Chris Grabenstein - Fun House

“Not if we deal with it on an overtime-only basis with everybody but you two,” suggests the chief.

“But we’d still pay you two the overtime rates,” adds Mandrake. “That’s part of the deal. Definitely.”

“This isn’t about the money,” says Ceepak.

Mandrake laughs-derisively, I think they call it. “Officer? It’s always about the money. Am I right?”

The mayor laughs. Layla chuckles. Hey, the guy’s her boss. She has to.

Me, the chief, and Ceepak? Statues on Easter Island smile more.

Ceepak repeats himself. “It is not about the money, Mr. Mandrake.”

“Okay. Forget the money,” says Mandrake, reaching into his briefcase yet again. “You guys should do it to protect my kids.”

Ceepak arches an eyebrow. “Protect them? From what?”

“Drug dealers.”

He holds up a tiny glass vial, the kind doctors use when giving you a shot. There’s a small sticker glued on the front. Instead of the usual medical mumbo-jumbo, I see a comic-book illustration of a purple muscleman in a hood and loincloth. His head is a skull.

“Might I see that ampule, Mr. Mandrake?” says Ceepak.

Mandrake hands him the small glass container. “The crew found a bunch just like it when they had to move a couple mattresses in the house to set up a shot.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Anabolic steroids,” says Mandrake, striking a bodybuilder pose, pumping his chicken wings, pretending he has muscles.

“From Skeletor,” adds Ceepak.

Last summer, Ceepak and I almost died when this boarded-up ride called the Hell Hole started burning down around us.

Despite the dilapidated old ride’s name, the blaze, or, to quote the newspapers, the “roiling inferno,” was caused by an arsonist, not Beelzebub pitchforking up brimstone from the basement.

We had crawled into the shuttered ride to rescue a couple of junkies shooting up something called “Hot Stuff Heroin,” which was being sold by a homegrown Sea Haven drug dealer who calls himself Skeletor, because, according to our sources, he has a thing for the villain from the 1980s “He-Man: Masters Of The Universe” cartoons.

Skeletor, in the animated episodes-and action figure aisle at Toys “R” Us-was a purple muscleman in a hood and loincloth who had a skull for a head.

The cartoon on the steroid bottle? It’s him.

And branding his drugs with cartoons? That’s him, too. “Hot Stuff,” the little red devil from the old Harvey comic books, was plastered all over Skeletor’s white paper heroin bags, the evidence that led us to the Hell Hole ride.

Ceepak and the SHPD, plus a joint federal/state government task force, have been trying to locate and apprehend Skeletor for nearly two years. He and his gang are responsible for most of the drug traffic up and down our eighteen-mile-long barrier island, not to mention the rest of the Jersey Shore.

Needless to say, we haven’t caught him.

As soon as we figure out where he’s set up shop, he disappears. He’s like a ghost or one of those Al Qaeda dudes hiding in their Pakistani caves: always one step ahead of the law and/or the drones.

“Mr. Mandrake, Ms. Shapiro, Mayor Sinclair?” says Ceepak. “Can you please give us the room? Danny and I need to discuss your security detail proposition with Chief Baines.”

“Sure, sure,” says Mandrake, snapping shut his briefcase.

The mayor sidles over to schmooze the producer. “By the way, Marty, my son, who looks great on video, wanted me to ask you-”

“We can discuss that outside,” says Layla, ushering everybody to the door. “You have our phone numbers?”

“Yeah,” I say because I do. Well, I have hers, not Mandrake’s or the Mayor’s. I’m not really into sixty-year-old guys with Billy Goat Gruff beards or anybody who says “Have a sunny, funderful day” on a regular basis.

“Come on,” Mandrake says to Layla, fiddling with his iPhone. “We’re behind schedule. We need to be shooting the beer pong competition.”

Layla smiles at us. “Thank you gentlemen for your time.”

“My son is quite good at beer pong,” I hear the mayor say as their voices fade away.

“How old is he?” asks Layla.

“Sixteen.…”

I close the door and turn around to face Ceepak and the chief.

“What do you think, John?” says Baines.

“I am, of course, conflicted.”

“Yeah,” I say because I haven’t had breakfast and I know there are doughnuts in the break room but an egg, pork roll, and cheese sandwich would stay with me longer.

“Skeletor,” says Ceepak.

“Yeah,” says the chief.

Ceepak tosses the little steroid vial up and down in his hand like a glass peanut. Normally, he’d be whipping out his stainless steel forceps and tweezering the tiny bottle into an evidence bag so he could have it dusted for prints and scanned for whatever he could scan it for. But since the Fun House production crew found this particular piece of evidence under a seedy mattress in a skeevy party house, it’s probably way beyond compromised as far as offering us any useable clues.

“This could be the break we’ve been waiting for,” says the chief.

“Indeed,” says Ceepak. “However, we may be forced into an ethical compromise.”

Oh, boy. Ceepak’s not too keen on those.

“We could offer Mr. Braciole and Ms. Kemppainen a deal,” suggests the chief. “They help us nab Skeletor, we drop the charges.”

Ceepak nods. “It’s a possibility.”

Wow. He’s actually considering it.

“The county prosecutor cuts deals all the time, John,” says the chief. “Sometimes, to catch the big fish, you have to let the little ones off the hook.”

Ceepak nods some more. Yes, he lives his life in strict compliance with a rigid moral code and people call him an overgrown Eagle Scout. But hey, this isn’t his first rodeo, as they say, even though I’m not sure why they say it. Ceepak knows how the game is played: we don’t indict Paulie and Soozy on the drunk and disorderly, they give up Skeletor. We let two shrimps skate free to land the big tuna. I’m trying to work with the chief’s fish metaphor here.

“I’m not asking you to lie, cheat, or steal, John. Just to take advantage of the first lead we’ve had on this guy in ages.”

Ceepak thinks. Nods. “Talk to the county prosecutor. See how she wants to play it.”

“You on board if she says cut the deal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You sure?”

“Roger that.”

“What about the other thing?”

“Babysitting Fun House ?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

“The more time we spend with the reality show cast and crew, the more information we stand to pick up on Skeletor.”

“And,” says the chief, “maybe we can stop another one of those yahoos from passing out on top of some poor kid’s sand castle.”

Chief Baines. Always the dreamer.

“We’ll head over to the TV house,” Ceepak tells the chief. “Start interviewing the residents.”

“I’ll contact the county prosecutor. And John?”

“Sir?”

“Try to stay off camera.”

Ceepak grins a little. “That’ll work.”

As we head out the door, I remember what Dylan Murray said about Paulie Braciole when they processed him here at the house. His screaming, his face going bright orange, his neck tendons tightening up like thick cables.

“Roid rage,” I mumble.

“Come again?” says Ceepak.

“Paul Braciole. Dylan Murray and his brother were the ones who hauled the guy out of the Coin Castle. Said ‘The Thing’ was more like ‘The Hulk.’”

Ceepak stops in his tracks. Ruminates. “Roid rage. Acting in an overly aggressive, hostile manner after taking large doses of anabolic steroids. Manifesting symptoms of schizophrenia, mania.…”