Chris Grabenstein - Fun House

“He is one of Mr. Hess’s other brothers.”

“The Creed?”

Ceepak nods. “He’s waiting for us at Pasquale’s Pizza.”

Axel looks like a balder Hulk Hogan in a backward baseball cap.

Ceepak and I stroll into Pasquale’s Pizza (the best slices on the boardwalk, btw) and see this guy with a white handlebar mustache, Ray-Bans, five tiny golden earrings, and a serious ’tude sitting in a booth by himself. He’s wearing a tomato-red tank top so we can admire the various tattoos displayed on his bulging arm muscles. I particularly enjoy the flaming skull and crossbones on his right biceps. However, the Jesus in the Confederate soldier cap on his left forearm just confuses me.

“You Ceepak?” Axel says to Ceepak. I’m guessing Gabe Hess gave him a description that included the adjective “muscular,” so he knows it’s not me.

“Yes, sir. This is my partner, Officer Boyle.”

We both flash our badges. Seeing how we’re not wearing uniforms, it’s the least we can do.

We slide into the booth. Axel has a crushed Pepsi can and a grease-stained paper plate sitting in front of him. Guess he already ordered.

“Either of you wearing a wire?” he asks.

“Negative,” says Ceepak.

“You packing?”

“Are you asking if we are armed?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course. We’re on duty.”

Axel raises both arms off the table a couple inches. “I’m clean.”

Ceepak nods.

“But I got six brothers covering my back.”

I glance around the pizza parlor. All I see are guys in white aprons tossing dough in the air, tourists lined up three-deep at the counter, and my friend from high school, Sarah Pierce, grabbing drinks for customers out of the cold box.

“Don’t worry,” says Axel, taking off his sunglasses. “They can see you.”

“Gabe informs me that you wish to exonerate your motorcycle club from involvement in the death of his brother, as well as that of Paul Braciole.”

I can’t believe Ceepak just called an outlaw biker gang a “motorcycle club.” Then again, Axel, who looks like he taste-tests every batch of steroids they ship out so he can pump up like Popeye, might have gone ballistic and ripped our heads off if we’d called his “club” something more sinister-sounding.

“Yeah,” says Axel. “We didn’t do any of this shit.”

“What about the stunt at Morgan’s Surf and Turf?” I say.

“Well, yeah, obviously we did that shit, but none of this other. That shit at the restaurant wasn’t the shit I was talking about.”

“You were in no way involved in the death of Paul Braciole?” says Ceepak.

“Nope. Sure, most of the brothers thought he was a douchebag. But being a douche isn’t sufficient grounds for termination.”

Good to know the Creed has rules for this kind of stuff.

“And Skeletor?” says Ceepak.

“No way.”

“And we are expected to take your word for all this?”

Axel grins. At the edges of his Pringle-man mustache, the guy has dimples. “No.”

Now he reaches under the table and pulls out an interoffice envelope somebody in his motorcycle “club” probably stole from their day job.

“This is what we call a good-faith offering.” Axel untwirls the string clasp and slides out a stack of eight-by-ten photographs.

Ceepak flicks the first one over.

It’s a photograph of a Lincoln Town Car parked in a crappy section of some equally crappy city. In some state. Somewhere.

“What exactly are we looking at here?” Ceepak asks.

Axel leans across the table, taps the photograph with a finger. I see he wears the “88” tattoos on his knuckles.

“You see the guy behind the wheel?”

“Yes.”

“That’s Georgio Accardi, driver for Bobby Lombardo.”

“How do you know this?” asks Ceepak, even though it’s probably a dumb question.

Axel smiles. “Let’s just say the Lombardos are friends of friends. You don’t believe me, check it out with the Feds.”

“We will run this by the FBI, have them confirm the identity of the driver.”

“You do that.” He head-nudges for Ceepak to check out photograph number two.

Ceepak flips over the second eight-by-ten.

“Holy shit,” I say out loud.

“Indeed,” says Ceepak, without reprimanding me for my poor choice of words. He’s too shocked.

Because in photo number two, we see a certain young lady, wearing sunglasses and a conservative business suit, toting a boxy attache case and walking up to Georgio Accardi’s Lincoln; a certain young lady who bears a striking resemblance to one Layla Shapiro.

“You know the chick, am I right?”

“From the distance this photograph was taken,” says Ceepak, “it’s hard to be one hundred percent certain.”

“Try the next one. We zoomed in for you.”

Ceepak flips over the third picture. It’s a little grainy, a little blurry, but crystal-clear.

It’s Layla.

“We started tailing these production people as soon as the TV started saying we were the ones who bumped off Paulie Braciole, because we knew we didn’t have nothing to do with that. We figured they did.”

“The TV people?” says Ceepak, not letting on that he had recently reached a similar conclusion.

“Yeah,” says Axel, leaning back in his chair. “You make that big of a stink about something, it’s like a fart, you know what I mean?”

Ceepak looks confused.

So I lend a hand: “He who smelt it, dealt it?”

“That’s right, kid. He who denied it, supplied it.”

“What is in the briefcase?” asks Ceepak.

“Cash,” says Axel.

“How can you be sure?”

“The driver, Georgio, he is like a brother to me, you know what I mean?”

“He is a member of your organization?”

“I ain’t saying he is, I ain’t saying he ain’t. Be that as it may, Mr. Accardi did not like seeing The Creed Brotherhood being maligned on TV. He witnessed the transfer of certain funds from this chicky who works for Mandrake, the big-shot producer who, not for nothin’, needs to take remedial gambling lessons before he heads back to A.C.”

“Perhaps Ms. Shapiro was simply acting as a courier to pay off her boss’s gambling debts,” says Ceepak, back in his let’s-not-jump-to-conclusions mode.

“Maybe,” says Axel. “Only, Georgio says as soon as little miss hot body is out of his Lincoln, his boss gets on this secure satellite phone he keeps in the back seat, makes a call.”

“This is all hearsay,” says Ceepak. “Where is Mr. Accardi? Perhaps we should talk to him.”

“Sorry. That ain’t gonna happen. And, if you send that black FBI bastard down to A.C. to knock on Georgio’s door, we’re done. I will swear up and down we never even had this conversation we’re having here.”

Guess the Creed has been tailing us, too. They know about Special Agent Christopher Miller’s involvement in our investigation.

Ceepak sighs. “Very well. What was the nature of Mr. Lombardo’s conversation, as reported to you via Mr. Accardi?”

“The meet took place a day or two after you boys found Braciole strung up with the stuffed animals. The money was for a hit. And, get this.” Axel leans in. Looks both ways before talking. “It was, and I quote, a hit for a repeat customer.”

“Come again?”

“Bobby Lombardo tells his contact that this job is being ordered by the same guy who ordered the last one, the one that got all the TV attention.”

“You mean Paulie Braciole?” I say.

Up go his shoulders. “Mr. Lombardo don’t come right out and say it, he don’t name names. He just calls it the ‘other one. From TV.’”

Wow. Ceepak was one hundred percent correct. Mandrake set up both hits. He had his chief lackey, Layla, deliver the down payments, because, I gotta figure, you don’t pay everything up front when you order a hit, in case the contractor doesn’t complete the job. It’s sort of like putting in a swimming pool. You pay the guy up front, the only pool you’re gonna see is where your backyard floods after a good rain.