Chris Grabenstein - Mad Mouse

She's crying.

I'm not used to seeing Olivia cry. She's always been “tougher than the rest,” to copy Ceepak and borrow a line from a Springsteen song. Now she's tugging at her soppy blouse, looking at where the exploding paint balloon tore open a middle button and exposed her bra. Ceepak takes off his blazer and drapes it backwards over her like a blanket.

“Thank you,” Olivia whispers.

“Danny? Preliminary injury assessment?”

My man cuts through the crap. I guess this is the no-nonsense battlefield talk you use when your buddies are getting blown up all around you in Fallujah.

“I'm okay. Ribs hurt. That's the worst of it.”

“Hang in there, partner.”

“Roger,” I say. “Wilco.” I think that means I will cooperate with his request. I will hang in there.

Ceepak duckwalks to the shattered lamp.

“Possible seven-six-two millimeter special ball,” he mutters to himself when he sees the shatter pattern in the glass light fixture. The bullet hole in the center of the cracked web isn't very big; in fact, it sort of looks like a hole you'd punch into the top of a mayonnaise jar if you were collecting fireflies.

“Ceepak? We should probably move Olivia inside.”

“Roger that. Can you walk?”

“Yeah. But I'd rather run.” Now she sounds more like herself.

“Stay low. I've got your back.”

They move to Morgan's front door, hunched over, Ceepak covering her back. When they reach the door, he kicks it open so they never miss a stride. As it swings in, I can see that ancient hostess Norma with her hand over her chest like she might need CPR and paddles from the first ambulance to arrive on the scene. There's a whole crowd up near the hostess station. The bartender. A couple of waiters. People clutching doggie bags.

I see Rita. T. J.'s standing next to her. I guess it wasn't him shooting at us this time, not unless he's like The Flash instead of The Phantom and ran real fast from the water tower and got back into the restaurant before anybody even noticed he was gone.

The door glides shut.

“I found this taped to the base of the water tower.”

Ceepak holds out what looks like a plastic-laminated Marvel Comics cover, only it's the size of a baseball card. On the card, in blocky orange-fading-to-yellow lettering I can read the word “Avengers.” The covergirl is a superhero with flaming red hair and a tight-fitting leotard that makes her boobs look like falling bombshells. Her white-gloved hands are splayed out, like she just lost her grip on the trapeze or she's grabbing for something. Her face indicates that she's pissed.

Ceepak tucks the card inside his shirt pocket after first feeling instinctively for his cargo pants hip pouch, which his dress slacks don't have.

I turn around and see a cop car with twirling roof lights swing into the parking lot off Ocean Avenue. Sea Haven's finest have arrived.

“We need to secure this site,” Ceepak says to Mark Malloy and Adam Kiger, the first cops on the scene.

“You got it,” Kiger says.

“Roll out the tape,” Malloy says. “I'll work the crowd inside.”

He heads into the restaurant. Kiger opens the trunk of their cruiser to dig out a roll of yellow “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape.

“More units are on their way,” he says. “Chief Baines, too.”

I hear our dispatcher squawking from the radio inside the car.

“All available units. Ten twenty-four. Morgan's Surf and Turf.”

10-24. Assault.

“This lamp,” Ceepak says, pointing to the shattered light fixture. “Lock it down. We might find our bullet.”

“Bullet?”

“Affirmative.”

Malloy lets that register for a second.

“I'm on it,” he says.

“Thanks, Mark.” Ceepak turns to me. “Danny?”

“Yes, sir?”

“We need to move you indoors.”

“I'm okay. We should go across the street, check out those houses.”

“Did you see something in either location, Danny? Barrel flash? Shadow movement?”

“No … it's just that … I want … I mean I have to …”

Ceepak looks at me. I see something in his eyes, like he understands. Bad people hiding in the shadows have shot at his friends, too.

“We'll get him, Danny. You have my word.” He turns around. “Mark?”

“Yeah?” Malloy stops unrolling yellow tape.

“We need units there and there.” He does this three-finger air chop pointing at the two corner houses. “ASAP. I'm taking Danny inside.”

I hear sirens, see two more cop cars swing into the lot.

“Come on, Danny. Inside.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I clutch my chest. It hurts more than I let Ceepak know, but not as much as seeing my friend Olivia crying like that.

I guess this is what they mean in all those cop movies:

Now it's personal.

Was this a bias incident? A hate crime?” The one asking the question is Penny Jennings. She writes for the Sea Haven Sandpaper, our weekly newspaper and fish-wrapper.

Chief Baines doesn't answer. He's busy pacing and rubbing his mustache. Two hours after the incident, we've set up a command center in one of the function rooms Morgan's rents out to private parties. It's where the Rotary Club meets on Mondays-there's a small podium with their Golden Gear seal taped to its front lying in a corner near a stack of booster chairs.

Baines has called in Penny and several of the town's top citizens in an effort to stop any hysteria about “this unfortunate incident” before it gets started.

“If we link the attack tonight to the earlier incident at The Pig's Commitment,” our reporter continues, “does that mean our shooter is some sort of white supremacist?”

“You mean because the waitress tonight and Grace Porter are both Negroes?” says Mr. Weese, my mortgage broker buddy. Weese, I've just learned, is chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Labor Day Celebration Committee, though he seems unlikely to be the one who came up with that Boogaloo BBQ idea. Anyhow, I can tell he wants all this stuff that's not listed in the official program to go away. “That's patently preposterous!”

There are six distinguished citizens here, including Mayor Sinclair, who's dressed in his usual uniform of khakis, polo shirt, and sunglasses draped around his neck with a red Croakie string, even though it's almost midnight. Ceepak, me, and a couple of other boys in blue are here, too-just waiting for the chief to give us our marching orders. Morgan's will provide all the free coffee we want. It figures to be a long night.

Olivia is at the hospital. She wasn't hurt all that badly but Ceepak insisted she go get checked out. She didn't need an ambulance. I called Jess on his cell, and he came and drove her over to Mainland Medical. He'll stay with her all night if they keep her.

“What about the FBI? Should we call them?” Mr. O'Malley asks. Skipper's dad.

Baines ponders this. Paces.

“Can we wait until Tuesday?” Now it's Bruno Mazzilli. He owns half the buildings on the boardwalk. “I've got a shitload of money tied up in this damn MTV thing.”

“We all do,” says O'Malley.

“Yeah, but I'm talking perishables,” says Mazzilli. “Ribs. Chicken. Burgers. Not to mention fifty-gallon drums of cole slaw, baked beans, and potato salad. We call off the damn beach party, I'm not gonna be too happy.”

“Get it through your heads,” the mayor says, suddenly smelling the twenty-ton gorilla in the room, the giant ape they've all been tiptoeing around. “We cannot call the FBI! Not again. Not twice in one summer.” Our mayor is also the proud proprietor of a couple of motels, a car wash, and two ice cream shops. He doesn't want G-men scaring people away from his cash registers again the same way they did back in July. “Jesus. This could kill us!” He swipes his finger across his throat to help paint the picture. “We'd never recover!”