Chris Grabenstein: Tilt-a-Whirl

I think she just realized she and Daddy won't be sneaking in anywhere any more.

The walkie-talkie clipped to my belt squawks. It's got to be Ceepak. I push the talkback button.

“Yes, sir?”

“I'm at the scene,” Ceepak says, “and have made a preliminary identification of the victim.”

There's a real long pause.

“It appears to be Reginald Hart.”

I turn to the girl.

“Is your father Reginald Hart?”

The girl nods.

O h, man.

“Danny?” Ceepak's filtered voice comes through loud and clear in The Fudgery. “Need your help here. Did the girl see who did this? Can she ID the perpetrator?”

She nods again.

“10-4,” I say into the walkie-talkie.

“Okay. Danny?”

“Yes, sir?”

“This is important. Focus.”

“Yes, sir….”

“You need to take her someplace safe.”

I wonder if Pudgy's Fudgery works for Ceepak.

“10-4.”

“Stick with her. Call the house for backup and secure your position. The bad guy's still at large and must be considered armed and dangerous. Alert the chief. I'll secure and preserve the crime scene.”

I look at my companion. She's too scared to be frightened any more.

Not me. My knees now start shaking.

Amy, having heard all of this, rechecks to make sure the Fudgery's front door is locked and deadbolted. Then she lowers the blinds. This morning, no one's going to get to check out the fresh fudge in the window.

There's a bad guy on the streets, someone crazy whom Ceepak says is “armed and dangerous” and who's probably looking for the one witness who can pin a huge homicide on him.

Then there's me.

A summer cop.

The guy without a gun.

Reginald Hart is kind of like Donald Trump, only richer and without the gravity-defying comb-over.

Plus, now he's dead.

If you grew up around Sea Haven, you've heard about Hart all your life. He owns half the skyscrapers up in the city and more than half the casinos further down the shore in Ocean Town. He also owns a bunch of restaurants, an NFL franchise, some oil tankers, and an airline. I think he used to own a mansion here on the ritzy south end of the island, but his third wife scored it in their divorce.

There are all sorts of stories about how Reginald Hart got his start and earned his nickname-Reginald “Hartless.” Apparently, when he was a young tycoon-in-training, Hart bought up cheap buildings in neighborhoods he figured were ripe for gentrification. But before he could renovate them, class them up for yuppies-or whatever they called professional people with money to burn back before Starbucks- Hart had to convince the old folks already living in his newly acquired tenements to move out.

Many of these longtime tenants didn't wish to accommodate Mr. Hart's desires. They had rent-controlled apartments and fixed incomes and wanted to stay where they were, thank you very much.

Hart energetically encouraged them to reconsider their real estate options.

He hired hookers and drug dealers and junkies to move into the buildings, even made some of the scuzzballs his resident superintendents.

Some people say Hart bought rats and turned them loose in the hallways. I don't know where you buy rats. Petco? Some eyeshadow factory that's laying off lab workers? I don't know, but I guess Hart did.

People fled his pigsties. Mostly senior citizens. Grandmothers and grandfathers. Hart was named “Slumlord of the Year,” but he got what he wanted-empty apartment buildings he could gut, gussy, fumigate, and flip. He did it a couple hundred times and made a ton of money. Then he started shopping for casinos and malls and high-end hotels. Hart was playing Monopoly on a really big board.

Mr. Hart is, correction, was, your basic bazillionaire.

And his daughter watched him die.

I did like Ceepak said. I radioed the base and in about thirty seconds every cop car on the island came screaming down Ocean Avenue to back me up.

Chief Cosgrove was first on the scene.

He's a big, burly 300-pound bear and when he starts growling orders, everybody hops to it. I don't even know Cosgrove's first name. I think it might be Bob, or Robert, but everybody calls him “Chief.”

“Lock down the causeway,” he says to Mark Malloy, this muscle-bound cop with a year-round tan.

“Right, chief!”

“Roadblock!”

Malloy jumps into his cruiser, but not fast enough for the chief.

“Move it! Hustle. Go!”

Cosgrove is like a junior-high gym teacher. He's always yelling at you to move it or lose it, haul ass, get the lead out-effective motivational stuff like that.

Malloy does a quick whoop with his siren, swirls his roof lights, and races off to blockade the bridge.

Those people who honked at me when I stopped them on Ocean Avenue? Man, are they going to be bummed with they bump into Malloy. The causeway is the only way on or off the eighteen-mile strip of sand we call Sea Haven Township. Unless, of course, you've got a boat. Lots of boats down here. There's even a pirate ship, but it's mostly a theme restaurant so it really wouldn't make a very good getaway vessel.

As I'm standing on the sidewalk in front of Pudgy's Fudgery watching a half-dozen cops running around, I realize that this is probably the worst crime this town has ever seen. Usually we deal with smaller stuff. Like stolen tricycles.

The chief marches up and sticks his face into mine.

“Where the hell is Ceepak?”

“Securing the crime scene, sir.”

“Good.”

Cosgrove walks away and retrieves a big blanket from the back of his Chief Car-a hulking Ford Expedition. It's way bigger than my Explorer and has the black-tinted privacy glass. There's not much turquoise and pink on the chief's vehicle. His police car is more Darth Vader death star, less friendly flamingo.

The chief galumphs into Pudgy's to get Hart's daughter, who's still inside with a couple cops. Guys with guns.

I look down the street at Sunnyside Playland and wonder what kind of gruesome stuff Ceepak is looking at right now.

All I see is Sunnyside Clyde's big beaming face on a billboard near the entrance. Clyde is Playland's mascot-a baggy-panted surfer dude with a big ray-rimmed sun for a head. He's always wearing dark sunglasses; but I never understood this, because if his head is the sun, how come he needs sunglasses?

“Cover me!” I hear the chief bark.

He has the girl bundled up in the blanket and is hustling her out the front door. Two cops with pistols flank him. When the girl's strapped into the back seat, she sees me and waves goodbye.

I wave back.

I see that Amy Decosimo insisted the girl take home some free fudge. She's clutching the clean white box against her bloody dress.

Cosgrove slams the door shut.

“Kid?” Cosgrove is in my face again. Apparently, he doesn't know my first or last name.

“Yes, sir?”

“What's your 10–38?”

He's using cop code. Something I should have studied more or maybe even memorized.

“What's your destination?”

“I, uh … I….”

“Go help Ceepak,” the chief says, checking his watch. “Tell him I've contacted State. The cavalry's on its way.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“Move it!” Cosgrove barks. “Get the lead out, son.”

I do as I'm told.

Just like in junior high gym class.

I've never seen a dead body before.

Well, I saw my grandfather's at his funeral, but he was all dressed up in a suit and tie and lying in his coffin. He even had on make-up, something he wouldn't have been caught dead doing when he was alive.

The weirdest part was his hair.

Grandpa always had a crewcut flattop, a holdover from World War II. The funeral director didn't know my grandfather, so he slicked his bristly hair over to the side and grandpa didn't look like grandpa any more.