Hell Hole (9 page)

Authors: Chris Grabenstein

BOOK: Hell Hole

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A dark
red Dodge that rolled off the assembly line sometime back when Reagan was president parks next to my Jeep. I can see two silhouettes in the front seat but nobody gets out.

“The troopers contacted Smith's family,” says Dixon. “Alerted his sisters as to what happened. Told us the ladies would be coming up today to claim the vehicle and make arrangements for the body.”

Ceepak nods.

We're all standing along the fence. Seven men staring at the two black women in the car. We must look like the receiving line at an Irish wake.

Finally, I hear the clunk-thud-screech of heavy car doors opening. Two at once. Both of Smith's sisters step out of the beat-up old Dodge.

“We come for the car,” says the one standing behind the door on the driver side. “Tonya needs it for work Monday.”

Tonya seems to be the shy sister. About my age and very pretty, she stands behind the door on the passenger side. She's thin and, right now, looks like she wishes she were even skinnier so she could become invisible. She won't lift her head to meet any of the fourteen eyes staring at her.

“Which one of you has the keys?” The driver-side sister, on the other hand, is no shrinking violet. I figure she's older, maybe thirty. She talks with a sassy swagger and looks tough enough to take out half of Dixon's unit, especially if she packs all 290 of her pounds into the first punch. “Maybe you gentlemen didn't hear me. I said, âWho has the damn keys to Tonya's ride?'”

“Butt Lips?” Dixon calls out.

“On it, sir.” Rutledge, aka Butt Lips, heads into the house to retrieve the car keys. Ceepak takes a step toward the women. When he does, Tonya, the shy one, retreats half a step. The other one? She doesn't budge.

“Ma'am, we are all very sorry for your loss.”

The driver doesn't answer. She gives Ceepak a bull snort out both nostrils and stands her ground.

“Will you be taking the vehicle home to Maryland?” Ceepak asks. He's not that good at guessing where people are from by the way they snort at him. He just knows how to read the license plates on the Ford and the Dodge:
Maryland
.

Now the big sister glowers at him. “You a soldier?”

“No,” says Ceepak. “I'm with the local police.”

“But he used to be a soldier,” I chime in. “Over in Iraq.”

I figure she might relax if she knows everybody here except me played on the same team as her brother. But she doesn't. In fact, she looks angrier.

“Local police have a problem with Tonya picking up her own damn car?”

“Of course not.”

“Then it's none of your damn business where we're headed, am I right?”

Ceepak gestures toward the smaller of the two cars. “Would you mind if we inspected the trunk before you drive home?”

“Why?”

“Part of an ongoing police investigation.”

“What kind of investigation?”

“We think we know who stole the air bags and CD changer.”

“They took the air bags?”

“Yes, ma' am.”

She shakes her head, disgusted. “Who has the damn keys?”

Rutledge comes back out to the patio. Tosses a key ring to Dixon, who snatches it in midair. He steps forward and dangles the key ring off the tip of his index finger in front of the big sister's face. Swirls it around some.

“Miss Smith,” he says, “these keys are hereby presented to you on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your loved one's honorable and faithful service.”

Geeze-o, man.

I think Dixon is mocking a dead soldier's sister.

The big sister rips the key ring off his wiggling finger. Mutters something nasty. I hope it was “fuck you.”

“Excuse me?” says Dixon.

Apparently, it was.

The back of his neck flushes red with rage. If he had any hair back there, it'd be standing up like dog hackles.

“What'd you say?”

Ceepak steps forward. “Let it go, Sergeant Dixon.”

Dixon pivots. Glares.

“Let it go,” Ceepak says again.

“This woman disrespected me.”

“And I'll do it again,” she says. “In fact, I'll tell you to go straight to hell you ever talk that kind of trash about my baby brother again.”

Dixon grins. “Perhaps you misunderstood me, Miss Smith. I said nothing derogatory against your brother.”

“Uhm-hmm. I heard the words behind your words.”

“Sarge?” It's the lanky guy they keep calling Worthless. The lieutenant. The guy who should be in charge but, apparently, isn't. “Let it go.”

Dixon's skin tone steps down to code orange from its previous status at red.

“Tomorrow,” he whispers to Ceepak. “Seventeen-hundred hours.” He turns. “Gentlemen? Inside.”

The short dude in the do-rag, Hernandez, hops to and shoves open the sliding glass door. The soldiers head into the rental house. Hernandez is the last man in and slams the patio door sideways and shut.

I hear sizzling over on the grill. Those sirloins are officially shoe leather.

“You drive that one, Tonya,” says the big sister when the soldiers are all gone. “I'll follow along behind you.”

“Jacquie?” The shy girl speaks.

“What?”

“The police officer said he needs to inspect the trunk.”

“What for? It won't do Shareef any good.”

“Jacquie? Please.”

The big woman, Jacquie, lets out a hurricane gush of exasperation. “Fine.” She flings the key ring at my partner. “Five minutes.”

Seems everybody's giving us deadlines today.

“Thank you.” Ceepak moves around to the rear of the Ford. I follow. So does Tonya.

Jacquie grumbles as she climbs back into her Dodge. “Gonna take us all night to drive home to Baltimore. Gonna be all kinds of bad traffic â¦ .”

She keeps jabbering but it's mostly a mumbleâa TV set in the living room nobody's really listening to.

We lift the trunk lid and see less than nothing. Literally. If you ask me, Nicky Nichols and Mr. Shrimp travel around town with one of those portable Dustbusters you can plug into your cigarette lighter and tidy up after they break in. The carpet still has that greasy splotch on the left, but no way are there any hairs or fibers we could put under the microscope to help us nail Nichols and Shrimp.

I, once again, see the metal bracket and torn audio wires.

“They stole my CD changer,” says Tonya.

“Hopefully,” says Ceepak, “we will be able to recover it for you soon.”

“Tonya?”

Jacquie's back. If our five minutes are already up, her watch must be from a different time zone.

“We need to leave here. Now.” She turns on Ceepak. “Listen up, popo. Tonya and I are leaving. And don't you fools be comin' down to Baltimore, knocking on our door, getting all up in our business. We are through with you, them, and the entire United States Army. Is that clear?”

“Of course,” says Ceepak.

“It was new,” says Tonya. “The CD changer. Brand new. I bought it last month.”

“Little sister, you do not need to be talking to this man!”

“I may have the receipt. Would that help?”

“Yes, ma'am. It would help us identify the unit's serial number.” Ceepak hands her a business card. She stares at it. “If you find the paperwork, please call me.”

“Tonya?” says Jacquie. “We still need to go talk to that damn funeral home man.”

Ceepak lowers the trunk lid.

“Thank you for your time. Again, we're sorry for your loss.”

Jacquie turns on her heel and heads back to her car. “We are out of here.”

Tonya doesn't move.

“You were Shareef's friend, right?” she asks.

“No. We never met.”

Now she looks puzzled.

“Tonya?” Jacquie is hollering out the passenger-side window of her car. “How many damn times have I got to tell you? We need to leave here.
Now!
”

Ceepak looks at Tonya. Musters up his considerable stockpile of honesty and integrity and puts it right there in his eyes so she can see it. “Is there something you want to tell me, Ms. Smith?”

She nods. “Shareef called me.”

“Last night?”

Another nod. “We talked some.”

“Tonya?” Jacquie is furious and yanks open her door again. When she slams it shut behind her, the whole chassis rocks. “Get in the damn car, girl!”

Tonya keeps talking. “He said he was in a parking lot. At a rest stop. He told me he was fine, feeling strong.”

“Tonya?”

“Then he had to run because his friend showed up.”

“His friend?” says Ceepak.

“That's enough,” snaps Jacquie.

“I thought it might've been you,” says Tonya.

Jacquie grabs Tonya's elbow. Rough. “But you were wrong weren't you, baby sister? Shareef was wrong too! Dead wrong! He never had no damn friends. Not this man, not those others, not any of'em!”

“Danny? Did
you get more ice?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. Sam? Can you give him a hand? We need it at the poolside bar. Thanks, guys.”

Rita hustles up the driveway through the wrought iron gates to Crazy Janey's French chateau beach house. The place is a mansion. Samantha Starky and I have been valet parking cars for a couple hours, ever since the gates swung open at 7:30 PM. We're both wearing black pants and little red jackets. Kind of look like organ grinder monkeys. Of course, Starky makes a much cuter monkey than I do.

The red tunic hugs her in a way that shows off a shapely figure. This might be the first time I've ever seen her out of uniform. I mean she's in a valet parking uniform but not the drab dress-blue polo shirt that sort of makes everybody wearing it look like a lumpy airplane pillow. And without the cop cap, her hair is kind of bouncy, not strangled into a ponytail poking out the back of her hat.

She cleans up good, as they say.

“I can carry two bags,” she says.

“Great. I'll grab the rest.” I go ahead and hoist four bags so I can prove to Starky and the world just how manly I am. Mistake. Each bag weighs thirty pounds and the bottoms are filled with the sloshing water of melted ice, some of which is dribbling out of vent holes and soaking my shoes.

“We can make another trip,” suggests Starky.

“That's okay,” I grunt. “I'm good to go.”

Of course, it's all uphill from here. Up the driveway. Through the gates. Up around the fountain. The bags seem heavier with every step.

“Did you see Paris Hilton?” asks Starky as we hike up the hill. I'm leaking a trail of droplets, my bags barely an inch off the pavement.

“Nah.” I'm keeping my words to a minimum. Hoarding my oxygen. It's another hundred yards around the triple garages to the backyard, two hundred feet from there to the kidney-shaped pool. My arms are about six inches longer than they used to be. Carrying 120 pounds of ice will do that to you.

Starky and I are working our butts off tonight, because Ceepak isn't here to do all the jobs he was supposed to do. He talked to Rita earlier and, I guess, they both decided it was more important for him to head down to the state police barracks and talk with some of his trooper pals, see if we could gain access to any of the Smith suicide evidence, now that we officially suspect a pair of Sea Haven pirates were the ones who broke into the dead man's vehicle. Ceepak probably advised his wife that we only have about nineteen hours left to figure out who really killed Shareef Smith or, without a doubt, Sergeant Dale “Stone Cold” Dixon will send out his troops to do the job for us. They'll probably do the judge and jury's jobs too. You knowâthe sentencing and execution parts. I think they're all firmly in favor of the death penalty.

I guess when you marry a guy who comes with a rigid moral code, this sort of thing happens now and then. He gives his word to someone, you suffer the consequences.

But waitâit's almost 9:30. Ceepak's been gone for three hours. The state barracks are only like a thirty-minute drive down the Parkway. He should definitely be back by now.

Maybe he's allergic to ice.

We round this bend in the garden path and weave our way through a few hundred of Dirty Larry and Crazy Janey's close, personal celebrity friends. The girls in the crowdâmostly supermodels and adult movie actresses or bothâare all wearing bathing suits. Skimpy bikinis, mostly. But none of them are actually in the pool playing Marco Polo. We pass this one blonde and I swear it looks like she's wearing three folded napkins. Cocktail napkins. Folded in half. Tiny triangles.

I hear a wolf whistle. T.J. He's over in the poolside tent, setting up beverages for the beautiful people. He waves us over.

“We need to ice down this champagne, pronto,” he says. “The senator's all set to make a big toast.”

T.J.'s already lined up three-dozen magnums of MoÃ«t & Chandon in foil-lined bins.

I plop my ice bags on the ground and try to reestablish some semblance of circulation to my limbs. Starky repeatedly smacks and smashes her two bags on the concrete to break up the clumped-together cubes. Gives one bag a good karate kick. Then, she tears open the top with her teeth, gives the whole thing a good shake, and dumps ice into the channels between champagne bottles. She's not even breathing heavy. Maybe I should sign up for Tae Kwon Do.

“We have a senator here?” I ask to kill some time so I don't have to lift anything heavy for another ten seconds or so.

“Senator Worthington,” says Starky. “The senior senator from Pennsylvania. I parked his Lexus while you ran to the store for ice. It's a very nice car but he's a terrible tipper. Gave me seventy-five cents.”

“Man, you should've kept driving,” says T.J. “You could've held his Lexus hostage. Hey, Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you meet Springsteen?”

“No way. He's here? Springsteen?”

“Yeah. He played a couple songs. You knowââCrazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley trading hands.'”

“Oh, man! He sang âSpirit in the Night'?”

T.J. chuffs a laugh.

“Gotcha!”

Kids. You gotta love'em. Can't shoot'em.

“I'm yanking your crank,” T.J. says as I dump my first load. I make sure a couple cubes tumble out. I also let the water slosh onto his sneaker.

There's some commotion across the pool.

Eight brawny guys in dark suits and sunglasses who look like linebackers with curly wires trailing out of their ears. One of the guys talks into his sleeve, just like in the movies. I don't think he's talking to his buddy Mr. Cuff Link. I think they're Secret Service agents or some kind of private security guardsâeither for Dirty Larry, the king of all airwaves, or the senior senator from Pennsylvania. Right now, I'm guessing they work for the senator because they have crew cuts and shaved heads. I'm certain Dirty Larry's security posse dresses in the latest gangsta rap fashions and none of these guys are wearing necklaces that resemble hubcaps on chains.

The security team scans the crowd, sweeps it with their hidden eyes. A couple talk to their sleeves some more.

Rita swings by the booze tent carrying a tray of pigs in a blanketâgolden brown pastry shells wrapped around sizzling little wieners. Starving, I reach for a toothpick.

“Danny? These are for the guests. Heyâhave you guys seen John?”

“Nope!” says Starky, the one off-duty cop not currently drooling like Homer Simpson in a doughnut factory.

“Darn,” says Rita. “I wanted him to hear Senator Worthington.”

“Is he the guy in the suit and the Army boots?”

“Yes, T.J.,” says Rita.

Okay. I've read about Senator Worthington. Only because his fashion statement made the cover of this weekly newspaper I read whenever I'm in the express line at the grocery store with the mathematically challenged. You knowâpeople who can't count to fifteen. The Star Gazer loves Senator Winslow “the Winner” Worthington because he always wears a pair of his son's dusty ol' Army boots. He says he wears the boots “so I never forget the daily sacrifices being made by my son and all our brave troops with boots on the ground over in Iraq.”

Geeze-o, man.

Hey, call me cynical, but the wearing-my-son's-old-Army-boots bit sounds like a slick political PR stunt to me. Something for the TV cameras. This is why, when he speaks, he never stands behind a podium, unless it's made out of Plexiglas. It's all about the boots.

And it's working. Everybody says Worthington is a shoe-in to be the next Republican candidate for the presidency.

“Testing, one, two, three â¦”

On the other side of the pool, they've set up a small raised platform. Dirty Larry, the nationally syndicated potty mouth, is on stage, shaking his shaggy hair and tapping on the microphone.

“Can you hear me, Janey?”

“When can I
not
hear you?” Crazy Janey, our hostess and Larry's loyal sidekick, screams from over near the diving board.

“Okay, everybody,” says Larry, “before we fill the pool with Jell-O and really get this party started â¦”

The crowd laughs. I might've joined them except I'm busy heaving another bag of ice.

“I want to introduce a truly great American. Not as great as me, of course. He's not syndicated in one hundred and twenty-seven markets â¦ .”

The crowd claps. I dump ice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to introduce an American who isn't afraid to speak up for our brave men and women in uniform, maybe because he walks a mile in his son's shoes every day. A son, by the way, who was wounded in combat and awarded the Purple Heart. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want my opinion, which, of course everybody does, this man should be and will be the next president of these United States. Why? Because I'm too busy to run myself!”

A few more chuckles. Enough noise for us to start popping champagne corks into towels.

“Friends, I give you the senior senator from the great state of PennsylvaniaâWinslow W. Worthington!”

Dirty Larry signals for the senator to clomp up on stage in those Army boots.

Everybody claps so I flap flippers like an obedient seal.

“Danny?” says Starky. “Start pouring. It's almost time for the toast!”

So, while the esteemed senator rambles on about how happy he is to be here and jabs the air with his thumb like Clinton used to do, we pour bubbly into plastic champagne glasses. Well, I guess they're not really glasses but you can't call them champagne “plastics.” Not very classy and, trust me, Crazy Janey is definitely paying the classy rates for this shindig.

The senator talks some more.

We pass out the champagne.

The senator talks even more because that's what senators do.

Rita makes her way through the crowd and reaches the stage so she can hand a cup of bubbly up to the senator.

The eight guys with the sunglasses and earpieces flanking the senator on all sides of the stage won't be drinking this evening. It's hard to whip out your Uzi if you're sipping champagne.

Finally, the senator stops speechifying long enough to raise his plastic goblet.

“And so, my friends, I propose a toast!”

Everybody raises their glasses when the senator raises his.

“Goodness gracious,” he says. “Words fail me.”

“Impossible,” cracks Dirty Larry, who, unlike the senator, never runs out of words, especially if there's any kind of microphone close by.

“What makes this the grandest summer evening of all?” the senator continues, sounding all choked up. “The answer is quite simple: my only son is here tonight. Oh, yesâhe could have come home to his family months ago when he won that Purple Heart Larry mentioned. However, when his wounds healed, my son told me he didn't want to abandon his other family: the brave men of Echo Company.”

The crowd applauds. They know a hero when they hear about one.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my son is here on a brief furlough to savor some of the freedoms he has fought so valiantly to defend. And, to make this night even more special, he's brought along a few friends!”

A murmur rumbles through the crowd. I notice that Starky is up on the tips of her toes. The senator swings his arm grandly to the right.

“Son? Come on up here with your buddies and take a bow!”

Five men in uniform rumble up the steps and line up behind the senator.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Second Lieutenant Winslow G. Worthington and his courageous comrades from the fighting Eighty-second Airborne!”

The crowd goes wild.

Well, everybody except me.

Winslow G. Worthington? He's the soldier with the limp.

The one Dixon calls “Lieutenant Worthless.”