Mind Scrambler (15 page)

“So,” says Krabitz, “I'm gonna go out there and find the little fuck.”

“You, of course, know we're looking for Pratt, too,” says Flynn. “He is a person of interest in the death of Ms. Kathleen Landry.”

Krabitz tosses up both his hands. “Don't worry, Detective. I'll turn the chorus boy over to you guys just as soon as he gives me the fucking notebooks. Scout's honor.”

“Have you checked his room at the Holiday Inn?” Zuckerman asks Flynn.

“Yeah. Pratt wasn't there. Our people talked to his roommate, dancer by the name of Mr. Magnum.”

“That's his stage name,” says Zuckerman.

“So I gathered. This Mr. Magnum says Pratt hasn't slept at the motel since Saturday. Didn't come home last night. Or tonight, of course.”

“So,” says Krabitz, “that means he must be hiding somewheres else.”

F-ing brilliant deduction, Sherlock.

“Well, it's late,” says Zuckerman, closing his clipboard holder. He and Krabitz stand up to leave. “We will, of course, keep you in the loop on anything and everything we discover in our burglary investigation.”

“Appreciate it,” says Flynn as the crack Stolen Notebooks Investigative Team heads toward the door.

Halfway there, Zuckerman stops.

Does one of those classic “oh-I-forgot-to-mention-something” pivots.

“Oh. By the way.”

Here it comes.

“There's one more thing you gentlemen should probably know.”

“What's that?” asks Flynn.

“Christina Crites, our stage manager, the one who helped you with the list of cast accommodations.”

“What about her?”

“She just texted me. Said the prop pistol is missing.”

“What?”

“The revolver. Silver barrel. Black handgrip. We use it in the bullet-catch number.”

It was in the show tonight: Richard Rock has a volunteer from
the audience load a bullet into the barrel. His wife shoots at him. He catches the bullet with his teeth. The bullets and the pistol looked very real. Sounded real, too.

“Is it a real revolver?” asks Ceepak.

“Yes,” says Zuckerman.

Told you.

“Smith and Wesson. Five shot, thirty-eight caliber.”

I remember it. Snub-nosed. Looked like something Dick Tracy might carry.

“When the stage manager locked up the prop room tonight, she noticed that both pistols were missing.”

“Both?” Flynn is leading with his chin again, yanking at his shirt collar.

“We always travel with two. The hero and an understudy.”

“What about the ammunition?” asks Ceepak.

Zuckerman nods. “That's missing as well.”

 

 

 

 

 

“It's one
AM
,” mumbles Flynn. “We should call it a night.”

“Agreed,” says Ceepak.

“Tomorrow, I'll follow through with MCU. Continue to coordinate the search for Mr. Pratt. We've got every cop in the state on the case. We'll find him.”

“Where can we be of best use?”

“Lady Jasmine. Go talk to her up at Trump's place. I'll call ahead. Set it up for nine.”

“Roger. Will do. We'll also attempt to identify the members of her entourage.”

“How many were with her?” asks Flynn.

“Three. A dwarf, another female of Asian ancestry, and a rather large man whom I took to be her bodyguard.”

“Dwarf?”

“Performer known as Mighty Mo-Mo. He is Lady Jasmine's costar at the Taj Mahal. According to the show's most recent
advertisements in the
Atlantic City Weekly,
he lifts an elephant with one finger and flies on a magic carpet the size of a hand towel.”

Ceepak. The man does his homework.

“Lady Jasmine and the others arrived well after Mr. Rock's performance had begun,” he continues. “It is conceivable that they, somehow, gained access to the backstage area undetected.”

Right. The dwarf. He could've crawled through an air-conditioning duct or something.

“You honestly think Lady Jasmine and her crew killed Katie so they could rip off Rock's notebooks?” I ask Flynn. “How'd that work? Jake barged in on Katie, sent the kids out for ice cream, made Katie put on the S and M gear, got busy with her, and then Lady Jasmine barged in on the two of them?”

This gets Flynn's neck popping again. “Maybe. Don't know. Need you two to find out.”

Ceepak nods. “Danny, even if Lady Jasmine and her entourage had nothing whatsoever to do with this evening's incidents, eliminating them as suspects is a prudent course of action.”

“Well, I don't think she'd murder Katie just to get her hands on a couple composition books,” I say.

“Really?” says Flynn. “Why's that, Officer Boyle?”

I shrug. “First off, Lucky Numbers is just a frigging magic trick.”

Flynn shrugs back. “A trick worth millions. Magicians? Fugghetaboutit. Very competitive individuals.”

“Wait a second,” I say to Ceepak. “Did you see the way Lady Jasmine shook her head and laughed at the end of the Lucky Numbers bit? She figured it out just by watching it.”

“Or,” says Ceepak, “she knew what was coming because she had just read all about it in Mr. Rock's journal.”

 

 

Ceepak and I agree to meet out back on the boardwalk at 0845.

He and Flynn head left. I head right and follow the Xanadu's
magic carpet back to the Crystal Palace Tower and my high-roller suite.

In a minor acknowledgment of what time it actually is, some of the shops in that fake Chinese town square are closed, even though the puffy clouds in the domed ceiling remain colored twilight pink. I notice, however, that the bars and nightclubs up on the second level are rocking. I can hear the beat reverberating through the walls. So, I head up the escalator on a beer quest.

Joe Mulligan has already started his final set at Yuk-Yuk-Ho-Ho's Comedy Club and I really don't want to walk in late so he can make fun of me. (“You're from New Jersey? What exit?”) So I head over to the Pandamonium nightclub. The girl at the front is in one of those cat-suit body stockings the color of gray flannel. The way she looks at me? I'm not dressed properly to join the beautiful people inside sipping flirtinis.

So I try the Forbidden City.

Twenty-five-dollar cover charge. Champagne is fifteen bucks a glass. The waitresses don't wear very many clothes, just lacy undergarments.

So, on the beer front, I have one option remaining: Lip Sync Lee's.

The karaoke bar.

Sometimes, when he's thirsty, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

 

 

It's dark and loud in here. There's a small dance floor in front of a giant-screen TV, which is currently playing what looks like the washed-out footage from a late-night commercial from 1975 for
Every Love Song Ever Recorded
. Guy and girl in meadow of flowers. Slow-motion hand-holding on beach. Playful car-wash hose-squirting action.

Song lyrics scroll across the bottom of the frame.

A tipsy sorority sister with half her dress sliding down one shoulder is swaying in front of the screen destroying a Carly Simon song: “You're So Vain.” The “Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?” bit is all the same note repeated very loudly off-pitch.

This is worse than the first week of
American Idol
auditions.

Over at the bar, I see a pair of squirrely guys flipping through a three-ring binder the size of an airplane-maintenance manual. Must be the book where they keep the list of songs available to be karaoked.

“The Carpenters?” gushes one. “I
love
Karen Carpenter!” He is not drinking beer. His upside-down pyramid-shaped cocktail glass is turquoise blue.

His buddy flickers eyelashes. “Which song? She only sang like a hundred before she went all anorexic and died.”

“You know.” He sings a quick snatch. Something about birds suddenly appearing.

Meanwhile, the sloshed girl on the dance floor is attacking her chorus again: “Don't you? Don't you? Don't you?”

I'm ready for Karen Carpenter's birds. And a beer.

I see from the golf pencils and cards stacked in the rack where the beer coasters and peanut bowls ought to be that it costs $2.50 to destroy a song in public. The bartendress is over at a computer console, reading cards, punching in numbers—apparently programming my upcoming pain.

“So did you hear?” says one of the Karen Carpenter wannabes to my right.

“What?”

“The nanny. They think she and Jake were back there rodeoing sadie-masie style.”

“Are they mental?”

“They say it's why he missed the show! And get this—just yesterday, Jake told me he was ‘in love' again.”

“Who was it this time?”

“An old flame.”

His buddy clicks his tongue against his teeth. “That cheap child hops into more beds than a sleazy mattress salesman!”

“Uhm-hmm. This old flame, by the way, is currently
married
.” He trills the word to underline it. “Their little reunion started with a Hawaiian Tropics bake-and-baste out by the pool.”

“What can I get you?” shouts the bartendress who snuck up on me while I was eavesdropping. “What're you drinking?”

“Bud, if you got it.”

“Bottle or mug?”

“Bottle.”

“You want to sing?”

No, what I want to do is eavesdrop some more.

“No, thanks.”

“Why not?” she says all coy and cuddly. She's cute. So's her low-cut top. She flashes me a flirty smile. “You afraid to make a fool of yourself?”

I tip my head toward the boozy girl clutching the mike and feverishly pumping her free hand over her head every time she chants, “Don't you! Don't you! Don't you!”

“I think you've already met your foolishness quota for the night.”

My beautiful beer maiden laughs. “You're right. Hey, Blaine?” she hollers down the bar to the two gossipy guys.

“Yes, dear?” Blaine shouts back.

“You gonna sing?”

“Maybe.”

“Come on! We need you!”

Blaine sighs. “Fine. C-fourteen. ‘Close to You.' The Carpenters.”

“Comin' right up!” The bartender fishes a frosty Bud longneck
out of the ice chest. “Stick around. Blaine is good. He's like a professional Broadway singer. Doing a show downstairs.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. Hey, Blaine?”

I'm glad she's acting as a go-between. Otherwise, Blaine might think I'm hitting on him when he already seems to have a date for the evening.

“Yes, darling?”

“What's your show called again?”

“ ‘Rock 'n Wow!' ” He starfishes out his fingers on
Wow!

I'm ready for Blaine and his buddy to leap into that hoedown number and whip out their bolo ties.

Because they're Jake Pratt's castmates.

In fact, the other guy is Jim Bob—the wiry little Lord of the Dance who escorted Richard Rock out of the theater during the Lucky Numbers bit.

I'm about to sidle over and ask them both a few questions when a blond bombshell stumbles into the bar looking so blitzed she wouldn't be able to read song lyrics off the JumboTron screen at Shea Stadium.

Actually, on closer examination, I see it's
the
blond bombshell.

Mrs. Rock.

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs. Rock
stumbles over to the two guys.

“Blaine?” she slurs the word worse than Daffy Duck. “Have you seen Jake?”

“No, honey.”

“I need to find him. The police!”

“We know.”

I stand up. Time to make my presence known.

“Excuse me,” I say. “I'm Officer Boyle. Sea Haven police.”

Jim Bob curls up his nose. “Really? Here on vacation?”

“No.” I dig in my pocket. Flash my badge. “I'm actually working for the Atlantic City police department. We're the ones looking for Jake Pratt. You guys know him, right?”

“Where's your badge?” asks Blaine, getting off his stool to shield Mrs. Rock.

“I just showed it to you.”

“Funny,” says Blaine, “I don't remember hearing Atlantic City recently changed its name to Sea Haven.”

“Detective Flynn deputized me.”

“Really? That must've been so special. Was there cake?”

“Don't tell this man anything!” Mrs. Rock blurts out. “Jake's in trouble!”

“Mrs. Rock?” I say. “We met earlier.”

Back when you were sober, I want to add but don't.

“Remember? In your room? You talked to me and my partner, John Ceepak. Big guy. Muscles? Remember?”

She lizards out a dry tongue. “No.” Her eyes loll up in her sockets as she staggers sideways.

Jim Bob stabilizes her with an elbow clutch. “Come on, honey. Let's walk you home.”

“Did my wig slip?”

Now that she mentions it, her bangs do look a little longer than they did about ten seconds ago.

Blaine adjusts her hairpiece, slides everything up half an inch. “Good as new. Come on. We'll take you home, honey.”

“Wait a second,” I say. “Mrs. Rock?”

She pulls back her head. Tries to force her eyes into focus. “What?”

“We need to find Jake Pratt! If you know—”

“I'm sorry,” says Jim Bob in his new role as Mrs. Rock's bodyguard. “We are not talking to you or any other members of the
Sea Haven
police department.”

“I told you—I'm working with the ACPD.”

“Prove it.”

“Call the ACPD. Ask for Detective Flynn.”

“Maybe tomorrow.” He blows me a kiss. “Buh-bye!”

Blaine and Jim Bob grab hold of an arm each and ease Mrs. Rock toward the exit. She shin-bops a stump-high cocktail table.