Free Fun House by Chris Grabenstein Page A

chomp.
    “All right !” says Rutger the director. “My two stars! Give me the full gear, baby, not the fool’s gear!”
    Marty Mandrake swaggers over. His face is puckered up in what he probably thinks is an expression of earnest sincerity. To me, it looks like he has gas.
    “Gentlemen, glad you could join us. We need to talk about working you two into next week’s scenario.”
    “You lied to us,” says Ceepak.
    Mandrake looks shocked. Insulted. “Lied?”
    “Yeah,” I butt in. “You told us you wouldn’t use any of the footage from the drug bust until after we arrested Skeletor.”
    “We had to use it, Danny,” says Layla.
    “Had to?” says Ceepak before I can.
    “To protect the kids,” says Mandrake. “We can’t have these kinds of crazies stalking our stars.”
    “Mr. Mandrake, the man known as Skeletor is a dealer of illegal drugs. He was not stalking—”
    “Did you see the way he tugged up his T-shirt, did that whole Thing thing? He’s clearly obsessed with Paulie.”
    “I don’t see how that changes anything.”
    “Of course not. You’re not in show business. Don’t know what kind of crazies we have to deal with on a daily basis. So, I’m sorry if we hurt your feelings, if you think we ‘lied.’”
    “I don’t think it; I know it.”
    “Fine. Good for you. Now we have to deal with what comes next. Layla?”
    She shoves a folder across the table.
    “Paulie Braciole received a very upsetting text message,” she says. “A death threat.”
    “Oh, really?” I say, because I’m guessing they cut together some kind of fake text message the same way they messed with reality in their edit of the parking lot footage. “When’d he get this threat?”
    “Wednesday,” says Mandrake. “While we were in the editing room. It’s what made us scrap our original cut and go with a lot more of the action with Skeletor and the motorcycles.”
    Yeah. Including the scene where the biker bopped me on the head.
    “We needed to let this creep know we’ve got the goods on him,” says Mandrake.
    “Might we see this threatening message?” says Ceepak, sounding like he doesn’t believe it’s any more real than Paulie’s humble-pie act under the stormy summer skies.
    “Of course,” says Ms. Shapiro, flipping open the folder.
    Ceepak and I move to the table. Read what’s printed on the paper.
    “U ratted me out? U R The Dead Thing.”
    And, as it turns out, that death threat is the one thing from this reality TV show that’s really real.

11
     
    T HE NEXT MORNING , I GET A CALL FROM C EEPAK .
    “It’s Paul Braciole,” he says, sounding grim.
    “What’s up?”
    “He has been murdered.”
    I have the phone tucked under my chin so I can pull on my shorts. I glance at the clock. It’s eleven thirty. Saturday is my day off. Guess I slept in. I also guess I won’t be doing that again until Ceepak and I figure out who murdered Paulie Braciole.
    “How?” I ask.
    “Single gunshot to the brain. Powder burn on the left temple, exit wound on the right—slightly lower, suggesting that the bullet traversed straight through both hemispheres of the brain, making death instantaneous. We’ll know more after Dr. Kurth runs her post-mortem.”
    Dr. Rebecca Kurth is the county medical examiner. We’ve been keeping her kind of busy this summer.
    I tug on my sneakers.
    “Where are you?” I ask, sniffing my uniform polo shirts to find the cleanest one.
    “Boardwalk. Pier Four. A booth called the Knock ’Em Down.”
    Ceepak can’t see me, but I’m nodding.
    The Knock ’Em Down is one of several “games of chance” tucked into a side alley off the main path to the Giant Ferris Wheel at the end of Pier Four. If I remember correctly, the Knock ’Em Down is done up with a Farmer-In-The-Dell look: a mural with a cartoon horse and cow making goofy faces at you; three wooden barrels with a pyramid of six white milk bottles stacked on top.
    You pay a buck and hurl a baseball at the bottles, half of