which, I swear, are filled with lead. The only guys knocking them down are friends of the booth operator, who probably has a button he pushes to make the stack topple every once in a while so he can keep reeling in suckers like me.
But I digress.
“Was Paulie shot inside the booth?” I ask.
“Highly doubtful,” says Ceepak. “The game operator, a young man named Hugh Williams, discovered Mr. Braciole’s body when he rolled up the security gate at eleven hundred hours.”
In Sea Haven, our boardwalk amusements don’t open till noon, because everybody spends the morning on the beach. Opening at noon also gives the vendors time to fill the bottom of those milk bottles with wet cement.
“Danny?”
I have one arm inside my shirt, but I freeze: I can tell from Ceepak’s voice that whatever he’s going to say next isn’t going to be pretty.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Williams discovered the body on a side wall of the booth. It was hanging in the middle of the stuffed animals they award as prizes.”
I hop in my Jeep and race up to the boardwalk, a good thirty minutes north of my apartment.
Ceepak and the other first responders have sealed off the crime scene with rolled-out POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS tape. The taut yellow plastic snaps in the gusts blowing up from the ocean. It looks like we’ve locked down the whole block of games, even though blinking bulbs are still throbbing in signs outside the unmanned booths: Water Gun Fun, Whack A Mole, Duck Pond, Frog Bog, Clown Bop, Balloon Pop, and Bucket Drop.
Most of the brightly colored booths have their fronts open, and I can see all sorts of stuffed animals hanging off hooks. Giant Teddy Bears wearing New York Mets, Yankees, Jets, and Giants uniforms. SpongeBob SquarePants flashing his two-toothed smile. Giant yellow banana people with pudgy cheeks. Long-limbed fleecy things that look like an octopus crossed with a rhesus monkey.
One or two booths are even offering “Official Fun House” prizes. I see a towering display of boxed-up bobblehead dolls. Paulie “The Thing” molded in mid T-shirt tug, his incredibly ripped chest immortalized in tan plastic.
“Danny?”
It’s Ceepak, waving at me from up at the Knock ’Em Down booth. One of our SHPD cruisers is parked thirty feet beyond the booth, its roofbar lights swirling, blocking off the mob of onlookers licking their orange-and-white swirl cones, trying to see what the heck is going on.
Officers Nikki Bonanni and Jen Forbus are working crowd control at the far end. The two Murray brothers have caught the duty at the end where I entered.
“Put down the corn cob,” yells some young wiseass in the crowd.
“Give me the full gear!” shouts another.
I shake my head. Six years ago? Both those guys would’ve been me.
“Detective Botzong is on his way,” says Ceepak when I reach the Knock ’Em Down.
William Botzong heads up the State Police Major Crimes Unit. They always get called in to do all the stuff they do on those CSI TV shows when a murder takes place in, oh, say a Jersey Shore resort town where the police department isn’t geared up to handle all the forensic work needed to mount a modern-day murder investigation, even though Ceepak has his own mini-crime lab on the second floor of police headquarters and watches every episode of Forensic Files . I think he has them on DVD too.
We had worked with Botzong back in June. He’s good people. In his spare time, he likes to sing in community theatre productions. Ceepak and I caught him in Jesus Christ Superstar . He’d had to wear a wig to hide his cop crew cut.
“We can assume that the killer placed the body in this very public location to send some sort of message,” says Ceepak.
“A mob hit? From Skeletor and his biker buddies?”
“It’s a possibility, Danny.”
I look up and see Paulie Braciole hanging on the wall between a giant pink gorilla and a flock of floppy green ducks. His head is slumped forward, so, fortunately, I don’t have
But I digress.
“Was Paulie shot inside the booth?” I ask.
“Highly doubtful,” says Ceepak. “The game operator, a young man named Hugh Williams, discovered Mr. Braciole’s body when he rolled up the security gate at eleven hundred hours.”
In Sea Haven, our boardwalk amusements don’t open till noon, because everybody spends the morning on the beach. Opening at noon also gives the vendors time to fill the bottom of those milk bottles with wet cement.
“Danny?”
I have one arm inside my shirt, but I freeze: I can tell from Ceepak’s voice that whatever he’s going to say next isn’t going to be pretty.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Williams discovered the body on a side wall of the booth. It was hanging in the middle of the stuffed animals they award as prizes.”
I hop in my Jeep and race up to the boardwalk, a good thirty minutes north of my apartment.
Ceepak and the other first responders have sealed off the crime scene with rolled-out POLICE LINE, DO NOT CROSS tape. The taut yellow plastic snaps in the gusts blowing up from the ocean. It looks like we’ve locked down the whole block of games, even though blinking bulbs are still throbbing in signs outside the unmanned booths: Water Gun Fun, Whack A Mole, Duck Pond, Frog Bog, Clown Bop, Balloon Pop, and Bucket Drop.
Most of the brightly colored booths have their fronts open, and I can see all sorts of stuffed animals hanging off hooks. Giant Teddy Bears wearing New York Mets, Yankees, Jets, and Giants uniforms. SpongeBob SquarePants flashing his two-toothed smile. Giant yellow banana people with pudgy cheeks. Long-limbed fleecy things that look like an octopus crossed with a rhesus monkey.
One or two booths are even offering “Official Fun House” prizes. I see a towering display of boxed-up bobblehead dolls. Paulie “The Thing” molded in mid T-shirt tug, his incredibly ripped chest immortalized in tan plastic.
“Danny?”
It’s Ceepak, waving at me from up at the Knock ’Em Down booth. One of our SHPD cruisers is parked thirty feet beyond the booth, its roofbar lights swirling, blocking off the mob of onlookers licking their orange-and-white swirl cones, trying to see what the heck is going on.
Officers Nikki Bonanni and Jen Forbus are working crowd control at the far end. The two Murray brothers have caught the duty at the end where I entered.
“Put down the corn cob,” yells some young wiseass in the crowd.
“Give me the full gear!” shouts another.
I shake my head. Six years ago? Both those guys would’ve been me.
“Detective Botzong is on his way,” says Ceepak when I reach the Knock ’Em Down.
William Botzong heads up the State Police Major Crimes Unit. They always get called in to do all the stuff they do on those CSI TV shows when a murder takes place in, oh, say a Jersey Shore resort town where the police department isn’t geared up to handle all the forensic work needed to mount a modern-day murder investigation, even though Ceepak has his own mini-crime lab on the second floor of police headquarters and watches every episode of Forensic Files . I think he has them on DVD too.
We had worked with Botzong back in June. He’s good people. In his spare time, he likes to sing in community theatre productions. Ceepak and I caught him in Jesus Christ Superstar . He’d had to wear a wig to hide his cop crew cut.
“We can assume that the killer placed the body in this very public location to send some sort of message,” says Ceepak.
“A mob hit? From Skeletor and his biker buddies?”
“It’s a possibility, Danny.”
I look up and see Paulie Braciole hanging on the wall between a giant pink gorilla and a flock of floppy green ducks. His head is slumped forward, so, fortunately, I don’t have
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