Fun House by Chris Grabenstein Page B

dance club?”
    “That’s right. Me, Chuck, and Rich. We peeled off from the pack. Rutger sent us after Paulie and his hot date. Very attractive local lady in an extremely tight skirt. Her butt shimmered, man. I wish we could’ve hosed down the streets, got that slick surface going, like we do in car commercials. But this is reality TV. No time to light right.”
    “Chuck and Rich?” says Ceepak.
    Jimbo jabs his thumb toward the dress shop. “My sound and light guys.”
    “Where did Mr. Braciole and his date go?”
    “A couple blocks north. 136 Red Snapper Street.”
    Ceepak makes a face to let Jimbo know he’s impressed. “You’re certain about the address?”
    “Yeah. We were camped out in the front yard till like three in the morning.”
    Ceepak has his notepad and pencil out. “How so?”
    Jimbo flicks his ponytail again. Maybe he’s like a horse, uses it to swat flies. “Like I said, me and my boys, we tailed Paulie and his hot little honey out of the dance club, hoping to catch some hot and heavy action. Now, if they had headed back to the Fun House, we would have, you know, been able to follow them inside, tailed ’em all the way into the bedroom, might have even hung around to catch a little nookie action.”
    Ceepak’s left eye twitches. “Go on,” he says.
    While he talks, Jimbo monkeys with buttons on his camera, peers into the viewfinder.
    “This house on Red Snapper being the girl’s abode,” he says, while squinting into that little rubber-cupped box, “we can’t go in without an invitation, which, you know, wasn’t exactly forthcoming. In fact, yeah … here we go.” He holds up the camera so Ceepak can peek at the playback. “Check it out.”
    Ceepak does.
    “I see,” he says after a few seconds. He pulls back from the camera.
    “You see Paulie give me the finger?”
    Ceepak just nods.
    “I hope Marty cuts it into the show, seeing how I got the last fucking shot of Paulie before, you know, he got whacked by the stalker or whatever. But they probably won’t use it. Paulie flipping me off doesn’t fit in with this week’s narrative. That ‘Funeral for a Friend’ jive Marty pitched the network. Ratings will be through the roof. Just like Princess Diana.”
    Ceepak reaches for the radio clipped to his utility belt.
    “Excuse me,” he says to Jimbo. “We need to send a unit over to the house on Red Snapper. Interview the woman.”
    “Cool. Can we roll with you dudes? We’re pretty unobtrusive. We’d shoot you grilling the chick, catch it all guerilla gonzo style.”
    “Not gonna happen,” I say as Ceepak radios in a request for the first available unit to respond to 136 Red Snapper Street, to hold a “blonde female, approximately five feet, two inches tall, one hundred pounds, with a mole on her left cheek” for questioning.
    Ceepak. While watching a video of a drunken girl in a skimpy skirt bopping up a dark street, he keeps his eye on the distinguishing characteristics.
    “Hey, if it helps,” says Jimbo, “the chick’s name is Mandy.”
    Ceepak, gripping his radio mic in one hand, cocks an eyebrow.
    “She was wearing that T-shirt over her sausage dress,” Jimbo explains. “You know—the one that says ‘Remember my name. You’ll be screaming it later.’ So Paulie, he’s such a joker, he says ‘What am I gonna scream, baby?’ and the chick with the hooters says ‘Mandy.’”
    Ceepak adds the name “Mandy” to his bulletin then clips the radio back on his belt.
    “How long did you stay outside the house?” he asks.
    “Till Mandy came back out, pretty close to three A.M. ”
    “I take it Paulie was not with her?”
    “That’s right. She came out in this skimpy bathrobe, even shorter than that skirt she’d been wearing at the club. Told us we were wasting our time: Paulie was gone. ‘I have a back door, numbnuts,’ were her exact words.” He holds up the camera. “You want me to find the clip?”
    “No, thank you,” says Ceepak. “We’ll