Mook's motel, Smuggler's Cove, is one of Sea Haven's seedier establishments. It's tucked off Bayside Boulevard on a side street. Typically, they rent out the same bed several times a day, if you catch my drift. Sometimes they even change the sheets. If you like those Girls Gone Wild videos, they sell them in the Smuggler's Cove gift shop. (Everybody has a gift shop in Sea Haven, even our low-rent rendezvous motel.)
“Do you see his car?” Ceepak asks.
“No.”
The motel parking lot is one of those pothole-filled numbers with heaving humps of cracked asphalt creating random speed bumps every two feet.
“This is twelve,” Ceepak says into the radio microphone. “We're ten-eighty-four.” He means we're on the scene. I climb out of the car, realizing I have at least eighty-three more 10-codes to memorize by Tuesday.
Ceepak and I step into the filthy lobby and squint because it's so dark, what with the pink scarves draped over all the lamps to help set the mood. The place reeks of incense, the kind they sell on sidewalks. A string of little bells jangles when the door glides shut.
“Be right with you,” says a woman from somewhere behind the check-in counter. I hear her groan, like she's having a hard time standing up. “Hang on!” Now she grunts.
The lobby walls are decorated with porn posters. Debbie Does Dallas. The Devil in Miss Jones. Candy Stripers. The classics.
“Danny!”
Emerging behind the front desk is Donna Pazzarini, my friend Tony's big sister. By big, I mean older as well as huge. She weighs at least three hundred pounds so, all of a sudden, the grunting and groaning I heard make sense. Donna's the kind of girl who typically needs a forklift to help her up out of her chair.
“How you doin', Donna?”
“Good, good. You?”
“Can't complain.”
“Good, good.” She's dusting doughnut sugar off her enormous chest and eyeing Ceepak. “Well, hello handsome.” She tugs up on one of her black bra straps and tucks it back under her sleeveless blouse. “What can I do for you boys?”
“We're looking for someone,” I say.
“They're usually here-the ones people are lookin’ for. You're with the cops now, right, Danny?”
“Yeah.”
“That's what Tony says. I said, ‘Good for Danny,’ you know what I'm saying?”
“We need to inquire about one of your guests,” Ceepak says.
“Short-term or long-term?” Donna lets loose with this rumbling laugh-part belly shaker, part smoker's cough. “We have a lot of ‘guests’ who don't stick around for the free breakfast buffet, you know what I'm saying?” She gestures to a sour-smelling Mr. Coffee machine on the windowsill next to a half-empty box of Dunkin’ Donuts.
“His name is Harley Mook,” I say.
“Sure, sure. Mook. He was here. But he checked out.”
Donna wobbles back around to the other side of the counter, taps the keyboard. I figure she's calling up room records. Instead, I see her slide a King around on a solitaire spread. I guess she was playing with one hand, juggling a doughnut with the other.
“When?” Ceepak asks. “When did Mr. Mook vacate these premises?”
“Little while ago,” says Donna. “Around nine thirty. Seemed like he was in a big hurry all of a sudden. Acting all antsy, you know what I mean?”
“What room was he in?”
Donna squints at her computer screen. I can tell she doesn't like the idea of closing her card game to open whatever program tells her who was in what room.
“Usually, we don't mind when our guests check out early,” she says, clicking and sliding more cards around the screen. “But seeing how this is a holiday weekend I told Mook he had to pay for tonight even if he didn't stay. He gave me a little attitude but, like I said, he seemed eager to leave. Had ants in his pants.”
Ceepak drums his fingers on the counter. “What room?”
“The maid hasn't cleaned it yet. I've been kind of busy.” She rumbles out another laugh. Her upper arms jiggle.
“Ma'am?”
“Give me a second.” She finishes her final pile. Smiles at her tidy row of kings. “Okay. Here we go.” She taps a couple of keys and calls up her room records. “Mook was in two-oh-seven. Upstairs.”
“You got a passkey?” I ask.
“Why? You guys want to search his room or something?”
“Yes, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “We surely do.”
“Wait a sec.” Donna crosses her arms over her chest. “Isn't that like against the law? You need a warrant, am I right?”
“No, ma'am,” says Ceepak. “Since Mr. Harley Mook has checked out, any property, record, or information he may have left behind is considered abandoned and, therefore, not subject to the Fourth Amendment protections provided by the Constitution.”
Donna purses out her lower lip. Nods. She's impressed. “Interesting. You go to night school or something?”
“The key?”
“Sure, sure.” Donna reaches under her tiny desk and finds a miniature baseball bat with a key dangling off the handle.
Ceepak takes it. “Upstairs?”
“Yeah. Two-oh-seven. Second floor. Seventh door down.”
“Thanks, Donna.”
“Any time, Danny.”
We hustle toward the door.
We pass the ratty Coke machine, reach the staircase, clank up the rusty metal steps, and hurry down the crackled concrete landing to 207.
Ceepak works the passkey into the lock. The door squeaks open and we're hit with a wall of recirculated air that stinks of cigarettes mixed with mildew. The air conditioner is rattling away underneath a window darkened by thick, plastic-based drapes. The room is a mess. The sheets and flabby pillows are clumped in a tangled bundle in the middle of the bed. Back in the bathroom, I can see a pile of soppy towels lying in a puddle near the shower stall. There's a Domino's pizza box feeding flies on top ot the TV. Judging by the color of what used to be cheese, I'd say the pie's been sitting there since at least Thursday.
Ceepak spies a pink slip of paper wedged under a half-empty beer bottle on a small table with a wrinkled walnut veneer. The pink beer coaster is actually one of those “While You Were Out” phone message deals.
“Apparently,” says Ceepak, “someone named Wheezer called Mr. Mook at eight forty-five A.M. The woman downstairs must've given him this message when he returned from Schooner's Landing this morning. Prior to his decision to check out.”
“Wheezer is Mook's local drug connection,” I say. “The guy with the ‘good ganga.’ ”
“The front desk did not record the caller's number. However, there is a note: ‘He'll call your cell.’ ”
Ceepak secures the pink slip in an evidence envelope and moves toward the rumpled bed. He tilts his head to study a notepad near the telephone on the bedside table. Now he reaches into his cargo pants and pulls out a stubby carpenter's pencil. Okay, even I know this one: he's going to rub the pencil on the empty sheet of paper and see if he can pick up whatever was written on the sheet that used to be on top.
“Wheezer, again,” Ceepak says after he's done dusting the pad with pencil lead. “Noon. Circled. I suspect twelve P.M. is the time Mook and Wheezer agreed to meet in some undisclosed location for the drug buy. Mook will most likely drive there.”
“In his little red Miata.”
“Roger that,” Ceepak says. “Red Miatas are much easier to spot than white minivans.” He tucks the small sheet of motel notepad paper into a second evidence envelope. “We'll definitely nab him.”
“Great.”
We're going to catch the creep. Just like I promised Katie.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“Since we seem to have some time …”
Ceepak has this look on his face.
“What's on your mind?” I ask.
“The lady downstairs. She's a friend, I take it?”
“Donna Pazzarini? Yeah. Well, I mean I know her on account of her brother. Tony. We worked together at a gas station one summer.”