Mind Scrambler (23 page)

“Who is currently watching the Rocks' children?” Ceepak asks. “Mr. Rock?”

“Kim?” says Parker.

“The kids are in the candy shop off the main lobby,” says the woman at the console as she clacks a couple more keys. “They have a new nanny and she's pretty lame. I think she's one of the chorus girls from the show. Young. African American. She keeps yawning. Needs coffee. Anyway, she's letting the rug rats run wild.”

She clicks her mouse. The camera zooms in.

“Britney just shoplifted a pocketful of gummi fish.”

“Gentlemen,” says Parker gesturing toward his day-shift super-snoop, “I suggest you do not get on Ms. Kim Hammond's bad side. She'll see every bad thing you've ever done and then send a videotape of it to your mother
and
your wife.”

“Now the girl's pawing through the malted milk balls,” Hammond reports.

Parker heaves a sigh. “Have one of the guys suggest to young Miss Rock that she put her goodies in a paper sack and pay for them up front. About time someone taught that child some manners.”

“You got it,” says Hammond. “Jeremy? This is Kim upstairs. Go have a word with the young girl in the LA Dodgers baseball cap moving toward the caramel apples inside Kubla Khandy. Ask her to show you the inside of her pockets.”

“You want me to escort her upstairs?” a voice comes back over the radio. “Hold her in the room?”

Parker shakes his head. “Nah. Just tell that damn babysitter to wake up and pay for what the kid tried to rip off.”

On the screen, I watch a beefy man in a sport jacket step into
the picture and tap Britney on the shoulder while her hand is literally in the cookie jar. Well, the jelly bean jar.

Britney, of course, throws a hissy fit. Pouts. Stomps on the floor. Throws a fistful of Jelly Bellies up in the air.

The new nanny looks like she's awake now.

When Britney won't show the security guard what's crammed in her pockets, the nanny digs inside them to see for herself.

Now Britney is screaming. Probably threatening to sue the casino, sue the new nanny.

I see her brother, little Richie. He's still wearing that tiger backpack but now he's pounding his fists on the babysitter's butt.

“Dammit! Haul those two brats up to their mother!” says Parker—almost loud enough for his floor man Jeremy to hear him without the aid of his radio. “She's in the spa.”

“Ten-four,” comes the reply.

We see the kids being escorted out of the store.

“Let's bring the nanny up here,” suggests Ceepak. “She's in the show. Works with both Ms. Amour and Mrs. Rock. She might be better able to ID who it is on the elevator with Jake Pratt.”

“Good idea. Kim?”

“I'll tell Jeremy.”

“Thanks,” says Parker. “Damn kids had me fooled.”

That's right. Yesterday, he told us he'd had dinner with the whole Rock clan. Thought the kids were a couple of cuties. Another illusion shattered.

“Cyrus?” says Ceepak.

“Yeah?”

“Yesterday, you indicated that you had helped Mr. Rock with his act but had signed a confidentiality agreement that prevented you from revealing what it was you had done.”

“True and true.”

“Given recent developments, do you now feel at liberty to divulge what it is you did for Rock?”

“You mean will I go back on my word?”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“Yeah. They have a way of doing that on a regular basis, don't they?”

“People have been murdered,” Ceepak adds. “Katie Landry. Jake Pratt. Detectives Flynn and Weddle.”

“I didn't sign any damn confidentiality agreement,” says Ms. Hammond from her control console.

“True,” says Parker. “However, Kim, since technically, you work for me—”

“Hell's bells—you can't swear me to secrecy just because you swore it.”

“Ms. Hammond?” says Ceepak.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Parker and I attempt to live our lives by a very strict, perhaps overly rigid, moral code.”

“Tell me about it,” says Hammond as she gulps a slug of coffee from a lipstick-rimmed mug. “The big man won't even let me lie to myself about how many doughnuts I had on my break.”

Ceepak makes a finger tent under his nose. “Allow me to advance a theory. If I am wrong in the particulars, I trust, Cyrus, that you will cut me off and, thereby, prevent me from spreading further falsehoods.”

“Yeah. Okay. I could do that,” says Parker. “Because I won't lie or tolerate your lies, either. So, if you get it wrong, I'd be duty-bound to tell you. Cool.”

“Very well. I presume you primarily assisted the show's stage technicians, helping them gain access to your security-camera feeds, that you wired them up to all pertinent cameras arrayed along the route Mr. Rock follows when he leaves the Shalimar Theater and proceeds to the high-roller room.”

Parker doesn't correct or contradict Ceepak. In fact, he doesn't do anything. He just stands there like a six-foot-two brick wall.

“I also assume that Mr. Rock has his own backstage control room where the show's technicians switch between your camera feeds and determine the sequencing of images to be shown to the audience on the video screen.”

The room is quiet, except for the constant clack and tap of computer keys, the whirr of hard-drive fans.

“Is that it?” asks Parker.

“Yes,” says Ceepak.

“Good. Next issue: how are we going to find Ms. Sherry Amour? You got any theories on that one, Lieutenant Ceepak?”

“Not yet, Colonel Parker.”

The two former soldiers are addressing each other by their old military titles. That means, as far as they're concerned, it's all good. Nobody violated the Code today.

Well, nobody in this room.

Out there in the rest of Atlantic City, they're trashing it every chance they get.

 

 

 

 

 

“Can you
guys like arrest me or something?”

The shapely young dancer is throwing herself on the mercy of the security control room, hoping we'll lock her up and put her out of her misery: working with the Rock children. Her name is Kathy Young and she still looks like what she told us she was until she graduated from college last spring: a “FoXXy Dancer” with the Morgan State University marching band.

“I can't babysit those two monsters one more minute.” She sips some coffee out of a paper cup Kim Hammond fetched from the break room. “Well, the boy is okay. At least he was until he started banging on my butt.”

She raises her injured rump half an inch off her seat so she can rub the sorest spot. Like I said, she's very shapely. “We want you to look at this surveillance-camera clip,” says Parker. “Can you tell us who that is?”

He replays the elevator love scene

“Ohmigod.” Young giggles. “I had no idea.”

“No idea of what?” asks Ceepak.

“That Jake was, you know, hooking up with an older woman. Someone in the show!”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Well, uh, yeah. He's what? Nineteen? She's got to be at least forty. Maybe forty-five. Who knew Jake was into the whole MILF scene, hunh?”

“Excuse me?” This from Ceepak.

I translate. Loosely. “Mothers I'd like to . . . fool around with.”

“I see.”

“Who is the woman with Mr. Pratt?” asks Parker.

“It's a pretty big secret.”

“Did you sign a confidentiality agreement?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Unh-unh. 'Cause we weren't supposed to even know about Mrs. Rock's body double, this lady named Sherry, who they keep like hidden upstairs in the hotel until the very last second before the show, but we're not supposed to know that because we're just dumb girl dancers and they don't trust us with any of their big-deal, super-duper secrets. We were hired to look pretty and kill time between tricks. None of us even get to work on the magic stuff, which, like, totally sucks.”

“I see,” says Ceepak.

“Except the big opening where the kids fly in. But everybody already knows how they do that.”

They do? Ceepak and I couldn't figure it out.

She taps the glass on the video monitor. “That looks like this Sherry chick. The body double.”

“Are you certain?”

“No. It could be Mrs. Rock. They both wear the exact same wig. Oh, wow. How weird would that be? Jake messing around with the boss's wife? Talk about fishing off the company pier where you eat.”

Ceepak puzzles up an eyebrow as the chorus girl mashes up her clichés.

“Look hard.” Parker presses on. “Is that Mrs. Rock or Ms. Amour?”

“I can't tell. They look so much alike, you know?”

Uh, yeah. That's whey they call 'em body doubles.

“You were only hired recently?” asks Ceepak.

“That's right. The same with all the girls. We're locals. I was dancing down at the Trop, saw the casting notice in the trades. This show pays better. We still get to go on, tonight, right? They're not going to shut us down on account of, you know—what happened to the other nanny?”

“It is my understanding,” says Parker, “that all performances of ‘Rock 'n Wow!' will go on as previously scheduled.”

The way he says it? I think Security Chief Cyrus Parker lost that round with the PR people. Must be why there hasn't been much about the murder of Katie Landry on TV or in any of the local papers, why nobody seems to care that a beautiful woman was murdered last night, that a troubled dancer and two cops went down today. Either that, or no one in Atlantic City reads a paper or watches the news, just that in-house TV channel where they explain how to play baccarat.

“What can you tell us about Ms. Sherry Amour?” asks Ceepak.

“Is that her last name?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Sounds like a porno name, you know? My porno name is Fuzzy Hemlock because Fuzzy was my first pet's name and I grew up on Hemlock Street.”

“Fascinating,” says Ceepak because he's very polite that way. “What can you tell us about the body double?”

The chorus girl shrugs. “Not much. Like I said, we weren't even supposed to know she existed. They kept her hidden away until like eight every night.”

“I see,” says Ceepak.

“But one night . . .”

Here we go.

“Me, Chandra, Monica, and Jodi—those are the other girls in the show—we were at this bar, the Forbidden City, which is this totally hot club over near the Crystal Palace Tower. We were all looking good, flossin'. I had on this like plunging bandage minidress.”

She uses her hands to illustrate just how low and just how high.

I'm sorry I missed it.

“Anyhow, we're just marinating there . . .”

“You were just hanging out?” I translate so Ceepak and Parker will stop looking so confused.

“Totally. All of a sudden, I see this extremely tanked brunette eyeballing us. She stumbles over to the table where we're like, you know, just trying to chill. I'm thinking: ‘lesbo alert.' Figure she's coming over to hit on us because we look so fine and there's no guys with us. Anyway, she's totally trashed. Slurring her words and stuff. She tells us she's in our show and we're all like, ‘Uh, no you're not.' Long story short, she totally blows her cover. She shows us this blond wig she keeps stashed in her skanky canvas tote bag and tells us how she's like this body double for Jessica Rock because that's how they do the whole transporting trick, even though none of us know what this drunk woman is babbling about because we're offstage when they do that trick, too.”

“While intoxicated, did Sherry mention being romantically involved with Mr. Pratt?”

“No. After she like sampled all our drinks and totally spilled her guts, Blaine and Jim Bob, two of the boy dancers, came over and gently hauled her ass out of there. I think she has a drinking problem, you know?”

Yeah. I thought the same thing up in the karaoke bar.

“The three of them knew each other back in LA and Vegas. Chandra, Monica, Jody, and me? We're all Jersey girls.” She pauses. “Hey, you know what?”

“What?” I say, since I'm a Jersey boy.

“I just now remembered: before the two guys showed up, Sherry asked us this totally random question.”

Ceepak looks extremely interested. “What was it?”

“Well, I guess she knew we were locals, because she asked if any of us had ever worked at a place on the boardwalk called Lucky Lilani's Stress Therapy.”

“Had you?” asks Ceepak.

“Hello? Excuse me. It's a massage parlor.”

“We know.”

“What? You think all showgirls are like hookers or something?”

“No, ma'am.”

She waves her hand to let Ceepak know it's no big deal even if he did. “Whatever. After we totally laughed our asses off at her lame question, she mumbled something even lamer: ‘That's where Richard Rock does all his casting these days.' ”

 

 

We're back on the boardwalk.

“I'm beginning to suspect that Mr. and Mrs. Rock had an arrangement,” says Ceepak.

I know where he's going with this: Mrs. Rock gets to play with Jake Pratt in exchange for looking the other way every time
her hubby heads off to Lucky Lilani's for a happy ending courtesy of one of the Asian ladies in the back rooms behind those curtains.

“You think that's what's in the notebook?” I ask. “Details about what Richard Rock's been doing at the massage parlor?”

“Perhaps,” says Ceepak. “We cannot be certain that the object being sought so arduously is actually a notebook. We only have Mr. Krabitz's word on that.”

Yeah. So that means it's probably not true.

“However, whatever it is, if there is some form of physical evidence clearly linking Richard Rock to women smuggled into this country for the purposes of prostitution it could severely tarnish his family-friendly brand image.”