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Chris Grabenstein

Free Fall

1

For a cop, there’s nothing worse than hearing an old friend say “I didn’t do anything, Danny!” two seconds after you pull her out of a nearly lethal cat fight.

Of course, these days, that’s just the icing on the cake. Or, as I like to say, the suds on the Bud.

Despite all the “Life Is Good” T-shirts on sale at the Shore To Please Souvenir Shoppe, life has not been so great lately down the Jersey shore in “sunny, funderful” Sea Haven.

First off, there was a hurricane (that turned into a super storm) named Sandy, which, until last October, was also one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. All of Sea Haven was shut down for two full weeks. No one was allowed on or off our eighteen-mile-long barrier island, except, of course, the governor of New Jersey and the President of the United States.

Eight months later, our battered seaside resort has pulled back from the brink. It’s early June and everybody’s excited about the upcoming summer season.

Everybody except me.

Because of bummer number two: John Ceepak is no longer my partner.

Funny story.

See, late last August they made Ceepak the Chief of Police. By early October, he was tired of pushing paper, untangling paper clips, and wearing these “Buy One Get The Second At Half Price” suits his wife Rita found for him at the Men’s Wearhouse. So, after pulling us all through Sandy (don’t worry, some day I’ll tell you that story, too), when things had more or less settled down in the new year, Ceepak initiated a search for his own replacement.

After interviewing dozens of candidates, the township council hired another new Chief of Police. An older guy named Roy Rossi. With the new boss on paper-shuffling duty, Ceepak and I were poised to become the SHPD’s first team of full-time detectives.

But that never happened.

See, I forgot to mention last year’s other big blast of hot air and swirling garbage: our mayoral election.

The guy we wanted to win didn’t.

And the guy who got re-elected has never been very fond of Ceepak or me. About fifteen seconds after all the New York and Philadelphia TV stations declared that the Honorable (how they came up with that title for him, I’ll never know) Hubert Sinclair had won re-election, the guy initiated budget cuts. Said we had to bring the deficit under control for the sake of our grandchildren. Tough choices had to be made.

That’s what he said. What Mayor Sinclair meant was that people who ticked him off had to be made miserable.

Buh-bye SHPD detective bureau.

Ceepak is still chief of detectives. He just doesn’t have anybody in his tribe. He is allocated “personnel” on an “as-needed” basis. So, mostly, I spend my shifts cruising the streets in a patrol car.

With my new partner.

Sal Santucci.

“You hungry?” Sal asks as we cruise down Ocean Avenue just after sunset.

We’re heading toward the southernmost tip of the island where we’ll make a U-Turn and head back up to the lighthouse on the northernmost tip. Down south is where the swanky people have always lived in their bajillion-dollar beachfront bungalows. The first homes rebuilt after the super storm. The kind of homes other people like to burglarize, especially during the first week of June, when the tourist season isn’t in full swing and the island is still mostly empty.