Крис Грабенштайн - Fun House

golf carts and storage tanks and all the functional crap amusement parks keep hidden from public view. The “employees only” entrance to the Fun House is dead ahead.

“Danny?” This from Ceepak, behind me. “Down.”

I duck behind a dumpster.

Ceepak points to his eyes with two fingers, swings them around to face the door we were running toward.

Now I see the guy Ceepak already saw. The man turns around and his face is illuminated by the soft glow of a handheld device of some sort. Maybe an iPod. Maybe the world’s tiniest TV. He’s clearly watching the Fun House telecast, keeping an eye out for any trouble.

My eyes adjust to the darkness.

I can see that the guy is wearing a wet suit and flippers. At his feet is a duffel bag and two scuba tanks. On his hip, that H amp;K USP.45.

“That’s most likely the Mandrake shooter,” whispers Ceepak.

I nod. It makes sense. When the hit went bad, he ran back to his Port-A-Potty and changed into his wet suit. A lot of surfers wear them. Then he scuba-dived up to the boardwalk, swam a mile and more under water so he could gain access to the pier with a bag full of weapons. He knew we’d have metal detectors and heavy security out front, so he climbed the pilings with his gear slung over his shoulder, came in via the water route.

“I could take him,” I say because, yes, I am that good with my Glock.

“Negative,” says Ceepak. Now he taps his ear and I look back to the scuba commando, who maybe used to be a Navy S.E.A.L. He’s wearing a military communications device. Earpiece. Microphone rigged up to his mouth. He taps his chest to activate it.

“Seven minutes,” we hear him whisper. “Roger that. Execute and extricate.”

I turn to Ceepak. His eyes are narrow slits. Mine are about to explode with panic.

Seven minutes till they kill Becca?

“Do you still know your way through the Fun House?” Ceepak asks.

“Yeah.”

“Then you need to be the one to go in.”

I nod. He’s right.

“Grab some camera gear if you can. Act like you’re a crew member.”

That’ll work. I’m already dressed like one.

“I’ll cover this shooter and take him out the instant you take down the player inside.”

Again I nod. If he shoots this bad guy before I nail the one inside, Becca dies when scuba man stops communicating the countdown.

“Six minutes thirty seconds,” we hear the guy say with ice in his voice.

Ceepak gives me the sharpest hand chop he has ever given me.

I’m up.

Moving on tiptoe. Fast.

Back up the alley. To the gate. Around to the front of the Fun House.

I see bundles of cable piled in a rolling bin. Grab one.

I move even faster, make for the big clown-mouth entrance. And-BOOM! — it hits me.

The guy inside is Sean, the grip in the knit cap who didn’t know what a half-apple was. It has to be. Like Layla said, TV production jobs are hard to come by. You don’t get on a union crew without knowing basic crap like what the hell a half-apple is-unless maybe the people who really hired you have ways of pulling strings to get you into any place you need to be.

It’s how Sean made it past security tonight: he had a bright orange crew badge. And his teammate out back stowed his weapons for him in a prearranged drop zone, or maybe they met up out in the alley. That would explain why Jimbo didn’t have his smoke machine upstairs in the second maze. Why Sean, his P.A., was A.W.O.L.

Sean would also have been with Jimbo’s crew at Big Kahuna’s when Paulie left with Mandy. He could have alerted his partner, the outside guy, the man on the motorcycle. Sean didn’t stick with Jimbo’s crew when they tailed Mandy and Paulie. He peeled off, met up with his partner.

Together, they did Paulie in Mandy’s Mustang.

Now he’s going to kill Becca.

48

I run into first maze and see a dozen me’s reflected back in brightly lit silver-framed mirrors.

The passageways are tight.

I drop the stupid coil of wire.

I’m in. Nobody cares who I am or what I’m doing, because the live TV feed is coming from further up ahead, the two camera crews attached to Soozy and Becca, maybe the one with Mike and Dave, breathlessly waiting to see how quickly their competitors complete the course.

Fortunately, when we worked here, Jess and I used to play “mice in the maze.” First guy to reach the end didn’t win a chunk of cheese, just an after-work beer at the Frosty Mug.

Up ahead, I hear laughter and squeals. The happy kind. Soozy and Becca. They might be on the second floor already. Maybe in the area called The Side Show. Audio-animatronic mannequins in a bathtub crack corny jokes as you wander past them in the dark. A clown dummy cackles at you.

I enter a black-lit hallway decorated with glowing clown faces and whirling swirls. Next comes a rolling tunnel, The Barrel Of Laughs. It’s like walking through a psychedelic toilet-paper tube with a spinning clown face at the far end to make you queasy.

“Fuck me. Another maze?” I hear Soozy shout.

Becca giggles. “Come on, girl. We can win this thing!”

I step out of the rolling corridor and onto the oscillating floor where we used to blast air up pretty girls’ skirts.

Next I’m in the hall of mirrors. The frames are clown faces. Their wide-open mouths distort my reflection. First I’m fat, then I’m stretched thin, now I’ve got a huge head and very little body, next my chest balloons up to the size of an elephant’s.

I don’t bother checking my watch.

I’m sure there’s less than two minutes left.

I need to keep moving forward.

I climb the undulating stairs. They’re split down the middle. One side rocks up while the other rocks down. It’s like a spastic escalator.

Now I’m in the side show with the dummies cracking corny jokes. I move past them fast and step onto a spinning disc that’ll make you all kinds of dizzy because you see a dozen reflections bouncing back at you.

I’ve reached the entrance to the second maze of mirrors.

The frames up here are painted colors that radiate bright pinks, purples, and greens under the influence of ultraviolet light.

My reflection moves forward.

No. Wait. That’s not me.

I’m not wearing a knit cap.

49

Knit cap has his compact semi-automatic up in a two-handed grip.

I do the same with my Glock.

Sixteen images of him creep forward.

I don’t know which one is really him, which ones are his reflection.

I inch ahead, match him step for step.

Now the killer repeats to infinity. His reflection is reflected back so many times, it looks like a receding mineshaft full of shooters. I notice he has a communicator headset, the same as the backdoor lookout’s, strapped on underneath his ski cap.

A new image flickers off a mirror.

A blazingly bright light.

From the camera crew. It swings into a full-filament burn and bounces off the mirrors all around me. I am momentarily blinded.

I blink. Try to clear the floating sunspots singed into my retina.

Becca and Soozy jitter into view on half of the endless array of glass panels surrounding me. The shooter is still in the other half. He’s aiming left and right and straight at me. The girls keep moving, bumping into mirrored walls, feeling their way in the dark.

Knit cap keeps following them, moving stealthily. He is a killer cat. A never-ending column of death.

The effervescent mirror frames glow under the black light.

So do the killer’s teeth. Bright white. He’s smiling like a shark.

And I don’t dare take the shot --">