Inside the store you’ll find aisles lined with shelves crowded by battalions of wine and liquor bottles, not to mention rack after rack of salty snacks. You’ll also see towering stacks of beer packaged in what they call suitcases-24-can cartons with a handy handle for toting down to the beach or up to your motel room.
I pull into the parking lot next to a dinged-up Ford F-150 pickup and douse the headlights so the moths will leave my Jeep alone and go attack the fluorescent tube lights giving the package store its ghoulish green glow.
The instant I climb out of my Jeep, I see Ben Sinclair and a few of his young suburban gangsta buddies leaning against the booze mart’s grocery cart return corral.
They have their hands stuffed into the front of their hoodies or the pockets of jeans hanging halfway down their butt so they can show off their plaid Ralph Lauren boxer shorts.
They’re waiting.
For somebody in the store, judging by the way one of the kids keeps craning his neck and going up on tippy toe.
By kids, I mean neither Ben nor any of his crew are over twenty-one, the minimum legal drinking age.
I know who they’re waiting for.
The same guy me and my underage buds used to wait for outside a package store on a warm June night down the Jersey Shore: an older dude to go inside to buy us our brewskis for a small handling fee.
I hang near my Jeep. Wait to see who Ben’s dude is. Ours was a wino we called Clint The Splint because he always seemed to have one limb or another in a plaster cast. He’d go into Fritzie’s package store and get us anything we wanted for five bucks. Cigarettes. Boone’s Farm. Malt Duck. Colt 45. Slim Jims. Hey, we had to eat something.
I hear sleigh bells tinkle. The front door swishes open.
And out comes Mr. Joseph “Sixpack” Ceepak.
I’m wondering what bible verse Mr. Ceepak’s going to quote when I bust him for buying alcohol for minors.
Whistling merrily, he strides out the sliding door and into the harsh glare of those overhead fluorescents. He’s still in his StratosFEAR uniform and wears a cocky grin on his face. One arm is wrapped around a grocery sack full of jingling glass bottles. His other is toting what looks like a filing-cabinet-sized carton of Budweiser. Maybe they’re doing 48-packs now.
Ben and the boys over by the cart corral give off a couple “Booyahs” and swarm like a wolf pack toward Mr. Ceepak.
“You get the Mike’s and vodka, too?” asks Ben.
Mr. Ceepak is about to answer when he sees me step out of the shadows.
“Good evening, Officer Boyle,” he says.
I nudge my head toward his groceries. “That all for you, sir?”
Now Ben and his pals try to act casual but their worried eyes betray them. They’re probably wondering if the old fart Ben hired is going to rip them off for a hundred bucks worth of booze plus whatever handling fee he charges.
“Yeah,” says Mr. Ceepak. “This is all mine.”
One of the kids is about to say something when Ben elbows him in the ribs.