Hardy Boys Fan Fiction at the HDA - Boardwalk Bust

I don’t know what Joe’s problem was – and I’d asked him to let me do the talking. I know it may have looked like I was spilling secrets but it’s not going to hurt if she thinks we’re detectives. Our big secret is about ATAC anyway. Our reputation as far as being detectives has been around awhile, really. And you can only ask so many questions before you give it away anyway. And it was all part of my plan.

As we walked along, I made sure no one was really close to overhear. “And even if she does start blabbing about us, it’ll draw out the thieves, make them nervous.” I shrugged as my brother gave me a hard look. “What?”

“What? You just drop the fact you’ve set us up as bait and all you ask is ‘what’?”

We got to the pier and looked around. Most of it was enclosed, and from outside I didn’t see any tattoo parlor signs. “Let’s have a look inside,” I said.

We did, and we were immediately hit by a wave of noise – dings and rings and blowing horns, and hundreds of human voices, shouting and laughing. There were smells of popcorn, saltwater taffy, cotton candy, sunscreen and people.

“Hey, Frank, look,” said Joe, pointing to a sign that read: Solly’s Sideshow. “Let’s check it out.”

I rolled my eyes. “Joe...”

He was already at the window, buying tickets and I shook my head. We trailed a line of people inside the warren of small rooms. It was like visiting a Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibit: a guy around five feet tall who must have weighed 800 pounds; a lady with a long beard that looked very real, hanging down to her bare belly button. She would have been pretty without the beard. There was a guy eating fire and swallowing swords and a lady with over 500 piercings. I didn’t doubt that since she had to have a dozen in each ear alone.

Joe nudged me and pointed me to another room. There was the tattooed man. “Bet he can lead us to Myers,” Joe whispered in my ear.

I studied him for a moment. The man was lean but not skinny, he was wearing only shorts to show off that every inch of exposed skin had been tattooed. I noticed his spider webs on his face. It made him look creepy.

“Wanna take a picture?” he asked me when I reached the front of the little crowd that surrounded him.

“No, thanks,” I said, smiling. “But can I ask you something?”

“Sure, pal. Go ahead, shoot.”

“Doesn’t it hurt...to get those?”

He laughed. “No pain, no gain.”

Considering he was tattooed all over, I couldn’t help but wince. I knew that tattooing involved a special kind of needle that inserted the dye underneath the skin. “Whoever did yours is something of an artist.”

The man smiled and pointed to an intricate dragon on his shoulder. “It all started with this one. I got it in the Navy years back.” Then he pointed to his face. “These are the newest ones.”

“Looks real enough to confuse the spiders.”

He laughed again. “Ric Myers did my spidey-webs. He’s gonna go big time some day.”

“Really. Maybe my brother will want him to do a tattoo. Where can I find him?”

“Sure – all the way out on the pier. Place called Rat-a-Tattoo.”

“Thanks,” I said, flashing him a thumbs-up and left him to his admirers.

I found Joe talking to the bearded lady. I have to admit I was surprised he was talking to her. I snagged his arm and pulled him along as we left the enclosed area.

“Bye,” Joe told her as he followed me farther out on the pier. “Well, that was rude. Do you know she told me that it’s a genetic disorder, passed down through the male line? Her mom had hoped her being a girl, she would not get the genetic fluke but...”

I looked over at him. “You mean...” I glanced over my shoulder. “It’s not a fake?”

“Nope. She tried shaving every day but it just kept growing back thicker and thicker.” Joe followed for a beat and then frowned. “You found Myers?”

“Yeah. Want a tattoo?”

“You’re joking, right. If you think Mom would have freaked over a Mohawk, can you imagine what she’d do with us getting a tattoo?” He shuddered. “And Aunt Gertrude? Oh, gosh, we’d never hear the end of it.”

I sighed. “Think you can pretend to want one?”

Joe grunted. “I can pretend with the best of ‘em. Remember I always got those little fake tattoos out of those quarter machines? I’d always put them where Mom couldn’t see them.”

“Then come on.”

Rat-a-Tattoo had a psychedelic-style sign above its entrance and a crowd of tattooed and pierced teenagers hanging out in front. Some of them looked a year or two older than me and sported numerous tattoos, piercings and one of the guys had a Day-Glo lime green Mohawk.

Others seemed to be less showy. I saw a few girls with several earrings in their ears, a belly button ring, a nose ring and sometimes their left eyebrow pierced. They seemed to opt for ankle and wrist tattoos.

They all looked at us for a moment, like we were the strange ones. Then they just parted for us, like a tidal wave. One of the girls smiled. “Good luck.”

I realized then they thought we were there to get our first tattoo or piercing. Inside, we looked around. There were sample drawings hanging from all the walls. You could pick any of the designs or bring your own design. In the center of the store were cases of rings, bars, and half hoops for piercings.

Joe peered into the case and pointed to a bar stud that was nearly an inch long and looked about as thick as a metal screw. “That’s got to hurt.”

I swallowed hard, knowing it was specific for certain piercings. “Yeah. See a design you like?”

Joe angled his head upward and immediately picked out a skull with a dagger stabbed through it. There were small roses wound around the image. “Joe, you don’t imagine small, do you?”

“Why should I?” Joe turned to the guy who was the store manager. “Hey, is Ric Myers free?”

The manager shook his head and gestured to a curtained-off area. “He’s got a customer. You’ll have to wait.”

Joe and I both noticed the sign above the curtain: Employees Only. We shared a look and then waited for the manager to turn his back. We darted behind the curtain to find little cubicles on either side of a long, brightly lit room. In each cubicle someone was either getting tattooed or pierced.

Five of the workers were girls. That left three possibilities and two of the men looked to be around fifty. Mary had mentioned that Ricardo Myers was young. We found a young man, probably only a couple of years older than we were. He was wearing only shorts and sandals. He had a long black ponytail that hid the tattoo in the middle of his back, but I could see it was some kind of snake wrapped around its prey. This guy was obviously not someone to be messed with.

“Ricardo Myers?” I asked.

The man turned round. “Who wants to know?” He nodded to his customer. “I’ll be right back.” Coming over to us, he snapped, “Who are you?”

“I’m Frank Hardy and this is my brother Joe. We wanted to ask you a few questions about the break-in at the The Shore Thing.”

He narrowed his dark eyes, looking angry. “That Fleming lady,” he muttered bitterly. “I hate that woman – she’s a snob, man. She thinks if you’re tough, you must be a criminal.”

Joe arched an eyebrow. “So...she fired you?”

“Hey, nobody fires me,” he snapped, stepping right up to us, like he was going to punch us both. “I quit. I was tired of her demanding this and ordering that. Anyway, I like it better here, I make my own hours. Plus, I can express myself. You know, get into my art.”

I took a small step back. “How’s the pay?”

Ricardo’s eyes hardened and his expression turned ugly. “Bug off. It’s none of your business how I get by.” He shoved me and I nearly collided with the wall of the cubicle.

I resisted the urge to shove him back. “What I really want to ask you is—“

Just then, the manager lifted the curtain and saw us. “Hey! No one’s supposed to back here except paying customers,” he said.

“We’re just going.” I saw Joe clench his hands into fists and I nudged him. It wouldn’t do to get into a fight in here.

“Now,” ordered the manager.

“Who did it?” I asked quickly as Joe stepped between me and the manager.

“Fleming,” muttered Ricardo. “She did all three, her own just to make herself look innocent...”

“I said get out,” said the manager, getting angry.

We headed out and heard Ricardo shout one more thing: “If I’d ripped off two million bucks’ worth of bling, you think I’d be sitting here doing ankle tattoos for twenty a pop?”

We found ourselves outside in a matter of minutes. Joe looked over his shoulder. “He’s got a point.”

“Yeah. And he thinks she may have robbed her own store.”

“Well, we can figure it out once we have lunch. It’s one o’clock already.”

I nodded and we headed for the nearest hot dog stand. We put in our orders and were waiting for our Jersey-style Texas Wieners when we heard screams – loud screams coming from the beach.

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The Hardy Boys Fan Fiction authors of the Hardy Detective Agency have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.