Bad Games- The Complete Series

by Jeff Menapace

  “Whatever.” Caleb waved a hand across the miles of technology. “Show me how all this works.”

  32

  Carrie entered the 7-Eleven and went straight towards the large rectangular coffee station at the back of the store. She fixed herself a large dark roast, cream and two sugars, and brought it to the checkout counter.

  “Pack of Marlboro Lights,” she said to the clerk.

  The clerk fetched her cigarettes and placed them on the counter next to her coffee. Carrie paid and left.

  Outside, she placed her cup of coffee on the hood of a garbage can and began packing her cigarettes, whacking them against the palm of her hand. Unwrapped the plastic covering, opened the box, tore off the foil, tossed the plastic and the foil, plucked out a cigarette, went to light it—

  “Carrie!”

  Carrie stopped and lowered her lighter. Unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, she looked around the parking lot, making eye contact with the male patrons coming and going. Because it was a male who had called her name.

  She saw no one looking back. Perhaps she’d misheard. She raised the lighter to her cigarette again.

  “Carrie Lambert!”

  Carrie stopped again. This time removing the unlit cigarette from her mouth. She rotated on the spot, again hoping to spot the owner of the male voice that had called her name. She might have misheard “Carrie,” but she had not misheard “Carrie Lambert.”

  And again she saw no one looking back, just more patrons shuffling in and out of the convenience store. More patrons entering and exiting their cars in the lot, seemingly oblivious to her presence.

  “Who’s there?” she called out.

  A passing female patron cast her a funny look before entering the store.

  Carrie frowned. A high school friend playing a trick on her?

  She stayed put by the trash can. Lit her cigarette and pocketed her lighter. She sipped her coffee, waiting.

  She smoked her cigarette, eyes still going over the lot, expecting to see an old friend rise up from behind a car, or possibly emerge from the side of the convenience store wearing a playful grin.

  She saw none of that.

  Caleb? Her brother perhaps chastising her for smoking? No—that made little sense. If that was the case, why the game of peek-a-boo? He’d have confronted her immediately.

  Carrie dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with her toe. Gave a demonstrative splay of her hands in all directions, signifying to whoever was behind this stupid game of peek-a-boo to show themselves before she bailed, and then grabbed her coffee and went towards her car. She opened the driver’s side door and gave one final look around before entering.

  “Whatever,” she muttered, entered the car, and drove off without further incident.

  • • •

  Carrie had been half-right. There was someone hiding around the corner of the 7-Eleven. Two people, actually. But they were no high school friends. They were Andy Franklin and Charlie Hall.

  “Got to looove social media,” Charlie had said to Andy the night before. After a little searching, the two friends had learned quite a bit about Carrie Lambert.

  Amy Lambert might have done a good job of keeping her children out of the public eye via regular media channels, but no one was safe from the cavernous peephole of social media. Worse still, no one was safe from the siren call of social media—the information the boys had gathered had not been divulged voluntarily from “Carrie Lambert,” but it sure as hell was from “Carrie Marie.”

  Carrie Marie, who might have been wise enough to keep her profile picture generic—an island setting—and who might have been wise enough to keep any pictures on her personal page equally generic, was not wise enough to keep from friending Jamie and Janine Brown, current students at the University of Rhode Island…twin daughters of Allan Brown. The Allan Brown, who had famously endured hell at the hands of psycho Kelly Blaine while in the company of Amy Lambert, all of this knowledge easily accessible via regular internet searching or, better yet, Amy Lambert’s recent bestseller.

  After that, it was simply a matter of following the cyber trail. A trail that led to a back and forth via status updates between one Carrie Marie and high school friends who still resided in the area.

  Such gems included:

  Carrie Marie: Ugh. Miss Kutztown so much. Nothing to do here.

  High school friend: You back home???

  Carrie Marie: Yup. Bored stupid.

  High school friend: Hit me up, girl!!! I’ll take your ass to Benny’s for some craziness!

  Quick search on high school friend. High school friend was currently residing in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

  Quick search on Benny’s in Doylestown to confirm. Boom—Benny’s Tavern. Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Carrie Lambert’s current whereabouts were now confirmed.

  More gems:

  Carrie Marie: D-town peeps: does the 7-Eleven on Eastwick still have the best coffee?

  High school friend: Yes! LOL. Don’t know what the hell they do to it, but it is still my crack. LOL.

  Carrie Marie: Beautiful. I know where I’ll be every morning from now on. Can’t take my mom’s organic shit much longer LOL. Thanks!

  Quick search for the location of the 7-Eleven on Eastwick. Done.

  As to what Carrie Lambert looked like? How to make a positive ID? Not as easy. Andy and Charlie had dug through countless photos of Carrie Marie’s friends, hoping to see Carrie Lambert tagged in one.

  They found none.

  The best they could discover came through conventional internet searching, yet the picture had been outdated. Carrie Lambert was seventeen in the photo, and it had been a profile shot to boot. A pic in the back lot of a popular daytime talk show on which Amy Lambert had just appeared, the photo snapped by a tabloid magazine. They would need something better to work with.

  This morning they’d gotten it. Their little stakeout in the infamous white van outside the 7-Eleven in Doylestown (not a bad drive at all from their little suburb outside of Philadelphia) was a tremendous success—and more than a little fun.

  That just left the younger brother, Caleb Lambert. However, Caleb, it would turn out, was a social media pariah. Even Carrie Marie and her loose lips offered no help in tracking her brother. Other than the fact that Caleb was apparently in the Marine Corps (a high school friend had recently asked how Caleb was managing in the Corps, and Carrie’s response had been nothing but a thumbs-up emoji), no other information could be found on the guy.

  And that was just fine by Andy and Charlie. Let the guy stay wherever the hell he was stationed. Let him be dead. Killed in the line of duty, for all they fucking cared. It would make things a hell of a lot easier to abduct one Lambert kid as opposed to two. Not to mention the guy was a Marine. If the guy was home on leave or whatever, he would be difficult bait to subdue.

  Subduing Carrie Marie for bait? Carrie Marie with her habitual morning trips to the 7-Eleven on Eastwick Road in Doylestown, Pennsylvania? Carrie Marie, former Kutztown University student who was “bored stupid” living back at home and would thus be dropping by Benny’s Tavern soon, time and date assuredly to be released in her status update?

  Subduing Carrie Marie for bait would be like—pun delightfully intended—shooting fish in a barrel.

  33

  Caleb, awake since dawn, yet still in bed, lay with a forearm draped over his closed eyes, replaying the conversation he’d had the night before with Ray.

  Or more specifically, when Ray had provided Caleb with one hell of a first target…

  Caleb waved a hand across the miles of technology. “Show me how all this works.”

  Ray smiled. “You want to know how it works, or do you want me to get you what you want?”

  “Huh?”

  “If you want me to tell you how it all works, then I’ll be keeping you here ’til Christmas. You want me to get you what you want, what you came here for, then you’ll be on your way tonight.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes. “G
et me what I want.”

  Ray spun towards the largest wall of monitors, dozens upon dozens, each of them showcasing a different story in the lives of strangers. Stories that Caleb had learned were more valuable untold than told, and they apparently paid the all-seeing eye of crazy Ray to keep it that way.

  Which suddenly begged a question. It was all so much. Ray might be able to handle the all-seeing eye in this remote cellar, but who handled the legwork? There was no way Ray could handle both, especially when some of those stories on the monitors before Caleb were marked with international locations.

  “Who else do you have working for you?” Caleb asked.

  Ray tapped his chest with his finger. “All me, partner.”

  “Bullshit. You got to have people handling your—I don’t know—transactions, don’t you? Like physically handling them? Picking them up in person to make sure everything goes smoothly?”

  “Nah. Too many working parts. Too many chances for cogs to come loose in the machine. Them cogs being any employees I hire. You think if a drop turned out to be a sting, they wouldn’t give me up to save their asses? I told you: we’re all born into this world as selfish creatures, and we all die as selfish creatures; we just get better at hiding that fact with those masks we cultivate to suit our needs.”

  Of course a man with Ray’s outlook on the human condition wouldn’t trust anyone to be under his employment. Caleb should have guessed this. But it still raised the question of—

  “All right here,” Ray said, waving his arm around the cellar, once again appearing to have read Caleb’s mind. “Everything I need is all right here. Oh sure, I make field trips from time to time when certain jobs demand it, but other than that—” Ray showed Caleb his palms. “I’m not one to get my hands dirty if I can help it.”

  More questions flew at Caleb. And he asked them. How were transactions handled? What happened when people refused to pay? How did he get the cameras and audio and every other damn thing into these people’s lives in the first place? How, how, how—

  “Son,” Ray finally interrupted. “I thought you didn’t want to know how it all worked.”

  “I don’t, I just—”

  “Just what? Just did? We could talk drones, hacked satellites, all the countless goodies of my creation—goodies that would make every so-called intelligence agency in the fucking world collectively come in their pants—but do you really want to know how it all works? Need to know? Jack Dixon referred you to me, despite our many differences. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  Caleb supposed it was. He supposed that Ray could have orchestrated his entire enterprise from the devil himself, but if Jack Dixon had sent him Ray’s way…

  Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

  “Yeah,” Caleb said with a sigh, “it’s enough.”

  Ray grinned his grin. “Good. Then let’s get down to it, shall we?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “And let’s not waste any more time with bullshit. Take off your mask and tell me what your selfish little self needs.”

  Caleb stared at him.

  Ray sighed. “You want to find someone who’s up to some naughty shit, yes? Someone who needs putting in their place, as you see it?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Caleb said.

  Ray sighed again. “Make it that simple. I told you I don’t give a shit about your reasons, partner.”

  “Fine.” Caleb stared at the endless wall of monitors. He might as well have been staring at a jigsaw puzzle recently dumped from the box. “How do I…choose?”

  Ray looked Caleb up and down with a sly eye. A smirking eye. “I know your backstory, partner. My guess is you’d like to get your hands on the Fannelli brothers of the world, yes?” Ray spoke these words with both his sly, smirking eye and an eerie frankness. As though Caleb’s backstory carried no more weight than a harmless secret.

  Now it was Caleb who looked Ray up and down. “I thought you didn’t need to know my reasons.”

  “I don’t. But knowing your reasons and helping you choose aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, are they?”

  “I suppose not. Do you—I mean, are you currently watching anyone like that?”

  “Matter of fact, I am,” Ray said. “Funny how it played out. I was keeping an eye on some bartender moonlighting as a pimp. Was gonna blackmail his ass on that—seems he had quite a little enterprise going despite his blue-collar status—but things got a hell of lot more interesting as time went on.”

  Caleb went cold. The world was a huge place. And Ray had only said very little thus far. The things he found “a hell of a lot more interesting” could have meant anything about anyone anywhere.

  Only the axiom of the world being a small place after all had proved painfully true when Ray grinned his all-knowing grin and said: “Do you know how the rest of this story goes, killer?”

  34

  “So, then what?” Caleb had said last night to Ray. “You planning on blackmailing me?”

  Ray laughed. “No, no, no, partner. Can’t imagine I’d get much from the likes of you. Not to mention Jack Dixon and his crew would kick my ass if they ever found out.”

  “Did you know? All this time? Did you know about what I did that night?”

  “Yep. Placed you the minute you stepped out of your car on the side of the road.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Ray shrugged. “Didn’t care. Found it amusing, though. Small world, isn’t it?”

  Caleb took no pleasure in their shared use of the proverb. “Not with you watching it isn’t.”

  Ray found this delightful. He laughed heartily.

  “So, you saw everything,” Caleb said. “You saw what I did to the pimp. You saw the hooker and me dump him.”

  “Saw you fuck her damn good right after too.”

  Caleb looked away.

  “Aren’t you curious as to what I saw after that?” Ray asked. “After you left?”

  Caleb turned back to Ray. “After?”

  “The hooker had two more customers.”

  “She did?”

  “She sure did. Two boys around your age, as a matter of fact.”

  Caleb felt cold again. If he’d learned anything here with Ray tonight, it was that coincidence had left the building.

  He asked it anyway: “They killed her, didn’t they?”

  Ray’s sly, smirking eye was enormous. “They sure did. Beat her to death with a tire iron a few blocks away. Went back and took her van after. Been keeping an eye on them ever since. Their type didn’t seem to fit in that kind of neighborhood. Turns out they were suburban boys. Suburban boys got money, or at least their folks do. Figured they might be willing to pay to keep their little number on the hooker a secret. Want to know the craziest thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You met them, partner,” Ray went on. “The next day in the lot behind the bar. You went back for whatever reason, and so did they. You met each other.”

  Yes. Caleb remembered them well. They popped into his head at odd times, those two boys, reminding him of who he feared he might one day become, who he feared he might already be…

  …but most of all, they had reminded him of two particular men who would forever be imbedded in his nightmares.

  “So, what do you say, partner?” Ray asked. “Would you like to place those two boys on your little vigilante radar?”

  “Yes, I would,” Caleb said without pause.

  35

  Charlie Hall’s father had a gun. He had a lot of guns. Rifles. One of the few things Mr. Hall had ever taught Charlie of any worth was how to use a rifle.

  He’d taken Charlie hunting for the day when Charlie was ten, determined, as Mr. Hall had put it, to “find something you might be good at, boy.”

  But Charlie wasn’t good at it, and the disgust and abuse flowed freely after, culminating with Charlie being tossed a flimsy tent and forced to sleep in the backyard later that night in order to “show your
old man some type of goddamned outdoorsmanship.” It had been late November in Pennsylvania. Mr. Hall had never shown Charlie how to properly pitch a tent. Charlie was taken to the hospital the next day for pneumonia.

  More than seven years later, Charlie still didn’t know how to pitch a tent. But he did remember how to use a rifle.

  • • •

  Mike Childs dumped his football gear into the trunk of his black 2020 Audi A5 (a gift from his father on his sixteenth birthday. Mike had wrecked the car three weeks later, and his father had promptly bought him another) and slammed the hood. He was sweaty and hungry after practice, but hunger superseded cleanliness. This meant Wendy’s drive-thru.

  A mayo- and ketchup-glopped slice of onion fell onto his lap after a large bite of a Dave’s Double with cheese, and Mike took his eyes off the road a second too long. When he lifted his head, the brake lights on the white van in front of him were larger than life. Mike stomped his brakes to no avail, rear-ending the van.

  “Fuck!”

  Enraged, Mike all but kicked open the door of his still idling Audi—the Childses were never in the wrong, never in the wrong—and stormed over towards the driver’s side of the van, keen on whooping somebody’s ass or, if the driver was a woman, keen on telling her who he was. Who his father was. That they’d see her in court, and that she would lose.

  When Mike Childs saw Andy Franklin in the driver’s seat, he thought it was Christmas.

  When the side door of the van slid open a second later, and Charlie Hall pointed his father’s rifle into Mike’s face, Mike’s face going from fighting red to shit-scared white in a blink, it was now Charlie Hall who thought it was Christmas.

  Andy hopped out of the driver’s seat and came up behind Mike. Eyes stuck on the rifle’s barrel aimed between his eyes, Mike didn’t even register Andy’s exit.

  Andy brought the tire iron down onto the back of Mike Childs’s head, knocking him cold. Quickly, feverishly, the two friends hoisted Mike Childs into the van, slid the side door shut with a boom, and sped away, the Audi and its newly dented fender idling unattended in the middle of the street.