100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series)

by A. J. Lape

  Guys and girls both liked to talk about the opposite sex—even if it was unrequited. I’m not sure what it was about me. Maybe they didn’t see me as a threat, or maybe they saw my equal desperation in the wallflower world. Whatever it was, people usually opened their mouths and regurgitated their screwed-up lives even if I didn’t ask.

  “And I love her fucshia weave,” Bean sighed. “I want to touch it.” Dear God, he referred to Justice. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of landing her. Heck, she could probably kill him with his own eyelash, but far be it from me to rain on his hormonal, delusional parade.

  “She is pretty,” I smiled. Then that little thing that killed the cat got ahold of me. “What do people say about me?”

  I dipped my roller inside the tray of paint and slapped a white streak on the wall. I had a theory why we painted the cafeteria. Chances were, we covered years and years of animal fat that wouldn’t go away with a wet cloth.

  Bean answered, “That you’re taken.”

  Dylan, I sighed. We definitely were something, but ‘taken’ wasn’t it.

  I said, “Would they want to date me if they didn’t think I was taken?”

  Bean glanced at the ceiling, Grumpy at his feet. It was one of those times people hoped if they ignored you long enough you’d forget they owed you an answer.

  “Don’t answer that,” I muttered.

  Before shame could take root, I turned on my heels and hit a soapy puddle of water. My legs went out from underneath me, and the paint flew through the air, landing on the tan tile in long wavy streaks. I tried to recover but overcompensated and Fosbury flopped, landing so hard my butt felt like a popped balloon. I looked like an idiot, and the immediate laughter of the group sealed the deal.

  Lovely.

  As I snatched the towel a laughing Grumpy tossed over, Slapstick moseyed to my side with a mop and rolling bucket.

  Well, well, well, here comes the silver freaking lining.

  I dabbed at my face as he lifted the mop from the bucket and swished it across the floor. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “A thirty-six inch inseam trips you up from time to time.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he laughed back.

  I placed the rag on the table to my side, needing to spur the dialogue.

  He squeezed out the mop, handing me a roller as he flanked himself to my left side. Damon lugged over his gear, parking himself to my right. He whapped an overly wet roller on the wall, paint drippings splattering his LeBron sneakers. Wow, I’d be guarding those with my life, but Damon didn’t seem to have a lot of regard for anything.

  “I hear you’ve been looking for me,” he muttered, his brown eyes anything but warm.

  “Yup,” I answered, and I didn’t get a chance to ask who’d delivered the message before he spoke again.

  “Lying is not usually a good foundation to a lasting friendship, Walker,” he smirked.

  “I wasn’t aware I’d just lied,” I told him.

  “But I hear that’s what you do,” Damon protested.

  Okay…hated Damon.

  First up, I asked about Coach’s car, and maybe it was wrong, but the delivery was with more than a hint of accusation. “Everyone’s heard about that,” he chuckled. “I didn’t do it, but why would you think I’d know?”

  “Do you?”

  I’d outed myself as someone who thought bad people always knew other people who did bad things. I attempted an answer, but his voice came out like thunder, growing loud and testy with each confrontational look. “You thought I was the type, right?” he accused. “The type that didn’t care what the crime was, you’re just always involved?”

  Huh, he had a point.

  But let’s be real…profiling existed for a reason.

  He crowded up into my personal space, eyes as cold and hard as a dead body on ice. I fought to stand my ground, but I’ll be honest—it was hard. Damon had some seriously loose screws. “Tsk. Tsk, Walker. You’re reputation isn’t exactly stellar. Look at where you are now.”

  “I plan on being a one-timer,” I shrugged.

  When I woke this morning, the last thing I thought about was my reputation. But if I took the time to think about my methods of operation—which I sorrily never did—maybe this whole shebang was a tad embarrassing. Granted, I didn’t do anything to land me in here on purpose, but I needed to work on being appropriately embarrassed.

  Damon gave me a time-will-tell look as I made a snowflake on the wall.

  “Then answer this, Darcy. Did you think Slapstick knew anything?” Slapstick obviously hadn’t mentioned our conversation yesterday. I could tell by the feel in the room. Damon kept pushing my buttons when I never answered. “I’m thinking I don’t like you. It’s a shame it wasn’t my finger on that gun last spring. I wouldn’t have missed, and your big mouth put my friend in jail.”

  I pulled in a breath…that wasn’t exactly what I’d term welcome material.

  But I was determined not to let Damon see the effect his words had on me. The shooter (who chased me with a gun, murdered three people, and shot AP Unger)—had sent me several letters over the summer—trying to be my jailhouse pen pal. To know I spoke with someone who considered that maniac a friend left me on high alert. I was stuck with the cold, stark fear that only a true sociopath could conjure. Damon Whitehead was one evil sonovagun, and I needed one eye on my back.

  Swiping the wall with the roller, I made a big “w” and watched paint drip to the drop cloth beneath me. Damon had an opinion of me he wasn’t going to change one way or another. Well, good. That made two of us. I painted on a psychopathic smile, trying to beat him at his own game.

  I said, “A friend of mine had his checking account hacked, Damon. In fact, he didn’t only lose a few bucks, the thief stole his personal credit information and used it to try and buy a house. I’ve heard that someone in Valley does this stuff for sport. Have you heard who that might be?”

  Slapstick continued to paint; still not giving up we’d spoken yesterday.

  Once again, Damon gave me his told-you-so face. Translation, I was a bigot.

  His paranoia ignited instantly. He wasn’t much bigger than me, but his attitude was of a tribe of people who’d seen more hard than good. “You’re just like everyone else,” he bellowed. “Who says I’m into that?” Well, I could admit I’d seen his juvie record, but I got the feeling I shouldn’t put my hand in his cage.

  Crud.

  “You’re not even going to try and deny it, are you?” he barked. Damon’s voice went raspy—he was either on the verge of a cold or smoked one too many cigarettes.

  I stupidly suggested, “Maybe you shouldn’t smoke, Damon.” I didn’t mean it as an insult; I, honest to God, thought he might not see thirty.

  He expelled a bitter laugh—harsh, stinging, like tiny bugs biting into your skin. The sensation was so powerful I had the overwhelming urge to roll on the ground to remove it. Slapstick, on the other hand, actually looked nervous. He tripped over his own feet, sliding into his bucket, making the water slosh in a swirl. Tiny flumes of water streamed between our feet, soaking the bottoms of my shoes.

  “Everything’s cool, D-D-Damon,” he stammered. “Darcy’s a n-nice girl.”

  “No, she’s not,” Damon seethed. “She’s like all of ’em. Thinking she’s somethin’ she’s not. Girls like that should only be dealt with in one way.”

  Damon proved he just might be the supreme ponkey of the cosmos.

  Knowing I had a lot of ground to cover, I decided to go for broke. I’d already made him angrier than a hornet, so I decided to maximize my time—even if it meant I’d be under fire myself. I quickly pulled Motor Oil Hair and Coffee Blot Boy out of my backpack, thrusting the photos in his face.

  “Do you know these guys?” I asked. “I’ve got a hunch one
of them knocked off Nowacki’s Videos and stole the owner’s identity. And they also did the same to Tito Westbrook, crime reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer.”

  Slapstick carefully took both photographs and pulled them up to his eyes, perusing them as you would a drop of water under a microscope. Damon, however, looked like his head would blow right off his shoulders. He slammed me back up against the wall, my head banging against the cinder block in an instant headache.

  Heaven must’ve felt sorry for me because Grumpy muscled his way over and crowded into the group. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Whitehead,” he hissed, jamming a stiff finger in his direction. “Do you know who her best friend is? In case you don’t, it’s Dylan Taylor. After I beat the shit out of you, he’ll be next…and my guess is your family will be lucky if there’s a body for a viewing.”

  A hush filled the room.

  Yeah, Dylan’s name held that much weight.

  “Why are you doing this?” Slapstick gasped at me.

  The obvious? Tito Westbrook deserved justice, and Coach Wallace deserved a new paint job. Couple that with no life, no boyfriend, no discernible path for the future, and the motivation was simple: I was bored.

  Damon took two thundering steps, chest-bumping Grumpy. “I’m afraid of no one.”

  Bring it on was in my mind, but absolutely nothing came out of my mouth. I tried again to speak, but Grumpy spoke overtop me, pulling me by the elbow to where he’d shoved me completely behind him. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he laughed darkly. “Taylor delights in showing people the error of their ways.”

  Grumpy may be a lot of things, but he always had the gonads when it counted. Other than Vinnie, he and I spoke the closest language. It was called weathering years and years of hard times, but in our favor, it bred a very astute mistrust. He could sniff out a fake as quickly as I could.

  Damon parked himself within a breath of Grumpy’s face, a sick sadistic grin lining his lips. He had a gold tooth I’d never noticed, even while he’d been speaking. The more his grin tipped up to his ears, the more the gleam of gold prism’d in the light. One minute I thought he’d pummel Grumpy into sawdust; the next he backed down like a whipped dog. The mood grew crazier and crazier by the minute. Couple that with “Oh Holy Night” crooning in the background, and it was some seriously messed up shinola.

  13. Skeletons in the Closet

  I’d always heard Death sometimes came just to visit; right now, I was pretty sure I looked at the Puerto Rican version.

  Claudia’s sister, Ana Rosalina, blew into town along with the devil’s spawn—er, Choncho—her son. I wasn’t a fan of Choncho. There was something about him that didn’t jive with me. At only eight, the eyes on his pudgy, thirty-pound overweight body had a maturity to them of adults. Not ripe with wisdom, but ripe with a worldly knowledge of the bad crap that can happen. No childhood innocence was detectable anywhere, assuming it had been inside in the first place.

  Claudia only had one bedroom in her apartment, and Ana Rosalina planned to stay in the states until Christmas. Murphy said Claudia could bunk here if she needed an escape, but so far they’d been cohabitating without killing the other.

  Like Claudia, Ana Rosalina had an ample hourglass figure and was born in full makeup—her blush painted as thick and opaque as a stop sign. Both in green muumuus, they huddled over the kitchen sink, dumping herbs and what looked like indigenous Puerto Rican bugs into a pot.

  For most, you’d ask, Why?

  For us, it barely garnered a second thought.

  Murphy was upstairs on speakerphone, working on a Saturday. Word spread through the camp quickly there’d been a catastrophe in his “Dumbass Kansas Account,” and Claudia and Ana Rosalina had been trying to fix things via their magic. Evidently, a cyclone decimated an entire town, and Murphy’s division had underwritten two manufacturing plants. The biggie of all biggies, a VP’s dead body was found buried underneath the rubble.

  I bit my tongue. Claudia was right…death had come to Murphy’s life.

  I didn’t know if the herbs and dead bugs were to raise the vice president or put a financial windfall back into Murphy’s company. Heck, maybe it was to spare all of our lives from my father who currently screamed, “Eat poop and die” to someone who worked for him. All I knew was I had free time on my hands…free time to, eh, stakeout the school’s losers.

  Provoking them was dumb—heavy emphasis on the “dumb” part. But sometimes my crazy demanded I sic it on people. What did I learn? Slapstick Wilson was friendly, mannerly, sometimes nervous, and definitely a people pleaser. And he honestly struck me as a flower waiting to bloom if it hit the right light. Whatever mess he got into in life, my guess was he fell into it unawares, had a good reason, or went along for the ride. That being said, he claimed he didn’t work for free. That insinuated he thought he’d contribute something of value. But did I actually want to hire him?

  Damon Whitehead was a trash-talking, hotheaded ponkey. If he perpetrated anything, my feelings were he wouldn’t be able to keep it to himself. And by his blanked-out reaction to my questions, I’d swear Slapstick hadn’t tipped him off to anything. That meant he’d heard through the grapevine, like Collin had.

  Just the practice of dissecting these two made the truth ring true…neither was The Ghost. The Ghost was supposed to be of superior intelligence, deadly to the point of making your skin crawl, and liked to remain hidden. Damon longed to be seen and heard. Slapstick was too much go-with-the-flow to be a consideration.

  Crashed on the floor in the den, I snatched up my iPhone and punched in Slapstick’s number. When the testosterone cleared after Damon and Grumpy’s peeing match, I made sure to program his digits into my cell. After six rings on four separate attempts, I got the feeling he didn’t want to speak with me. I’d cry if I had the energy, but it’d been expended playing hillbilly Barbies with Marjorie, along with the realization my best friend had changed the confines of our relationship. Instead, I developed a case of hiccups and promised Barbie everything would be okay.

  It was a little past five o’clock. The sky was blue, cloud-free, with a tiny ray of sunshine trying its best to survive. Ana Rosalina had left her cell phone on the countertop. As their attention stayed riveted to the sink, I snatched it up, stole upstairs to my room, and closed the door. I thumbed in Tito’s number. I had no idea if he was married, divorced, dating, or in a custody war with his baby mama. But Vinnie and I needed to point our compass somewhere tomorrow, and Tito was the best bet.

  As luck would have it, he answered. “It’s Jester,” I said into the phone.

  Tito was probably shocked I’d used yet another number, but he could trace away, and all he’d get would be a Colombian drug lord. That’s some other news Ana Rosalina brought this Christmas. She was now a kept woman, engaged to a reformed drug lord who still resided in Colombia.

  Suuuuuurrrreeee…I’m sure that rehab worked just fine.

  “Jester,” he sort of chuckled. “You must be a workaholic like I am.”

  Workaholic, I didn’t know, but I might be the biggest dolt ever created. “Two things are on my mind, Tito. Number one, I want to know if you received the two Visa cards and the social security card I mailed you. Visa cards were for Lindsee Maroni and Kelley Lowder. Social security card was for an infant boy named Lucas Carlton.” I then reiterated their stories, down to the last detail, and swore on a stack of Bibles I wasn’t the thief.

  Crickets chirping for a beat.

  “That package was from you?” he finally asked with disbelief.

  “No, they were from the Tooth Fairy. Of course, they were from me.”

  “Where’d you get them, Jester? When I wrote my article, all three of those families called to share their stories. I never printed particulars, and I never printed names.”

  “Well, I didn’t steal them if that’s what y
ou’re insinuating. I’m simply showing you how far my reach goes in case you ever have the need to doubt me or sever ties.”

  More crickets. “Jester, you scare me.”

  That might be the biggest compliment anyone had ever given me. “Thanks,” I dumbly giggled.

  Tito chuckled…I think. “You said you had another reason to call?”

  Right. “Number two, I have a lead on The Ghost,” I lied. “But I need to catch up with him one last time. What location did your source last see him?”

  Please, say it’s within driving distance, I prayed. Then I looked to the ceiling hoping my many lies didn’t keep me from Heaven’s Gates permanently. But how could you remain lie-free when you pumped people for information? Creativity was a necessity.

  “Big Moby’s Cheeseburger Shack,” he rattled off.

  After some small talk, we disconnected.

  A spoonful of peanut butter later (my cure for hiccups), Dylan sauntered through the door to a silent house. Claudia and Ana Rosalina went shopping and took Marjorie and Choncho along. Suddenly, I felt the need for allies because Dylan didn’t seem as lovey-dovey as last night. In fact, he looked like he’d opened a can of whoopass.

  I choked on my tongue and coughed it back up.

  The whoopass thing actually sounded intriguing.

  Murphy thundered down the stairs, and by the look on his face, more bodies must’ve been pulled from the rubble, or he was mad about something else…I gulped.

  When I glanced at Dylan, he lowered his voice, “Powwow, sweetheart.”

  Oh, God, no. Powwows were worse than walkie-talkies. Powwows included Murphy or worse yet, Murphy and Red…or God forbid, Grandpa Winston. Powwows were my family’s equivalent of a come-to-Jesus meeting—underscoring the death and eternal damnation if you didn’t see the error of your ways.