100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series)

by A. J. Lape

  “He’s good.” I shoved my pinky nail in my mouth and ripped off the tip.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You always chew your pinky nail when things aren’t right between the two of you.” I didn’t give him jack. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Yes! No! Maybe? “I dunno,” I sort of shrugged. Heck, I didn’t know how to answer anyway.

  Vinnie punched the rectangular doorbell again.

  Then again.

  And again.

  The black front door was ajar by about an inch. Vinnie yelled, “Hello!” then creaked the door wide with his foot. Just went right in—not even waiting for an invitation. This qualified as a maverick move—and felt freaking nuts—but I didn’t care, and God knew Vinnie’s conscience was harder to find than mine.

  The front room looked like your normal home: modest blue fabric sofa, two chairs, flatscreen TV, a bookshelf on the back wall behind the TV, and a multi-colored oriental rug in the middle of a scratched hardwood floor. Beside one of the end tables was a bowl of uneaten popcorn in a gold plastic bowl. Vinnie plunged his hand inside and ate the crap out of their popcorn, flipping through his texts while I snooped down the hall.

  Two bedrooms were adjacent to the restroom. I popped inside the first one and knew instantly I’d hit the nerve center. Half a dozen laptops and desktop computers were fired up, all idling on Google. A white box sat on top of the desk containing several Visas and MasterCards, social security cards, and even King’s Island season passes. Thing was, no name had been assigned to any of them. They simply waited there for someone to stamp a name on the front and hand out to their new owners.

  I sucked in a breath.

  Brantley McCoy had some major secrets that needed to remain underground.

  I squeaked open the door to the adjacent bedroom and was met with an empty twin bed. A rumpled white sheet draped the bed, no comforter. Pivoting around, I did a quick scan of the gray carpet, found nothing overly suspicious or weird, so moved onto the closet.

  By that time, Vinnie nipped at my heels. “I’m getting a funny feeling, Dolce. We need to roll.”

  My thoughts exactly. But when I stepped inside the walk-in closet, no way in the world would I ever have been prepared for what I’d find. There’s an idiom about skeletons in your closet. Trouble was, the skeleton I’d discovered still had meat on it.

  “Vinnie,” I whispered, “there’s a skeleton in the closet.”

  Vinnie munched on his moon pie behind me; I heard the crinkle of the wrapper. “Ha-ha, Dolce. Is this some metaphorical test I’m supposed to decipher?”

  “No, like a real skeleton that I think is a man.”

  Vinnie took one step inside and dropped the f-bomb. Then added mommy-effer.

  “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  Vinnie’s inhale was audible. “Yeah, smells like O-positive to me.” Loosely rolled in a faded navy comforter were the remains of a man. He lay facedown with a small patch of flesh and short black hair still clinging to his head. This wasn’t the only dead body I’d encountered, and neither was the body of a man I’d found in a dumpster last spring. I, eh, well…I found a head…buried in the sand on vacation in Orlando. I had a habit of stumbling upon dead bodies and/or body parts. Something the majority of people could go a lifetime and not have happen once, I’d experienced one too many times to count. The smell wasn’t as bad as bodies that’d recently expired, but it smelled like death, nonetheless. Death has a peculiar smell you never forget. Covering my nose with my hand, I lifted the tip of my boot and kicked the blanket back, starting at the naked feet. Black boxers framed femurs that barely had any flesh left, and a plain white t-shirt adorned the crumpled torso. A vintage concert t-shirt from The Minstrel Cramps, a local all-girl band popular back in the day, lay beside the corpse’s head.

  A memory played in the back of my mind I immediately tried to erase.

  A memory that’d haunted me since I was nine years old.

  I couldn’t do this…not again…noooooo…this particular scene was too raw and familiar. If I didn’t get out of here soon, I’d flip the freak out, and I wasn’t sure Vinnie could screw my head back on.

  I quickly turned, braced both hands on my knees, and dry-heaved three times. Bile scorched my throat, and I struggled unsuccessfully to swallow it back down. Spitting into a handkerchief Vinnie shoved over my mouth, I sucked air through my nose, trying to find calm.

  Vinnie laid a gentle hand on my back. “Breathe, Dolce, breathe,” he coaxed. Stumbling to the bathroom, I worshiped at the porcelain throne and still couldn’t rid myself of the nausea. I ultimately gave into biology and used the commode in a half-stand, half-sit position. Do you know how hard it is to pee this way, praying you don’t leave any fingerprints or DNA behind?

  Inhaling deeply, I found my calm, realizing Vinnie and I needed to leave ASAP and phone the authorities. Those plans hit an iceberg because once I joined Vinnie in the front room, I heard a Pfffft. Then another. I was a little slow on the uptake but soon realized the Pfffft was the sound of something striking the couch. Yellowed batting exploded out of a bullet hole in a puff of white smoke.

  Call me a genius, but I didn’t consider this good.

  “Down!” Vinnie roared, launching himself toward me.

  Unfortunately, my legs went moron and glued to the floor. For a moment, I had a flashback of running from a shooter last spring. They say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place…evidently, it does. My legs felt like rubber, and the room went to a dizzying whirl. Tears welled in my eyes, but I commanded them to dry up. You couldn’t think rationally when you cried. Emotions ruled. I didn’t make the rule; someone else did. Problem was, my tear ducts didn’t comply. I boo-hoo’d like a little girl.

  Vinnie heaved us both off the floor, pitching me his keys I caught in one hand.

  “Oh, God, Vinnie,” I breathed, adrenaline nearly slicing me in two. This was like a Scarface shootout, only we didn’t have a gun.

  Vinnie’s eyes glowed black and angry, but he took time to tenderly touch my cheek in an order. “Snap out of it, Dolce. Go. Out the back. I’ll follow.”

  I still couldn’t move.

  When Vinnie whipped off his jacket to do God-knew-what, voices boomed outside as three more gunshots landed on the hardwood floor. The wood splintered into pieces, sawdust pooling like an ant mound. When a sixth shot hit near my feet, I lost my balance and cartwheeled across the floor, landing on my knees. Vinnie snatched me up and shoved me in front of him, clutching my back to his front, acting as a human shield. Praying vehemently he didn’t get struck in the mayhem of gunfire, I still was worthless while he kicked out the window and tossed me onto the ground. I landed on all fours, my hands hitting the gravelly dirt of a backyard in need of upkeep. My tights split at the knees, and the air left my body on a hiss. I crawled in an uncoordinated manner like a baby intent on learning a new method of transportation. My eyes blinded with tears, and when I made it around the air conditioning unit, my hands hit something thick and mucousy.

  Pulling my shaking hand to my eyes, I recognized the red, viscous fluid immediately…blood. Blood that’d partly dried and led me to the body of…oh, God help me…help me…Nico Drake.

  My stomach churned, and I felt like I’d scarfed a bag of jalapeno poppers. Nico Drake’s stare was glazed over and wide-eyed, and his body so covered in blood I didn’t know from where the mortal wound originated. His hands were bloody, his white shirt soaked to the skin, and his tongue hung out to the side like someone struck him from the back, and it was a reflex reaction. I have to admit I’d imagined him dead, but the reality was a whole lot scarier than what I’d pictured in my head. It’s like he’d totally bled out because the ground was soggy underneath him. I’d like to say I was surprised, but Nico Drake was mongoo
se-mean. Apparently, he had enemies that didn’t mind to take a beef to the next level. Still, my heart broke a little with the discovery. Not even the bad should die young. You should have time to live, make mistakes, make them twice, fall in love, get married, have kids, feel like your life’s been a waste, make peace, and only then should you be allowed to die.

  Whatever Nico thought would be useful to me followed him to the land of worms.

  But why? Why was he here…and dead?

  A shrill laugh escaped my trembling lips, followed by a cry so bizarre it felt like the earth took pause. Stick a fork in me…I’m done. I can’t do this. People were falling dead all around me, and no amount of money in the world was worth Vinnie and me getting shot at. Well, getting shot at and potentially finding success.

  I tried to get up and fell.

  I tried again, this time even shakier.

  When I finally scrambled to my feet…I realized Vinnie hadn’t followed.

  And that’s when I heard it…

  Chaos everywhere.

  Furniture moved; there was a shout, more gunfire, a man’s scream, the sounds of rolling and thrashing fists, the cracking of heads, grunts, a loud thud, Vinnie’s muffled cry and now…

  Nothing.

  For God’s sake…nothing.

  I attempted a scream but instead whispered a strangled prayer. “God, please,” I whispered. “Pleeeeease…”

  I couldn’t imagine a world without a Vinnie—especially when it was my fault he’d been placed in this situation. Vinnie had a life, a mom, a girlfriend named Donatella, and maybe a budding acting career. I crawled to the Bug, opened the driver’s side door, and crumbled inside. “Be calm, be calm,” I sniffed to myself. As my conscience prickled with guilt, I bumbled my iPhone out of my purse when the door was thrown wide with Vinnie tossing me to the passenger side. His gray suit had been splattered with blood, but I knew innately it wasn’t his. A rip. There was a rip in his left knee. A simple rip.

  I cried nerd tears; I cried happy tears.

  I launched myself at Vinnie, sniffling, “Vinnie, I love you. I love you…”

  Vinnie gazed at me cockily, like it was a given he would’ve walked away unscathed. Amidst all my blubbering, he did the indescribable. He placed The Minstrel Cramps vintage t-shirt in my lap, tenderly squeezing my knee. The dueling emotions of love and hate immediately boiled up inside me. Vinnie was one of a handful that knew what that band meant to me. What that memory meant. Nerd tears resurfaced. Desperate tears won out. Stabbing his keys into the ignition, he rocketed out of the driveway on a squeal. We’d raised the bar on crazy, and I was bawling like a baby. At this juncture, I didn’t care I looked like a wuss…I was a wuss…but Vinnie was alive and that’s all that mattered.

  Vinnie slid worried eyes over. “Whatever or whoever you were looking for…I saw it in his eyes. He’s the right guy, Dolce, but we gotta split. I might’ve killed him.”

  14. Big Moby

  If my life were a bowling alley, I was the gutter ball.

  Mr. B felt that’s where my life was headed…in the gutter. When I punched the clock this afternoon, he spat nails I hadn’t worked at all yesterday. A situation due to the fact I’d been banished to detention. I considered telling him I’d been abducted by the government, but one look at the Christmas tree by the checkout counter and I couldn’t lie.

  So I gave them a partial truth which in turn launched Detention Lecture 2.0…yeah, call me an idiot.

  “So this Nico Drake,” he gruffed, “do I need to go rough him up?”

  Um, he’s already dead, I said in my mind. “No, but thanks for the offer” was my official response.

  Another grunt. “I’d better not be pulling you off of skid row some day, Walker,” he told me. “I love a charity case as much as any other employer, but I don’t invest in idiots.”

  He needed to invest in a heart monitor because he was leaned over the counter, sucking the calories out of his fourth ham sandwich. I watched a greasy bite enter his mouth, knowing full well he’d taken another sixty seconds off his life.

  He wasn’t through yet…unfortunately. “Were you drunk?”

  “I wish,” I muttered.

  He threw out a JC, and he wasn’t praying. “You need to straighten up, Walker. God has plans for you. He’s watching.”

  This coming from a man who should have AA on his speed dial. “He’s watching?” I mumbled.

  “Yeah, an eye for a porkin’ eye.”

  That statement didn’t even fit within the context of the conversation.

  Mr. B had been up in my business for the past hour and a half, his jean suspenders hanging from one fat shoulder. He’d splashed eggnog—schnapps was my guess—all over my shirt. I wore my normal uniform of black yoga pants, Chuck Taylor sneakers, and bookstore t-shirt that bragged, “Belinski’s is the Bomb” on the front. Now the bomb smelled like hard liquor.

  It was nine o’clock, and I closed out the cash register, waiting for Dylan to pick me up so we could eat a late dinner at Big Moby’s. Somehow I’d made it through the day without raiding the liquor in the back, and that was a miracle in itself. Vinnie and I immediately went to his home and ditched our clothing. He took the bag with him back to Ohio State with the promise, “I’ll take care of it.”

  To that, I had no doubt.

  Vinnie’s will to survive might be greater than mine.

  We didn’t know what to do about Nico Drake but assumed his parents would issue a missing person’s report sometime soon.

  Even so, I still had my eyes on the prize despite the fact that A) Vinnie and I’d been shot at this morning; B) we found human remains in a closet; C) Nico Drake’s dead body was mysteriously present; and D) a large possibility existed Vinnie might’ve killed someone. I’d had the local news rolling since arriving at one o’clock, but not one single thing went over the airwaves about gunfire at 9139 Calypso Cove Drive—what I now referred to as The Bates Motel. That being said, it was paramount I inform Tito about the things and bodies I’d discovered. Trouble was, I hadn’t quite figured out how to open that can of worms. If, in fact, Vinnie accidentally killed Brantley McCoy, a chance existed he could be arrested. Heck, they might even say he knocked off Nico Drake too out of vengeance for me. How, you say, would authorities know to look for Vinnie? Let’s not forget Vinnie drives a pink VW Bug…complete with eyelashes. If they went CSI on the scene, they’d discover the Bug was a one-of-a-kind in the Cincinnati area, and although I could swear no one saw us, I couldn’t say for sure.

  My brain was spent. Getting shot at sort of ruined anything. I ugly-cried the whole way home, my eyes currently so red they looked like a newborn vampire’s. Plus Dylan’s and my discussion weighed on my mind. He’d accused me of “editing our conversations,” as if it was as devastating as finding out your spouse cheated on you. No, what was freaking devastating was getting freaking shot at.

  Ugh…

  “Have you learned your lesson?” Mr. B grunted.

  I punched the register door shut, dusting the breadcrumbs into my hand that’d fallen from his sandwich. I didn’t think we had rats, but random breadcrumbs were one surefire way to attract vermin. I dropped them into the waste can and removed the clear plastic trash bag, tying it at the top.

  I reiterated exactly what I’d told Murphy. “I’m extremely remorseful, and I will never embarrass you or my family again. I plan on being a productive citizen of society, and you have my word you won’t be reading about me in the prison round-up.”

  Because I don’t plan on getting caught.

  Apparently, that’s all he needed to hear. He ran his greasy hand through my ponytail and lumbered back toward the break room where Chichi, real name Conchita Diaz, was preparing to read his palm.

  From Ecuador, Chichi stood about five foot five with shiny, black hair and
eyes that were burgundy. Her claim to fame was reading palms and tealeaves. She saw your future and those who’d make the biggest dent in your life. To the best of my knowledge, she operated on one hundred percent prophetic status. Pretty impressive for a seventeen-year-old; although, it smelled of BS.

  Tonight, she planned to dispatch a communiqué from the spirit world on Mr. B’s immediate future. To rephrase, could he get by with killing the “porkin’ scum of the earth that porked up his place” last night after closing? No windows had been broken, but the outside door had been spray painted with words I didn’t understand nor care to repeat. Thing was, that made two acts of vandalism in a week: Nowacki’s Videos and now here. As a precaution, he closed his bank and credit card accounts, but that wouldn’t do any good if the thief had somehow secured his social security number. The best identity thieves only needed one set of identification for you, and they could uncover the rest.

  I made my way to the rear of the store, straightening along the way.

  The break room had a lime, faux leather couch made of a washable plastic. Mr. B lay on it like a beached whale while Chichi knelt beside him, closed her eyes, and did a quick meditation to herself.

  I flopped down beside them when Chichi took his palm, tracing its deep lines. The moment I was certifiably bored out of my mind, Chichi dropped his hand like it had burned, darting her burgundy eyes over to me in a fit of hysteria. “A bad man will bring harm to Darcy.”

  Stand in line, I thought.

  Mr. B looked at her grunting, “What are you talking about?”

  Chichi’s gaze held a weight. Like she dealt with something so heavy she couldn’t quite carry it. She explained, “Darcy’s and your destinies are intersecting, and it isn’t good.”

  When Mr. B still had that dumber-than-rocks thing going on, I realized Chichi spoke in Spanish—which she only did when she was truly, out-of-her-mind scared.