Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  She was especially grateful that he had taken in her brother, Dwayne, and set him up in his second bedroom. And even after all the good that John had done, Amy couldn’t help but think that John was not her type. He was handsome and, yes, sexy, but she usually went for the brasher men like her ex-husband, not the kindhearted and thoughtful ones. But John was growing on her.

  In her quest for self-improvement, she had just finished reading the Dr. Spencer Johnson book, “Who Moved My Cheese,” and didn’t want to fall into the “hem” way of thinking. She wanted to be a “haw,” and she was most definitely on her way to getting there.

  But now, a few days after their dinner date, as they made their way through the massive McCormick Place, all they could both think about was locating the Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts franchise booth.

  The sea of booths laid out among the nearly three million square feet of exhibition space in front of them was daunting, and John was mentally kicking himself in the ass for not grabbing up one of the floor maps he was offered when they arrived.

  The franchise show was in full bloom. Even in a down economy, people were interested in what they could invest in next. The ocean of people in attendance gave both John and Amy hope that something better was just around the corner.

  John didn’t really care what sort of place he was going to invest the Vicodin cash into. That is, once he found a proper buyer for the drugs. He was merely interested in getting Amy firmly on her way toward her dream of managing a business. So the decision to walk away from the Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts booth after a bland and no frills presentation was an easy one to make.

  John could tell that Amy’s heart wasn’t really in the donut and ice cream venture anyway, and that was okay. That was his idea, not hers. He wanted to make sure that she was excited about her new job.

  Nearly the entire time the boring man at the Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts booth was speaking, Amy had her eyes on the booth across the way. It was a color-filled and playful booth for The Kid Crew which was a franchise of sports-related, child care facilities.

  At least that’s what John was hoping she was looking at. The proprietor of the booth, a tall and handsome man, may have caught her eye, too.

  John said, “And here I thought donuts and ice cream would be more stimulating.” She laughed and John noticed her attention was fully on the Kid Crew booth.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  As John and Amy stepped over to The Kid Crew display, Amy could see that the tall, handsome man was the only person working the booth. He was busily working on his laptop and not really paying attention to anything around him.

  As John and Amy moved closer, they could see that the man was typing away on a Facebook page, writing a comment under the photo of a 12-year-old girl who was sporting a playful smile. When he finally noticed Amy and John, he slapped the laptop closed.

  “Hi. Um, welcome to The Kid Crew. I’m Henry. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. We have a comprehensive catalogue here, and some testimonial materials as well,” he said.

  Henry was a little nervous as he took in the sight of the beautiful Amy. But now Amy wasn’t so sure about Henry. There was something off about the guy. He was handsome in a rugged, broad-shouldered sense, but Amy thought he was hiding something. This feeling was reinforced when Henry took the laptop and placed it under a table and out of view.

  “Facebook, huh?” she said, nodding to the laptop. “I haven’t gotten into that. You never really know who you may be talking to.”

  John was a bit confused by the angry change in Amy’s demeanor, from excitement to near contempt for this Henry guy standing no more than three feet from her.

  Henry could sense her anger as well, and his nervousness soon turned to a low-level anger of his own. “I was talking with my daughter.”

  Amy didn’t believe him but didn’t leave either. She wanted to know more about The Kid Crew and how the business worked.

  She said, “Okay, Henry. Pitch us. What’s your company all about?”

  And that’s when Henry went on to make Amy feel like a squashed bug on a windshield for even hinting that Henry was up to nefarious, Facebook trolling.

  The Kid Crew was Henry’s wife’s idea. A former corporate climber, Henry’s wife, Liz, decided to start the very first Kid Crew center in her North Side Chicago neighborhood when their daughter, Emmy, was born 12 years ago. Liz quit her six-figure job and worked the same long hours attempting to launch Kid Crew. But the difference this time was that she was constantly with her infant daughter.

  Tragically, Liz was killed two years later in an auto accident while the family was vacationing in Tucson. Henry was seriously injured, but Emmy was spared any real physical harm.

  Due to his extensive permanent injuries, Henry wasn’t able to keep his job as a trainer for the Northwestern University athletics department. He was, however, in good enough shape to keep The Kid Crew going and growing. Henry was not only an excellent trainer, he was seemingly a very savvy businessman, as well. He designed the franchise start-ups for The Kid Crew to be cost-effective and profitable, with a low, up front, cash outlay.

  All Amy could do after Henry finished his pitch was point to the laptop and say, “Emmy?”

  Henry smiled and nodded.

  John, not wanting the “Kumbaya” moment to pass, wrote Henry a check for $35,000 on the spot. He was the proud owner of the new, Balmoral area Kid Crew franchise, with Amy as his soon-to-be general manager. The proceeds to cover the check came from John’s investment account. He would replenish the $35,000 from the funds he’d get from selling the Vikes - piece of cake.

  As John wrote the amount into his checkbook register, Henry passed Amy his card and said, “I wrote my cell phone number on the back in case you have questions after business hours.” Before Amy could take the card, John unconsciously grabbed it and said, “Thanks. We’ll talk next week.”

  CHAPTER 29

  After only a few days of having Dwayne as his roomie, John knew it was a mistake inviting him to stay. It wasn’t that Dwayne was an ungracious houseguest. Quite the opposite was true. He cooked, cleaned and mostly kept to himself.

  Except for when he was talking - this, by the way, was all the time. He would just never shut up. Every little thing that came to his mind, he would have either an opinion about or a tidbit of trivia to share with John. Watching TV with the DVR was a special kind of hell for John, especially if Dwayne had command of the remote control, which was always.

  Because Dwayne was incarcerated for so long, he had had a lot of time to peruse the prison library’s computer for movie web sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Imdb. There was blocking software on the prison computers so the inmates couldn’t surf porn, but Hollywood movies were the next best thing. The movie web sites had samples and trailers from films and TV shows. Dwayne was able to watch and track down all of his favorite television and movie actors and characters through simple site searches.

  There he would find page upon page of information and message boards about the various players. So every time an actor he was familiar with appeared on the TV screen, Dwayne would freeze the frame and tell John a story about the actor. And Dwayne knew his stuff. Little details about each individual’s life that most wouldn’t be aware of.

  That’s why John had gone to Larry at Dink’s Diner at closing time a few days after Dwayne had arrived, to ask if the dishwasher’s job was still available. John was more pleading than asking, and it had its desired effect.

  Dwayne started working at Dink’s the following day. If he could keep quiet about living at John’s house, he would be able to keep the job as long as he worked up to Lou’s expectations.

  Larry didn’t want to jeopardize his own job, knowing Lou hated John, by letting slip that Dwayne was bunking with the source o
f Lou’s disdain.

  Dwayne, although only in the dishwasher’s position for a day or so, loved it. He’d become quite proficient in the State Pen’s kitchen, enjoying his time alone early in the mornings making homemade bread.

  Most of the prison food was barely edible, but the administrators of the Kentucky prison system learned early on that it was more cost-effective to bake their own bread. The flour was inexpensive when purchased in bulk, and the ample supply of cheap labor sealed the deal.

  First smelling and ultimately sampling the crusty bread each and every day was one of the only legal pleasures the inmates got enjoyment from.

  Dwayne doubly liked his time alone with the dough-making process. And although the Dink’s Diner kitchen was pretty small, it was well-appointed. Dwayne knew all about the various kitchen appliances and implements.

  Larry was, at first, impressed by Dwayne’s knowledge and conversely annoyed with him for talking so damn much about it all. Larry made several mental notes to give John some shit about it later.

  CHAPTER 30

  Jimmy the cop couldn’t believe his bad luck that morning. First his car wouldn’t start and he was late for work, and once on the job, his first report of the day was a yuppie transplant couple from California who couldn’t quite bring themselves to fully explain their problem.

  The California couple spoke with an advanced vocabulary, but they kept circling back to where they began without making a point that Jimmy could decipher. But finally, after picking up enough information through the couple’s stop and start sentences, Jimmy was slowly piecing together a story about trusting adults and confused teenagers.

  Finally, Jimmy thought that it all had jelled. “You think someone’s messing with your teenage daughter?” he said.

  “It’s our son, Danny, officer,” said Sharon.

  And as Danny’s parents explained in further detail, Jimmy had to do his best acting job not to let on that he was silently seething. How could his brother, John, be so stupid as to get involved in the California couple’s creepy kid’s life?

  He knew who Danny was. Every cop on the Balmoral police force knew who he was because the kid had had a verbal run-in with every single one of them.

  To date, Danny hadn’t done anything they could charge him with, but he stood out among the other area youth. It was more the way the kid interacted with others that brought him so much attention, not so much his raggedy attire. Jimmy had two words in mind when envisioning Danny: douche bag.

  As Sharon and Donald continued, Jimmy was filtering their conversation for any phrases that would incriminate his brother, but he was using most of his brain remembering back to when John was a teenager himself. He thought about the way John interacted with others during his youth. What he could remember, anyway, from the few times he interacted with his brother during his teenage years.

  Jimmy thought of the way John dressed and acted back in the day, all the Goth clothing and dyed, black hair. He came to the conclusion that he could understand perfectly why his younger brother would be interested in a kid like Danny. They were kindred spirits.

  “Is there a reward?”

  Jimmy’s filter kicked in, “A reward? A reward for what exactly, sir?”

  Donald didn’t want to go into detail with Jimmy, but the bottom line was that he needed the money. His employer had relocated his family from San Mateo, California, to Balmoral a year before, and just this week, they informed him that his pay would be cut 20 percent to make up for the lowered cost of living expenses in Illinois.

  By the look on Sharon’s face after Donald asked if a reward was available, Jimmy knew that she and her husband were on separate pages when it came to their family’s welfare and, apparently, finances.

  Just as Sharon was about to protest to her husband on where this entire conversation was heading, she finally noticed Jimmy’s nameplate.

  Sgt. Caul.

  “I think we’ve taken up too much of your time, officer,” she said. “I’m sure this is all nothing, and we’re just being overprotective parents.”

  She pulled the confused Donald to his feet and gently pushed him toward the door of the police department.

  CHAPTER 31

  She had followed him for two straight days. She watched carefully, she thought, from a distance, as he strolled from one place to the next, always turning back to Dink’s Diner for his meals. It was the only place in town where she couldn’t follow.

  She retraced his route, going inside the businesses he had just walked out of, asking the people inside of the various establishments what the man had asked them. The townsfolk she encountered were as confused by her questions as his. But slowly, she was able to glean that the man was asking about a guy named John whose brother was a cop in town.

  When he again stepped into Dink’s Diner, she had to wait across the street and out of view inside the Superstar’s Coffee Shop. She couldn’t chance going inside the diner because she would be exposed the minute she stepped foot in the door.

  It would happen when her brother-in-law, Lou, would see and warmly greet her. She loved Lou like her own brother, and she just couldn’t chance being seen. Not until she was able to clear her son, Tyler, of the trouble he had wrought upon himself.

  But something worse than being found out by her family had taken place, and now she found herself in the cheap motel room on Route 14 waiting for him. She was trapped. Not physically, but emotionally, by his blackmail.

  She had only been with one man for the past 20 years, and the thought of even being with the paunchy and slimy Enright sickened her, but Rita knew she had to go through with the blackmailed tryst or else Tyler would be exposed as a stalker and likely killer in the making. His life would be ruined before it even really started.

  The man grabbed her by the elbow as she stepped from the Superstar’s Coffee Shop. He spun her around, leading them both toward the train station, telling her to smile and nod, as if nothing was wrong or else he’d hurt her. She complied.

  She had lost sight of him when he went into Dink’s this last time, but as soon as he grabbed her elbow, she knew she had made an enormous mistake by taking up a viewing position in Superstar’s Coffee Shop where only one of the two doors at Dink’s was visible.

  He obviously had stepped out the side door and worked his way around the back side of the diner and across Balmoral Road out of her field of vision.

  She finally stopped walking just shy of the train station parking lot, and pulled her arm free.

  “I know what you’re doing and you have to stop!” Rita said.

  It was her only purpose in this endeavor. Her only mission in following Enright was to stop the madness that her 17-year-old son, Tyler, had started.

  “We should go somewhere private and talk it through, babe,” said Enright with a greasy smile.

  And now here she sat for the past two hours on the edge of the creaky bed in room 115 of the cheap motel on Route 14 just outside of Balmoral awaiting her sexual fate.

  In an odd way, though, it would be worth it for the man to stop working for her son. She could resolve to forgive herself for this sin against the 20-year relationship with the man she truly loved.

  It would all work out.

  ***

  Enright pulled his crappy car in front of the cheap motel on Route 14, exited his vehicle and made his way to room 115, his head on a swivel making sure no one was following.

  Working as a PI had sharpened his skill of making sure he never picked up tails. He employed those skills when he noticed Rita following him. He knew she was there ten minutes after she started her amateurish surveillance the day before. But he was biding his time, making sure he’d confront her when she least expected it.

  And now he was heading to room 115 for a little something-something to warm up and change the pace of his
day. He had no intention of stopping his investigation of John Caul and his brother Jimmy the cop. He knew they were probably working together in the Baby Face Robber scheme. Jimmy was probably acting as the setup man, researching the best places to hit, and John did the actual robbing. He was not going to stop because he was so close to snagging the robbery proceeds all for himself.

  And he was going to blackmail Tyler’s father, too.

  Rita was a total bonus. Hell, he thought, he’d extort cash from her as well after he partook of other pleasures. Enright was sure that a woman as pampered as Rita could cough up some nice dough of her own. This was turning out to be a damned good day’s work for Enright.

  But Enright’s reverie was misguided. His internal radar was excellent at picking one tail, but not multiple tails.

  Right at that very moment, across the street parked in his car, sat Lou. He had his chrome-plated .357 revolver resting in his lap.

  CHAPTER 32

  John pushed aside a heavy, green canvas bag containing baseball bats, and he pulled up the loosened floor boards of the park’s equipment shack.

  There, tightly wrapped in heavy-duty, clear plastic, were the large Vicodin bottles and the remainder of the cash proceeds from his robbing activities.

  Although Brick had threatened his life during their last meeting, John had once again contacted the drug dealer asking if he was more interested this time in actually purchasing the drugs than killing him. Brick was and they set up a meeting.