Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  “It’s not about my commission, sir-“

  “Where do you keep the tents?”

  ***

  His new plan of attack took shape one minute after Kenny went about his carefree kid day following their conversation. Their brief chat about his son’s new love interest had snapped Keith completely out of his suicidal funk.

  His new-new plan, which took no more than an hour to put together, involved the third stop back at Sebela’s Sporting Goods in Hoffman Estates, another at the tool rental place on Route 14 in Balmoral -- and also a favor asked of old man Jenkins to use his backhoe, and the wooded back 40 of his huge lot - no questions asked. Jenkins liked Keith’s style and agreed without a moment of thought.

  “Anything you do, Michaels, is good for god and country as far as I’m concerned,” said Jenkins.

  As Keith leaned against his van on Jenkins’s property, he punched Gregy’s cell number into his own phone and waited for his intended victim to answer.

  He could, in no way possible, ever take his own life. It would be totally unfair to his children and wife. He needed for his legacy to be that of a person that fought to the finish. Luring Gregy to this clearing in the wooded area of the Jenkins property would work, he was sure of it.

  As the phone rang a second time, Keith looked over his killing ground, complete with a 10-foot by 10-foot assembled tent that was housing a small, rented stump grinder inside. His idea was simple -– get Gregy on the property, immediately shoot him, drag his body into the enclosed tent, and grind his carcass to a bloody pulp.

  He would burn his own clothes and bury everything where it stood -– pulpy body remnants, grinder and all -- using the tent shell as a pliable casket. He would then report to the rental company that the grinder was stolen. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it would work. Jenkins himself told Keith that he never even ventured back in this area of his land anymore.

  And for the gunshot used to eliminate Gregy, that would easily be explained away. Everyone in town, especially the tough cop Jimmy Caul, knew that old man Jenkins fired his guns every day, rain or shine.

  But Keith’s confidence waned a bit when the call went to voicemail. He hung up and hesitated for a moment. Before he could gather his thoughts completely, his phone rang – the caller ID showed that it was his home phone number.

  “Hi, honey,” said Keith, trying to sound casual.

  “You are a stupid son of a bitch. Really, you are,” said Gregy. He sounded as if he was chewing something. “You’re not great at noticing whether you’re being followed, are you? A fucking stump grinder? Brutal, man.”

  “Don’t hurt them.”

  “Relax. No one’s here. Yet. Hurry. Oh, and your celery’s gone limp.” The phone went dead.

  ***

  Keith skid his van to a stop near his garage and fell from his vehicle. He left the door wide open, and the engine running, as he stumbled toward his house.

  Crystal stood in her garden with work gloves on and water can in hand. “Got the runs, ace?” she said with a giggle. “Hurry!” She laughed even louder. “Hurry, hurry!”

  Keith didn’t even hear her as he bound up the back wheelchair ramp and barged into his own home.

  “Rebecca? Kids?” he screamed.

  “In here, schnookums,” said Gregy, sarcastically.

  Keith stepped from the mudroom and into the kitchen -- and there was Gregy. He sat at the table and leisurely spun a .40 caliber semi-automatic pistol around on the tabletop. He twitchily rubbed white powder residue off his nostrils, and said, “Let’s take this into the living room. This chair sucks. No back support at all.”

  “Where did you put them?”

  “There is no them. It’s just me and you. Come on.”

  Gregy grabbed up the gun, rose to his feet, and motioned for Keith to move, which he did.

  Once in the living room, Gregy peered out the window at Crystal, who was now bent over and working in her front yard. Her shapely rear end was prominently pointed in the window’s direction.

  “Holy, shit. And she’s right next-door, too. She’s got a little something extra that your mousey wife doesn’t, you know,” said Gregy as he lecherously eyeballed Crystal.

  Keith wanted so badly to tell him that he was barking up the wrong sexuality tree, but this wasn’t the time.

  “Okay, last chance, my man. $100,000 or one between the eyes. You know I should probably just do it anyway even if you pay me. All this bullshit you’ve put me through.”

  Looking out the front window, and further down the street, Keith’s heart sank as he noticed Kenny rounding the corner from Main Street and onto Ray Avenue -– heading home.

  “This is crazy. I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Maybe we should take this across the street where I have your pain in the ass father-in-law all snug and waiting? I bet he’s got the dough. He doesn’t, I make it a two-fer.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Come on, a guy has to have contingencies, right?”

  Keith saw Kenny in front of Crystal’s yard now. She stopped her work to watch him closely. She looked as if she was readying herself for a fight if he cut across her lawn once again.

  “You can’t keep your eyes off that ass out there, can you? I don’t blame you, bro,” said Gregy.

  Keith reached out and tugged on Gregy’s shirtsleeve. “Do it now.”

  “What’s that?” Asked Gregy, as he pulled his arm free of Keith’s grasp.

  “Okay, I got it. It’s all there. The money is in my home office filing cabinet,” Keith lied. “Do it now, damn it! Shoot me!” Keith said. “Shoot me and go!” He wanted the gunshot to scare Kenny away before he entered the home and be placed into danger himself.

  Gregy shrugged and aimed the pistol at Keith’s head. Keith closed his eyes.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, gimp?” Crystal screamed from the front yard.

  Keith opened his right eye, and looked past the barrel of the handgun, to see Crystal leaning over Kenny and screaming at the top of her lungs. He’d done it again. His right wheelchair tire was positioned on the edge of her lawn.

  “She’s feisty, too,” said Gregy.

  And that’s when Keith launched himself, full on, at the surprised Gregy. He got in three solid gut punches to Gregy’s midsection, which caused the larger man to drop the handgun. But Keith exhausted himself as quickly as he had attacked.

  “What are you doing?” asked the unhurt Gregy, as he effortlessly shoved Keith to the floor and stooped over to retrieve his gun.

  “I’m not a coward.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t back down. I didn’t curl up into a ball this time!”

  Gregy had no idea what Keith was talking about, and asked, “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  Both men heard the hardwood floor creak as a gloved and hoodie-wearing person in the crinkled baby-face mask slipped into the living room armed with a 12-gauge shotgun.

  “Hey! Whoa, wait a minute here. What the hell?” said Gregy, his hand merely inches away from the .40 caliber handgun that lay on the floor.

  The masked gunman leveled the shotgun at Gregy’s nose, but didn’t shoot -- yet.

  The tough, young loan shark’s face darkened. He coughed once, gurgled, and clutched at his left shoulder with his beefy right hand. His facial features froze in place as he pitched forward onto the floor, dead from an apparent heart attack.

  Rebecca lowered the shotgun, pulled the crinkled baby-face mask over her head, and said, “Holy shit.”

  “Mommy said a bad word,” screamed Sarah from the kitchen.

  “Hey, kiddo, go outside and play, okay?” said Keith. “Can you do that right now, sweetie? Right now, okay?”

  “Okay, daddy,” said Sarah
from the other room.

  When they heard the back door open and close, Keith got to his feet and he and Rebecca just stood there and stared at one another in stunned silence. She finally touched his right eyebrow, and said, “Aw. You’ve got a bruise, honey.”

  “This is the last time you little son of a bitch! You cut across my lawn one more time and I’m going to make you pay. You hear me?” screamed Crystal out in the front yard.

  Keith and Rebecca turned and watched through the window as Kenny rolled even further onto Crystal’s lawn. He knocked her water can askew, and aggressively bumped into her right shin with his wheelchair. The boy smiled, and said, “Go piss up a rope, lady!”

  ***

  Thomas was finally thankful to see his son-in-law for once. Specifically, after Keith showed up to untie him from where Gregy had tightly bound him, wrist and ankle, to a basement chair across the street in his new house.

  Just after the Michaels family had their dinner, and while the unaware Crystal sat on her front porch next door with her iPod ear buds jammed firmly in place, Kenny and Sarah played in the living room, as Keith, Rebecca, and Thomas snuck into the garage out back. There, under the airless husk of a colorful blow-up kiddie pool, lay Gregy’s hidden dead body.

  With the use of his rickety wheelbarrow, the plastic glove-wearing Keith deftly and silently moved the 230 pound dead man next door and into Crystal’s house through the unlocked back door. Thomas and Rebecca, also wearing gloves, hurriedly stripped the dead man of his clothes and spread them willy-nilly about the house. They made sure to hang Gregy’s red boxer/briefs from the ornate chandelier in the dining room. Keith then sprinkled Gregy’s carcass with some of Crystal’s perfume and positioned the corpse; spread-eagle, face up, hands behind his head, on what he assumed was Babs’ side of hers and Crystal’s bed. He found Gregy’s vial of cocaine in his pants pocket and popped it opened. Keith spilled its contents all over the side of the bed where the dead body lay. Keith topped it all off when he manipulated Gregy’s lips into a grin.

  Keith, Rebecca, and Thomas tacitly made their escape just in time to hear Babs arrive at the front door of the house.

  Two hours later, Balmoral Police Lieutenant Jimmy Caul finished up his initial death investigation at Babs’ and Crystal’s house. It looked like an open and shut case. Boy meets yoga instructor. Boy and yoga instructor engage in sexual activity. Boy dies of massive, cocaine-induced heart attack in yoga instructor’s bed.

  On his way to his parked squad car, Jimmy made sure to lock eyes with Keith, who was sitting on his own front porch, watching the scene unfold. When Jimmy slowed to give the realtor/councilman even more of a menacing deadpan stare -- Keith winked at Jimmy.

  Jimmy’s mouth opened, as if he wanted to say something, but flustered, he came up short. The tough cop recovered quickly and continued toward his police car. He hopped into the car and followed the ambulance containing Gregy’s body to the nearby hospital morgue.

  Thirty minutes after that, Crystal no longer lived in the beautiful home next door.

  Keith and Rebecca, at first, felt horrible for utilizing the ploy that got Crystal kicked out of the house. But in the coming months, Babs and the Michaels family would become very close. Keith eventually officiated her wedding to the woman she met six months after Crystal moved out.

  And the best part of all, the night Gregy stopped existing was the first time on Ray Avenue in Balmoral, Illinois, that everything was truly going to be okay for Keith Michaels and his lovely little family.

  ###

  Breaking

  Two years after Bad Reputation

  Rita Dimos, a beautiful, olive-skinned woman of Greek descent, sat stoically at a metal table in a windowless Vermont State Police interview room as a skinny detective wearing a cheap, food-stained blazer, leaned in close with pungent coffee breath.

  “You’ve never been to Vermont, is that right?” he asked.

  “You’re repeating yourself. I told you already,” said Rita, looking straight ahead and not showing much emotion.

  “And you just happen to be the last person to see her alive? That’s a coincidence I’m just not buying, lady. Let’s try this again. Why were you in Fairlee?”

  Rita turned, looked the detective square in the eye, and said, “I’d like to leave now.”

  “Answer my questions.”

  “Are you charging me with a crime?”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Mrs. Dimos.”

  ***

  7 Days Earlier

  Rita watched from her home’s kitchen window as her 7-year old son, Christopher, terror-stricken, ran from three menacing 10-year old boys on bikes.

  Christopher was an athletic little kid and quick on his feet, but the heavy book-bag on his back slowed him down.

  The older boys caught up to him across from Rita’s house and forcibly restrained Christopher, taking turns punching him in the gut and slapping his face.

  Christopher was so overcome with fear that he didn’t even attempt to fight back.

  Rita remained stone-faced, inexplicably frozen in the moment, as Christopher doubled over in agony, and the bullies stripped him of his book-bag.

  Like a swarm of locusts, they were gone as quickly as they had arrived.

  His nose bleeding, the book-bag gone, his shirt torn, Christopher made his way across the street but stopped in his tracks when he noticed Rita looking his way from the kitchen window.

  He knew the irritated expression in her eyes all too well, and as he turned to walk in the other direction, Rita quickly pushed opened the kitchen window and yelled, “No you don’t! Get inside this house right now!”

  Rita met Christopher just inside the front door hallway, her son saying, “I don’t want to talk about it, mom.”

  As he tried to step past, Rita grabbed his right wrist, a little too tightly, and said, “Why would you let them take your book-bag like that? What is wrong with you?”

  “What was I supposed to do? There were three of them this time, mom,” said Christopher as his eyes welled with tears.

  “Fight back!” she barked.

  “They hit harder when I fight back!”

  Rita grabbed both of Christopher’s wrists and made the kid strike himself in the face with his own open limp palms. “Fight back. Like this! Hit them!” she repeated.

  Christopher began to ball uncontrollably, choking out the words, “Mom, stop!”

  “Come on, kid. Throw some punches. Like this,” she screamed.

  “Rita!”

  Rita froze immediately and turned to see her husband, Jason, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, his mouth agape, and his face twisted in confusion. He finally said, “What are you doing?”

  She snapped out of her angry trance and looked in astonishment at the vice-like grip she had on Christopher’s wrists.

  The poor kid was trembling, and his wrists were bleeding a little where she had roughly grabbed him with her manicured fingernails. She instantly released Christopher’s arms, and the kid bee-lined toward his father, crying.

  Rita’s mouth opened as she readied herself to give an apology, but no words came out.

  Jason picked up Christopher in his arms and hugged him tenderly. He walked away without another word.

  Rita hung her head and stumbled back up against the hallway wall as a brief, guttural, howl worked its way up and through her body. She wept uncontrollably.

  ***

  Rita grew up in the exclusive Sauganash neighborhood on Chicago’s north side. To her neighbors, she seemed like a happy kid, living with her loving parents and two older brothers, George and Alex.

  But her upbringing was not as perfect as it seemed.

  She was a prisoner in her own home. Starting at a very young age, her father and older brothers over
saw every aspect of her life like prison guards. They would tell her what to do, what to eat, what to wear; sometimes even forcibly changing her clothes for her if her own choices weren’t up to their conservative standards.

  She was powerless.

  They also didn’t allow the teenaged Rita to date, and on occasion, they physically locked her in her room if they thought she would disobey. Her mother was as powerless as her.

  Rita celebrated her nineteenth birthday with her family at a steak house on Peterson Avenue. That evening, on her way to the bathroom, a burly man, with the rough-looking hands of a person who worked for a living - a trait that Rita had always found irresistible - asked for her phone number. His name was Jason, her future husband. The attraction was instant.

  “I can’t call boys, sorry,” said the shy Rita.

  In his Greek-influenced English, Jason said, “I’m no boy, Rita. I give you my number. You call if you want to go out sometime, okay?”

  A week later, Rita snuck out of her bedroom window, after her parents went to sleep, to meet with Jason. At first, the act felt juvenile. She was of legal age and able to do what she wanted, but she was so emotionally handcuffed by her family that it seemed wrong. The freedom experienced simply hanging around at local gathering spots, however, was exhilarating.

  She met in secret with Jason for several months, but was caught by her brothers one night after she snuck back into her bedroom. They layed in wait for her when she arrived back home.

  George, her then 26-year old brother, and still living at home, was the main interrogator.

  “Who is he?” he asked. “It’s better if Alex and I find out instead of dad. You know that. He’ll probably kill him.”

  Rita tried to slip back out the open bedroom window, but her 25-year old brother, Alex, who was also still living at home, grabbed her forcibly by both wrists, and said, “You better answer us.”