Grade a Stupid

by A. J. Lape

  He didn’t complete the thought, suddenly as overwhelmed with emotion as I was. “Too late, right?” I finished for him.

  “Darc, don’t do this to yourself. You’re a wonderful person, the person I love more than anything. Please,” he pleaded, briefly wincing, “don’t beat yourself up over something you had no control over. Be proud of yourself...I am.”

  Dylan was the eternal optimist: good conquers evil, bad guys go to jail, sunrises bring joy, all wrapped up in a big, red bow. There were a bigillion reasons I could think of that were wrong with that theory, the biggest being I was Darcy Walker. Life with me was tantamount to being Sisyphus, condemned to rolling that boulder up the hill only for it to tumble back down once it reaches the top. But Dylan’s words and personality were addictive, and I was a codependent mess.

  Whoever wound up with him was going to be the luckiest girl alive...I hated her already.

  After his delusional rants and ravings, he’d all but convinced me I was the first female president one summit away from achieving world peace. I was feeling good again. I had purpose, by God, and I did the best I could in an impossible situation.

  Maybe I wouldn’t change a thing about the day after all...well, except the shoes I was wearing.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Thank you for reading Grade A Stupid, and I hope you will follow Darcy in her next adventure, No Brainer, due in the spring of 2013!

  In the meantime, you can follow her adventures on twitter @darcywalker13. If you would like to receive emails of upcoming releases and promotions, please sign up for my distribution list by visiting my homepage at http://www.ajlape.com and clicking the “contact” tab.

  Please consider leaving a review at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Goodreads. Thank you!

  THE BALLAD OF ALFONSO JUAREZ

  My father’s a preacher in Kentucky. When my sister and I grew up, we spent a large portion of our lives in funeral homes. Other than get freaked out by the corpse or smell of roses, I used to sit there and think about the deceased. What were they like? Were they nice? Were they ogres? Did they “make things right” before they died with anyone they’d wronged? The entire time I was writing Grade A Stupid, I knew Alfonso Juarez wasn’t someone you wanted to invite over for dinner, but I knew he had a past. A past that contributed to the way he exited the world. When I allowed him to talk to me one night at midnight, this is what he said…

  I SQUEEZED THE ketchup out of its packet, drizzled it on the fries, and shoved a McDonald’s special into my mouth grabbing my car keys. Not what I’d planned for the evening, I actually wanted to chill in front of the TV, but this kid reminded me of myself growing up—angry, unstable, and just this side of a life-in-prison term. If only I’d had someone invest in me, I thought, but that was an existential question long gone. Unfortunately, I’d done too many horrendous things to ask for special dispensation from God.

  I thought back to when I was a thirteen-year-old. I’d just returned from Walmart to fill the grocery list my mother had wanted a week earlier. My deadbeat dad drank away the last two hundred dollars in her wallet, and we’d existed those seven days on a meager loaf of bread and canned meat. Thankfully, food stamps were delivered that morning, but my mother only used them when she had to. She was a proud person, but if her pride kept her from accepting free food—something we’d had to do since her car accident that was someone else’s mistake—you’d think she’d rid herself of the other mistake in her life...him. But she loved him; I shook my head to myself. She’d loved him and put up with his asinine, self-centered antics for decades.

  Growing up, electricity was part-time and cable television was a commodity I’d never seen. Food was hit or miss. The only thing for certain in my life was he was going to screw up. You could count on it like the sunrise. My father was a screwup of the highest caliber, and if it were up to me, he would’ve died before that night.

  I’m not sure why Fate brought me to Valley; I didn’t fit the mold and stuck out like a sore thumb. The first thing I did was buy some new digs—khaki pants, expensive loafers, and five of those designer button down oxford shirts with money I’d made from my last hit. My job had evolved over the years. First, it was tidying up loose ends, being an errand boy; then I was contracted out by my organization as a hitter because I simply was that good with a gun.

  That’s why I was here, another job...that and other more personal reasons.

  Valley reminded me of where I grew up—well, at least the other side of the river where I grew up. I was born in New York, the Bronx specifically. My entire childhood I gazed over the Harlem River and envied the way people in Manhattan lived, wishing I could have that for my mother and me. At one time, it looked possible. My mother worked her way through college, landed a good job, and before you could say American Dream, we were the proud new homeowners in one of New York’s better suburbs—not nearly as swanky as Valley, but it wasn’t like you’d be embarrassed to admit where you hung your hat.

  Our fairytale ended one rainy night with six months of rehab and a permanent wheel chair. Some idiot drunk driver, the culprit. Next came foreclosure and a trip to government housing. Things went downhill fast from there. I had to figure out ways to get extra cash, and I had to figure out ways to keep my father from blowing through it behind my back. One night, when he started slapping around my crippled mother, I picked up his loaded revolver and shot him in the back of the head. I’d done some juvenile antics that would leave a lesser human squabbling, but murder wasn’t something I’d even fantasized about. Once before me, it wasn’t as difficult as you’d dream it would be. I merely lifted my hand and squeezed the trigger.

  When the cops came, it was written up as self-defense, but I subsequently was still forced to go through juvenile counseling—trying to scrape away the trauma good people were sure was done to me. It didn’t traumatize me, however. It taught me how to get people out of my way that I didn’t want there.

  Although Valley was by no means the Bronx, it wasn’t as clean as people wanted to believe. I was walking the streets, for Pete’s sake, taking out someone that in my opinion needed dead yesterday. That was proof enough in my book. I think people here willingly embraced their ignorance just so they could lie down at night and feel good about things. They could think they’d reached that upper echelon of society’s hierarchy where they could recite their address, name their car, and people could breathe an envious, “Aaah.” Whatever helps you sleep, I guess, but with that kid lurking around, they’d better at least be locking the doors.

  Dunking two more fries in ketchup, I popped open the tab on my Sam’s Choice cola and walked out the door of my rental. It was midnight, and I was meeting that kid at the edge of Valley Township where she picked up extra cash with the rest of her crew in illicit jobs. I wasn’t here to judge; I’d lived that life myself. I’m not sure why I even cared. Perhaps I wanted to stop her before she descended into an irreversible insanity.

  An insanity I feared was irreversible in me.

  I’d been troubled the last few years, the restlessness swimming over me like I was caught in an unpredictable riptide that could drown you. I needed a change, and when an opportunity presented itself to up my station in life, I wasn’t a fool. I jumped on it with unprecedented vigor. My contact was supposed to meet me tomorrow. He was a big guy, a smart guy, and when he approached me that he would give me a new identity in exchange for information—I was more-than-a-lifetime ready.

  But I wanted to do one good thing, one pure thing without motive, before that meeting—just one, for some reason.

  While I turned onto Valley Road, I thought back to my first hit. I was seventeen years old. My “Padre” told me where to find the man in question and told me what I had to do...it was simple...kill him. He was a real estate mogul on the West Coast. To jumpstart his business, he took out a loan from the wrong people—us—and then failed to read the little fine print on his contract...pay it back. We let him go for a while—and as most of these things g
o—when the lender gets in a bad mood, he calls in all his markers at once.

  I’d never been on an airplane, and in my juvenile view of the world, I’d finally arrived. We had guys on the street—I’d been one of them—who fit the part of the gang member with their baggy jeans, shirtless torsos, and lowriding trucks. Then there were those like me. Those tapped for perks like airplane rides and fancy dinners, bred to be nothing but a killing machine—who blended into society so well no one would know the atrocities you were capable of unless they saw into your soul.

  When my resume grew, there was discussion about having the AVO ink on my left hand removed—it outed me—but honestly, it was my decision for it to stay. I needed to belong to something. I’d craved that nesting feeling for so long I didn’t know how I’d feel if it were removed. Since my kills were mostly in parking garages, or at the curb of someone’s home or the backs of their cars, I was able to blend in.

  When I stepped off the airplane in LA, I immediately got down to business. The victim worked in downtown Hollywood with an office off Rodeo Drive. Taking a rental car to his building, I waited until a parking space opened near his Mercedes 500 Series then pulled my rental right next to his. Initial recon from our mother organization in LA said he left every night around 9:20PM. At exactly 9:18PM, I spray-painted the video cameras black then crouched down behind his car. Dressed in a four-figured suit, he was average sized with a swagger of someone who knew he’d “arrived” in life on what he thought was his own two hands. While he chatted on his cell phone, the moment he beeped his car open, I stood behind him and placed my left hand over his face, then sliced the length of his neck with my new stiletto. Barely a gurgle, he slumped dead to the pavement. I still remember that feeling. It was like cutting into raw chicken, working your way through the sinewy tendons. I waited for the world to stop spinning, but when it didn’t, I wiped my hands on a towel, then pried his keys out of his clenched fist and slid behind the wheel of his car. Punching HQ’s address into his GPS was jailbird bound, so I disconnected it altogether and started driving toward the address I’d committed to memory. Once there, I showered, and while someone else picked up my rental, his was scrapped and sent to the dump yard.

  I cried that night in the shower—the last bit of my mother in me dead—but what did you do when you found out being a hitter was what you did better than anything else? Time after time, things got even more fluid. It became second nature and so effortless I’d begun to believe I was born for this type of lifestyle. The success and money amped me up, severing my conscience even more. I’d changed from the teenaged boy that was afraid to go home at night, and it wasn’t for the better.

  That night seemed like a lifetime away, and here I was thinking on it as I’d just finished what I’d promised myself was my last contract kill. My methods of death had recently changed. My organization liked kills performed a specific way. Here lately, I preferred my 9mm Ruger pistol with a silencer. Less personal, less messy, and more livable with, I guess. Look at me, a hit man with a conscience, I laughed to myself. Anyway, when I nailed that guy in Indianapolis yesterday, after the bullet struck its mark, he looked me square in the face and said, I forgive you. My stomach fell all the way to my feet, and I turned and regurgitated my meal. In the span of a few seconds, my mind went through all the kills I’d ever committed. I recited all of their names—from the politician I blew up in Chicago financed by a rival gang, down to the sixteen-year-old kid I tortured with a cattle prod. His offense was basically to fall in love with one of our leaders’ daughters. Not initially bad, but irrevocably bad when you refused to join our version of a family.

  I realized my time on this side of the law was done. I’m not sure I’d ever venture onto that other side, but perhaps I could find a third side where I could rest easier. All I knew was if I’d been subconsciously wavering whether to take the deal the large man offered, I wasn’t now. In fact, I was counting down the minutes until we met.

  When I pulled off the road, I saw the kid exactly where she said she’d be. This kid was big with zero personality, and what I’d observed in the short amount of time I’d known her, there wasn’t much to brag about. Our first encounter was at that Frisch’s joint in town a month ago when I came in for my own recon. I loved those burgers. Maybe when this was all over I’d buy my own Frisch’s, I dreamt. Anyway, the kid spilled her Coke, and when the server rushed to clean it up, I saw that involuntary jerking—or shrinking back—where you were preparing yourself for a blow. Like she’d been hit at home for something as minor and totally non-monumental as a spilled drink. What reminded me of myself, though, was what happened once the area was cleaned. A plotting, flawless face of evil stared into the back of the server who rather happily, I had to say, took care of the mess. This kid had issues with anyone being kind, so it wasn’t only daddy issues; it was a hatred of anything good.

  I didn’t start that way, but I’d ended there. Good reminded you of everything that you weren’t. When you weren’t capable of changing—or maybe didn’t want to change—that reminder ate away at whatever fraction of a conscience you did have.

  As I stared over the dash, I realized maybe I feared I was passing that torch to this kid. Maybe I was hoping I could talk her out of it before the nightmares began to wake her. Turning off the engine, I got out of my Taurus and walked over slowly, wondering once again why I even was investing myself.

  “Hey, how’s it going?” I said to her, treading lightly, choosing my words carefully. This kid was so unstable and socially inept, just having a conversation with me had to have aged her by a decade.

  “Good,” she said, quickly, “I’m good.”

  “Great,” I said even more slowly. Looking at the pile of metal in her hands I deducted this was a good night for business. I pitched my head toward it, “Looks like you’ve hit the jackpot.”

  She gave me a “whatever” shrug as she opened the back hatch of her ride and pitched inside what she’d stolen. I took two more cautious steps forward until I was flanking her to the left about three feet away.

  When I said, “Would you like to get something to eat?” I nearly croaked when this kid turned to face me—eyes flat and devoid of any soul whatsoever—and replied, “I was thinking of eating you.”

  Immediately, an uneasy feeling descended upon me, and I was reminded when I was ambushed a few years back by a rival gang. I’d ventured into one of the crummier sections of Chicago’s South Side operating on a tip. The man I was contracted to hit was supposed to be there. He wasn’t. I was met with six gang bangers, guns drawn and a-blazin’. Then, I had two loaded guns and some throwing stars. Right now? It was just me.

  Normally, I’d attack right then, but for some unknown reason, I didn’t. A reason I hoped wasn’t the wrong choice. I opened my mouth and said in a monotone, “I’m not the person you want pissed off, kid. Trust me on that.”

  “Trust me,” she mocked, looking me square in the eyes. “You don’t want me pissed off either.”

  Every instinct I had, every learned-on-the job defense and innate fighter in me, begged me to shut this kid up once and for all. I literally laughed in the kid’s face that she thought I could be threatened so easily and successfully, but this kid acted as if this conversation was far from over. Her voice teetered with hysteria screaming, “Don’t mock me!” and when I didn’t back down (either in proximity or deadliest of stares), I was gifted with an open-handed smack.

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I prayed.

  My head flew back on my shoulders like I’d run headlong into a brick wall. Blood immediately filled my mouth, swirling through my teeth, and I shook my head hard, trying to clear it. I’d been in a lot of fights over the years, but this kid held some terrific power I wouldn’t have believed.

  In retrospect, it was probably only three or four seconds, but it was that three or four seconds that cost me dearly. Staggering upright, next thing I heard was, “Don’t try this at home, kids,” and then she unloaded the sickest amount of for
ce on me.

  I heard and felt a crunch then watched myself fall facedown to the ground in front of her feet. How could this be happening? How could Alfonso Juarez be taken down by a teenaged kid who had both feet in loser? As I stared at her sneakers, next then I knew, she fired off two shots into my back. My body jumped twice then went completely still.

  Someone in my life knew that I’d talked...and this was payback. Instantly overcome with humor, I tried to laugh out loud at the sheer absurdity of it all. Alfonso Juarez, deadly Alfonso Juarez, was turning over a new leaf. A new leaf that was now floating further and further away from me. When no sound came out of my mouth, it dawned on me—I was dead.

  Revenge is a dish best served with two GSWs to the back, I suppose, along with a broken neck.

  This kid wasn’t the quintessential screwup everyone thought she was—she’d stalked me like any predator would. I was read like an open book, my soft spot for pitiful teenagers with “daddy” issues, my Achilles Heel. Nothing hurt on me. I kept waiting for an intense and debilitating pain but was shocked when I felt myself rise above the broken body on the ground. I looked at my oxford shirt with two holes in it, the khaki pants, my bare feet that had somehow lost their expensive loafers. As I hovered overhead, it slowly sunk in I should’ve gone up or below. Why was I hanging around? Was I too bad for even the bad place?

  The blood seeped into a pool around me. A half an hour later, the kid raised a saw and commenced to saw off my left hand. No remorse, no thoughts of another way, just the sickest smile and sense of accomplishment that I’d worked for the last two years to remove from my mind.

  Once I was sufficiently drained, the kid threw my body over her shoulder and into the back of her car. I was struck again with the similarity of our backgrounds. Bad childhoods, bad fathers, bad attitudes, and a need to punish those who seemed happier. I, however, wanted out.