100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series)

by A. J. Lape

  Now we knew why Dylan remained silent on entry. One of them was the mastermind here, and Dylan was stuck between tag teaming with my father or cluing me in.

  I put my hands on my hips, wanting to kiss him and spit on him at the same time. He gave me a look that meant everything…and nothing. The usual. “What in the heck did you do, Dylan?” I said in a rare moment of anger. “Call and whine to Murphy about what big, bad Darcy was doing?”

  He never admitted, denied, or even acknowledged the statement. He carefully removed his jacket, standing stoically in a white golf shirt, faded-out jeans, and Adidas sneakers. Opening the hall closet, he even more carefully hung up his coat. Once he closed the door, he lowly and slowly repeated again, “Powwow.”

  Like he was afraid I wouldn’t understand the term.

  Believe me, I got it. “I’m not in the mood for Native American culture,” I mumbled, sort of giggled. The joke fell flat. When no one laughed, I decided to act dumb and blonde. “What’s wrong?”

  When Murphy made it to the last stair, the house suddenly took on the tenor of a den of angry rattlesnakes. He grabbed me by the elbow and shoved me into the kitchen. We tripped overtop one another, his jeans swiping my sweats, until he stopped on a dime by the kitchen table. “I understand you didn’t ask to be thrown into detention,” he grunted, “but did you have plans to make the best of it while you were there? In Darcy’s world, poll the dang crowd for whatever stink you’re currently stirring?”

  It’s not like I got up one day and said, Hey, how about I get myself thrown into detention. The idea presented itself with Nico Drake, and once there I decided to execute. That made me a mover and shaker. He should be proud.

  “I didn’t plan anything, Murphy.”

  “Bible it, kid,” he demanded. Once again, Murphy was doing the talking.

  I looked at Dylan and let out an imaginary eek. Before we fell asleep (and talked about our relationship afterward), Dylan had asked the same thing over and over. I’d successfully held him at bay. I got the distinct feeling my free pass was used up.

  “Umm,” I stammered. “We don’t need to bring God into this, Murphy. He’s probably busy handing out angel wings.”

  Murphy snorted to himself about going to church more. “That’s what I thought,” he grumbled. “You might be dumb in all the other areas of your life, but thank God you know you can’t swear on the Good Book and lie. Your life, under current management, isn’t working. That means I need to manage you. You’re in the ditch, kid. Either look up and find your salvation or continue down into the pit of Hell.”

  God help me, Hell might be a possibility. I glanced at Dylan. He leaned up against the countertop, idly fingering the clasp on the black TAG Heuer hugging his right wrist. He was nervous; no, I take that back. He was p-i-s-s-e-d off.

  “Answer the question, Darcy,” he demanded, “or I’m not picking you up for school ever again.”

  I was reeling, my head swirling in a sickening circle. “That’s Beemer blackmail,” I gasped.

  Dylan remained stone-faced. “Try me,” he warned. “And by the way, when did you start editing our conversations?”

  Oh, about five minutes ago…

  Murphy hissed, “I need an explanation. Did this Nico Drake really attack you because you defended some girl’s honor? Is that all, or is there something else?”

  I ignored Dylan because I suddenly couldn’t look him in the face. “Some situations are beyond explanations, Murphy.”

  Murphy’s attitude went arctic, immediately talking in terms of electronics because he thought I needed a rewiring. “Shut up, kid,” he huffed. “Your motherboard is so screwed up. This has to be another one of your lowlife, cockamamie, screwball routines that’s going to wind up with someone getting hurt. You’re always rubbing shoulders with some shyster, Darcy, and God only knows who you hooked up with on The Island of Misfit Toys.”

  One look at Dylan showed him stifling a chuckle. Good, maybe I could salvage the evening despite the bad vibe that’d invaded the room. “Answer your father,” he murmured. “He’s just…we’re just,” he amended softly, “worried.”

  When I didn’t answer, Murphy literally took my arm and twisted it high behind my back. “Man up,” he barked.

  “I can’t,” I stupidly laughed. “I have ovaries.”

  There was a moment here where they both debated laughing, but they didn’t give into it.

  “For the sake of clarity,” Murphy growled, “I’m going to dumb this down as much as my intelligence will allow and your lack of will understand. Are you doing something that would’ve landed you in detention even if you wouldn’t have been attacked?”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I giggled.

  Murphy threw both arms up in the air, like defeat faced him with a six-shooter, and he had no choice but to surrender. “Oh, Good God,” he fumed. “You add a whole new dimension to the term dysfunction.”

  “I like to think I’m resourceful.”

  Murphy’s grumble sounded like a PO’d bear. “You’re being resourceful. Well, let me tell you what I’m going to be.” He turned to Dylan with a frown. “I’m out, son, because this conversation didn’t take. I’ll say a prayer for you upstairs, but right now I need to take two Tylenols and crawl into bed. I’m being deposed tomorrow. On the Lord’s Day, dang it, about a claim we denied because some idiot didn’t understand what I told him. I don’t understand why God continually puts stupid people in my life, and then I have to un-stupid their mistakes.”

  “Stupid is a bad word,” I giggled.

  He gave me his standard answer. “Stupid is a frame of mind, kid. It has nothing to do with intelligence.”

  He shot a sarcastic wave over his shoulder and disappeared upstairs.

  Once out of earshot, Dylan yanked me to the couch so hard my elbow throbbed like a heartbeat. His eyes knit together in frustration. “Cough it up, Darcy, before I beat it out of you.” Impressive threat—one I don’t mind having thrown at me actually, I laughed to myself. Those words were ultimately a fabrication. Besides, Dylan did that hocus-pocus stuff with his voice where I wound up doing what he said anyway.

  I enjoyed the way he looked at me, even when angry. I fell headlong into his eyes, scorched in the amber gaze that’d kept me up almost every night for months. I shook my head so violently to clear it I probably lost IQ points. “What’s wrong, D? You act like something else is bothering you.”

  Dylan was molten-hot and unnaturally strong. But he had a weight upon his shoulders, making him move so slowly, it’s like he’d wrestled with a lion…and lost. “I’m frigging exhausted. Dad sleepwalked out to the lake last night thinking he was crossing The Delaware fricking River. At two o’clock, I had to talk a grown man down from attacking the Redcoats in his underwear with a pool stick. Do you know what it’s like to stare into the half-mast eyes of someone who’s incoherent, unstable, and devoid of rational thought?”

  Every day when I look in the mirror.

  “I’m sorry,” I smiled innocently. “Would you like a massage?”

  He frowned when I batted my lashes twice. “Maybe later,” he said. “Right now, we’re talking about you, Darcy.”

  I picked up the remote. “Since you want to be formal…Dylan,” I emphasized snidely, “it’s sort of a long story.”

  “Shorten it.”

  I took a major gamble here, but I blurted out, “As you know, I didn’t ask to be assaulted by Nico Drake. That being said, I’ve been working on finding who painted Coach’s car. To gather information, I stole a file from his office and did some profiling. The guys who caught my interest have juvie records and do the occasional neighborhood graffiti, normally pulling time in detention. So when the situation presented itself, I introduced myself Saturday morning. To me, this is business. I did not ask to be there; I d
id not ask to have my favorite bra ripped. But I’d be a fool to let the situation pass me by without getting something that benefitted me. In one conversation, I’d swear Slapstick Wilson and Damon Whitehead had nothing to do with spray painting Coach’s car. Now I just need everyone to leave me alone so I can figure out what to do next.”

  I omitted The Ghost.

  I was stupid but not suicidal.

  “Please say this is a lie,” he muttered.

  “It’s truth. Pinky swear.”

  When he didn’t respond, I soldiered on with the bombast account and overdramatics, offering a slew of excuses why it’d been a godsend to be banished to detention. It was a contained environment, chances of random violence were slim (sorta), I could observe while I performed worthwhile community service, and so on. He still said nada. In fact, he swallowed three times and took the remote from my hands.

  “D?” I said.

  He scrolled through the channel guide with his left hand, holding the other palm to my face in a back-off motion. “I’m processing.”

  I actually felt pretty darn good. Confession’s good for the soul. I crawled onto his lap, snuggling my nose into the curve under his chin. “Would it help if I said I loved you?”

  Dang, he smelled good.

  You heard it here first, folks. I literally jumped on top of him, touching anything I could get my greedy little hands on. The hair, the face, the chest—anything that said pregame activity, if you know what I mean. Dylan tensed as if it’d hurt. Here he’d led me to believe he wanted a relationship, and now that I’d offered a hookup—let’s just say he wasn’t so gung-ho about getting up close and personal. Mortified, I pulled a complete-180 and pushed away, wondering where I could hide. I blamed this behavior on the three cookies I’d eaten beforehand—they weakened my brain. And if they hadn’t weakened my brain, then that just proved Dylan was one step closer to stealing my soul.

  Hello, migraine. Good night, libido.

  “Are you going to drop this?” I asked, rubbing my temples.

  “No,” he murmured, and then he tenderly kissed the top of my head, his voice going rough. “Soon,” he whispered almost to himself. “Soon.”

  Vinnie’s pink Volkswagen Bug sounded like a dying pigeon.

  “What’s wrong with the Bug?”

  “She’s sick.”

  There you have it, friends—the extent of Vinnie’s mechanical abilities. The calendar said Sunday morning. Vinnie and I had decimated, and I mean decimated, Finn Lively’s list. We cruised along Mack County Road, ending our surveillance for the day before I headed into work and Vinnie back to Ohio State.

  Vinnie’s job was primarily to get me “into” places. It was my job to find out the needed information once inside. When we started our unorthodox relationship last year, I discovered he had many aliases (once again, not my place to cast judgment). The two I’d encountered then were a maintenance worker named Guido Galucci and an attorney called Carlo Corleone (yeah, The Godfather; so much for creativity). Carlo helped me gain access to my friend Oscar Small when he’d been unjustly detained in the Valley Juvenile Detention Center for the murder of a mobster named Alfonso Juarez. In both those situations, Vinnie played the part and dressed appropriately, getting me out of a heated situation in an Evidence Room (as Guido) and into Oscar’s presence as Carlo Corleone.

  Today he came dressed as (wait for it…wait for it) an encyclopedia salesman. Suit, tie, and shiny black shoes a little too tight. Alias of Herb Ferrari. I nearly choked on my caramel latte because I wasn’t sure encyclopedia salesman existed anymore with the Internet. That being said, Vinnie (excuse me, I mean Herb), successfully granted us entrance into the abodes of all five people that’d been tardy. Did I smell anything nefarious on any of them? Not a doggone, stinking thing. One was a band geek; the other smelled like a tweaker too brain-dead to construct a sentence; the third was in the Honor’s Program and a goody-goody; and the final two actually dated one another (tardy because they’d been caught in the early stages of the horizontal mambo in the parking lot). Yes, I pulled that detail out of the girl by shooting the breeze as Vinnie presented encyclopedias to her parents. Then she told me what constituted the mambo, and I honest to God, didn’t understand it.

  Anyway, that left us cramming in the last of the detention list before I went into work. We’d already hit four residences because they were close—none were home—and immediately took off for the address listed for Brantley McCoy.

  On the drive there, I told Vinnie about Nico Drake—evidently, the story didn’t end with him being expelled. Nico left me a voicemail last night. He never apologized (red flag) but claimed he knew what I’d been doing and might have information I’d find useful (red flag, number two). First off, I was doing two things: Coach’s car and The Ghost. I replayed the message multiple times, looking for clues, but any way you turned this Rubik’s cube, the situation remained a jumble. Nico Drake, point blank, ambushed me from behind.

  Buuuuuuut…

  If he had something beneficial, then I’d be a fool to not listen.

  Vinnie volunteered to visit him personally to gather the intel—he didn’t have a good look on his face when he offered—but it was either Vinnie or Dylan. Vinnie was hardcore; Dylan was straight up horror show.

  Um, I’d take Vinnie.

  Vinnie swung a right into a new neighborhood called Calypso Cove. Calypso Cove was in the BFE section of Valley and only a year old. Still under construction, homes in the suburb were one of five modern styles with a single tree in front, landscaping along the front edge of your home, and two bushes in the backyard.

  Brantley McCoy lived at 9139 Calypso Cove Drive. My mind swirled with frustration at the mere mention of his name. Who was he? And why wasn’t he on Valley’s radar? He hadn’t appeared in the yearbook, and when I randomly polled Valley’s grapevine, no one even recognized the name.

  Vinnie pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, downing a Red Bull and crumpling the silver can. Tossing it in the backseat, he whipped a moon pie out of his blazer and ripped off a big bite. Vinnie needed to be careful of the extra calories because although football season had ended, if he continued to eat his way through snack cakes, he’d never make the weigh-in for next year.

  As per all the other stops, he made me endure a quick sound bite regarding his current girlfriend, Donatella Ricci. I’d never heard of nor met Donatella, but Vinnie remained convinced she was the “love of his life.” Only time would tell because he was a notorious skirt chaser. When he finished talking about her “rockin’ bod and nice rack,” (Gah! No matter how you spun it, that never sounded respectful), I exited the car behind him, straightening the only dress I owned. It was a two-year-old long-sleeved black jersey—so short it rode up to the hoochie zone when I took a step. Couple that with black tights and leather spiky boots, and I looked like the bimbo of the encyclopedia world.

  “You’re going to get fatter, Vinnie.”

  “I overeat as therapy,” he answered. “Therapy,” I repeated laughing.

  “It helps me suppress a past too painful to acknowledge.”

  Here-here to that.

  Vinnie’s pink Bug came equipped with black plastic eyes lashes on the headlights. When I exited my side, one of its lashes fluttered in the wind. Up and down. Up and down. I pushed it back into place, briefly wondering if I’d poked it in the eye.

  A leather satchel in one hand, Vinnie strode out of the car, his beefy hand palming the half eaten moon pie in the other. I ripped the pie from his grasp, throwing it to the ground with a stomp. My foot twisted into the plastic and white marshmallow oozed out the sides.

  “Tell me you just didn’t do that!” he roared, his eyes gone wide.

  I found it a waste of breath to verify what he knew to be true.

  Vinnie dropped to his knees—a miraculous
feat, considering I would’ve guessed it anatomically impossible—and talked to it like you would a dying man. His plumber’s crack greeted me with about three inches. I giggled, “I see London, I see France.”

  “Shut up, Dolce,” he grunted. “Donatella can’t keep her hands off my glutes.”

  Let’s hope Donatella used hand sanitizer.

  Standing up toting a smashed pie with no hopes of resuscitation, he threw his hands up in the air, frustrated. “I’m eating because I’ve got good news. 100 Proof Stud was picked up for distribution, and there’s a spin-off. The spin-off is called Fat Men from Venus,” he said proudly. “I’m eating because I’m a method actor. I get into my characters by actually becoming them.”

  I burst out laughing, bending over to grab some oxygen. They’d need one heckuva CGI department to morph Vinnie’s body into stud material. Mid-laugh, a troubling thought hit the smart part of my brain. I grabbed his forearm. “Is this like, um…er—adult entertainment, V?” Oh, God, please tell me Vinnie was smart enough to not become a…how do I phrase this?

  I couldn’t even say the words in my mind.

  Vinnie shoved the smashed pie in his pocket. “Sure it is, Dolce. Everybody loves a good love story.” I wasn’t sure what he’d admitted but put the thought on the backburner.

  “How’s our boy?” Vinnie asked me as he rang the doorbell. My sigh could’ve been heard in Timbuktu. I desperately needed a friend’s advice regarding Dylan, but the friend I’d normally go to was the person asking me to date him. Vinnie would be the perfect candidate for an unbiased opinion, but it made me feel disloyal to Dylan. See, this wasn’t good all the way around. I’d be flying solo, screwing up unencumbered, with no sounding board anywhere.