by A. J. Lape
Grumpy grinned, “He said you’d say that, but I’ve been instructed to bring you anyway.” I hated Dylan because he always knew beforehand what my arguments would be. “Come on, Walker,” he begged. “Tip off is in an hour, and I don’t want to deal with him if I’m not successful.”
True. Dylan was like a Pit Bull on a bone when he wanted something. He’d lock on hard and not give up until he grounded you in one heck of a bloody fight.
Grumpy and I followed Murphy to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out milk and eggs. “Things better between the two of you?” he said to me.
“They’re better for Dylan, obviously.”
“Good to know he’s not a grudge holder,” Murphy chuckled. “Grudges are bad.”
I laughed, and God love him, so did Grumpy. Everyone—and I mean the man five houses down—knew Murphy held grudges more than the people in the Middle East. Murphy shot Grumpy a frown that made his happies shrivel. “Do you drink?” he grunted.
“No,” Grumpy said proudly.
“Smoke?”
“No.”
“Seatbelt?”
“Every time.”
“Insurance?”
“Yes.”
“What carrier?”
“Nation’s Best.”
“Wrong answer,” I giggled. “They’re a competitor.”
“Sorry,” Grumpy said quietly. “Not my call.”
“Any tickets?” Murphy continued. Grumpy got silent. “Name the offense,” Murphy demanded.
Grumpy sort of shrugged, sort of whispered, “Parking illegally.” Murphy took the time to ponder as he cracked two eggs and poured them in a stainless steel bowl. He glanced to me, back to Grumpy, and then at the clock on the wall.
“I know she’s ridden with you to your little vacation on The Island of Misfit Toys, so I suppose it’s okay if she films a repeat. But listen, son. If something happens, I’ll make you wish you died in the crash.”
Okiedokie. Some welcome wagon.
Murphy took a step forward and towered overtop Grumpy’s generous listing at six feet. “Five miles under the speed limit the entire way. Fathers have a way of finding out if you piss on their requests. Ask Dylan. I’m not someone you want angry.”
Grumpy cleared his throat. Pretty sure he didn’t need the details.
He waited the fifteen minutes it took me to change into a pair of tribal print leggings and an oversized white hoodie that had “Fighting Buffalo” in black capital letters. Our mascot was a buffalo, for God’s sake. Half the time when something great happened, I didn’t know whether to grunt, snort, or moo. The hoodie was Dylan’s and had the number eleven embroidered over the heart. It seemed like something you’d wear when you were a couple…um, we weren’t a couple, but tonight I wanted to be a face-rubber (hello, Brynn Hathaway).
Whatever. Sometimes I felt like Dylan’s community service project anyway.
Pulling my hair into a ponytail, I reapplied the trifecta of mascara, blush, and rolled on lipstick called Chastity Belt (no kidding). It was hot pink with shiny sparkles. It didn’t particularly remind me of a celibate attitude; it reminded me of blinking lights and stripper poles. Afterward, I stepped into red and black Asics running shoes I kept on hand in case I ever became a serious runner.
My look wasn’t complete until I was tatted up. Dylan’s mother found a bunch of temporary tattoos she gave me for my birthday. I’d wear one on my face each game. Turning on the faucet, I ran the little white square back and forth under the water and then carefully stuck it to my cheek. After thirty seconds of pure nothing, I slowly lifted the paper and looked at a perfect number eleven.
After I slid my lucky hat on my head, I trudged downstairs finding Vinnie (yes, I said Vinnie) playing naked Barbie’s with Marjorie—in little girl voices. Marjorie’s Barbie squeaked, “Love makes you desperate.”
Vinnie’s grumbled, “Don’t I know it, but the guy in 100 Proof Stud is worth all the drama.” Vinnie then produced an 8x10 glossy headshot of himself, giving it to Marjorie with a grin.
I broke into giggles. Vinnie was a walking advertisement for his new movie, complete with a Fu Manchu mustache the spin-off must require. “Why are you here, V?”
“I’m feeling the Valley game.”
Grumpy snagged a warm biscuit from the countertop, pitching another toward Vinnie’s open hand. Grumpy took a big bite and gazed at my sweatshirt with a grin.
I shot him a warning glare as I pulled on my coat. “I hate him,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, Taylor says he hates you too,” Grumpy answered.
Piling into the Beemer, as usual the black leather interior was immaculately clean and still had that new smell going on. Grumpy immediately played with the new-fangled gadgets, as if it would increase his odds of owning a duplicate one day. Picking a country station, he warbled away about crying in his beer while I tried to still my mind. I read somewhere if you could still your mind, you’d find the answers you sought.
Dude, all I got was white noise.
Glancing at the console between the seats, unfortunately I noticed something that shattered my attempts. An ebony-colored hairclip lay nestled inside a cup holder. My specific cup holder, I should qualify. And the clip wasn’t mine. Instantly my blood boiled, and just as fast, my anger flipped into an agonizing despair—if it wasn’t mine—then whose was it?
While Grumpy continued to sing and Vinnie practiced lines for his movie, I clasped it between my fingers for a few miles. It was expensive. I could tell by its feel. My first desire was to roll down the window and toss it in Valley’s freaking gutter. But then I got hit with a better idea. In my brain, I knew my plans were the actions of an unstable girl in the throes of an unhealthy crush—but I didn’t care. If it was Brynn’s, how in the heck did it find its way out of her hair? Passionate frenzy? I gulped.
I wore one of those energy bracelets that supposedly emitted negative ions beneficial to your health. Pulling the red band from my wrist, I slid it over my fingers and dropped it in the exact spot where Brynn’s probable hairclip had been. Put it this way, if I were a dog, I peed on her spot. When my ringing iPhone broke the mood, I fingered it out of my purse. The screen lit up for the second time tonight with Ben Ryan. Wow, Ben must be the pushy type.
When I said, “Hey,” he grunted out, “Brantley McCoy” in greeting.
“Hello to you too, Ben,” I laughed.
I couldn’t tell where Ben was or what he was doing. It sounded like multiple adults talking in the background of a high-energy meeting. “What are you up to, angel,” he asked, “because suddenly I’m nervous. I don’t get nervous often. In fact, I’m never nervous, and I don’t like the feeling.”
“Spill the beans, Ben.”
“I have nothing to spill. And I tried.”
Grumpy reached over and pinched my arm, twisting the flesh between two fingers. Ben Ryan, although none of them had ever met him personally, had made the naughty list of my bestie guy friends. They were overprotective and suspicious of our budding friendship—although the accident was my fault.
With that, I thumbed him off and finished the conversation via text.
I typed like a mad woman, sparing no detail. Telling him I feared Vinnie killed Brantley McCoy when we broke into Bishop Fowler’s Calypso Cove address. The moment I typed my last word, Ben screamed in all caps:
BACK OUT OF THE EQUATION, CALL THE AUTHORITIES, AND TELL THEM WHAT YOU KNOW!
My word, he should know better than to use math lingo with me. After a few beats of the cat stealing my tongue, he then texted back.
I know you well enough to say you’re going to do what you want to do. Be careful. I’ll keep digging.
The resources at Ben’s disposal began to gnaw away at me. Sure he said they came via his father, but
our relationship was new. Too new for me to make a final assessment of him. I was either paranoid, or maybe I needed to take a step back and figure out who and what exactly this guy was. Besides, the information he gleaned for me no doubt was a total misuse of government property, and ergo illegal.
Not that I was complaining…but why?
As fate would have it, Big Moby’s Cheeseburger Shack was at the next light. Big Moby’s was supposed to be the last venue Tito’s source saw The Ghost. Thing was, I had no idea what I’d look for once inside. Sure, I had a face, but what would I do if I actually bumped into that face?
The verb in me, or idiot rather, considered this a minor issue.
“Grumpy, pull over,” I asked, touching his arm. “I need to Moby up my life.”
He would’ve dragged me behind the car if he could escape a murder indictment. He barked, “No, Walker. Taylor asked me to bring you, and this is his Beemer. I’m doing exactly as I was directed.”
“Dylan would pull over,” I laughed.
“Dylan would not pull over.”
“Dylan loves me, and he’d pull over.”
“Dylan’s probably wondering where we are.”
“I could eat a burger,” Vinnie piped up from the backseat.
I grinned, “I’ll make a deal with you, Grumpy. Pull over, and I promise to give you a makeover so fab that Clementine can’t keep her hands off of you.”
You know, there was someone for everybody, but the thought of kissing Grumpy was like sucking on a sourball…it’d have to be an acquired taste. After we stared at one another, he realized I wouldn’t shut up and that he needed a fashion overhaul. His answer came in a grunt and a quick swerve into Big Moby’s parking lot.
Slowing the engine, immediately he headed for the drive-thru. A logical choice, but the drive-thru line was as long as my current list of sins. Besides, what would I see from a car anyway? It took some arm-twisting, but Grumpy agreed to pop inside for the burger I was quote-unquote “dying to have.”
Finding an empty space between two dark-colored vans, he carefully maneuvered inside, saying out loud, “It better not get dinged.”
Dropping my phone in my purse, I asked, “Did you speak to Damon Whitehead?”
“Damon hasn’t returned my calls,” he grunted, shutting off the engine. He slid his eyes over, full of questions. “I’m thinking he’s scared to death.”
Or guilty.
Once inside, we filed like cattle behind the only cashier line open. It was a four-person crew dressed in red shirts, black pants, with a smiling Moby over the heart. Not much older than me, the cashier was medium build, brown hair and eyed, and barely made eye contact—just a hand out for the money and a yell to the cook who appeared new to the job. He was fidgety and jumpy, and when I offered a smile, he hunkered over a beef patty and started flipping.
The same guy as last week manned the drive-thru, still appearing grossly underqualified for the task. He had fries, chicken nuggets, and burgers all lined up in a row, furrowing his brow, trying to figure out which brown bag to drop them in.
Big Moby’s Cheeseburger Shack was one of those joints that if your order wasn’t straight off the assembly line, they’d ask you to pull your car up to the curb where they’d deliver your special order. Big Moby was the burger express, so to say.
As I ordered a Moby Meal, I stole a glance outside watching Moby deliver a meal to a female in a maroon Chevy Impala. Moby put his white-gloved hand into her rolled down window, and when they exchanged bills, he pulled a plastic Ziploc baggy out of his pants pocket full of what looked like dirt. On impulse, I pushed my way out of line, walked to the window, and made binoculars out of my hands, scrunching my eyes and nose up to the glass.
The female was hunched over her steering wheel in a black coat and baseball cap. Pulling the bag up to her eyes for inspection, she gave Moby a hurried nod.
It wasn’t dirt, I told myself. It was a bag of marijuana.
24. Citizen’s Arrest
Citizen’s arrest! the angel cheered. Let him be! the devil laughed. He’s making a living.
I couldn’t breathe; in fact, I was in danger of losing all bodily functions in my pants. Dodging a little boy carrying a tray, I hustled back to line, told Grumpy as fast as I could, to which he rolled his eyes totally unaffected. “Maybe it was spices, Walker,” he grumped, looking at his watch.
“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t basil and oregano, Grumpy.”
I’d seen marijuana. My grandfather lives in Kentucky. Kentucky people knew all about Mary Jane—even if you were clean—and then the knowledge was passed on through the placenta.
When Grumpy didn’t give me anything more than an eye roll, and Vinnie chuckled, “You’re so cute,” I flipped them both off in my mind and yelled, “Big Moby’s passing out drugs!”
A hush filled the room.
Those were fighting words amongst the parent crowd—especially when it was Kid’s Eat Free Night. But no one made a move to apprehend, defend, or do anything. Heck, they didn’t even look frustrated. They just stood there, wondering how their favorite clown had turned into a freaking felon.
It didn’t take long for me to make the decision to get involved, and come hell or high water, Big Moby would go timber tonight. Leaving Grumpy and Vinnie, I slammed my body in fifth gear, pushed the side door wide, and bounded outside under the security light. In unison, Big Moby and the young woman locked on me, mouths agape, faces shocked-out with that busted looked.
No lie, the female was Madison-I’m a beeyotch-Flannery.
The moron in me yelled self-righteously, “Citizen’s arrest, citizen’s arrest, I’m busting you for possession of a controlled substance.”
Madison dropped the bag of weed and went from zero to sixty off the property. Big Moby snatched it up and immediately plopped it in his mouth. Then he came at me swinging all limbs like he’d lost his mind. He smacked me in the head with a Moby bag, and if that wasn’t insulting enough, he squirted me in the face with his seltzer bottle. When he took off running across the lot, at that moment I felt like a superhero. I dove at him—you heard right, dove at him—and took him out at the knees. Moby went down hard, me on top of him, and suddenly I was eating clown. Clown in my mouth, clown up my nose, clown in the beds of my fingernails. Moby and I rolled around the snow-filled pavement on old french fries, gum, and probably E. coli and the rotavirus, but the verb in me was going for the memorable.
Amidst the flailing of our arms and legs, the bag of pot plop, plop, plopped out of his mouth and bounced on the pavement. If pot came out of his mouth, I didn’t dare think what’d come out of any other orifice. Big Moby was scum of the earth. I’m sure he had no scruples.
“Cuff him, Grumpy!” I yelled.
Grumpy was in slow-mo at my heels, partly in shock, partly due to the fact he might just be a noun. Lord help me, I needed more verbs in my life, but I had to work with the tools I’d been given. “Cuff him?!” he screamed back. “I don’t have any cuffs, Walker!”
True, but by God, improvise!
Moby wiggled out from underneath me, stumbling past a still shell-shocked Grumpy, heading straight for the drive-thru in a fit of panicked hysteria. Knocking over a red trashcan, he jumped up on the curb, placing his hand on the driver’s side door of a green Jeep Cherokee. He yanked it wide, pulling a startled teenager out by the shirt. The boy went down hard, but Moby stepped over him, full intentions of taking off in his idling car.
I had a decision to make. I could call the police and give them a description of a clown, or I could dive onto the car and pray Moby pulled over. Without another thought, I dove spread eagle onto the hood, a whole lot of don’t-die-a-virgin giving me flight. Big Moby cursed words so obscene I think my immediate consciousness blocked them out. I heard a b-word, a c-word, and an f-word that frankly made no sense. What I did
make out was a laughing, “Ta-ta,” and I knew innately he had plans for me eating the pavement. Swerving the car right then left, we’d traveled a good seventy-plus feet, neither of us giving up the fight. I glimpsed people peering out the windows, cheering me on or shaking their heads in disbelief. My right leg fell off the car when Moby hit the brakes, trying to jar me loose, but somehow I held on, staring into the face of a certifiable psychopath.
Moby and I had one of those moments. A moment where our eyes met and the bad in him met the trying-to-be-good in me. A sick, twisted smile lit up all that clown makeup, and I briefly said a prayer I’d make it to the Promised Land if this ended badly. Right then, I had a connect-the-dots moment. I recognized him—even through makeup, I recognized him as Brantley McCoy, the photo ID Finn had given me from the detention list.
“You’re Brantley McCoy,” I half whispered, half yelled. Moby grinned so big I didn’t need him unmasked. Right when the small part of my brain told me I should’ve followed by car, Vinnie and Grumpy made the scene. You’d think they would’ve arrived quicker, but all of it took place probably within thirty seconds. God help them, their reaction skills sucked. Vinnie lunged for Moby’s door. He wrestled his way inside, punching and shoving as Grumpy opened the passenger side door and went for the emergency brake.
Trying my best to hang onto the windshield wipers, all at once it felt like the car ran full-force into a brick wall, six feet thick. I performed a backward roll down the hood, bounced arm and elbow first onto the front bumper, and launched about twelve feet backward like I was shot out of a cannon. I landed on my left leg, hearing the knee of my leggings rip wide in protest, scuffing the skin with black, pebbled slush.
Then the inconceivable happened. Someone started snapping photographs. When Grumpy yelled, “What the h-e-double-l,” Vinnie called up his thespian side. My God, he turned and offered up a red carpet smile for the camera, long enough for Big Moby to yank free and run for the hills, like a starving wolf on the scent of a bleeding squirrel.