Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  CHAPTER 10

  Tyler mopped the floor at the Athenian before the dinner rush. His concentration wasn’t on the job at hand, though. He was more interested in keeping a close eye on Jason.

  His dark, curly hair and expressive eyes were those of a little boy but, at 6’3” and 265 pounds of solid muscle, Tyler was a man-child. He was also an unusually sensitive kid of 17. Maybe not so much when he was chasing down opposing quarterbacks as a defensive lineman for the Maine High School football team in Park Ridge, though. He was a straight-A student and recently had been awarded a full academic and football scholarship to Boston College. But now he was troubled like never before. He fought back tears while witnessing his father Jason battle his own feelings of inadequacy in the wake of the Baby Face Robber incident.

  Tyler had never seen his father so depressed before. Jason’s head and heart weren’t in his business or family life any longer. Instead of being out front greeting and enjoying playful banter with his customers, he sat in his tiny office and allowed the waitresses to run the show.

  At home Tyler stood by as his father watched inane cooking and home improvement shows on television, something he’d never done in the past. Jason was usually vibrant and always conjuring up a family activity to do, from miniature golf, to seeing a movie, to whatever.

  Now Jason was an empty shell.

  But after hearing his father weep through his closed bedroom door in their Park Ridge home the prior evening, Tyler knew he had to do something. That’s why he withdrew the $4,500 from his savings account and hired a private investigator he found on Craig’s List.

  The private investigator, Enright, a disgraced former Evanston police officer, was happy to take the case. Enright was, at one time, an aggressive cop. After getting his ass kicked while trying to stop a garage burglary in progress on the west side of Evanston his rookie year on the force, he took to instruction in the Israeli special forces method of Krav Maga fighting.

  Enright trained at a dojo in Skokie for a few years and became an excellent student of the martial art. Krav Maga or “contact combat” in Hebrew is a brutal form of self-defense. The fighting style had been invented by a Czechoslovakian Jew and former boxer in the 1930’s who was sick and tired of getting beaten by the Nazis who would wreak havoc on his small village.

  The Czech’s hostile invention incorporated nearly every style of fighting the world over in what would become one of the most effective defensive-aggressive, hand-to-hand combat techniques known to man.

  Enright had been kicked off the police force for using his Krav Maga skills to shake down drug dealers of their cash to supplement his own kid’s college fund. He was good at what he did.

  He was a master at hunting down bad guys. When he found them as a sworn officer of the law, he’d take their money and brutally beat the shit out of them, but that was the dangling carrot he needed to get the job done.

  Enright knew that this Tyler kid didn’t care about the money, so if there was any robbery proceeds left over when he caught up with the Baby Face Robber it was his to keep. That plus the $4,500 would make for a good month.

  They met in a blue and orange-colored Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts franchise building. The playful, colorful and boxy buildings had been popping up all across the Midwest of late. In blind taste testing done by the Chicago Tribune’s food critics, the ice cream won hands down – the doughnuts, however, were subpar. This ice cream and doughnut shop was located in Des Plaines. Or was it Mt. Prospect?

  “I can do shit the cops can’t. I’ll find him. You got the money?”

  Tyler handed Enright the cash out in the open. “Come on, kid? Think.” The private investigator quickly stuffed it into his pants pocket.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know,” said Tyler apologetically. He added, “Don’t hurt the dude, okay? And don’t get the real cops involved, either. Not until I meet the Baby Face Robber face-to-face first, okay?”

  “Sure, makes no difference to me,” said Enright. “I’ll corral him and then he’s all yours.”

  “And no one will know?” asked Tyler.

  “Probably better they don’t. It’ll be just between you and me,” said Enright.

  “When you find him, I’m going to-“

  “Whoa! Plausible deniability, kid. Don’t tell me any more, okay? I still have some ethics, you know?”

  “Huh? Oh, right,” said Tyler.

  But Enright knew what Tyler was going to do. As a cop he’d seen it all before in kids Tyler’s age - teens who had been dissed and were bent on revenge.

  Tyler added, “After you get him for me, I’ll pay you $10,000 more. Is that cool? It’ll clean me out, but it’ll be worth it.”

  Enright feigned a nonchalant attitude, but this bonus was a complete surprise. He was thinking “Ya-fucking-hoo!” But what he said was, “Yeah, sounds fair.”

  After their meeting, Enright went to his grayish, blue-colored, one-bedroom apartment on Northwest Highway in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Chicago and did a simple Google search. He read all about Tyler, the star athlete and straight-A student.

  “Boston College? No shit…,” thought Enright, “And his dad owns a successful restaurant in the burbs. I wonder what Tyler’s old man would pay to keep this all quiet. His kid hiring someone to find the son of a bitch who robbed him, so he can kill him?”

  At the Athenian, Tyler finished mopping the floor and rolled the bucket past his father’s open office door. Jason sat at his desk looking blankly at the nearest wall.

  The 12 gauge shotgun was no longer resting in the corner of the room.

  CHAPTER 11

  Jimmy the cop was a nervous wreck.

  This was an unusual state for the normally confident 42-year-old man. Dressed in his civvies, he parked his personal car in back of the Balmoral police department and armed only with a handful of number two pencils, he made his way inside.

  Back in 1989, he’d seen and done things in the Marine Corps that would make most people go weak in the knees.

  As a highly effective and aggressive 21-year-old sergeant, he helped to guide his men against Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) in “Operation Just Cause.” Taking point after hitting the beach, Jimmy and the men in his charge made quick work of the shoddily trained PDF on their home turf of Panama City.

  For his efforts, Jimmy was chosen as one of the Marines who escorted a handcuffed Manuel Noriega to a waiting C-130 transport plane. His photo was seen the world over, and it helped him to the land his current position.

  Thinking back to the .223 rounds zipping over his head as he returned withering fire while lying in the wet beach sand didn’t make him sweat, but the idea of again failing this damned lieutenant’s test he was about to take certainly did. It was eating him up inside.

  This was his fourth attempt at the test. He was a man of action, running headlong into enemy fire while taking out seven PDF soldiers’ singlehandedly, but shit, this goddamned test.

  He was always able to prove himself physically throughout his life - as a hard hitting free safety for Balmoral High’s football team, a state qualifier at 189 pounds on the wrestling team, a trained killer in the Marine Corps or as a no-nonsense cop, but he never had success in the classroom. Book learning was his Achilles heel. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Quite the opposite was true. He was street-smart, just academically incurious.

  As he passed the age of 40, though, his thought process began changing. His body would only hold out for so long, so he hit the books. He knew that if he wanted to stay in the job he loved, that he needed to change his stripes – from sergeant to lieutenant. As a commander, he would be behind a desk more often than in the field.

  The bump in pay would help, too, especially with two daughters attending Northwestern University. They were on academic scholarships thanks to their mother, and Jimm
y’s ex-wife, being a brilliant woman herself, but there were still expenses to take care of.

  Jimmy couldn’t just fire a few rounds of his department issue Glock .40 caliber pistol into the test and be done with it because that would be too easy. He had to ace this pecker so there was no doubt that he should be named the next “Lute.”

  After flunking the test so many times before, Jimmy wanted to prove to his brethren that he wasn’t an idiot, although they had ungraciously tagged him with the nickname, “Flunky,” behind his back.

  “All set, Flunk-, ah, Jimmy?” asked the chief, holding the paper packet containing the test.

  Jimmy, sitting at the desk in the empty sally port of the police department, couldn’t even speak. He gulped, nodded and tapped the desk where he wanted the chief to place the exam.

  “You have two hours. You can start - now,” said the chief with a knowing smile.

  Jimmy didn’t like the way the chief was looking at him, his expression a mix of torment and ridicule. As Jimmy was about to spout a smartass remark of his own, something deep in the recesses of his mind calmed him. It was an inner voice that he had heard as he hit the beach in Panama City. It was a voice that he hadn’t heard in over 20 years. It warmed him and gave him confidence and comfort. The voice is what got him safely off that beach all those years ago as the PDF .223 rounds zipped over his head. What the voice said was this.

  “I’m gonna light these assholes up now so I can screw their wives tonight.”

  Jimmy giggled at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s your wife doing these days, chief?”

  The Chief lost his smirk, shook his head and left.

  Jimmy hunched over the exam, readied his number two pencil and began the test in earnest.

  CHAPTER 12

  John sat on a barstool furthest from the door, sipped his drink and admired what the new owners had done with the place.

  Once a Hooters-like sports bar, recently it had been reopened as a tastefully decorated Irish pub with lots of dark wood and brass accents. The large windows facing Main Street and the beautifully renovated train station were a nice addition to the decor. The drink and food prices were higher, but the clientele was better. The absence of Hooters-like girls will do that.

  Anytime John could enjoy himself in a place like this without having to prove his might to some drunken 22-year-old with beer muscles was a win-win in his estimation.

  He liked eating his dinner out before the main crush of passengers disembarked from the arriving rush hour trains. They’d jam places like this along the tracks, meeting their significant others or simply sitting at the bar drowning their sorrows and avoiding their significant others at home a few blocks away.

  The bartender delivered an order of shepherd’s pie to John, “There you go, Sparky. Want another Sprite?”

  John placed a hand over his drink and began digging into his dinner when the front door opened, and Amy walked inside.

  She had that look of purpose on her face that John found so appealing. As she surveyed the place, John looked down into his delicious shepherd’s pie and took a bite.

  “Is the owner around?” she asked the bartender.

  “The manager is. Hold on a sec,” he said as he stepped into a back office.

  Amy thought to herself, “Of course they have a manager. Maybe there’s something else?”

  There were only five customers in the place at the time, and John knew he needed to play this cool or--

  “Hey, I know you,” said Amy.

  John, a forkful of shepherd’s pie hovering near his mouth, faked confusion, “You do?”

  “The other day? I made an ass of myself as we were crossing the street.”

  “Sure, okay,” said John.

  She nervously tapped her fingers on the bar awaiting the manager’s arrival and said, “Doing some job hunting.”

  “Yeah? How’s it going?”

  Amy shook her head and said, “Sorry, don’t mean to bother you while you’re eating.”

  Contrition – the opening John was looking for.

  “No problem at all. Would you like to join me while you wait?”

  Amy thought to herself, “This is a nice looking man. He’s polite, too. His hair’s a mess, but it adds character.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  John extended his hand, and they shook as she sat on the stool next to his, “John Caul.”

  “Amy Bowling. Nice to meet you, John. How’s the food?”

  “You’ve never been here before?” he asked.

  “Nah, but it looks like a nice place. I saw where they just opened a few weeks ago and was checking to see if they needed any help. Maybe a manager. Too bad the bartender there said he was getting the manager, so…”

  John sipped his drink and said, “That your game, restaurant management?”

  “Um,” Amy sized John up and thought to herself, what the hell. To shed the past you need to own it and allow it to fall away as quickly as possible. “No, I haven’t worked a real job in about 15 years. My husband left me. Actually the FBI’s snooping around made him leave me.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to pry…”

  “No, this is good, John. Unloading this crap to a total stranger is sort of freeing if that makes any sense.”

  “I guess…”

  “Can I help you?” said the manager, a burly man in his thirties, as he stepped through the office doorway.

  As a smiling Amy engaged the manager in conversation, John noticed someone watching him through the front window. It was a shabbily dressed, shadow figure.

  To John, Danny had no discernable expression but his eyes were eerily locked onto him. The kid finally turned and disappeared from view.

  Danny was sort of confused by it all. It was because the dude was like 40-fricking-years-old, but still, Danny thought John was awesome.

  John was at the top of Danny’s “cool” list, especially so after he poked fun at himself following the fight with that asswipe, Staley, at the park. Danny wanted to get to know John, maybe hang with him, but didn’t know the correct protocol in engaging older dudes in conversation.

  Even though he’d only lived in the area for a year, he had heard the stories of John and how he had burned the school gym down back in the old days. Danny thought the idea of burning down the school gym, hell, any part of a school, was amazing.

  Danny’s avocation, and his first love, though, was of making up and telling stories.

  The stories he told were always about real people in his life like his parents, a neighbor or a classmate. Although the stories seemed factual, they were always nearly completely fabricated. They were wicked ditties woven in the mind of a troubled, 15-year-old boy.

  One story he conjured, and that was circulating at the high school at the moment, was about Staley and how he had screwed one of the older lunch ladies at school. The story was untrue, but Danny was a master of his craft. Details mattered. He always researched his story enough to make the scenario plausible in the audience’s mind.

  He was a master of the three-act structure, taking his young and unsophisticated audiences on a dramatic, roller-coaster ride.

  Yes, the lunch lady was in her late fifties but she was built like a mo-fo. Everyone at school knew that Staley was a tit man. Shit, he’d tell you point blank himself, if gently prodded. The students also were aware that the lunch lady in question was overly friendly with the male students. The particular story that Danny crafted had Staley and the stacked lunch lady doing it in the walk-in cooler on a row of chicken nugget boxes. It had just enough ring of truth that it worked, and it quickly got the anti-Staley ball rolling at school.

  The burly teen, Staley, didn’t know what hit him or
where the story originated, until he heard Danny himself, that little prick of a raconteur, spouting off the story to a couple of cheerleaders in the cafeteria. Danny was quicker on his feet and got away – that day.

  Danny was sort of an asshole and usually kept people at arm’s length, but he liked it that way. Keeping people in check allowed him to live within his own head, free of the outside world’s static.

  He had a feeling that maybe he and John were kindred spirits and that the older dude was sort of a contrarian like he was.

  Danny was gleefully aware that people in town thought he was from a bad home and that he was neglected.

  “But they didn’t know shit,” he’d tell himself. “It’s just another stupid story, Sheeple. Wake the hell up.”

  Actually Danny had been raised, up until a year ago, in the posh San Mateo Hills of the San Francisco Bay area. His mother, Sharon, a highly regarded clinical psychologist, and his father, Donald, an executive with an international beverage company, were relocated to the Balmoral area by Donald’s employer.

  Danny was a seemingly well-adjusted kid until two years ago when his parents welcomed a surprise baby boy named Joseph. His little bro was a cute and fun little dude, but Danny found that all of the attention usually aimed his way quickly evaporated as soon as the baby came into the home.

  He began acting out soon after.

  His decline into semi-juvenile delinquency started small. One day, he skateboarded at a high rate of speed past the multi-million dollar homes on steep Parrott Drive in San Mateo, screaming and yelling obscenities at the wealthy residents who got in his way. But, it soon escalated to where Danny was hanging with the fringe elements of a dangerous gang near Central Park in downtown San Mateo, working as an unofficial lookout-in-training for weed slingers.

  That’s when Danny began his storytelling avocation and the reason the gangbangers-in-training liked having him as an unofficial lookout. He was a well-dressed suburban kid who could tell any patrol officer a plausible story thus keeping the heat off the drug dealers.