Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

Oddly enough, Jimmy was sort of proud of his little brother for how he had confounded the cops to this point. He knew that John was a brilliant person, and how, when they were kids, that brilliance was threatening to him. But now, he actually felt a strange, brotherly affection for John in a “this son of a bitch is good at what he does” way.

  ***

  John, alone in the Chevy wagon, drove eastbound on Route 22 and entered the town limits of Lake Zurich. He wasn’t quite right in the head. The half a Vike helped curb some of the withdrawal symptoms but only to a minor degree. Once or twice during his drive, he forgot where he was going and what he was going to do.

  That was it - there was a Wal-Mart in Lake Zurich where he could pick up another cheap windbreaker. And there was a gun shop nearby that always had excellent deals on cheap 9mm pistols. He’d have to wait out the Brady rule but that was okay, because he was not going to break the agreement that he and his older brother, Jimmy, had made. There would be no more robberies until they got back together.

  Luckily, the last gun he had used he had procured through the Vike vine and the serial numbers were filed off, so it couldn’t be traced back to him. If he did decide to go the legal route in purchasing his next gun, that wouldn’t be the case, though.

  Turning north on Route 12, he wondered if a handheld, electric, drum-filing tool would do the job in erasing the serial numbers. He wasn’t quite ready to turn himself in or get caught for pulling off the robberies and needed every advantage at his disposal to make sure everything went as planned.

  As he drove he looked toward the parking lot where the grocery store and Italian beef place stood. It didn’t instantly register who the beautiful woman was as she got out of the ten-year-old car in the parking lot. She was with a sallow and scrawny-looking man in his forties who appeared as if he’d just been saved from a mine shaft in some South American country.

  ***

  Amy ordered for herself and Dwayne.

  They sat at a table by the window of the Italian beef place. It was a kitschy little eatery created from the shell of a former ten-minute oil change garage. They were enjoying delicious Italian beef sandwiches and crispy waffle fries.

  “Not a one of ‘em wants to leave, you know,” said Dwayne.

  Amy was uncomfortable talking about family because she felt, from time to time, that she abandoned them although she really hadn’t.

  Dwayne added, “They never even left for a little while to at least explore. ‘Course, when I left, it wasn’t by choice.” He smiled sheepishly. “But I’m here now, ain’t I?”

  Amy and Dwayne got caught up on family and old, small-town friends and what they were all doing nowadays. They soon discovered that nearly 20 years of absence had done nothing to change things back in Jackson. But both agreed that that was how it should be. The beauty of Jackson was that it didn’t really change – not ever.

  “No one could blame you for leaving, sis. You did the right thing,” Dwayne said as he took a juicy bite of sandwich.

  She nearly choked on a sweet pepper when she saw him yank the front door open and step inside.

  He looked like he hadn’t slept in a few nights. The deep circles under his eyes were quite prominent. But she quickly admitted something to herself, though - he was a good-looking man that she had a hard time taking her eyes off of. And now he was angling right toward her table. She chewed and swallowed the food in her mouth as quickly as she could.

  “Hi, can we talk?” he said.

  Dwayne didn’t like the way the guy crowded their table.

  “Wanna back it up, my man?”

  In the State Pen, Dwayne would’ve put John on his ass and asked him later what he wanted after the dust had settled. But he knew things were more civilized out in the world, so he controlled his aggression for now. He turned and noticed the expression on his sister’s face. She liked this dude. Well, shit, this was an altogether, different situation.

  “I’ve got to, ah, use the can. Be right back,” he said as he excused himself.

  Dwayne got up and left. Amy finally nodded to the empty seat next to her. John sat down and measured his words very carefully.

  “I’m a Vicodin addict.”

  “No shit…”

  “But you have to know why.”

  “Why should I care?”

  “Please hear me out for just 30 seconds.”

  “You’ve got until my brother comes back,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s your brother. I thought…right, um, you see… well, how do I put this?”

  “Better start talking,” Amy said.

  “I have multiple sclerosis,” he said for the first time to anyone other than his brother, Jimmy. “Unfortunately for me, I’m in constant pain,” he added.

  She believed him.

  Who couldn’t? Especially after he told her all about how the disease had taken so much away from him. He explained about how the doctors, trying to help his liver function, limited the amount of pain medication they would prescribe in hopes of not creating a new problem in addition to the MS.

  He told her how he had disregarded their attempts at curbing his Vicodin intake, and how he went in search of illegal sources of the drug to alleviate his relentless pain. But the bottom line always circled back to the fact that he was an addict. He admitted that to someone other than the mirror for the first time. It felt like a solid, first step toward normalcy.

  Amy knew that he wasn’t acting or putting on some sort of ruse. John was sincere. But she still wasn’t sure she wanted to be involved with him.

  “I’m Dwayne, Amy’s brother.”

  John stood said, “John,” and shook hands with Dwayne and they both sat.

  “What are you going to do now, John?” she said.

  But John didn’t want to talk any more about his problem, especially with Dwayne at the table. Amy understood and quickly changed the subject.

  “So my brother, Dwayne, here is looking for work. Do you know of anyone who may be hiring?” asked Amy.

  John nodded “thanks” to Amy for not pressing any more, and he turned to Dwayne and said, “What line of work are you in, Dwayne?”

  Dwayne smiled a big, toothy grin and said, “The paying kind.”

  ***

  “I’d like to ask you to dinner,” John said as he and Amy stood next to her car in the parking lot.

  Dwayne, across the lot, had made an instant friend with a 30-year-old man who had pulled up to the Italian beef place in a brand-new BMW. The man was more than happy to show Dwayne all the cool features of the car. Dwayne was completely in awe of the technology. He had seen car commercials in the State Pen while watching sports on TV but inspecting the cars up close was much better.

  “So ask,” she said.

  “Is tonight good for you?”

  As she nodded, a thought came to him. “How did it go at the car dealership?”

  “That didn’t work out. I’m still on the search. I’d take anything right now. But I’d really like something in management or with the chance of getting into management,” she said.

  “I remember your saying that at the bar. I know things are tough right now,” he said, before stopping abruptly. John was looking directly at a Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts franchise that was situated across Route 12 from the parking lot where they stood.

  In his travels around the northwest suburbs of Chicago, he’d seen several of these buildings – small, boxy affairs with colorful signage. And just as quickly, a second and third thought came to him. John, in his part-time but very lucrative job as a stock market player, had read where these types of franchises could be cash cows. They were fairly easy to get off the ground, and the training needed to own and run the franchise was provided by the parent company for a start-up fee, of course.

&nbs
p; The third thought was that he remembered seeing a segment on TV about a franchise trade show that was coming to the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago. John had experienced another kismet-like moment in Lake Zurich.

  A fourth idea suddenly dawned on him. But before he could fully complete the thought, Amy gently grasped John’s elbow bringing him back to the conversation.

  “Let’s meet at the Irish bar in Balmoral at eight,” she said.

  The thoughts bombarding John’s mind made him smile. He hadn’t felt quite this positive about doing anything since first conjuring up the “robbery to help save the Fourth of July celebration” idea and meeting Amy. But what made the thoughts pinging around in his brain more satisfying this time was that it was all legal. Okay, mostly legal.

  “But we’ll eat somewhere else, is that okay?”

  “See you at eight,” she said.

  CHAPTER 24

  Like most who excelled in that particular space, Brick was a no-nonsense kind of drug dealer.

  He had met the dentist through a mutual friend, a person who had turned Brick onto the Vike vine. Brick learned that the dentist had been run out of business in Lake Zurich by some dude wearing a baby face mask, and now he was ready to start up another operation.

  He needed an equity partner, though. The dentist would provide the legal, medical front and actual distribution arm, handing out the merchandise and collecting the money from customers. The equity partner, Brick, would provide the capital and drugs needed to get the operation outfitted.

  Brick was an only child. His father, a retired Chicago police officer, and his mother, now deceased, was a homemaker. He grew up in the Pill Hill neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. It was once an affluent, urban oasis occupied by doctors who serviced the neighborhood hospital, thus the name, Pill Hill.

  Unfortunately, like so many other city neighborhoods, it slowly changed over the years. After the doctors began looking elsewhere for housing, the area stagnated. It’s still solidly middle-class, but not nearly the same as it was in its heyday.

  Being an only child, Brick was spoiled rotten. He didn’t have the hardscrabble upbringing nearly his entire drug-dealing underlings had experienced. And he didn’t get started in the drug trade to rebel against his police officer father, either. He simply didn’t want to put in the hours his father did to make a living.

  A 12-year-old Brick couldn’t keep his eyes off of the fat cat dealers and pimps who traveled through his area. Driving their Caddies and surrounded by sweet bitches. Brick knew there was an easier way to success than punching a clock every day.

  When he was 15, he started his first weed-slinging operation with a $500 investment from his own bank account. Brick took the initial $500 and parlayed that into nearly $12,000 in a matter of a few weeks’ time. He never looked back.

  There was a price to pay for his new, lucrative, business operation. His mother, a heart patient, began experiencing a rapid succession of setbacks soon after Brick took a .22 round to his head. The bullet ricocheted off his skull and did very little damage, but the stressful nature of the event, while providing Brick with his nickname, “head as hard as a brick,” did eventually kill off his mother.

  Brick arranged for the person responsible for delivering the .22 round to his skull a more instantaneous form of death the day after his mother passed.

  By 17, Brick was making nearly $250,000 a year. His father loved him, but he couldn’t stand having a drug dealer living under his roof.

  So Brick set up shop on the West Side of Chicago and flourished, branching out into the western and northwestern suburbs. And as a testament to his business acumen, Brick never identified himself with the myriad street gangs in the Chicago area. He was an anomaly among his drug-dealing brethren - an independent businessman.

  He accomplished this independence by not undercutting the prices of other gang-affiliated dealers and only operating in areas they didn’t. His territories were spread out from Wauconda to Downers Grove to the West Side of Chicago, but that was okay. It provided him with the peace of mind in knowing that no one was gunning for him.

  Now Brick waited next to his Escalade on the western edge of the Woodfield Mall’s massive parking lot and considered his surroundings.

  He tried to imagine what the area had looked like in 1956 when Schaumburg was founded. How the original 100 or so residents lived day to day in what the late, great Chicago Tribune writer Mike Royko deemed, “The land beyond O’Hare.”

  Brick figured it was mostly cornfields and apple orchards way back when, but now he gazed upon nearly three million square feet of retail space under one roof. The mall itself was surrounded by an ocean of satellite stores, mini-malls and paved parking lots.

  “Place is fugly, man,” he said as his business associate, Aaron, a tall man with a 1000-yard stare, walked in his direction. “Junior and Peaches better keep their eyes open, my man, else…well, you don’t wanna know the what else.”

  “Junior screws it up, he’s gone. No problem with me,” said Aaron as he scanned the parking lot for the Chevy wagon they were awaiting. “Nothin’s whack. We’re cool.”

  “Was Peaches always a fuck up? I mean when you were kids?”

  “Don’t sweat it, Brick. My little bro messes up - I said I’ll take care of it.”

  Brick’s mind drifted again. This guy named John had used the same Vike vine to send out a coded message looking for buyers of large quantities of Vikes. Through another series of messages, each relaying a cell phone number hidden one digit at a time in the body of the text, Brick had connected by phone and set up this meeting. The John dude said he wanted to unload a mess of Vicodin. He had thousands of pills on hand.

  Brick’s objective in this transaction was a bit different than what the guy in the powder blue station wagon’s would be, he was sure of that.

  Brick was going to hold onto his cash, kill the deliverer of the Vikes and drive away with the goods. So what if it took a bit more gas money to get way the hell out here in Schaumburg. It would be worth it.

  CHAPTER 25

  As John drove the old station wagon east on Coleridge, he couldn’t help but happily daydream about how he would acquire some solid employment for Amy and possibly provide her a future in management.

  He was going to meet this man named Brick at Woodfield Mall and sell him all of the Vicodin he had stolen from the dentist in Lake Zurich. From his years of misuse, John was quite adept at pricing illegal Vicodin, estimating that he had in his possession nearly $75,000 worth of the drug. That would be enough to get him solidly on the path to launch a Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts franchise.

  He’d seen a segment on WGN about the lucrative, fast-food franchise a few days before meeting Amy. And just that morning he’d done another Google search on the franchise trade show coming to McCormick Place, scoping out the map where the Franklin Finch Ice Cream/Dip Doughnuts booth would be set up. He didn’t want to waste any time when he got to the enormous convention center. He wanted to take Amy directly to the booth and talk turkey with the company representatives on how they could get started.

  Slowing for the stop sign at Coleridge and Balmoral, John saw a white flash as an SUV careened north, doing 50 in a 25. In that brief moment he caught a glimpse of the driver. Danny.

  The Land Rover took a harrowing and tilting right on Trussell Street.

  Instead of turning south and heading toward Woodfield Mall, John took a quick left on Balmoral and a right on Trussell. He slowed the station wagon as he neared Cook Street, looking north and south. Peering south on Cook, John noticed the brake lights of the Land Rover flash as it pulled into a driveway halfway down the block.

  He parked a few houses away and took in the sight of the beautiful home Danny had just walked into. Inexplicably, John was angry. The kid was obviously not destitute, as his
choice of clothing would suggest. The home, a 100-year-old frame house that was impeccably rehabbed, was easily worth over a million dollars.

  ***

  Danny slowly closed the front door and listened for any activity in what should be an empty house.

  All was clear.

  He put the keys to the Land Rover carefully back on the hook near the front door, making sure they were in the exact same position as they were before he had stolen them.

  His mother, Sharon, was a stickler for details. Having the Land Rover insignia facing right instead of left, as she had placed the keys the night before, would be enough for her to know they had been tampered with.

  He kicked his dirty shoes off right there at the front door and began to head for the kitchen, when the front doorbell chimed. Circling back, Danny tried to look out the front window to see who was at the door but only made out a shoulder of the man standing there.

  As soon as he cracked the door open, John shoved his way into the house and slammed the door shut in back of him.

  “What the hell, man?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said John.

  “Get out!”

  “Why were you following me? You think your parents would be interested in knowing you were out joyriding? Do you even have a driver’s license?”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone what you did,” said Danny.

  John took in the sight of the terrified teen and said, “I’m doing this all for a good reason, okay. You have to know that. I’m going to save the Fourth of July celebration.”

  “I thought you were cool, man. I thought…”

  They both jumped when the back door opened, and Danny’s mother walked into the house. She didn’t notice John at first because of where he stood just around the doorframe from Danny.

  “Hi, sweetie. The train was so crowded. I almost didn’t get a seat. Did you get something to eat? There’s leftover lasagna from last night in the fridge. I need to head over and pick up your baby brother at preschool.” She stepped closer to give Danny a peck on the cheek when she noticed John. “Oh! Hello.”