Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  “Hi, I’m John Caul. How are you?”

  They shook hands but Sharon wasn’t sure about the situation. There was palpable tension brewing between her son and John, but Sharon chose not to pry at this time. She had actually seen John on a few occasions around town and thought he was quite handsome – sexy, even.

  She noticed John the most often when he shopped at the Gemstone and always wondered why the cashiers would hurriedly shut their lanes down when they saw John approaching with his shopping cart. He seemed like a very cordial and smiley sort. The sour expressions the cashiers and other employees at the food store exhibited toward John never made sense to her.

  And who was she kidding, since her husband Donald had transferred to this area with his job, he had little time for Sharon. She was being ignored not only through a lack of conversation in the home but in the marital bed as well. John was handsome, that was certain to Sharon. But of late, she had noticed that there were a lot of handsome men in Balmoral.

  John finally said, “Your son volunteered to help me maintain the little league ball fields, and we were discussing the hours. I hope I didn’t startle you.”

  Sharon became pleasantly surprised. John’s interest in helping her son Danny made this Balmoral man even more appealing. She said, “Danny? You never told me about this. So, mister…?”

  “John Caul. John.” He turned and looked Danny directly in the eye and continued, “Danny’s been a lot of help. I can really count on him.”

  Danny was truly terrified and about to spill the beans about John’s history to his mom. As he opened his mouth to blurt out the details of the Baby Face Robber’s botched robbery attempt, John quickly continued, “When Danny gets his driver’s license, he’ll be even more help because he can legally drive the mower around town as needed.”

  “Oh, but that’s a year away,” said Sharon.

  John and Danny’s eyes met and locked, and John said, “Huh. A whole year. Really? How about that...Danny?”

  CHAPTER 26

  “I used to be on the job in Evanston,” he said to Jimmy the cop.

  “I retired a few years back.” Retired, fired and almost put in jail, whatever, this tough-looking, Balmoral copper was buying it, thought Enright. “Now I do my own thing.”

  Jimmy, sitting at the small, U-shaped counter of Dink’s Diner, had a bad feeling about the guy sitting across from him. There was something wrong with the guy. The cashier at the Gemstone on Main thought the same. That’s why she had called Jimmy on his cell phone after this Enright character stood at her register while buying a single pack of gum and asked her all sorts of probing questions about life in Balmoral. The cashier thought that maybe the guy was a burglar casing the town or something.

  Jimmy sensed it, too. There was something crooked about him. It was more than the way he dressed, wearing an ill-fitting and cheap sport coat and off-brand blue jeans. It was the way he never looked a person directly in the eyes. Enright always looked a few degrees to the right or left of the person he was addressing. It placed Jimmy on guard.

  “These Baby Face robberies are something, huh?” said Enright, noticing the way the freshly-sipped coffee caught in Jimmy’s throat. “You okay?”

  Jimmy took a sip of water and cleared his throat, “Fine, thanks.”

  Enright made sure that no one else was listening as he leaned forward for some low volume “cop talk.”

  “I hear the guy mostly likes robbing breakfast restaurants…like this one. But he’s hitting everything around this town right here. Just never in this town itself. Strange, huh? I’m sure they have a task force set up to catch the shit-heel, though, right? I mean, I’ve been out of the game for so long, but I figured that was the cop’s first move.”

  When Jimmy didn’t offer up an answer, because there was no Baby Face Robber task force in place, Enright knew that his source in the Buffalo Grove police department was right. He was the only Baby Face Robber hunter at this point. He smiled and waved a “no need to answer” Jimmy’s way.

  Jimmy quickly finished off his coffee, stood, put a couple of dollars next to his plate, nodded a goodbye to Enright and made his way to the cash register.

  Lou met him at the front counter. Jimmy handed a twenty to Lou to pay for his tab. And as Lou made change, he said, “You get tired of Curious George over there, too? He asks a lot of questions.”

  Jimmy said, “Yeah? What do you think he’s up to?”

  “He asks me what’s different around here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, is there something new happening in town. Is something wrong here, stuff like that. Weird shit. And he asks forceful, too. I don’t like that. This is my place. He’s police or something?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jimmy.

  “We know the only thing different is that we won’t have the Fourth of July celebration in summer. But why would anyone else care about that, huh?”

  Jimmy pulled away from Dink’s Diner in his police car in time to see John, driving the old Chevy wagon, turn on Coleridge, followed closely by a black Escalade, and soon another, and a few seconds later, yet another black Escalade.

  His first inclination was to keep driving south on Balmoral and not to let the sight of the three SUVs following his brother get to him, odd as it was.

  In the past, he’d not even look twice at something out of place with his younger brother, but things were different for Jimmy now. He was interested in what John was up to. Jimmy had self-preservation on his mind.

  ***

  Dwayne, in Amy’s 10-year-old car, spotted John’s station wagon turning onto a street up ahead. He smiled to himself, thinking, “What the hell, maybe I can catch up to him and shoot the shit for a few minutes before applying for the next job.”

  Dwayne’s employment search wasn’t yielding too many results up to this point even though he’d only spent a few hours at it. There were fast-food job openings here and there, but those franchises usually frowned upon hiring convicted felons. He knew his best bet would be getting a gig at some mom-and-pop place in a town like Balmoral.

  He thought the area was beautiful. Not Kentucky, rolling hills beautiful, but quite appealing all the same. He’d never been to any New England small towns, but he had seen photos and movies filmed there and thought Balmoral was pretty damned close to that kind of quintessential, small-town splendor.

  There was a slow-moving, Balmoral cop car in front of him so he played it cool, holding back from his first impulse to pass him. That’s when he noticed John’s old Chevy wagon turn on a street up ahead followed by three, black SUVs.

  The Balmoral cop car turned onto the same street. Dwayne, trying to avoid any unwanted attention by the police, drove to the next street and took that to Dundee Avenue circling back to Coleridge. He arrived on Coleridge in time to see three, black Escalades park in front of a house with either a bad paint job or some sort of stains all over it.

  It was obvious to Dwayne that the SUVs were following the Chevy wagon. Before long the cop car drove slowly past with the cop himself looking down the house’s shitty-looking driveway. Dwayne played it cool as the cop drove past, tossing a wave and a grin.

  ***

  The garage door was wide open and Brick had a .40-caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol pushed into John’s neck.

  Aaron, and his two other cohorts, Peaches, a short muscular dude, and Junior, a rangy and dangerous-appearing man, ripped up the inside of John’s garage.

  Peaches picked up one of John’s junk-based metal sculptures and admired it.

  “Dude!” said Brick, and Peaches put the sculpture down and continued to search.

  “Just tell us, man,” Brick said to John. “We don’t need the hassle. Where’s the shit?” He pressed the gun harder into John’s neck and added, “You don’t, either. We
take it and go. Easy as that.”

  John nodded to the metal cabinet near the weed whacker hanging by a hook on the wall. Aaron stepped over to open the door and extracted a small single bottle of Vicodin. “What the hell? This is it?” he said.

  John, for some odd reason, wasn’t afraid.

  He knew these drug dealers wanted the drugs and not him dead until they actually had their mitts on the goods. So he was confident that he was in a good spot, being that the bulk of the Vikes were now hidden in the little league field’s equipment shack where no one would look for them.

  But Brick pushed John into the wall of the garage and pointed the Glock at his chest, and said, “That’s your large quantity, one shitty bottle? We wasted good gas money for this shit?”

  Okay, now John was scared; he figured it all wrong. “Well, hell,” he thought, “they are going to kill me.” He didn’t see his life pass in front of his eyes or anything, but an urge to urinate grew and grew to an uncomfortable level.

  ***

  Jimmy sat in his idling police car at the corner of Dundee and Coleridge wondering if he should go and see if John was okay. His guard was definitely up, especially after interacting with that asshole Enright back at Dink’s Diner. The three SUVs now parked in front of John’s house were the toppers, though.

  He couldn’t let go of the nagging feeling that his brother was in danger. He pushed the thought aside and wondered what would happen if people found out that his brother was the Baby Face Robber and how that would screw him out of his upcoming job promotion.

  What the hell was he doing allowing these negative thoughts to seep into his mind? And, hell, this was Balmoral in the middle of a warm and sunny day. What could be wrong? He shook the thoughts away and drove off.

  ***

  “Hey, guys,” was all he said, enough for John to immediately recognize the Kentucky drawl and the owner of the voice.

  Peaches, Aaron and Junior all extracted their own guns and pointed them toward the voice but none of them could see anything. That is until the barrel of the long rifle poked from around the corner of John’s house opposite of the driveway.

  “Eh, eh, drop ‘em,” said Dwayne.

  And when they didn’t, Dwayne turned toward the neighbor’s house and said, “Ernie! Roger! You got a bead, guys?”

  That’s when all the combatants in the garage turned to see the glint of sunshine off a scope and two more rifle barrels aimed right at them from the dense bushes of the neighbor’s house. The combatant’s confusion was nearly comical, their heads swiveled, their guns pointed here and there.

  “Fella’s, just take what you got and go. No need to make this shitty,” said Dwayne, the lackadaisical confidence in his voice enough to punch his point home.

  Peaches leaned over and began placing his gun on the ground and Aaron, the bottle of Vikes on top of the Chevy wagon.

  “Keep it. We don’t need your guns or shit. We got plenty of our own. Remember that,” said Dwayne.

  Peaches straightened, and he, Brick and the others put their guns away and quickly made their way down the driveway toward their SUVs.

  ***

  Jimmy felt another layer of relief when he saw the four, tough-looking men saunter to their SUVs.

  The largest of the four, a man with a scar along his forehead, turned before he got behind the wheel of an SUV and made a gun with his hand, pretend fired and smiled.

  John, who stood close to his house, waved in a nonchalant, “toodle-loo” fashion.

  The bad thoughts had crept back into the forefront of his mind as he drove away a few minutes earlier. Now Jimmy wasn’t in his cop car. He had parked it on Monument Street and walked the half block to the hiding place he’d chosen on the porch of a house five down from John’s home.

  Continuing to peer through binoculars, Jimmy waited for John to go back inside his house before making his way to his police car and continuing his normally scheduled day.

  ***

  At John’s kitchen table, Dwayne untwisted picture-hanging wire off of the downside end of a shepherd’s hook and released the pellet gun scope into his hand.

  It was a good thing that some folks in Balmoral were like the ones in Lake Zurich – leaving their garages open all day long. And that this neighbor in particular, the one whose garage Dwayne had foraged through, was a gardening enthusiast.

  Upon seeing the dire straits that John was in, Dwayne had improvised his way into creating an army of three out of one scoped pellet gun, some wire and the neighbors’ penchant for having way too many shepherd’s hooks in their yard. The pellet gun lay across the kitchen table and now Dwayne placed the shepherd’s hook alongside it.

  A shaky John stood at the sink and started taking a whole tablet of Vicodin, thought better and snapped it in half. He downed the half pill with a chug of cold milk from the carton.

  “How long have you been hooked?” asked Dwayne.

  John took a seat at the table in the now cleaned and repaired kitchen and said, “Who knows?”

  He noticed the grim expression his new friend was displaying and added, “A couple of years. I just admitted it to myself is what I really meant to say.”

  Dwayne started putting the scope back on the pellet gun and said, “You going to meetings or talking to anyone about it?”

  “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” John said with a twinge of frustration and anger. After seeing the hurt in Dwayne’s eyes, he added, “Sorry.”

  Dwayne waved it off. If this was a year ago and he was in the Kentucky State Penitentiary, John’s ass would’ve been on the floor about now. But today, in John’s kitchen, Dwayne was a softer and more forgiving man.

  It was also that he liked John right from the start, especially after he made his play back at the Italian beef place. In the past, if a dude had walked up behind Dwayne like John had, he’d have to deal with the certain swift pain he’d receive. But Dwayne felt an odd sort of kinship with John because the man was looking out for his sister, Amy. And to Dwayne, that made all the difference in the world. In his mind, he and John were instant friends, brothers, really.

  Dwayne asked, “You got two or three bedrooms here?”

  CHAPTER 27

  Sitting in the oaken den of their million dollar home and sipping Earl Grey tea, Danny’s parents, Donald and Sharon, were perplexed and beginning to overanalyze the situation. But that was their nature especially when they were feeling a lack of control in their lives.

  Danny had not left his room in the past few days, except for bathroom breaks. They had to bring his meals to him. He wouldn’t discuss what was bothering him. And he didn’t even want to play with his younger brother, something he loved doing more than anything else.

  Danny’s emotional freeze-out started after that man named John Caul had stopped by their home to speak with him about volunteering. Sharon could see that her son was off his game, stammering and not his usual and confident self.

  Donald, measuring his words carefully, said, “Do you think there was abuse?”

  Sharon didn’t want to even consider it.

  She knew that this situation didn’t fit the pattern of stranger abuse, for the perpetrator to actually step foot in the home of the one they abuse. It was completely out of character. That type of behavior was usually observed in family and close friend abuse.

  Honestly, she thought, John Caul was a perfectly normal man - handsome, polite and self-assured. She had dealt with abusers in her years as a therapist and John just didn’t fit the mold. But of course, she could be dead wrong.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” she said.

  ***

  Danny was acting like a confused, little kitten. The idea of not being in control of his situation as it related to that older dude, John, totally knocked him off his usual, smartass g
ame.

  That asshole was the Baby Face Robber he had heard about on the news. But Danny thought he seemed so cool, how could he be pulling off armed robberies? Danny’s 15-year-old brain just couldn’t put all the pieces together. The guy lived in Balmoral - weren’t people around here well-off? Why would he need to steal from others? He volunteered all the time, cutting grass and shit. What the hell?

  He wondered if he should tell his parents what he knew. But could that put his family in danger? He knew that when his little brother, Joseph, was born, he began acting out, but he loved that little guy now and didn’t want to even think that anything bad could happen to him. He had to keep quiet and stay in the house for now. It was the only way to assure his family’s safety.

  But something deep within the reptilian recesses of his brain was churning. The thoughts confused and frightened him even more. And yet, he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to rob someone at gunpoint. He wondered what the adrenaline rush would feel like. He had placed himself in dangerous situations in the past, when making up stories about kids bigger, stronger and one hell of a lot meaner than he was, but the idea of gunplay fascinated him.

  CHAPTER 28

  Their dinner together was pleasant enough. They had met at the Irish pub in Balmoral, but John had chosen a French bistro in the quaint town of Long Grove for dinner. The bistro’s specialty was coq au vin.

  He did something he hadn’t done since his father’s funeral. He wore a sport coat.

  Except for the ride over in the crappy old station wagon, Amy was impressed with the evening that John had planned. Amy, aware now of John’s Vicodin taking ways, insisted on driving the old car herself to ensure they’d get around undamaged. He was a gentleman and she appreciated that, but she still needed to feel safe.