by Matt Hader
***
“I’ll need a year’s payment up front,” said Jer, the owner of the old carpet store. “And proof of insurance before we sign a lease. Can’t have you backsliding on me, Sparky. Can’t afford it.”
John let the Sparky epitaph go, as he began writing a check.
Jer cleared his throat and said, “Cash.”
John tucked his checkbook back into his pants pocket and nodded. As John walked from the store, Jer called after him, “My brother-in-law’s an insurance agent, I’m sure he’d love to help you with the property insurance policy. I’ll give him a call while you’re getting the rent.”
Jer had a sweetheart deal going with his alcoholic brother-in-law, the insurance man. Jer would get a 20 percent kickback on any policy he sent his brother-in-law’s way and in return, his drunken brother-in-law would be free to carouse with the similarly alcoholic ladies he met and had trysts with at the roadhouses along rural Route 14. Several of the trysts Jer had witnessed himself as he, himself, was canoodling with the ladies.
And as part of this agreement, Jer promised that the brother-in-law’s wife, Jer’s sister, would never find out about any of it. It was a win-win situation for all involved.
Jer waited patiently inside the empty storefront while John went to the bank in town and came back with a stack of bills to pay the year’s rent. But as John was about to hand over the stacks of cash, he pulled them back.
Jer was confused and asked, “Hey, we had a deal.”
“We will, once you sign off on allowing me to double the size of the roadside signage,” said John. He added, “You know, and I know that this new business will succeed if enough eyes see the sign.”
John held the cash just out of Jer’s reach. It didn’t take all that long to consider.
“Do whatever you want,” said Jer as John handed him the dough.
After they both signed the lease agreement, Jer told John to take his time getting the insurance certificate to him. He knew he was good for it now. Jer handed John the keys, stuffed the cash into his jacket pockets and left.
As John locked up the newly-leased Kid Crew location, someone honked the horn of their car just once. John turned and his heart sank.
Parked next to his old station wagon was a white Land Rover just like the one he saw Danny operating. But as he stepped to his car, he noticed that a woman was behind the wheel and the driver’s window was down. She opened the door and swung her legs around as if about to get out of the vehicle.
“Hi, John. I’m Sharon, Danny’s mom.”
“Right. How are you?”
But before Sharon could answer, John got a visual reply. Sharon sat in the driver seat of her Land Rover wearing a revealing tank top and a short skirt that was hiked up to its highest logical place. The buttoned-down look she sported at her home the first time he had met her was no more. Even her demeanor seemed more relaxed. And by way of an answer to John’s question, she did finally say, “Hop in.”
Sharon hatched this plan after knowing that going through the police to investigate John would be a dead end, especially with Jimmy on the case.
She knew right away that it was an ill-advised strategy from the start. But she had to know if there was something reprehensible going on between John and her son, Danny. And the more she obsessed about the troubles her son was having, she couldn’t help but think that her own personal relationship problems needed attention as well.
Donald hadn’t touched her in a few months, and she craved attention - male attention. Even now, it was utterly confusing to her, and she wasn’t sure when her plan went from saving her son from difficulty to getting into a bit of erotic trouble of her own, but here she was.
She was an incredibly sexy woman, maybe not in a Victoria’s Secret model manner, but in that relaxed, intelligent-woman-who-knows-exactly-what-she-wants-from-life sort of way.
John really wasn’t interested in what Sharon was selling. All he could think about was his dwindling bank accounts and trying to get the Kid Crew business off the ground. He was truly more focused on the need to keep Amy interested in him than anything else, though.
What he said was, “I really…can’t. I’m sorry.”
John thought it was enough to politely rebuke her advances, but he was wrong. She really wanted what she wanted. She quickly hopped out of the car, pushed John back against the old station wagon, leaned in and kissed him deeply.
As they separated, John said, “I can’t.” And he turned, got into his car and drove away.
Sharon’s dreamy sexuality faded quickly as her anger took over. No one had ever turned her down - ever.
CHAPTER 39
In the kitchen area of the Athenian restaurant after the lunch rush had dwindled, it took several go-rounds of explanation before Jason settled down enough to truly understand what his brother, Lou, and his son, Tyler, were telling him.
And now, for the first time since robbing Jason of $1,200, John was back inside the restaurant, looking repentant and carrying a small, brown paper bag.
“Why should I not kill him here right now?” said Jason.
So Lou tried again with, “Because, brother, John helped us. He helped our family. Do you not understand?”
Lou didn’t want to explain the part about his wife, Rita, almost being forcibly raped through a blackmail scheme by the sleazy Enright, though. He’d keep that from both Tyler, who wasn’t aware even though he was there, and his younger brother, Jason. It would just hurt them too much to know.
John extended the small, brown paper bag to Jason, and said, “It’s yours.”
But Jason didn’t accept it. Instead his eyes scanned the kitchen looking for a sharp implement to impale John with.
“I told you. I told you if I catch you that I’d kill you slowly,” Jason said.
John, even though in real danger, did not back down. He pushed the bag into Jason’s hands. Jason was so angry and frustrated, he looked as if he was either going to lash out physically or cry. He finally opened the bag and peered inside. He reached into the bag full of hundred dollar bills and gave them a cursory count.
“Don’t understand. There’s more than $3,000 here,” he said.
The amount was $3,600 to be exact. John had counted them twice to make sure.
John said, “We’ll say you loaned me the initial money, and I’m paying you back with interest. I’m truly sorry for what I put you and your family through.”
But Jason wanted blood, and Lou and Tyler could tell.
Finally, Tyler stepped between his father and John and softly spoke to Jason. “Dad, I wanted to kill him. I almost did it, but his brother stopped me. His brother’s a cop.”
Jason’s eyes fluttered and he finally looked Tyler in the eye, so Tyler continued, “His brother was going to arrest me, Pops, but John talked him out of it.”
Lou added, “No one will know, brother. Tyler is not in trouble, and John is sincere in his apology. Please accept it.”
Jason sent John a murderous glare, his mind wandering to how he had been visualizing this moment and how it would play out. It was a scenario that had run through his thoughts a hundred times a day since he’d been robbed and his dignity had been stripped bare.
He always imagined finding the Baby Face Robber, alone as he stepped from his green Saturn on a darkened, dead end street. That’s how Jason had seen the vision in his deadly daydream.
Jason wouldn’t use a gun, but would disarm the robber with a large aluminum baseball bat. A quick strike to the shoulder, and the 9mm in the masked man’s hand would tumble to the ground.
Jason would kick the gun from the area of operation and toss the bat aside, using his bare hands for the remainder of the wet work. He imagined beating the robber in the face repeatedly with his clenched fist while calmly voicing his disdain fo
r the perpetrator.
Jason would let the robber know what he had done to him, to his family, to his business and how it would never go back to being the same.
After enough blood was spilled from the robber’s face, Jason would firmly wrap his thick fingers around the neck of the now unmasked man. He’d slowly squeeze the life out of the man who had ruined his life.
And as most fantasies go, the locations tend to change at a moment’s notice – so after the robber was no longer breathing, Jason always saw himself dragging the body to the quaint Town of Maine Cemetery on Touhy Avenue in Park Ridge, only two blocks from his home, where an already completed grave had been dug.
In his fantasy, he’d kick the body into the grave, and in a blink of an eye, the hole would be filled in and covered with fresh grass. Jason would be immediately clean of blood and dirt - smiling as he sat down for dinner in his home with his beautiful family.
His problem would be solved and he could go on with his life. That’s how Jason had continuously fantasized about taking care of the Baby Face Robber.
But in reality, it took another few minutes of apologetic go-rounds between John, Tyler, Lou and Jason, before Jason finally calmed down enough to fix his stare again on John and ask, “You like blueberry pancakes?”
Jason finally hugged Tyler, and they both shuddered with a mixture of joy and relief.
CHAPTER 40
The train ride into the city of Chicago from Balmoral was a pleasant one, or so he thought. John gestured to points of interest along the way from their comfortable seats, and Amy pretended to be interested in what John had to say about the various bits of trivia he spouted.
“Robert Reed from the Brady Bunch grew up in that house right there,” he said as they passed through Des Plaines.
“Park Ridge was originally called Brickton because of all the brick manufacturing companies located there at one time,” he continued.
She had made a mistake when befriending John.
It actually gnawed at her from the moment they met, but she had been so desperate to find a job, start a career and begin a new life. What it mostly boiled down to, though, was that Amy was emotionally kicking herself for allowing another man to prescribe her life and future for her.
John was handsome and gentlemanly enough, and he was helping her brother, but he still had too much baggage.
She had done just a cursory bit of recon of John and his existence after they became more involved in the Kid Crew venture. What she learned was that John had a history in Balmoral of being an outcast, and possibly a dangerous one, too.
She found out about the fire at the high school and how the locals never believed his story of how it was all an accident. Even though she wound up asking fifteen different people in town about John, they all had the same story about her new business partner.
Amy knew, first hand, that he was kicking a drug habit, as well, and that was the final straw. She had to figure out a way to both keep the job of running the Kid Crew franchise, something she truly wanted to do, and of dissuading John from pursuing her romantically.
She felt like a fraud for proceeding this way, but she really needed the job, just not John as a love interest. She needed to work on her own life before allowing another man into it.
She owed that to herself.
And really, if John knew what she was truly thinking, he would totally understand. But she couldn’t chance him knowing the full truth. So she played along in a way. Not overtly with affection, because that would absolutely not be her style, but with faux interest in everything John had to say.
“Brickton, huh? Because of the bricks. That’s interesting…”
Departing the Ogilvie Transportation Center on Madison Avenue in downtown Chicago, John and Amy, each carrying an overnight bag, took a brisk stroll to the State Street corporate offices of the Kid Crew. As they waited for the light to change at Clark Street, John gently took Amy’s hand in his.
She didn’t instantly pull away, but after the light changed, and they stepped forward, she made a move to pass a slower walker and dropped John’s grasp.
John never tried to take her hand for the remainder of the short walk, and they soon found themselves riding in an elevator to the fifth floor of a 20-story building.
There they stepped directly into the lobby of the Kid Crew corporate offices. The colorful signage was placed on the wall behind the reception desk, but the desk itself was empty. John cleared his throat, and both he and Amy could hear someone stepping quickly down a hall towards them.
“Hey, there they are!” said Henry, truly happy to see Amy more than John. He added, “Ready to hit the books?”
And the books they hit.
They studied the Kid Crew from the ground up. In the first eight hours of instruction, John and Amy were shown the proper bookkeeping techniques, schematics and photos of the correct layouts for the retail outlets and much more.
They learned that the kids they’d be dealing with were never to be spoken of as customers, or children, or kids, but as “crew members.”
During one of the hourly, five-minute breaks, John made his way to the men’s room and had to walk past the reception area.
He noticed, again, that the reception desk was empty. His curiosity got the best of him and he sidestepped the men’s room to walk down the hallway to the other side of the office suites.
There John found one empty office after another. Some of the offices looked like they hadn’t been used in a long time.
“I wasn’t really trying to hide this, John. I hope you believe me,” said Henry, now standing in the hallway near one of the empty offices.
“Kid Crew is real, isn’t it?” asked John.
“It’s a real business, but we’ve had a tough time keeping an administrative and marketing team. I’ve been doing everything myself. We have all the franchise locations that are listed in our marketing material, you can check for yourself.”
John was now mentally kicking himself for not doing that before he sank his original money into this venture or renting the building on Route 14.
As John surveyed the empty offices, he made sure Amy wasn’t hearing any of this. He stepped into the reception area and looked down the other hallway, where he could see her reading from one of the manuals Henry had given them.
“She can’t hear us. I turned up the radio,” said Henry. He added, “I do need another $10,000, though, John. I hate doing this to you, but if I can get that money, I’ll be able to give this excellent franchise business developer I know the signing bonus he’s requiring to start. If I can get him on board, I’ll be able to raise the capital to staff the offices again. You know all those donut shop and ice cream store combinations you see everywhere now, he’s the brains behind that.”
“And if I don’t?” asked John.
Henry wanted to speak but his eyes watered up, and he shrugged his shoulders a little instead.
“Shit,” was all John could muster.
***
Amy was energized as they stepped out onto State Street from their first day of instruction with Henry.
She said, “I never thought learning about Excel spreadsheets could be so entertaining. Henry’s a fantastic teacher, don’t you think?”
John wasn’t paying a lick of attention to Amy, though. His eyes were on the building across the street, where, in the lobby, a bank branch was located.
She asked absently, “Do you think he’s seeing anyone?”
“Um, what?”
Amy couldn’t believe she let that slip. “So, the hotel is a walk or a cab ride?”
John kept his eye on the busy bank branch.
His eyes scanned the wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling glass front, and the double door placement on the facade. The teller’s counter was an L-shaped
affair with six positions, but had only two tellers stationed there now. Neither of them were doing a whole lot of work. They looked bored in the otherwise empty bank.
John’s eyes swiveled to the alleyway next to the bank building itself. The front door of the bank was only five paces to the alley opening.
Shifting back to the bank he observed that there was no visible guard on duty.
He shook the thoughts flooding his head away, turned to Amy while sporting a forced grin and said, “The hotel is just around the corner. A couple of blocks at the most.”
***
“The master bedroom is to the right, and the guest room is to the left,” said the smartly-dressed bellman with the perfect teeth and blonde highlights.
John slipped him a twenty.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to bring the bags into the master bedroom?” asked the bellman.
Amy looked a bit stricken and confused by the hotel room situation. The hotel suite was beautiful, very posh and modern, and she knew they’d be staying the night, but John had told her that they’d have separate rooms.
“Here’s fine, thanks,” said John.
“Mr. Caul, when you’re ready for the dinner preparation, just press “zero” on the hotel phone, and the chef and his team will head on up. You have a great stay.”
As the bellman exited, he caught a glimpse of Amy’s backside, locked eyes with - and looked away from - a not too happy John. John waited for the door latch to click before turning to Amy.
John said, “Is everything okay?”
“It’s beautiful…”
“It has separate rooms. I just thought that this setup would be more convenient for us if we wanted to go over the Kid Crew material later tonight.”
“Yeah, John, I’m…not sure…”