Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  “Your mother didn’t run away, Jackie. She was shot and injured when your grandmother was killed. It was a hit,” said Abby. “They both suffered head wounds, son.”

  “Wait, wait. I’m not following,” said a confused Enright. “They both left because of the drinking. They weren’t shot.”

  Abby could see the torment in Enright’s eyes and he softened his tone even further, “They were shot, Jackie. Your mom was in a rehab place in Chicago for a time afterwards, but it got too dangerous. We thought that maybe the people who Sean put away would try again. You know all that bullshit in the movies about the mob not going after family? That’s exactly what it was for these jerk-offs, a bunch of bullshit. They wanted to take out the ones that Sean cared for the most. You got lucky. They must’ve drawn the line at killing kids. I helped get your mom into Independence House under an assumed name.”

  After seeing that Enright still struggled to understand, Abby said, “I used to be on the job with the Chicago PD. Your grandfather was my mentor on the force. He was really something, Jackie. He was the best. I got hurt bad early on in my career and wound up convalescing at Indy House. I had family close by and it just worked out better for everyone. Wound up working at Indy House later on.”

  He sipped from his bottle of beer, and added, “In the 50s, I left the force because I was really messed up. Could barely walk for some time. Been living around here ever since.” Abby hesitated, took another sip and said, “But after all the stuff went down with Sean, your grandmother, and mom, I helped him save your mom. Sean barely survived himself. They shot the women, but they nearly beat him to death. All of it broke your dad completely. He was out of town when it happened. Poor guy was destroyed by what he found in that house when he came home.”

  “My grandfather’s scars,” mumbled Enright, as he started to comprehend the situation. “I thought they were from prison fights.”

  Abby shook his head and said, “He was just never the same. Neither was your dad. It was good that Sean had powerful friends on the force and at the Trib. They buried the story about your grandmother and mother getting shot. That probably saved your mom, for what that’s worth. With the story buried, no one could let on where your mom was located. It probably saved you, too, of course.”

  “Why would the Outfit still come after him in 1969? He was long gone from the department by then. The damage was already done,” said Enright.

  Abby studied Enright and said, “He was still on the job. He was deep undercover, and quietly causing a shit-storm of trouble. The Outfit figured it out. They went ape shit. They didn’t kill him only because they wanted him to suffer after his wounds healed. Sean was a toothless lion after the hit on your grandmother and mom. He was an empty shell. The Outfit used him as a warning to others. He was so messed up that killing him would’ve been a waste of a bullet.”

  Enright simply stared at the table top, completely lost in thought.

  “Sean Enright did the right thing according to the law, but what did it get him? The prison time that the man did between his ears must have been unbearable,” said Abby, just before he raised his beer bottle in a toast. “To Sean.”

  Enright strained to keep his emotions in check as he sat there and stared at Abby. He tried to absorb everything he learned during his short time in Wisconsin Dells, but suffered informational overload. His hand slid along the table top toward his own bottle of beer, but it stopped short. His shaky fingers curled into a loose fist. Enright was about to speak, but instead he lowered his eyes and remained silent.

  ***

  The moment he walked into his darkened apartment he was struck hard above the left eyebrow by a flying fist. He fell to his knee and tried to catch his breath.

  “Why so secretive, Jack?” asked Vasily from the shadows.

  When Vasily clicked the lamp on, Enright looked up at the block of granite in the leather coat as he hovered over him.

  “Here,” said Vasily as he underhanded a cheap throw pillow to Enright.

  Enright swiped the blood from his lacerated eyebrow with the small pillow and dropped it on the floor. As he righted himself he wanted so badly to pop the block of granite in the mouth, but held off – for now.

  “I feel you avoid me. You must keep me in baby face, how you say, loop.”

  Enright hesitated at first. When Vasily nodded to the block of granite, Enright finally spoke. “Wait. Take it easy. Take it easy. Christ. I’m not avoiding you. It’s something else.”

  “Please, enlighten me,” said Vasily.

  But Enright didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even sure how to form all the new information that rattled around in his head into words. He just stood there with a confused look on his face. Vasily took it as a personal affront and flicked his eyes toward the block of granite. The block of granite hit Enright so hard in the gut that the 233-pound private detective fell face-first to the floor.

  Vasily stepped over, knelt, and spoke softly in Enright’s right ear. “I have bar girls working tonight. Your 10 percent is now one percent. I expect you to make five figures for me. Each week.” When Enright’s angry, bulging eyes flashed Vasily’s way, he continued, “And I get fifty percent of all your earnings from here on, comrade. All photography of cheating husbands and things you do for angry Lake Forest wives. You understand? Yes? And baby face money, I want it all, of course. As a show of respect, no?”

  ***

  One week after he met Abby, Enright ripped up the floorboards in a bedroom closet of John Caul’s tiny post-WWII home on Coleridge Avenue in Balmoral, Illinois. He had to locate the money that the baby-face-mask-wearing Caul had stolen. Jack Enright’s future depended on it.

  Through a thick mental fog brought on by the events of the past days, Enright spent his time haphazardly investigating the Balmoral outcast named John Caul, and those around him for their possible involvement in the “Baby Face Robber” caper. And even with his mind preoccupied, Enright was still able to discern that Caul was, indeed, the “Baby Face Robber.” Enright forced himself to act in his usual cocky and condescending manner to get what he needed, even though he was hurting and confused.

  His other desire was to get Vasily off his ass about whether or not he located the money that the robber stole. The Russian had taken over Enright’s entire criminal existence, and the private detective was angry with himself for even getting involved with the Russian in the first place. Jack Enright’s greed had gotten the best of him – again. He knew that he had to change that part of his personality so that it would never happen again.

  Enright was also able to keep track of the comings and goings of Rita Dimos, his beautiful stalker. Actually, that was the easiest part of his life of late. Rita was so inept in her pursuit of Enright that he could count on her showing up nearly every day. Eventually he cornered her, and using the threat of sexual blackmail, he was sure he’d sufficiently scared her away from following him any more. But that only caused her son Tyler to become more irate with Enright. Now he was in a battle with the Dimos family on two fronts. It was all nearly too much to handle at times. But he was driven to succeed.

  Rita Dimos wanted Enright to cease in his efforts to help her son, Tyler, locate John Caul. She was afraid her son was about to kill Caul for what he had done to her husband, Jason’s, psyche when he robbed him at his restaurant. The usually gregarious Jason had been emotionally shattered over the entire incident.

  From inside John Caul’s bedroom, Enright heard the car door shut in the driveway of the tiny house. The next twenty minutes of his life became a haze-filled blur. Enright found himself in one brutal hand-to-hand fight after the next as friends of Caul began to arrive, one after the other.

  During the incessant fights, a shotgun was brandished by Tyler Dimos, the very kid who initially hired Enright to find John Caul. Tyler wanted Enright to pay the ultimate price for his inapp
ropriate transgressions with his mother, Rita.

  Even as he fought for his life, there was one major thought that sniggled in the back of Jack Enright’s mind. This idea mostly overruled all the others.

  He wasn’t predetermined to be a criminal like he had theorized throughout his entire life – part of that existence spent under the wing of the damaged Sean Enright. Sean Enright was a hero cop. It was true. If that was true anything could be possible for Enright.

  Jack Enright could easily shed his criminal ways and go legitimate. He was an Enright, god damn it. Why not? The thoughts of legitimizing his existence mingled with another lovely vision of being reunited with his estranged daughter. He knew that this could all work out for the best.

  Sure, it was illegal, but if he could locate the money in John Caul’s home and keep it from Vasily’s greedy paws, he could use the dough to make a clean break. He’d get as far away from the Chicago area as he could. It would be his last crime.

  Maybe he’d go back to Wisconsin Dells.

  He felt deep, heartfelt, comfort when he spent time with Abby, his new best friend. Enright never had a best friend. In fact, Abby was more than a friend. He was an instant father figure.

  That was it. It was settled. Jack Enright would fight his way out of this predicament in John Caul’s house and head to Wisconsin to live out his days in peace.

  Maybe he would work in a rehabilitation facility like his new buddy, and father figure, Abby had in years past. It seemed to Enright that the work would satisfy him, especially as patients graduated to the regular world where they could fend for themselves.

  But as his muscles ached after he knocked down the last of the combatants, John Caul himself, for the final time, he was struck with a rather confusing visual image. To him it looked like a divine mirage.

  It was the sight of a beautiful blonde woman as she walked through the front door of Caul’s house. Confident. Alluring. The woman in the mirage then stooped down and grabbed the shotgun from the kitchen floor. The vision began to truly confuse him. The woman’s face was so familiar, and angelic, and yet, he couldn’t quite place where he had seen her before.

  Wait a minute. That was it. She flirted with him in the coffee shop an hour or so earlier in downtown Balmoral. He tried now to say something to the woman, but he was so tired, he couldn’t quite make his mouth work.

  When the woman snicked off the safety on the massive gun, tugged the blonde wig from her head, and shoved the barrel of the shotgun under his chin, all Jack Enright could mutter to Rita Dimos was, “Please don’t.”

  But no one would ever hear his words.

  The voice he used sounded more like a faint echo – traveling through time, and from the mouth a frightened three-year old boy in 1969. Those distant words caught in Enright’s throat the moment he tried to slap the shotgun away.

  ###

  West Bound

  Two days after Bad Reputation

  “Call the cops,” screamed a prissy male clerk as he held the baby face mask-wearing Dwayne chest down on the thick-carpeted floor of the upscale hotel lobby.

  “Don’t bother, brother, I already called ‘em,” said Dwayne. “Hey, you know anything about the chow in the prisons here?”

  The clerk blinked several times and gave him a sideways glance.

  Dwayne said, “Slide this thing off my face. Kinda stuffy.”

  The Lake Geneva police arrived en masse as the clerk tentatively peeled the see-through baby-face mask off the smiling Dwayne. Several of the officers aimed their service pistols and screamed, nearly in unison, “Don’t move! Don’t move or I will shoot! Don’t fucking move!”

  Dwayne turned his head toward the hotel clerk, rolled his eyes, and said in his molasses-slow Kentucky drawl, “Boy, they got a lot of energy.”

  The cop nearest the two men pushed the hotel clerk aside, immediately cuffed Dwayne, then yanked him to his feet. The hotel clerk stepped back around the counter, and the lead officer, a bull of a sergeant asked, “Where’s the gun?”

  “Ain’t no gun, sarge. I was giving the money back.”

  “Well then where’s the money?” asked the sergeant as he squinted in confusion.

  Dwayne aimed his chin toward the hotel clerk. The cop who cuffed Dwayne tugged him toward the doors and roughly escorted him from the hotel. He quickly led Dwayne to his police car, shoved him against the vehicle, and frisked him.

  The week before, John Caul, of Balmoral, Illinois, wanted to make amends for his own misdeeds and offered Dwayne a chance to reenter the prison world he’d grown accustomed to. Dwayne took the offer straight away. All he had to do was return the money that John had robbed from the hotel and claim that he, Dwayne, was the “Baby Face Robber.”

  Dwayne absently scanned the parking lot while the cop checked him for weapons and contraband. His eyes froze in place when he noticed a mint condition, maroon-colored, 1970 Pontiac LeMans parked 75-feet away. It was a car that he’d seen twice before - once when he stole a car in Balmoral to make this trip into Lake Geneva, and the other time when the LeMans drove past him after he parked the stolen car down the road and walked to the hotel. He could make out the outline of a man in the driver’s seat, but with the sun’s glare beaming off the windshield, he couldn’t make-out any more detail.

  The cop tugged Dwayne into a more upright position, opened the police car’s back door and stuffed him inside. The cop slid into the driver’s seat, and they took off.

  The cop eyed Dwayne through the rear view mirror and said, “Don’t say a word until you see the detectives.”

  “You got it, buddy. Not a word from me. I will remain silent until that moment in time, officer. Mum as a mum,” said Dwayne, smiling satisfactorily.

  The cop let out a breath and said, “Just shut the fuck up.”

  As they traversed the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, area on the way to the Walworth County jail, Dwayne relaxed in the back seat as best he could and dreamt of his days ahead, where he’d meet new acquaintances, probably enemies, too, and acclimate himself to one of the Wisconsin State Penitentiaries. Once there, he would spend a few years of his life behind bars. He sighed with the relief of a man heading back home to be welcomed by his adoring family following a long business trip.

  After being released from the Kentucky State pen, just a couple of weeks prior, Dwayne spent a few days in his hometown of Jackson, Kentucky, in search of the former love of his life, the beautiful and sexy Waynelle Stidham. But he couldn’t locate her. Once it was apparent that Waynelle was nowhere to be found in Jackson, he headed north toward Chicago in hopes of locating his long-lost sister, Amy. Shortly after he discovered Amy living in Balmoral, she introduced him to John Caul. The like-minded Caul and Dwayne became fast friends, especially after Dwayne knew his new friend’s intentions toward his sister were sincere. Dwayne may have been out of Amy’s life for nearly twenty years, but she was still kin.

  The initial loss of Waynelle Stidham after his incarceration was heartbreaking for Dwayne. It was truly the worst part of his confinement. Waynelle was a sweetheart and an extremely innocent blonde-haired young woman. She was a dead-ringer for a pop star known for shaving her head during a manic episode a few years back. Only Waynelle had a kindly disposition and was “chubby in all the right places,” as Dwayne put it.

  Although she was in a relationship when he first met her, nearly every young man in Jackson vied for Waynelle’s affection back in the day. It was Dwayne’s comical intelligence that finally won her over from her mailman boyfriend all those years ago. That and Waynelle believed that the similarity in their names was a sign from above.

  Waynelle loved TV. She introduced Dwayne to the classic cinema he still enjoyed to this day. Hitchcock flicks were their favorites. They were so infatuated with the master director’s films that they planned to travel to the sites where Hitchcock fil
med some of his pictures. Places like Mt. Rushmore, where North by Northwest was shot, San Francisco, which was the location for Vertigo, and of course Bodega Bay, California, where the eerie flick The Birds was produced. They went as far as to purchase a map book that they used to highlight their intended driving routes.

  Their love of Hitchcock and all that he stood for led them to use “Bodega Bay” as their safe phrase when either of them was in trouble and needed to get out of a situation without rousing the suspicions of anyone else around them.

  Waynelle was supposed to be with Dwayne the morning he was arrested but she had smartly stayed home in their 30-foot trailer to await the Cable TV repairman instead. That was the day that Dwayne got into a wild shootout with a Kentucky State Trooper named Tommy Deaton. Dwayne shot and injured the trooper and was also wounded by return fire, but the anguish of ultimately losing Waynelle was the worst pain of all.

  Dwayne wasn’t a mean man, really. He suffered true and sincere regret over having injured the now ex-Trooper Deaton. Tommy Deaton was simply on patrol and doing his job in the Breathitt County area, when he surprised Dwayne at his hidden marijuana grow-spot on state property near Frozen Lake. The gunfight erupted after Dwayne saw movement in a tree line and the glint of sunshine off the officer’s chrome-plated handgun. He had wrongly surmised that marijuana poachers were there to kill him and take his crop. Dwayne was blinded by the sun and the Trooper was decked out in camouflage instead of his usual gray and black colored uniform. If Dwayne had known he fired bullets at a police officer, he would have surrendered immediately without another shot.

  Waynelle visited Dwayne regularly in prison for the first few years. The uniformed guards would mercilessly gawk and flirt with her each and every time, though. One of the guards, in particular, was excessively annoying. With each visit, the lecherous guard’s actions grew more and more persistent. She never told Dwayne about the harassment, but her frequent visits dwindled over the following months.