Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  Dwayne ignored the cop and moved toward John, who was on his riding mower a few hundred yards away. John made it a habit to mow the Balmoral little league baseball fields every week during the summer. It was one of his more legal ways of giving back to his community.

  A confused expression crossed John’s face as Dwayne stepped closer. John killed the engine, yanked the iPod earbuds out of his ears, and hopped off the mower. Dwayne could hear The Smithereens “Blues Before and After” seeping from the ear-buds before John turned off his iTouch.

  “Shit. You escaped,” said John.

  Dwayne tossed a nod over his shoulder. “You got company. That’s a cop, brother. Could see it a mile away,” said Dwayne. They both noticed the Crown Vic pulling between two parked cars, trying to stay out of sight, but to no avail.

  John nodded, then put his hands on his hips and lowered his head. He looked like a man whose troubles were only beginning. He threw his own nod over his shoulder, motioning to the tree line near the railroad tracks and said, “That kid is still up my ass. He’s got me cornered, and I’m not sure what to do.”

  Dwayne recognized the shabbily dressed teenager sulking near the tree line. His name was Danny. The week before, Danny nearly cost John his freedom, but John had devised a plan to scare him straight. His plan, so far, had not worked out.

  They moved toward a flimsily-built sports equipment shed and stepped inside. Dwayne immediately pulled wads of folded bills out of his pockets. When he got all the money out in the open, he shuffled it into one stack and handed it all to John.

  “What the hell is this?” asked John.

  Dwayne could’ve easily kept the money for himself, but it just wasn’t in his DNA. “Long story. But they didn’t believe me, and they gave this all back. Well, most of it, anyway,” said Dwayne. “Like I said, long story.”

  John rubbed the bridge of his nose and considered his next move for just a moment. He handed all the cash back over to Dwayne and said, “You’ll need it to get away from here. Go as far away as you can. You don’t need to be tangled up in my shit.”

  Dwayne stood there for a brief moment, unsure. Then replied, “I got to be honest. I could really use it.”

  John nodded and said, “Glad to help.”

  Dwayne left and trekked to the nearby cheap motel where Tubby was staying. The 1970s maroon LeMans was parked in front of the room’s door. The car had Kentucky plates on it, and when Dwayne looked inside, there was a dog-eared map book opened to the San Francisco bay area on the passenger seat. A sloppily written note on the map book page read: ‘I-80 all the way!’ There was also a “For Sale” sign with a Kentucky-area code lying on the back seat.

  Dwayne slipped Tubby’s motel room key out of his pocket. He wished now that he had taken the car keys to the hillbilly’s LeMans as well. The moment he opened the motel room door, he was kicked in the nostrils by the distinct smell of moonshine. He followed the odor to the bathroom where he found a tub lined with thirty sealed mason jars of white lightning. Dwayne figured that Tubby was probably taking care of a couple of birds on his trip to the area. Besides killing Dwayne, Tubby was obviously on a moonshining run, most likely to the Uptown neighborhood on Chicago’s north side. The Uptown area had been home to one of Chicago’s largest Appalachian populations since the 1940s.

  Dwayne was surprised to see that the not-so-intelligent Tubby was a Mac user. His laptop sat open on the rickety desk and when Dwayne made it come to life, he lost his breath as the desktop background image came into view. It was an aerial satellite photo of Bodega Bay, California. “What the hell is going on?” Dwayne asked no one. Bodega Bay was Waynelle Stidham and Dwayne Bowling’s safe phrase. He wondered if she loaded the image on the Mac to send a secret S.O.S.

  Dwayne sunk down on the lumpy bed and heard the crinkling of paper under the unmade blankets. He stood, yanked the blankets away, and grabbed a few wrinkled sheets of computer printout paper. The top printout was a Wikipedia entry for Mt. Rushmore, the site of Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest. That was disturbing enough, but the other was for a wedding service company that performed ceremonies on luxury boats in Bodega Bay. There was a note on the printout, written in different handwriting than the note on the map book in the car. It read: ‘Ollie - this is the place. June 12th.’

  ***

  Dwayne purchased a plane ticket to San Francisco, with cash, at O’Hare International Airport a few hours later. But after a snippy TSA agent ushered him aside and advised him to wait for extra security inspections, he had second thoughts about flying. He hadn’t done anything suspicious, other than paying cash for the ticket, traveling at the last minute, and without any luggage. It was the security lines that bothered him, though. They reminded Dwayne so much of prison life. He just couldn’t chance mouthing off to one of the entitled TSA agents and getting locked up. He just couldn’t risk it.

  Later that night, after Dwayne sweet-talked the airline-ticketing agent into reimbursing him, he purchased a clunky 1973 Harley Sportster for $1,500 from a gas station on Mannheim Road just outside the airport. Dwayne drove west on I-80. He had to save Waynelle Stidham from whatever trouble she was in. The 12th of June was still a few days away, and the 30-plus-hour drive to Bodega Bay was a small price to pay for Waynelle’s safety.

  ***

  Dwayne had serious work to do, but even through his sleep-deprived thoughts, he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful Bodega Bay, California, was. It was just a small seaside town, but as quaint as quaint could be. As he slowly rode around town, scanning for any sign of Waynelle, Dwayne saw a little fish shack restaurant, used for several exterior shots in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

  It was Saturday morning, June 12. If he arrived into town before Tubby, Dwayne could locate Waynelle before his foe was the wiser. He could then set Waynelle free. If he had beaten Tubby to the punch, that is.

  Dwayne never expected to ride off into the sunset with Waynelle once this fiasco was over. He just hated the thought of the free-spirited Waynelle perpetually hindered by someone like Tubby and the rest of the Turner clan.

  Dwayne rode in circles around town for a few hours, searching. He mentally kicked himself for not memorizing the marina name or the wedding service company that was printed on the papers in Tubby’s room – and for not taking the printouts with him. Stupid.

  He discovered, after rifling through the local phone book at a gas station, that there were several marinas and wedding ceremony companies in the Bodega Bay area. It could take him a few hours to locate Waynelle. He didn’t want to call any of the companies because Tubby may get tipped off and his rescue mission would be thwarted.

  Dwayne had to physically visit and search every company in hopes of finding Waynelle. Unfortunately, by that time, Tubby could already be in town and the hunt would be over.

  ***

  California Highway Patrolman Adcock Timmins, a very somber 25-year old probationary police officer, watched through the windshield of his BMW R1200RT motorcycle as Dwayne sat on his Harley in the parking lot near the water. Patrolman Timmins wondered if Dwayne was intoxicated – evident by the way he kept repeatedly, and involuntarily, dipping his tired head.

  Adcock had a chip on his shoulder due to serious past job indiscretions. He badly needed to be as proactive as he could to root out any crime in his Golden Gate district of operation. He needed to prove himself worthy of the job. He’d been on probation for nearly two years, a year longer than a typical rookie, because he had two departmental infractions that hovered over his head. A third screw-up and Adcock would be summarily dismissed from the department.

  Adcock Timmins, or Pat, as his patrolman buddies called him (an acronym for Patrolman Adcock Timmins), still lived with his demanding, and demeaning, mother – a woman who always told any date that Pat brought by their tiny Santa Rosa home how he sucked his thumb and wet his bed until he w
as 15 years old. Pat didn’t want to be a mamma’s boy, but that’s how his home-life panned out.

  He desperately wanted a place of his own, however, the only way he could achieve autonomy from his nut-job mother would be to pass probation and acquire the automatic pay raise that came with it. Apartment rental rates in the Bay area were just that wildly astronomical.

  Pat’s first departmental strike occurred when he left his Glock .40 caliber sidearm in the safety locker at the station after he processed a DUI suspect. Officers are required to secure their weapons in lockers when they handle prisoners at the district headquarters. Of course, they’re supposed to retrieve their weapons when they go back on patrol.

  Shortly after the DUI arrest, Pat was called to Highway 101, 7-miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, where an injured deer blocked the passing lane. When he arrived, his sergeant was already parked in the median. His sergeant appraised the situation for a brief moment then ordered Pat to shoot the injured deer and drag its carcass to the shoulder of the roadway. Patrolman Timmins reached for his gun but came up with air. Strike one.

  Strike two came one week later. Pat was still smarting over the first mistake and allowed his guard to drop when he dealt with a cranked-up prostitute who worked a truck stop off of Highway 101 in Petaluma. The prostitute didn’t like the way he dismissed her claims that she had been kicked to the curb by a truck driver “John” after he refused to pay her for her services.

  Pat was already in a crappy mood due to the first departmental infraction and repeatedly belittled the prostitute. When he curtly advised her to leave the area without being paid, she decked him with a fierce left hook. Because of the sizeable crowd that formed to watch Pat deal with the hooker, and the tense nature of the interaction, an all out riot ensued between the other prostitutes working the truck stop and the numerous truckers parked there. Back at the district headquarters, his sergeant deemed the fight a case of patrolman Adcock Timmins not being “situationally aware” enough to quell the brawl before it even began. Strike two.

  Pat saw the possibility of instant salvation in the presumably drunk driver on the Harley parked 200-feet away.

  ***

  Dwayne rode around the Bodega Bay area for the better part of the morning in a fruitless search for Waynelle. He sat on his bike in the parking lot on the spit of land known as Port O’Bodega and pondered his next move and how utterly exhausted he was from traveling with no sleep. Then his tired eye landed on what he believed was a mirage. But it wasn’t.

  Dwayne watched as Tubby’s maroon colored 1970 LeMans slowly drove west-bound on Bay Flat Road and circled Bodega Bay itself.

  Dwayne fired up his Harley’s engine and took off after the Lemans.

  The LeMans pulled to the side of the road and into a desolate, gravel-covered scenic turnout. Dwayne’s heart quickened when he spied a blonde-haired woman in the passenger seat.

  Dwayne cut his bike’s engine fifty feet from the parked LeMans and glided up to the passenger door. He kicked the stand down, hopped off the bike, yanked open the door, reached inside, and grabbed the blonde woman by the wrist.

  “Let go off me,” said a sixty-year old woman as she fought to free her wrist from Dwayne’s grasp.

  Her sixty-five year old portly husband got out of the driver’s door and circled the car, ready to fight. “Back up, son. I don’t want to have to hurt you, but I will,” he said, with his dukes up.

  “Shit,” was all Dwayne could muster as he released the woman’s wrist.

  “It’s a setup,” screamed the sixty-year old woman to her husband. “Oh, I told you, but you didn’t listen,” she continued.

  “What?” asked Dwayne, allowing his dejection to wash over himself. “A setup?”

  “Did that Tubby fella have you stop us so he could get our money and the car back?” asked the husband.

  “He sold you this car?” asked Dwayne.

  “Said he needed the money to pay for a surprise wedding on the Pacific side of the bay,” said the husband, dukes still raised.

  “Did you see the bride?” asked Dwayne. “The woman he’s-”

  Dwayne was interrupted by an authoritative voice. “Real easy, back up to my voice. Hands on your head, interlock your fingers.” Dwayne turned slowly toward the source of the voice – saw patrolman Adcock Timmins getting off his bike and reaching for his handcuffs.

  Dwayne straightened and said, “Shit!” but dutifully followed the officer’s commands. The older couple got back into the car and took off.

  “Great, there go the victims,” said Pat, sarcastically, as he took Dwayne’s left wrist in his hand and slapped the cuff on him. As he grabbed Dwayne’s right hand, Dwayne spun under Pat’s reach and yanked the patrolman’s right arm around his back and forced him to the ground. Neither man yelled or even spoke as they struggled with one another. All Dwayne could think was, “I got to find Waynelle!”

  Pat, on the other hand, could hear his mother’s raspy voice screeching in his head saying, “What the hell is wrong with you? You ain’t man enough to keep a real job? Bed wetter!” His mother’s voice instantly transitioned into that of his laughing sergeant’s, “I hear Wal-Mart’s hiring. I hear Wal-Mart’s hiring. I hear Wal-Mart’s hiring.”

  Dwayne elbowed Pat in the side of the head and knocked him semi-conscious. He quickly rifled through the patrolman’s front waistband and grabbed a hold of the handcuff keys dangling there. Dwayne un-cuffed his one hand and drug the patrolman over to a no-parking sign on the edge of the gravel lot, which was partially obscured by high weeds. He handcuffed the cop to the sign, reached for the officer’s holstered gun, but came up with air.

  “You’re gonna get killed out here,” said an astonished Dwayne.

  “Let me go,” pleaded Pat, coming out of his semi-conscious funk. “Unhook me!”

  Dwayne ran to the patrolman’s BMW motorcycle and rolled it into the weeds where Pat was locked to the sign. Dwayne said, “I’m sorry mister patrolman, but I got to stop a wedding.”

  ***

  Dwayne sped around the westernmost road of Bodega Bay on his Harley, searching, when something caught his eye in the distance, and he slowed to a stop.

  A curvy woman wearing a thigh-high white cocktail dress stood on the deck of a 40-foot luxury boat. She held a small bouquet of colorful flowers in her downturned hand. One look at the vivacious woman and there was no wonder as to why Dwayne would travel the world to be with her. This was Waynell Stidham.

  The 40-foot luxury boat, 100-yards out in the water, slowly motored toward the mouth of the bay and the open Pacific Ocean. He was too late.

  Dwayne pulled into a waterside park and hopped off the motorcycle. He ran to a picnic table, jumped up on top and frantically waved his arms in hopes that she would see him. Soon she would be out to sea.

  Waynelle stood alongside another woman on the luxury boat: Ollie Turner, Tubby’s ornery, tattooed, and overweight sister. She was also gussied up in a fancy dress, but she appeared pissed off about something. Although Dwayne couldn’t hear her, he watched as Ollie yelled and screamed at Waynelle.

  Dwayne tired of waving his arms, and in a concession to final defeat, he sat on the picnic table.

  “She always did have a thing for a man in uniform,” said Tubby from a picnic table thirty-feet away. His nose bandaged and his eyes blackened.

  Dwayne recoiled in surprise.

  “Take it easy, man. There’s no need for me to hurt you or you to hurt me no more. It’s over now,” said Tubby. He stood and moped his way to Dwayne. “That morning you got arrested for shooting my cousin, I was the guy fixing your cable TV. I was in uniform, no doubt. That’s why she never made it to Frozen Lake,” said Tubby, sitting down near Dwayne. “She had a fling with one of those uniformed guards at the prison you were at, too, but I forgave her. You know, that uniform shit a
gain. All I wanted was to marry that sweet girl. Couldn’t believe the hints she dropped in my lap, either. We’d been on and off over all them years, but I thought it was for real this time, brother. By the time I got here, she was already on the damn boat.”

  “I got to ask. When you were together, did you and Waynelle watch old movies all the time?” asked Dwayne. “Is that why we’re in Bodega Bay?”

  “Hitchcock was her favorite, for damn sure,” said another man’s voice behind them.

  Both Dwayne and Tubby spun around to see Tommy Deaton, the injured ex-Kentucky State Trooper standing there. He was dressed in a suit, sans the tie. “The Birds was her all-time favorite,” he said.

  “What the hell, cousin? What’s going on?” asked Tubby, totally confused.

  Surrounded by enemies, Dwayne believed that his end might be near. He feverishly scanned for an escape route, until Deaton limped over and sat himself heavily on the same picnic table. He gave Dwayne a pleasantly reassuring look – and smiled sincerely. The tension deflated immediately. Deaton let out an audible sigh and said, “I always felt like a monkey doing a math problem figurin’ out them Hitchcock movies.”

  Deaton leaned around Dwayne’s back and smacked Tubby hard on the head with his open palm. He said, “You were supposed to kill Dwayne, not bring him to my wedding!” He turned to Dwayne and offered a meek smile, “Sorry you had to hear that.”

  They all sat quietly for a moment. But even through his exhaustion, Dwayne’s thoughts were beginning to form in a proper linear fashion. “You were in uniform at my trial,” said Dwayne, still a bit confused but with realization overcoming him at a rapid pace. “Your wedding,” continued Dwayne. Deaton nodded and looked back out at the luxury boat that cruised in the bay.