Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  Keith gulped hard, and his eyes fluttered. He began to scan the parking lot of the big box store, as he tried in vain to locate someone to scream to for help. That was, if his voice would ever return from hiding deep down near his zipper.

  “We’re all alone, my friend. You didn’t know he had a son, did you?”

  “Um,” was all Keith could say.

  “The window treatment business of mine is just window dressing for what I really do. Like my old man, I loan money outside the usual channels, you could say.”

  “Oh, shit,” mumbled Keith.

  “See what I did there?” Gregy asked, chuckling. “The window treatment business is just window dressing.” When Keith didn’t even smile, Gregy kept going, “I’d like that $100,000 you promised my old man.” He slapped a faux-friendly hand on the village councilman’s bony shoulder and squeezed tight. “I used to keep his books for him, so I know all about you, pal. I’ll give you three days. You don’t want to join my dear departed pops now, do you?” He smiled, let go of Keith’s shoulder, and walked away.

  Keith got into his van, lowered his head, and began to shake uncontrollably. He tried to slide the car key into the ignition but only managed to poke the hell out of the van’s dashboard.

  After a few attempts with the key, he let it drop from his grasp. He leaned his head back on the seat, closed his eyes, and didn’t move a muscle for nearly 10-minutes. Once he did, though, he slowly drove himself towards home -– his mind raced as he went.

  His life, like it had when he got the ill-intentioned loan from Franky ‘Five Bucks’ for the rotten land deal, was about to spiral out of control. He was sure of it.

  As he slowed for the red light at Balmoral Road and Main Street, he noticed that his wheelchair-bound son, Kenny, was situated on the sidewalk in front of the new ice cream store, which was located next to the old movie theater. Kenny and a couple of his new 10-year old buddies smiled, laughed and looked inside the store.

  Keith’s troubles faded for just a moment as he witnessed his son’s joy. If nothing else during this stressful moment in time, it cemented Keith’s decision to move into town.

  But his warm feelings instantly chilled when Gregy stepped from the ice cream store with three piled high cones. He handed a single cone to one of the boys, and two to the other. The boy with two cones helped Kenny to eat his treat. Gregy leaned down and conversed with Kenny. Kenny smiled, and then laughed heartily.

  Keith wanted to charge through the red light, but cross-traffic was too heavy, and there were several pedestrians in the way. He honked his horn, but that only made the pedestrians pleasantly wave. So he laid on the horn for one very long blast.

  Gregy and Kenny looked his way and Keith pulled his hand away from the steering wheel. Kenny smiled and motioned to the cone with his head. His buddy allowed him to take another lick and he grinned with delight.

  Gregy rubbed each kid on the noggin, turned, and made sure Keith watched. He then backed away, turned, and walked around the corner of the building, disappearing from view.

  The traffic light finally changed to green, but Keith was so shell-shocked that he didn’t budge. The chorus of car horns shook him from his funk and he moved his van forward. He slowed to wave Kenny’s way as he passed.

  Keith turned right into the Gemstone grocery store lot and searched for Gregy. He knew that he’d lose a one-on-one battle with him, but he couldn’t allow the veiled threat to go because his kid was now involved. This time he wouldn’t curl up like an armadillo, he was sure of it.

  Keith began to seethe with anger. His eyes deliberately scanned as he drove through the parking lot, but he couldn’t locate his NFL player-sized tormentor.

  As he took in deep breaths of air he slowly came to his senses. Who was he kidding? What could he do? Gregy would’ve beaten him to a pulp.

  His mind was made up. He needed to find a way to obtain $100,000 -- the sooner the better. His family had been threatened. But where in the hell was he going to come up with that kind of cash?

  ***

  “Your shower upstairs is leaking,” said Keith’s father-in-law, Thomas, a 70-year old bulldog of a man, as he sat, smugly, on the living room sofa. He followed that up with a condescending wink.

  “Dad!” said the female voice from the kitchen. “Don’t start.”

  Keith was still in distress after being endangered and wasn’t listening to anyone. He stumbled into the kitchen and just stood there.

  His wife, Rebecca, a girlish pixy of a woman, placed a ham sandwich on a plate.

  His pigtail-wearing little daughter, Sarah, watched her father with interest. “I think daddy’s going to throw up, mommy,” she said.

  “Go wash your hands, kiddo,” Rebecca said to Sarah. The little girl took off for the bathroom.

  Rebecca still hadn’t noticed that Keith was acting strangely. “Did you get what you need, honey? He won’t stay long,” she added when she nodded toward the living room. “He’s just here to eat a little lunch.”

  “I heard that,” chuckled Thomas from the living room. “I haven’t told you my big news yet.”

  “Keith, are you okay,” asked Rebecca when she finally noticed that all the blood had drained from his face.

  Keith didn’t answer. He simply dropped the plastic bag full of plumbing parts on the kitchen floor and tripped his way back into the living room. Once there, he plopped into an overstuffed chair and stared out the front window.

  “Keith, sweetie, are you okay?” asked Rebecca after she followed right behind him. She checked his forehead for fever.

  “What’s the matter? You finally figuring out that you don’t know squat about fixing and maintaining a home?” asked Thomas with a smirk. “When I was 12-years old I used the money from my nine paper routes and fixed up my first house on the north side. A brick bungalow. Bought it, fixed it up, and sold it all in six months-”

  “Shut the hell up, Thomas,” said Keith, softly, his eyes still locked on the window.

  “You don’t talk to me like that! Not in my own neighborhood, you don’t!” screamed Thomas as he conjured even more indignation, and rose to his feet.

  Rebecca stepped into the middle of the living room to quell any more trouble, but it didn’t matter. Keith wasn’t going to argue any longer. He just sat there like a slug, and looked out the window. He wondered why his life had turned to shit once again. Defeatist thoughts howled through his mind, like they had before he confronted the Baby Face Robber in the million-dollar home his asshole father-in-law had purchased for them.

  Only this time it wasn’t going to end as well, he was sure of it. There would be no $45,000 cash rainbow waiting in his mailbox today. There would be no instant self-confidence builder after verbally unleashing all the shit that was piled up in his head. His ammo was spent.

  Keith was screwed.

  “Dad,” said Rebecca. “I’ll wrap the sandwich for you, okay?”

  “Don’t bother. I’m going home, Rebecca. Goodbye!”

  Rebecca followed her father to the door and she and Keith watched with horror as he stepped past his parked car, crossed the street, yanked the For Sale sign out of the yard, angrily tossed it into the grass near the porch, and entered through the front door of the old house with the beautiful double-sized lot -- the one that was sold in just one day.

  “Awe, shit,” was all Keith could muster.

  “Daddy said a bad word!” squealed Sarah as she pointed a freshly-washed finger Keith’s way.

  ***

  “What are you doing?” asked the man’s voice from the darkened hallway of the Balmoral municipal building.

  Keith was cornered.

  He raised his eyes from the desk drawer that he had just rifled through to see newly promoted Lieutenant Jimmy Caul of the Balmoral Police Department staring b
ack.

  “Staples. I ran out,” Keith lied. “Where the hell are they hiding them now?”

  Jimmy Caul wasn’t in the mood to buy Keith’s inane excuse. He knew that the councilman shouldn’t be in the finance director’s office, especially on a Sunday morning, probably ever, for that matter. “I know they don’t store them in here, Michaels. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Keith didn’t like the tone Jimmy took with him, but he didn’t complain, because he was actually there in search of the Balmoral village checkbook that was normally housed in the top middle drawer of the desk. He knew the town was flush with cash after the Baby Face Robber donated enough money to perpetually fund the famous 4th of July festival. If a mere $100,000 was gone from the village coffers, who would notice?

  Keith stared at Jimmy for a long beat. He wondered if Jimmy realized that his own brother, John Caul, was the savior of the famous Balmoral festival. Then his mind wandered to the chamber meeting from two weeks prior where the finance director advised the city council, because of the great sum of money now controlled by Balmoral, that the checkbook would be kept in a safe deposit box in the local bank.

  Shit.

  Keith, totally lost in thought, must’ve stared too long, because Jimmy said, “Don’t let this get ugly.”

  After Keith got to his feet, and walked from the office, Jimmy Caul made sure the finance director’s door was locked. He then followed Keith all the way to the front door of the municipal building.

  “You have a fantastic day, Michaels,” said Jimmy, sarcastically.

  As Keith stepped out onto the sidewalk, he noticed John Caul, Jimmy’s brother, as he left Dink’s Diner, which was located directly across Balmoral Road from the municipal building.

  Neither the Baby Face Robber John Caul nor Keith wanted to make eye contact with the other. Their shared secret was safe for now. John waved to his brother Jimmy and said, “Hey! Are you still coming over for the cookout?”

  Jimmy nodded to John, but said quietly to Keith, “Others in town may think you’re some sort of a messiah. They’re easily fooled. You’re playing some angle that’s going to screw us all in some way. What it is, I don’t know just yet. When it all goes down, though, I’ll enjoy dealing with you.” With that, Jimmy shut himself inside the building and melted into the shadows of the unlit hallway.

  ***

  Keith punched in the security code on the keypad just inside the front door of the massive home and the incessant beeping tone stopped immediately.

  Before he closed the heavy, custom-made, oak double front doors, he peered past the realty sign planted in the front yard, the one with his photo on it, and checked the tree-lined lane on the other side of the wrought-iron fence to make sure no cars were passing. He was in the clear.

  “Hello? It’s Keith, the realtor!” he said loudly, and waited for a reply -– which didn’t come. He figured the home visit would go this way, and that’s why he was here now.

  He wasted no time as he ran up the right side of the huge double-winged stairway to the second floor. No one would’ve heard him padding up the steps anyway, because the imported carpet on the stairs was quite expensive, and two inches thick.

  He made a right at the top of the stairs and worked his way down a long, wide hallway with framed artworks on both sides. The paintings in this hallway alone were worth more than his entire house -– probably an entire block of houses like his. He briefly considered taking one of the paintings, because it would be so easy, but couldn’t follow through. It would be just too conspicuous having a large empty space on the wall of that massive hallway the next time the owner came to stay.

  He arrived at the end of the hallway, opened the only door there, another huge double-door set-up, and entered an incredible master bedroom suite -- complete with four-poster bed, high ceilings, and lush oriental rugs on the floor. The square footage of the space was more than twice that of the average two-bedroom condo.

  On the left side of the master bedroom he stepped into a master closet, which was filled with men’s clothing. Keith instantly parted a row of fine suits that hung on the right side of the closet, and there it was.

  It was a three-foot-high, locked, thick-glass case with an old baseball card displayed inside. Although the case was large enough to hold many mementos, the card was the only piece housed there. Top shelf, center. To an uneducated observer, accommodating the old baseball card in the expensive, custom-made, built-in cabinet would seem pretty damned silly. But Keith knew that the expense of creating the built-in wasn’t wasteful in the least.

  He simply stared at the thin paper relic, and thought of its history and how it came to be purchased by the person who was selling the house. The homeowner was extremely proud of the baseball card and had excitedly shown Keith the piece even before they signed the contracts for the home’s listing.

  Although on a personal upswing with his family life, professionally speaking, Keith’s realty business hadn’t been going well of late. This massive dwelling was only one of just a handful of properties on his current roster. And the other properties paled in comparison.

  At $14 million dollars, the mansion had been on the market for more than a little while. Once it sold, though, Keith would be flush with cash. But by that time it would be too late to pay off Gregy.

  The owner of the home and the extremely rare Honus Wagner baseball card locked inside the glass case, was a trust-fund baby who currently resided in his other $14 million dollar home in the hills of Montecito, California.

  Keith knew that the homeowner made infrequent trips to Chicago, and that, if he really wanted, he could easily stage a burglary and make off with the card. At least, in his manic state of mind he would be able to pull the heist off. It would be a bit less conspicuous than snatching an expensive painting off the hallway wall, anyway.

  But there was always that pesky alarm system that logged every person’s comings and goings due to the individual and personalized code numbers that were programmed into the noisy contraption. A burglary would be risky, but he could pull it off. Maybe.

  Keith was working off the assumption that the homeowner probably showed anyone who visited him the rare baseball card. His vistors could number in the hundreds. That hypothesis alone led him to believe that his involvement could possibly be concealed because there’d be just too many damn suspects for the police to investigate.

  Keith stood there in that silent walk-in closet and studied the Honus Wagner card for a good long time. He thought of how back in 2006 it was sold by a famous hockey player to some unknown buyer in southern California for nearly $3 million dollars, and how it came to be located in this closet a mere mile-and-a-half from his own home in Balmoral, Illinois. The unknown buyer was, obviously, the man he knew who split his time between Montecito and northern Illinois.

  Could Keith simply take the card and sell it to someone, somewhere, and be out of Gregy Gregers’ crosshairs? Could he get away with the crime? It was a long shot. His eyes widened as he stood there and contemplated how a deal would go down for the stolen goods once he freed it from its glass cage.

  Yes. Yes, he could make this work, because he wouldn’t sell the Honus Wagner card at all. He’d simply give it to Gregy and be done with the whole situation. Gregy would be grateful for the eventual overpayment. Who wouldn’t take three million dollars to pay off a $100,000 debt? Those were excellent terms.

  He made his way back downstairs, towards the kitchen and the attached 8-car garage. He stopped to grab a few paper towels off a dispenser in the massive French-country decorated room. Keith stepped to the interior garage door but didn’t bother using the paper towels to open the doorknob. If the police ever interviewed him he could easily explain away that his prints would be all over the house because he was the realtor of record. He would touch many surfaces during the commission of his duties, of course. But he d
id, however, need protection from handling the item that he required to help with his crime.

  He stopped in his tracks at the site of the eight matching, dark blue Bentleys parked in the garage. “Who does that?” he asked no one as he wondered about the homeowner’s sense of variety.

  Keith’s eyes scanned the garage until he finally locked onto his target – a small rubber mallet mounted on a peg-wall hook.

  He sidestepped between two Bentleys and up to the mallet. He carefully wrapped the paper towels around his right hand before he snatched the hammer off the wall.

  Back in the walk-in closet, Keith readied himself for the attack on the sturdy-looking glass case. He reared back with the mallet -- but then suddenly stopped. “What the hell am I doing? This is crazy,” he said to no one.

  Then the vision of the self-satisfied Gregy, as he rubbed his ice cream cone-eating son Kenny’s head, flashed through his mind.

  “Ah!” yelled Keith as he reared back and, using full-force, slammed the mallet into the top of the case. The mallet bounced off of the thick glass and smacked him in the face directly over his right eye.

  Thirty minutes later, groggy and just coming to full consciousness, Keith awoke on the floor of the closet. He knew immediately that he needed another approach in locating the crucial funds that would save his life.

  ***

  As he lumbered to the front door of his home on Ray Avenue, Keith heard his wife’s conversational voice as it hit higher and liltingly sweeter notes than usual. That meant only one thing; there was an outsider in his home - a visitor of some sort. The current vocal trait his wife exhibited, when they first met, was charming – cute even – but today it grated on his nerves.

  His scouting trips to the finance director’s office and the mansion were both total busts. It was a good thing that the closet floor didn’t cause more damage to his head when he rag-dolled, unconscious, to it earlier. He had the massive home’s expensive and thick carpets to thank for that.