Wicked Bad Boys

T
his is a work of fiction
. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

T
he valet looks
on in horror as he catches sight of a young woman on the floor of the luxury condo parking elevator. It’s the end of his first shift. He’s damned if this gets him in trouble. It’s the best gig he’s had since he left his trailer park in Arkansas and hopped on the bus to New York City.

He looks down. He studies her for a moment. She’s dressed in a skin tight blue dress, and stilettos that can kill. There’s a needle in her arm. She’s in a pool of her own blood, eyes rolled back in her head. He takes out his cell phone and calls the concierge desk.

“Hey man, I think there’s a dead body down here in the green elevator on the P three.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman. Pretty. Young, maybe 19 or 20.”

“Do you recognize her from the building?”

“Never seen her before.”

“Call 911 from your phone.”

“Why from my phone?”

“Because you fucking found her. I’ll get the security manager to come down. He’ll probably pull the security tapes for the cops…and Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time, call the cops yourself and don’t fucking get me involved. Got that?”

“Um, yeah.”

Nick hears the phone slam down on the other end, and calls 9-1-1 next.

M
y dad
only calls me for three reasons. First, when he’s sick of the board of directors giving him hell for some crap decision he makes that bleeds money out of Sloan Sports and Entertainment. Second, when it’s my birthday. The man loves to celebrate shit. He’d probably celebrate waking up in the morning if he could. Third, when he’s in a bind.

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m getting ready to hit the gym when I see his number come up on my phone. That only means one thing—he’s with a call girl or one of his eclectic, artsy girlfriends who lives in the village on Friday night, and something goes wrong. I don’t know why he can’t find some other poor fuck, and have
them
clean up his mess. But no, I’m his kid. That’s what I was born to do. I know where I stand. So I brace myself and pick up the phone, because it’s some shit going down.

“Yes, Dad.”

“I need you over here at the Fifth Street condo now.”

“What Fifth Street condo?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Jonathan.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I let him stew a little. Sloan Sports and Entertainment, contrary to the company name, has many real estate holdings. The one on Fifth Street is an entire floor of seven luxury condos he set aside for visiting executives and other guests. There’s a special one he keeps for MMA sparring with his top guys, or his play time with the call girls.

“Okay, what do you need me there for?”

“There was another accident. I need you to cover for me.”

“What kind of accident, Dad? A harder than expected beat-down kind of accident, or a dead hooker?”

“Call girl, Jonathan. You know I don’t mess with hookers. Anyway, she’s really young, and probably dead, except she got away and might be in the building bleeding out somewhere.”

“What? So what do you need from me?”

“Alibi. Maybe a cleanup if no one’s found her yet.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dad, can’t you hire someone for this shit? I thought you said that redhead was the last one?”

“Watch your mouth, boy. I’m still your old man, and I’m the one who got you where you are now. You think you’d be a Senior VP at Fairchild’s at twenty-six if it wasn’t for me? Now put your ass in gear and get over here.”

The man holds this position over my head every time shit gets serious. It doesn’t matter that I was smart enough to earn grants and hold my own all the way through Harvard. Yes, they were all wrestling and football athletic grants—and some student loan forgiveness funds—but getting through that place required a level of academic bullshitting to finish my sports management degree. Still, he’s right that at twenty-six, with my past, I would never be in this Fairchild gig if he didn’t marry Mandy.

“Alright. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Remember to take the back stairs. The one with the camera loop I had Marty set up. I can’t have them place you anywhere else but here last night.”

“What the hell did I—”

He hangs up before I could finish my question, and I know this is the real deal. When the redhead died, he got me over there fast, but his so-called clean-up crew were already wrapping her body in plastic and dousing industrial cleaning products all over the condo floor. That time, I was only there to figure out a spot to dump the body, because he had a board meeting with a Japanese trade delegation.

I throw on some sweat pants and a hoody, pull out my duffel bag for cleaning up my dad’s shit, and grab my keys so I can get over there fast. I get down to my garage, and I have decisions to make. I can’t take the Maserati. It’s too conspicuous. It won’t hold a dead body anyway. Ditto for the Porsche. I go for the forest green Escalade. It’s roomy and not too showy in that part of town.

On the drive there, all I want to do is punch something. The man promises on his own life that he would stop the S & M shit he’s into. But he’s an addict. A sex addict of the worst kind. He has sex to feel alive. Because he’s an addict, he has to have more of it, and it’s more intense every time. One woman is not enough. In New York City alone, he probably boasts twenty or more mistresses, and still, they’re not enough. After he’s with them, he has to finish off with a call girl, with his sick, fucked up game. More often than not, someone ends up dying.

I don’t know why I covered for him the first time back in Reno. I was just sixteen years old, and I had put him up on a pedestal back then. That was my biggest mistake. I should have turned and left the motel room, skipped town, and I would have had my own life. Instead, I felt sorry for him, and helped. The man knows how to manipulate. He sat on the edge of the motel room bed that night. He was crying like a toddler. All he could do was look at the blood pouring from the naked girl on the floor, heroine needle sticking out of her arm, her hands bound, with bruises all over her body like he used her as a punching bag.

Time was slipping by, and he was no fucking use, so I swung into action. I stood him in the corner, and stripped off the bedsheets so I could roll up the body inside of it. He bawled when I threw it over my shoulder. I took it out to my beat-up old pickup truck—the one he gave me when I got my driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday—and left the motel to bury it in the desert. When I got back, my dad was still standing in the corner, catatonic. After the first time, it got easier. I could never look at the women’s faces, though. That was the first thing I’d cover up.

Today, I get to the condo building, and there are cops everywhere. The place is cordoned off in emergency police tape. There are even officers posted in the back alleyway. I drive around the block until I see Matheson. Detective Ben Matheson. He’s on dad’s payroll, and helps keep shit tight whenever things get dicey. I stop on the other side of the street and roll my window down enough to get his attention, so he can come to me. If this is the big one, I need to make sure I’m not seen—and Matheson can make it happen.

“Hey Jonathan.”

“Matheson,” I greet him. Cops hated people using their first name, like it was sacrilege. Even the ones we paid off.

“You’d better get up there before anyone sees you.”

“Help me out, man. The place is crawling with New York’s finest.”

“Okay, go back around to the alleyway. I’ll clear it for you…and Jonathan?”

“Yeah?”

“This one’s bad. Your old man just fucked up the wrong kid.”

“Who is she?”

“Senator Rushton’s niece.”

“Fuck.”

“You know the Senator had no kids, right? That little thing was his princess. Worst of all, his wife preaches on about cleaning up this violence against women and sex workers shit every chance she gets.”

“Yeah, I heard about her. She was on all the media channels just yesterday, pushing for legislation change.”

“Exactly. So you already know they’ve unofficially dubbed her the
hooker spokesperson
. This won’t be something the commissioner can sweep under the rug for your old man like some of the others.”

“Fuck. Okay I’ll be in the alley. Best if I don’t get seen.”

I drive around the corner and all I want to do is gun it down the main road and get the fuck out of the state of New York. All my instincts are telling me this is not my fight. I never touched the scene this time, I barely know anything, and maybe it’s time for the justice system to take Dad down now. Maybe it’s time he faces the music and pays for all the nasty karma he put out there that’s coming back to him. The man is a menace to society at best, and at worst, a serial killer with the resources to keep looking shiny like a new fucking penny.

Loyalty gets the better of me, and I make the fucked up decision to back up my old man. I turn in the alleyway. The place is empty now. Matheson does what he has to do. He’d better, because Dad pays him off enough. Now I can go up there to see what damage control is needed. Taking my duffel bag with me, I hit the stairs from the back entrance all the way up to the fifteenth floor. Normally, it’s no biggie for me. I’m ripped as fuck from working out two to three hours a day. Today though, I’m carrying seventy five pounds of cleanup supplies, and I’m as nervous as the first time, so I’m winded by the time I get to the floor.

My dad and his security crew are smart. They have not let the cops up to the floor. As of right now, all the men in blue downstairs know is some unlucky senator’s niece died in the underground parking. The girl could have come to visit any of the condo owners in the fifty-two story building. So far the cops have set up a perimeter, and put the building on lockdown.

I walk into Dad’s condo unit. There are two of his guys sitting in the living room. It’s Rocko and Danny, his two most trusted security thugs. He hand-picked the two men almost eight years ago. That was when he started Sloan Sports—the mixed martial arts side of the business. They have never left his side since. They’ve seen shit like no one else—almost as much as I have. Today, they actually look worried.

“What’s going on? Where’s Dad?”

“He’s in the gym,” Rocko answers. “Jonathan, when you go in there, go easy on him, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

“Oh, and you might want to put on a mask, or cover your face or something.”

“I thought he said the girl got away?”

“Yeah. She did, but not the other three.”

My jaw drops, and then I remember who I’m dealing with. These men do not exaggerate, so I sense it’s a shit storm I’m about to enter. I take a rag from my duffel bag and put it over my nose and mouth to go down the long hallway to the gym. The condo my dad picked for himself is a massive, two-level, five bedroom, six bathroom unit. He ripped out walls from three condo units beside it to make the gym so he could practice every night—in more ways than one—before going home to Mandy.

I open the gym door and the smell hits me so hard, it knocks the wind out of my chest. I tighten my grip on the rag over my face. It’s then I see there’s blood everywhere. I mean everywhere. On the floor, the walls, the ceiling, on the furniture and on the equipment. I back up and close the door. I stand in the hallway to get some fresh air. Time to start putting on my gear. The four things I put on are black, long-sleeved overalls, latex gloves, a hairnet, and those booty-type shoe covers to cover up the sneakers I have on. Blood is hard to get off stuff without some powerful chemicals. I shake my head, because I should not know this disturbing piece of trivia.

I’m in the door again and take a step inside. There’s sticky liquid that’s quickly drying on the floor. Some of it is blood. God knows what the rest is. I get around to the octagon and I see them. Three dead women with their hands tied to posts above their drooping heads. They’re butt naked and something bright red is sticking out of their mouths. In the farthest corner of the room is my dad, standing facing the wall, sobbing like his life is over—because it probably is, this time. I swear under my breath that if I have to clean up all this shit and cover for him too, I’ll have to kill him myself to finally end the madness.