Nothing good, p.1
Nothing Good, page 1
R. J. Piper
Copyright © 2024 by R. J. Piper
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact rjpiperwrites@gmail.com.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Book Cover by R. J. Piper
ISBN 979-8-9910441-1-0
First edition 2024
For Ron DeSantis
Contents
1. Florida Man Commits Murder, Public Indecency
2. Florida Man, Bartender Cause Public Disturbance
3. Florida Man: Crime Means Bad Coworkers
4. Florida Man Revealed as Incompetent Stalker
5. Florida Man Plots Revenge, Kidnapping
6. Florida Man’s Ventures in Water Torture
7. Florida Man Apologizes for Waterboarding Incident
8. Florida Man Seduces Prospective Killer
9. Florida Man Mutilated in Lovers’ Spat
10. Florida Man Losing Grip, Warns Coworker
11. Florida Man Tells All: Eccentric Billionaire Seduction
12. Florida Man Joins Violent Spree; 3 Casualties
13. Florida Man Charms End to Gang Violence
14. Florida Man Swept Up in Underworld Politics
15. Florida Man Ponders Romance; Chaos Ensues
16. Florida Man Locked in Battle to the Death
17. Florida Man Has Breakdown, Redecorates
18. Florida Man Romances Stabbing Victim
19. Florida Man Yet Again Drugs, Robs Date
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Florida Man Commits Murder, Public Indecency
Rainy’s evening was turning out to be sort of a mixed bag. On the one hand, he’d gotten what was probably the best blowjob of his life. On the other, his date had followed it up by pulling a gun on him.
Really fifty-fifty, if he thought about it.
It had started out as a pretty typical workday. Rainy had pulled up to the valet station of the five-star hotel, pushing his sunglasses up on his head. It was October, tail end of the rainy season, and the Miami air was so thick with humidity that you could taste it, rub it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Rainy’s shirt stuck to his back as he climbed out onto the pavement. He checked his kit in the trunk of the silver convertible, making sure everything was in place before zipping the suitcase shut and lifting it out.
The valet was a skinny Latino kid who grinned when Rainy tossed him the keys, and Rainy felt a flash of pleasant nostalgia, like digging through the closet for an umbrella and finding an old photo album instead. He winked and told the kid to take it for a little spin. He’d be a few hours at least.
The lobby was vaulted and airy with a clean white aesthetic that did little to hide old-money sensibilities. Rainy breezed through the off-season denizens of the hotel, the businesspeople and wealthy retirees, all white and gracelessly aging. They were the furniture of Rainy’s city—the static and interchangeable backdrop around and over which the locals moved.
As a rule, Rainy never dressed up for work. His half-buttoned Hawaiian shirt, sneakers, and tattoos earned him a dubious glance from the receptionist, but a subtle one. In this part of town, you never knew which trashy streetwear hid a surprise tech millionaire or trust-fund kid.
“Do you have a reservation?” she asked, smoothing a hand down her uniform blouse.
“Luis Pliego,” he told her, rolling the syllables of the fake name like a handful of dice. She clacked primly at her desktop, then beamed at him, satisfied that he was, in fact, a paying customer. Her smile was whitewashed and genial as the lobby itself.
“I have you for one night. Room 1243.”
“Lovely,” he said, and accepted the key.
His room was taken up by a king-sized bed upholstered in the most ridiculous eggshell duvet set he had ever seen. It looked like a fucking wedding cake. He heaved the suitcase up onto it and started unpacking.
His pearl-inlaid Colt 1911 got set aside for now. Rainy gave it an affectionate pat before letting it sink into the froth of the bedspread. Next came two prescription pill bottles—benzos and the strongest muscle relaxant he’d been able to get his hands on. He picked each up with a handkerchief, then folded it around them and set them down.
The final two items were a small plastic baggie and an unopened bottle of top-shelf, thirty-five-year-old scotch.
Whistling to himself, he cracked open the scotch and took a swig. It burned smooth, splashing warmth along his jaw and down into the center of his chest. He set the bottle down on the dresser and opened the baggie.
Inside were two plastic capsules, each about the length of his pinkie and half as thick. They were filled with fine white powder. Rainy tore the seam of one pouch and tipped its contents into the bottle. He wiped the excess from the rim, then recapped the bottle and swirled it until the silt disappeared.
The powder was a mix of the pills from the two prescription bottles, which he’d crushed by hand earlier that day and premeasured into two extra-hefty doses. He tucked the empty capsule back into his bag and dropped the full one into his shirt pocket.
You never knew when something like that might come in handy.
The spreadsheet Malia had typed up for him was pulled up on his phone. According to her—and she was never wrong—Holister would be arriving back to the lobby from his client dinner right about now. Rainy tucked the bottle under his arm and went out into the hall.
He’d asked for room 1243 because it was exactly one turn from the elevator. He stood just behind the corner, drumming his nails on the neck of the bottle, until he heard the elevator chime. Then he counted to ten under his breath and stepped out.
Dean Holister was a salt-and-pepper man in his late fifties with a haughty expression and a bad habit of fucking over people he wasn’t remotely prepared to get away with fucking over. His tie was loosened against the humidity, and he pawed at the lock to his room as Rainy approached.
There was an art to homicide. There was also a structure to it—best practices, maybe. Rainy liked to call them the three Rs: research, relax, and relocate.
Malia handled the first step, research. There were all sorts of interesting things to learn about Holister. For example, his schedule. His chronic back pain that required prescription meds. His fondness for a certain label of top-shelf scotch.
“Oh, thank God,” Rainy said, hurrying up to him just as he got the door open. “I thought I was going to have to go down to the lobby.”
Holister squinted at him. Rainy plowed on:
“Came out to get my delivery and locked myself out of my room. Could I use the phone in yours? I don’t want to trek all the way back down.”
He shook the bottle at Holister, double-checking that it was unclouded. The man’s eyes caught on the label, and his skeptical frown eased.
“That an ’85?”
“A ’90,” Rainy offered. He uncapped the bottle and brought it to his lips, pressing his thumb over its mouth to pretend to drink. “Trade you some for a minute on the phone?”
Holister shrugged and pushed open the door.
“Be my guest.”
That was the trick to the second R—approaching the mark in a role that felt unassuming, unthreatening. Getting them to relax.
Holister left the door propped open, tossing his tie and room key onto the table in the entryway. The suite had a sitting area with plush carpet and a sideboard with glasses and champagne already sitting on ice. Rainy plunked the bottle down there and strode toward the bedroom.
“Help yourself.”
He paused for a moment in the next room, listening to Holister shuffling around. There was a clink of glass. Satisfied that he was sufficiently occupied, Rainy planted his hands on his hips and said to the empty air:
“Hi, yeah, locked out. Room 1247.” He waited, drumming his fingers on his pants. “Great; I’ll be waiting.”
He walked back into the sitting area to find Holister already halfway through a tumbler of scotch. “Thanks, man, you saved my ass. That good stuff?”
“The best,” Holister sighed.
Rainy laughed and passed the bottle to him again. “Pour yourself a taller glass. Least I can do.”
Holister agreeably poured himself quite a tall glass and sipped it with a blissful expression. Rainy screwed the cap back onto the bottle and saluted him. “Thanks again.”
On his way out, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and picked Holister’s room key up off the table. He kicked the door shut behind himself without touching the handle.
Rainy returned to his room and packed the scotch back into his bag. He sat on the bed and checked the time. When the minute hand on his watch made it to the spot he’d marked, he tucked his Colt into the back of his jeans and tugged his shirt down over it. Then he snapped on a pair of latex gloves from his handy 120-count medical-grade box and stuffed the two prescription bottles into his pocket.
He checked to make sure there was nobody in the hall before using the swiped keycard to open Holister’s door. A pause to listen yielded nothing but silence. Rainy closed the door behind himself and moved to the bedroom .
Holister was sprawled across the top of the duvet—a matched set with Rainy’s, huzzah—with his eyes half-lidded and drool gathering at the corner of his mouth. His face had the slack deadness of unnatural sleep. Rainy sighed, cracked his neck, and went to work.
Unlike many, he actually liked this kind of job. It didn’t need to be flashy and bloody; Emilio Espinosa, Rainy’s employer for this hit, wasn’t trying to send a message. He just needed Holister out of the way. That meant Rainy had the opportunity to get creative with it.
Holister wasn’t a small guy, but Rainy had a linebacker’s build. He’d spent his teen years playing Mike on the varsity football team, making a full-time gig of throwing around guys twice Holister’s mass, and his post-high school career had ended up being much of the same. He picked Holister up off the bed and carried him to the bathroom, only bowing a little under the weight. Holister stirred but couldn’t do much more than mumble his discontent.
He made quick work of Holister’s suit and underwear, dumping them onto the counter. Holister groaned when Rainy dropped him into the tub and turned the water on. While it filled, he withdrew the pill bottles and placed them on the counter, unscrewing one lid. By the time the water had risen to cover Holister’s chest, the man was squirming ineffectually toward the lip of the tub, fingers clumsy.
“Ah-ah,” Rainy chastised, coming to sit on the bathmat. He placed his palm on Holister’s forehead and pushed him under.
To his credit, Holister did try to wriggle away, but those pills were good shit. The fight went out of him quickly, and Rainy watched as the bubbles slowed from a roiling stream to an occasional blop. Once they stopped, he kept one hand under the water and checked his watch. When he’d counted out the appropriate number of minutes, he stood. Holister looked pale and small under the water. His eyes were closed. Rainy gave him a final poke, just for good measure, and turned away.
He dropped the keycard on the entryway table and let the door lock behind him.
It wasn’t perfect—it rarely was—but it was a satisfying enough story to keep the cops occupied. Wealthy man gets his hands on some prescriptions he shouldn’t have, gets drunk at dinner, and goes overboard self-medicating his aching back. Takes ill-advised bath. Accidents happen.
Whether or not the cops bought it in the end, Rainy’s hands would be clean of it by morning.
Back in his room, he texted Malia, Back from swimming. Time for a drink.
You’re such a freak, she replied. Be back by three.
Rainy mussed his dark hair in the mirror and undid another button on his shirt so the tattoo over the hard line of his left pec peeked out. Satisfied, he packed his kit into the suitcase and left it on the bed along with his gun.
The hotel’s restaurant had crisp white tablecloths, a few tasteful crystal light fixtures, and a long backlit bar. It was the end of the dinner rush, and the scrapes of cutlery on plates were few and far between as diners leaned back in their seats, occupied with wine.
Rainy sidled up to the bar and leaned his back against it, surveying the field. At first, it was just his instinctual recon—noting the exits and checking for suspicious body language or too-bulky clothing. Then he let his gaze linger on a few of the other single patrons. A woman in a green cocktail dress eyed him from the end of the bar, and he winked at her.
His job meant that he was often stuck working when the rest of the city was having its fun, scattered, neon-saturated, across the bars and clubs and beachside cabanas. As such, Rainy had developed a bit of a tradition: whenever he pulled off a job at a place with a bar, he was obligated to pick someone up there for a quickie before heading out for the cleanup. It had started as a competition with Marco, but then Marco’s affections had been drawn… elsewhere. Now, Rainy saw it almost as an integral part of pulling off a successful hit—like a kiss for luck.
The woman at the end of the bar had curly black hair and a ballerina’s silhouette. Every graceful angle of her seated position on the stool, back curved and ankles crossed, gave an impression of careful arrangement. Rainy rumpled his hair again as he watched her, feeling that familiar dance of mutual awareness, the weight of her gaze sliding like water over his skin.
He waved absently for the bartender, who approached from the corner of the bar. He was tall and dressed in a tailored gray three-piece suit rather than the hotel uniform, but there was a name tag pinned to his breast pocket. When Rainy turned to face him, he had to bite down on a wince. The man had a brutal scar on his face, a pink line that puckered the skin from the corner of his mouth to his right ear.
“Yes?” the bartender asked. In the unusually open slide of the syllable, Rainy sensed an accent.
Already distracted by the woman still watching him, running her cocktail pick around the rim of her empty glass, Rainy nodded and dug for his wallet.
“Two Manhattans. One for me and one for the lady.”
The bartender made a small, skeptical noise in the back of his throat. Rainy turned to him, incredulous.
“What?”
The man pulled two glasses and a cocktail shaker from under the bar top, shrugging.
“I didn’t say nothing.”
The accent was thick and Deep South—Alabama, if Rainy had to guess.
“You hmm-ed something,” he accused.
“Well. Don’t you think she’s a little out of your league?”
Rainy’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
The bartender’s gaze, burnt-coffee brown, was unimpressed. He dragged it pointedly over Rainy’s patterned shirt and too-bright sneakers.
“I might be crazy,” Rainy said, “but aren’t you supposed to be polite to me?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Of course, sir.” The bartender’s voice was deadpan as he selected a bottle of bourbon without looking at it. “I’m assuming you like a heavy pour?”
Rainy leaned over the bar, woman briefly forgotten. He dragged the shaker away so the bartender was forced to look at him. The man clunked the bottle down on the bar and held Rainy’s gaze.
He had short brown hair with a hint of curl to it and a flat, stern expression, like he was gearing up to tell Rainy to sit down and button his shirt. His neck was elegant and just a little too long in a way that made him interesting to look at. The scar on his face distracted from the handsome angles of him—a painting of an angel someone had slashed with a box cutter. He was long and wiry and stood with his feet a little too far apart. His hands had come to rest behind his back. Perfect, perfect posture. Rainy wanted to push him over.
His name tag read: Jesse.
“For your information, Jesse, I belong here plenty.” Rainy turned on a megawatt smile, one he had on good authority should be labeled an air traffic hazard up there with fireworks and high-powered lasers. “I just closed on a big contract, and I wanted to celebrate by blowing some money on someone pretty.”
Jesse reclaimed the shaker and started making the drinks. “Oh? And what is it that you do for a living?”
“High-profile talent agent.” The lie came smooth and familiar as ever as Rainy watched Jesse pour the liquor with careless efficiency, barely glancing down while he worked. His hands were deft and long-fingered. There were freckles and white flecks of old scars across the knuckles.
“Mm,” Jesse said. “With that shirt, that was gonna be my second guess after ‘ten-dollar escort.’”
Rainy couldn’t help the laugh that startled out of him like a puff of kicked-up dust. “Does insulting customers get you off, or do you just have a terrible personality?”
Jesse’s mouth finally tilted up at the corner, smug and mean. “Both.”
His accent was starting to get under Rainy’s skin. The lazy stretch of the vowels was like a hand running down his shoulders, up the back of his neck. Rainy wanted to bite that snide little expression off his face.
“Shit,” he said. “Forget the girl. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Hitting on the help? Classy.”
“Oh, now you’re concerned with appropriate employee-customer interactions?”
Jesse leaned against the bar, languidly uninterested, and shook the drinks. Rainy listened to the rattle and crunch of ice, watched the amber-red liquor trickle into the glasses. When it settled, he pushed one back across the bar.
