by N Kuhn
Tucked In: Lianna
The Hollywood Files
By N Kuhn
This book is for my Mother. My constant. My cheerleader, shoulder, supporter, my everything. It’s been the two of us against the world since the beginning. This year we faced some of the hardest challenges, but persevered. I love you all the more for it.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
Growing up I wanted to be Rambo. My mother couldn’t afford a babysitter, so she used the TV. From the first time she sat me in front of the VCR with it, I knew that had to be me. I used to pretend our backyard was the jungle. Crawling my way through mud, with my best friend, killing the bad guys, is how we spent every summer. It's all I ever wanted out of life. So at eighteen, it was no shock to anyone when I joined the army, leaving my small town life behind me. Never once did I look back to that little Texas town. Years of my childhood I thought I would rot and die there like everyone else. Spending ten years in the Special Forces, I partook in black ops and got to live out my dreams of being a real live Rambo. Traveling the world, killing bad guys, it was the best years of my life.
That all ended one rainy night in the jungles of South America. We had been sent after a drug cartel moving guns they stole from an army base. Their leader was a badass man called El Burro, The Ass. Why anyone would want to be called The Ass, I have no clue, but by birth he was Javier Condos. Our informant was a deflector from his camp. He hadn’t known that Condos demanded his men plant some mines around their base camp perimeter and our Intel never caught it. Go figure, the government messing something up? The unit had spent four grueling days trekking through this jungle. We were all soaked from the rain, exhausted and almost out of MRE’s. Our attitudes that were once gung ho and ready to kill had turned sour. As we neared the camp, suddenly the adrenaline had returned. Each picking up a second or fifth wind, our pace quickened. The senior members of our team were prepared, as always. You never know what you will find out here.
One of our rookies on the team didn’t pay attention and had stepped on a mine. Having not listened when Rios told him to stay put, that’s when the shit hit the fan. Lifting his foot was the last thing I saw before getting thrown backwards. My shoulder felt like it was on fire, then I blacked out. My best friend and teammate Jeremy Rios was killed and in the blast, along with the rookie, my shoulder was horribly messed up. Other team members were injured, but not as bad. Torn and bloody I had laid on the jungle floor knowing my best friend was dead.
Jeremy had been my best buddy since I was six. We did everything together, even joining the Army and going through Special Forces training side by side. We rose in the ranks together, went out for Special Forces together, and expected to retire with each other. I don’t remember much of that night after the blast, but I can recall waking up in the mud, covered in blood. Mine, Jeremy’s, who knew, but that’s when I saw him. I saw El Burro standing over me, saying, “Tucker, Americans,” he spit on me, “Hah. This one won’t live, let’s go. Pack it up.” He had kicked me with the toe of his boot and it took everything inside of me to lie still. If I had moved, he would have most likely shot me. There was no way I could get to my gun, ten feet away from me in time. When I find that bastard again, I’ll put a bullet through his head, and trust me, I will find him. He’s done so many despicable things, he deserves a rotten death. Drug trafficking, sex trafficking, rape, murder. You name it, he’s guilty of it. That’s why we even had an informant in the first place. Burro took the man’s fiancé and raped her. He had said that as his leader, he was entitled to try her first. The man makes me sick.
The government, neither ours or in South America, know what he looks like, or so they say. That’s why they claim to have had difficulty capturing him. Sure, they have found some low level jockeys of his. But that doesn’t go far. When one of them is caught, he moves his base. Further and further into the jungle he goes, making it harder for us to find him. The man is like a ghost. Completely untraceable. No one knows much, and his men are loyal, out of fear. He has no qualms about killing them off. I heard he once killed a man for stepping on his toes. Brutal bastard.
Now, this makes me the only person living who has seen El Burro’s face that is not employed by him or working with him. Needless to say, my shoulder put me out of action with the Army, but dropped me into a bigger, meaner jungle. Now, stalking the nasty streets of Hollywood, I do the dirty work for Agents, Producers, Actors, and whoever else needs my assistance. This includes, but isn’t limited to bodyguard work, scaring off drug dealers, retrieving run away actresses, party girl heiresses, stepping in when they get out of hand in public, shutting down the paparazzi and in some extreme cases, taking them out. Permanently. A lot of times it’s just babysitting, but occasionally I end up having to hurt people to achieve my Tuck. I hate having to do that, killing, shooting civilians isn’t my idea of a great job. But, it pays the bills and for the most part, they deserve to get shot. You wouldn’t think a bunch or rich and famous people would be that bad. But, trust me, my black ops training comes in handy. A lot more than one would think. I’m Lance Tucker, and you don’t want me to have to tuck you in.
On the verge of thirty three, I have to look at the cards life has dealt for me. Most of my friends are still in the service, my family is all back in Texas, I have no steady girlfriend, and not many friends. My family wasn’t happy with my move here after I got out of the military, but that’s only because they expected to still live off of me. I had abusive parents growing up. Dad drank a lot, mom did drugs. They are the reasons I fight so hard when cases involve children or drugs. Having a beer here and there is one thing, but I don’t go crazy. Keeping myself in control is important. Thankfully, I don’t have any siblings. No one is left with them that I need to worry about. What few friends I had before the Army, weren’t that close to begin with. Most that I’m close with now, if you would call it close, were team members. They were the ones there when I met Burro. When I got home, I had been staying near the Mayor’s office, at a hotel. Running into him in the parking garage, it had been purely coincidental. A drug dealer, mad over some new restrictive law tried to shoot him, I saved his life. Long story short, I was offered a job by the Mayor’s bodyguard, ended up in LA on a job, and never left. Not that I’m conceited, but I’m good at what I do and I enjoy it. Over the years I have made a lot of connections and I’ve earned a lot of favors.
My job is my life, which is why I’m now in this crap hole bar, trying to find Lianna Landry. Now, yes, some of my associates would be jealous. This star, used to be a knockout. Used to be. She’s my age, about 5’6, with long flaming red hair and deadly green eyes. I’ve seen photos of her, where she looks like she’s on fire, from the way her hair shimmers. Not to mention the phenomenon of a body she has. Had I should say. The last few years she spent her millions on drugs and booze. It took a toll on her looks. She’s now a washed up actress, living off a daily dose of coke and booze. Back in the day, she was a child actress. Top children’s movies, a few good ones when she grew up, but as with most, her looks have faded as her poison of choice abuses her body. I saw my mother go through the same thing. She was a gorgeous woman, prom queen, back when dad met her. Between his abuse, and getting hooked on drugs, she spiraled down, and Lianna is heading in the same direction.
Rockstar studios paid her fifteen million to do a movie with them. This was supposed to be her comeback role. Some overseas adventure where the hot girl meets the government type and they have some sort of action romance. Chick flicks. I’m sure she took it, thinking she coul
d resurrect her career, and blow her money up her nose without anyone caring. Well, she’s wrong. Rockstar cares. They care that they invested all this money, and have no lead actress. A few days ago, the producer called me and said that she had disappeared from set, and they haven’t been able to find her. This is where I come in. Taking me out to an expensive lunch at La Bella on Rodeo Drive, they schmoozed me, even though I already knew I would take the job. But, politics is part of the game. I let them show off their fancy meals, talk about themselves, then get down to business. They cut a check, give me what info they have, and off I go, on my own. This time, I was hired to track her down and bring her back to the studio, in one piece. Which sometimes isn’t as easy as you would think. My gut tells me this will be one of those times. Lianna has a reputation for being hard-headed and a Diva. Just what I need, a whiny little movie starlet trying to give me a hard time. But, that’s the job I chose, or rather, the job that chose me.
A couple years ago, fresh from Texas, I did some bodyguard work for a studio head, the job that moved me here. Shep Davis, he’s made some of the highest grossing movies Hollywood has ever seen. He started getting death threats over a movie he was making, it was a highly controversial religious piece. But, it’s not my job to judge, only to protect. There were threats, break-ins and an attempted assassination, so I began handling the shadier situations. My job was to find the person who tried to kill my client. Then tuck him permanently. It was the first time I had been asked to kill a civilian, on US soil, not sanctioned by the government. At first, I wasn’t sure I could do it. It’s not like I hadn’t killed before, but this was just some nut job upset about a movie. I spent weeks on surveillance, I found out how really depraved he was. The man liked hookers. But not just any hooker, young ones. I watched several times, as he rode up and down the Boulevard, looking for the youngest girl. Then when he was done with her, I’d see her limping away, covered in bruises. He was a sick bastard. I no longer felt bad about what I was asked to do, and kill him I did. No one was the wiser. Had to be an accident right? Couldn’t have suspicion come back on my client or myself.
It seemed he befell the consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle. Every day this short, fat, bald loser would eat three meals a day at the same diner, down the street from his cardboard apartment. The place was a dumpster. He would grope the waitress, and because he tipped well, she would try to hide the look of disgust. She was a single mom after all. I do my research. Since South America, I make sure to be fully informed of every situation I’m going into. No longer do I rely on intel I’m given, especially by those who hire me. For the most part, they are wrong or don’t’ fully fill you in. I don’t do ‘Need to know.’ So, I paid this waitress and the cook off with a thousand each. Which was nothing to my client, but a lot to them. Pay isn’t so well in a place like that. Anyways, they turned their heads to the little handfuls of powdered glass I mixed into his food, before they served him.
For four days, I took the fine powder of crushed glass in there, sneaking through the back door. The guy was none the wiser. Always ordering the same thing, he never noticed the little crystals that would soon be attacking his insides. The food wasn’t the best, it was just cheap, so to him, I’m sure it didn’t taste any different. On the morning of the fifth day, we noticed he never made it in for breakfast. So, sneaking into his place, I found him laying in a pool of bloody vomit, face down, red liquid seeping from every hole in his body. An anonymous tip to the cops had them finding his body and shipping it off to the medical examiner. The ME was baffled. He had no clue what had happened or just didn’t care. I’m sure the man’s intestines looked like someone took a cheese grater to them, but what ME really cuts open the whole length of someone’s intestines? That’s what the glass does. It shreds the intestines, causing bleeding. The ‘victim’ eventually bleeds from every orifice in the body.
There was no poison in his system, and it ended up being inconclusive on the tox screen. The lazy ME just couldn’t figure it out and no one cared, it’s not like he was someone important, and this is Hollywood. There are plenty more deaths that rank higher attention than this guy did. It’s sad to say that about the justice system, but it’s true. Case closed, it was ruled an accident. All this, over him not liking a movie being made about Jews and Jesus. Come on. I mean, everyone is allowed their own opinions, but to threaten and then act on killing someone over it? Plus, I’m sure there’s a lot of hookers happy they won’t be seeing him or his fists again anytime soon. It’s a movie. Get a life, or get dead. He was my first official Permanent Tuck. I can sleep perfectly well after a Permanent Tuck. Because, I know they deserve it. If they don’t, then I won’t do it. The man was a scum bag. I have no nightmares about it. What I did was best for all involved. I did have a studio try to hire me for a permanent and I turned them down. I won’t kill over something foolish like being outbid on a movie option. Even killers have boundaries and limitations. This doesn’t make me an entirely bad guy, it just makes me good at my job, a paid mercenary of sorts. Society is better off for what I do.
So, that is how I got the nickname of Tuck. Besides it being my last name. You want something done discreetly, that’s where I come in handy. Now I’m sitting here in this shit hole in the wall bar in Little Tokyo. Not even a badass like me wants to be in J-Town after dark. This town is crawling with Yakuza, wanna be badasses and actors. From where I sit in the back of the Flaming Dragon Breath, I can see the whole bar. Keeping one eye on Lianna, and the other on the door, I can keep track of who comes and who goes.
A gaggle of Asian guys surround Lianna, I’m sure all trying to get lucky with the used to be famous woman. I had overheard her asking if they knew where they could get her some coke. Rolling my eyes to myself, waiting for the right time to step in is the hardest part. The last thing I want to do is get in a bar brawl with a bunch of ninja-wannabe’s. A large part of the population in J-Town thinks they are actors and the rest think they are badass ninja skilled warriors. Yeah, sure, there are families here just trying to live, but even the good families have that idiot kid or brother who just ruins it for all. It’s worse when they are drunk. They act like they are seven feet tall then, instead of five foot shorties. The guy who seems to be the alpha around here is pretty tall for being Japanese. Being the same height as Lianna, he’s been leaning on the bar right next to her the whole time. Dressed in his knock off Armani suit, and his fake Ferragamo shoes, he’s the one that said he could find her what she wanted. I’m sure that price will include a roll in the bed though. After a quick phone call, he tells her to sit tight. I don’t like the sound of that. Assessing the situation, I try to figure how many I will have to take out just to get her away from here. Guessing two or three of them will fight and the rest will back off, I like my chances.
A few times already, she has glanced over her shoulder at me. Licking her lips seductively, her smoldering emerald eyes winking with amusement. I typically blend in where ever I go, but in J-Town, it’s hard for a guy like me to just blend. Well, duh. I’m over 6’5” and I have a decently kept body. I’m so out of place here, there’s no chance of blending, which is what I prefer to do. I’m 6’5”, and built like the soldier I used to be. Typically the way I dress is sort of a camouflage. I can blend into most places here in Hollywood. Whether lunch at La Bella or walking the Boulevard, I blend. This place may have well-dressed patrons, but they are all Asian. I’m shit out of luck on fitting in. I do some working out to maintain my strength. But here, I tower over everyone, and besides her, I’m the only Caucasian in the damn bar. Rubbing my face, I haven’t shaved yet today, so I have a nice little fuzzy going on. The course hair rubs against my palm as I try to figure out the best approach. Her sly little smiles and peeks at me were starting to anger the man next to her. He noticed, but kept his mouth shut. Which was pretty smart of him. Guess even these bozos has some sort of mental capacity. Apparently I give off a certain air of ‘Don’t fuck with me.’
Anticipating my opportunity to b
reak in and drag her away, I begin to stand. Some of the guys were paying attention to the bartender mixing their drinks, and not Lianna. It’s a good time as any, and I may only have to deal with one or two of them. Drunk guys like to fight, no matter how big the opponent. As I get up, fully ready to walk towards the bar, the front door busts open. The proverbial shit has just hit the fan. Akio Hokkaido, the son of the Yakuza underboss here in L.A. walks in. Remember I said I like to be informed, well, he’s shown up in a few of my tucks before and though never have I been face to face with him, it’s still not someone I want to piss off. He’s tall, but scrawny, and it’s not that I don’t think I can take him, it’s his dad I’m more afraid of. The man is like a pit bull with a bone. He doesn’t forgive and sure as hell doesn’t forget. If this is the drug connection they called, we’re screwed. There’s no way I’ll get her out of here without a fight. Sitting back down, my hand rests on my hip, nudging against the Smith and Wesson tucked under my flannel pea coat. This is why I love wearing these coats, I had lots of pockets sewn on the inside, it’s easy to move around in, and I can turn my collar up, to help make me disappear. I can also easily hide my Bodyguard 380. It’s small, compact and doesn’t weigh me down when I need to move, and I’m definitely going to need to move. Staying on the edge on my seat, I’m prepared to launch. Good thing I filled the clip before coming in.