by Dancer, Jack
During his stay, Tucker received a check in the mail for €24,000,000 (20% of lottery winnings) with the note, "reimbursement of expenses,” signed anonymous. French and Spanish authorities confiscated funds for taxes (French and U.S.), and to cover fines for the long list of laws broken, including a fine for interfering with the joint task forces' failed efforts to capture an international terrorist.
Of the one million euro ransom money hidden in the El Raval floor safe, €200,000 paid outstanding bills from Dick's Dicks and the Fernandez, Lopez, Carbello, law firm. €50,000 was gifted to Madame Bovarie for all of her kindness and assistance. And, €750,000 was gifted to Tanya Bălan for educational expenses and as seed money to underwrite Rescue Romania, a charitable organization to help Romanian girls 13 to 22 to exit the sex industry.
Tucker Blue remains a bachelor and serial dater still determined to find and marry the love of his life.
***
Holy Shit!
Interview With Monica Reyes
Were you really a part of this Spanish Prisoner scam team?
Initially, yes. I was recruited by Nanette. God bless her. She was my friend since the days we were both with Pan Am.
Did you know the other scam team members?
Not really. I knew that Nanette had a partner, but I didn't know her personally, and I didn't know it was Pau, rather Julia.
I didn't know about James or Lisa's involvement, or Juan's. But I did eventually begin to suspect that James was involved based on my talk with him that Tuesday night at Scruples. He said some things that made me think he might be involved.
Did you know that Nanette and Pau were sisters?
No.
Are you really a princess?
Yes. My father descended from the royal bloodline dating back to Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile. Alfonso II was king of Aragon and Count of Barcelona during the 12th century.
Did you fall in love with Tucker?
Not at first of course. He was simply the mark for our scam, and I was to lure him in.
Is it true that you used your powers to make Tucker fall in love with you, like Terry said?
Yes. But these powers as you call them are not exclusive to me; every woman possesses them. It's just that some women are more skillful than others in applying them.
But you can't deny that beauty has a great deal to do with it too, right?
Sure it does. And those who are endowed with an uncommon beauty do have an advantage in attracting men's attention, but any woman can seduce virtually any man, beautiful or not. It's just that some women have developed a greater skill for seducing men than others.
The thing to remember is that it's not the power of women to seduce a man so much as it is the man's weakness for seduction. Men are inherently weak when it comes to women and that's where a woman's power lies, in the weakness of men.
What a girl needs to realize - and the sooner the better - is that she's sitting on a million dollars. Literally. Every girl is sitting on a million dollars, and it doesn't matter what she looks like. Just ask a blind man. They're as weak as any man, and just as easily seduced.
But don't you have to know what a man wants in order to seduce him?
All men want the same thing.
And what's that?
You'd have to be a eunuch to ask such a question.
So, getting back to love. Did you fall in love with Tucker?
I did but I wasn't entirely sure that he had fallen in love with me.
What gave you doubts?
When I discovered he had hidden the lottery ticket, and he refused to tell me about it. I thought he intended not to share the winnings with me even though I was entitled a share under the circumstances.
So you retrieved the ticket from the hiding place in the aqueduct after you saw Tucker hiding it. What did you do with it then?
I hired a lawyer to claim the winnings anonymously, pay the U.S. taxes, and deposit the balance into a numbered Swiss bank account. I did this on the Friday that Tucker drove to Perpignan.
But you were with Lloyd on Friday.
Lloyd was fiction. I use Lloyd once in a while as a competing lover to lock down a mark that either becomes unsure of his feelings toward me or becomes overconfident about my feelings for him. It's a strategy based on the idea that something gains in value when there's a chance of losing it. Everyone wants what they cannot have.
But Lloyd didn't just appear the Thursday night before Tucker's drive to Perpignan, he was introduced during a phone call back at J.F.K International.
I always introduce Lloyd early in the game as insurance, and so that he appears less contrived, when and if I bring him out later. Whether I use him later or not depends on how things go.
Once you had the lottery ticket why did you continue with the Spanish Prisoner scam; you didn't need it at that point?
I didn't. When I bailed from the limo, I essentially bailed out of the scam. By then I had already taken possession of the ticket, and when Ebba tore into me during the limo ride - that I was pretty sure would be the abduction - she provided me with an ideal cover to extricate myself from the scam without ruining it since she would be an acceptable Spanish Prisoner to keep Tucker as the mark. Plus, not only could I assist by encouraging Tucker to pay the ransom for humanitarian reasons, but it would give me time to sort out my feelings for Tucker without interference from Ebba.
So at that point did you tell Nanette you were out?
No. I just told her that I wasn't going to sit there and take Ebba's shit. I waited until Friday to be sure the ticket was valid before I told her I was out as Spanish Prisoner but would push Tucker along to pay the ransom. I was also the one who came up with the idea of using Nanette's new Pleasure Room and the Nyotaimori orgy fest that same Friday night to add another frame-up for Tucker.
I also paid Nanette a lot of money to make it worth her while to let me go and to placate whoever else she was in this with. That's when I learned about Pau's involvement, and that she was the real boss, so I paid Nanette enough money that she could pay off Pau too in case things fell apart because of me. I don't know what transpired there, only that the scam continued with Ebba as Spanish Prisoner; actually with Ebba and Terry both as Spanish Prisoners. Supposedly, Pau knew nothing of my involvement, which was how the scam worked - where no one person knew all the players.
But then Saturday night came along, and you were kidnapped by Drusilla's men. Were you expecting that?
Hell no. I knew that the ticket likely originated from the train incident and Drusilla, and that her boys were probably stealing it from Paulo because that was Tucker's thinking even though he tried to explain her involvement as something else entirely. We both knew the IndyCat boys were out to get us and that Drusilla was directing them. But once they were put away by Dick's Dicks, and we'd moved to a hotel room not registered to either of us; we thought Drusilla would have trouble finding us. So to your question, while it wasn't entirely unexpected, it was definitely a surprise.
When you were being held in the castle, were you afraid that Drusilla might harm you, or even kill you for the ticket?
At first, of course I thought she'd harm me and maybe kill me, but as I thought about it and the fact that I had already taken possession of the proceeds my fears abated on that score because I had what she wanted and that actually put me in control. If she killed me, she'd get nothing, so there was no gain for her to kill me and get nothing.
She did make one attempt to scare me into submission. She made one of the men who abducted me do an awful thing to me, and then she killed the man right before my very eyes so that I would see his life actually extinguish. She tried to break me with that, but it only strengthened my resolve to turn the tables on her. Don't get me wrong. I was still scared to death, but I knew she wouldn't kill me because I had what she wanted. My only choice was to gather up my fear and use it as my resolve to turn the tables, take charge and dictate terms that she would accept.
How
did you know she would accept your dictated terms?
She had no other choice if she wanted to walk away with something out of this whole mess. Plus, the heat Tucker was putting on her with his campaign to destroy her publically made my offer to her even that much more attractive.
What did you do to turn the tables?
I offered to pay her off.
When did you do that?
I made the offer to her on the day after she killed the man in front of me. I finalized the offer and arranged payment after Nanette's visit to the castle, and I learned about Tucker's campaign and that Drusilla would shortly be toast. And more importantly Drusilla knew the end for her was already banging on the front door.
Then why didn't she just quit and release you then?
I didn't want her to. I wanted to see what Tucker would give up to rescue me. He still thought he had possession of the lottery ticket. So I made Drusilla agree to continue with my kidnapping and the demand for the ticket.
But you knew he didn't have the ticket to rescue you.
But he didn't know that. I wanted to see how he'd handle that, how creative he would be.
But then you put his life at risk because you knew he'd try to rescue you, right?
I expected him to but I didn't know for sure he'd be willing to give up the ticket or risk his life to save me.
Why would you expect him to risk his life like that for essentially nothing since at that point, you weren't in any real danger?
Because I'm a princess, and I expect my hero to rescue me, and put his life on the line doing it. I wanted to see if he was a real hero. I wanted to know that he'd put his life at risk for love. I also wanted him to be a real hero for himself. It would not only be me testing him but also him testing himself. How often does a man have that chance in life? To really test himself, to test his mettle. Not many. And for those who do have that chance and actually pull it off, pass the test; can you imagine how they must feel about themselves? It's gotta be the greatest feeling in the world to know you're made of the right stuff.
But you were willing to sacrifice his life to find out?
He was under no real danger because I pre-arranged everything with Nanette and Drusilla to see that no harm would come to him during the rescue mission.
Why would you do all that knowing there were really no risks for him to take to be a hero?
He didn't know that. To him, the risks were absolutely real. I wanted him to be a hero. Didn’t you pay attention to what I said two questions ago?
Okay. So you knew ahead of time that Tucker and Nanette were facing little or no risk to themselves but what about all those men who died or were wounded during the rescue operation? Surely you knew there was a potential risk to them.
That was part of the deal with Drusilla. She didn't care how many of those men were lost during the rescue operation. She doesn't care who dies as long as it isn't her. And as it turned out most of those men were either already working for Azaura to overthrow Drusilla or were turncoat bounty hunters out to kill her for the reward Tucker had put on her head. At that point, Drusilla would've been happy if Tucker had shot 'em all.
But they were men, nevertheless, men who would lose their lives. Didn't you care?
They were the scum of the earth. They were men who would kill you and your whole family for a dollar and not think twice about it. They were just like Drusilla and Pau, bloodthirsty killers without a shred of conscious or compassion. They were no loss to the world. And they helped make Tucker my hero. A real hero who rescued his real princess. Isn't that what fairy tales are made of? How can you show your love for someone more than that? Tucker Blue is my hero, and I love him with all my heart. And no, I didn't give two shits about any of those men. If you only knew what one of them did to me, you wouldn't care either.
But as it turned out Tucker and Nanette were at great risk during the rescue attempt having dodged bullets several times. In fact, on at least two occasions, they were forced to kill men to save themselves.
Are you an idiot? Are you listening to anything I'm saying to you? I don't think so because if you were you'd at least have the sense to revise your questions. Okay. Let me give it to you one more time so listen up because this is the last time I'll speak to you on this subject.
When Drusilla agreed not to interfere with Tucker's rescue attempt, she had no idea she will have lost control of her troops by then. She was completely blindsided when her men turned on her for the reward money that Tucker put up and pushed at their families.
And of course she had no idea either that Azaura had cut a deal with the secret agent team to throw her over in exchange for her business interests in the Basque region. She certainly had no idea that his men would be infiltrating the castle that night, coordinating with the secret agent team's raid.
And just to show you how sometimes the right hand will intentionally leave the left hand ignorant; it was Tucker who set the stage for the secret agents' raid on the castle in the first place, and even he was kept in the dark about Azaura, and his men being involved. Had he known that the castle would be swarming with Basque guerrilla fighters that night, he probably would’ve modified his rescue plan accordingly. It's one thing to take calculated risks even for love, but it's another to say fuck it, and make a suicide run in the name of love. That's not love. That's just stupid.
Are you going to leave Big Al for Tucker?
Why would I do that? I don't want to die, and I don't want Tucker to die either.
What about Drusilla shooting Tiber and Drusus? Why did she do that?
Fear was the basis of Drusilla's power and killing he own sons reinforced her evil image and instilled fear among her men. Of course, you do know those killings were staged, don't you?
Was Nanette's killing staged too?
No. That was an accident, an act of pure stupidity. Pau didn't intend to shoot Nanette but Pau's a megalomaniac and got excited and accidentally shot Nanette. She warned Nanette and Tucker that she had P.M.S. and a gun. I guess she wasn't kidding.
You brought Nanette and Drusilla into your confidence to pull off Tucker's rescue, did you also bring Pau into your confidence?
No. Never. I knew Pau was a loose cannon, a wild card that could not be trusted. Her accidentally killing Nanette proved that. Besides, I didn't need her.
Terry was your friend and not a part of the scam team. Why did you put her at risk?
First of all, I did not put Terry at risk. I was not in control of the kidnapping. That was James' responsibility. I had no foreknowledge of the details regarding when, where and how that was to be carried out. And besides that, Terry was never at risk. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if you ask her, she'd tell you she was in the right place at the right time because it put her together with Juan, and they fell in love. Had she not been in the limo and taken, she probably would have never hooked up with Juan.
Have you done anything to help Terry and Juan given that Juan could be prosecuted for kidnapping?
First of all, there is no evidence that a kidnapping even occurred. Ebba, Terry, and I were supposed to have been kidnapped, right? Ebba is not going to file charges because it was her fiancé, Pello Azaura, and his men who were technically the kidnappers who held her captive, and she won't do anything to harm him. Terry won't file charges because it was Juan, her fiancé, who kidnapped her. I will not file charges against Drusilla for kidnapping me because I made a deal with her to take the money and run.
In terms of helping Terry and Juan, yes, I am helping them with their business venture - Juan's Special Sauce. I am investing in their business by providing all financing for one-third interest. I've made them millionaires.
And Ebba, what's with all that?
You should probably ask Pau since it takes a nut to understand another nut. Who knows what sent Ebba off? Maybe she's just looking for another adventure or another man to torture or many men to torture. She's got a whole guerrilla army of nuts to play with now; I he
ar. She's probably having the time of her life. I think she was getting pretty bored (pun) with being a flight attendant.
You go girl!
By the way, if you don't get the pun on "bored," and you're German, you might know her as Mindy.
Dear Reader,
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Sincerely,
Jack Dancer
To My Readers
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