The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels)

by R. O. Barton

  “Please stay and work the night Mr. Tucker. I’ll have James drop you off where we picked you up, after he takes me and the boys home.” After a pause he added, “I’ll give you a bonus.”

  The boys didn’t look any happier at the mention of the bonus. He actually looked scared. What the hell, in for a penny in for a pound.

  “Sure,” I said.

  By now the limo had come to a stop and James opened the door on my left. There was a sizable crowd around the entrance to Pete’s. The walk under the maroon awning, from the door to the road, was lined with people. Many appeared to be those who’d come to Pete’s to eat without reservations, and unable to get in, were milling around. The others seemed to be Bench’s employees and their partners. They were actually clapping. It looked like a mini academy awards ceremony, without the red carpet.

  Powell got out first, stood and looked around just like a bodyguard should.

  Before I could move I heard Trent say, “You get out last.”

  I knew he wasn’t talking to Bench.

  “Okay,” I said, without looking at him. I was watching the crowd. I thought, this is where I would cut the dogs loose. I wondered who Mr. Bench had angered to the extent to need three bodyguards. Not only who, but what he had done to anger them.

  Powell bent down and looked at Samuel Bench and said, “Okay, Mr. Bench, it’s clear.”

  Clear?

  Bench got out, followed by Trent. For a moment, I thought Trent was going to close the door in my face.

  People were standing in front of Bench, shaking his hand, patting him on the back. These were for sure, employees. Powell was on his left and Trent on his right. All three only one man deep. They were not letting anyone get to either side of him. I was three feet behind Bench, about 15 feet from the limo, and still 20 feet from the door to Pete’s when I remembered an old swamp axiom: ‘It’s always the second man the water moccasin bites.’

  That’s when things started to move into slow motion. That’s when I knew; for me, slow motion has been an effective harbinger for extreme violence and it has never lied.

  The skin on my back felt like there were ants crawling under it. The cool October night felt too warm, and there was light where there should be darkness and darkness where there should be light. The crowd disappeared, and there was only Powell, Bench, and Trent in front of me. I felt a presence behind me.

  I spun my head to the left, over my shoulder. There were two men in the street, ten feet from and just over the hood of the limo. I was vaguely aware of other people in the shadowed street to either side, but knew there was no one behind them. James was still standing by the back door, his wide white smile glistening and contradicting the impending doom.

  Both the men in the street wore dark suits, coats unbuttoned, their faces ghostly white in the changing light. They were just starting to spread out when they saw me spot them. One was a big man; beefy in the shoulders and small in the hips. The other was as small as Bench.

  “Behind us!” I yelled, as my body followed my head to the left, putting my back to Bench’s back, my left hand reached behind me to make sure he was there, and stayed there.

  There was a gun in the smaller man’s hand, and it was aimed at me. The big man’s gun was by his side, coming up fast. My .45 bucked twice in my hand. I didn’t hear it, didn’t even know I’d pulled it. I saw flame come from the little man’s gun. To my left, someone was tugging at my coat. I knew what it was. I’d felt it before. My .45 bucked two more times, now aimed at the big man’s chest. I shifted back to the little guy, he was still up but somehow shorter.

  He must have body armor.

  In a two handed squared stance, I shot him once more. He went down hard, disappearing behind the hood of the limo. I moved forward, looked over the hood, then shifted to the big guy. He was sitting in the street, holding himself up with both hands, one at each side. I could see the gun under his right hand, I shot him once. The back of his head hit the street so hard, it bounced back up into a bright red mist that was hanging in the air. I still couldn’t hear anything over the sound of rushing fluid in my head, like water straining through a pipe. I’d heard that before.

  I slowly and deliberately turned my head to look at Bench. He was just starting to lie down, being pushed by Trent. I couldn’t believe how long it was taking him. He should have been down a long time ago. Powell and Trent both had their weapons out and were looking at me like I had feathers. Somewhere in a small pocket of my brain, I wondered what I had done wrong.

  I knew I’d shot six times, so I reached into the left hand pocket of my coat, pulled out an extra magazine, pushed the magazine release with my right thumb dropping the partial magazine into my left hand. With the full one between thumb and forefinger I rammed it home, putting the partial into the empty pocket.

  I walked around the limo and looked down at the little guy. He was on his back, his feet tucked under him, one under each butt cheek. He’d been on his knees when I shot him the last time. There was no body armor, just a lot of blood. I didn’t need to look at the big guy.

  My hearing was coming back. Both ears were ringing from the muzzle blasts I didn’t hear. Life once again moved at a normal pace.

  Trent was looking at me wide-eyed, shaking his head. Powell was pulling Bench to his feet.

  I wondered why I didn’t hear the sirens of approaching police cruisers. I could hear women screaming, and suddenly, everything was sharper, brighter; the colors more brilliant and the eyes of everyone staring at me were magnified, too close to me.

  Holstering my Colt, I walked over to the limo, and James was still standing in the exact same spot, like he was holding the door open for me. He was no longer smiling.

  I got in and sat in the middle, away from the crowd and the bodies in the street. I faced the front of the car and waited for the police to arrive. Staring straight ahead, I couldn’t see anyone at all. More importantly, I felt no one could see me.

  Suddenly, I felt the beautifully aged, cherry-stained, birds-eye maple trim inside the limo, gawking at me.

  I was later told the whole thing took place in the space of 3 to 4 seconds, probably closer to 3. It wasn’t the gravity of my actions that ground that data into insignificant unobserved electrons, but the eyes. I couldn’t get the eyes of those people out of my head. They looked at me like I was one of the bad guys.

  Chapter 2

  What if? Have you ever played what if? Most people have, but it’s usually, ‘what if I won the eighty million dollar lottery’.

  But, what if you knew beforehand, the exact moment, that pivotal moment in time and space, that moment you made the decision to turn right, to answer the phone, or to take that other route home? That crucial decision that would hurl you into a series of independent, seemingly logical actions, which would create in your world so much pain, so much violence, so much grief and guilt, that at times you didn’t think you’d survive. At other times, you were afraid you would. If you knew this beforehand—would you make that turn? Would you answer that phone? Probably not. For in most cases it takes years, sometimes many years, to know that the decision you made at that moment—the moment that facilitated all that violence, pain and grief—that horrific decision making nano-second . . . could make you a better human being.

  Nashville, Tennessee Present Day

  I was focused at my workbench, easing the slide onto a Smith & Wesson 9mm when the phone rang. Startled, I jerked it up, “Tucker’s.”

  On the other side I hear in the slowest of southern drawls, “Hey, ya wanna punch holes in some paper?”

  It was Brad Spain, a Captain with the Nashville Metro P.D., who heads up the elite Murder Squad. He’s a little full-blooded Cherokee Indian, who talks sooo slow, in a deep brown monotone voice, that it is sometimes grueling. His words were cut short and exact, his voice strained, as if he were lifting something heavy, all with a drawl, but he was a competitive shootist. I’ve known him for twenty years, since 1 a.m., Dec. 11th, 1982. The night
my wife was killed.

  “Brad, it’s always good to hear from you,” I said.

  Notice I didn’t say, ‘good to hear the sound of your voice.’ But, Brad was a friend, a friend of a definite kind, the kind who has shared something horrific, tragic, and sacred with me. When I did hear from him, it usually meant some kind of work was coming my way. It would just take me a long time to hear about it. Spain was instrumental in the transformation of Tucker Arms to Tucker Security.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’ve got the range at Gun World for six tonight. Feel like a friendly wager?”

  There was a time we could do our shooting at the police range, but certain knowledge as to the identities of some of my clients had become privy to Metro PD, and I had fallen out of favor.

  I looked down at the Citizen Aqualand watch on my left wrist. It was 4:30. It’s a big watch and has nice big green numbers, so at night I could almost read by their luminescence, and if needed, it could be taken off and used as a blackjack.

  I said, “Kind of short notice, isn’t it? What’ve you been doing? Practicing for this and planning to slip up on me?”

  “Naw, just a friendly little shoot-out,” he replied.

  I don’t have time to do the gunsmithing I used to, but I looked at the two pistols remaining on my bench that I had yet to finish. One was my favorite to work on and to shoot, a 1911 Colt .45. Archy in Boulder, Co sent it to me. The attached note said, ‘smooth it out, quicken it up and make it shoot straight.’ Usually 1911’s shoot where they’re pointed, tells me a little about Archibald from Boulder. The other one was a third generation Smith and Wesson Model 5904 9mm that had a little too much on the trigger pull. I owned one myself. Nothing I couldn’t do tomorrow.

  “Spain, I’d love to take your money, but I’m swamped here.”

  Thought I’d play hard to get and raise the bet.

  “Money,” he says lazily. “Who said anything about money? I don’t have any fuckin’ money. If I can’t pay for it with a credit card, forget it. How about the winner buys dinner at the Three Little Pigs.”

  Aha. It worked. It’s a great Bar-B-Q place that serves excellent smoked turkey breast and has Haake Beck, a fine fake brew, and it’s just around the corner from Gun World. But, I can tell he’s holding something back.

  “I don’t think so . . . ” I started, but before I can get it all out, he spilled his guts, in slow motion.

  “Tucker, I need to see you. There’s someone who is interested in meeting you. He wants to set up an interview. Tucker, this might be a big one, and there’s something else going on I’d like to talk to you about.”

  I traced the scrimshaw etchings on the ivory handle of the Colt with my finger and said, “So I’ve got to embarrass you at the range. Then make you buy me dinner just so you’ll tell me. Tell me now and save yourself.”

  I wonder where dead-eye Archy from Boulder got his ivory. It didn’t look old enough to be legal.

  He said, “I can’t. I’m at my desk, it could get a little touchy . . . embarrass me! Just show up and I’ll show you who gets embarrassed. Besides, if you beat me, I may not tell you.”

  Listening to Spain was like trying to wheedle a half inch of thick brown molasses out of a gallon jug. After it was all out, you realized it would’ve been faster to break the jug and scrape it out.

  “Okay. What are your terms?” I asked. “You always have some.”

  “No fast draw. Semi-automatics on the bench. Five shot groupings. We go on a three count.

  I felt like he was right behind me, fixing to take my scalp.

  “All right, Spain, who’s doing the counting, you?”

  “Naaw, I’ll give you a break. We’ll let Spark do the counting.”

  Spark owned and operated Gun World on Murfreesboro Road. He looked like a slow-moving catfish with a Clark Gable mustache, black glasses and a black receding hairline, and his favorite expression to me was ‘Well, I don’t know, Tucker.’ He would say this in a cavernous bass voice with no southern accent, since he originated in Connecticut. He usually said this right after I’d done something with a pistol he just couldn’t wrap his mind around.

  “I’ll be there even though I smell an ambush,” I said.

  “Good, see you at six.” His chuckle sounded like he was rubbing his hands together.

  Chapter 3

  My past has a way of slipping up behind me, with the subtlety of a freight train. I don’t hear it coming. First, I feel it, like a wave of shimmering energy being pushed ahead of it. Then the train arrives and slams into my occipital ridge with a force that used to take me to my knees. Towed behind the locomotive is a row of boxcars that contains everything meaningful, and most times traumatic, that has happened to me. It’s a long train.

  For someone who battles with staying in the present moment, this can be difficult. But isn’t that what life is?

  Over the years I’ve learned through different modalities of study to watch this train from a higher point of view. Like an eagle soaring above the train. Observe the train. Don’t be the train.

  Each car being towed is full of actions and feelings. They’re baggage cars and they are full. Who I am at this moment, is the sum total of the mistakes made and lessons learned inside each one of those cars.

  But, I am not at this moment any one of those actions or feelings. I am not anger, I am not violence, I am not guilt, and I am not grief. I’m supposed to be love. Love for everything that has happened to me, no matter what it was. Because like Stuart Smalley said, ‘I love myself.’

  There are times when I feel more love than other times. I can be any one of many feelings. This time I’m numb. Numb is good.

  From my eagle’s eye view, everything happens at the same time. So my future has already happened. I just can’t see it. The decisions I make now, in the present moment, determine that.

  Ahh . . . there’s the caboose.

  I stared at the backs of my hands that were spread out over the Colt. They weren’t big hands, as hands go, especially attached to my Alleyoop arms that were affixed to a 48-inch torso. They were strong hands. I believed the smallness of them was a major factor in the hand speed I’ve always had. The knuckles were different shades due to scar tissue. There was a perfect little round scar just to the left of my right index knuckle, exactly the size of a .25 caliber bullet. The exit scar on the other side was not as perfect.

  Sporadically spaced about the backs of both hands were scars of varying sizes, shapes and shades. The little finger on my right hand was bent under at the last knuckle, due to my first fight out of the ring when I was 13 (I never got past Golden Gloves). I didn’t close my hand tight to make a hard fist. Instead of hitting him with the first two knuckles, I caught him with the last two, and the force of the blow pushed the little finger into my hand and the bone decided to peek out and see the world.

  I knew at that moment, hitting a man in the head with my bare fist, while summoning the speed and strength I was capable of, wasn’t going to work for me. I was five- nine and weighed 160 pounds when I was 13. I wasn’t fat.

  The man I hit was 35 and about 185 pounds. The last punch of a five-punch combination was a straight right that caught him over his heart. He wet his pants on the way down. I got the knuckle sequence right that time.

  My cell phone rang. I pick it up, “Tucker’s.”

  “Hiii Paw Paw!”

  I felt my heart smile.

  I said, “Hey, Little Margie.”

  My mouth felt funny. I must have smiled. Smiling, according to some, was something I didn’t do enough of. It’s been said my smiling was often a precursor to violence. It may be hereditary. The Major use to smile before he smacked me.

  I remember the day my daughter, Shannon, called and asked my permission to name her firstborn after her mother, my late wife.

  I knew the inescapable red horned demons that stalked me in my slumber and crept up on me with the stealth of stagnant swamp water while I was awake, were not m
y daughter’s problem.

  I answered with, “Shannon, you don’t have to ask my permission. You name your daughter anything you want.”

  “But Dad,” she replied, “I’m worried that it’ll be hard for you. I know how much you still miss Mom.”

  Bowing to my ambiguous sensibilities, all I could do was reiterate, “You name your daughter anything you want. I appreciate your concern. I’ll be just fine with it, really.”

  I also remember I wasn’t so sure of that at the time.

  Now, I love to say her name. Her being named Margie was a healing for me. Now, she’s my ‘Little Margie’.

  “What are you doing, Paw Paw?” Margie said, enunciating every syllable.

  “Oh, you know, just foolin’ around the office.”

  “Are you working on a gun? When are you going to take me shooting? I want to go hunting. I want you to take me fishing too,” she said, without taking a breath. Her voice, so mature for a girl not yet a teenager.

  “You’re not quite old enough to hunt yet, Margie. Besides, do you think you could really kill an animal, like a duck? They’re so pretty.” I figured to shock this burgeoning young lady with some hard reality.

  “Sure,” she chirped. “I love your duck gumbo. I could kill a duck for sure.”

  So much for shocking reality. She was so sure of herself. I couldn’t help but notice how much she was like her namesake.

  I did something alien. I laughed out loud.

  I said, “Maybe this summer we can start shooting a .22 rifle. You and Max (her little brother) can come out to the house, and we will make a day of it. Maybe you guys can spend the night.”

  “That would be cool,” she said, delighted.

  Cool, the word of generations. The fact that it still worked was cool in itself.

  “Paaaw Paaaw! Take me fishing!” Max yelled into the phone.

  I said, “Maxoman, can you hear me?”