The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels)

by R. O. Barton

  “I’m sure you’ve used all your resources on the street to find these guys, right?” I said, all cop-like.

  “Hell, yes, I’ve been on it for over a week. I knew you’d be calling after Allen asked me about it. I don’t know what to do, Tucker. I can’t find these assholes, I don’t have the money, I don’t want you all pissed at me . . .

  “Just a minute, let me think,” I said, already thinking how his tone had changed. It had just the right amount of whine to it and showed enough respect for me, that I may be able to make him believe I believed him.

  After a planned pause, I said, “Barry, can you get me anything, anything at all? If you can, I might be able to get us out of this hole.”

  For what I had in mind, I didn’t want to seem too easy, and his answer would tell me what I wanted to know. If he had spent all the money, was he sitting on it, or was he setting something up for himself. I also hoped the ‘we’ would add some depth to the problem.

  “Whataya mean?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  I had him.

  “If you can come up with a couple of grand, I’ll use it to get us some real good stuff, something new. Something you can get top dollar for, and I’ll front it to you at my cost. The way I’ve got it figured, three or four ventures like this will not only get you out of hock with me, but you’ll make some on the back end.”

  I could hear the wheels spinning through the phone.

  Then I closed on him.

  “Even if you had to borrow it from somewhere, you’d still come out. You and I would be square. I could pay my guys, and if you ever get the money back from the guys who ripped you off, we’ll talk about that.”

  “I might be able to put something together in a couple of days, ya know, talk to a couple of buddies,” he said, a little too quickly.

  “Great, Barry!” I said, with a feigned sigh of relief. “This’ll work out. You’ve just got to watch your clientele from now on. Okay?”

  “Yeah, no shit. Look, Tucker, I’m real sorry about all this, but I’ll make it right. I promise.”

  “I know you will. Shit happens in this business. We’ll fix it and move on.”

  “I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, when I get it together,” he said.

  “Okay, when you do, I’ll get the rope (code for marijuana). You can drive up here, we’ll have us a visit and get this thing fixed up. Wait till you see this stuff, you won’t believe it.”

  “Cool, call you in a couple of days,” he said, then hung the phone up.

  Now, what did I learn from our conversation. One; he was waiting to see how I would react to his not paying me. Two; he had most or all of my money. I knew this when he said ‘Whataya mean, instead of, ‘I don’t know, or no’, or something along those lines. Three; he’s thinking not only will he get to keep my twelve grand, but make some more money and stay in business with me. And, four; he’s dumber than I thought, so I really don’t want to do business with him.

  I looked down at Boone, my black lab, patted him on his beautiful broad head and said, “You’re a good boy, Boone, a gooood boy.”

  My bowels felt like water and bile was in danger of rising at the thought of what I had planned to do, to get my money.

  Four days after our phone conversation I was sitting on the front porch of the house I’d rented in the country, waiting for Barry.

  A nice, semi-remote place on Dixie Garden Drive. It was just outside the city limits where the city police had no jurisdiction, and where the sheriff’s department didn’t know about me, I hoped.

  I was sitting in one of twin rocking chairs that overlooked an acre of front yard that was studded by five 50 foot pecan trees, that dripped a sticky residue on any cars that were parked beneath them. Some people said it was aphids doing it, but I always thought pecan trees just dripped.

  Boone was lying on the porch to my right, between the chairs, with my hand on his head, when Barry pulled into the drive.

  Boone was seven years old and extremely friendly. So I put my fingers around his collar so he wouldn’t try to get up when Barry got out of his car and started up the porch.

  Barry wasn’t a big man, about five-nine and a trim 150 pounds. At 24, his brown hair was already thinning, and his parents evidently hadn’t believed in, or couldn’t afford an orthodontist. Margie thought he was kind of handsome until he smiled, which he was doing now.

  We’d played football on the same team for six years and against each other on baseball teams all the way from Rebel League through Pelican League. We never really hung out, so when I suggested to Margie that she may want to go out for a while, until Barry and I did our business, she didn’t find that suspicious.

  Besides, she needed to get out of the house to take her mind off of something that was bothering her, and given that 8-year-old Shannon was down in Alexandria visiting her Grandmother, I would be left alone.

  She knew he owed us, but didn’t know what I had been planning. It was one of the few times I didn’t confide in her. Under the circumstances, I thought it best. She would find out soon enough, then I would have to deal with her reaction.

  At the top of the steps, Barry said, “Hey, Tucker, nice day, huh?”

  I chose not to reply, and I didn’t get up when Barry offered me his hand. I let go of Boone’s collar, and after shaking Barry’s hand, he bent over and ruffled Boone’s ears.

  “How ya doin’, Boone, old boy,” he said.

  I looked down at Boone, and thought, ‘he didn’t look old, he was only seven, and he was beautiful.’

  Barry sat down in the chair to my right. Boone was between us, looking back and forth with his intelligent brown eyes.

  “How was the drive up?” I asked, knowing full well how the drive from Alexandria was, two hours of flat boredom.

  “I made it in an hour and forty-five minutes,” he said proudly.

  “You must have been hauling it.”

  “Yeah, well, it helps to be a cop,” he replied.

  “Not all the time,” I said, gently rubbing behind Boone’s ears.

  I started to hear little rushing noises in mine, like water shooting through a pipe.

  My reply was hanging in the air, and when I looked at Barry, I saw the first signs of alarm register.

  Looking at the pecan trees, he said, “You doin’ okay, man?”

  “Hunky-fucking dory,” I said, smiling thinly at the same trees.

  “Where’s Margie, she around? I’d love to see her.”

  Yeah, I bet you would.

  She had been a cheerleader for two different football teams for five years, until we got pregnant with Shannon, in the 11th grade.

  It was no secret all the players had lascivious thoughts of the cheer-leaders.

  “She went shopping and to run some errands.”

  Barry had married a girl named Rochelle. We called her Roach, but she had a great personality.

  One of my father’s pearls was “never sleep with a girl you wouldn’t marry.”

  I didn’t believe Barry’s father gave him the same pearl. If he did, Barry didn’t listen. There were a lot of teenage pregnancies in the sixties.

  “That’s cool,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure,” he squeaked, the alarm now in his throat.

  Barry cleared his throat and continued, “We can get our business done and I can get on back to Alec, get the ball rollin,’ ya know.”

  “How much could you put together?” I asked, methodically rubbing Boone’s ears. I’d just about put him to sleep.

  “I got $2500,” he said, after what I thought was too long of a pause.

  Well, he either just added or subtracted $500. I was betting on added.

  My hands were sweating and the rubbing of Boone was keeping my right hand dry and that was a good thing.

  It’s funny how things worked out sometimes.

  I felt the itchy sweat as it rolled from my armpits and down my sides.

  “Did you get that good shit yo
u were talkin’ about?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  Between the rushing in my ears and the sweat dripping down my sides, I started to feel like I was ‘humidity’.

  He made a show of reaching into his right-hand pocket of his Levis and taking out a wad of hundreds.

  When I took on a new recruit, I usually gave my, ‘always keep your money in your left-hand pocket and my money in your right-hand pocket’, speech.

  It had always worked for me.

  Actually, he pulled out two wads. One had twenty hundreds in it, the other had five.

  There was no need for paranoia. There wasn’t much traffic on Dixie Garden and, after all, he was a cop, right?

  He handed me the money, and after counting it, I put it in the left front pocket of my Levis. This didn’t go unnoticed by him. After all, he’s a cop, right?

  He made no comment on the fact that I’d counted it.

  I was starting to get angry at what he was forcing me to do. I detest being angry, it tends make me angrier, another catch-22.

  “How much can you front me on this first run?” he asked, actually rubbing his hands together.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, standing. “Make sure Boone stays on the porch, I don’t want him running out into the street. It would be my luck that the only car that came down the road today would hit him.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” he said, already starting to pet Boone’s head.

  I wanted to hit him with a 36-inch bat.

  I went through the house to our bedroom. Under the bed was a walnut box I’d put there right after Margie left that morning.

  I pulled it out and set it on the bed.

  Could I really do this? I need to go to the bathroom, and I suddenly had to take a huge breath. I hadn’t been breathing.

  I opened the box and looked at the contents.

  A Smith&Wesson .22 cal. semi-automatic, on a Colt 1911 frame. It had two barrels and slides. One was a .22 magnum and the other was a .22 long rifle, with a silencer attached.

  I’d purchased the gun in the back room of a bookie’s bar for $75 when I was 18. The bookie was an Italian. The gun supposedly came from the northeast and was used for a hit in New Orleans, and I believe, was supposed to be Red River bound. You never know about these things. So, I had never showed the gun to anyone.

  The gun, extra slide and barrel with the silencer, were inlaid into purple felt. It only took a moment. While I listened for the sound of the front door to open, I assemble the gun with the silenced barrel, rammed a full .22 long rifle magazine up the grip, and racked a round in the chamber.

  I thought I did a damn quick job, considering my hands were wet and shaking.

  I had to get it together. I was angry, really pissed off. I was also afraid of what I had to do and what it may do to me, and Margie.

  I wanted to cry.

  I walked back to the front door, stood there, looking at the back of Barry’s head, and thought how easy it would be, to just shoot him from here.

  I took another big breath, let it out, took another one and slowly let it out.

  I could see the wind riffling the leaves of the pecan trees, a woodpecker knocking away at a limb, but all I could hear was the rushing of water. No… it was blood.

  After making sure it was on safety, but ready to fire, I tucked the pistol between my left hip and my jeans and pulled the t-shirt over it. It’s not where I usually carried a gun, but was perfect for what I had in mind.

  After another big breath, I wiped my palms on the front of my jeans, opened the door and stepped out onto the front porch.

  As soon as I walked out, Barry turned his head and looked at my empty hands. He couldn’t see the bulge of the pistol because it was on my left and he was on my right.

  “What’s up Tucker, where’s the shit?” he asked, half-rising from the chair.

  I casually motioned him to sit with my right hand and walked over to the steps. I looked up and down the street to make sure there were no cars coming, which seemed to relax him back into the chair. He thought I was checking before I brought out the pot.

  I knew he was carrying. After all, he’s a cop.

  I walked slowly down the steps until I was halfway down and about 10 feet in front of him. As I did, I crossed my arms over my stomach.

  Again I looked up and down the street, careful to keep my left side unexposed.

  “Looks clear to me,” he said, from behind and to my right.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning to my right to face him, and uncrossing my arms.

  By the time I was fully facing him, the gun was in front of my stomach, in my hand. I knew to him, it looked like it just appeared.

  He didn’t move . . . at all. He sat there staring at the end of the silencer.

  The gun was hidden from anyone but him and me, if there had been anyone else around, which there wasn’t.

  Then he heard the click of the safety, as I took it off.

  His face was pale and the fingers of his right hand were twitching.

  I said, “I know you’re carrying under your shirt. You wanna try for it? It might make this a little easier for both of us.”

  “I’m no match for you, and you know it,” he croaked, like his throat was stuck.

  “You want me to give you a better chance?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He just sat there looking at the silencer and all it implied.

  I waited. I didn’t trust myself to talk again. My throat was so tight, you couldn’t have pull a hair through it without slitting it.

  I don’t know how long we stood like that. It could’ve been ten seconds or ten minutes.

  Finally he said, “You can’t do this.” It was almost a whine.

  “Oh, and why is that?”

  “I’m a cop, for Christ sake, and a friend,” he said, his voice one testicle heavier than before.

  “You think I want to do this,” I said, with the anger I felt.

  “Go for it,” I said, with the first signs of tears in my eyes.

  “No.” He said. “I’m not going to make this easy for you.”

  It was going to be hard to see through the tears if I didn’t do this soon.

  “Easy!…Easy! You think this is going to be easy for me?”

  I was really pissed now, and he could see it. Ray Charles could have seen it.

  “The people I get my dope from want their money!” I lied. “I tried to explain the situation to them. They told me to get the money from you, or show them a picture of your body!”

  The tears in my eyes was what did it. He knew he was about to die.

  “I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” he screamed.

  For the first time, Boone started to get up.

  “Stay, Boone!” I said loudly.

  The silencer had never left the straight line to his nose.

  “Please,” he pleaded, “just give me a chance.”

  “I gave you one, and you lied to me. No one ripped you off. The question is, just how much of my money have you spent?”

  “I’ve still got most of it, I swear, I swear. You’ll have the rest of it tomorrow. Please, Tucker, don’t do this. You can’t do this!”

  “I don’t have a choice, you’ll just go back to Alec and never come up here again. Then, I’ll have to go down there and have to do this all over again, only it’ll be harder for me, you’re a cop.”

  “I promise. I promise. I didn’t know what kind of people you’re dealing with. Allen said you were real tight with the Mexicans.”

  Thanks a lot, Allen.

  “I’m sorry Barry. I’m sorry,” I said softly, as the tears flowed freely down my face and into my beard.

  It was time, the dreaded moment I knew was coming, what I had planned was at hand. It was time.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” I said hoarsely, as I moved the silencer from his nose to his forehead.

  “Noooooooooo!” Barry screamed, leaning so far back, the rocking chair was on the back tips of its runners
. His hands came up in front of his face as if to ward off the bullets.

  At the last split second, I turned the silencer to Boone’s beautiful head, and pulled the trigger twice.

  Phhitt-Phhitt

  The little .22 bullets hitting Boone made a thwapping sound. The movement of the slide and the brass hitting the concrete steps was louder than anything else on the porch.

  Through the rushing blood in my head, all noise was muted and distant.

  Boone’s head slumped down, as if he had quickly fallen asleep. His legs twitched a little, then I took my eyes off of him and back on Barry.

  It took less than a second.

  “Jesus . . Jesus . . . Jesus . . . . . Jesus,” he whimpered.

  “He ain’t here, you piece of shit!” I screamed.

  “Look what you made me do. You know how much I loved that dog. You know. Tell me you know!”

  “I know, I know . . . I’m sorry . . . please . . . please,” he was begging.

  I hadn’t realized it, but the gun was again pointed at his nose. We were both crying.

  Uh-oh. I’d better get myself under control before I really fucked up.

  “I’m going to lower my gun,” I said softly. “If you move, I’ll shoot you. If you say anything, anything at all, I’ll shoot you. If I hear you breathing, I’ll shoot you. Right now, I really want to shoot you.”

  I didn’t like that the last thing I’d said wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Get off my porch. Get in your car and get the fuck out of here. Tomorrow before the end of the day you’ll give Allen $9500 in cash. If he doesn’t call me before 10 o’clock tomorrow night, I’ll come down there and finish this, and you won’t know when.”

  I’d been lowering the gun, and when it was almost next to my right leg, he started to say something. I whipped the muzzle up and again it found his nose. His mouth slammed shut. He sat there like a small child waiting for someone to tell him to come out of the corner.

  “Now go. I have to bury my dog. I can’t believe I did that. I’d rather have shot you. Go. Go,” I said, the sound of the truth terrifying him, and me.

  I turned on the step, giving him room to walk by me, and as he did, he was looking down, not wanting to meet my eyes, the front of his pants were wet.