| General Fiction posted May 8, 2022 |
  |
A cantankerous Tucker verses an evil Farnsworth.
Tucker at the Trocadero (Part-2)
by Ric Myworld
In Part-1: After a confrontational restaurant meeting, Daniel Farnsworth IV made Samuel Tucker (Aka-Tucker) an offer he couldn’t refuse. Setting him up in a luxurious office and supplying everything he needed to become his own personal private detective. The picture to the left is the Trocadero as it was in its heyday.
Tucker hadn’t seen his fancy new office but once since hiring on as Daniel Farnsworth IV’s private investigator three-months prior. The day the office was set up and he moved in.
He had spent every night since in a hotel, and three days a week on a plane as Farnsworth’s glorified debt collector. And unbeknownst to Farnsworth, Tucker had secretly spent every spare minute chasing leads to nail down his unsuspecting boss’s innumerable dirty deeds.
In good conscience Tucker refused to keep turning a blind eye to Farnsworth’s flourishing empire fueled by greed and corruption. The ruthless billionaire who continuously committed outrageous atrocities in the name of business.
It was time to take a stand. But first, Tucker needed to recruit a few extra eyes to help substantiate evidence for charges to stick in court. He hoped to accumulate an overwhelming stockpile of damning information, without getting them all killed.
___________________
Tucker whipped his blue F-350 Ford pickup into the graveled side lot of Bill’s Bar and Country Grocery. Formerly, the infamous Trocadero Club ballroom, restaurant, and gambling establishment from the 1940s through 1960s, before the multi-million-dollar bust closed it down.
In 2005, nearly 50-years later, it reopened. But without all the luxurious flash and fanfare. The lopsided ramshackle Trocadero sign still tottered over the entrance. A front for Daniel Farnsworth’s private cardroom and bank-sized safe chocked full of cash.
Tucker pulled-in, angling across two parking spaces to avoid dings on his doors. But to anyone watching, they would have sworn he had to be drunk.
It was 8:30 in the morning, July 3rd, on the Ellis Park racetrack-side of the Audubon Memorial Bridge that separates Henderson, Kentucky from Evansville, Indiana.
The summer’s river-bottom humidity was already hot and sticky. Piercing bloodsuckers swarmed, an army of hummingbird-sized mosquitos inflicting itchy, raised, quarter-sized welts. And by noon the sweltering heat would smother staggered patrons struggling for every breath.
T. D. McCann, the person Tucker had hoped to find, stood between the bushes next to the building, guzzling down half of a half-pint in his right hand, his left propped against the stone wall steadying his wobbly legs. And no sooner than he gulped down the cheap, rot-gut whiskey, he puked it back up. What he called, priming his worn-out alcoholic system.
T.D., the tall, Hollywood handsome, Big Ten football star had become a prominent thoroughbred horse trainer after college. Time and bad choices had taken their toll on his wrecked body and career. He’d become an old down-on-his-luck drunk; frail, grey skinned, with glow-in-the-dark yellow liver-jaundiced eyes and nicotine-stained teeth. One of the nicest people ever, his once million-dollar smile still drew remembering fans to his celebrity.
“Hello, T. D., how’s it going?” The two childhood schoolmates and friends smiled and waved, always happy to run across each other. “Hey, T.D. man—think you’ll make it?”
“Howdy, Tuck . . . you bet.” T.D. chuckled. “If I can get the second half of this bottle to stay down . . . I’ll be good for the day.” They both laughed, but jolly demeaners couldn’t hide the sadness in both their eyes.
“Well, Touchdown McCann, when you get squared away, come on in ol’ buddy and I’ll buy a couple.” Bent over, shaking, and gagging, T.D. threw up his hand, tried to smile, and waved a trembly-handed okay sign.
Tucker’s memory likely wandered back in time to when one bad joke had destroyed two good peoples’ lives; to when a fraternity brother had hidden a pair of lacy-pink panties under the driver-side seat of T. D.’s new Eldorado convertible—recently purchased with his huge signing bonus—from the then, Cleveland Browns.
Claudia, T. D.’s fiancé, supposedly out of town for the weekend, had come home unexpectedly to catch a glimpse of the panties peeking from under the seat’s front edge.
T. D. and his friends tried desperately to explain the joke. But Claudia refused to listen. And there wasn’t anything T.D. or anyone else could say to change her mind.
Their fairy tale, “happily-ever-after and forever” had ended. Claudia moved away, changed her name, and died the following year in an automobile accident. Totally innocent of the seemingly obvious, T. D.’s plummet to the dregs spiraled.
Tucker eased through the dilapidated joint’s door and climbed up on a stool at the bar, the only open seat since before six o’clock that morning.
A haze of smoke swirled into ceiling fans throughout the non-smoking establishment, evidence state and city laws weren’t a priority.
Over at the racetrack, stables had started work between 2:30 and 4:00 in the morning, the regular seven-day-a-week grind. The track opened at 5:45 for training. And the outfits that didn’t have horses to gallop or work were finished shortly after the track opened, if not before.
Therefore, the bar filled up early. Yesterday’s hangover victims needing to knock off the edge, desperate to find a winner and recoup the previous day’s losses.
Tammy Jo, the bartender, tried to attract Tucker’s attention, adding a little pretentious wiggle to her boom-chick-a-boom walk. Such a cute little bubble-butt twitching like bait on the end of a flyrod. Every bug-eyed bass or trout waiting for the hook to be set.
As typical, Tucker ignored everything else once he opened his racing form, except Tammy. He hadn’t missed a twist of her round and shapely derrière in full swing, more an aggravation than a turn on to him. He hated her flirty, street-corner gyrations. So, he kept his perception disguised.
“What’s new, Tuck?” Tammy asked. She waited for an answer that never came, before working down the bar and back up serving food and drinks. Then, she eased over again, eyelashes fluttering, searching for a response.
“Well, Tuck, how’s everything going with you?” Tammy waited . . . and waited . . . then, raised her voice, “Tucker!” Tuck gazed up slowly, his reaction not in the least bit startled, as you might expect.
“What—Tammy?” Tuck asked. The whole bar turned and stared. Probably wondering why Tammy Jo was yelling.
“Damn you Tucker . . . why can’t you take your nose out of that racing form long enough to answer a simple question?”
“Because most of the time . . .” Tuck cleared his throat and smiled. “I don’t want to be bothered with stupid questions. So, did you need something important, missy britches?”
As the old saying goes, Tammy was “red faced and madder than a wet hen.” “Oh, okay, I get it—” she said, staring a hole through Tuck. “So sorry I bothered you. But you can bet your bippy it won’t happen again.”
Typical Tuck just couldn’t leave things well enough alone, as he laughed, and said, “Oh, I’d bet against that.” The whole bar broke out in raucous laughter.
Tammy stormed away, throwing her dish towel, knocking over all the clean glasses that banged and clanged in the drain basket. Luckily, nothing broke.
“Tammy Jo . . . don’t act like that. I’m sorry—” Tuck folded up his racing form and sat up straight. “Well, what’s going on with you princess?” Tucker’s sweet talk only made matters worse.
“Just go back to what you were doing, Tuck.” Tammy slammed and threw everything in her path. “Sorry, I interrupted you.” Tammy wasn’t only mad. She was hurt and embarrassed in front of all her regulars.
And Tammy wasn’t just the bartender. She was Katie’s daughter: the woman Tucker had dated on and off for twenty years. For eleven of those years, Tuck was the closest example of a father Tammy had ever known.
Within months of Katie and Tucker’s breakup, Katie passed away. Leaving Tammy to the indiscriminate judgement of Child Services until new provisions could be met.
Tucker didn’t waste any time filing necessary paperwork to adopt Tammy as his own. But as a single, unrelated male: the court-system’s criteria ruled against him. His years spent co-parenting merited little consideration. The obscure courts deemed the child’s unfamiliar aunt and uncle better suited to provide a proper and healthy homelife environment.
Tucker made every effort to stay in Tammy’s life. But Katie’s sister and her husband blocked all attempts. Even managing a restraining order to keep him away. After four years of weekly letters and routine gifts, he gave up.
Tammy never received any of Tucker’s letters or periodic packages. So, who should she have believed? Her deceiving aunt and uncle who had hidden or destroyed all the evidence of Tucker’s persistence to communicate, or the one living person she had counted on and trusted before he allegedly abandoned her.
Out celebrating with friends on her twenty-eighth birthday, Tammy couldn’t stop staring at a familiar face at the bar. She just wasn’t quite sure . . .. It had been a long time, and people change. Although, he was a near replica of how she remembered him. She refused to leave without saying something, but the question was . . . what to say?
Thinking back to happier times—cuddled in his lap watching cartoons, drinking chocolate or strawberry milk—half of her wanted to hug him. But her deeper-side of befuddled misgivings and pent-up anger wanted to slap the cowboy-piss out of the worthless deserter.
She managed to push her squeamish fury aside, walked over, and tapped him on the shoulder. And the instant their eyes met, her icy heart melted, along with all hostilities. Tuck, the big brawny bruiser turned helpless child, wept uncontrollably. A deluge of tears streaming down both their faces.
They hugged and cried . . . and hugged some more.
Tucker spent hours explaining his side of the story, and Tammy pieced together an update of life without him. Devastated by the unretrievable time lost, they made a pact to never let anything come between them again.
_________________
Katie hadn’t been in the picture for 16 years. And in the last couple, Tammy had made it clear she wanted more from Tucker than a father figure and wasn’t bashful about showing how she felt.
Any man would have been flattered and proud to have had such a gorgeous young woman half his age wanting a romantic relationship. But as attractive and special to him as she was, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to see Tammy in that way.
At 37-years old, he still saw her as a naïve, young girl who needed to be careful and make the right choices, which would have been a first so far. And Tucker knew there wasn’t a parent in the world who would consider him a suitable mate. And besides, Tammy needed a good man, her own age. A standup person to grow old with, not a worn-out, old coot with a thirty-year head start on meeting his maker.
“The tangled web we weave,” an unforgettable line from a television soap opera describes most of our lives. Tucker was the perfect example. He was a private detective determined to bust his devilish, no-qualms-about-killing boss, rather than clearing the cases he’d been hired to solve.
The bar doors burst open in a hail of splintered fragments and glass. Dressed in all black, five face-masked commando-types rushed in. Four aggressors separated in six-foot-gapped intervals, locked onto submachine guns, ready to fire. The fifth stood against the wall and barked orders for everyone to keep facing forward, hands on the bar.
Then, the intruder closest to the door slipped up and smashed a vicious blow behind Tucker’s right ear with the butt of his weapon. The force drove his head into the oak bar with a loud pop. Blood splattered. And Tucker’s limp body crashed to the floor with a thud on his left side. His right arm flopped across his head and eyes.
Tammy dropped whatever she had in her hands and darted toward Tucker. But then, three shots ripped into the rear wall exploding liquor bottles a foot in front of her face, as a harsh voice yelled, “Stop or die.”
Tammy froze in place. Mascara melting down her face like candle wax, an Alice Copper or Marilyn Manson lookalike.
The first and third raiders jumped over the bar, cleaned out the cash registers, then raced toward the rear cardroom and safe.
A clay-packed charge blasted the door off its hinges. Perpetrators on a mission. Two bandits and the commander sped in before the smoke cleared. In and out within seconds, they were gone as quickly as they'd come. An indicative clue that robbing the bar was secondary.
________________
The following morning, sunrise flickered through the trees on five bodies hung by their necks high up in the giant oaks outback of the Trocadero. Only a crane could have hoisted them so high. Turbulent 30 mph wind-gusts whipped the dangling corpses around like tails on kites.
Despite the doctor’s week-of-rest order, Tucker drove straight back to the bar upon release from overnight-observation.
Police cars sat parked and running, red and blue lights flashing. Frenetic detectives collected evidence. Hazmat-suited forensic specialists examined the hanging bodies from City Electric’s bucket trucks, often called cherry pickers. Two investigators cornered Tucker the second he pulled in the lot.
“Hello, Sir, wasn’t it you who the robbers injured.”
“Yea, they thumped me on the head.”
“It was a little more than that wasn’t it?”
“Well, not really, but they caught me in a soft spot that took 11-stitches and gave me a concussion.”
“Do the men hanging in the trees look like the same ones who committed yesterday’s robbery?”
“Well, they’d be hard to recognize under the masks. But those swinging stiffs aren’t likely the robbers.”
“And why would you say that, Sir?”
“Well, for one thing, they’re wearing standard service-issued boots. The surefire pros from yesterday wore $1,200 Cruz-flat combat boots made in Italy by the Jimmy Choo family.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Easy . . . I was lying on the floor, arm over my face, and able to see everything at ground level. Plus, the Choo’s are memorable.”
“Did they take anything besides cash-register money?”
“I have no idea. But chump-change wasn’t the motive. This was a scouting mission to scope out the safe.”
“What makes you say that Sir?”
Tucker laughed and shook his head, thinking: these nitwits would be lucky to find their own butts with both hands.
“Well boys, doesn’t it make sense that if they’d really wanted to rob the place, they might’ve waited for the evening’s overflowing tills and brimming bank bags?”
“Huh, hadn’t thought about that. You might be right.”
Tucker knew Farnsworth wanted to sell the nearly decapitated bodies as casualties of stepping on the wrong toes, billboarding merciless reprisal against all who cross him.
“You law-enforcement cowboys better get tied on tight. There are two ruthless, high-tech organizations out to prove superiority.”
Daniel Farnsworth’s vicious brutality had already hung five innocent people to save face.
In Part-1: After a confrontational restaurant meeting, Daniel Farnsworth IV made Samuel Tucker (Aka-Tucker) an offer he couldn’t refuse. Setting him up in a luxurious office and supplying everything he needed to become his own personal private detective. The picture to the left is the Trocadero as it was in its heyday.
Tucker hadn’t seen his fancy new office but once since hiring on as Daniel Farnsworth IV’s private investigator three-months prior. The day the office was set up and he moved in.
He had spent every night since in a hotel, and three days a week on a plane as Farnsworth’s glorified debt collector. And unbeknownst to Farnsworth, Tucker had secretly spent every spare minute chasing leads to nail down his unsuspecting boss’s innumerable dirty deeds.
In good conscience Tucker refused to keep turning a blind eye to Farnsworth’s flourishing empire fueled by greed and corruption. The ruthless billionaire who continuously committed outrageous atrocities in the name of business.
It was time to take a stand. But first, Tucker needed to recruit a few extra eyes to help substantiate evidence for charges to stick in court. He hoped to accumulate an overwhelming stockpile of damning information, without getting them all killed.
___________________
Tucker whipped his blue F-350 Ford pickup into the graveled side lot of Bill’s Bar and Country Grocery. Formerly, the infamous Trocadero Club ballroom, restaurant, and gambling establishment from the 1940s through 1960s, before the multi-million-dollar bust closed it down.
In 2005, nearly 50-years later, it reopened. But without all the luxurious flash and fanfare. The lopsided ramshackle Trocadero sign still tottered over the entrance. A front for Daniel Farnsworth’s private cardroom and bank-sized safe chocked full of cash.
Tucker pulled-in, angling across two parking spaces to avoid dings on his doors. But to anyone watching, they would have sworn he had to be drunk.
It was 8:30 in the morning, July 3rd, on the Ellis Park racetrack-side of the Audubon Memorial Bridge that separates Henderson, Kentucky from Evansville, Indiana.
The summer’s river-bottom humidity was already hot and sticky. Piercing bloodsuckers swarmed, an army of hummingbird-sized mosquitos inflicting itchy, raised, quarter-sized welts. And by noon the sweltering heat would smother staggered patrons struggling for every breath.
T. D. McCann, the person Tucker had hoped to find, stood between the bushes next to the building, guzzling down half of a half-pint in his right hand, his left propped against the stone wall steadying his wobbly legs. And no sooner than he gulped down the cheap, rot-gut whiskey, he puked it back up. What he called, priming his worn-out alcoholic system.
T.D., the tall, Hollywood handsome, Big Ten football star had become a prominent thoroughbred horse trainer after college. Time and bad choices had taken their toll on his wrecked body and career. He’d become an old down-on-his-luck drunk; frail, grey skinned, with glow-in-the-dark yellow liver-jaundiced eyes and nicotine-stained teeth. One of the nicest people ever, his once million-dollar smile still drew remembering fans to his celebrity.
“Hello, T. D., how’s it going?” The two childhood schoolmates and friends smiled and waved, always happy to run across each other. “Hey, T.D. man—think you’ll make it?”
“Howdy, Tuck . . . you bet.” T.D. chuckled. “If I can get the second half of this bottle to stay down . . . I’ll be good for the day.” They both laughed, but jolly demeaners couldn’t hide the sadness in both their eyes.
“Well, Touchdown McCann, when you get squared away, come on in ol’ buddy and I’ll buy a couple.” Bent over, shaking, and gagging, T.D. threw up his hand, tried to smile, and waved a trembly-handed okay sign.
Tucker’s memory likely wandered back in time to when one bad joke had destroyed two good peoples’ lives; to when a fraternity brother had hidden a pair of lacy-pink panties under the driver-side seat of T. D.’s new Eldorado convertible—recently purchased with his huge signing bonus—from the then, Cleveland Browns.
Claudia, T. D.’s fiancé, supposedly out of town for the weekend, had come home unexpectedly to catch a glimpse of the panties peeking from under the seat’s front edge.
T. D. and his friends tried desperately to explain the joke. But Claudia refused to listen. And there wasn’t anything T.D. or anyone else could say to change her mind.
Their fairy tale, “happily-ever-after and forever” had ended. Claudia moved away, changed her name, and died the following year in an automobile accident. Totally innocent of the seemingly obvious, T. D.’s plummet to the dregs spiraled.
Tucker eased through the dilapidated joint’s door and climbed up on a stool at the bar, the only open seat since before six o’clock that morning.
A haze of smoke swirled into ceiling fans throughout the non-smoking establishment, evidence state and city laws weren’t a priority.
Over at the racetrack, stables had started work between 2:30 and 4:00 in the morning, the regular seven-day-a-week grind. The track opened at 5:45 for training. And the outfits that didn’t have horses to gallop or work were finished shortly after the track opened, if not before.
Therefore, the bar filled up early. Yesterday’s hangover victims needing to knock off the edge, desperate to find a winner and recoup the previous day’s losses.
Tammy Jo, the bartender, tried to attract Tucker’s attention, adding a little pretentious wiggle to her boom-chick-a-boom walk. Such a cute little bubble-butt twitching like bait on the end of a flyrod. Every bug-eyed bass or trout waiting for the hook to be set.
As typical, Tucker ignored everything else once he opened his racing form, except Tammy. He hadn’t missed a twist of her round and shapely derrière in full swing, more an aggravation than a turn on to him. He hated her flirty, street-corner gyrations. So, he kept his perception disguised.
“What’s new, Tuck?” Tammy asked. She waited for an answer that never came, before working down the bar and back up serving food and drinks. Then, she eased over again, eyelashes fluttering, searching for a response.
“Well, Tuck, how’s everything going with you?” Tammy waited . . . and waited . . . then, raised her voice, “Tucker!” Tuck gazed up slowly, his reaction not in the least bit startled, as you might expect.
“What—Tammy?” Tuck asked. The whole bar turned and stared. Probably wondering why Tammy Jo was yelling.
“Damn you Tucker . . . why can’t you take your nose out of that racing form long enough to answer a simple question?”
“Because most of the time . . .” Tuck cleared his throat and smiled. “I don’t want to be bothered with stupid questions. So, did you need something important, missy britches?”
As the old saying goes, Tammy was “red faced and madder than a wet hen.” “Oh, okay, I get it—” she said, staring a hole through Tuck. “So sorry I bothered you. But you can bet your bippy it won’t happen again.”
Typical Tuck just couldn’t leave things well enough alone, as he laughed, and said, “Oh, I’d bet against that.” The whole bar broke out in raucous laughter.
Tammy stormed away, throwing her dish towel, knocking over all the clean glasses that banged and clanged in the drain basket. Luckily, nothing broke.
“Tammy Jo . . . don’t act like that. I’m sorry—” Tuck folded up his racing form and sat up straight. “Well, what’s going on with you princess?” Tucker’s sweet talk only made matters worse.
“Just go back to what you were doing, Tuck.” Tammy slammed and threw everything in her path. “Sorry, I interrupted you.” Tammy wasn’t only mad. She was hurt and embarrassed in front of all her regulars.
And Tammy wasn’t just the bartender. She was Katie’s daughter: the woman Tucker had dated on and off for twenty years. For eleven of those years, Tuck was the closest example of a father Tammy had ever known.
Within months of Katie and Tucker’s breakup, Katie passed away. Leaving Tammy to the indiscriminate judgement of Child Services until new provisions could be met.
Tucker didn’t waste any time filing necessary paperwork to adopt Tammy as his own. But as a single, unrelated male: the court-system’s criteria ruled against him. His years spent co-parenting merited little consideration. The obscure courts deemed the child’s unfamiliar aunt and uncle better suited to provide a proper and healthy homelife environment.
Tucker made every effort to stay in Tammy’s life. But Katie’s sister and her husband blocked all attempts. Even managing a restraining order to keep him away. After four years of weekly letters and routine gifts, he gave up.
Tammy never received any of Tucker’s letters or periodic packages. So, who should she have believed? Her deceiving aunt and uncle who had hidden or destroyed all the evidence of Tucker’s persistence to communicate, or the one living person she had counted on and trusted before he allegedly abandoned her.
Out celebrating with friends on her twenty-eighth birthday, Tammy couldn’t stop staring at a familiar face at the bar. She just wasn’t quite sure . . .. It had been a long time, and people change. Although, he was a near replica of how she remembered him. She refused to leave without saying something, but the question was . . . what to say?
Thinking back to happier times—cuddled in his lap watching cartoons, drinking chocolate or strawberry milk—half of her wanted to hug him. But her deeper-side of befuddled misgivings and pent-up anger wanted to slap the cowboy-piss out of the worthless deserter.
She managed to push her squeamish fury aside, walked over, and tapped him on the shoulder. And the instant their eyes met, her icy heart melted, along with all hostilities. Tuck, the big brawny bruiser turned helpless child, wept uncontrollably. A deluge of tears streaming down both their faces.
They hugged and cried . . . and hugged some more.
Tucker spent hours explaining his side of the story, and Tammy pieced together an update of life without him. Devastated by the unretrievable time lost, they made a pact to never let anything come between them again.
_________________
Katie hadn’t been in the picture for 16 years. And in the last couple, Tammy had made it clear she wanted more from Tucker than a father figure and wasn’t bashful about showing how she felt.
Any man would have been flattered and proud to have had such a gorgeous young woman half his age wanting a romantic relationship. But as attractive and special to him as she was, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to see Tammy in that way.
At 37-years old, he still saw her as a naïve, young girl who needed to be careful and make the right choices, which would have been a first so far. And Tucker knew there wasn’t a parent in the world who would consider him a suitable mate. And besides, Tammy needed a good man, her own age. A standup person to grow old with, not a worn-out, old coot with a thirty-year head start on meeting his maker.
“The tangled web we weave,” an unforgettable line from a television soap opera describes most of our lives. Tucker was the perfect example. He was a private detective determined to bust his devilish, no-qualms-about-killing boss, rather than clearing the cases he’d been hired to solve.
The bar doors burst open in a hail of splintered fragments and glass. Dressed in all black, five face-masked commando-types rushed in. Four aggressors separated in six-foot-gapped intervals, locked onto submachine guns, ready to fire. The fifth stood against the wall and barked orders for everyone to keep facing forward, hands on the bar.
Then, the intruder closest to the door slipped up and smashed a vicious blow behind Tucker’s right ear with the butt of his weapon. The force drove his head into the oak bar with a loud pop. Blood splattered. And Tucker’s limp body crashed to the floor with a thud on his left side. His right arm flopped across his head and eyes.
Tammy dropped whatever she had in her hands and darted toward Tucker. But then, three shots ripped into the rear wall exploding liquor bottles a foot in front of her face, as a harsh voice yelled, “Stop or die.”
Tammy froze in place. Mascara melting down her face like candle wax, an Alice Copper or Marilyn Manson lookalike.
The first and third raiders jumped over the bar, cleaned out the cash registers, then raced toward the rear cardroom and safe.
A clay-packed charge blasted the door off its hinges. Perpetrators on a mission. Two bandits and the commander sped in before the smoke cleared. In and out within seconds, they were gone as quickly as they'd come. An indicative clue that robbing the bar was secondary.
________________
The following morning, sunrise flickered through the trees on five bodies hung by their necks high up in the giant oaks outback of the Trocadero. Only a crane could have hoisted them so high. Turbulent 30 mph wind-gusts whipped the dangling corpses around like tails on kites.
Despite the doctor’s week-of-rest order, Tucker drove straight back to the bar upon release from overnight-observation.
Police cars sat parked and running, red and blue lights flashing. Frenetic detectives collected evidence. Hazmat-suited forensic specialists examined the hanging bodies from City Electric’s bucket trucks, often called cherry pickers. Two investigators cornered Tucker the second he pulled in the lot.
“Hello, Sir, wasn’t it you who the robbers injured.”
“Yea, they thumped me on the head.”
“It was a little more than that wasn’t it?”
“Well, not really, but they caught me in a soft spot that took 11-stitches and gave me a concussion.”
“Do the men hanging in the trees look like the same ones who committed yesterday’s robbery?”
“Well, they’d be hard to recognize under the masks. But those swinging stiffs aren’t likely the robbers.”
“And why would you say that, Sir?”
“Well, for one thing, they’re wearing standard service-issued boots. The surefire pros from yesterday wore $1,200 Cruz-flat combat boots made in Italy by the Jimmy Choo family.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Easy . . . I was lying on the floor, arm over my face, and able to see everything at ground level. Plus, the Choo’s are memorable.”
“Did they take anything besides cash-register money?”
“I have no idea. But chump-change wasn’t the motive. This was a scouting mission to scope out the safe.”
“What makes you say that Sir?”
Tucker laughed and shook his head, thinking: these nitwits would be lucky to find their own butts with both hands.
“Well boys, doesn’t it make sense that if they’d really wanted to rob the place, they might’ve waited for the evening’s overflowing tills and brimming bank bags?”
“Huh, hadn’t thought about that. You might be right.”
Tucker knew Farnsworth wanted to sell the nearly decapitated bodies as casualties of stepping on the wrong toes, billboarding merciless reprisal against all who cross him.
“You law-enforcement cowboys better get tied on tight. There are two ruthless, high-tech organizations out to prove superiority.”
Daniel Farnsworth’s vicious brutality had already hung five innocent people to save face.
Tucker hadn’t seen his fancy new office but once since hiring on as Daniel Farnsworth IV’s private investigator three-months prior. The day the office was set up and he moved in.
He had spent every night since in a hotel, and three days a week on a plane as Farnsworth’s glorified debt collector. And unbeknownst to Farnsworth, Tucker had secretly spent every spare minute chasing leads to nail down his unsuspecting boss’s innumerable dirty deeds.
In good conscience Tucker refused to keep turning a blind eye to Farnsworth’s flourishing empire fueled by greed and corruption. The ruthless billionaire who continuously committed outrageous atrocities in the name of business.
It was time to take a stand. But first, Tucker needed to recruit a few extra eyes to help substantiate evidence for charges to stick in court. He hoped to accumulate an overwhelming stockpile of damning information, without getting them all killed.
___________________
Tucker whipped his blue F-350 Ford pickup into the graveled side lot of Bill’s Bar and Country Grocery. Formerly, the infamous Trocadero Club ballroom, restaurant, and gambling establishment from the 1940s through 1960s, before the multi-million-dollar bust closed it down.
In 2005, nearly 50-years later, it reopened. But without all the luxurious flash and fanfare. The lopsided ramshackle Trocadero sign still tottered over the entrance. A front for Daniel Farnsworth’s private cardroom and bank-sized safe chocked full of cash.
Tucker pulled-in, angling across two parking spaces to avoid dings on his doors. But to anyone watching, they would have sworn he had to be drunk.
It was 8:30 in the morning, July 3rd, on the Ellis Park racetrack-side of the Audubon Memorial Bridge that separates Henderson, Kentucky from Evansville, Indiana.
The summer’s river-bottom humidity was already hot and sticky. Piercing bloodsuckers swarmed, an army of hummingbird-sized mosquitos inflicting itchy, raised, quarter-sized welts. And by noon the sweltering heat would smother staggered patrons struggling for every breath.
T. D. McCann, the person Tucker had hoped to find, stood between the bushes next to the building, guzzling down half of a half-pint in his right hand, his left propped against the stone wall steadying his wobbly legs. And no sooner than he gulped down the cheap, rot-gut whiskey, he puked it back up. What he called, priming his worn-out alcoholic system.
T.D., the tall, Hollywood handsome, Big Ten football star had become a prominent thoroughbred horse trainer after college. Time and bad choices had taken their toll on his wrecked body and career. He’d become an old down-on-his-luck drunk; frail, grey skinned, with glow-in-the-dark yellow liver-jaundiced eyes and nicotine-stained teeth. One of the nicest people ever, his once million-dollar smile still drew remembering fans to his celebrity.
“Hello, T. D., how’s it going?” The two childhood schoolmates and friends smiled and waved, always happy to run across each other. “Hey, T.D. man—think you’ll make it?”
“Howdy, Tuck . . . you bet.” T.D. chuckled. “If I can get the second half of this bottle to stay down . . . I’ll be good for the day.” They both laughed, but jolly demeaners couldn’t hide the sadness in both their eyes.
“Well, Touchdown McCann, when you get squared away, come on in ol’ buddy and I’ll buy a couple.” Bent over, shaking, and gagging, T.D. threw up his hand, tried to smile, and waved a trembly-handed okay sign.
Tucker’s memory likely wandered back in time to when one bad joke had destroyed two good peoples’ lives; to when a fraternity brother had hidden a pair of lacy-pink panties under the driver-side seat of T. D.’s new Eldorado convertible—recently purchased with his huge signing bonus—from the then, Cleveland Browns.
Claudia, T. D.’s fiancé, supposedly out of town for the weekend, had come home unexpectedly to catch a glimpse of the panties peeking from under the seat’s front edge.
T. D. and his friends tried desperately to explain the joke. But Claudia refused to listen. And there wasn’t anything T.D. or anyone else could say to change her mind.
Their fairy tale, “happily-ever-after and forever” had ended. Claudia moved away, changed her name, and died the following year in an automobile accident. Totally innocent of the seemingly obvious, T. D.’s plummet to the dregs spiraled.
Tucker eased through the dilapidated joint’s door and climbed up on a stool at the bar, the only open seat since before six o’clock that morning.
A haze of smoke swirled into ceiling fans throughout the non-smoking establishment, evidence state and city laws weren’t a priority.
Over at the racetrack, stables had started work between 2:30 and 4:00 in the morning, the regular seven-day-a-week grind. The track opened at 5:45 for training. And the outfits that didn’t have horses to gallop or work were finished shortly after the track opened, if not before.
Therefore, the bar filled up early. Yesterday’s hangover victims needing to knock off the edge, desperate to find a winner and recoup the previous day’s losses.
Tammy Jo, the bartender, tried to attract Tucker’s attention, adding a little pretentious wiggle to her boom-chick-a-boom walk. Such a cute little bubble-butt twitching like bait on the end of a flyrod. Every bug-eyed bass or trout waiting for the hook to be set.
As typical, Tucker ignored everything else once he opened his racing form, except Tammy. He hadn’t missed a twist of her round and shapely derrière in full swing, more an aggravation than a turn on to him. He hated her flirty, street-corner gyrations. So, he kept his perception disguised.
“What’s new, Tuck?” Tammy asked. She waited for an answer that never came, before working down the bar and back up serving food and drinks. Then, she eased over again, eyelashes fluttering, searching for a response.
“Well, Tuck, how’s everything going with you?” Tammy waited . . . and waited . . . then, raised her voice, “Tucker!” Tuck gazed up slowly, his reaction not in the least bit startled, as you might expect.
“What—Tammy?” Tuck asked. The whole bar turned and stared. Probably wondering why Tammy Jo was yelling.
“Damn you Tucker . . . why can’t you take your nose out of that racing form long enough to answer a simple question?”
“Because most of the time . . .” Tuck cleared his throat and smiled. “I don’t want to be bothered with stupid questions. So, did you need something important, missy britches?”
As the old saying goes, Tammy was “red faced and madder than a wet hen.” “Oh, okay, I get it—” she said, staring a hole through Tuck. “So sorry I bothered you. But you can bet your bippy it won’t happen again.”
Typical Tuck just couldn’t leave things well enough alone, as he laughed, and said, “Oh, I’d bet against that.” The whole bar broke out in raucous laughter.
Tammy stormed away, throwing her dish towel, knocking over all the clean glasses that banged and clanged in the drain basket. Luckily, nothing broke.
“Tammy Jo . . . don’t act like that. I’m sorry—” Tuck folded up his racing form and sat up straight. “Well, what’s going on with you princess?” Tucker’s sweet talk only made matters worse.
“Just go back to what you were doing, Tuck.” Tammy slammed and threw everything in her path. “Sorry, I interrupted you.” Tammy wasn’t only mad. She was hurt and embarrassed in front of all her regulars.
And Tammy wasn’t just the bartender. She was Katie’s daughter: the woman Tucker had dated on and off for twenty years. For eleven of those years, Tuck was the closest example of a father Tammy had ever known.
Within months of Katie and Tucker’s breakup, Katie passed away. Leaving Tammy to the indiscriminate judgement of Child Services until new provisions could be met.
Tucker didn’t waste any time filing necessary paperwork to adopt Tammy as his own. But as a single, unrelated male: the court-system’s criteria ruled against him. His years spent co-parenting merited little consideration. The obscure courts deemed the child’s unfamiliar aunt and uncle better suited to provide a proper and healthy homelife environment.
Tucker made every effort to stay in Tammy’s life. But Katie’s sister and her husband blocked all attempts. Even managing a restraining order to keep him away. After four years of weekly letters and routine gifts, he gave up.
Tammy never received any of Tucker’s letters or periodic packages. So, who should she have believed? Her deceiving aunt and uncle who had hidden or destroyed all the evidence of Tucker’s persistence to communicate, or the one living person she had counted on and trusted before he allegedly abandoned her.
Out celebrating with friends on her twenty-eighth birthday, Tammy couldn’t stop staring at a familiar face at the bar. She just wasn’t quite sure . . .. It had been a long time, and people change. Although, he was a near replica of how she remembered him. She refused to leave without saying something, but the question was . . . what to say?
Thinking back to happier times—cuddled in his lap watching cartoons, drinking chocolate or strawberry milk—half of her wanted to hug him. But her deeper-side of befuddled misgivings and pent-up anger wanted to slap the cowboy-piss out of the worthless deserter.
She managed to push her squeamish fury aside, walked over, and tapped him on the shoulder. And the instant their eyes met, her icy heart melted, along with all hostilities. Tuck, the big brawny bruiser turned helpless child, wept uncontrollably. A deluge of tears streaming down both their faces.
They hugged and cried . . . and hugged some more.
Tucker spent hours explaining his side of the story, and Tammy pieced together an update of life without him. Devastated by the unretrievable time lost, they made a pact to never let anything come between them again.
_________________
Katie hadn’t been in the picture for 16 years. And in the last couple, Tammy had made it clear she wanted more from Tucker than a father figure and wasn’t bashful about showing how she felt.
Any man would have been flattered and proud to have had such a gorgeous young woman half his age wanting a romantic relationship. But as attractive and special to him as she was, Tucker couldn’t bring himself to see Tammy in that way.
At 37-years old, he still saw her as a naïve, young girl who needed to be careful and make the right choices, which would have been a first so far. And Tucker knew there wasn’t a parent in the world who would consider him a suitable mate. And besides, Tammy needed a good man, her own age. A standup person to grow old with, not a worn-out, old coot with a thirty-year head start on meeting his maker.
“The tangled web we weave,” an unforgettable line from a television soap opera describes most of our lives. Tucker was the perfect example. He was a private detective determined to bust his devilish, no-qualms-about-killing boss, rather than clearing the cases he’d been hired to solve.
The bar doors burst open in a hail of splintered fragments and glass. Dressed in all black, five face-masked commando-types rushed in. Four aggressors separated in six-foot-gapped intervals, locked onto submachine guns, ready to fire. The fifth stood against the wall and barked orders for everyone to keep facing forward, hands on the bar.
Then, the intruder closest to the door slipped up and smashed a vicious blow behind Tucker’s right ear with the butt of his weapon. The force drove his head into the oak bar with a loud pop. Blood splattered. And Tucker’s limp body crashed to the floor with a thud on his left side. His right arm flopped across his head and eyes.
Tammy dropped whatever she had in her hands and darted toward Tucker. But then, three shots ripped into the rear wall exploding liquor bottles a foot in front of her face, as a harsh voice yelled, “Stop or die.”
Tammy froze in place. Mascara melting down her face like candle wax, an Alice Copper or Marilyn Manson lookalike.
The first and third raiders jumped over the bar, cleaned out the cash registers, then raced toward the rear cardroom and safe.
A clay-packed charge blasted the door off its hinges. Perpetrators on a mission. Two bandits and the commander sped in before the smoke cleared. In and out within seconds, they were gone as quickly as they'd come. An indicative clue that robbing the bar was secondary.
________________
The following morning, sunrise flickered through the trees on five bodies hung by their necks high up in the giant oaks outback of the Trocadero. Only a crane could have hoisted them so high. Turbulent 30 mph wind-gusts whipped the dangling corpses around like tails on kites.
Despite the doctor’s week-of-rest order, Tucker drove straight back to the bar upon release from overnight-observation.
Police cars sat parked and running, red and blue lights flashing. Frenetic detectives collected evidence. Hazmat-suited forensic specialists examined the hanging bodies from City Electric’s bucket trucks, often called cherry pickers. Two investigators cornered Tucker the second he pulled in the lot.
“Hello, Sir, wasn’t it you who the robbers injured.”
“Yea, they thumped me on the head.”
“It was a little more than that wasn’t it?”
“Well, not really, but they caught me in a soft spot that took 11-stitches and gave me a concussion.”
“Do the men hanging in the trees look like the same ones who committed yesterday’s robbery?”
“Well, they’d be hard to recognize under the masks. But those swinging stiffs aren’t likely the robbers.”
“And why would you say that, Sir?”
“Well, for one thing, they’re wearing standard service-issued boots. The surefire pros from yesterday wore $1,200 Cruz-flat combat boots made in Italy by the Jimmy Choo family.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Easy . . . I was lying on the floor, arm over my face, and able to see everything at ground level. Plus, the Choo’s are memorable.”
“Did they take anything besides cash-register money?”
“I have no idea. But chump-change wasn’t the motive. This was a scouting mission to scope out the safe.”
“What makes you say that Sir?”
Tucker laughed and shook his head, thinking: these nitwits would be lucky to find their own butts with both hands.
“Well boys, doesn’t it make sense that if they’d really wanted to rob the place, they might’ve waited for the evening’s overflowing tills and brimming bank bags?”
“Huh, hadn’t thought about that. You might be right.”
Tucker knew Farnsworth wanted to sell the nearly decapitated bodies as casualties of stepping on the wrong toes, billboarding merciless reprisal against all who cross him.
“You law-enforcement cowboys better get tied on tight. There are two ruthless, high-tech organizations out to prove superiority.”
Daniel Farnsworth’s vicious brutality had already hung five innocent people to save face.
 Recognized |
#2 May 2022 |
I had planned for this story to become a book, but without enough time or patience for such a long and tedious venture, I have decided to finish the story with a few additional chapters. It's been a while since Tucker (part-1) was posted, so you might want to refresh your memories before reading the following few parts. Thanks for your time and consideration!
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