The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels)

by R. O. Barton

  I never got mad. He told me he was going to do it. I never again, doubted his word.

  I looked down to find myself rubbing the back of my right hand with a finger, across four barely visible, little white dots,.

  “The fork?” LeCompte asked.

  “He told you about that?”

  LeCompte walked around and sat in the chair across from me that earlier had been occupied by Carr. Now we were both sitting down. I was starting to feel a surrealness to all of this.

  He said, “I was standing next to Levanda the very first day of SEAL training. This bad ass Sergeant Major instructor comes up, the first thing he said was, ‘Any of you pussy assed numbnuts that thinks he can take me, step up here and let’s dance’. I heard this guy next to me whisper under his breath, ‘I wish Tucker was here.’ It was Levanda, and it was just the first of many times he said that.”

  “He was my best friend. I don’t know how to feel about him still being alive. I’ve missed him over the years.”

  “Well, he missed you too. I could tell by the way he talked about you. You were a big influence on his life.”

  “How and when did you talk to him?” I asked.

  Frank LeCompte looked at his boss, who had been sitting quietly behind his desk, smoking and sipping at his drink. Carr nodded to him.

  “When we started investigating you and I found out you were from Alexandria, I had to make sure you were the same Tucker he used to talk about. I mean, talk about your coincidences. I pulled some strings and called in some favors and found out where and who he’s with these days.”

  Even through the surprised anger of finding out I’d been investigated, I was getting ready to ask him about my old friend.

  He put his palm up toward me and said, “Don’t ask, I can’t tell you. He was one of the guys that couldn’t or didn’t want to come back.”

  “Come back? You mean he’s still over in Southeast Asia?” I asked. He could at least tell me that. Southeast Asia is a big place.

  “No, I don’t mean that. I meant come back to a civilian or I should say a civilized life.” His hand gesture encompassed the room and his eyes looked out the window, suggesting all that was out there.

  I sat there, thinking about my best friend. He was the last one I ever had.

  LeCompte said, “I talked to him on the phone, and it was scrambled so many times I didn’t know where he was. He did tell me when he found out about your wife, it was hard on him. After everything Levanda has been through, for him to say that, he must have really liked her. He also told me to tell you, don’t be surprised if one day he slips up behind you and slices your throat with a rubber knife, whatever the hell that means. He said you’d understand.”

  Now, that opened a baggage car.

  Book Two

  “BAGGAGE CARS”

  Chapter 24

  Alexandria, La.- 1965

  After being stabbed in the hand in a bar when I was fifteen, I went to see Mack. Mack worked as a car mechanic for a friend’s father who owned Val Eskew’s Garage and Towing Service.

  Mack was a veteran of the Korean War and an infamous local bad-assed knife fighter and was covered with scars to prove it. I wanted to learn how to use a knife, so I wouldn’t ever be caught like I was in the bar that night. He decided to teach me and had me go out and buy some toy rubber knives and some pool cue chalk.

  We rubbed the chalk over the edges of the knives. We cut off the points and rubbed chalk on the small blunt ends as well. That way, after Mack and I fought with the rubber knives, we could tell every place we cut or stabbed each other. It would leave a green chalk line for every slice and a green chalk spot for every stab.

  I remembered that first lesson. I had on a white t-shirt. Mack put one of the chalked up rubber knives in the back pocket of his grease stained blue coveralls and gave me the other one and said, ‘Come and get me’.

  I went after him. I was fast with my hands and knew it. I went in slashing and stabbing, never hitting anything. He grabbed me, and we wrestled around the garage. We had a small audience, my friend Val Jr., and some of the black guys that worked there. For a minute we danced around, while he held onto my knife hand just below the wrist. He pushed me away and said, “Stop, look at yourself.”

  I had little green stripes all over my white t-shirt, with five or six little green spots over my chest. I never saw Mack pull the knife.

  Mack looked at me, “You’re one dead fucker, Tucker.” His poetry bringing on snickers and laughs from the audience.

  “Now, the first thing to learn about knife fighting is you’re going to get cut,” he said, showing me his left forearm that was covered with scars. “But, if you can decide where and when, it might make the difference of walking away or being carried away.”

  His poetry sucked, but after two years of dancing with Mack, I finally turned the tables.

  I used to practice on Levanda. I sometimes sneaked up on him from behind and cut his throat, leaving a green line on the left side of his neck. It used to piss him off that he could never hear me. Or, if I went at him head-on, that he couldn’t get away from the rubber knife.

  Chapter 25

  Nashville, Carr’s Mansion, 1:45 PM

  “Yeah, I understand,” I said, looking out the window behind LeCompte.

  “I think I can guess,” he said. “Levanda said you were something else with a knife. Even after SEAL training, he said he would shoot you before going up against you with a knife.”

  “Well, if he said he’d shoot me, I’m sure he would.”

  “He also said you would have some kind of low profile knife in your right front pants pocket.”

  I reached down with my right hand and pulled out my Ken Onion designed Kershaw spring assisst, flicked open the 4-1/2 inch blade, closed it and put it back. It only took a couple of seconds.

  “I don’t like knives,” I said. “I prefer something that barks here and bites over there.” I pointed across the room.

  Frank LeCompte looked over at Carr. Neither had anything to say.

  Carr reached down to the floor to the left of his chair and pulled up a stack of file folders and papers over a foot high, He set them down on the desk in front of him and said, “I had you investigated. I probably know more about you than you do.”

  I looked at Carr and said, “You had me investigated? What did you find out?” I asked. I didn’t try to hide the irritation in my voice. Just when I was liking the guy and thought maybe I had a new friend. I didn’t know whether to be pissed off or flattered.

  As I sat there trying to decide, he said, “For one thing, I found out you were an outlaw.”

  “No,” I said, “I have always been a Tucker. I had a third grade teacher named Outlaw. She was the meanest old bitch I’ve ever known. I still have nightmares about her.”

  Frank LeCompte laughed out loud and said, “I told you. Brad said he was a funny guy.”

  Carr was amused, but wouldn’t waver, “You were a big marijuana dealer in the seventies. And you never got caught, even after the cops knew who you were and were gunning for you.”

  Having my secret past so accurately thrown in my face was surprising and unsettling, like suddenly having my cloths jerked off in public, and I’m a shy guy. I glanced at the stack of files in front of Carr, then over to LeCompte, then back to Carr. I have found it appropriate, when I find myself at a loss for words, not to go looking for them.

  After a moment of silence, somehow giving my past an unwarranted respect, Carr said, “I have statements here. One being from a retired Shreveport Police Officer by the name of Gray. Gray states, in his words, ‘you were one of his partners in one of the biggest and badist marijuana dealing crews in northern Louisiana.”

  One of my continuous torments has been to fugue particular felonious episodes during a time of my life when there are cherished memories of the same period that can rankle in my heart the love of my life that has been forever lost to the tactile textures.

  My personal preva
rication of those episodes was that I was caught up in the revolutionary Zeitgeist of the seventies.

  “Robby always did think big,” I said, feeling the first shimmerings of the locomotive that pulls the baggage of my past, coming full blast.

  Clickity-clack . . . clickity-clack . . . clickity-clack . . . clickity-clack!

  Chapter 26

  Shreveport, La., Spring- 1971

  “I see by your application that you prefer to be called Tucker, and I can see why. What were your parents thinking?” asked Barry Woods.

  “Trying to preserve a family name is what I was told,” I said.

  Barry Woods stood up behind his secretarial type desk that was totally misplaced in his wood-paneled office, adorned with various golfing and ping pong trophies.

  “I usually hold two to three personal interviews with applicants. My business is very important to me,” he said.

  I could tell Barry Woods took himself very seriously. He was about five- eleven and weighed around 200 pounds. Take away the beer gut that hung below a yawning chest, take away the liquor lines that creased his face under blue eyes and a blond crew cut, there was an athlete. I took him to be about 35.

  “Yes Sir,” I said. Being an Air Force brat with an officer for a father, yes sir’s came out involuntarily.

  “I’ve checked your references and made a few personal calls to some cops I know in Alexandria.”

  “Yes Sir,” I said. I needed this job, whatever it was. I’d filled out the application following a tip from a friend who had a friend that was a head hunter for an employment service. I had no idea what I’d applied for.

  Sawbuck’s Sporting Goods was the largest sporting goods store in Shreveport. It sold everything to everybody. From uniforms to the majority of the schools to every kind of ball, gun, shoe, racket, club, trophy, and the latest in sports fashions. The merchandise packed the entire three floors.

  “You put down that you had experience with guns and listed some competitions you had won. I don’t know much about guns, as you can see,” he said, gesturing with a wave of his arm that encompassed the many trophies around the office.

  He not only took himself seriously, he took himself as being someone important. He probably was, he owned the biggest sporting goods store in Shreveport.

  “So, I made a few calls and talked to some friends of mine in the Alexandria Police Department,” he reiterated. Not only was he important, he had connections.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I was told you were very good with a handgun.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, thinking I would sound more intelligent if I varied my replies.

  He looked at me. My responses might have confused him.

  “I was looking for someone to help me in my golf department. I used to do it all, but my time is limited these days. What do you know about golf?”

  What I knew about golf wouldn’t fill a thimble.

  There goes my chances for a job. But, I wasn’t going to say I knew nothing.

  “Looks to me to be about the same as pool. Just a bigger table and you hold the cue different.”

  He stared at me with no expression for about five seconds.

  “Damn,” he yelled, kicking the side of his desk. “I never thought of it like that. Okay, what do you know about pool, then?”

  “Enough to know when to walk away with money in my pocket,”

  “Now you’re talkin’. I like a man who knows when to walk away with money in his pocket.”

  I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just plucked the heart strings of a gambler.

  “Well, Tucker, here’s what I’m willing to do. I can move the manager of the gun department to the golf department, he’s been overseeing both for the past few weeks anyway, and you can be my new manager of the gun department. How would you like that?”

  I didn’t know much, but I did know I wasn’t applying for a manager’s position. I was told what the wage was, and it definitely wasn’t manager pay. I didn’t say anything.

  There was a stony quiet between us. But, since I was the one with the least information, it was easier to keep quiet.

  “I’ll pay you $300 a week, and you can charge whatever you want at cost and take as long as you like to pay it back. I’ll never take it out of your check.”

  To me it sounded like, “I’ll pay you a million dollars a day and you can have anything you want in the store.”

  I didn’t want to appear over-eager, so I just sat there reading trophy engravings, while I thought about how to say yes without genuflecting. Managing the gun department, wow, Sawbuck’s had a very large gun department.

  “Okay, $350 a week and you start tomorrow,” he said, blowing importantly between his lips, while rocking back and forth on his feet with his hands in his pockets.

  Before I could answer, he said, “Your expertise and knowledge of guns has been called to my attention through my contacts, but I want you to know that’s not the only reason I want you to work for me. I wouldn’t normally hire a 21 year old to hold such a position, but, we work a lot with the Shreveport Police Department. We sell them everything from badges and night sticks, to guns and ammo. I’ve been told you know how cops think and what they want. I also saw you play in the 1969 Sugar Bowl. In fact, I won some money because they put you in.”

  Aha…Now we get to the meat of the matter.

  I remembered how I got to dress out for the Sugar Bowl due to an illness that overcame the third string varsity linebacker. They pulled me up from the junior varsity to fill the bench. Due to freak injuries that overcame the fullbacks, I was the only one who had any idea of the plays. In fact, I knew so little, all they could do was give me the ball up the two, four, and six holes. It was just one of those fluke occurrences, it all just clicked, came together, jelled, all of that. I started popping the holes the line made for me, that built their confidence; the holes got bigger, and that built my confidence. I’ve had a while to think about that night.

  “It was my first and last varsity appearance on the LSU gridiron,” I said.

  “You were just a freshman, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You were listed as a linebacker. Why’d they put you in at fullback?”

  “I played both ways all the way through junior high and high school, fullback and linebacker. I didn’t know you could just play half a game until I got to LSU. I got my scholarship to play linebacker.”

  “Why’d you quit playing after that year?” he said. “You were great. You came in from nowhere and they just kept feeding you the ball and you just kept on knocking off three to seven yards a carry, all the way down the field. You set up one touch-down and two field goals in the last quarter.”

  Wow! The glory days!

  Margie and I were the first couple in the new married dorms with a child. She worked, I worked, and playing football and going to school at the same time didn’t. I dropped out of school and we moved back to Alec. She got a job as an insurance underwriter, and then a year later she got a transfer with her company to Shreveport, along with a raise.

  “I said, “My wife’s job brought us here.”

  It was hard for him. Evidently he wanted more.

  After a few blinks, he shuffled some papers on his desk, picked up what appeared to be my application and after looking at it, said, “I see you worked for Southern Bell for a year, then you sold insurance for a while. With the same company your wife works for?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did you stop doing that?”

  After thinking about it for a couple of seconds I said, “It seemed like a magic show to me. Selling something you can’t see. You can’t put your hands on it. Every time I made a sale, I felt like they just didn’t know which shell the pea was under.”

  If he was asking me why I quit working for the telephone company, that answer wouldn’t work.

  “Be here at seven in the morning,” he said.

  Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was my i
ntroduction to a new career… crime.

  Chapter 27

  About a week later

  It was 2:30 in the afternoon when he swaggered in, in full uniform, night stick and all. Five-feet-seven inches of him, covered in leather and steel. That’s how it looked. He couldn’t have weighed over a 145 pounds. His revolver and all the police regalia took up most of the space he occupied.

  He walked up to the counter as I was putting a freshly polished handgun into the display case.

  He sauntered up to me like he was 10 foot tall and bullet-proof, stuck out his hand and said, “My name is Robby Gray. I saw you shoot at the Alexandria P. D. range a couple of years ago. You were shooting western quick draw. It was fuckin’ unreal.”

  He had cold, clear slate-colored eyes, that didn’t go with his youngster’s grin. He looked about 13 and exuded something akin to Irish charm. Everything but his eyes wanted to make you laugh, so I didn’t feel too bad about the smile on my face.

  “I’m Tucker,” I said. “Good to meet you.”

  “Shit, I know who you are. I saw you draw and shoot six rounds out of single action revolver faster that I could shoot six times with a semi-auto, fuck the drawing. We have a mutual friend who’d been telling me about this kid who could outshoot anyone on the force, so I had to go see for myself.”

  Two years ago I was 19 and had been married for two years, had a 2 year-old daughter, and had been shooting guns for more than half my life, and shooting very seriously for six years. I didn’t feel like a kid.

  But…his charm and enthusiasm was irresistible.

  “I hope I didn’t disappoint you,” I said, closing the display case.

  He turned away and started roaming around, looking at the guns and their new display. I had rearranged quite a bit in the week I had been manager.