The Other Side of Bad (The Tucker Novels)

by R. O. Barton

I was still 15 feet away from him, too far.

  I walked past Sharkskin towards the desk. Sharkskin fell in behind me and poked me with the muzzle.

  Eight times.

  This might be easier than I thought.

  When I was 2 feet from the desk, I stopped. I could see the room behind me in the reflections of all the-bitches.

  I was pretending to look at the women, and as I whistled admiringly, I moved a half step to my right, allowing me to see the left side of Sharkskin, reflected over a gorgeous blond.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Tucker, you got balls.”

  “Yeah?”

  “To come in here like this.”

  “I didn’t know your phone number or I would’ve called first.”

  He chuckled, drumming his fingers on his desk.

  Sharkskin was only a couple of feet behind me.

  “I got your little note on my windshield,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  Well, at least he didn’t deny it.

  He started moving things around on his desk top, very cool. First he picked up a pencil and stuck it in a pencil cup that had ‘Stud’ painted in freehand on it. He wanted me to see it. Then he moved an old flip type rolodex from the right-hand side to the left.

  I could see he liked to print instead of cursive. Me, too, maybe we could be buds.

  It was time to switch gears. I held my hands out in front of me, palms up.

  In my finest apprehensive voice, I said, “Ya know, Mr. Tuma, I think there’s been a terrible misunderstanding between us.”

  “How’s that?” he asked, looking over my shoulder at Sharkskin with a ‘this guy’s about to piss his pants’ grin.

  I started moving my weight nervously from one foot to the other.

  “I didn’t know Mr. Bench and you had any trouble. I was just hired that very morning. I swear if I had known you and he had a beef I wouldn’t have taken the job, I swear,” I whined.

  I wondered if I could tear up a little. Maybe not.

  I heard Sharkskin snicker behind me, then, “Ain’t so fuckin’ bad without your gun, are you turdface?”

  Turdface?

  Then it happened.

  Looking at the blonde, I saw Sharkskin slide his Beretta back into his shoulder holster.

  Still shuffling nervously, I put my left hand in my jacket pocket, like I was cold, and hooked my right thumb inside my pants, right behind the buckle of my belt.

  I said, “Gee Mr. Tuma, I don’t want any trouble with you . . .”

  I made sure not to make eye contact, opting to look at the pictures, but more importantly, their reflections.

  I used the nervous movement of my body, along with my left hand in my pocket, to cover up my right hand.

  Sharkskin was now going “heh, heh, heh.”

  I think it was a laugh.

  I snapped his left knee with a side kick of my left boot, at the same time I pulled out the stick. The knee sounded like an old dried out cane pole breaking from the weight of too large a fish.

  Sharkskin screamed. Literally. Like a woman, high pitched and long.

  As he started to pitch forward, I came up with an uppercut and hit him in the mouth with the blunt end of the kelite stick. As his teeth shattered, it sounded like I’d hit a gravel road with a hammer.

  When Sharkskin’s head came up from the force of the blow, I reached over with my left hand and pulled my pistol from his belt, and in one motion, pointed it at Eddie. The move shielded my right hand, as I slipped the kel-lite stick in my back right pocket of my jeans. It was never seen.

  It took less than three seconds.

  Eddie Tuma looked like he’d just given blood, all of it.

  Sharkskin was down, moaning loudly and bleeding profusely on the fine plush carpet.

  “Stand up, Eddie, and put your back against the wall.”

  He didn’t move.

  “The last thing you’ll ever hear will be this safety going off.”

  I made a show of picking my thumb up and slowly lowering it to the safety. I always carried my Colt at full cock with safety on, ready to shoot.

  He got up and put his back against the wall. His hands had never left the desk top and now with his back against the wall, I wouldn’t have to worry about him unlocking the door. I loved it.

  “You’re dead,” he said, his color returning.

  “Yeah? How do I look?”

  Sharkskin’s moaning was aggravating.

  I backed up a couple of steps until I was next to his prone body. He was laying on his back, his head lolling back and forth, groaning, making little red bubbles. Now there was blood in two spots on the carpet, large spots.

  I took a quick gander at Eddie, then jumped up and came down with both boots and my 200 pounds, right over Sharkskin’s heart, rebounded off his chest and back onto the floor.

  That shut him up.

  I felt nimble.

  “Jesus . . .” Eddie’s voice cracked.

  With one eye, I was watching Sharkskin’s chest for movement.

  Glancing at Eddie, I said, “If he doesn’t start breathing pretty soon, you’re going to be the one to give him mouth to mouth.”

  The muzzle of my .45 never left his chest.

  It took a few seconds but Sharkskin started gurgling. With my boot, I moved his head to one side so he wouldn’t drown on his blood and vomit. Then I bent over and took out his Beretta and tossed it away.

  “Looks like you’re off the hook,” I said, after straightening up.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “What’s his name?”

  “What?”

  I snapped the fingers of my left hand and said, “Come on, Eddie, you need to get with the program here.”

  I head gestured to Sharkskin and said very slowly, like I was talking to a child, “What is his name?”

  “Pauly.”

  “Yeah? Tell me, Eddie, how come everyone around you sounds like they came from the set of ‘The Godfather’ but you?”

  “Whataya mean?”

  I snapped my fingers again and said, “Come on, out there on the floor, you got Tony with a shot-up leg and down here you got Pauly with…”

  I gave the floor a quick once-over and said, “You know, I think he swallowed most of his teeth.”

  “You better kill me, mother fucker.” He did sound tough, really.

  “Now, Eddie, I was hoping we could come to some sort of agreement, you know, so I won’t have to do that.”

  “You think you can just come in here and get away with this shit and live. You’re fucking crazy, man.”

  “You think you can send this asshole and Tony out there, to my house! My house! I’ve got a son!” I was raising my voice. I hate to raise my voice, it makes me violent. It stems from my childhood. Yelling always ended in violence.

  I slowly raised my thumb over the safety.

  “Okay. Okay. Look, Tucker, you can’t do this. You don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with, man . . . I’m connected.”

  How dumb could I be? Jersey accents. Italian names. It was coming to me, slowly, but it was coming.

  A couple of years ago, I had Tuckerized a couple of 1911 .45’s for one Sonny Medica, from New Jersey. Sonny sent the guns to me, but when I finished, said he would prefer to come down and get them. Shoot them to see if they needed any fine-tuning, a custom fit, as it were.

  Sonny and I hit it off nicely. He was more than a decent shot and pretty quick. I took him to the police firing range (I was still in their good graces) and he seemed to get a big kick out of that, the fact we were shooting right next to a bunch of cops.

  While having dinner after shooting, I asked him what he did in Jersey. He told me he was a body guard for some big shot up there, a man named Tumanello. I couldn’t remember the first name.

  Sonny hung out for a couple of days. We did some more shooting,. I made a few adjustments on the trigger pull, and buffed the rails again. We got friendlier, and he told me the big shot was a distant relative. I
figured he worked for the mob up there and probably did more than bodyguard.

  He liked my off hand shooting, with either hand, and asked me if I would give him a few tips. I did, and before he left, he said if I was ever in Jersey, to look him up and we’d have some fun, eat some good Italian food. He also said if I was up there and ever got in a fix, to drop his name, it might help.

  “Eddie, you know Sonny Medica?”

  “…….No.”

  It took him too long.

  I walked over to the desk and grabbed the rolodex. I looked under the M’s and there it was, ‘Sonny’. The number looked familiar. I pulled it out and set it on the desk.

  I looked under the T’s and the first entry read, ‘Frankie,’ that’s it, no last name.

  That’s the first name I couldn’t remember, Frankie, Frankie Tumanello.

  I set it next to Sonny’s number.

  “Whataya doin?” Eddie asked nervously.

  “Take it easy, Eddie.”

  There was a cordless phone laying on the desk. I picked it up and saw that it had one of those caller ID buttons. Just for grins, I pushed it. When the last number that called showed, I punched the talk button.

  The phone rang three times before it was answered, a voice said, “Yeah, boss?”

  Outside the office door, I could barely hear the music, but now it was in stereo.

  “Tony, you got your phone on vibrate or what?” I said with a raised voice and my best Jersey accent.

  “Yeah, boss, everything okay in there?”

  I took it Eddie liked his help to call him boss.

  “Good, stay put,” I said, and hung up.

  I was confident he couldn’t tell the difference between my voice and Eddie’s over the music.

  Eddie was still against the wall, but was looking at the two cards on the desk.

  I punched in Sonny’s number.

  “Ahh, man, don’t do that,” Eddie said, not so toughly.

  It rang twice before it was answered. There was a short pause before I heard Sonny’s voice, “This better be good, Eddie, it’s fuckin’ late.”

  Caller ID again.

  “How ya doin’, Sonny?”

  Another pause, then, “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Tucker.”

  “. . . Shit. Just tell me, is he still alive?”

  “Yeah, for now.”

  “What did he do?”

  “How ya doin’, Sonny?” I asked again.

  This got a little laugh as he said, “I’ll be doin’ a lot better after you tell me what the fuck is goin’ on.”

  “What’s goin’ on is, I’m in Eddie’s office at The Men’s Room. He’s against the wall, alive, and Pauly’s on the floor in dire need of an oral surgeon and maybe an Internist.”

  “Okay. Okay. That’s a start. Now, why are you there?”

  “Eddie sent Pauly and Tony out to my house in the middle of the night to kill me. They didn’t.”

  “Fuck! I told him not to fuck with you.”

  “He didn’t listen.”

  “Fuck!”

  “Yeah, that’s kinda how I feel. My son could have been home, Sonny. I need to do something to make sure this never happens again. Got any suggestions?”

  “Just a minute, let me think.”

  I gave him a couple of seconds.

  “Tucker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you put it together…you know, Eddie and me.”

  “I was just about to cap him when he tells me he’s connected (a little white lie couldn’t hurt). I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, but it wasn’t a long way from Tuma to Tumanello, not with all the Jersey accents around here.”

  “Yeah. I get it,” Sonny said.

  “Sonny, I’ve got Frankie Tumanello’s phone number, but I thought I’d call you first.”

  “For God’s sake, Tucker, don’t call Frankie.”

  “You’d better come up with something, Sonny.”

  “Listen, Tucker, when all that shit came down, I told Frankie about you. He understood it was just business, even though you took out two of his best shooters.”

  “He still has you.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t do that kind of work anymore, I made my bones years ago.”

  “Why would Frankie send them down here to begin with?”

  “It was for Eddie, he lost a lot of face over that real estate deal with Bench. They were kind of on loan.”

  “Pretty high interest,” I said.

  That got a small laugh.

  “You got that right,” he said.

  The whole time I never took my eyes off of Eddie. He wasn’t a happy camper.

  “Ya know, Tucker, I couldn’t believe any one man could have taken those two, not ‘til I heard your name connected with it.”

  “It was close.”

  “Really? I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact I showed them your style of shooting? I even got them to wear their pieces on their hips, where you say they belong.”

  “Do me a favor, Sonny.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stop doing that.”

  “Whatta you care, you’re still walking around. I just helped make your life more interesting.”

  “What’re we goin’ to do here, Sonny? I’m getting kind of tired holding this gun up, and Pauly needs to go to the hospital, oh yeah, what’s Eddie to Frankie Tumanello?”

  “Nephew, not his favorite either, ‘cause Eddie really wants to be a wise guy, and we’re trying to get away from that image.”

  “Has anyone told Eddie that?”

  Another chuckle, “Yeah, not that it’s done any good.”

  “It’s late and I’m getting tired, Sonny.”

  “Okay, give the phone to Eddie.”

  I slid the phone over the desk top and motioned for Eddie to pick it up.

  Eddie looked at it like I would look at a spider.

  He finally picked it up and said, “Yeah.”

  It was amazing how one word could sound so wise guyee.

  After a full minute of him listening to what sounded to me like a chipmunk barking through the phone, he said, “I was just trying to take care of business, Sonny. I just wanted to make Uncle Frankie proud.”

  After another full minute of barking, Eddie said, “I gotta do something Sonny, I gotta do something.”

  More barking, then he pushed the phone back across the table.

  I picked it up and said, “Yeah?”

  “He ain’t gettin’ it, Tucker. I know him, and he just ain’t gettin’ it. Stay where you are for a few minutes, I’m going to have to call Frankie. I hope like hell he isn’t asleep. I’ll call you back in five.”

  “Okay.”

  After putting the phone down, I looked around, then said, “Eddie, go sit in the corner.”

  “Whataya mean, go sit in the corner?” he asked disbelievingly.

  With the muzzle, I pointed to the right-hand corner of the room behind the desk, about eight feet away from the desk chair.

  “Go sit in the corner. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  About that time, Pauly gurgled.

  Eddie went and sat in the corner.

  I walked around behind the desk and sat in the chair.

  After a full minute of silence, I said, “Eddie, ya know, the name ‘The Men’s Room’, it sounds like the smell of urine. You should consider renaming it. It’s really quite nice out there, doesn’t smell like piss at all.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, that’s no good. That sounds more like an advertisement. You need something more subtle.”

  He didn’t want to talk anymore. While he sat there thinking of a new name, I opened the top drawer of his desk.

  Among the regular things one might find in a desk was a little .22 cal. derringer. I picked it up with my thumb and forefinger, like it was road kill.

  I scrunched my face like I’d just smelled a skunk and said, “Damn, Eddie, you really are a bad ass. Evident
ly you’re not afraid to just piss somebody off.”

  Unless you put a round directly in a man’s eye, you couldn’t be sure to stop someone with one of these. And you had to be close…very close.

  He still didn’t want to converse with me. I’d get over it.

  The phone rang. I answered it.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Tucker?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Go ahead and call Frankie, he’s waiting.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Tucker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Frankie Tumanello comes from the old school.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Respect goes a long way. Think you could fake it? It might help.”

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Bad choice of words.”

  I remembered why I liked Sonny.

  “I’ll give him a call.”

  “Right,” he said.

  I hung up the phone and looked at Eddie.

  “Who ya gonna call?” he asked, looking scared for the first time.

  “Ghostbusters.”

  I punched in the number, and it was answered on the first ring.

  “Mr. Tucker?” The voice was smoker deep and resonated from his chest.

  “Mr. Tumanello?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh shit,” Eddie whispered from the corner.

  I waited.

  “Mr. Tucker, Sonny has spoken highly of you.”

  “As he has of you, Mr. Tumanello.” Won’t hurt to schmooze.

  “As I understand it, you have my nephew at gunpoint; is that correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “In his own office?”

  “Correct again.”

  “And just what is it you want?”

  “Not to have to worry about your nephew sending someone to my house, again, to kill me or my son if he happens to be home, because I did the job I was hired to do.”

  “You’re putting me in an awkward position, Mr. Tucker. It is not good that you are holding a gun on my nephew while we negotiate.”

  I put the gun on the desk.

  “I’m not doing that now.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tucker. Now, what can I do for you? Oh, by the way, that was an impressive piece of business you attended to in Nashville. Now, again what can I do for you?”

  I deduced he was referring to me killing two of his men. His voice sounded genuinely impressed and not at all angry.

  I said, “It’s not just what you can do for me. But what you can do for us, all three of us.”