You’ve gotta love food trucks. They offer great food at prices low enough for me. Unfortunately, my wallet was as empty as my stomach yesterday and the smell of the tacos wafting from Tito’s was making it worse. Tito winked at me as I strolled by, expecting me to order my usual triple taco lunch special. I just shrugged at him and smiled as I walked past the service window. The back door opened and a grinning Tito handed me a bag of tacos – “on me today, Chas”. I almost hugged him.
Tito and I have known each other for about 25 years. We met on the football team in high school – Central High – in Pueblo, Colorado. He was a slow footed, sure handed receiver and I was a part time tight end/tackle. He was half my size then, but his years as a taco purveyor had rendered him a bit circumferentially challenged. That is a fancy term for fat. After high school, we both attended the local state university in town – Southern Colorado State. We both played football there too – both all conference. It was the big fish in a small pond syndrome. After we graduated, he went to work in his family restaurant business and I became a cop. So here we were – Tito a popular food truck jockey and me a small town detective, Tito happily married with three kids and me – a widower. My wife Dee passed away six years ago from the ravages of Huntington’s Disease. We’d had no kids because Huntington’s Disease (HD) is genetic and any child we had would have a 50 percent chance of having HD. We decided the odds were not in our favor.
So there we were – the dynamic duo, Chas and Tito, staring at the body of someone we both knew – Carl Bowman. Carl had been shot in front of the bar that Tito and I frequented once a week or so for a couple of cold Coors. We were old school and had not adopted one of the new microbreweries in town. Someone had done Carl in execution style. Tito almost tripped over him as we left Arnie’s Time Out. The killer used a silencer – we had not heard the shots.
I reached into my pocket, grabbed my phone and called it in.
Like mine, some autobiographical stuff has come in and it is par for the course for first attempts at writing novels. From the end of the first page, it would appear that you intend it to be a crime story whereas I intend mine to be a business oriented one. I wonder if one of us would eventually write a novel!
ReplyDeleteI will - I have an outline in my head for a dark crime novel with trhe narrator being a serial killer. It is much too dark for this ecercise and might scare some folks away from me - LOL.
ReplyDeleteWOW.
ReplyDeletewhat in the world are either one of you doing content with crossword puzzles and mere blogging?
these 'novels' are both worth finishing!
Great Scot and Cat House Thursday you guys!!!
aloha.
and a huge SH.
Tammy, with you cheer leading, one of us will indeed write the mother of all novels. The chances are that Chuck will be the one to do it.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Tammy and Ramu Bhaiya. A dark whodunit is just up my alley.
ReplyDeletenope. I have equal faith in my men.
ReplyDeleteand I am expecting autographed copies!
it's very exciting you know.