Previously on Old Man Young and the Con Man’s Daughter….
“I’m nervous.”
“Why are you nervous?” Detective Paul Young asked gently.
“I haven’t been to school in forty years,” Sandra said. She was packing a book bag with binders and pencils at the kitchen table. “Do I even need all this stuff?”
Young shrugged and brought her breakfast on a plate. “You can just come work at the department. I can get you a job no problem.”
Sandra grunted and then looked at Young skeptically.
“You don’t even like working at the department and you been there forever now. It ain’t gonna get no better.” She looked down at him as he ate eggs with slices of tomato. “I’m doing this for both of us. I’m gonna learn how to run a business, and then you can work for me.”
Young smiled at her. “I got cases to solve Sandra…”
“How that working out at the department? It’s always dead ends and night terrors for you. You’ll see,” Sandra said and they ate their breakfast together.
“If I don’t get this task force,” Young said as he chewed eggs, “then I know they ain’t serious and we start our own detective agency.”
“Honestly, I hope you get it,” Sandra said seriously, remembering the tears in Young’s eyes and the fear that immobilized him when he was forced to take leave from work. “But ain’t no reason to hold your breath on that, old man.”
Young finished his breakfast in silence.
Somewhere near Knoxville, Tennessee…
Falon is still looking for her father and the past few months haven’t made his location any clearer to her. She’s been getting to know Clete and his very discreet drug operation that saturated the Knoxville greater metropolitan area with illicit drugs of the amphetamine variety.
Falon has a hunch and her time with Clete and his goons has allowed her time to think it through. The blue meth that seemed to be the impetuous for her father’s disappearance was sold to them by a bigger trafficker who supplied many dealers along the east coast. Even though they had their own meth manufacturers locally, Clete depended on the support of the east coast trafficker for cocaine, heroine and various drugs in pill form, and it made it easy for the east coast trafficker to force whatever product onto his customers because of their reliance on other things. Maybe her father had become entangled with the east coast trafficker? Falon figured that if her father’s head was going to explode like the others, it would have happened by now and made the news. And Falon knows that he would have contacted her if he was able, so there must be something else that she is not considering. Maybe her father went looking for the source of the blue meth; he’d lost friends in that house where they were trying to replicate it with ingredients they got from the east coast trafficker. Maybe her father was angry and wanted revenge, and that wasn’t unlike the man; Phil was a con man and he never felt bad for taking what he could from stupid people, but he cared about people who cared for him and he would want to see someone pay for what happened in the meth lab.
So Falon is after the east coast trafficker, determined to find him and get whatever information he might have. It’s her only hope really; her father seems to have fallen off the Earth.
Today, Falon is with Clete at a nondescript house in a wide stretch of farm land that hasn’t been worked in at least a decade. It is a pastoral scene, but one of neglect; tall grasses seem to stab through the rusted frame of a truck in the front yard and a sad barn corroded by weather to an ashen grey set back behind the house with the same washed-out color. The house looks long abandoned from the outside, but inside, Clete presides over a meeting with Falon at his side with his employees gathered before him at a table. They are his proxies in the metropolitan area and he keeps them supplied so that they can make him more money than he seems to have based on the house where he lives and the way that he dresses.
“Y’all keep this up, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with all the money,” Clete says laughing uproariously and the men and few women laugh along, except Falon.
“We can just keep the money if it’s a problem,” one of the men says and the collective laughter is renewed.
“Nah, nah,” Clete says, settling the room. “Serious, y’all, this is exactly what we need to be doing. We making so much money, pretty soon we gonna be able to cut out the middleman. And that should be the goal, right? We can go to Afghanistan our damn self and get that shit. We don’t need no nigger to do it for us.”
The room is whipped into excitement and Falon stares on, like she is invisible to everyone else and no one sees her until she wants to be seen.
Clete calms them again. “We doing good, and that’s why I want to start spreading out, expand the territory. It’ll be dangerous, we know that, but we got the money to hire some serious muscle. By this time next year, I want the state of Tennessee coming to me for they shit. Money and muscle boys, that’s the new motto.”
They all cheer and pop open cans of beer and a party breaks out. Clete offers each of his employees a gift that they all accept eagerly; he gives them guns and farmer’s hats with the words “Money Muscle” printed on the front in a font reminiscent of the 1970s.
When everyone is partying, Falon pulls Clete outside to the back porch where they sit in two rocking chairs, slowly moving back and forth while the sun sets over the distant treeline.
“A lot of people gonna die, Falon,” Clete says somberly with his eyes on the horizon. “We ain’t even gonna get that far either. You know that?”
Falon nods as she sways back and forth, her eyes fixed on Clete.
“Whoever is in charge got roots in Tennessee, we know that. That man Fire that got killed, he used to be in charge of the drugs in this state, we know that, and somebody took his place. From what I hear, that man running everything. And that’s the man I want to talk to. Your men ain’t gotta die, they just ruffling some feathers, that’s all. It won’t be long before I get what I want. Ain’t I been good to you?”
Clete looks at her and smirks. “In every way but the one I want the most. But you ain’t never giving that up, is you?”
“You want pussy or money?” Falon asks frankly. “You don’t deserve neither and you lucky enough to have all that money. This drug dealing stuff is easy, I can do this with my eyes closed, but I helped you. You richer than you ever been, now give me what I want and you can go about your business.”
Clete shakes his head. She had beefed up his operations in metropolitan Knoxville and her management of his employees had yielded lucrative results. But her demands risked all of that if they went up against other drug organizations and died in the process.
“I’m doing my part,” he says. “I’m kinda curious what happened to your old man myself.”
Falon watches as the tip of the sun dips below the trees.
“Do what I say and we’ll solve the mystery.” Falon waves him away and he goes back to the party inside.
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