The Cunninghams II

“Beginnings for Dix….” 1973
“Most people do not realize the depths of intrigue and depravity which imbue Memphis politics, giving it a sickness easily on a par with New York City or Chicago. No dirty trick is unknown here; no foul deed is untried."

-1929-
It should have never happened, particularly not this way.
In truth, if Chet Cunningham had been more commonly dressed, (instead of “spiffy”), to better match Al, they might have made their way back out to Chet’s truck and off for home without incident. They made it close to the truck, though.
Alas, on this night there was no mistaking Chet, and so the anti-union “shoulder-strikers”, sent by agents of former mayor E.H. “Boss” Crump to clamp down tight on any potential union activity, had no trouble picking out their primary target.
Al Dixon was just simply “along for the ride” in being with Chet Cunningham that evening, and thus was only an ancillary target, to his significant misfortune.
Two thugs stopped Chet and Al as they approached Chet’s truck, on the pretext of asking for a “light” for their cigarettes. While the two workmen were thus stopped motionless, two more miscreants came up behind the two carpenters and waylaid them on the backs of their heads with “black-jacks”, stitched leather clubs filled with lead shot to render a man unconscious from a blow behind the skull.
The lighting in the area was essentially non-existent and there were no other people around, so the ruffians did a quick, but effective, binding with rope of the two inert bodies and pitched both of them into the back of Chet’s 1920 Ford Model TT stake-bed truck. The first two thugs piled back into their nearby idling car, while the second two, who had done the actual assault, jumped into the cab of the truck and began to follow the others. Both vehicles left downtown in the darkness.
Their destination was to be the Saunders “Pink Palace” building, where they were to “rough up” their prisoners and then promise them much worse if there was any more talk of unionization, and then let them go. Sadly, that never happened.
Chet’s bound and unconscious body was lying flat on the truck bed floor between the toolboxes and lumber racks which lined either side. Al was lying partially on top of, and partially beside Chet. Neither man moved; neither was capable.
Unfortunately, the man driving the Model TT was not familiar with driving a truck configured with a two-speed rear axle. With the transmission in first gear and the rear end set in the low range, a super-low final gearing was achieved. This could cause the truck to lurch suddenly if the driver let the clutch out too rapidly.
Sure enough, this was exactly what happened at their destination as they passed by a heap of marble shards and scraps, and Al’s body flew out of the back end of the truck onto the ragged heap of scrap stones, landing with a sickening thud.
The two hoodlums got out quickly and assessed the situation. Believing Al to be dead from this impact, they left him there on the rocks and drove Chet the rest of the way to the stone building, where the other two evildoers waited impatiently.
Two of the hoods pulled Chet’s body from the back, and made the discovery that he’d been hit too hard behind his head and, rather than unconscious, he was absolutely dead! This turn of events made it imperative that they flee, and quickly.
Panicky over this, their leader decided to get rid of Chet’s body, so they found an out-of-the-way corner between an interior wall of the central rotunda and the outer stone wall. With herculean effort (they thought they might have to cut the body up), the miscreants managed to stuff Chet’s body - in his now torn and smudged suit - behind that wall, where it could not be seen, even with great care .
They even threw his Golden Hammer award plaque in behind him, just for spite.
They also threw in a couple of large buckets worth of lime, from the cement-mixing materials area just outside, to hold down the smell of the body as it decayed, hopefully giving them a good while before his body was discovered.
In the muggy Memphis night, all the tugging, pulling, heaving and shoving had turned them foul and surly; there was real danger that one or two of them might have ended up inside the wall as well, but their leader barely did manage to keep a damper on tempers. They wanted and needed to get out of town, as soon as possible. A couple of things had to be done first, though – essential things.
After the gruesome business was done, all four of the foul, sweaty hired thugs jumped into the car and the truck and headed off toward Mississippi. Almost fifteen miles south of the Memphis city limits, they found an abandoned barn which looked like a likely hiding spot for the truck. After putting the truck into the barn, and concealing it as best they could, the four drove back toward Memphis, where they ditched the stolen car they’d been using, changed into clean shirts, and boarded a late-night train back to Chicago. No one ever saw them again.
*****
The guy could have been a model for a police recruiting poster. Tall, hearty, and looking every bit like the seasoned officer he actually was, “Dix” Cunningham did not seem like the typical raw recruit. He looked like he’d been a cop for years. He actually had. He’d also been a combat veteran in Korea; he was experienced.
As he stepped forward and raised his right hand, the large and dashingly-handsome new police recruit had a quick thought:
“Getting sworn in feels like I’m getting married all over again. I guess it kind of is. My hand’s in the air and I’m saying, “I Do”. My new precinct commander, Captain Hall, has on his dress uniform and we're standing in front of guests. Margie is smiling at me like she doesn't know the MPD is going to be the other woman, but she loves me anyway. It all seems slightly surreal.”
He was Robert Dixon Cunningham, “Bobby” as a boy, and now known as “Dix.”
At this time he was a newly-hired detective for the Memphis Police Department. He had been married to his stunning bride Margie, for about eight years by then.
His story, and his circuitous journey to come to this point, had started more than forty years earlier on the mean streets of Depression-Era Memphis.

You could have written a novel about it.

The story would have started off something like this:
Born in Memphis right before the 1929 stock-market crash, Dix’s mom raised him in a little brick bungalow near midtown. After knocking around in poverty for some of his early life, Mom met up again with Al Dixon, who eventually became his beloved step-dad and who took them to his home in Cookeville, Tennessee.

His natural father, Chet Cunningham, had disappeared without a trace, never to be seen or heard from again.

A life-long quest to find out what had happened to him began for Dix.