About forty years ago when I lived in Chicago I met a player named Tommy. I used to run into him at the bars on the west side. He was a pretty decent player who loved to gamble. His special talent was he played extremely well one-handed. He would offer that as a handicap to unwitting victims. One day Tommy called me in a panic. He needed money NOW and asked me to loan him $300 on his Fender Platinum Stratocaster ... which I did. A few weeks later he called and said he found a buyer for the Strat and asked if he could pick it up and when he sold it he would pay me back that same day. Needless to say, Tommy didn't return with my money. A couple of weeks later a guy came up to me in a pool bar and asked if I heard what happened to Tommy. They found him in a dumpster with his throat slit.
