### “Big ” Tom

**Real name:** Thomas Mercer

**Age:** 38

**Occupation:** Mechanic, occasional bouncer, self-appointed problem solver

Tom is the guy you call when your truck won’t start, someone’s giving you trouble, or a perfectly sensible plan needs one spectacularly bad idea. Broad-shouldered and permanently grease-stained, he carries himself with the confidence of a man who has never read the instructions—and rarely suffered enough to learn.

Nobody agrees on where the nickname came from. Tom refuses to clarify, mostly because the competing stories keep getting better.

**Personality:** Loud, generous, stubborn. He’ll spend six hours helping a stranger move, then insist he was “in the neighborhood.”

**Strengths:** Mechanical ingenuity, fierce loyalty, staying calm when everyone else panics.

**Flaws:** Treats apologies like hostage negotiations. Would rather lift something dangerously heavy than admit he needs help.

**Secret soft spot:** An elderly terrier named Princess, whose medication schedule he follows more carefully than his own bills.

**Goal:** Buy back his late father’s garage before a developer tears it down.

**Signature line:** “All right. Who made this complicated?”