“This didn’t exactly go as planned,” he snarled.
“Few do but we got them, right? Nothing was burned and no one innocent got hurt.”
He sighed loudly. “What am I going to do with you, Ronan?”
“How about a thank you?”
“How about a swift kick in the ass?”
So goes my life. Batman never suffered that kind of abuse from Commissioner Gordon.
The rain cleared out late in the morning and we were rewarded with a beautiful sunny New England afternoon; too warm for the heat to kick in but not even close to air-conditioning season. I wore my nylon black-with-gold-trim Boston Bruins jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans. Though the season was over for my team, I liked the jacket and wasn’t ready to put it away just yet.
I sat at the outdoor café on the patio behind the Doubletree Hotel and a refreshing breeze came up off the water and flooded the Industrial Canyon. A boatload of Lowell National Park tourists made an early season run through the Lower Locks into the Pawtucket Canal and some kids waved as they passed by. I gave them a short royal wave back.
Spring is easily my favorite of the seasons, and I enjoyed spending time outside, taking it all in. The flowers bloomed, the bees buzzed, the birds sang, and the skirts on the local girls were growing noticeably shorter. They’d stashed the long wool winter numbers and exchanged them for lightweight and tight knit dresses. There would probably be a few more chilly days, but those women wouldn’t mind. Switching to warm-weather attire meant weekend trips with boyfriends or husbands to the Cape or Hampton Beach were only weeks away.
The warmer weather also signified something very important to methe start of baseball season. I ran through the highlights of last night’s Sox game in my head, a five-to-four win over the pesky Tampa Bay Rays. Josh Beckett had been marvelous, but the relievers had given up four runs in the ninth. It was going to be a long summer for the Olde Towne Team if they didn’t improve out of the bullpen.
I’d met with Shea earlier in the day to fill out a written statement about the previous night’s activities. He was still pissed off, though I could have sworn I heard him mutter, “thank you,” under his breath between curses. Buck had survived the night in intensive care and his comrades had squealed their heads off to the cops laying the blame squarely at his feet as the ringleader. All of them were charged with arson and attempted murder and there were federal hate crime indictments probably coming as well. It looked like they’d be spending a long time in prison.
After Shea was done with me, I had lunch with Rabbi Salus, one of the local Jewish leaders. Unlike my friend downtown, he thanked me outright and was most pleased with my work; although a little disappointed that I had shot one of the men. I explained that those things were sometimes necessary in my line of work, and he seemed to genuinely understand, even if he didn’t like it.
The rabbi offered me a substantial fee for my services, but I declined. He insisted, and after twenty minutes of negotiations, I convinced him to make a donation to charity in my name. I kept a low overhead by not having a cushy office and a gum-snapping secretary to screen my calls and get me coffee. At least that was my story, and I was sticking to it.
The look on his face said he knew I was full of it, but I had my reasons and kept them private. As a bonus for a job well done, he promised the local Jewish community would keep me in their prayers. I appreciated that much more than money. Divine Providence was always a welcome backup for some of the sticky situations I had been finding myself in.
Before we parted ways, Rabbi Salus mentioned he knew plenty of attractive single women looking for a good man, and if I was interested to call him, and he’d introduce me. A year ago I probably would have taken him up on the offer, but for the time being I was all set in the girlfriend department.
A cute, young waitress with bobbed blonde hair wearing a gold nametag that said Sally came over to take my order. She didn’t look like a Sally, more like an Amanda, but what the hell does someone named Ronan know about names? I ordered a Sam Adams draft and she smiled and skipped off to get it. I watched her go toward the bar, admiring her figure under her black stretch pants.
I checked my watch. Mickey Mouse said it was two-thirty five. I was here for another meeting, this one with a potential client who was recommended by an old college classmate. He was late and my beer showed up about the same time he did.
An easy measure of a man is his handshake. This guy’s was clammy and limp. I could smell his expensive hand cream, which left a residue on my palm. In my book, this was not a good sign. I hadn’t titled my book yet, but when I did, it would be something like Ronan’s Book on Good Signs and Measures of a Man or something equally innovative and witty.
He said his name was John or Fred or Bob; it really didn’t matter. He sat down and immediately launched into his story of woe in a dull monotone voice. Something about his wife cheating on him, and how he wanted to hire me to gather evidence, so he could divorce her and not pay alimony. It didn’t interest me in the least bit.
He may as well have been warbling a tune from some lame eighties hair band like Winger. In fact, the Winger song might have held my attention for a second or two longer. After about ten seconds of his story, I felt a sort of perverse empathy for the suspected carousing spouse. I’d want to screw someone else too if I had to listen to him drone on every night and day.
I could tell before he even opened his mouth that he wasn’t my type of client, but I tried to keep an open mind. Jumping to conclusions was another character flaw I was working on and really not doing a very good job of it this afternoon. His smug look, thousand-dollar tailored Armani suit, Rolex on his thin, pampered wrist, and Harvard Law class ring were easy clues to what type of man I was dealing with.
I pegged him as a typical Massachusetts liberal know-it-all, probably an activist lawyer who claimed to worry about global warming while driving a gas-guzzling Mercedes SUV. I pretended to rub my nose, but covertly I smelled my hand. It still emanated the unflattering odor of his hand cream. I wiped my hand on my jeans underneath the table, but he was too wrapped up in his sad tale to notice.
John-Fred-Bob continued, and I nodded like I cared, hoping he might say something to make me. My attention wandered over to the gatehouse located in the center of the lock that controlled the flow of waters from the nearby Merrimack River. Workers applied a fresh spring coat of yellow paint to the rebuilt structure, oblivious to my plight. I’d have much rather been out there painting with them than bored by Harvard Law. I made a mental note to make sure my friends understood who I would and wouldn’t do business with. No doubt I’d forget to tell them, but I made the note anyway.
I was stricken with Attention Deficit Disorder long before it was a national excuse for hooking kids on expensive prescription drugs. When I was younger, it was simply called not paying attention. That comment had shown up in my report card almost as much as disruptive in class, and my father never once considered it might be some type of mental disorder that he could collect a monthly check from Uncle Sugar for. As I got older, I managed, for the most part, to gain control over it. At times like this though, it tended to serve me well, especially as John-Fred-Bob whined on.
I looked at the sun’s bright reflection in the cold brown canal water, thinking of the many people in the past two hundred or so years that had traversed through here and their contributions to the city of my birth. History was always one of my interests, and I’d read extensively about this area. Lowell had an important place in the chronicles of America, commemorated by our national park. Located about twenty miles north of Boston, the city was named after Francis Cabot Lowell, who “borrowed” the secrets of industrialization from England and brought them to the former colonies.
Soon after, the Industrial Revolution came to the Merrimack Valley, and giant red-brick mills sprang up along the banks of the river. The mills continued to dominate the cityscape, but they have been turned into museums, office buildings, and apartments.
A series of canals were constructed through the downtown area to the river. This was done to efficiently move the textiles the mills produced to the river and to provide the hydropower used to run the mills’ loom machines. In the early nineteenth century, Lowell saw a huge influx of immigrants from Greece, Ireland, Canada, Portugal, Poland and many other European countries, giving it a diverse flair and some damn good restaurants. It served as the model city for the great melting pot where all cultures came together to become Americans. The importance of which seemed to be lost in this day and age where many of the new immigrants refused to learn English and expected you to speak their language.
In the early eighties, the Asians came, mostly Cambodians and Vietnamese fleeing violent regimes in their homelands. Eventually they managed to push the majority of the Puerto Rican population down river to Lawrence, Lowell’s ugly twin sister. This added yet a further ethnic dynamic to the city.
After years of prosperity, The Great Depression sent the city into decades of decay. Most of the mills closed, leaving the Merrimack a polluted mess, and Lowell looked like it was going to be just another rundown footnote in American history. The biggest product from here when I was a kid was probably heroin. An outlaw biker gang set up shop in a bar down on Appleton Street, and crime was rampant.
It was a tough place, and I had to become street-smart to survive. Even now, when I tell people I grew up in Lowell, their faces scrunch up and they offer condolences. I remember my father driving my brother and me around the city pointing out junkies, whores, and pimps in an effort to teach us the ways of the world. The first time I ever saw a real live breast was when a hooker flashed her wares to us on the corner by the Tower News adult bookstore and the old fruit market. Thankfully it didn’t scar me for life because frankly, the working girl’s breasts had probably seen better days; much like the street she worked.
When everything seemed to hit rock bottom the aptly named Mill City experienced an almost miraculous turn-around. In the late seventies, Lowell native and United States Senator Paul Tsongas led a revival by convincing the federal government to declare the mills and canals historical treasures, forming a new national park. The city cleaned up the downtown area, new stores and restaurants opened, and people came to spend their tourism dollars. Wang Labs, once a leader in computer technology, also grew by leaps and bounds, creating thousands of jobs and leading the area into the technological age. The lifeblood of the city, the Merrimack was cleaned up which led to the return of many fish and bird species that had not been seen locally in decades. In short, it became a place to be proud of.
Now don’t get me wrong, Lowell will never be mistaken for John Winthrop’s shining city on the hill, but it’s light years ahead of other local cities with similar stories, such as Lynn, Holyoke, and Brockton—all of which continue to slowly decay. We still have problems with the Asian gangs and drugs, but unlike similar cities, you can generally walk down the street at night without body armor and a high-caliber weapon at your side.
Most of the murders here are gang related; usually kids from the surrounding towns that come to the city to work for one of the locals dealing drugs. Some have found unfortunate ends parked down by the river with a nine-millimeter hole in their temple because they think they’re smarter than the guys they work for and get stupid.
It was now close to a year since I came home to live after fourteen years serving in the Air Force as a Special Agent with the Office of Special Investigations. I’d lived through the battle of Tora Bora against the Taliban in Afghanistan, my ride getting blown up underneath me by an improvised explosive device in Iraq and an undercover assignment posing as an ecstasy dealer in the worse gang-ridden sections of Los Angeles. I’d even survived a bad marriage that had left me with little more than the clothes on my back. Six years short of retirement though, I left the military and made some huge life changes due to an amazing bit of luck.
Stopping for a cup of coffee late one night after a long surveillance operation outside of L.A., I bought a lotto ticket on the spur of the moment, never thinking it would be the impetus for some major changes in my destiny. The next night, I won the richest prize in the history of the California State lottery. Seeing as my retirement pay would have been a pittance compared to the annual checks I’ll receive from the Golden State for the next twenty-nine years, I decided it was time to move on. My good fortune opened up a whole new world, one I was eager to explore.
Prior to my windfall, I had taken a very predictable path. I went from high school, to college, to the Air Force, and I never had a chance to see life from outside the blue gates. My financial freedom gave me the opportunity to leave Uncle Sam behind and experience new things. I had secret ambitions the military couldn’t support, and it was time to give them a try. A big one was to play in a rock band, which I now did a couple of times month.
Another ambition I’d had since I was a little boy was to be a superhero. I recognized though, that a radioactive spider or a high-tech suit of armor were a bit out of reach, so being a bit more realistic, I set myself up in my current profession. It was as close as I’d ever come to donning a cape and tights in the real world.
My decision to separate from the Air Force did not come without consequences. I disappointed a lot of people, including my father who claimed he always wanted to say he had raised a general officer. Now I had to listen to him constantly brag about my younger brother Marc, who is the youngest police chief in the state, or so he claims. It got tiresome hearing it day after day, week after week, on and on. Maybe one day, he’ll realize the good I’ve done and stop calling me his rich, lazy son.
So why did I move back here? After I won the lottery, I had originally planned to stay in sunny California. With all apologies to The Boss, the plan was to buy a bourgeois house in the Hollywood Hills with a trunk load of hundred-thousand-dollar bills. The problem was I quickly figured out that I’d never be accepted amongst the beautiful people unless I kept my big mouth shut. They didn’t care for my brand of sarcasm on the left coast, especially amongst the politically correct factions that dominate polite society there.
People in La La Land don’t like it when you say how you feel or offer an unpopular opinion, no matter how close to the truth it is. It’s different in New England, and that’s high on my long list of reasons why I loved living here. New Englanders rarely hide their feelings about anything. They’re a harsh, hardy folk who don’t smile as you pass them on the street. If you smile, it is usually returned with a scowl or, in the extreme case, a face full of pepper spray.
That is a major exaggeration, but I had a hard time with it when I came home. I had grown used to California, where everyone smiles, even the muggers and gang-bangers looking to take your wallet or sell you some crack. I had to break the smiling habit, which I had worked so hard to learn. It didn’t take long for me to slip back into my old form after the first few dirty looks.
My mind wandered back to the present as the midday sun crested over the buildings. John-Bob-Fred talked on, assured that I was diligently taking mental notes. No doubt he could afford the services of a top-notch private eye, but I’m a picky guy. Some folks in my profession take whatever job they can, picking up scraps like a bouncer picks up bar flies at last call. I’m different because I don’t need the money to make rent, pay child support, finance my drinking problem, or pay my bookie. I do things because I want to do them not because I have no other skills.
I never intended to work as an investigator again, but karma, fate, or God in heaven painfully steered me back in that direction. Whenever I felt like closing up shop and spending the rest of my life getting fat surrounded by nineteen-year-old bikini girls on a boat in the tropics, sipping drinks with queer names, exotic colors, and little paper umbrellas, I think of Karen. She is the reason I do what I do.
My name is Ronan Arthur Marino, private investigator and closet superhero.
TWO
The chain of events that led me down this path began roughly two mon
ths after I migrated back to Lowell. I’d dabbled in music for a long time, playing guitar and singing since high school, but was never all that serious about it. Having all kinds of free time on my hands, I decided to act on one of those secret ambitions I mentioned earlier and joined a local band. I answered an ad posted on a music store bulletin board and immediately found a good fit, a classic rock band that didn’t take itself too seriously.
The band featured guys close to my age though they had families and jobs. We had a bass player, drummer, two guitar players and keys with the vocals shared between me, the drummer and the keyboard player. The drunks seemed to like us especially when we played “Sweet Home Alabama.” Unfortunately, drunks don’t make good music critics, and in truth, we were mediocre at best. We called ourselves the “The Jefferies Tubes” after an obscure Star Trek reference, which was my idea. It was clearly a better name than “The Screaming Sled Ferrets” that the drummer came up with.
It was a Thursday night in early October, and we were playing at a club downtown on Market Street called Max’s Blue Room. I’d spent many a night there in college, working the door, and nothing much had changed other than the namesame bad seventies lime-green wallpaper, scuffed parquet dance floor and strobe lights. A crappy sixties era Schlitz light, meant to be hung over a pool table, hung over the worn black plywood bar. Ironically, there wasn’t anything blue to be found in the room. It occurred to me once it was supposed to be Max’s Blues Room, but outside of an occasional Stevie Ray Vaughn song, no one played the blues there.
The place had gone through many name changes over the years. It was the Black Cat Lounge when my father was in college and The Downtown Club when I worked there. If I ever had any kids, it might be called something futuristic like Planet Xenon, but the inside would probably look entirely the same. It was so outdated that most of the college kids who frequented it probably thought Schlitz was the name of the company that made the light.
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