Devine's Providence: A Novel Read online

  I tried and failed to not watch her backside as she walked away.

  “I don’t know how she doesn’t fall off of those things,” said Jim, pointing down toward her clear plastic shoes. If I had to guess how big the heels were, I would probably say about three stories.

  Jim held up his glass in a toast.

  “Well sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding,” he said.

  What an odd thing to say…and where have I heard that before?

  I grunted an agreement and took a sip of the radioactive concoction. I immediately recoiled as if I’d been punched in the face. Jim let out an obnoxious laugh.

  “Too sweet?” he asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” I coughed out. “I knew all these offers of free drinks were too good to be true.”

  The alcohol was the only reason I was here, and this particular alcohol tasted like somebody sopped up lemonade-flavored vodka with a bar rag and then wrang it out in my glass.

  I considered just getting up and walking out without another word. But although I could give a rat’s ass about my new best friend Jim, I didn’t want to be rude to the generosity of the club’s staff. There was no telling when I may need them again for another case.

  “Maybe it just needs to settle,” I said.

  Jim took a sip of his own drink and shrugged.

  “I actually don’t think it’s that bad,” he said. I scoffed rather rudely.

  I sat back in my stool and looked at him up and down. Really looked at him, for the first time. He was young, maybe late twenties. He was in all black, with just a flash of bright blue dress sock showing below his cuffed pant leg. I first thought maybe the black was uniform; perhaps he was a waiter who had just finished his shift at one the city’s many high-end steakhouses, but his shoes gave him away. The shoes always do. They were more expensive than my car, without a scuff or a crease on them.

  No, he was too fresh and clean-shaven to just be stopping in for a nightcap on his way home from somewhere else. This was his destination.

  Why would he get all dressed up to go to a strip club—by himself—in the middle of the night, just to sit at the back bar and chat with a middle-aged guy like me? Providence was chock-full of weird people doing weird things for weird motives, but the detective in me suddenly decided he wasn’t going to let this one go so easy.

  Jim was watching me studying him out of the corner of his eye, but pretended not to notice. His fingers nervously tapped the side of his glass, not at all in tempo with the music.

  I tried to think of some subtle and discreet way to find out what he was really up to.

  “What are you really up to?” I asked.

  Nailed it.

  Jim’s eyes grew wide in surprise. “I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

  “You said I don’t look like the type to hang out at places like this. I happened to be working here, and was offered a drink. You, however, are just as much a fish out of water. So what’s your excuse?”

  He smiled warmly and eased his posture.

  “That obvious, huh?” he asked.

  “No one comes here just for the booze,” I said, “yours truly excluded.”

  Jim laughed.

  “I’m not from around here,” he said.

  Truth.

  “No shit,” I said.

  “I’m a, uh, journalist.”

  Lie.

  “You don’t say,” I said.

  “Doing a culture piece on the best bars in major cities. This week I’m in Providence. Next week is Hartford.”

  “This is not one of the best, I promise,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Jim, looking around. “Yelp was widely misleading on this one.”

  “What’s a Yelp?” I asked.

  Sounds like a dog-walking service.

  “A ratings site,” he said. “I don’t know why, but this joint has five stars.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That would be because of what goes on back there…legal and otherwise.”

  I motioned to the hallway off to the side leading to the private dance rooms.

  “Like I said, nobody comes here for the booze.”

  “Oh! Ohhhh…” said Jim, his eyes growing wide again. “They…they get away with that?”

  “Providence has its own way of running. This place…it’s just part of the machine.”

  “You seem to know a lot about the city,” said Jim. “And about how it works.”

  “I’ve seen enough on the inside of it all,” I said. “Enough to know I don’t want to see any more.”

  “But you must know how to get certain…information, should you need to? Who to ask, and how to ask it?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What are you getting at?”

  “Oh, it’s just that I’m guessing that probably comes in handy, as a private eye.”

  “Mmm-hmm. What company did you say you worked for again?”

  Jim started to stutter out a deflective answer but was cut off by Becky, who had reappeared behind the bar.

  “Another round, gentlemen?”

  She was wearing her self-described “classier” outfit, which was a white lace g-string and still no top.

  The epitome of sophistication.

  “No thanks, sweetheart,” I said, standing up. “I think it’s high time I call it a night.”

  Jim went to speak, but was again cut off by Becky.

  “Awww, well it was so nice to see you again, Harry,” she said.

  I placed a few bills on the bar and leaned over to whisper in her ear.

  “Keep an eye on this one,” I said, referring to Jim. “Something’s not adding up.”

  She nodded slightly in acknowledgement.

  “Don’t be a stranger, Harry!” she said as I straightened up. “I’m here almost every night! Remember, just ask for Sydney.”

  “Yeah, about that,” I said, “Why Sydney? Any particular reason?”

  She flashed her best sultry gaze and leaned over, resting her breasts directly on the bar.

  That’s gotta be against some health code.

  “It’s Sydney,” she said breathily, “because I do all my best work…down under.”

  She winked at me and blew me a kiss as Jim choked on his drink and erupted into a coughing fit.

  I shook my head and took my leave. Finally time to put this case, and myself, to bed.

  • • •

  I slept for most of the morning. A deep sleep that only found me in those seldom times my brain had no loose ends to tie up. I even treated myself by sleeping at home, in my soft king-sized bed, instead of curled up on the leather sofa in my office. I awoke naturally from the sun shining through the slats in my bedroom blinds and the sounds of birds and traffic, not at the behest of a clanging alarm, and it was glorious. In my younger days, I would’ve needed just a quick powernap and I’d be ready to go at it in a couple of hours. But alas, I was on a bullet train fast approaching the big five-oh station, and I knew not to push myself too hard. There was no rush, anyhow. I showered, doused myself with coffee, and headed out to my office around one in the afternoon.

  There weren’t any new cases waiting for me (by design), but I still had reports and invoices to write up on my Pink Parrot target. I would detail how the construction foreman with a supposed freshly broken back was miraculously out of traction and swinging punches at a strip club bouncer. The video from inside the Parrot would clearly show no restrictions in mobility. Hell, I wished I was as flexible as him. I hadn’t decided yet if my report would include how the man was jet-skiing in Narragansett Bay for most of the previous day, because any physical evidence of that was lost when my smartphone was fumbled over the side of my rented motorboat. (Technology, in my opinion, had regressed. Back in the day, all cameras came with straps). But with any luck, I’d be done with the pa
perwork by early evening, celebrate with a late nightcap at Rick’s Bar & Grille, and then be on the early morning ferry to Block Island.

  Once there, I’d find a spot on the beach not too far from the bar, park my rear end on the sand, and not move it for a week. Maybe two. No calls. No e-mails. No smartphone to even be tempted to look at missed calls or e-mails. No paperwork. No tailing sneaky adulterers or insurance fraudsters. Just the surf and the sky and some spy novel and the kind of fruity girly frozen drink you can only get away with ordering on vacation.

  My mind was already way ahead of my rear end, relaxing on the sandy beach, as I pulled up to my office building. I squeezed my old clunker into a space half its size. Parking came at a premium in Providence, but I was lucky enough to find an open space right in front. The narrow, brick-laid street, not far from the Brown University campus, was dotted with gas lamps and lined with antique stores and coffee shops. On a cool night, when the fog obscured the telephone lines and Priuses just right, you could look down the street and swear you were transported back in time, to the point you could almost hear the clop of horseshoes on cobblestone. The mystique in the air was enhanced by the fact you were in the same hilly neighborhood where H.P. Lovecraft lived and wrote his stories of horror and fantasy.

  The office of Devine and Associates, my private investigation firm, was located on the top floor of a weathered brownstone, covered by decades of dirt, soot and ivy. It was a lovely old building, spacious and well-kept, and the rent was surprisingly low for the neighborhood. A steep wooden stairway ran up the natural slope along the side of the building, allowing outside access to the upper floors.

  I was the lone occupant of the third floor, with a conference room, private office, kitchenette, bathroom with working shower, and a sitting room I mostly used for crashing when I was working late nights and didn’t want to make the effort to drive home.

  The second floor was home to a tanning salon, according to the weather-beaten sign, but I rarely saw or heard anyone coming or going and kind of assumed it had long since gone out of business. The owner of the building was a petite older woman named Terry who operated a health food and vitamin store on the ground level. The store was once a pharmacy at the early part of the last century, and Terry painstakingly restored the display windows and pharmacy counter with reclaimed woodwork, tile, and tin ceilings. The old soda fountain at the rear of the shop was even cleaned up and served as a juice bar proven to be popular with the millennial college students and neighborhood hipsters on their way from the yoga studio or spin class in the building next door.

  The whole hippie, crunchy, quinoa-kale-avocado-smoothie culture was not something I understood, but I accepted that it was just a different world than mine and I was not meant to understand it. I had to respect the amazing job Terry had done in revitalizing the building while keeping the history. And I couldn’t help but notice that although some people in my generation scoffed at the local hipsters with their man-buns, floppy hats, loud-print leggings, and waxed mustaches (I myself laughed out loud the other day when a young man with a monocle strolled by), the fact was that these weirdos spent money. Lots of money.

  Terry charged a premium for her wares, and they gobbled it up by the messenger bag-full. And not just on College Hill, but throughout all of Providence, catering to quirky young folks was good business. Coffee huts, vintage clothing suppliers, luxury smoke shops, craft cocktail joints, paint bars, escape rooms…if you build it, they will come. Even the venerable record store was making a comeback, much to my personal delight. And as far as I was concerned, whatever they were spending on, their spending was good for the city.

  What I still wasn’t sure of, however, was where they were getting their money to begin with. They all liked to play the starving bohemian artist, but they sure spent a lot of scratch to keep looking like hobos. Even Terry, an unmarried woman on a small pension, somehow had the funds to buy and extensively renovate a multi-unit building in a valued location. Must be nice, I fantasized, to have good credit.

  If Terry was indeed used to a silver spoon diet, though, she certainly didn’t give any indication of it. She was a tireless worker; I had never seen her stay still for more than a second or two. They just don’t make work ethic like hers anymore. She was sweeping the already-clean sidewalk outside her shop’s front entrance when I pulled up to the building.

  “Hey there, good looking!” she said cheerfully, continuing to sweep. Her long, wavy gray hair was tied up in a bright blue bandana, knotted at the top. Her glistening blue eyes matched her shiny diamond nose piercing. A bright gem on the schnoz of any other woman her age would look utterly ridiculous, but somehow she pulled it off.

  “Hiya Terry,” I greeted. “Hey, I’m going away for about a week or two. Would you mind collecting my mail?”

  “Not at all, happy to,” she said. “Although if Devine and Associates had any actual associates, I wouldn’t have to.”

  “I told you, it sounds more professional. Besides, by getting my mail, that makes you an honorary Associate. Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she chided gently. “You couldn’t afford me as a partner.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re smiling,” I said, “but somehow I know you’re not joking.”

  I turned and went to make my way up the steps, but she called after me.

  “There’s some other Associate work I’ve done for you already today.”

  I turned back around. “Oh?”

  “A woman came in the store this morning right when I opened. She was looking for you.”

  “Okay…did she say who she was or what she wanted?”

  “She didn’t. Seemed real nervous. I told her you usually did business by appointment only, and to call the number on your sign, but she said you weren’t answering. She was so insistent, I tried ringing you too.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, picturing my phone on the bottom of Narragansett Bay, illuminating the sea floor with God knows how many missed calls. “Cell got some water damage.”

  Terry pulled a business card out of her back jeans pocket and handed it to me. It was Terry’s card, but a number was scrawled on the back.

  “She just said to give this to you as soon as I saw you, and that it was urgent.”

  “Sounds like the beginning of a bad movie,” I said, frowning.

  “Yeah, it gets weirder.” Terry dropped her voice and moved in closer.

  “She specifically said if any one came around asking about her or someone who looks like her…”

  “Let me guess,” I interrupted. “You didn’t see nuthin’?”

  Terry nodded and shrugged.

  I could feel my mind begrudgingly getting up from the beach and taking the ferry back to the mainland to reunite with the rest of my body, including my rear end, which was decidedly not plopped in the sand but instead climbing the steps toward what could turn out to be another long work week.

  “Thanks doll,” I said over my shoulder, trying to hide my dejectedness. I had been looking forward to vacation for some time, but I didn’t like turning cases (or income) away. And far be it from me to reject a dame in distress.

  Being a responsible adult sucked sometimes.

  Most of the time, actually.

  Chapter 2

  THE TATOOED STRANGER

  After getting settled, I called the number on the back of Terry’s card. A woman’s soft, hurried voice answered before the first ring had finished.

  “Yeah?”

  The abruptness of the greeting caught me off guard.

  “Uh, yeah. I mean, uh, hiya there, this is Harry Devine from uh, oh, Devine and Associates. And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with on this gloriously sunny afternoon?”

  I was overcompensating for my stuttering by laying on the Ol’ Devine Charm (trademark pending) a bit too thick on the backend. It’s a powerful tool that c
ommands finesse to use. A little dab’ll do ya, but I was pouring it on like ketchup on grandma’s overcooked meatloaf.

  Keep it together, Harry.

  “I’d rather not talk on the phone.”

  My mystery client spoke with a quiet but authoritative tone. Drat. The quiet and authoritative types are often the most impervious to the Ol’ Devine Charm, no matter how heavily applied.

  “Well,” I said, “I do apologize I missed you this morning. I’ll be here at the office for the rest of the workday. But as for the rest of the week—”

  “I’ll be there in two hours,” she interrupted.

  Click.

  Miss Manners, apparently, she was not.

  Probably another jilted lover wanting me to tail her husband, I decided. I could get lucky with a quick and easy stakeout outside the airport Sheraton (or the Biltmore if he really knew how to treat a lady), and still only be a few days away from my Block Island getaway. I could even make enough dough for a new cell phone, and maybe even spring for insurance this time.

  But for now, there was an island of paperwork to tackle. I flipped through my old vinyls for an appropriate soundtrack—it was, I settled on, a Charlie Parker kind of day—and dove in. I had seductively ogled the bottle of Johnnie Walker on the bookcase behind my desk, but decided it would be best to not smell like Scotch while meeting someone deciding if she wants to give me money or not.

  Later, baby.

  The next two hours flew by in a mundane flurry of expense reports and case notes. Clients, especially corporate ones, like proof that they’re getting results for their money. And details are important if anything ends up in court, which it usually does. So the lengthier, the more verbose, the more technical I make things, the more satisfied they seem to be. And I don’t mind piling on plenty of the bovine excrement if it means repeat business.

  I was so lost in dates and numbers and nuanced insurance terminology that I was actually startled when I heard the main door open and a voice call out.

  “Hello? Mr. Devine?”

  The voice was the same from the phone, but this time not as rushed and crisp. I came out of my office and into the main reception area. I’d never had a secretary, but kept a small, stocked desk to give the place a more ‘professional’ vibe. The perception of a bigger operation not only made my clients feel more at ease, but also allowed me to charge higher rates.