Devine's Providence: A Novel Page 26

  “First off, what’s with this? Why do you have this woman’s name?”

  He laughed again. I backhanded him again, this time in the other direction. But he was like one of those inflatable clown punching bags. He just took the hit and kept on laughing.

  “You’re wasting your bitchslaps,” he said. “I can do this all night.”

  I ignored him and leaned in close.

  “What about Philip Grayle?” I asked. “What really happened to him?”

  “Funny you should ask,” he grinned, “He was just taken care of the other day. If it was up to me, I would’ve offed him right away, as soon as we took him. Waste of resources, if you ask me, keeping him alive that long, just to kill him later anyway.”

  Chelsea walked over, drinking from the Jameson bottle.

  “Who ordered the hit?” she asked.

  “Nah, you’re not getting that from me,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “What about Marc Winters? Who was pulling the strings behind his death?”

  “What a night that was,” said Bruce, grinning at Chelsea. “They really should’ve listened to me on that one. I wanted to get both of you at once, but they said they wanted to spare you. If I had just done it anyway, the way it was supposed to be done…well, I wouldn’t be in this here situation with youse, would I?”

  Chelsea tensed up, but I stepped between her and Bruce.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I asked. “Who’s behind it?”

  Bruce ignored my question, but craned his neck around me to see Chelsea. He laughed maniacally, as if taunting her.

  “Easiest job I’ve ever had,” he said between laughs. “Hardest part was getting the adjoining door to look locked from the inside. But the kid didn’t put up much of a fight. Even as I was throwin’ him out the window.”

  I whirled around, ready to intercept Chelsea as she leapt forward to throttle him, but her leap never came. In fact, she didn’t react at all, until she put the Jameson bottle up to her lips, knocked her head back, and finished it.

  She then sauntered around the perimeter of the room, empty bottle still in hand.

  “I’ll ask you again,” she said over Bruce’s cackles. “Who ordered the hit?”

  She never looked at him as she spoke. His laughs died down so he could catch his breath. She stopped walking when she reached the jukebox.

  “You may as well let me go now,” he said. “That’s all you’re getting out of me.”

  She reached down behind the jukebox.

  “What makes you think we’re letting you go?” she said calmly. This evoked even more laughter from Bruce.

  “Of course you’re letting me go…if I don’t escape first. You’re the ‘good guys.’ You’re not cut out for this, sweetheart.”

  The jukebox sprang to life as Chelsea found the cord and plugged it into the wall. The neon sides lit up as bright as the day it was installed, and the machinery inside started to whir.

  “Huh,” said Chelsea to herself. “Only ten cents a song. Got a dime, Harry?”

  “Funny time for karaoke,” I said. I rummaged through the change in my pocket and tossed her a coin. She frowned as she browsed over the song titles.

  “All of these songs are ancient,” she said. “No wonder you love this bar.”

  Bruce laughed.

  “You know, maybe he’s right,” I said. “He’s not going to talk any more. Why don’t I take a cab to the hospital, then we’ll uh…dispose of…our guest of honor here?”

  “Pick a number,” said Chelsea.

  “Huh?”

  “Pick a number between one and nine.”

  “I’m not in the mood for games, Chelsea.”

  “Come on, Harry, pick a number.”

  “I’m not picking a number.”

  “Three,” said Bruce.

  “Seven,” I said.

  “Seven it is,” she said. She pushed “A-7” on the jukebox and the horn section of Dean Martin’s backup band blasted out of the speakers at a deafening level. Bruce winced harder than when I was slapping him.

  Chelsea covered her ears.

  “Oh, it’s so loud!” she shouted over the music.

  How lucky can one guy be?

  “I think the volume control’s in the back there,” I said, walking over. I crouched down and felt around the side of the jukebox for the dial, which was exactly what Chelsea was waiting for. She smashed the empty Jameson bottle on the edge of a table and ran over to Bruce. She was on him instantly, knocking his chair over backwards. The chair splintered and broke apart, leaving his arms cuffed to just the back as he lay flat on the ground, Chelsea’s knees on his chest and the broken bottle up against his throat. I struggled to get up, but just couldn’t move fast enough.

  Like the fella once said, ain’t that a kick in the head…

  I stumbled over to them, but I was afraid to do anything. She was holding the glass so close to him a trickle of blood was starting to run down his neck. At least he wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “Chelsea,” I said. “Take it easy…”

  “Talk, motherfucker,” she said to Bruce. “You know what I want. Give me the name.”

  Bruce’s eyes were wide and panicked, his smug confidence ripped apart like his chair. He stared at the bottle pressed against his neck. I leaned over and peered out the window of the connecting door. Charlie was cleaning glasses, and there were a few patrons at the bar, but no one seemed the least bit interested about anything other than the drinks in front of them.

  “You’re crazy” said Bruce, his voice suddenly high-pitched. Chelsea leaned in close to his face.

  “Try me,” she said. “Let’s see how crazy I am. Say his name. Tell me Temple’s behind all this.”

  “Chelsea, don’t do this,” I said. My protests went ignored.

  “Temple’s only a part of it,” said Bruce. “Even he answers to somebody.”

  “Who? Who does he answer to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She gripped the broken bottle tighter.

  “Then think,” she said.

  “I mean it, I don’t know! Nobody does. All I’ve heard is there’s a lot of power at play. And they pay well. Really well.”

  “Why? What’s worth protecting? And what’s SmartPark got to do with it?”

  “Lady, I’m just the hired muscle. I—yeeeeooooow!”

  Chelsea grabbed him by his shirt and lifted him up into a sitting position, the bottle still pressed against his neck. She knelt down next to him on her right knee, her left heel planted squarely between his legs. I winced and reflexively covered my own manhood.

  “Oh, Brucie,” she said. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  If this is just the beginning,

  My life is gonna be…beeee-utiful!

  I slowly paced in a circle around them. Part of me was trying to figure a way to disarm her without hurting the thug too badly. As little as I cared what happened to him, I didn’t want his blood on her hands any more than I wanted it on mine. The other side of me was goddamned impressed. Chelsea turned out to be quite the badass. Sure, I was scared out of my mind and didn’t agree with what she was doing. I didn’t want to think so, but there was something undeniable about seeing her this way that was so. Fucking. Hot.

  “Okay okay okay!” yelped Bruce. “I don’t know anything for certain. But the rumors are that Temple’s using SmartPark just to get people’s personal information.”

  “Personal information?” asked Chelsea. “What are you talking about?”

  “Phone numbers, credit cards, shopping history, banking info—it’ll all be on the app. It’s being made to track everyone’s location, browsing habits, it can even listen in on phone calls if they decide they want to.”

  “Why would they want to?”

  “Tem
ple’s bundling up all of the stuff he gathers and selling it to the highest bidder. Word is that CIA and NSA are very interested in the app’s capabilities. Someone said maybe even Russia.”

  “That doesn’t sound very legal,” I said.

  “Of course it’s not,” Bruce started to laugh, but was cut off by the shards on the bottle being pressed tighter against his neck. “But we’re talking billions of dollars here, once it gets off the ground.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Providence is practically forcing every citizen with a smart phone to get this app, just to deal with the city’s everyday infrastructure.”

  “And it’s a matter of time before they expand to other cities,” said Bruce. “Rhode Island’s just the test market, on account of how small it is. And how easily bought everyone is to make it happen. Do you think…do you think you could move your foot? I’ve told you all I know. I’m a dead man, now.”

  Chelsea kept the pressure on her heel.

  That deal indeed sounded like it was worth potentially billions. People were going to get very, very rich very fast, once they were in possession of all that illegally mined data. No wonder they were going all out. They didn’t let Philip Grayle stand in their way, they didn’t let Marc Winters expose them, and they certainly weren’t just standing by while we…did whatever it was we were doing.

  They were sloppy, cocky, and trigger-happy, but they were also aggressive and relentless. They wouldn’t stop until they’re bank accounts were maxed out.

  But we still don’t know…who are ‘they’?

  Was Frank Temple the one behind it all? Or was the mayor the mastermind? Chief Delgado, even? Or someone even higher up?

  “That’s a mind-blowing amount of misused data,” said Chelsea. “Where are they going to keep it all?”

  “They got some space in an old warehouse in the Jewelry District. They say it’s got hundreds of…whatdayacallit, computer brains? That’s all I know, really.”

  “What about that slip of paper with Terry—Theresa’s name on it? What’s that all about?”

  “A job to tail some old lady,” said Bruce. “They thought she might have lead me to you. Guess they was right, kinda…”

  “Chelsea,” I said as calmly as I could. “Can we talk for a minute?”

  She seemed reluctant at first, but finally nodded at me, then leaned in close to Bruce’s face.

  “You move,” she said, “you die.” She threw him back on the ground and walked over to me near the bar.

  “That’s the connection,” I said. “That’s what we were looking for. Now we can go to the FBI with the full story. Not only that, but that means the FCC, the FTC…hell, even congress…this is where they take over. They can figure out who the key players are.”

  Chelsea shook her head. “They’re not going to do anything. They’ll find some fall guy and Temple will get away with everything.”

  “You heard him, Chelsea. Temple’s just one cog in this machine. He’s not the real boss. We can keep going until we pass out from exhaustion, which I’m very close to doing, but we’ll never know the whole story. It’s just the way it is.”

  “They’re not going to go down without a fight,” she said, her voice borderline manic. “They’ve come too far. Invested too much money and too many lives. They’ll never back down. We need to hit them someplace where it hurts.”

  I was absolutely exasperated by her.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t care. Not if it means bringing them down in the process.”

  I took her hands in mine.

  “Please. Chelsea. It’s not worth it.”

  “You should get the hospital already. I’ll take care of this guy.”

  “I’m not going to let you…huh.”

  I looked over to where Bruce had been sprawled on the floor. There were just the remnants of the chair scattered in his place. His gorilla-like silhouette was running out the back door, throwing it closed behind him.

  “Fuck!” shouted Chelsea, going to run after him. I grabbed her arm, holding her in place.

  “Let him go,” I said.

  “Harry, let me go!” she screamed. She started punching my arm.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s all okay. We were done with him anyway. I’m calling this in.”

  “No! Harry, let go of me! You can’t do that!”

  Chelsea squirmed and twisted to try to wrangle free, but I kept a firm and steady grip. My free hand fumbled around in my pocket for one of my cell phones, but of course there were both in the opposite pocket. I was still busy fumbling when she was finally able to break free and bolted toward the door. I started after her but she picked up a barstool as she passed and swung it around, hitting me in the gut. I don’t know if she meant to hit me, or if she was just trying to push it over in my way, but it knocked the wind out of me.

  A spot of red quickly began to spread on my new shirt where the make-shift stitches had burst open. I collapsed to the ground. The pain completely overtook me. I reached out to Chelsea, but she may as well have been three football fields away. I was starting to hyperventilate. I tried to keep myself propped in an upright position, but my limbs felt like they were full of sand.

  “Harry!” Chelsea cried out from across the expanse, which in actuality was likely about three feet. “Harry, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “I can’t…let you…” I tried my hardest to sputter out the words, but my own breath stayed just out of reach, making talking increasingly difficult. Chelsea looked like she was on an invisible leash; like she wanted to rush over to me but some unseen force was physically holding her back, trying to pull her out of the bar.

  She looked up at the squeak of the connecting door behind me. Charlie came rushing in. He immediately pushed a bar towel onto my side to stop the steady flow of blood.

  “We’re calling an ambulance,” he said.

  “Harry,” said Chelsea again. She kept her green, wide, panicked, beautiful eyes on me as she slowly backed out toward the door. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed to me before slipping out.

  My breath was coming in short gasps. I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. Charlie reached in my pocket and pulled out my wallet, replacing it with another one.

  “What are you doing?” I spurted.

  “Trust me,” he said. “I just saw the news.”

  What the hell was he talking about?

  I didn’t have the strength to ask any follow-up questions aloud, and I soon succumbed once again to the sweet envelope of unconsciousness.

  Chapter 23

  FRAMED

  This dream was not in black and white. There was no Noir-style mood lighting, no cinematography tricks, no swelling crescendo of an offstage orchestra. The sun was shining. It was a warm, beautiful New England spring day, the kind where the whole world seemed to be waking up from the deep lazy slumber of winter. Windows of houses and apartments and cars were finally thrown open. The birds were chattering away their gossip in sing-song. Each blade of bright green grass seemed to dance and reach toward the sun’s embrace. The world was alive. It was a perfect day.

  Just like it had actually been.

  The bicycle was pink and sparkly, with red and white plastic tassels on the ends of the handlebars. The back wheel let out a thwppppppp sound as it turned, a result of the playing card stuck through the spokes with a clothespin. It was originally a Queen of Hearts, but we had to trade it out for a Seven of Clubs (“If it rips, I’ll have a broken Heart, and then I don’t know what I’d do, Daddy!”).

  I had been walking along the tree-lined sidewalk behind the bike, quite a bit younger, leaner, fitter, and more sober than I was now. I stopped to talk to Sam and Martha over the short white picket fence in their front yard. Sam and Martha were our neighbors, and were not yet div
orced and re-married to other people. It was still a few years away from when Martha caught Sam fooling around with his receptionist.

  We talked about the weather, about what a long and brutal winter it had been, about the church potluck coming up just after Easter, about how the Red Sox spring training was looking, and about this and that and the other thing. I had kept my eyes on the bike as she made it all the way to the end of the block. She stopped on the corner, turned around, and came riding back toward us.

  Thwppppppppp…

  Sam and Martha’s tall hedges separated their yard from ours, and ran the length of our property lines. It gave both families some wonderful backyard privacy during cookouts or late night wine-drinking on the patio, but they also obscured the view of our driveway from their front lawn. When Martha sold the house after their divorce, the new owners trimmed the hedges to waist height all the way down to where our garage started, in an effort to be more neighborly.

  But that wasn’t until much later. Too much later.

  The hedges were still full grown in the dream—I hate to call it that, because dreams are usually full of fantasy or subconscious messages or ridiculous situations. This was none of that. This was shot for shot what happened. It was a memory burned into my brain like an image that stays on an old television after you turn it off. It was there every time I closed my eyes, no matter how much I tried to flush it out by filling my head with alcohol.

  I wish I could freeze it right here. Just hit pause and stop it in place like a DVD. Just here, before everything went to shit. I was happy—we were happy, and things were normal. A normal family living a normal life on a normal street in a normal city. No worries of conspiracy or corruption or bribery or murder. No fretting about Frank Temple or Chief Delgado or Teddy Rocco.

  No Chelsea Woodstern.

  I would like to think that I knew what I had then, in that moment. That I knew how lucky I was. How it would never be the same again. But the truth was I didn’t know. I had no idea. Instead of cherishing the blessed situation I was in, I was worrying about work, about bills, about PTA meetings and coaching tee-ball and trying to find the time or the money or the energy to keep everything going. I was worrying about things that in hindsight were nothing. I would give anything—anything—to have just those worries again, if it meant things were back to the way they were.