Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde (2 page)

The rain started coming down hard again, and I wished I had remembered to wear a hat to keep the water out of my eyes.

“Are we going to stand here and dance all night, or are you going to do something with that knife?” I asked.

Dipshit uttered some kind of primal death scream he’d seen on pro wrestling and made a few awkward stabbing motions that I easily blocked. After failing to stab me, he slashed at my head with the blade, lunging in desperation. That didn’t work either, and Dipshit grew frustrated as the sounds of sirens grew louder.

“Hold still, asshole!” he demanded.

I generally don’t respond well to demands of any kind. It’s yet another character flaw of mine, but one I can live with, especially at times like this. Dipshit made a last-ditch downward slash but I caught his arm and knocked the knife out of his hand, flipping him over on his back hard onto the pavement in the process. The air rushed out of his chest as he bounced off the concrete like a rubber ball.

Using his arm for leverage, I rolled him onto his stomach and twisted his wrist back while applying pressure to his shoulder. He struggled to catch his breath and tried to stand, but I pulled back on the arm. His body writhed in pain like a fish flopping on dry land, and he groaned out in pain.

Right on cue, a pair of police cruisers arrived, their lights shining on us through the raindrops. An unmarked car pulled up, and Lieutenant Shea stepped out and shook his head.

Two uniformed officers rushed over and took control of Dipshit. I let him go and ruffled the rain out of my hair.

“Lt. Shea, meet Dipshit,” I said.

He jabbed a long thick finger in my chest and yelled, “You’re the only dipshit I see. We found one of them nearly bleeding to death in front of the temple with a hole the size of my fist in his leg. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want any shooting?”

“Couldn’t help it, he fired first.”

“I didn’t see a gun on him.”

I took the shotgun shell from my pocket and flipped it to him. He looked at the buckshot round like I had handed him a cold turd.

“You’ll find an empty Remington in the bed of the truck. There’s also a third guy who got away from me.”

“Already in custody,” Shea reported. “Detective Garcia caught him circling back around. What happened to calling and letting us move on them?”

“I dropped my phone,” I explained.

Shea glared at me like I was back in his advanced forensics class and had forgotten another homework assignment. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed it hard. For a man rapidly approaching sixty, his grip was surprisingly strong.

“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 m
e
the 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.