I have something very special to share with you today. It’s a brand-new, never-before-seen short story featuring the hero of my crime thriller series, Parker Hanson, which I wrote in response to a call for submissions to a crime fiction anthology.
The theme of the anthology is “crime without corpses,” and I chose to write about an investigation that takes place early on in Parker’s career as a private detective. In this story, he’s still stewing about losing his reporting job and bitter about the turn his career has taken. It’s a relatively minor case taking place inside a restaurant that finally swings Parker’s attitude around.
The story draws upon my own experience working in restaurants for years before starting my journalism career. It also shows how Parker meets Amalia Velasquez, the badass sidekick who helps keep him from danger in my novels.
I’d love to hear your impressions of the story; let me know what you think!
I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had in writing it. Without further ado, here it is...
Return of Service
“What can you tell me about the floater?”
The guy I was talking to, Rico Tocci, was a big, sweaty fellow with teeth that looked like overturned rocks from a hundred-year-old stone wall that had just collapsed. He owned Rico’s, the waterfront restaurant whose back deck we were sitting on long after the kitchen had closed for the evening.
I had my detective’s notebook open on the table in front of me, ready to jot down whatever keen insights Rico might provide.
Perched on the east bank of the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire, Rico’s served a fusion of Italian and New England seafood cuisine to diners who wanted a nice view of the river but weren’t picky about their meals. No one who ate at Rico’s was likely to send back their fettuccini alfredo because it was drenched in heavy cream.
As Rico pondered my question, the moon peeked out from behind a bank of clouds. Its shadowy craters formed a downcast expression, and its pallid light cast an eerie glow on the water below us.
“Her name’s Lacy Stevens. She’s nineteen. Went to community college for a semester but didn’t go back in the spring. I think she might have a drug problem. She gets this really loopy look in her eyes sometimes, like she’s not all there.”
Rico was using the present tense to describe Lacy. That made sense, as she wasn’t a corpse that had been fished out of the river. She was a floater at his restaurant, meaning she did various jobs to support the wait staff. These included cleaning off and resetting tables, bringing food out to diners, clearing dishes, and sometimes running credit cards when diners were ready to pay.
I’m sorry if I misled you, gentle reader, by creating the impression that this was a homicide investigation. But the truth is, I wasn’t the kind of detective who’d be investigating a murder. Not then, at least. This was in 2015, when I was still a struggling, small-time private eye who mostly found lost relatives or served court summonses for a living. It was a decent, though not glamorous, way to pay the bills after losing my job as a reporter a few years earlier.
Did I dream of taking on bigger and more high-profile cases some day? Sure. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the turn my career had taken. One day I was breaking major stories for the state’s largest newspaper. And then, owing to the collapse of print journalism at the hands of the Internet revolution, suddenly I found myself chasing around cheating spouses and trying to document their infidelity.
My case involving the governor’s crimes was still nearly a decade away.
Rico had a notion that one of his employees was stealing customers’ credit card information and selling it on the Dark Web. He’d taken calls from two recent patrons who were victims of credit card fraud shortly after dining at his establishment. He wanted me to find the perpetrator, and he suspected Lacy might be behind the thefts.
I leaned forward in my chair a little, slowly scratched my chin, and pretended to be interested in what Rico had to say.
“What makes you think it’s her? Aside from the fact that you think she’s doing drugs, I mean.”
“I approached her the other day and said I wanted to talk when her shift was over. Her eyes got really wide and her hands shook. It looked like she had something to hide. All I wanted was to tell her we still needed her W-4. The night shift manager, Brenda Curtis, must’ve forgotten that part during her onboarding.”
“Why hire me? Why not just watch her yourself—or better yet, install some cameras?”
“I don’t have time for that. Even with cameras, I’d have to review the footage. I’ve got a business to run.”
Rico leaned forward as well, clasping his hands in front of his face. I noticed he wore many rings on his meaty fingers: a wedding ring, a Manchester Central High School class ring, a ruby-studded pinky ring. The gold from his rings glinted in the pale moonlight, and I had a momentary vision of Rico as Gollum sitting alone in his cave, fussing over his treasures.
We agreed that I would work undercover as a barback in his restaurant, keeping the bar stocked for the bartenders while simultaneously keeping an eye on Lacy and the other employees. We also settled on my modest fee for the assignment.
As I closed my notebook and got up to leave, Rico reached out and touched me on the arm. “By the way,” he proclaimed with a flourish, “whatever tips you earn from the bartenders for helping them out are yours to keep.”
Gee, swell, I thought. Us thanks them, precious.
* * *
My conversation with Rico took place on a Wednesday night. At four thirty the next afternoon, I reported to his establishment wearing black jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt with the restaurant’s logo splashed across the front, which Rico had given to me the night before.
I couldn’t believe I was going to work in a restaurant again.
I mean no offense to food service employees when I say this. They carry out a vital but underappreciated role in our society, and they have my utmost respect for the grueling jobs they do. But after years of waiting tables and tending bar to put myself through college—followed by more than a decade spent as a high-profile newspaper reporter—it felt like I was taking a big step backwards in my career.
With regard to restaurant work, I’d been there, done that—and I thought I’d moved on.
Now, I was right back where I’d started. The prodigal son returns.
Brenda Curtis greeted me as I entered the building. She was a short, heavily tanned woman with bleached blond hair and a nice smile. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, same as me.
Brenda handed me an apron and took me on a tour of the restaurant, showing me the kitchen and the storeroom where the bar supplies were kept. She also introduced me to the bartender on duty that night, Amalia Velasquez.
“Amalia, this is Parker Hanson. He’ll be helping you out in the bar this weekend. If there’s anything you need, just let him know.”
Amalia was a slender but well-toned woman of medium height. She had shoulder-length dark hair the color of sable’s fur and warm but roguish eyes. A tattoo of a skull wearing a tan beret adorned her left shoulder.
“I like your tattoo,” I told her. “Does it mean anything?”
“Actually, yes. It’s an Army Ranger symbol. I completed Ranger School training during my service a few years ago.”
“Wow, that’s pretty badass. Does Rico use you as a bouncer, too?”
“Hasn’t had to yet,” she smirked. “But if he needs me, I’m ready.”
I also met Lacy and the rest of that evening’s employees. Lacy was tall and gangly, with sad gray eyes that reminded me of an abandoned puppy.
“How long have you been working here?” I asked her.
“Six months.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s okay.”
Quoting Billy Joel, I said: “But there’s someplace that you’d rather be.”
“I don’t know where I want to be,” she replied, and I saw the same glazed look in her eyes that Rico had mentioned.
The waitstaff consisted of Priya, a friendly and attractive girl who struck me as a little flighty; George, a blond guy with perfect hair and teeth who probably had a future in politics; Suzie, a petite brunette with a deafening laugh who was studying to be a phlebotomist; Derek, a muscular guy with a flattop haircut and eyes that could cut through diamonds; and Allison, a self-absorbed young woman who wore electric blue eye shadow and chewed gum. The hostess was Pam, a quiet girl with curly hair held back by a leopard-print headband.
All of them were young. Too young to drink alcohol legally, in most cases—and definitely not old enough to rent a car.
I’m sure Rico knew a lot about running a restaurant. But when it came to understanding people, I wasn’t about to defer to his judgment. Eleven years as a newspaper reporter, two years apprenticing as a private investigator, and another year with my PI license had taught me that most human beings are terrible judges of character. They trust—and suspect—entirely the wrong people.
That’s because most people use the wrong characteristics to judge someone’s morals, like skin color or religion, when really it’s our values that determine how ethical we are. People also tend to use behavior as a shorthand for judging character, and that can be misleading, too—a mistake that my college psychology professor called the “fundamental attribution error.”
In Lacy’s case, it seemed like Rico was using the fact that she dropped out of college to suggest she was lazy, and therefore prone to stealing. But maybe it just meant that college wasn’t for her. She might be hard-working and industrious if she found something she was passionate about.
So rather than rely on Rico’s judgment, I spent that first evening doing my own assessment of his staff, using a few simple questions that I hoped would reveal their core values. For instance:
“Hey, Lacy. I found a gold necklace near the front entrance. I think it might belong to a customer. What should I do with it?”
“We have a box for lost items at the hostess station. You should put it in there.”
My conversations with most of the other employees followed a similar vein. Except for one. When I put this question to Derek, he replied: “I think you should keep it. Isn’t possession nine-tenths of the law?”
Granted, this was hardly conclusive. But it did raise a big red flag for me.
In between getting to know the employees, I kept the bar stocked for Amalia. And when she was busy with customers at the bar, I made drinks for the waitstaff.
It didn’t take me long to get back into the flow. I surprised myself by how much I still remembered from my bartending days.
Then again, how likely was I to screw up a rum and coke?
* * *
When I got home that evening, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep right away. I was too keyed up from working late, even if it was on a case I wasn’t deeply invested in.
Instead of going to bed, I went online and tried to learn as much as I could about the restaurant’s employees from the public databases I had access to as a detective.
Rico had given me a list with his employees’ full names and addresses. I learned that none of his employees had a criminal record. Checking out their social media feeds didn’t reveal anything useful, either. I found out that George collected old baseball cards, Brenda baked exquisite desserts, and Suzie was obsessed with Justin Bieber. But nothing I’d gleaned actually helped with the case.
My efforts were successful in one respect, though: They made me drowsy. I closed my laptop and drifted off to sleep.
Later that night, for the first time in fifteen years, I had the familiar nightmare that anyone who’s worked in a restaurant knows all too well.
I was waiting tables again, and all the tables in my section were sat at the same time. People were looking around and expecting me to take their drink orders, but I was busy with the customers at another table. I could feel my chest tightening and my breathing become shallow as I noticed their angry looks.
I was deep in the weeds and unable to keep up.
Only this time, there was a twist. On the way to the bar to pick up drinks, I got lost. Suddenly, nothing looked familiar. I was running in circles, continually retracing my steps but not getting any closer to my destination.
I could hear the diners at my tables angrily shouting in the background as I kept them waiting, unable to get where I wanted…
* * *
The next day was Friday. I spent that evening getting to know the remaining staff at Rico’s who hadn’t worked the night before. I also started closely watching each employee.
Conveniently for me, the credit card station at Rico’s was located at the bar. (This was before mobile credit card machines were widely available in restaurants, allowing diners to pay right at their table.)
When an employee approached to run a diner’s card, I scrutinized every movement they made: Where they placed their hands. Whether they could have been holding a skimmer. Whether they had their phone out, possibly snapping a photo of the card and its information.
My heightened sense of observation extended beyond the machine at the bar. I watched how each employee walked, how they carried themselves around others, whether they fidgeted or showed any obvious “tells” that suggested they might be hiding something.
I noticed that Allison seemed aloof around most other people, but she leaned in closer to George and made eye contact with him whenever he talked. Priya would absently play with her hair around Derek. Rico liked to hang around by the hostess station and schmooze with guests, but Pam would tense up or shrink back whenever he stood close to her.
I also watched Lacy whenever I could. Though I had my doubts that she was behind the theft of credit card data, I couldn’t just dismiss what Rico had told me about how nervous she was when he’d asked to speak with her after work.
Amalia was joined that night by a second bartender. Robert Smith—no, not the lead singer for The Cure—was a wiry little guy with an oversized personality that made up for his small stature. Throughout the evening, I heard many regulars at the bar ask Rob to tell them a joke or story. Remarkably, he had a new quip or anecdote loaded up for each request.
“Hey, Rob,” one regular said, “my buddy Dave here is a county prosecutor. Got any jokes for that?”
“Why did the D.A. skip his morning coffee?” Rob asked. When there was no response, he said: “Because there weren’t sufficient grounds.”
By eight thirty, I had watched all the waitstaff—and Lacy—run diners’ credit cards, except for Derek. Yet, he was the one I most wanted to observe.
Finally, I saw him approach the card reader with a check presenter in his hand. My pulse quickened as I tried not to be too obvious about my surveillance.
“Parker, we need a new bottle of Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Rye right away,” Rob shouted from the other end of the bar.
Damn. What lousy timing.
The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go a-rye, I thought as I left to get the whiskey.
* * *
As the restaurant emptied, I noticed that Lacy was still doing side work. It was after ten o’clock, and technically her shift was over. She wasn’t a waitress, so she didn’t have any tables of her own with campers who lingered well after the kitchen had closed. She could have left any time she wanted.
Maybe she was milking her shift to earn some extra money. But at $7.25 an hour, filling salt and pepper shakers for twenty minutes to make another $2.42 before taxes hardly seemed worth the trouble.
Once most of the staff had left for the night, including all the chefs, I saw Lacy head for the kitchen, where the time clock was located.
I followed her and watched as she punched her time sheet and then disappeared into the walk-in refrigerator. When she emerged a few seconds later, there was a noticeable bulge in her apron pocket.
She glanced around, failing to see me as I hid behind the prep counter, and then slipped out the back door.
* * *
On Saturday night, Rico’s was slammed. We were so busy that, in keeping the bar stocked and making drinks for the waitstaff, I barely had time to observe the restaurant’s employees. But there was a silver lining in all the chaos: I was too distracted to think about my own life or question my career choices.
Things started slowing down around nine o’clock. “Eighty-six the veal scallopini!” Priya called out as she emerged from the kitchen.
“That’s like the forty-seventh thing we’ve run out of tonight,” Allison said with a scowl. She was standing at the bar, waiting for me to finish pouring a glass of chianti for one of her customers.
“Oh, it’s so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl,” I sang as I handed her the wine goblet. From the vacant look in her eyes, I surmised that she was unfamiliar with Elvis Costello or his iconic musical catalog.
Amalia was washing dirty glasses and hanging them in a rack above the bar. “Did I mention that my landlord is selling the building?” she said to Rob as she worked. “I have to be out of my apartment by the end of the month.”
“If you need a place to stay,” I interjected, “the apartment below mine is empty.”
Amalia stopped what she was doing to look at me. A sense of gratitude shone in her eyes.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.” I gave her my landlord’s number.
I left the bar to get more cocktail napkins and prosecco. On my way to the storeroom, I saw that Derek was picking up a diner’s credit card from one of his tables. I stopped to watch him, determined not to lose focus on him until the moment he’d returned the card.
As Derek walked away from the table, slipping the check register into his apron, I saw him subtly palm the credit card that was sticking out from its top. In a public performance that could have won an Emmy, he stopped walking in mid-stride as if he urgently needed to write down another table’s order before he forgot it. He took out his server’s notepad and began writing.
I couldn’t see the credit card, but I strongly suspected it was still in his palm and that he was jotting down the card’s information in his notepad.
I intercepted him on his way to the bar. “Hey Derek, can I borrow your notepad for a sec? I wanna write down what I need for the bar before I forget.”
The guilty look on his face all but confirmed my suspicion. “Uh, here,” he stammered, tearing a piece of paper from the back of his pad. He handed me the scrap of paper and brushed past me without making eye contact.
That was some nifty sleight of hand, I thought to myself. Forget about camera phones or fancy card skimmers; Derek’s deception was strictly old-school. Maybe he could make a living performing magic at parties once he was released from prison?
I was pretty sure I’d solved the puzzle that Rico had hired me to explain. But I still had another big question to answer.
I hadn’t had a chance to talk with Lacy since I followed her into the kitchen the night before. I caught up with her at the side work station, where she was filling ketchup bottles.
We talked in hushed tones for five minutes. Lacy did most of the talking.
By the end of her story, everything made sense. I felt a long-dormant emotion stirring inside my chest, and I was struck with a sudden inspiration that made me almost giddy with excitement.
But I needed to talk with Pam and Amalia before I could pull off my idea.
As I was thanking Lacy for her candor, I noticed that someone had taped a handwritten sign on the wall above the station designated for side work. It read: “There are no small jobs. Only small people.”
“Who made this sign?” I asked her. “Do you know?”
“I think it was Mr. Tocci himself.”
Huh. Who would have guessed that Rico, of all people, would find the words to express what I’d finally realized that evening after three years of feeling sorry for myself?
It reminded me of an old adage: Children and fools speak the truth.
* * *
“I know who’s stealing your customers’ credit card information,” I told Rico later that night. “And it’s not Lacy.”
We were sitting on the back deck of his restaurant, in the same spot we’d occupied only a few days before. It was a moonless evening, and a late summer chill gripped the air.
“Oh, yeah? Who is it?”
I told Rico what I’d witnessed and suggested that Rico ask Derek to hand over his server’s notepad after his next shift. “I think you’ll find all the evidence you need is in that pad.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“You weren’t entirely wrong about Lacy,” I continued. “She’s stealing from you as well.” I proceeded to tell him what Lacy had told me.
Lacy’s father had left the family when she was twelve, and when her mother lost her job cleaning houses for a professional cleaning service one year later, the family lost their apartment as well. Lacy spent a large chunk of her teenage years living in a homeless shelter with her mother and two siblings. Lacy attended school and took care of her younger siblings in the evenings while her mom worked a series of temp jobs to save enough money for first and last months’ rent and a security deposit. When Lacy was a sophomore in high school, her mother had finally accumulated enough savings to move the family back into a proper apartment.
But that homeless shelter had saved the family’s lives for three years, and it ran mostly on donations from the community. There were many nights when all Lacy and her siblings had to eat were warmed-up refried beans from a tin can.
When Lacy started working at the restaurant, she marveled at all the food that was available. Remembering the other families in the shelter who didn’t have much to eat, she’d begun taking fresh vegetables and meats home from the restaurant once a week, donating them the next morning to the shelter where she’d grown up.
Rico wasn’t impressed. “I’m gonna fire that girl tomorrow,” he fumed.
I had anticipated his response.
“No, you’re not,” I stated. “Because if you do, I’m going to tell your wife that you’ve been hitting on Pam, the hostess. Pam told me everything, and while I should report your behavior to a lawyer, I’ve been assured that Pam is the only victim so far. As long as it ceases immediately, both Pam and I are willing to overlook your boorish behavior. But in return, not only are you going to keep Lacy employed; you’re also going to set up a food donation program in which you give surplus food items to Lacy’s former shelter and other needy organizations. Amalia will be my enforcer; she’ll report to me if you fall out of line. And if that’s the case, I’ll be making two calls: one to your wife and one to a sexual harassment attorney.”
I got up to leave. “Oh, and one more thing: Lacy’s not on drugs. She takes medication for her anxiety, and that’s why she might appear loopy at times. Given what’s she’s endured, it hardly seems surprising.”
* * *
A few weeks later, I ran into Amalia as she was moving into the apartment below mine.
“Need a hand?” I asked her.
“Sure.”
I helped her lug boxes and furniture from the truck she’d rented into her new digs. Afterwards, we sat on the floor and shared a mushroom and pepperoni pizza.
“Lacy told me to tell you she’s grateful for what you did.”
I still hadn’t been paid yet for the job I’d done for Rico, and I wondered if the delay had anything to do with the way our last encounter had gone or if his general stinginess was to blame.
But knowing I’d done some good in the world—and that my job put me in a position to do so, even if I wasn’t investigating any gruesome murders—offset the lack of a check.
And besides, I’d earned a cool hundred bucks in cash over three nights from Amalia and Rob for helping them out in the bar.
File under: Return of service.
Dennis Pierce is a freelance writer, journalist, and author of the Parker Hanson Mystery series set in New Hampshire: www.denniswpierce.com.
* * *
If you liked this short story, check out my Parker Hanson Mystery series of crime thrillers!
In book one, Swinging for Power, Parker is still a small-time PI, but he’s about to find himself in the big leagues when he suspects the governor is involved in a double murder.
In book two, Cross Checking, Parker and Amalia take on not one but two high-stakes cases: a search for hidden treasure linked to a decades-old crime and a race against time to stop a fanatical church leader’s murderous plot.
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