harrowing
short story
The rain paints a dreary scene on the windshield, the droplets rippling through an Upstate New York urban landscape so bland and monotonous it might as well be in black and white. Rick Harrow, a private investigator, stares through it from behind the wheel of his 2006 Toyota Corolla, looking very private investigator-ish in a tan trench coat and outdated shirt and tie he got at JC Penney around the same time he got the car (it was new then). As may be apparent, the PI business is not great.
So he takes a lot of these cybercrime romance scam cases now, even though they’re not exactly the kind of thing he imagined he’d be doing when he started this whole PI adventure twenty years and two wives ago. They’re the lifeblood of his practice, about two or three of them a month. Usually they’re pretty easy—he takes the pictures these scammers are using and runs them through a reverse-image finder to track down the Instagram account they’re stealing from, debunks whatever fake documents they’ve sent the victim, researches the veracity of whatever fake sob-story they’ve grifted the victim with, and then does a write up for whatever caring family member has taken it upon themselves to prove to their loved one, ‘hey look, evidence of what I’ve been telling you all along!’
They’re a particular draw for him because the police rarely get involved with these things since they’re dime-a-dozen and virtually unpreventable and non-prosecutable and so people turn to what they imagine is the next best solution besides their own vigilantism. Usually it’s someone more middle-aged who approaches him for the help, someone who doesn’t realize most of what he does in these cases is easily doable themselves. And usually the victim is a woman, which surprises him because as a twice (almost thrice) divorced man with a mail-order prescription for hair-loss drugs and an unfair addiction to pornography, he gets a little tug of hope every time he opens one of his social media accounts and gets a DM from a pretty blonde saying ‘hi!’ and starts talking to him about crypto investments. Sometimes he lets the conversation go on a little too long. He’s certainly vulnerable.
But in this case he’s meeting up with a young woman who has already done most of the legwork; proven, in her own way, that the scammer is not who they say they are. Apparently, though, her uncle—the male victim—is having a hard time believing her. Rick Harrow’s job, in this case, is to be a more male, traditional, and trustworthy (in the uncle’s eyes) source on the falsehood of his internet lover. All he really has to do is show up here at the house, put some documents in front of this uncle, and seem authoritative in his assessment. A couple hour’s work for a couple hundred bucks. They probably could have hired an actor for cheaper.
The victim’s niece pulls her car up to the curb behind him and gets out. A guy gets out the other side too. Harrow realizes he forgot an umbrella as he exits his car and approaches them. “Hey, oh my gosh, sorry we’re late,” the woman says. She’s almost a girl.
“Rick Harrow. I believe you’re who my assistant has been emailing with, right?” he asks, extending a hand. This is an elaborate ploy to maintain a high level of legitimacy to his service. He has an email address (minerva@harrowPI.com) that he manages himself as an ‘assistant’. There is no ‘Minerva’.
“Yes, that’s me, Madeline, nice to meet you,” she says, shaking. “This is my boyfriend Andre. Kind of brought him for backup, you know?”
Harrow shakes the guy’s hand. Are these kids or is he just old?
“Absolutely. These things can be difficult. I know a lot of people get in deep with these things, and it’s hard to get them out.”
“Yeah, I think, just, unfortunately, my uncle will see you as more of an authority than me, you know? Like he’ll listen to you, he won’t listen to me.”
“Sure thing,” Harrow says, but he has his doubts. The kids have rain jackets with their hoods up but Harrow feels conspicuous rain drops on his thinning dome. In the driveway across the street there’s a little pop-up canopy under which a family of some South American descent is cutting up a huge pig. Since when did this neighborhood have immigrants?
“So you have the copy of everything I found?” she asks. He nods. It’s in a manila folder in his hand, augmented by his own findings. She takes a deep breath. “Just so you know, my uncle can kind of have a temper. I apologize in advance.”
“You haven’t seen a temper until you see a lover scorned,” Harrow says, alluding to the sort of thing that is the more traditional PI lifeblood. “I guarantee I’ve seen worse.”
This seems to calm her a bit, even though it shouldn’t. A lover scorned and a cybercrime romance—they kind of end up being the same thing.
They go up the steps of the chipped and sagging porch and knock. The uncle answers immediately. Harrow figures it’s because he’s been at the window watching and judging the South American family.
“Hey Mads!” The uncle hugs niece.
“Rick Harrow, private investigator,” Harrow says, extending a hand. The uncle shakes it.
“Mike Grayson,” the uncle says. If ever there was a man who looked like being scammed, this is him. Eyes large and watery behind hugely magnifying glasses, foppish comb-over hair, a fleshy face atop a rotund body.
The boyfriend is ignored amongst greetings.
The house itself makes Harrow—a veteran of a couple wars and the horrors that come with those—so sad that he immediately regrets taking on the case. It seems every piece of mail the victim ever received from anyone is piled on any available surface, of which there are not many, and also onto the floor. A film of dust envelopes everything. The decor, where there is any, hasn’t been touched since the ’70s. There’s a framed poster of Kenneth Copeland on the wall.
They sit at the dining room table after the victim clears it of microwavable dinner trash.
“Listen,” the uncle known as Mike Grayson opens up. “I know why you’re here and I appreciate it, I really do, but there’s no issue. Janice is real, our love is real and I know it in my heart of hearts, the Lord has seen it.”
“Please Uncle Mike, just let him talk, let him show you. I promise you, I promise you’ll be convinced,” Madeline pleads. Uncle Mike kind of ignores her and Harrow sees this portents a bad time, but he admires her care for him regardless.
The manila folder of documents gets slapped onto the table. “Where did you say you met Miss Janice Hartman?” Harrow starts.
Uncle Mike straightens his glasses. “ChristianMingle dot com. About three years ago.”
Harrow coughs to hide a smile. It’s always something like Christian Mingle, for whatever reason, and he tells Uncle Mike this in a polite way and in many words.
They get into all the details, Harrow relaying everything Madeline has surely already told him, with evidence disproving every falsehood this ‘Janice Hartman’ character has told Uncle Mike: she’s rich if she could only access her father’s gold bar inheritance, she lost her husband and kid in a car accident, she’s living in California but she’s from Scotland, etc. In between all this are other lies and excuses to coerce him into doing their financial bidding.
He’s in deep, this Uncle Mike. Set up LLCs in his name, has Paypal accounts, multiple phones. He’s given over his driver’s license and Social Security number in responding to an email from the ‘Britsh Embasy [sic]’. He’s a money mule, a regular beast of burden for any number of fiscal schemes perpetrated by what is most likely an organized crime syndicate, and the ‘Janice Hartman’ communicating with him is most likely a rotation of girls (or guys) who are maybe even enslaved. It’s only a matter of time before he gets snagged by the FBI for complicity.
When you’re in so deep, it’s hard to see the surface again. Sunken cost fallacy and all that.
“It’s the time, the effort, the money,” Uncle Mike says, over and over through it all, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth in a way that does not present as total sanity. “The Lord wouldn’t will it if it weren’t real. Let me ask her, let me talk to her...”
At the end of it all, the boyfriend named Andre finally speaks up, his words emphatic, hands upturned. “MIKE! What part of this are you not getting? It’s DONE. It’s OVER. And if you’re not gonna admit that, then at least stop asking your niece for money! At least act like you got shame, ‘cause you got none. We’re not giving you a CENT anymore, man. Not a CENT.”
Uncle Mike turns a red that Harrow hopes signals an imminent heart attack because death would probably be a kinder fate to this poor man.
“It’s him,” Uncle Mike says, standing up, pointing at the boyfriend. “It’s him that’s put you up to this. This...scumbag. What did I tell you about him, Madeline? What did I say?”
“Uncle Mike, no, please stop,” the girl says, crying now.
Harrow feels very uncomfortable. He’s been in the midst of some cheating allegations and maybe even some racist stuff, but he’s usually well removed from the room by the time it all goes down.
“I, uh, think I’ve done all I can here,” Harrow says to the now sobbing Madeline. She sniffs and nods.
“Thanks so much for all your help,” she says, but it goes unheard with the battle now raging between her uncle and her boyfriend.
“Here’s the problem, man—you’re just an idiot. You’re a lonely, racist idiot who doesn’t know any better but I don’t feel bad for you. I really don’t,” Andre continues. Harrow respects the kid for this and he delays his departure just to hear him out. “You’re out of step. The times are here and you’re HERE, man,” he says, gesticulating a spatial gap with his hands.
Uncle Mike slams his fists on the table, gets up and waddles into the kitchen out of sight. The room goes from many decibels loud to zero.
Harrow breaks the quiet with a clearing of his throat, a tic that all three of his wives hate/hated. “I’ll be off now. I’m so sorry. Have a good night,” he says. Andre lasers holes into the floorboards with his eyes without acknowledgement and Madeline can only nod she’s crying so hard. As he turns to go Uncle Mike comes back and raises the decibel level of the room to approximately 140.
The sound of a gun indoors is a sound that’s hard to forget, but Harrow finds, surprisingly, he kind of has, because his whole body flinches and at first doesn’t know what happened. The biggest hint, though, is Uncle Mike standing in the doorway, face brick red, dust from the hole he’s just shot in the ceiling descending over him like snow.
Because he somewhat has experience in stuff like this, Harrow is the first of the three to recover, even with ears ringing as they are.
“Hey, whoa there, Mr. Grayson, let’s take a second and calm down here, no one is forcing you to...” He raises his hand slowly in the universal ‘put down that gun’ gesture.
“Lord forgive me and pardon my language, but get the FUCK away from my niece before I fucking blow your head off and get the FUCK out of my house,” Uncle Mike yells at his niece’s boyfriend. Judging by the amount of spittle he expels with each enunciation, it’s very cathartic for Mike to say the ‘F’ word like this. He levels his Walther pistol at Andre with one hand in a manner Harrow immediately sees is ill-practiced, perhaps even non-practiced.
Andre stands up. “Oh yeah? You’re gonna shoot me Uncle Mike? Go the fuck ahead! C’mon man, do the Christian-like thing!” Madeline reaches up with pleading hands to try and sit him back down. Harrow appreciates the massive balls on this kid before he takes the opportunity to step slowly into Uncle Mike’s blind spot. He’s only a step away from him now.
No one is doing the right thing in this situation.
“I’M GODDAMN WARNING YOU!” Uncle Mike bellows, his voice as strained as fresh saran wrap across a bowl of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce.
Madeline is screaming something Harrow cannot interpret as he reaches for Mike’s wrist and brings it downward in a sweeping disarm and tackles him to the ground, but not before another deafening shot is fired.
“GODAMNIT, JESUS CHRIST!” Andre screams.
Harrow looks across the floor as he lays on top of the grunting and squirming Uncle Mike. Mike’s finger must have engaged the trigger as he pulled his arm down.
Where is the kid hit? He surveys for red with a prayer.
There, in the shin.
Shin.
He is going to live. Probably.
“Madeline, call Janice for me, please. Call Janice,” Uncle Mike keeps saying with unwarranted calmness from beneath him. He doesn’t seem to think he’s done anything wrong.
The only thing Madeline is calling is 9-1-1.
“Janice isn’t real, Mr. Grayson,” Rick Harrow, PI says. He has Mike’s arms behind his back now, the gun clattered nearby onto the unvarnished wood floor.
After everything more or less gets squared away, Rick Harrow stands on the porch amidst the rotating red and blue lights. The South American neighbors watch from the driveway across the street as the police bring out a handcuffed Mike Grayson, then Andre on a stretcher.
Harrow can’t help but wonder—what would have happened had he not been there? What if the girl and the boyfriend had gone on their own? Did he prevent a death? Did he make things worse?
He sighs and rubs his balding head. Bad night to try and quit his pornography addiction.
A couple things he’s sure of: he should really hire a real-life part-time assistant to answer his emails for him.
And no more cases with male victims of these romance scams.
thanks for reading this story about a private investigator. even if you didn’t like it, maybe click the little heart button so that people who might will find it. if you REALLY liked it, click subscribe.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS:
How does the characterization of Uncle Mike lend itself to why he might have gotten scammed?
Do you know anyone who has been romance scammed?
thanks for reading PNP, where we fall for every romance scam in the book. if you liked this story, you might also like my novel, the big T, posted here on Substack:
The scene setting here was spot-on. I think poor Mike has a lot to work through but this line made me hear him in a way I've never heard a character: "...his voice as strained as fresh saran wrap across a bowl of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce." Really great stuff!!!
This was fun to read. Interesting how you took what seemed like a flat character, turned him into the speaker-of-the-truth, and gave him so much depth.
Good work. Also, your descriptions are top notch.