Tanzi's Heat (Vince Tanzi Book 1)

by C I Dennis

  Barbara returned with several more bags. She had a smug look, as if she’d won a prize.

  “Oh my God, everything was sixty percent off!” she said, as I powered down the laptop.

  “Yes, but how much did you actually spend?”

  “That’s not the point,” she said. “It was sixty percent off!”

  I kept my mouth shut. I’d probably spend as much on a gun anyway. A good automatic wasn’t cheap.

  *

  We wedged the shopping bags into the small trunk of the Beemer and drove to the hotel. Barbara took the wheel while I looked out the window. She was obviously enjoying the nimble little car, and I didn’t mind being chauffeured. The Hyatt was one of those downtown business hotels that catered to conventions and meetings, and pretty much everyone who was coming out while we drove up had a hello-my-name-is badge on their lapel. I got the bags out for Barbara, who handed them to a bellman. I told her to go ahead and check in, I’d be back in a few minutes. I was going to drive out east of town to Shoot Straight, a shop I’d found while searching on the new Mac. I’m not a gun-nut, but I thought I might have to dawdle there for a while; gun shops are the fifty-year-old ex-cop’s equivalent of being a five-year-old in F.A.O. Schwartz.

  The Shoot Straight gang was very professional and knew their weapons. I took four guns to the range; a Sig Sauer P238, a Kimber Super Carry and two Glocks, a Baby 26 like the one I had, and a slightly larger .45 caliber, the Glock 30, which had a little more heft, but was still an adequate concealed-carry weapon. I’d always lusted after the Kimber, which was well over a thousand bucks, but I couldn’t yet forgive myself for letting my Glock 26 go for a swim, or worse. My suspicion was that it would not be in the car, so I wasn’t worried about ending up with two guns, and even if it was still there I wouldn’t trust it after the salt water bath.

  The shiny Kimber shot like a smooth, lethal dream, but I couldn’t justify it; that’s a lot of money to me. A few days ago I’d been blowing through the insurance from Glory’s policy, but my attitude had changed since I was working again. The Sig and the Glocks are ugly, dark automatics, but this wasn’t a beauty contest. The Baby Glock was familiar and comfortable, but I was all over the target and couldn’t cluster my shots. The Sig Sauer had a lot more kick—too much—and I put it aside. I finally decided on the Glock 30; I was more accurate with it and it fit my hand nicely. The sales guys ran a background check, took my six hundred dollars, and I was back on the road, packing heat.

  *

  It was five thirty in the afternoon, and I was going against the traffic as I cruised back into the center of Tampa. It was still in the nineties and humid, and I had the top down, which no one except mad dogs and Englishmen would do in Florida at this time of year. I blasted the air conditioning and played a Suzanne Vega CD that Glory had left in the car. The music was dark and brooding, like Barbara had called her husband, but I was in a good frame of mind despite the loss of the SHO. Losing the Glock was worse; it was emasculating. I feel naked without a gun, like Glory used to say about going out without any makeup on. She called it her armor. Getting a new weapon, now loaded and ready, was definitely increasing my sperm count. I know, it sounds ridiculous. It’s a cop thing.

  And hanging out with Barbara was fun. But I’d been at this long enough to know that it’s not a good idea to get close to a client. Too often you solve the case and they hate you. People think they want to know the truth, but they usually don’t.

  I self-parked the BMW in the Hyatt garage to the dismay of the valet guys. The entrance led into a huge atrium decorated in brass and leather rectangles—business-class Bauhaus. A polite, dark-haired woman at the reception desk gave me a key, calling me “Mr. Butler”, which made me laugh. I looked about three rungs down the social ladder from everyone else there; this was a high-class joint. It was modern to the point of being sterile, but that was preferable to some of the hotels I stayed in where a little sterilization might be in order.

  I rode up the elevator with two guys in suits and a drop-dead-gorgeous model-type woman. The two men were trying not to be obvious about checking her out, and they were failing. They got off first and it was just her and me. I gave her a smile and she ignored me. We rode the rest of the way to the top floor in silence except for the whoosh of the elevator. She stepped off before me and walked away down the hall with that tight, high-heeled trot that beautiful women do. Girls that pretty are like Fabergé eggs—you wouldn’t want someone to hand you one, for fear that you’d drop it and be out a million bucks.

  Barbara opened the door when she heard me struggling with the key card. She had changed her clothes and wore an athletic-cut top and pants, like sweats, but lighter and probably ten times as expensive. She looked great.

  The room was the biggest I had ever seen in a hotel. You could have slept a Boy Scout troop in it, and made s’mores in the full-sized, completely equipped kitchen. There was a master bedroom, a second bedroom, a huge dining and living area, two bathrooms, a spa room, spacious closets everywhere, and a stunning view south toward Hillsborough Bay. The place had more square footage than my entire house.

  “Where am I?” I was in shock.

  “I asked for their nicest room,” she said. “Do you like it?”

  “Yeah, it’s nice. What time does the Mormon Tabernacle Choir arrive?”

  “I got an amazing deal.”

  “I know,” I said, “Sixty percent off.”

  “More. Keep guessing.”

  “Barbara, you are out of control. But thank you, this is fantastic.” I wandered around the suite. It kept going on and on. I poked my head into the second bedroom and there on my bed was a change of clothes: a crisp, white, button-down Oxford cloth shirt, lightweight dress trousers and a navy blazer hanging on a stand.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “I went a little crazy at the mall. I had to guess your sizes; I hope it’s OK.”

  The jacket was a 44 long, just right. The shirt was a 17 neck and I’m an 18, but I never wear a tie so it would fit. The perfect preppie outfit—except I went to high school with the rest of the proletariat. It felt nice to be taken care of, if a little embarrassing.

  “There’s a rooftop pool.”

  “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  “Yes you do, it’s in the top drawer of the bureau over there.” She flashed a big grin.

  “It better not be a Speedo,” I said. It was a Tommy Bahama, royal blue, and it looked modest enough. Barbara got a plush bathrobe out of the closet and said let’s go.

  *

  Barbara looked fabulous in her bathing suit. She was just as pretty, in a womanlier sort of way, as the uber-being on the elevator. People are just so much better-looking when they smile. She did a lot of smiling at the pool and we horsed around, played Marco Polo and generally made fools of ourselves, which was fine as we were the only people on the roof. There wasn’t a bar there, which was also fine; add alcohol to the equation and things could get out of hand.

  Back in the suite I powered up the new MacBook. The first thing I checked was the car trackers. Everyone was still in their place. Next, I opened the program that would play any recordings from the bugs I’d placed at the Johannsen house. It took a while for the data to download so I figured I had something. Barbara was busy in her bedroom, so I had time to do some listening. I wrapped a hotel towel around my wet suit, sat back on a leather sofa, and plugged in the earbuds.

  The recordings were clocked, and the first one began right after six thirty PM according to the display. I could hear someone arrive home and turn on the television news. So far I had a nice tape of Brian Williams.

  I skipped ahead on the time clock to just before seven, recorded only a few minutes ago. The sound came from the bug I’d put in the kitchen, and I apparently hadn’t done a very good job of it because I couldn’t hear clearly, although the tone of the conversation was obvious. It was a fight, and a bitter one. One voice was a woman’s, and the heavy Asian accent made it al
l the harder to distinguish the words. The other was a young man’s voice at that particularly awkward stage in puberty where boys speak partly in the lower register and partly in a shrill falsetto. It’s excruciating to be a kid that age; I remember it well.

  They were really going at it, and the boy, who had to be Philip, blasted his mother with some obscenities, slammed a door, and then it was back to Brian Williams’ calm tones. When that sort of exchange took place in my youth, the conversation always ended with the same words. “Just wait ‘til your father gets back.”

  Barbara came out of her room in a dress, holding up two pairs of earrings. “These?” she said, holding up one set, “Or these?”

  “I’m not qualified to make that decision,” I said. She told me to get dressed; we had a reservation downstairs at the restaurant in half an hour. I closed the laptop and went into my room to try on my new duds. The pants were too tight, and I couldn’t fit the conceal holster. I decided I would leave the new Glock in the room safe and hope that nobody gunned us down in the middle of our foie gras.

  The menu was unspectacular, but the wine list read like an erotic poem. Some bottles were in the many hundreds of dollars, the kind that a business person might order to impress a client and then wake up the next morning wondering how the hell he or she would expense it and not lose their job. The other diners in the restaurant were mostly men, dressed in blazers like me, with a scattering of women; they appeared to know each other and wore name badges. I asked the waiter who they were, and he leaned over and whispered, conspiratorially, “It’s the National Cremation Society. They operate crematoriums all over the country.”

  Barbara laughed out loud, drawing glances. “In that case I’ll have the fire-roasted half chicken,” she said, “well done.” The waiter actually laughed; he was a good sport and we had a friend.

  I had the pappardelle, which was forgettable. Growing up Italian you get picky about your pasta, and this was decent, but my mother’s was better. I paired it with a glass of Pellegrino and a lime slice while Barbara sipped a straight-up martini from a stemmed glass.

  “This is our second date,” she said.

  “It’s not a date.” I wondered if the vodka was already getting to her.

  “Vince, has it occurred to you that you haven’t asked me a single question about me? All you want to know about is C.J.”

  “Sorry. I try to keep it...”

  “Professional.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, screw that,” she said. “Come on, you have to be curious.”

  We were going to be here for at least another hour, and we had to talk about something.

  “OK. So what do you do, back in Vero?”

  “I teach some classes at the club, keep the home fires burning, clean a lot, read a lot, work out. I know, pretty dull.”

  “What do you teach at the club?”

  “Pilates.”

  “We had pie ladies where I grew up,” I said. “White-haired gals, cooking in the church basement.”

  She was about to correct me when she realized I was pulling her leg. She relaxed a little and told me about her life: the details, the routine, the boredom. She said her escape hatch was a floppy hat, a beach chair, and a good book. Within a few pages she could be thousands of miles away, having tea at Thornfield with Jane Eyre.

  “Did you study literature at college?”

  “I never went,” she said. “I guess I’m self-educated. School of hard knocks.”

  “Hard knocks?” I said. “Excuse me but you don’t look—”

  “I know,” she said, cutting me off. “But remember, you don’t know me.”

  “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Let’s go back to talking about you.”

  “We weren’t talking about me.”

  “Then let’s start,” she said. I’d touched on something, and she’d put up a wall.

  “I’m not finished,” I said. “Two more questions, your honor.”

  “I might not answer them.” She stirred her martini.

  “Why do you settle for being at home?”

  “A lot of women would take offense at that,” she said.

  “I’m not talking about a lot of women, I’m asking you. You’re smarter than hell, whether you went to college or not.”

  “I was going to try nursing.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Barbara looked sideways toward a table full of crematory owners, who were now laughing loudly.

  “C.J. wouldn’t want it.”

  “So what?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “You’re right, I don’t,” I said. “OK. Second question. Why no kids?”

  “God, you’re rude.”

  “It’s my job,” I said.

  She said she envied her friends who had children. She and C.J. had tried, but it hadn’t happened, and he wouldn’t go for fertility treatment. I knew all about that; Glory and I had tried for years and had even blown big money on fertilization, to no avail. Glory had become adept at rationalizing why it was better that we didn’t have children, but it was a dark territory that we seldom visited.

  “My turn to ask you the questions,” she said. She took a long sip of her drink. “How come you’re so damn handsome?”

  “Down, girl.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “But really. Spill. Who are you?”

  “I don’t really like to talk about me.”

  “Not fair,” she said. “You had your way with me, now I get to do it.”

  I grumbled an acknowledgement.

  “Where are you from? You don’t talk southern.”

  “I’m a Yankee. I grew up in Vermont.”

  “They have Italians there?”

  “We lived in Barre. My dad was a stone cutter—there are a whole bunch of them there, it’s where Rock of Ages is, the company that makes gravestones. I mean, memorials. Barre was like Brooklyn back then, you could get amazing Italian food, groceries, pizza, and the men hung out on the street corners when there wasn’t six feet of snow.”

  “So why did you leave?”

  “Too cold. Same reason everybody else does. I went to college on a scholarship for one year, but I was bored. I loved the reading, but I hated the classes. I dropped out and became a cop, and after a year I decided if I was going to be a cop I should at least do it somewhere where I wouldn’t freeze to death, so I moved down here and joined the Indian River Sheriff’s department. I worked there for twenty-five years and retired, five years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Well...you’re eligible for the pension after twenty-five years.”

  “You’re leaving something out.”

  “I had a disagreement with the boss. He won.”

  “Do you like what you’re doing now better?”

  “It’s different. I miss some of the guys, and it was go-go-go at the Sheriff’s, lots of action every day.”

  She finished her martini and waved the waiter over for a refill. I said no to another Perrier.

  We talked about everything that had happened during the day. Barbara had a glow in her eyes, from more than just the vodka. This woman was a princess who had been kept in a castle, under wraps, and she was aroused by the day’s action. What I do can be very addictive, although it’s not all glamour; most of it is waiting and drudgery just like anything else. She didn’t know that yet; so far to her my job was a lot of fast-paced chasing around, and the occasional car sinking into a bayou.

  We ordered dessert, and she ordered a third vodka.

  “Barbara, no,” I said.

  She gave me a frown. Apparently people didn’t say no to her.

  “I’m a big girl, Vince,” she said.

  “You’re getting shitfaced,” I said.

  She got up and threw her napkin on the table. “I’ll be in the room.”

  I finished both desserts—my key lime pie and her crème brulee. I left her martini untouched and took the elevator back up to the room.
I still had work to do.

  *

  Barbara was in the spa room when I got back to the suite. I took off my blazer and sat on the couch with the computer. There was more data from the Johannsen house bugs. I’d listen to that, but first I checked my phone; I’d left it in the room while we were in the restaurant. There was a text message from Roberto which became visible as soon as I turned it on.

  Need 2 talk 2 U.

  I called him. It was ten o’clock, but he’d be awake. “You OK?”

  “Yeah. Where are you?”

  “Still in Tampa. Back tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Oh,” he said, deflated.

  “Roberto, what’s up?”

  There was a very long pause, and I wondered if the call had been dropped, but he started talking.

  “I was hacking. I saw something I didn’t want to see.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some emails. Love stuff. You know.”

  “Someone you know?”

  “Yeah...sort of. The emails were between a guy and a girl. But the girl has a boyfriend already.”

  “Are you the boyfriend?”

  “Me? Heck no. It’s, like, just a kid I know. A friend.”

  “So you don’t know whether to tell your friend that his girl is cheating on him?”

  “Kinda like that. I think he’ll hate me.”

  I took a deep breath. I’m not a father, and mine wasn’t exactly a role model, so when I have to give a kid some advice, I’m basically winging it.

  “Roberto, you’re good at keeping secrets. Very good, in fact, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could easily keep this a secret, but it’s going to eat at you.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I’d say you tell the guy. He’s going to find out sooner or later anyway.”

  Roberto took a while to respond. “Maybe not. It’s complicated.”

  “My guess is he’ll thank you, eventually.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Use your own judgment,” I said. “But getting the truth out is usually the best thing to do. It’s what I do for a living.”