by C I Dennis
I bet Philip knew everything. He had a record, he had the balls to steal my car right from under my face, and he was just—the type. He was no innocent, no dummy; he probably knew more about D.B. than D.B. knew about himself. And, he was pissed. His mother was getting two nights of D.B. while the other woman, Barbara, had him all the rest of the week. I liked it, it fit. Unless D.B. and C.J. were two different guys.
I hadn’t heard back from Frank Velutto, and that was yesterday. Barbara had me stop for a bathroom break in Mulberry, a hamlet south of Lakeland. I called Frank. I got Myra, the day dispatcher, who sometimes handled the phones if it was busy.
“He can’t take your call, sorry Vince,” she said.
“Hey Myra, what’s up? What did I do? Too many parking tickets?”
“Um...when’s the last time you saw Frank?”
“I don’t know. He never came to see me in the lockup.”
“You know Carole left him, right?” she said.
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Six months ago. He looks like shit.”
“Frank never looks like shit.”
“He does now,” she said, “and it’s gotten worse in the last couple of days.”
“Tell him to get off his ass and call me. Sorry to hear about Carole, that’s bad.”
We hung up. Poor guy—Carole was a looker, and a sweetheart, too. I hoped Frank would call soon; I really wanted to know if Philip had any gun violations. The car boosts were kids’ stuff, but any kind of record of a gun bust would tell me I was definitely on the right track.
*
Barbara came out of the store with a couple of flavored waters and handed me one. She also gave me a small, white plastic bag with something in it.
“Present,” she said. “They had some unbelievable things in there.”
I reached in the bag. It was a dried alligator hand, attached to a key chain. It must have been from a young alligator because it was small, and the claws were splayed in a hideously deformed position, neatly varnished for eternity.
“Gosh, I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything, just enjoy the moment,” she said.
“Do you give one of these to all your lovers?”
“Seeing how you’re the only one, I’d have to say yes.”
I found that strangely nice. I was glad I wasn’t just another notch on her belt.
“So how about you?” she said. “Are you a Don Juan?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.
“I’ve got nothing to hide. And no, I was pure, before I met you. I never cheated on Glory.”
“That’s the first time you’ve actually said her name,” she said.
“I’m working on it. The self-pity thing. You got that right, last night.”
“Sorry, Vince, I didn’t—”
“No apologies, you were right on.”
“Lots of wild sex will help you get better.” She gave me a bawdy wink.
“Barbara, I—”
“You feel guilty about it, right?” she said.
“Slightly,” I said.
“Me, too.”
“You do?”
“I kind of manipulated you into it. I can do that.”
“It was nice,” I said.
“I agree,” she said. “But you’re not ready. And I’m not, either.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said, and I suddenly felt as old and crusty as an embalmed alligator hand.
*
I had forgotten all about tracking D.B. in the Lexus. Damn. I pulled the car over to the side of Highway 60 and the traffic sped past us as I switched on the Mac. D.B. was about a half an hour behind us in Valrico, just this side of Brandon. We’d be in Lake Wales in ten minutes and he would arrive thirty minutes after that. I tried to figure out how to play it; whether we should stake out his office, or the self-storage unit, or maybe wait at Quinn’s. My stomach was voting for Quinn’s, but somehow that seemed too confrontational. Oh, hi there D.B., or whatever you name is, great to see you! I’m just having lunch with your wife, or...one of your wives, ha ha...and by the way, she’s sensational in the sack! Getting in someone’s face is one thing, rubbing it in someone’s face is another.
Barbara wanted to stop at yet another store, and since we had the thirty-minute cushion, I let her, on the condition that she could not buy anything kitschy—we had already bagged our limit. She went inside, and I popped open the laptop. The tracking program was on, but now the Lexus wasn’t showing up. I looked for the van and it appeared, in the storage unit where it had been since Wednesday. I tried the Lexus one more time. Nothing.
It had to be the batteries, and mentally I kicked myself. I hadn’t used the tracker in more than a year, and I should have changed them before I’d attached the unit to the Lexus, but I didn’t, and now I’d lost him. I went into the store, bought an eight-pack of double A cells, and met Barbara at the counter while she paid for her water and gum. I told her about the Lexus and she frowned.
“So how are we going to do this then?”
“Who is we?”
“I’m your assistant,” she said.
“No,” I said, “You’re not. You’re my client. And his wife.”
“Leave me at the restaurant and go downtown. Keep your phone handy and I’ll call you if he shows up at Quinn’s first, and vice versa.”
Actually, that sounded like a good solution. “Just stay out of sight at the restaurant, ok?” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to hide behind a big pile of french fries. I’m starving.”
I dropped her at Quinn’s. Lake Wales is small enough so that I could get back to the restaurant quickly if I needed to. We were taking a chance, but if we lost him I was worried that we would miss an opportunity. I went downtown to my steam-bath stake out spot in the bank parking lot across from C.J.’s office. I had a half hour to play Scrabble and beat myself up about forgetting the batteries.
*
C.J. looked like hell. I took the seat across from him and asked him what the matter was. He said he was still worried about Barbara. He wondered if she was going to be there when he got home. He’d never had any reason to worry about her, but he was getting a strange vibe. She was in her forties; it’s the time a lot of women her age wondered if there was more out there. Not that he was jealous, he wasn’t that way. Just sad. I said how do you know this, and he said he didn’t, it was just a feeling. I tried to cheer him up with my tale about the golf game in Dunedin, and the ass-kicking I got the next day. Win some, lose some. My tuna salad came, but he didn’t even order, even though it was his turn to pay. I ate it fast, I had to go. I told him not to forget to leave a decent tip. He didn’t hear me—he was looking behind me at somebody. It was Barbara...right here in the restaurant.
C.J. walked over toward her table, and I got up and left.
*
I hadn’t seen anything of C.J., or D.B., or anyone for that matter. Historic Downtown Lakes Wales on a summer Friday afternoon was dead quiet, and the heat radiated off the sidewalks and buildings like someone had left the screen door to Hell wide open. I waited with the car running and thanked the engineers from Bavaria who had endowed the Beemer with superb air conditioning, unlike my recently-departed Taurus. But an hour had passed, and C.J. must have been in town for a while. I wondered why Barbara hadn’t called.
It dawned on me that I could call her. I dialed her Tracfone. It rang several times and then announced to me that “the voicemail feature has not been activated.” I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. I put the BMW in reverse and backed out onto East Stuart Avenue. Something had gone wrong.
*
There was no Lexus at Quinn’s parking lot, and no van either. I ran into the restaurant. The waitstaff was cleaning up after the lunch crowd, and the only patrons were two older guys lingering over their coffees. No Barbara and no C.J. I didn’t see the waitress I’d met the other time, the one who�
��d told me about Big Tip and Little Tip. I panicked. The first thing I could think was—self-storage unit.
Both of the bays were locked. I got my still-soggy tools from the trunk of the BMW and popped them one at a time. Door number one held the Lexus, still warm from the drive. Door number two, where the van had been, was now empty.
I had the presence of mind to quickly pull the tracker from underneath the Lexus and replace the batteries, which took me thirty seconds. I work fast when I’m mad at myself. I put the spent ones in my pocket, shut the bay door, re-locked it, and got into the BMW. I opened the laptop and checked. Yes—it was the battery, the tracking software confirmed that the car was right where it sat.
I switched it over to track the van. It was heading east on Highway 60, just below Lake Kissimmee. Whoever was in the van was halfway to Vero. I could drive as fast as the Beemer would go, but I’d never catch up.
I tried Barbara’s phone on and off for another half hour. I finally got through, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious.
“Hello?” she said.
“It’s me. Are you OK? Can you talk? Where are you?”
“Yes, I’m OK. I should have called you. We were talking. Everything is OK. “
I heaved a sigh of relief. “Where are you?”
“We’re going home. We have...a lot to talk about.”
“Barbara—”
“It’s OK, Vince. I want to thank you so much for all your help. You really helped a lot, but we’re all done. I don’t need you to work on this anymore; I’m all set.”
What? “Barbara, can you talk? Are you in trouble?”
“I’m fine. Really. I can take it from here. Thank you again, so much—I have to go.” She hung up.
I sat in the BMW, dumbfounded. Her voice was quivering at the end, like she was on the edge of tears. I didn’t like that, not one bit. All I could guess was that they had seen each other at Quinn’s and that they were talking. They were husband and wife; it was reasonable, you’re supposed to be able to talk to each other and you don’t have to explain to everyone else. I just didn’t like being fired, especially not before I’d determined who was shooting at my client. I like to finish what I start.
I decided I had a new client.
Me.
*
I reached the city limits of Vero and, on a whim, I turned left onto 43rd Avenue toward the Indian River County Complex where the Sheriff’s department was. It stood across from the Indian River County Jail and was in the center of a whole neighborhood of lawyers’ offices and bail bondsmen—I’m sure the bad guys appreciated the convenient, one-stop shopping. I breezed into the Sheriff’s department parking lot with the familiarity that came from having worked there for so many years, though it had been a while. Frank Velutto was in the lot walking toward his car, a tan Mercedes sedan that he kept as neat as his hairstyle. It was about the vintage of my Taurus SHO, but it looked new. I parked next to it and got out.
He looked like a faded black-and-white picture of himself. The movie-star good looks were masked behind a pale, dazed expression. I wondered if he was getting chemo...and if all that thick black hair would soon end up in his brush, or going down the shower drain.
“Hey,” I said, approaching him. He recoiled as if I was going to hit him.
“Vinny,” he said, recovering. “What the fuck. I didn’t expect you.”
“Frank, I heard about Carole. I’m sorry.”
“Well, that’s ancient history.” He fidgeted with his car keys. He looked like a man who wanted to be anywhere but here, talking to me. “What do you want?”
“The kid in Tampa? You were going to see if he had any gun violations?”
“That’s what you’re here for?”
“Yes,” I said. Had he forgotten? I didn’t get it. He must be sick, and it must be messing with his head.
“Ask Myra to get you the name of the JPO. She’s still inside; she’s on dispatch. Tell her I said it was OK.”
“Frank...are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking great,” he said, without the usual smile. I was going to say something else, but I didn’t.
Frank started his car and left, and I entered the county building. Myra was behind the smoked glass window in the front, and she lit up when she saw me. She had been one of my friends back when I was with the office, and she’d visited me every week in jail. She always brought me cookies, and one time she brought a layer cake into which she’d actually baked a metal file. The guards had a big laugh about that, and it was one of the few light moments during my nine months of imprisonment.
“Vince, lookin’ good,” she said.
“You too, babe.” We always flirted, although we looked like people from two different planets. She was part Seminole and part African and weighed twice what I do, although she got around pretty well. “I just saw Frank in the parking lot.”
“You see what I mean?”
“Yeah. Is he sick?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. She leaned closer to the slot in the smoked glass that let in conversation, but not bullets. “Drinking himself to death if you ask me. The man had a buzz today when he come back from his lunch.”
“He told me I could ask you to get the name of a Juvenile Probation Officer in Tampa. Whoever’s assigned to a kid named Philip Johannsen.”
“You wait right there.” She got on the phone while I sat in the lobby and thumbed through a year-old copy of Law Officer Magazine. I found several items that I didn’t own yet in the “More Gear” section. I wasn’t a cop anymore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have all the toys. “Got it,” Myra said, as she hung up the phone. She passed a slip of paper with a name and phone number through the slot. I winked and blew her a kiss as I left.
*
I sat in the BMW and got my phone out. It was the middle of the afternoon and the weekend would start in a couple hours so I decided I’d better call the JPO in Tampa before I did anything else. Her name was Shirley Magan, and she answered the call on the first ring.
“Ms. Magan, my name is Vince Tanzi. I’m a P.I. over in Vero Beach, and actually I’m a retired deputy.” I say that to open doors; sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn’t.
“Go on,” she said.
“You have a kid named Philip Johannsen, lives over in Sunset Park. I know he’s got a record, mostly car theft, but I need to know if he has any gun violations.”
“I can’t tell you that. That’s not public information.” It appeared the cop-to-cop door opener was going to be shut on my foot.
“Then we have a problem. I have a client who’s been shot at, twice. Your juvenile had motive, opportunity, and has a gun.” I was stretching on motive—I didn’t really know that yet.
“If he has a gun, then that’s a violation right there. Are you reporting that?” This woman had all the warmth of Judge Judy with a tequila hangover.
“Ms. Magan,” I said, keeping my cool, “I’m just investigating. If I need to report something, you’ll be the first to know. I know what you can and can’t say—I’ve been a cop all my life and I play straight, OK? I just need some background. If you tell me he’s a thief and that’s it, I’ll leave it alone. But I don’t want people to get killed, and I don’t want your juvie to kill anybody. Fair enough?”
“He’s clean. You wouldn’t want to give him your car keys, though,” she said.
That much I already knew. “Just the GTAs?”
“And some fights at school, that kind of thing. He thinks he’s tougher than he is—you know the type.”
“Yes,” I said.
“He has a chip on his shoulder, but I don’t think he’s your shooter.”
“Thank you.”
“Call me if I’m wrong.”
“I will,” I said, and hung up.
I fidgeted in the seat of the BMW while I tried to figure out my next move. What I really wanted to do was find Barbara, to make sure she was OK. Like most men I have bad instincts about wome
n, but I have excellent instincts about trouble, and I still had the feeling that she was in someone’s crosshairs. But if I got too close, she might be upset.
I was distracted by a car that pulled in to the space next to me. It was a brand-new Ford Taurus SHO; they’d revived the model after many years and it was 365 turbo-charged horses of pure muscle. I’d read about them, and they were in the neighborhood of forty grand. A deputy got out, and I knew him—Buzzy Siebert, one of the nicest cops on the force. I rolled down the window.
“Hey officer, how’d you afford that on a cop’s salary?”
“Hi Vince. I robbed a bank. Hope you didn’t have any money in it.”
“Nice whip, dude,” I said, and he walked into the building. I was drooling. The Ford dealership wasn’t on my way home, it was down U.S. Highway 1 several miles. But it happened to be located right next to a car wash, and I decided I needed a car wash.
*
Two hours later I was back in the BMW, driving home with a sales contract on the passenger seat. It had been the usual ordeal; back and forth between the salesman, the manager, the business manager and God knew who else, maybe they had a spiritual manager, or they had to ask their moms. It was the first car I had ever bought brand-new, and it was way out of my price range, but I had the insurance money, and this would just about finish it off. Glory would have approved. They had to prep it, and told me I could pick it up tomorrow. The salesman said they didn’t usually take a personal check, but I just happened to leave the Glock visible on my belt during the negotiating process, and they agreed.
*
I opened the bay door and parked the BMW. I had decided not to trade it, I could always sell it privately, but for now it looked good in the garage. One of these days I would clean out all of Glory’s things and make a trip to the Salvation Army, but I wasn’t quite ready for that. I could clear the cobwebs from the house, but that wouldn’t get rid of the ones in my head.
Barbara’s clothes were still in Glory’s bedroom, in the bag she’d hastily packed back at the Spring Hill Suites, which seemed like a long time ago. I’d decide what to do with them later—for now I was hungry, as I had skipped lunch, and I went downstairs to the kitchen to make a salad. I’d had enough fatty food for a while. That salty, fried stuff is one of the more socially acceptable forms of addiction, like shopping, except that getting fat can kill you, and people don’t usually die from shopping unless it’s around Thanksgiving. I’m not an economist, but to my thinking the global economy is more about our addictions than our actual needs. There is enough of everything to keep the planet clothed, warm, and fed, but it’s our nature to want more until it’s all gone. More sugar, more fat, more sex, more shoes, more gasoline, more money—more stuff, until it’s gone, or we’re dead. A true crackhead doesn’t leave anything in the pipe. Of course I had just blown forty grand on a car, but that was different.
