by C I Dennis
Those Buddhists sure were a low-key bunch—no swinging chalices, no communion, no organ, no choir, no tabernacles, no albs, no vestments, no chasubles, no holy water, no rosaries, no crucifixes—just three laid-back guys and some chanting and bowing. I was enjoying the simple beauty of it, but I decided I’d best slip out the back before they decided to baptize me or something.
I got into my car and tried to think about what to do next. I’d learned that Le and Philip went to church—big deal. If I’d had another tracker, I could have attached it to the Transit van, but I didn’t have one, and I was tired of following people around the old-fashioned way, it was too much work. I backed onto Town ‘N Country and shifted into drive.
There was a loud noise as something hit the car, and I watched in the mirror as the rear window shattered. The glass held together, but there was a walnut-sized impact hole surrounded by jagged fissures that extended outward. A smooth, round stone sat on the trunk lid. It looked exactly like one of the rocks in the artificial waterfall I’d seen in the temple.
I stepped on the parking brake and got out. Someone was running back through the yellow entry arch toward the main building. It was Philip, and the little fucker had just thrown a rock at my brand-new car. My first instinct was to go inside and kick his ass, but that would solve nothing and the window would still be broken. I was starting to really not like that kid.
I decided instead to drive back to their house and see if I could get to the mother—alone. Maybe she would talk to me and maybe not, but I was thinking I would just lay out a few cards and see what happened. And if Philip answered the door instead of his mother, he’d better have dental insurance because I’d be sorely tempted to rearrange his bicuspids.
*
I was back in my pull-off spot on Hibiscus Pond Drive when my phone rang. It was Roberto.
“Vince...” he started.
“Hey,” I said.
“I can’t get in to the computer at the Johannsens’ house. I was in looking around for a while after you left, but it went dead.”
“No problem,” I said. “I had to cut the line, so there won’t be any way to get in until they fix it.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Did you find anything?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A lot of money.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have a lot of money. I got into a program that was hidden. It links to an external server, maybe in the woman’s office. From there I got into a bunch of bank accounts. They have money all over the world.”
“Is it in their name?”
“Some of it. There was a little under David Butler Johannsen, like a hundred thousand, and over a million in his name and Le Quyen Johannsen’s joint name. There’s about two hundred thousand under “Le’s Vending”. Then I found a lot more under “Empex Import/Export LLC”, in the Cayman Islands and a bunch of banks in Europe. I totaled it all up.”
“How much?”
“Like, thirty million dollars,” he said.
“That’s a lot of quarters,” I said. We were quiet for a while.
“I’m not supposed to be talking to you,” he said.
“Uh-oh,” I said. “Your mom must be pissed.”
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “You said it was a stray bullet.”
“It might have been.”
“Oh,” he said, and went silent.
“Roberto...don’t worry too much. I screwed up and I’m sorry. These things blow over, and it’ll be OK.”
“I don’t know. She’s, you know, she’s crazy sometimes. She says I can’t come over anymore, and she wants me to give your wife’s computer back.”
OK, now I felt like shit. I had some fences to mend with Roberto’s parents. I knew I would feel the same way in their shoes, and they were right, I should be extra cautious if I was going to spend time with him, and if I could worm my way back into the family’s good graces, I would be more careful. I really liked the kid, and I believed that hanging out with me was good for him. It was good for us both.
“Keep the computer; I’ll talk with your mom.”
“Vince?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s some weird stuff on it.”
“Like a virus?” I said.
“No, different.”
“Like what?”
“Some stuff I found. I don’t understand it all. I guess I’ll show it to you when we can talk again.”
“You relax, Roberto. I’ll talk to your folks again. I’ll run up a big bill at the florist. Watch out, I’m going to totally spoil your mom.”
“She likes flowers.”
“Roberto, see what you can find on Empex Import/Export, OK?”
“OK.”
“‘Night,” I said, and we hung up.
*
Less than a minute later the Transit van turned into Hibiscus Pond Drive and passed by me. I opened the laptop and turned on the audio. I heard their front door open and shut, but no voices. There was some bustling around in the kitchen. I hadn’t seen their faces when they’d passed me, and I wondered if both or just one of them had returned home. That would explain the lack of conversation—or—perhaps they weren’t speaking to each other on purpose.
There was one way to find out. I drove the SHO to the end of the road and parked next to Hawkeye’s driveway. It was around ten in the evening, and only a few of the houses in the neighborhood showed any light—if there was any, it was the blue flicker of television screens. I walked up to the front door of the Johannsen house and knocked, rather than ringing the bell. She answered the door.
“Mrs. Johannsen—I’m sorry to trouble you at this time of night, but I need to ask you some questions.”
“You police?”
“I’m not police, but this is about Philip. Is he home?”
“He is in his room being unhappy.” She gave me a shrug, like a mother would when she’d had a long day. Le was short with rounded features and a pretty face, but her eyes were hard, like polished stone. “We can talk outside,” she said, and she stepped out into the evening.
“You met Barbara Butler,” I said.
“Barbara Butler,” she said, without acknowledging.
“I worked for her. Someone drove to Vero Beach and tried to shoot her, two times. I am concerned that it could be your son.”
She showed no reaction. “Philip does not drive.”
“Yes, he does,” I said. “He just drove you home.”
“He does not drive to Vero Beach.”
“Does he know how to shoot?”
“No.” Her eye flinched, just the tiniest bit.
“You have guns,” I said.
“His father has guns. His father is not here.”
“I know,” I said. “Does that bother Philip?”
“Barbara Butler,” she said. “You know my husband is married to Barbara Butler?”
“Yes. Did you know that before?” I said. “That he was married to both of you?”
Until now she hadn’t betrayed much, but her body language suddenly changed. She was pissed. “My husband is two people,” she said, “but he can only have one wife.”
I began to say something, but decided not to.
“You followed us to the temple?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You leave us alone. You go away now,” she said, and went back into the house.
*
I started the SHO and drove back to where Hibiscus Pond Drive met a cross street. It was still hot out and I had the windows down, enjoying the sultry air. The radio was playing the Allman Brothers’ version of “Trouble No More,” and I turned up the volume while I sat at the intersection, processing what I’d learned. Le had dodged and weaved like a welterweight in the one minute of conversation we’d had.
She had let one thing slip, which was that she was not pleased with D.B.’s dual marital arrangements. There was resentment there, and I wondered if it extended to Barbara. But Le was so dimi
nutive I could hardly imagine her handling a hunting rifle with a heavy scope—those things had a kick that would have broken her shoulder. This time I had a potential motive, but not the means.
I was deep in thought at the intersection when a vehicle roared up behind me and slammed on the brakes, nearly rear-ending my car. It was the white Transit van. The driver honked loudly, and I pulled out into the cross street. It followed, right on my tail. Philip? Fuck you, kid. I accelerated.
I turned onto Bay-To-Bay Boulevard in the direction of Dale Mabry Highway where the Best Western was, but I didn’t want him following me to the hotel so I kept going, past the turn. At fifty miles an hour the Transit van still right behind. He accelerated and swung wildly into the left lane and passed me. Good riddance, I thought, and I almost turned around, but my eye caught the shimmer of a streetlight in my fractured rear window, and I changed my mind. Someone needed to teach the punk a lesson. I punched the accelerator of the SHO and got it up to sixty-five—too fast for the quiet residential neighborhood.
I saw his taillights a few blocks ahead, in the direction of Hillsborough Bay. Fat, intermittent raindrops began to smack against my windshield, and the wipers automatically turned on and swept them away. The taillights were closer as I sped under the overpass of the Crosstown Expressway and swung a hard left onto Bayshore Boulevard, north toward the city. The boulevard was flanked by expensive homes on the left and the bay on the right, and the pavement was now becoming slick with rain.
The traffic opened and I accelerated. I began to close the gap. Up ahead heavier rain was sweeping in, but I wanted to catch him—I hit the accelerator again, hard, and was finally right behind him when his taillights disappeared into a wall of water. The rain hit my car with such force that the windshield went liquid and I was suddenly driving blind, at almost ninety miles an hour. I stomped on the brakes—too hard, and too late. The car lost traction on the flooded highway, and hydroplaned in a dizzying pirouette. I was no longer driving, I was watching. A slideshow of destruction began to play as the SHO caromed off a light pole, sideswiped a row of portable toilets, skidded across an intersection into a low wall, flipped onto its roof and finally came to rest. I was still strapped in, hanging upside down in the seat while the Allman Brothers blasted out guitar riffs to the beat of the raindrops on the undercarriage. Around me were the front and side airbags, now deflated and flaccid. I couldn’t draw a breath, and the last thing I remember before I passed out was the sweet, sickening taste of blood in my mouth.
SUNDAY
“You’re awake.” A nurse was adjusting an IV bag on a stainless steel pole.
“Yes,” I said. “What’s in the bag?” It hurt to talk. Everything hurt.
“Saline, a splash of oxycodone and a twist of lemon.” He held up a pen about a foot from my face. “Can you see this?” He was a burly African American guy in light green scrubs with a name tag that said “Marcus”. He looked like he could pick me up and carry me around like a bag of groceries if he wanted to.
“I can see it,” I said. Fragments of the night before were trickling back into my consciousness, and the pain in my body was joined by the painful knowledge that I had just royally fucked up.
“Is it in focus?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” he said. “You remember anything?”
“Sort of. I don’t remember how I got here, wherever here is.”
“You’re in Tampa General. You could have walked from where you crashed, it’s right down the road.”
“Shit,” I said. I was thinking about the SHO. I wondered if it had survived. Meanwhile I was taking inventory of what hurt. So far, breathing, talking and thinking. “So I’m not dead.”
“You have a few cracked ribs and a concussion.”
“I thought the airbags would take care of that,” I said.
“Airbags work for the first thing you hit, then they deflate and you’re the airbag,” he said. “According to the cops you took out about a quarter mile of Bayshore Boulevard. I’m supposed to call them as soon as you’re awake.”
“Give me some time to freshen up first, OK?”
He laughed. “If you can make jokes then I think you’ll live.”
“When can I get out of here?”
“They want to do an MRI, but Radiology is closed on Sunday. You were bleeding when you came in, so they want to check your innards. Tomorrow, at the earliest.”
“Shit.”
“Relax. You’re in the highest-priced hotel in Tampa, and you have a nice view of the bay. The cops will be here soon.”
I was going to say something, but I fell back to sleep instead.
*
When I awoke again there was a plainclothes cop in my room, sitting in the visitor’s chair. At his feet was my black nylon duffel.
“Doc Edwards, Tampa Police.”
“Vince Tanzi,” I said.
“Yeah, we looked you up, but I remember you from the papers. I have family over in Vero.” He had a crew cut and deep blue eyes—soft, for a cop, although he didn’t look too sympathetic. “Your stuff is in the bag. The car is in the impound lot.”
“Is it drivable?”
“Ha,” he said, “We couldn’t measure the skid marks; there weren’t any because it was too wet. But our best guess was you were going between eighty and a hundred. I hope you have collision insurance. I saw the receipt. You really just bought the car?”
“Yeah.”
“So how come you were going so fast?” he said.
“I was looking for a bathroom,” I said. “I had to pee.”
He frowned. “You wiped out a bunch of city property along with your car. I was going to let that go because you used to be a cop, but I won’t if you start bullshitting me. What’re you doing in Tampa?”
“I have a client in Vero who got shot at. There’s a connection over here.”
“People getting shot at is something for us, not for a P.I. You know that.”
“I said the same thing, and the client refused,” I said. “Give me your card. I’ll call you if I find anything on your turf.”
“I don’t like it,” he said. “By the way, the sawed-off is at the station. They’re illegal, you know.”
“It has an eighteen-inch barrel,” I said. “It’s legal.”
He shrugged. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good,” I said. “Do me a favor. Pass me my laptop, OK?”
“Laptop?”
“You don’t have it?”
“It’s not in the bag,” he said. “There wasn’t any laptop in the car. There were a bunch of kids hanging around when we got there. Your laptop is probably history.”
“Goddamn it,” I said. I’d had the computer only a little longer than I’d had the SHO.
“Try Craigslist,” he said. “The fences know better, but the kids use it all the time.”
“I will,” I said. “But now I think I have to go back to sleep.” He left, and I drifted off to my room at the Oxycodone Hotel.
*
I was Googling on the phone when Marcus came into the room and scanned the various machines I was hooked up to. “You’re getting some of your color back,” he said.
“I feel a little better.”
“I’ve got you pretty juiced up on the oxycodone. When you leave here they’ll give you a prescription for that in pill form. Same stuff except the brand name is OxyContin. You got to watch out for that shit, you can get strung out on it.”
“Marcus, I was a deputy for twenty five years. I know what it does.”
“Rib fractures hurt for a long time, sometimes six weeks,” he said. “You can ice it, but it doesn’t help a lot.”
I was navigating with the phone on Craigslist, under “Computers for Sale”. There it was, right at the top of the list. The same model, same specs—an “almost new” MacBook Pro for a price of about three quarters of what I’d just paid for it. I called the guy, taking longer to dial than I should have as the pho
ne’s small keyboard and the IV drugs were a challenging mix. It rang four times.
“‘Lo,” he said.
“Still got the MacBook?”
“Yah.”
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“Cash,” he said. A tough guy. He sounded about twelve.
“No problem. Where and when?”
“There’s a Seven Eleven on East Davis Boulevard,” he said. “I can be there in five minutes.”
“Where’s East Davis Boulevard?” I said to Marcus, covering the phone.
“We’re pretty much on it,” he said.
“Give me a half hour,” I said to the kid. “I have to go to the ATM.”
“OK,” he said. I hung up.
“I have to go,” I said to Marcus.
“No you don’t,” he said.
“Some kid stole my laptop, right out of my car. I just bought it two days ago. The little shit put it on Craigslist, and I found it. Sorry, but I’m leaving.”
Marcus smiled. “Not without your clothes you ain’t. They’re locked up in the closet.” He pointed to a wardrobe. “You had a gun on your belt, so they locked everything up. Security is supposed to pick up the gun, but they haven’t shown up yet.”
“OK Marcus, you win,” I said. He finished his rounds and left the room.
I unhooked the various sensors they’d taped to my skin and peeled off the tape that held the IV needle to my hand. I took it out slowly, feeling nothing, thanks to the painkiller. Sitting up was a shock; I was dizzy and unsteady. I swung my legs out to meet the floor and did a wobbly cha-cha over to the duffel bag. I opened my lock-picking kit and took out a tension wrench and a Peterson P-knife-C. I continued my drunken tango over to the wardrobe. Fortunately, it was a cheap foreign lock, and even in my drugged condition I popped it easily.
I called a cab company while I dressed, and they said they’d have one at the main entrance in ten minutes. I splashed some water in my face and looked in the mirror. That was a mistake. But on the plus side, there would be no problem scaring the shit out of the kid.
