Tanzi's Heat (Vince Tanzi Book 1)

by C I Dennis

  “Yes?” I said.

  “This is Charles Butler. C.J. Butler.”

  “How can I help you, Mr. Butler?”

  “I’m looking for my wife,” he said. “I was hoping you knew where she was.”

  “When did you last see her?” I said.

  “She went for her walk, to the park. I shouldn’t have let her. You know what happened last night.”

  “What time did she leave?”

  “Seven,” he said. “Three hours ago. She is usually back by eight. But she’s impulsive sometimes.”

  “I know,” I said. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “Maybe. Let’s give it another hour. She might just be shopping. I tried her mobile, but it went to voicemail.”

  “Call me as soon as she’s back, OK?”

  “I will. And if you hear from her, please do the same,” he said.

  I was worried. And if C.J. was worried enough to call me, I was even more worried. He’d called her cell, but he probably didn’t know about the Tracfone, so I dialed it. It rang several times, and then I heard some noise, but no one was talking. It was white noise, like a fan, or a waterfall. And then I heard Barbara’s voice, not directly into the phone, but from a distance.

  Where are you taking me?

  Shut up. A different voice. Then, nothing.

  Is this Lake Wales? Barbara again. The white noise was the sound of a car. She was on the road somewhere, and I suddenly had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Lady, if you don’t shut the fuck up I will use this thing, the other person said. She must have answered the Tracfone and left it on so that I could hear them talking. She was trying to tell me where they were.

  What is that? What’s in your hand? the other voice said. I recognized the crackling falsetto of an angry teenager—Philip. The conversation stopped, and I heard a clattering noise. After that, there was the occasional sound of a passing car.

  Barbara’s Tracfone was now lying on the side of the road, somewhere around Lake Wales.

  *

  I called C.J. and told him to come directly to my house—that would be the fastest. I said to hustle, we were going to Lake Wales, and I was going to have some questions for him and didn’t want any bullshit answers. I packed the BMW while I waited. I had the Glock, two loaded spare clips with an extra box of ammo, and the Lupo with a box of shells. I put it all on the back seat where I could get at it quickly if I needed to. C.J. was in my driveway in ten minutes.

  The BMW isn’t as fast as the SHO was, but it’s nimble when you want to pass people, and I was in a hurry. C.J. sat white-faced in the passenger seat, partly from my driving and partly from what I’d told him about what I’d heard on the Tracfone. The road opened up after we passed I-95, and I got the car up to about eighty and kept it there while we talked.

  “Where would he take her? It’s Philip, right?”

  He looked at me, but couldn’t respond—like he’d had his tongue cut out, as Barbara had described it. It was as though he wanted to tell me, but he couldn’t force the words out. They were jammed somewhere between his two personae, and I had to find out how to unlock them.

  “Can you please slow down?” he said.

  “No.” I took the car up to ninety.

  “C.J., you know where they’re going, right?” I said, over the noise of the motor. “Philip and Barbara? Tell me where they’re going.” I took my eyes off the road and stared at him as the needle approached one hundred.

  “For God’s sake, slow down,” he said.

  “Not until you tell me.”

  “There’s a juice plant,” he said. “We own it. It hasn’t operated for years—it’s too old to pass the inspections now. It’s in the middle of a grove we own.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind the self-storage units. There’s a dirt road. We own the whole area between there and the Lake Wales airport. We’ll be there soon if you keep driving this fast.”

  *

  The road behind the storage units led to a metal gate that was flanked by two sturdy concrete posts. A tank might be able to run it down, but not the little BMW. C.J. got out of the car, opened a keypad on one of the posts, and entered a sequence of numbers; the gate swung open. I counted three surveillance cameras pointed at us; one on top of a chain-link fence that enclosed the grove and two others high up in a palm tree. Pretty high-tech for a juice plant that doesn’t operate anymore, I thought.

  Once we got past the gate the road narrowed to little more than a path through the orange trees. A truck with pickers could pass through, but the traffic could only go one way. The trees were Valencias, the best for juicing, and they were bare of fruit except for some drop, rotting among the trunks. Harvest season for Valencias was past, and the grove was deserted, quiet and fragrant.

  “Turn right,” C.J. said. We came to an open gravel lot where two ancient fruit trucks were parked alongside a high stack of wooden pallets. Across from where we entered stood a corrugated metal building with a flat roof. It was connected to a smaller wing with a concrete loading platform and a new-looking overhead door. The main building was the size of a high school gym, and I guessed that it was at least fifty years old, though it had been kept up—no broken windows, no sign of the vandalism that plagued old structures. A water tower on metal stilts rose above it, with “Vereda Fruit Processing Co.” stenciled on it in fading orange and black paint.

  The red Lexus was parked next to the building. There was no one in it.

  “Please stay in the car,” C.J. said, and he got out of the BMW. He entered the building through a side door. I decided that I needed to see what was going on for myself, and I slipped the Glock into my belt holster and put an extra clip in my pants pocket. C.J. had left the entry door open, and I stopped when I reached it and looked inside. It was an open span, littered with wooden pallets, but with no machinery or equipment. The floor was a patchwork of poured concrete and bare ground. The place stank of cat pee, probably from years and years of fruit juice and rot, or perhaps some feral cats had taken shelter there. The smell was overwhelming. There were two rooms partitioned off against a wall, one of which had windows to the interior and looked like an office. The other walled-off room also had windows to the work floor, but they were blacked out, and the access door was heavily secured. If I’d been alone, I would have checked that one out first.

  Philip and C.J. were at the opposite end from me, talking heatedly. I couldn’t hear what they were saying at first, but it got louder and their voices echoed across the empty floor.

  “Where is she?” C.J. said. It sounded like he’d already asked several times and was now losing his patience.

  “Stay out of it,” Philip said back to him. “It’s none of your business.”

  “She is my wife,” C.J. said.

  “Mom is your wife!” Philip screamed back.

  “Philip...” C.J. said. The boy saw me standing in the doorway, and went rigid. He pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at me, and then swung it around to point at C.J.

  “Stay away from me!” he shouted, and I decided to leave my gun in its holster, thinking that if I drew it would make matters worse. Philip dropped his arm to his side and ran toward the other side of the building. He opened a door and bolted into the part of the structure where the bay door was. I tried to follow, but with my cracked ribs it was impossible to run, so I hobbled as fast as I could across the open floor. C.J. and I reached the space where the boy had gone, but it was empty—the bay door was open and the hot sunshine spilled in. There was no sign of Barbara anywhere, and I was praying that he hadn’t killed her already.

  Philip started the Lexus and sped into the grove leaving a trail of dust. C.J. and I got into the BMW, and I turned the key. There were a hundred ways he could have gone as the grove was a grid, with nothing but rows of trees with paths between them. He could be anywhere.

  “Would he go back out the way we came in?” I asked C.J.

  He shrugged. “It’s
the only road out.” I looked in that direction, but there was no dust, and there should have been if he’d left that way.

  “There’s a fence all the way around the grove, right?”

  “Yes,” C.J. said.

  “No other gates?”

  “Just one on the airport side. They lock it. You can’t go in there.”

  “Where?”

  “That way. Down that row, turn right toward the runway.”

  I punched the BMW, and we bumped along though the trees. The harvesting rows weren’t really roads, they were grass, and the low-slung car was not the ideal vehicle for a pursuit, but I got it up to forty until C.J. told me to turn, and we approached the fence that bordered the municipal airport. Two chain-link panels formed a gate that was topped with barbed wire and locked together with a heavy padlock. I could see the nose of the Lexus parked up ahead, hidden between the trees. Philip saw us coming and roared out of his hiding place. He crashed through the gate, ripping it up off the ground and squeezing the car under. The bottom of the fence panels wreaked havoc with the Lexus’ fancy paint job, but Philip was far ahead now, and he accelerated hard as he reached the runway. I followed in the BMW, and the broken fence tore long stripes on the convertible’s top as we passed underneath.

  It was a drag race, and I was losing. Philip was way ahead. He hit his brakes and executed a perfect drift onto a taxiway, then turned onto the opposite runway in the direction of a concrete hangar and several parked planes. I cut the corner, bumping across the low grass and almost caught up. I was right behind him when he tried to make another hard turn toward the road that would take him out of the airport. He braked and tried another drift, but the screeching tires slid too far and the Lexus spun. It skidded across the runway and crashed into a parked Cessna, nearly breaking it in two. Philip got out of the car and ran. I stopped the BMW. C.J. opened his door and ran after him. I lifted myself out of the seat and hobbled over to the wreckage. The Lexus was intact, but the small plane was tilted up on one wingtip with half of the fuselage missing.

  As I circled around the car, I heard a noise. I looked in the window. There was nothing inside except my old Baby Glock, which I scooped up and pocketed. I heard the sound again and realized where it was coming from—the trunk. I popped the release switch and hurried to the back of the car as the trunk lid opened, letting out a blast of superheated air. Barbara was inside—her mouth, hands, and feet bound tightly in silver-grey duct tape. She was curled into a fetal position, gasping in rapid, spasmodic breaths through her nose. Her skin was a florid pink, hot to the touch. I lifted her out, put her down on the scorching pavement and ripped the tape off of her mouth. I dashed back to the BMW to get a water bottle and splashed some on her face, then held it to her mouth so that she could drink. She emptied the bottle and her eyes opened, squinting in the harsh light. I found my penknife and cut away the rest of the tape, freeing her arms and legs.

  She got to her feet, wobbling like a newborn calf, and put her arms around my neck and held tight. Behind her I could see C.J. and Philip—C.J. had tackled him, and they were on the ground at the end of the runway. Philip was sobbing, and C.J. was gripping him by the arm. I helped Barbara into the BMW and turned the air conditioning up to the maximum; she had a severe case of heat stroke and was lucky to be alive. We sat there, not talking, while C.J. walked Philip back across the tarmac. He put the boy in the passenger seat of the Lexus and came over to the BMW. I rolled down the window.

  “She has heat stroke,” I said. “We need to get her out of here.”

  “Can we keep this quiet?” C.J. said.

  “Your kid just kidnapped someone, threatened me with a gun, and there’s an airplane in pieces over there,” I said, pointing. “How do you keep that quiet?”

  “I’ll deal with it,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

  “You’re not my client,” I said.

  “Ten thousand?”

  “You’re not my client,” I repeated.

  Barbara was coming back to life. “Go to Tampa,” she said to C.J. “The boy needs you.” She turned to me and said, “Drive,” and I did.

  *

  I tried to talk Barbara into going directly to an emergency room, but she overruled me and gave me her now-familiar non-negotiable look. She had me stop at a CVS where she disappeared inside for fifteen minutes while I waited in the car, at her insistence. When she came out, she looked more like herself again. She had a gallon jug of water, a small bottle of Aleve, and a can of WD-40 which she had used to clean the duct tape marks off of her arms, legs and face while in the ladies room.

  “I just saved myself about five hundred dollars in some stupid clinic,” she said.

  I was not happy that we weren’t going straight to the doctor, but it seemed that the more that she was allowed to be in control, the quicker she got her color back.

  “You going to be OK?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “It’ll sink in later.”

  “Maybe I should stay with you for a couple days,” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t a hit.”

  “I know,” she said.

  She told me what had happened. Philip caught up with her on her way back to the house after she’d taken her walk. He’d pulled a gun and made her get in the Lexus. She said they drove around Vero for almost an hour while he made calls on his cell, speaking in a foreign language, so she hadn’t understood a word.

  “He speaks Vietnamese with his mother,” I said.

  “OK,” she said. “I was completely terrified for the first hour. And then he got on Route 60, and I forced myself to calm down and tried to figure out what I could do. I was thinking I’d just bolt at the next stoplight, but he had the gun on his lap the whole time, and I didn’t dare. When you called me and the cell vibrated, I was able to get it out of my pocket and open it, but he saw it, and he threw it out the window.”

  “That was brilliant, and it worked,” I said. “I heard enough to figure it out.”

  “He went crazy after that,” she said. “He turned off the highway onto a side road, and I thought he was going to take me somewhere remote and shoot me. He made me get out of the car, and that’s when he wrapped me up in the duct tape. Then he shoved me into the trunk and closed it, and we started moving again. It was pitch-dark in there, and I could barely breathe.”

  “You had heat stroke,” I said. “You’re lucky you survived. You need to go to a doctor—”

  “I need to go to the Keys and lie on the beach,” she said. “This is totally wrong. C.J. said he’d take care of everything.”

  “What were you doing out walking this morning?”

  “I know; that was foolish. I’m just so tired of being cooped up and scared.”

  “Barbara, I’m going to call the cops. I’ve talked to his probation officer already, and they need to know about this. He’s dangerous.”

  “I agree. C.J. will go crazy though.”

  “I don’t know how to say this nicely, but C.J. may already be crazy. I went to see a shrink I know the other day, and we talked about it. He thinks it’s something called Dissociative Identity Disorder, and it’s a serious mental illness. His guess is that it started when he was very young, and it might have gotten worse in Vietnam.”

  She processed that while we drove, in silence.

  “There’s a hurricane coming,” I said.

  “I think I’m already in the middle of one,” she said. “I’m going to close my eyes for a minute. I have a headache.”

  She leaned her head against the passenger window while I drove. I opened the glove box and pawed through my wife’s old CDs, thinking that I’d play one, but it made me sad to look at them, and I wondered which songs she’d listened to with Pacobell. I still hadn’t told Barbara about Glory’s emails, but that had nothing to do with her.

  *

  Barbara slept all the way back to Vero, and I had to wake her up when we got to her driveway. C.J.’
s van was parked there—he must have already arranged for it to be picked up from my house. She said she was exhausted and needed some time to herself. I said I’d come back later and would sleep on her couch. I didn’t say so, but I didn’t feel she was safe yet, despite C.J.’s intervention with Philip.

  Two small things were stuck in my mind as I left Barbara, bothering me, like grains of sand that find their way into an oyster and sometimes produce a pearl, but usually just make the oyster itch like crazy. Number one was the juice plant. Why was it wired up for security when nothing was there? The first chance I got I would let myself in and check it out. I almost had enough time to do it now, but I’d driven enough for one day, and my chest hurt more than usual from lifting Barbara out of the trunk of the Lexus. And it might take me a while to get inside, because the locks I’d seen on the blacked-out room were the keypad type, and they were a pain. Also, I’d need to disable the security cameras on the way in, so I didn’t end up performing a felony on YouTube.

  The second thing that bothered me was what Barbara had said about Philip speaking Vietnamese on his phone. I doubted his mother was calling to ask him to pick up some buttermilk on the way home. Le was in on this—how much I didn’t know, but she might be every bit as dangerous as the kid, if not more so. Now I was regretting leaving Barbara at her house. Le could be anywhere. As soon as I got home, I would call Frank Velutto and fill him in on the whole case. It was time. I needed backup, and I wanted somebody to be watching Le.

  I hadn’t had any lunch and was suddenly famished. I drove to Casey’s, a café in the middle of Central Beach with superb burgers that you could eat at a patio table in the open air. It was late in the afternoon, and the lunch crowd of bankers and shoppers was long gone, so I had a table to myself. I don’t like to talk on my cell phone in public, but there was nobody around and I owed someone a phone call—Shirley Magan, Philip’s JPO in Tampa.

  “Magan,” she said when she answered. Some people definitely watch too many cop shows.

  “Ms. Magan, it’s Vince Tanzi. We spoke last week about Philip Johannsen.”

  “I remember,” she said.