by C I Dennis
Barbara came out of the bath, dressed and looking refreshed. “Let’s go look around,” she said.
“They won’t want anyone on the roads except emergency vehicles,” I said. “Too many lines and trees down.”
“I just want to see if my house is in the ocean,” she said.
We took the Barber Bridge over to the island and surveyed the devastation. There was a roadblock on the mainland side, but Barbara insisted they let us through, and they did. Workers with chainsaws were clearing away stricken trees from the roadways, and there were rows and rows of expensive homes that were missing part or all of their roofs. The barrier island had been in one hell of a fight and had lost on a decision, but not a knockout, as it was still there.
We crossed A-1-A and continued over to Ocean Drive where the beach shops, hotels, and brokerage houses were. Piles of sand lay across the road, and you could hear the surf pounding away in the storm’s aftermath. The Driftwood Hotel was still standing. It had seen worse. The Riomar area where Barbara lived was relatively untouched. The neighborhood was older, so the trees had stood longer and were hurricane-tested. Roof tiles and shingles were scattered everywhere, and people’s insurance rates would be soon hitting the stratosphere as they did after every major hurricane when the insurance companies scrambled to recover their losses.
A big live oak had come down across her front yard, and I parked the BMW next to the uprooted trunk. One of its branches had smashed open a front window, and the tree had also taken out the power lines on the way down. C.J.’s van was safe in the garage. Barbara entered and surveyed the interior in semi-darkness. I walked around the outside and didn’t see any other damage to the building except for some loose shutters. It could have been much worse.
She came out and met me in front of the house. “It’s actually OK inside.”
“You need to cover that window,” I said. “I can help, if you’ve got a sheet of plywood.”
“I’ll get one later,” she said. “Vince, I think I’m going to stay here.”
“That’s not safe,” I said. “And there’s no power.”
“I’ll be all right. I have candles and everything. I need to be on my own right now.”
“Then I’m staying with you,” I said.
“No,” she said. “Not this time.”
“Look,” I said. “If you’re going to be like this, then I can’t do anything for you. I can’t protect you anymore.”
“That’s your decision.”
“This is fucking crazy,” I said.
“I need a ride back to the hotel to get my car,” she said.
She got into the BMW, and I drove her. Neither of us said a single word.
*
I was in no hurry to go home to my dark house. Instead, I drove to South Beach to watch the crashing surf. The storm tide brought the water all the way up to the dunes, across what was normally a wide stretch of open sand. The waves were still ten feet high, and a couple of kids were out on surfboards, getting the rides of their lives. I hoped they were good swimmers, because if they lost their boards the rip tide would take them halfway to the Azores.
If I was angry at Barbara, I was completely pissed off at myself. How had I let myself get so close to her? I wasn’t a goddamn kid anymore—I ought to know better. She was a client, and I had let my guard down and allowed things to go way too far between us. I told myself I wouldn’t let it happen again, but it felt like a hollow promise.
One of the surfers caught a perfect curl and tucked himself under the break—a giant blue canopy barreling just over his head. At exactly the right moment he shot out and flew up and over the top of the wave, temporarily joining a line of pelicans that were coasting over the breakers looking for food. Things were returning to normal after the hurricane, and although the wind and surf had altered the contours of the beach, the rollers still came in, the fish still swam, the sun rose in the morning, and the fat tourists from Ohio nourished their sunburns and yelled at their kids. Life would go on.
THURSDAY
The storm had swept the air clean of humidity, and so I left the windows open at the hotel. Since I’d already paid for the room, I decided to stay and enjoy the hot water and TV for one more night. Somehow, going home felt like giving up.
I didn’t stir until five in the morning. I got up and showered and shaved, and then I sat on one of the sofas and looked at the empty bed where Barbara had napped the afternoon before. A good night’s rest should have left me feeling better about things, but I felt worse, and I reached for my little packet of joy from Sonny. He was right, the stuff was seductive as hell and I really had to watch out or I’d be out picking up trash along the interstate in an orange jumpsuit and leg irons.
I went out to the parking lot and got my laptop. I hadn’t checked any of my snooping programs in a while, and I was curious if there were any recordings from the Johannsen house from after C.J. and Philip had driven the Lexus back home. According to Shirley Magan, Philip would have been picked up by now, remanded to the Hillsborough Juvenile facility. I should probably make yet another trip to Tampa, as she’d asked me to give her a statement. Maybe I could just do it over the phone; it was time to get back to my own house and check it out. There’d be some clean-up to do, for sure.
The first conversation was between the three of them, sometime on Tuesday afternoon when C.J. and Philip got home. Le was there waiting, and she was in an ugly mood. She alternated her shouting between Vietnamese, directed at Philip, and some foul-mouthed English, aimed at C.J., who was now D.B. There was some stomping off and door slamming, but nothing from the exchange gave me any more knowledge than I already had, except that the tiny woman had a big bad temper.
The next recording was at eight o’clock the same evening. The television was on in the background. The doorbell rang, and I heard C.J. answer it. It was hard to distinguish the words because the conversation was held at the front door threshold and the nearest microphone was in the kitchen, but I got the gist. It was the cops, looking for Philip. C.J. told them he wasn’t in; he was away with his mother on a trip. They pressed him, but he wouldn’t give them anything more than that. The cops must have known they were being stonewalled, because they didn’t waste any more time. When that happened to me in the old days we’d get a warrant and come back, and half the time we’d find who we wanted in the bathroom or under a bed. But after they left there was nothing else on the tape except the TV. A few minutes later I heard C.J. talking, from the bug in his man-cave. He was on the phone.
Where are you? Then silence.
Then he said, Don’t come back. The police were here, looking for Philip. I think they wanted to take him. You’d better stay somewhere else.
There was another long silence as C.J. listened. It’s under control, Le. No, she’s not the problem. Leave her alone. The problem is the guy she’s with. I can handle him.
There was some more back-and-forth, but nothing important was said and they hung up.
So I was C.J.’s problem, and I could be handled. He’d already tried to pay me off at the Lake Wales airport, and I thought I’d made it clear that I wouldn’t be bought. So if he was going to handle me, I’d better watch my back. The reassuring part was that Barbara was no longer the focus, I was.
The next recording was from Wednesday morning, while I was driving to Lake Wales to break into the juice plant. C.J. was on the phone, and I heard another one-sided conversation. He was talking to Le again. He told her he was going to “close the operation,” and he needed some of her men to take care of it. He wrote down a phone number and repeated it back to her, and I wrote it down also; Doc Edwards would surely like that. My little bugs were paying off.
After that there were no more recordings, except for the television coming on every so often. I could still get a live feed, so I switched it on. C.J. was up and moving around the house, with the morning news blaring.
I left the room and wandered down to where the hotel served a continental breakfast.
There was not much there because of the storm, but some heroic employee had managed to get a big pot of fresh coffee going. I got a cup, balanced some day-old pastries on a paper plate, and returned to the room. I decided I’d try Doc Edwards; maybe he was an early riser.
“Edwards.”
“Vince Tanzi,” I said. “I have something you’re going to like.”
“Give,” he said.
“The phone number that our meth-lab-owner friend called, to get someone to burn the place down.” I gave it to him.
“The DEA is all over this,” he said. “They already had a file on the vending company. Every one of their drivers has a record, and they were sniffing around for months, but it was a tightly-run operation.”
“Did you find anything on the hard drive?” I asked.
“Did we ever. Money trails, dealers, production records, a friggin’ gold mine. I don’t know how we’re going to explain how we got it. An anonymous concerned citizen turned it in, or something like that. We showed it to the judge last night, and we’re going into the Johannsen house and the vending office in a few minutes with the warrants. You caught me in my car; I’m on the way to their house.”
“He’s there, and he’s awake,” I said. “The wife and kid are gone.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Do me a favor,” I said. I told him where the bugs were. He said he’d collect them, and would hold them for me. Anything from my tapes would be inadmissible anyway, and it might also land me in jail.
“How’d you make out in the storm?” he said.
“Don’t know yet,” I said.
“You’re in the Tampa papers today,” he said. “You sure get a lot of press. A cop shot himself in your house? What was that all about?”
“Some other time, Edwards,” I said. “Good luck with the bust. Let me know when you get him, OK?”
*
I checked out of the hotel and thought about swinging by Barbara’s, but with the DEA and the Tampa cops swooping down on the Johannsens, I figured that for once I could relax. If she wanted to be alone, then I would respect that. I didn’t like it, but perhaps I had better start getting used to it.
My neighborhood was a mess. The development was not a fancy one, and the builders must have skimped on the roofing because there were tiles all over the ground and the blue tarps were coming out to cover the holes. My roof was pockmarked with patches of exposed plywood where tiles had been. I had some tarps in the garage, but I didn’t think I could deal with an extension ladder, with my ribs the way they were. I would have to call someone, get in line and wait.
The inside of the house was untouched, and the power was on. I brought my gear in from the car, including the two Glocks, which needed a good cleaning and oiling after all the exposure to the rain. I turned on the TV. The local news was all about Wabasso, and Gifford, the community just west of it. The eye of the storm had passed right through there, and there were boats tossed up on the land and a number of houses that were simply not there anymore. They didn’t have any figures on how many people had been hurt, but it was bad. I felt even guiltier for riding it out in a snug hotel room. A few lost roofing tiles on my house seemed like a minor inconvenience next to the devastation I was seeing on the TV. I hoped Sonny was all right.
Roberto arrived on his bike. “No school,” he said, and went to the fridge. “You’re out of Coke.”
“There’s a ginger ale in there,” I said. “It’s probably older than you are.”
“Cool.”
“How’s school this year?”
“Boring,” he said. “Catch me up.”
I told him about the trip to the juice plant and what C.J. had been up to. I said the cops were on it and would collar him soon. He was impressed that I’d scored the hard drive. We didn’t talk about Frank Velutto, and I made a mental note to not let him go into the downstairs bathroom before I’d cleaned it up. I had no idea if the cops had or hadn’t, and it might still be a bloody mess.
“What if I decided to do what you do?” he asked. “Be an investigator. Do you think I’d be good at it?”
“I think you’d be good at anything you want to try,” I said. “But you don’t want to be a P.I. Most of it is waiting around, and you deal with a lot of stupid people who have made big mistakes.”
“I could be a cop.”
“That’s worse,” I said. “It’s a lot of sitting around too, and a lot more dangerous.”
“Is that why you quit?”
“No,” I said. “I loved being a cop.”
“Then why?”
“Hang on,” I said. I went into the half-bath. It had been wiped clean and smelled of sanitizer. There was a piece of sheetrock missing from the wall where the slug had gone in; the forensics guys must have removed it, otherwise it looked like nothing had happened there. I stood at the john and thought about Frank, and Glory. I reflected on my life, the mistakes I’d made and the few successes. Roberto was just about to begin his life as an adult, and he took everything I said as gospel. I enjoyed that, it felt good to be a hero in someone’s eyes. But at the same time I wasn’t going to bullshit him: I cared about him too much. I zipped up and returned to the kitchen.
“The truth is that I left the Sheriff’s because I was asked to,” I said. “You know how I can get past any lock. I never stopped doing that. Guys would lock their keys in their cars and it was “call Vince”. I was also the go-to guy when we needed to get into somewhere that we weren’t supposed to. Nobody talked about it because cops can’t do that; you can’t bust into someone’s property without a warrant. But there were times when we really needed something badly, so I made it happen.”
“And you got caught?” he said.
“No, I never got caught. I was good at what I did. But one time I went into a house over in Fellsmere where a bad guy lived. I found a gun that was a murder weapon. We suspected that he’d killed three people with it, and we had a tip that it was in the house, but we couldn’t get a warrant. So I broke in and took it, and we made up a story. Then the whole thing unraveled in court. The D.A. was beside himself, because they couldn’t try the guy again and he went free.”
“Oh,” he said. “Not good.”
“Real bad,” I said. “I still see the guy on the streets. He should be in jail. I had twenty-five years on the force, and the Sheriff told me they would allow me to retire, but if I didn’t, I’d be canned.”
“Do you wish you were still there?”
“Sometimes. I miss some of the people I worked with. But this is better. Not good enough for you though. You can make a lot more money doing computer things.”
Roberto drank his ginger ale while I opened my mail. There was an express envelope from the insurance company with a check. It was for nearly the full amount that I’d paid for the SHO. That was the good news; the bad news was that my premium would quadruple if I bought another one.
“Hey,” I said. “You ever think about going to St. Eds?”
“Snob school,” he said. “Besides, it’s like twenty-five thousand a year.”
“They have financial aid,” I said. “And I have some extra money. I could swing it.” I definitely didn’t need another man-toy; the BMW would more than meet my needs.
“Yeah,” he said, “but my parents—”
“Roberto, I don’t have any kids to spoil. And you’re too smart to be lost in the crowd at the high school. The St. Edwards kids aren’t snobs; they’re smart kids like you with the same needs. I’ll deal with your parents.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bring over any flowers this time.”
I laughed. “I’ll talk to your mom and dad. Then we can go over and check it out. All the hot girls go there, you know.” Roberto blushed. Girls might not be on his radar yet, but if they weren’t, they would be soon enough.
My phone rang; it was Doc Edwards. “You were wrong, he’s gone.”
“Did you find my listening things?”
“Yeah, I got ‘em. I wish
I could get away with that kind of shit,” he said.
“Trust me, you can’t,” I said. “But I heard him in the house, right before you must have arrived. He must have bolted.”
“There’s a banged-up Lexus in the garage, no other cars.”
“Is the boat there?”
“Boat?” he said.
“A big sport fisherman on the back dock.”
“No boat,” he said. “Damn. We didn’t think of that.” C.J. must have seen them coming and slipped out. Cops with warrants aren’t always too subtle.
“There isn’t anything in the way of evidence in the house, not even a checkbook. The place is bizarre. Did you see the plastic slipcovers?”
“Yes, but remember, I was never inside the house,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s creepy. Any idea where he’d be?”
“Not if he left on his boat,” I said. “But he’s got a house over here. And another wife.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“She was my client. Somebody took some shots at her. I was hired to find out who.”
“Did you find out?”
“I think so,” I said. “At this point I think it’s either the son or the other wife, the one over there in Tampa. Or both of them.”
“Any idea where they are?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Are you guys looking for them yet?”
“We are now,” he said. “Keep in touch, OK?”
“You too,” I said. I didn’t like what I was hearing. I was worried all over again, especially for Barbara. I asked Roberto to excuse me while I called her, but her cell didn’t answer. I left her a voicemail, and told Roberto I had to go.
*
There was a power company crew at the Butler house sawing up the big oak. Barbara didn’t answer the door, but her car was in the driveway. I thought about getting my kit out, but the front door had been left unlocked, so I let myself in and looked around. Her cell phone was on the kitchen counter, charging, as the electricity was already back on. The house was empty, but I found a phone book on the table, opened to “Building Supplies” in the yellow pages. I checked the garage, and the van was gone. Barbara had gone out somewhere; now I was doubly worried. I remembered—I still had a tracker on C.J.’s van. I ran back to my car and opened the laptop.
