by C I Dennis
On the other hand I was still alive, and I felt more alive than I had in a year. I’d outwitted a bad guy and taken some of his toxins off the streets. I hadn’t exactly protected my client, but she wasn’t dead either. I’d found out who killed my wife, and it wasn’t me. In the process I’d lost Frank Velutto, who was once my friend. I’d almost lost myself to the siren song of pain pills, but I’d crept back from the edge. And I’d let my guard down with a woman whose motives I was now questioning. The phone rang.
“It’s Bobby again,” he said. “We got two DEA guys here, a state cop, our mutual friend Mr. Thornton the D.A., your friend Edwards from Tampa, and a lady JPO from Tampa who’s picking up the kid.”
“Did Thornton like the roses?”
He chuckled. “We’re playing “who’s got jurisdiction”. Everybody wants their mug in the paper next to your fish.”
“Good luck with that. What did you find on the computer?”
“According to the Tampa guys, it was everything they had already seen on the hard drive before it got wiped, plus much more specific bank account stuff. That’s what I’m calling about. Your girlfriend is in trouble.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.
“Then how do you know who I’m talking about?”
I paused. “Let’s not get into it right now, OK?”
“OK. But they found a lot of money in her name. Like a shitload of money.”
“She doesn’t know about it,” I said. I wasn’t sure that was true.
“OK,” he said. “But we’re going to pick her up for questioning tomorrow. You may want to talk to her first. Just a heads up.”
“Thanks Bobby.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “We’re picking you up too.”
*
I put down the receiver, then lifted it back up and called Barbara. She picked up on the first ring.
“I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said.
“What happened to your guard dog?”
“I sent her back to Jacksonville last night after you left.”
“I need to come over,” I said. “The news is not good.”
“Oh. Are you going to get angry at me again?”
“I’m not angry at you.”
“You sound angry,” she said.
“It’s just something we have to discuss.”
“What happened, Vince?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there,” I said.
*
She was in her recliner with a magazine on her lap. She looked pretty, even with no makeup and in her bathrobe. I had come right from the house and needed a shave and a fresh shirt, but I hadn’t bothered. I wasn’t trying to impress her anymore, and I was cranky from the lack of pain drugs. I got straight to the point of my visit.
“Your husband is in jail. He and his son took me for a ride in their boat this morning. They wrapped me in duct tape and were going to throw me overboard, but I got away. The Coast Guard picked them up, and there was a computer in the boat with the business records.”
“From the vending business?”
“No. From the meth business. With detailed bank records.”
“So they’ll get him?”
“Yes,” I said, “With any luck. It’s the evidence they needed.”
“Oh,” she said.
“There is apparently a lot of money in your name.”
“I know,” she said.
“You know?”
“I owe you an explanation, don’t I?”
“Yes.” I sat on the couch across from her. “Explain.”
“Oh God,” she said, “It starts a long way back. When C.J. was a citrus broker he used to give me money every week, and I’d put it in the bank. I built up quite a lot over the years, over a hundred thousand dollars.” She took a sip from a mug. “You want some tea? Vicki left it for me. It’s kind of disgusting.”
“Keep talking,” I said.
“About ten years ago he went under. There was a freeze in the groves, and I didn’t know it, but C.J. was into futures trading and he lost everything. He’d also invested for a lot of the growers, his clients, and they all lost money, and they turned on him. We were broke except for what I’d saved, and he didn’t have any clients left.”
“Then what?”
“Then he comes home from his trip—the Wednesday through Friday thing—and he says he has a new business partner. I ask him what the business is, and he won’t tell me. But the money starts rolling in, and I decide...I don’t really need to know. We just kept pretending he was a citrus broker.” She took another sip. “This tastes like herbal wallpaper paste.”
“Stop trying to talk me into it,” I said.
“So I’m still handling the household bills, but about a year after C.J. starts the new business he says he’s moving everything offshore, and we meet with a guy in West Palm Beach from a bank. It’s in Switzerland, it’s called “B-A-P” for short. After that I’ve never even seen a statement.”
“The one you overheard C.J. talking to? The one we talked about at the Tracking Station beach?”
“Yes. I wasn’t telling you everything.”
“Why?”
“I thought he was moving money to Le. I thought he was getting ready to dump me and live over there with her and the boy.”
“Didn’t you have any control over the money?”
“Not after it went overseas. I have a half million or so here, but according to what you said there was a lot more that I didn’t know about. I needed you to find out what was going on. I got scared when that guy said he was moving seventeen million euros, and that’s when I hired you back.”
“So you were after the money,” I said. “You weren’t really worried about getting shot at.”
“No—I was scared all right, but when we rode home from Lake Wales that day, C.J. swore he could handle that. He can fix things. He fixed my whole life. But now I realize he just wanted you out of the picture. I should have known better.”
“There’s no money, by the way,” I said. “I mean there was, but they’ll confiscate it. They can also take your house, your car, everything.”
“I don’t care about the money anymore,” she said. “When you told me about the meth lab, I wanted to crawl off and die.”
“If I remember correctly, you shacked up with me in a hotel instead. Same difference?”
She chuckled and wheezed at the same time. “Please don’t make me laugh, Vince; it really hurts.”
“I’ll try to be only mildly amusing.”
“Thanks,” she said.
We both went quiet and sat there in her living room while Barbara sipped her tea and I thought about how much she’d held back from me. I’d been played, all right.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s more.”
I stayed quiet.
“When I got out of the hospital, C.J. came to see me. He told me he was leaving, and he wanted me to come with him. He said he loved me. He’d put all the money in my name, not Le’s. He was going to get me a new passport, and we were going out of the country with the boy. He’s very persuasive when he wants to be.”
“So what did you say?”
“I said I would.”
“OK.” I was looking at the wall.
“Your feelings are hurt, aren’t they?”
“No,” I said.
“Now you’re the one who’s lying.”
I didn’t respond, but she was right. “Why? I don’t get it. Why does he have such a hold on you?”
She looked away.
“Barbara, please. Cards on the table.”
“You’re going to judge me,” she said.
“I won’t,” I said.
“C.J. met me in a strip club,” she said. “A titty bar, in Jacksonville where I grew up. It was called the Two Moons Club. And I wasn’t in the audience, I was the one with the titties.”
“So?”
“It
gets worse.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I did tricks on the side. I was pretty wild back then. And it was good money. You don’t know me, but I grew up trailer trash.”
“Barbara...I knew a lot of women in the game. There were good ones and bad ones.”
“When I told you about Le being a prostitute in Vietnam you seemed so...”
“I said something crass, right? I didn’t mean to.”
“C.J. took me away from that. It wasn’t easy—there were people who controlled me. That tattoo you saw wasn’t a tattoo; it was more like a brand. We were like cattle. He basically bought me.”
“And ever since that, you’ve lived your life according to his rules,” I said.
“Worse than that. He owned me. It was probably the same for the other wife. Even Vicki got caught—he was always sending her money, to help her out, and she got hooked on it. To be honest, so did I. She and I didn’t grow up with much.”
“So that’s it? He owns you, and you’re leaving the country with him?”
“I—”
“You disappoint the hell out of me, you know that?”
“Vince—”
“C.J. said you were playing me and he was—”
“Vince Tanzi, would you shut the fuck up for two seconds?” she yelled. “Christ.”
I shut up, but I was simmering.
“He came over here this morning at four AM. He let himself in and woke me up. He wanted me to pack a bag and go to his boat. He said we were going to South Florida, to get me a passport.”
“But you didn’t go with him,” I said. “That was right before they took me up the river.”
She paused to take another sip of the tea. “I told him to go fuck himself,” she said. “I sent Vicki home last night and started thinking clearly. I owe him nothing. If people find out about my past and they can’t handle it, that’s their problem. And I knew the money would disappear one way or another. I don’t want it, and I heard what you’d said about him killing teenagers. Honestly, I’ll be glad to be broke. I’m going to go out and get a job and start all over again. Or maybe I’ll finally go to nursing school.”
“You might have a job making license plates,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The police want to see you tomorrow. They want to see me too. We’re going to need a lawyer to be there.”
“I haven’t broken any laws,” she said.
“I haven’t either,” I said, “But it’s not always that simple.”
She thought about that for a while. “Now I’m worried,” she said.
“Don’t be,” I said. “I know some good lawyers. We can negotiate.”
“Oh God,” she said. “You must be so angry at me.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “I was, but I feel better now that I at least know the truth.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“I gave it up,” I said.
“Food?”
“Not hungry.”
“I can’t do sex. I hurt too much,” she said.
“Me too,” I said.
“Then let’s watch some TV.”
“Sounds good,” I said, but it wasn’t. It was some reality show, and I wondered what they had to pay the people to humiliate themselves like that. Probably not very much.
We sat next to each other on the couch, and she noticed the sticky tape residue still all over my arms and legs. She got up and came back with two mugs of the herbal tea and her can of WD-40. She rubbed off the residue as we sipped the tea.
“This stuff is a powerful aphrodisiac, you know,” she said.
“The tea or the WD-40?”
She laughed. “Remember, you’re supposed to be only mildly funny.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“You’re shocked about what I told you, aren’t you?”
“Sorry, but no,” I said. “I’m relieved. I couldn’t figure out what C.J. had on you.”
“You’ll never trust me again,” she said, as she dabbed the solution on my arms. I thought about that, and decided that she was probably right. Somehow, it didn’t matter.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Hey,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Do you think your lawyer can negotiate me keeping the boat?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“I’ve always wanted to go down to the Keys in a boat,” she said.
“What about nursing school?”
“It doesn’t start until January,” she said. “I was looking at the schedule on the computer when you called.”
Her hands felt good on my skin. Better than anything I’d felt for a long time, including the seductive caress of the painkillers. I might not ever trust Barbara again, but I didn’t want to be without her.
“So...do you know how to drive a boat?” she said.
“Not really,” I said. “But I could learn.”
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank several people for their time and encouragement. First, to my intrepid early readers—Connie Harvey, Isabel Dennis, Suzanne Semmes, Mike Humphrey, Roy Cutler, Willard Siebert, John Caputo and Sara Dennis, who is also my very patient wife. Thanks also to Andrew Gross, Jeff Lindsay, David Handler, Katharine Fisher Britton and Dan Gillmor, good friends and great talents, for their expert advice on the up, down and sideways process of publishing. Cheers to Deborah Heimann, my tireless copy editor who safeguarded the English language, and is an accomplished serial comma-killer. Lastly, to Joni Cole, for her literary midwifery. Joni is the one who spanked this baby, made it breathe and brought it to life.
This book is dedicated to Chod Edwards, late of the Indian River Sheriff’s Department, and to my father, who believed in me, and laughed at my jokes.
About the Author
C.I. Dennis lives in Vermont with his family and a whole lot of dogs. He is also the author of Tanzi’s Ice.
Cover design and artwork by Alexander Dennis.
www.cidennis.com/wordpress
