by C I Dennis
“You know the car?” I said.
“It comes up as registered to Francine Tanzi.” Her voice was milky, with a slight Slavic accent. “I assumed it was you. I’m being rude. My name is Yuliana Burleigh. Please come in.”
I crossed the threshold and entered a warm, brightly-lit hallway. The floors were polished Verde Antiqua marble, no doubt from the Barre sheds. I stripped off my coat and boots and felt the radiant heat coming from the floor, through my wool socks. Ms. Burleigh hung my coat on a hook and led me into a large living room.
“Please,” she said, motioning me to a soft leather chair. She took a seat on a couch across from me. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “You have a license plate reader?”
“Yes.”
“So then you know someone in Homeland Security?”
She smiled disarmingly, and I once again considered extending my wrists for the handcuffs. This was without a doubt the most beautiful creature on the planet, with the possible exception of the manta ray exhibit at SeaWorld. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I sneaked a look. Barbara. Holy shit, how do women know these things? I felt a pang of guilt as I turned it off without answering.
“Brooks knows everyone,” she said. “I’m so sorry about your father.”
I was going to say something negative about my father, but I stopped myself. “Thanks.”
“Brooks really liked him, and so did I.”
“You may not have known him that well,” I said.
“He told us all about you,” she said. “Everything. You were the one he felt the worst about. Brooks tried to get him to reach out to you, but he couldn’t do it.”
I felt my insides tighten. My father, reaching out to me? What the hell was that about?
“You are Mrs. Burleigh?”
“No, no, no,” she said. “I’m his personal assistant. I just took the family name. Mine is unpronounceable.”
“Try me.”
“Tsegelnichenko,” she said.
“You’re right,” I said.
“Brooks is away,” she said. “But I know he’d love to meet you. He said he’d be back in time for the wake.”
“Mr. Burleigh is going to my father’s wake?”
“If that’s all right,” she said. Her accent was as sweet as the crusted sugar on a crème brûlée.
“Of course,” I said.
“Will your siblings be there?”
Apparently this woman knew everything about the Tanzis. “Not likely,” I said. “Junie is, um, not available, and I can’t locate my sister.”
“I have Carla’s cell number,” she said. Carla with a cellphone? Suddenly I was way off balance.
“Excuse me, but, how do you know so much about us?”
“Your father drove for Brooks. They became very close. They spent a lot of time together, in the car. Brooks travels to New York a lot, and he doesn’t like to fly into Teterboro; he had a near-collision there one time. So Jimmy would drive him.”
“Did Mr. Burleigh buy him the life insurance policy?”
“I don’t handle his business arrangements,” she said. A little switch clicked, and I stored that information. The policy was a business arrangement. She stood up. “Come into the kitchen. You look cold. I am going to make you a coffee.”
I obeyed, and we entered a huge space that could have served as a church where Michelin three-star chefs went to worship. Expensive cooking gear hung from the beams, and the pink granite countertops held every imaginable high-end appliance. A vintage Aga stove dominated the stainless steel and cherry-wood landscape, and the welcome heat of the firebox radiated from its porcelain-clad surfaces. Yuliana chose a single cup cartridge from a drawer and inserted it into a Keurig.
“Dark roast, all right?”
“Perfect,” I said. The coffeemaker made a slightly obscene sucking sound, and she handed me a warm cup. “Ms. Burleigh,” I began.
“Yuliana,” she corrected. She drew closer to me and reached her arm around my waist. I nearly dropped the coffee cup in surprise. She unsnapped the holster in the small of my back and withdrew my Glock 30. Jeezum crow, I’d completely forgotten I was wearing it.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t—”
“The police like these,” she said, as she held the gun. “I find them a little unstable.”
“I used to be a cop,” I said.
“Until they let you go, because you entered a house without a warrant,” she said.
I had no idea how she knew that. I’d had to quietly negotiate my exit from the Indian River Sheriff’s Department after twenty-five years, when I’d hastily broken into a perp’s house to retrieve a murder weapon, and caused the whole case to subsequently unravel in court.
“Would you like to shoot?’ she asked. “We have a range downstairs.”
“Seriously?”
“Bring your coffee,” she said, and she led me across the kitchen to a stairway.
*
I estimated that the farmhouse had about five thousand square feet above ground. There was almost that much in the cellar. It was part storage, part wine stash, part gym, and part bunker, with comfortable living areas and several side rooms with beds. Yuliana gave me a brief tour. One storeroom held enough food and water to last out a war, and another had what looked like a mini-arms depot for the Vermont National Guard. If the barbarians attacked, Brooks Burleigh would not only be ready, he’d win. She unlocked the door to a shooting range with four ultra-modern SRI stalls. Behind us were racks holding guns of every possible type, from black powder antiques to modern assault weapons including several AK-47s. If the fully-automatic feature wasn’t disabled, these were highly illegal unless you had a very special permit.
“What would you like to try?” she asked. She took two sets of ear protectors from a bench and handed me one. I scanned the racks and hoped that the saliva from my mouth wouldn’t make too obvious a pool on the floor. I’m not a gun-nut, but I appreciate good hardware, and everything was top of the line.
“Is that an FN SCAR?” I pointed to a beige-colored rifle with an evil-looking magazine. These were Special Ops weapons, and if they ever got onto the streets there would be no more crime, because everybody would be dead.
Yuliana took it down for me and replaced the empty magazine with a full one. The woman knew how to handle a firearm. She passed it to me and went to a control panel that automatically set up a cardboard target at the far end of the range. It wasn’t a bull’s-eye, or a deer head. It was a human silhouette.
I emptied the magazine with three bursts. By the third, there was nothing left to shoot at, the paper target was obliterated. Yuliana was laughing; I could hear her even with my ear protection on.
“Not a very subtle weapon, is it?” she said. She retreated to the bench behind us and came back with a Colt Cobra, a small, snub-nosed revolver that packed a .38 caliber wallop but was hard as hell to shoot straight at range distance—it was for close-in work. A Cobra was what Jack Ruby had used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.
Yuliana chose a fresh target; another human silhouette. She took a shooter’s stance, with both hands on the weapon. Six shots rang out, and she pushed a button to retrieve the target, which whirred toward us on an overhead cable.
The target was the same kind I’d used when I was a deputy. It had a circle in the center, where a shot would have hit the heart. Five of the six holes were neatly clustered within the circle, with the sixth about an inch outside of it.
“You missed one,” I said. She awarded me another smile, and this time I decided that if I was going to be her love slave, I’d better pack my Kevlar pajamas.
*
I took the phone from my coat pocket as I drove the car back down Edson Hill Road. I owed my sweetheart a phone call. She didn’t answer, and I remembered that she had classes all Wednesday afternoon. I would text her something apologetic when I wasn’t at the wheel. My guilt had only increased after an hour of shooting bullets and the breeze with Yuliana Burleigh�
�just being in the presence of a woman that attractive made me feel like I was cheating. Barbara had very little to worry about in the looks department, and she’d been the one-and-only woman to sweep me off my feet after Glory, my spouse of twenty years, had been killed. This trip was the first time we had been apart since we’d met back in August. I loved Barbara, and I’d even grown to trust her. Now, the question was—could I trust myself?
My stomach was growling, and I stopped at a corner store to get a bag of locally-made tortilla chips and two tubs of Cabot’s Ranch Dip. Vermont is one of the healthiest states in the national rankings, which is a small miracle seeing how it’s the home of Ben & Jerry’s, the Cabot Creamery, and, of course, maple syrup. I munched my way through half the bag of chips and scraped every last vestige of the dip from the first plastic container as I got back on the interstate. I had decided to travel north rather than south—back to Burlington, where I would get a hotel room and spend the night. I thought I might drop in at the Marriott and see my brother play, just for the hell of it. I was also tired, cold, and slightly horny, which surprised me. It would be a good thing if I could wrap this up fast and get back to Florida, and Barbara.
*
I checked into the hotel, which was above my usual price range but seemed to make sense if I was going to go to Junie’s gig. I called my mother to explain that I wouldn’t be sleeping there and to make sure she didn’t need the car. She was relieved to hear that I had sprung my brother. I tried the cell number that Yuliana had given me for my sister, but there was no answer, and I didn’t bother to leave a message. I lay on the bed with the second container of dip and began to polish it off, along with the rest of the bag of chips. Barbara would freak out—she had me running and working out again, and she supplied me with all sorts of repulsive, healthy crap in an attempt to get my weight back under two hundred. Not long after we’d started an official relationship, the effort to reinvent me had begun in earnest. I didn’t protest—it was nice that someone would care enough to do it. I needed to break some of the bad habits I’d picked up after my wife had died.
The phone rang and I answered, with a mouthful of chips.
“What are you eating?”
“Busted,” I said.
“I hear a crunching sound.”
“They have food up here that would make a grown vegan cry,” I said. “It’s not fair.”
“If you’re going to get fat, don’t bother to come back,” Barbara said. “I don’t do porky.”
“Just as soon as I finish these chips, I’m going to do five hundred sit-ups,” I said.
She laughed. “So, are you in the work mode?”
“Yes.”
“Find anything?”
“Not really,” I said. I decided I wouldn’t confess to having spent most of the afternoon with Mata Hari. “How was school?”
“Bloody,” she said. “We did anatomy stuff.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I’m getting used to it. It’s actually kind of fascinating.”
“Cool.”
“Speaking of cool, it’s supposed to frost here tonight,” she said.
“I won’t even tell you how cold it is here.”
“I really, really miss you.”
“I know.”
“You know?” she said. “What kind of an answer is that?”
I laughed. “Gotcha.”
“I am going to have to spank you,” she said.
“Get back to your books,” I said. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
I hung up, and the phone rang immediately. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Vince Tanzi,” I said.
“It’s Yuliana.”
“So you even know my cell?”
“You called here this morning, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, and my paranoia receded. “Thank you for the target practice, I enjoyed it.”
“So did I,” she said, and there was silence.
I broke it. “So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m flying to Vero Beach tomorrow morning,” she said. “Brooks is at the John’s Island house, and the jet is up here. I’m going to pick him up and then fly back tomorrow night. I just wondered if there was anything I could do.”
Sure, you could collect all my gear so that I could spy on you and your boss. Haha. “You have a private jet?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever pick up hitchhikers?”
“Certain ones,” she said. The milky-soft voice got a little softer.
“I actually need to get some things from my house,” I said. That, and I figured that time spent with this woman and her boss might be productive. So far, several roads were leading to the Burleighs.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“You don’t know that?”
She laughed. “Not yet.”
“I’m in a hotel in Burlington.”
“The jet is at the Morrisville airport. Can you be there at eight thirty?”
“I’ll be there,” I said, and we hung up.
*
The clock radio said 8:30, and for a moment I thought I was going to be horribly late until it sank in that it was still night, not morning. I’d dozed off on the hotel bed, fully clothed and sated from my chip-and-dip orgy. Junie’s gig had started half an hour ago.
I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and put on a fresh shirt. It was an old wool flannel Pendleton, not something I’d usually wear to a restaurant, but Burlington was a college town and faux-lumberjack was perfectly acceptable evening attire. I found a seat at the bar across the room from where Junie sat with his guitar, illuminated by a single red spotlight. The tables were full, some of them with talky tourists, but others with quietly reverent locals. Junie had a following, especially among the guitar-playing community, and other musicians would often show up at his gigs just to be amazed and wonder how he did it. He played mostly jazz standards, but he could play anything. Someone could request a bluegrass tune, a Chopin étude, or a polka, and it made no difference, he’d just launch in like he’d played it all his life. Everything that came out of his guitar had a distinctive sound, nothing like what other guitarists did, and nobody could explain his technique, much less imitate it. He was in the middle of “Sweet Georgia Brown”, and his solo Gibson archtop sounded like a whole band.
“Drink?” a bartender asked me.
“I’ll have a Long Trail IPA. Got any oysters?”
“No, but we have steamers on special.”
“Fine,” I said. My digestive system was about to become a Superfund site, but I intended to enjoy my freedom before reporting back to my girlfriend-slash-dietician. That reminded me, I might be able to see Barbara during my lightning-quick dash to Vero. I took out my phone.
U hv class tmrw?, I texted.
Of course, she sent back.
Feel like cutting? I’m in Vero noonish, just for a few hrs.
U R a bad influence but yes.
Pick me up at Vero airport. Will txt arrival time ltr ok?
What?? Private plane?
Private jet, I texted.
Oh forgive me, jet, of crse, she texted back. La dee da.
Haha see U tmrw, xo
Xo, she replied.
*
Junie finished his set and came over to the bar.
“Rumple Minze?” the bartender asked him.
“Yah,” he said. The bartender handed him a glass with ice and poured a generous shot of the liqueur. “This is what the snowplow guys drink,” Junie said to me. “They keep a bottle under the seat.”
“I thought you had to yodel and wear lederhosen to drink that stuff,” I said.
“Is that a request? I can do some yodeling next set.”
I laughed. Junie smiled. This is where he was truly happy—at a gig. It was the only place I’d ever seen him beaming. The problem was that Junie didn’t have an off switch, and if he was doing drugs or drinking Rumple Minze, he’d just keep on doing it until
he was pie-eyed. That was the reason he only played solo—no one would put up with him after countless brief band stints that included missed gigs, fist fights, broken barstools, insulting the audience, or passing out cold in mid-song and collapsing backwards into the drum set. Everybody wanted to play with him, but everybody knew better.
“You sound awesome, as usual.”
“Thanks, man.”
“I’m staying here tonight,” I said.
“You could have stayed on my couch.”
“I didn’t want to impose,” I said. He was right, I could have, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind. Is that what a good brother would have done? I downed the rest of my Long Trail and motioned to the bartender.
“I’ll have what he’s having,” I said. He poured me a glass with as generous a shot as he’d served Junie. I took a swig and grimaced. “Tastes like toothpaste,” I said.
“And it fights dental plaque,” Junie said. We both laughed.
“I went up to the Burleigh place,” I said.
Junie said nothing.
“Apparently they know all about the family,” I said. “You ever meet the guy?”
“You don’t want to mess with that dude, Vin,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just ask Carla,” he said.
“I haven’t talked to her yet.”
“She’s not exactly easy to reach. I can give you the address.” He told it to me, and I entered it into my phone.
“Junie, what’s going on? You’re holding out on me.”
“I don’t owe you anything, bro.”
“OK, I’ll buy you a drink then, so you can owe me.”
“I drink for free here. That’s why I do the gig.”
“What was Dad into? Were you in it too? And Carla?”
“The less you know, the better,” he said.
“Come on, June. Give,” I said.
My steamers arrived, and I picked at them while he sat there. He drained his glass, and the bartender topped it up.
“Gotta go start the second set,” he said. He walked back to the stage, rested his drink on the top of his amplifier, and picked up the Gibson. His first song was “Giant Steps”, a complicated John Coltrane tune that he transformed as he played into something barely recognizable but perfect. This time the whole room went quiet. I could see the glaze in his eyes as the Rumple Minze began to kick in. I decided I didn’t want to watch him descend into inebriation—I’d stay for a few more tunes and then slip away. It’s probably not what a good brother would have done, but I needed the sleep.
