Tanzi's Ice (Vince Tanzi Book 2)

by C I Dennis

  “All the Tanzis do,” I said.

  “You’re here for Dad’s thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “I’m not saying you should.”

  “I don’t hate him,” she said. “He was trying to be nice to me, after he stopped drinking.” She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to me. “Take anything in it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Dad found me this place. They gave us both jobs, babysitting, and we stay for free.”

  “Who is they?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “They’d kick us out.”

  “What do you mean by babysitting?”

  “They send some of the girls here. The au pairs, before they place them. We shop for them, feed them and so on. Some of them hardly speak English, and Ginny teaches them. She’d be super mad if she knew I was telling you this, so don’t say anything.”

  Carla absently brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, revealing the bruise. I wondered if she’d actually slipped, or if her friend Ginny was up to her old tricks. She’d gone gray, much more than I had—I still had more pepper than salt. She wore a pink, coffee-stained bathrobe and slippers. She was forty-eight; two years younger than me, but she was beginning to look like a bag lady. I suddenly wished I could wave a wand and get the old pre-drug Carla back. She’d been a vivacious and beautiful teenager, but it was gone now.

  “Did you know that someone killed Dad?”

  “No.”

  “They think it was Junie.”

  “That’s impossible,” she said.

  “It’s not impossible, but I don’t think he did it.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In jail,” I said. “I’m working on it, don’t worry.”

  “That guy,” she said. “He had it in for Dad. I picked up a strange vibe. Dad used to stay in one of the cabins sometimes. They made Ginny and me go away, so we’d drive down to Burlington and stay in a hotel. They’d drop off a new girl, or sometimes two.”

  “What guy?”

  “We came home too early one time, and they were still here. The guy was having an argument with Dad, outside. A couple months ago.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “The man who owns the au pair agency. Mean as a snake. His name’s Tomas.”

  The front door opened, and Ginny appeared, stamping her feet on the hall rug. “What’re you doing here?” she growled. Ginny was wispy-blonde, slender and pretty in a girly sort of way. She could have passed for Tinker Bell, with a kidney stone.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” I said. “Nice place you got here.”

  “Don’t ruin it for us,” she said. She turned to my sister. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing,” Carla lied.

  “If you fuck this up for us, you’re dead,” Ginny said to me.

  “You’re a piece of work, Ginny.”

  “So are you,” she said. “Finish your coffee and go. Carla doesn’t need you to screw things up for her.”

  “Maybe I could ask Carla what she needs.”

  “Get out of here, Vince. You’re trespassing.”

  I kissed Carla on the cheek and slipped on my shoes. “Thanks for the coffee, sweetie,” I said. “I always have a place for you in Vero.”

  “Thanks, Vin,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come see you sometime.”

  “That would be great,” I said. I didn’t add that if she did visit, she would need to leave her junkyard dog at home.

  *

  The farther south I got the more trees there were down, and the power crews were everywhere. This is when nobody envied those guys—I couldn’t imagine working in the intense cold, cutting up branches and hauling away brush. After the really big ice storms they’d bring crews in from all over the Northeast, and sometimes from the South and Midwest. It could take weeks to repair all of the lines, and meanwhile a lot of people had no water, no heat and a whole fridge full of food that was gradually going bad.

  My cellphone buzzed in my pocket as I approached Burlington. I took a quick look. It was a text from Barbara.

  I’m pregnant.

  I laughed. I pulled over to the breakdown lane and texted back.

  How pregnant?

  Wicked pregnant.

  Who’s the father? I sent.

  I’m serious, she replied.

  Haha, I sent.

  The phone rang, and it was her. “I really am serious,” she said.

  “Come on, you’re forty-five.”

  “I thought I was starting menopause,” she said. “I went to the doctor last week. They told me to take a pregnancy test but I didn’t bother. I thought it was ridiculous. Then after I left your place yesterday, I got sick. I went out and got a test kit last night, and it was positive.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. About sixteen bazillion different emotions were racing through my head. At the same time I knew that my next words would either preserve or kill off my relationship with Barbara, and I should choose them carefully. I paused and collected myself.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Kind of a surprise though.”

  “No shit,” she said. “I am so relieved. I didn’t know how you’d take it. I was thinking you’d completely freak out and you’d want me to get an abortion.”

  “No,” I said, although she was right about me freaking out. The cars were zooming by, and I suddenly knew how a moose must feel when it wanders into traffic.

  “You don’t have to be involved,” she said. “I’m not going to lay that on you.”

  “Of course I’ll be involved,” I said. “It’s mine, too.”

  “Oh Vince, I am so, so relieved. Get back here fast, OK?”

  “I wish I could, babe,” I said. “I have to see this through, though. It’s going to be a few days.”

  “I can wait,” she said. “I love you so much, Vince Tanzi.”

  “So don’t I.”

  “What?”

  “That’s Vermont for I love you too.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Bye,” I said. I put the phone down on the seat and sat there. I was going to be a father. When I was a kid, Harry Houdini, the escape artist, had been my idol. He could get out of anything, and I’d read every single book about him and learned most of his tricks.

  I wondered how he’d get out of this one.

  *

  They wouldn’t let me into the Foxtrot Room until visiting hours started at one PM, so I sat in the lobby and played with the Aceso while I waited. I had only tried it once before, on my own phone, and Roberto had been there to help, so I was a little lost. I could tell that a lot of data had been downloaded, but that was it. I called Roberto.

  “Where are you?” he said.

  “Jail,” I said. “Just visiting. I need some help with the laptop. I’m trying to check out some things I downloaded from the new box.”

  “The Aceso?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me remote in,” he said. Soon I was looking at a group of folders on my desktop labeled Apps, Mail, Docs, Location and Texts. He had set the whole thing up in less than five minutes. I’d gotten my knitting out of my bag, but I hadn’t even finished a row.

  “You must be feeling better,” I said.

  “A little,” he said, but his voice still sounded hoarse.

  “Lay low,” I said. “I’ll bring you back some real maple syrup.”

  “I’ve never tried it,” he said. “Just the Aunt Jemima stuff.”

  “I’m going to fix that,” I said. “Friends don’t let friends drink fake syrup.”

  He gave a weak laugh, and we hung up.

  *

  A guard opened the door to the Foxtrot Room and waved me in. Junie was already sitting at a table.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” I said.

  “You’d better get used to it, ʼcause I’m fucked this ti
me,” he said. “They got me on videotape.”

  “But you didn’t do it.”

  “No.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “That makes two of us then,” he said. “Even my lawyer thinks I’m guilty.”

  “Who is he?”

  “She,” he said. “Jennifer Connelly. Public defender. Fresh out of law school, and she doesn’t know squat.”

  “Great,” I said. “So June…what were you doing there? I’ll help you, but I need the whole story.”

  He looked away from me. “I’m still a fucking junkie, Vinny. It’s pills this time. Painkillers.”

  “You and the rest of the world,” I said. “I had a problem with them myself, not long ago.”

  “I got more than a problem. I was spending everything I made on them.” He looked to see if the guard was listening, but he’d left the room. “I had a friend inside the hospital. They lock them up, but not that well. You taught me how to get past a lock.”

  “You were there to steal drugs?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I had a message on my phone that afternoon. Guy says he’s a friend of my friend. He says to get to the hospital at six o’clock and it would be wide open. So I get my scrubs on and go to where I usually go, and there are people everywhere. No way can I break in to the cabinet I usually hit. I waited around for a while, but there were way too many people around. I usually go in later, like ten at night. Whoever called me was full of shit.”

  “Did you see Dad?”

  “I didn’t even know he was in there,” he said.

  “Do you still have that message on your phone?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “Don’t erase it. I might be able to use that. You may do some time for stealing pills, that’s all.”

  “I can handle that,” he said.

  “There was skin under Dad’s fingernails. They thought it was from the scratches on your arm.”

  “That was from the guy who pissed me off,” he said. “He scratched me good, but I clocked the bastard.”

  “The DNA test will be done in a few weeks,” I said. “You might be in here until then. I’ll try to get you bailed out sooner.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “At least I’m clean when I’m on the inside.”

  “I have to go to the wake,” I said.

  “Tell Mom I said hi,” he said. “You’re a good brother, Vin.”

  “You too, Junie.”

  *

  Jennifer Connelly’s office was in the old North End, the section of Burlington where most of her clients probably lived. It used to be an Italian and French Canadian neighborhood, but it had become the catchall for whatever ethnic groups were currently crazy enough to emigrate to the fearsome Vermont climate. Somalis, Cambodians, Haitians—people who had never even seen a picture of snow—were outdoors, scraping it from their walkways and chipping away at the ice.

  I knocked on the glass of her door, and she looked up from her desk. It was a one-woman shop, no receptionist. She got up slowly and let me in. A Vermont Law School diploma was hanging on the wall; the ink still looked wet. I shook off the cold, removed my gloves and extended my hand. “Vince Tanzi,” I said. “Junie’s brother. I’m a private investigator.”

  “There’s not much I can do for him,” she said. “He’s on the security tape, coming and going.”

  “He didn’t do it, you know,” I said. “So let’s start with the presumption of innocence, just for the hell of it.”

  “I didn’t say I thought he was guilty,” she said. She had very short auburn hair and appeared to be about thirty. She was also pregnant. In fact, she was wicked pregnant, and I wondered if a new soul might burst forth while we were talking.

  “He’s not guilty,” I said. “You’ll know that in a few weeks when the DNA comes back.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “OK,” she said. “Then what do you recommend?”

  “How do I get the security tapes?”

  “I have them on my computer,” she said. “I can send you a link. They gave me everything from five PM until eight. You have to log in, but I can give you that too.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Here’s my email.” I extended a business card.

  She rose, slowly, to take it. I was about to ask her about the baby, but “When are you due?” is potentially the most catastrophic phrase in the English language if you’re wrong.

  “Good luck,” she said, as I left.

  *

  I had an hour to drive down to Barre, which was more than enough time. The wake started at three, and I’d told my mother I would pick her up on the way. Somehow I’d have to retrieve her car from the Morrisville airport, and turn in the rental car, but that seemed unimportant. I couldn’t escape the sobering irony that just as I was about to bury my father I was about to become one myself. It was already changing the way I saw him. Yuliana said that Brooks Burleigh had tried to get him to reach out to me, but he couldn’t, and that was because I had long ago put up an impenetrable wall. In the last two days I’d learned that James Tanzi had been trying to turn his life around—a little late, but he’d tried nonetheless.

  My child would grow up without a grandfather. Somehow, thirty years of contempt for him was turning, very gradually, into a reluctant form of mourning. Not at all like I’d mourned my wife, but I realized I didn’t hate him anymore. Maybe someday I’d even forgive him.

  *

  My phone buzzed. “We’re on the way,” Yuliana said.

  “You’re coming?”

  “Yes, if that’s all right,” she said. “I’m driving your mother’s car, and Brooks is in the Escalade. By the way, your gun is under the seat.”

  “Good,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to go to a wake without my piece.”

  She laughed. “So…how’s everything?”

  “Confusing,” I said.

  “Because of last night?”

  “No, that was…unreal.”

  “Unreal?”

  “Wrong word. It was insanely nice. I can’t even think about it, or I’ll run into a snowbank.”

  “I liked it too,” she said.

  “I have to stop and change at my mother’s,” I said. “She’s riding with me.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “A dark suit.”

  “Sexy,” she said.

  “No flirting,” I said. “This is a wake.”

  “Moldovans drink vodka and flirt at wakes. So watch out.”

  “Duly noted,” I said.

  “Are you playing hard to get?”

  “Yuliana…I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “That was completely inappropriate.”

  “I’ll see you there, OK?”

  “OK,” she said, and hung up.

  *

  A young guy in a wool Chesterfield coat and black gloves opened the door of the tiny rental Chevy and helped my mother out. We were at the funeral home early, and the only other person in the room where the wake would be held was Sheila. She stood next to my father’s open casket, and had been crying. Sheila was only a few years older than I was, and used to babysit for us when we were little. She’d been something of a bombshell and had married and divorced twice, then inexplicably fell for my father when he was around sixty. She’d cleaned him up and made him stop drinking, but it didn’t last, and they’d never married because he was old-school Catholic. Finally, a few years ago, she’d left him. Apparently that was right before he’d sobered up for good.

  “Vince,” she said, and gave me a huge hug, leaving me in a cloud of cheap perfume. “Look at him. So handsome. I can’t believe it.” She started sobbing again. My mother had been talking with the funeral home guys, but she crossed the room to join us.

  “Hello, Sheila,” she said.

  “Hello, Francine. It’s odd what brings people together, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” my mother said. “I was glad that he sp
ent time with you. I always liked you.”

  “Thank you,” Sheila said. “You’re a kind woman.”

  I turned to look at my father, lying in his casket. It was a fancy one made of dark cherry wood with a white velvet lining, and it had a little plate at the bottom corner that said “#8082 Geneva Rose Gold—Made In America”. That would be good to know, in case you really liked it and wanted to order one in advance of your own demise. My dad looked like a wax version of himself, with his cheeks powdered and toned with rouge. He still had all his hair and his strong nose. His eyes were closed, but somehow that didn’t make him look at peace. It was like he could wake up any moment and whack me.

  The last time I’d seen him, I’d whacked him, not the other way around. Actually, Junie did the whacking while I held Dad tight, with his arms behind him. I was a rookie Barre cop, and I’d had a call. It was from a neighbor of my parents, and there was a domestic disturbance in progress. I arrived in less than a minute and burst through the door. My mother had shut herself in the bathroom and was screaming. My father sat in his chair, drinking a beer and watching TV. Junie came in right behind me—it was when he still lived at home, and he’d just gotten off work.

  I opened the bathroom door and found my mother, badly beaten, lying on the floor and crying. I radioed for an ambulance and then walked back into the living room. Junie had already started in on him, but my father was tough and he was swinging back with hard punches. I stepped in and grabbed him from behind, then held his arms while Junie landed blows. We left him slumped in front of the television, looking a lot worse than my mother. No charges were ever filed, but a week later the Barre P.D. was abuzz with rumors and my supervisor asked me what my plans were. I caught his drift and relocated to Florida. Junie’s hands were so bruised he couldn’t play the guitar for months.

  The room began to fill with people. Rodney Quesnel had driven down from Burlington, and I greeted him, and then excused myself so I could circulate. Although I knew most of the people, I hadn’t seen many of them for years, except for Mrs. Tomaselli, who wore an expansive black dress with a lace veil and looked like she was the grieving widow. She made a beeline as soon as she spotted me and stuck to my side like a conjoined twin.

  Yuliana and Brooks entered the room, and the crowd parted before them. Brooks wore a suit that probably cost ten times what mine did, and Yuliana looked like she’d stepped off the cover of the Neiman Marcus catalog in her floor-length black sable coat and leather boots with heels. The nobility had just arrived, and the rest of us, the peasants, went quiet. They proceeded straight to my mother, introduced themselves, and offered their condolences. Yuliana caught my eye, and I felt a jolt of electricity as if I’d stuck my finger in a socket.