Tanzi's Game (Vince Tanzi Book 3)

by C I Dennis

  I chuckled into the pillow. Megan was a good twenty years younger than me and was a looker, with vivid red hair that she usually tied up behind her head. She was muscular but still slender, and she had a bright, ready smile that defused her sometimes aggressive attitude. A physical therapist is supposed to be something of a drill sergeant if they are going to be effective, and in my case Megan had worked miracles. Nine months ago I could barely walk. After she’d relocated to Vero Beach from Vermont and joined the practice, she had insisted on being assigned to me as soon as she had learned that I was a fellow Vermonter. She had pushed me hard. If I were thirty-two and not fifty-two, I might be in even bigger trouble with Barbara.

  “You’re wicked tense, Vince.”

  “I have a lot on my mind,” I said. Barbara had slept the whole previous night with the baby. We’d hardly spoken during the few minutes between coffee and when she’d left for her nursing classes.

  “Like what?”

  “You know how some dogs need a job? Like herding sheep, or retrieving tennis balls?”

  “You wish you were back at work?” She was digging hard into the leg, and I almost cried out.

  “I like being a father. And it’s OK being at home,” I said. “But, yeah. You can only do so many crossword puzzles.”

  “Why did you retire? You’re what, fifty?”

  “Barbara insisted, after I got shot. You can get killed in my profession. I almost did.”

  “Not doing the work that you love will kill you, too,” Megan said. “It just takes longer.”

  She was right, and I knew it. I missed my job. Barbara had suggested that I use my retirement to write a how-to book for aspiring private investigators, insisting that “everyone has a book in them”. I’d given it a try and had filled up part of a notebook, but all that I’d come up with so far was a tangled mess of random observations that had little or nothing to do with investigating and that no editor would ever be able to shape into something publishable or even readable. I called it Tanzi’s Tips.

  Tanzi’s Tip #1: Some people will never have a book in them, unless they eat one.

  I had turned my head sideways and was watching a flat-screen television suspended over a row of exercise machines. The news was on, from a Miami station. A group of cops and EMTs were loading a shrouded body into an ambulance, and a heavily made-up blonde woman was interviewing a plainclothes policeman. I recognized him: Talbot Heffernan, a pink-faced, patrician-looking detective lieutenant I’d once met when I had retrieved a teenaged runaway from a crack house in West Dade and hauled her back to Vero a couple of years ago. The victim’s name will be released shortly, Heffernan was saying to the reporter. After the family is notified.

  We understand that it was a shootout? The reporter said. Did the victim shoot back?

  We can’t comment on that, Heffernan said. He was dressed in a lime-green blazer, chinos and boat shoes, and he looked more like a prep school teacher than a cop.

  The woman turned away from the lieutenant and addressed the camera as he walked away.

  Jack, I’m outside of the Hacienda Club in Coral Gables, as you can see. Just hours ago a man was gunned down in his car outside the entrance. The police haven’t officially released the name of the victim, but he was identified by several onlookers. He’s a well-known figure in real estate in these parts. We believe that the deceased man is Raimundo Pimentel.

  Raimundo Pimentel? I slowly rose from the massage table and swung my legs off the side.

  “Vince?” Megan said, “I’m not done.”

  “I have to go,” I said, as I collected my watch and my wallet. “I know that guy.”

  I didn’t really know Raimundo Pimentel, any more than what everybody else knew about him. He was a real estate developer, and his net worth was in the many millions. But Pimentel hadn’t gotten his start in real estate. He had come over with the first wave of refugees after Castro, and the word was that he’d run the bolitas numbers racket back in the days before Powerball. The Cubans were addicted to the game, and the odds were long unless you were the house, which happened to be the Pimentel house.

  I also knew that Pimentel had a Vero Beach connection. His daughter lived here, although she seldom spoke to him. I had learned this from his grandson.

  Roberto.

  *

  Gustavo Arguelles wasn’t in, the receptionist said. He’d gone home sick an hour ago.

  But he wasn’t at home, as I found out when I arrived at his house ten minutes later. Nor was he answering his phone. I lifted the fake rock on the side of their porch that held a spare key and let myself in. No one was inside, and Gustavo’s car wasn’t in the garage.

  I hadn’t done any real investigating in well over a year. I didn’t know where to begin. My present life was focused on being a good father and husband, and on getting my strength back. But Barbara was at school, Royal was at the sitter’s, and it was Wednesday, which was my day off. Wednesday mornings were my physical therapy appointment, then I grocery shopped, and then I either went for a beach walk, or if the weather was bad, I stayed home and knit. I was partway through a sweater for my sister up North, my most ambitious project so far, and I figured it would be finished in no more than three years at the pace that I was going.

  I needed to do what any experienced investigator would do: Start with what you know.

  Lilian Arguelles was missing, last seen in the Keys, presumably with a boyfriend.

  Gustavo Arguelles had gone home sick, but now he wasn’t home.

  Raimundo Pimentel was deceased, and he’d died the hard way.

  Royal was all set until I picked him up at five. It was just before ten o’clock, so I had seven hours free. I took my phone from my pocket and called Sonny Burrows from Gustavo and Lilian’s kitchen.

  “Yo,” he answered.

  “How long does it take to fly to Key West and back?”

  “Two hours each way, if I push it. We goin’ fishing?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Two friends disappeared.”

  There was a silence. “Does Barbara know what you’re doing?”

  “Not yet. No need.”

  “I can’t be an accessory to that,” he said. “I already done my time.”

  Sonny and Barbara didn’t exactly get along. In fact, they could barely tolerate being in the same room together. It wasn’t that Sonny had once been Vero’s biggest cocaine dealer, now-reformed, nor was Barbara jealous over our unlikely friendship. They just didn’t like each other—period.

  “You’re my only friend with an airplane,” I said.

  “I’m already at the airport. I was going to fly up to Sanford to see my little sister.”

  “Can you do this for me?”

  “Long as you’re paying for the fuel,” he said. “Plus hush money, if your woman asks me about this.”

  “If you fly fast enough, she’ll never know.”

  Sonny laughed. “Your wife? That woman already knows what you did tomorrow.”

  *

  The Vero Beach Municipal Airport used to buzz like a bee-filled orange grove in full blossom back in the days when the Piper Aircraft company produced thousands of planes each year at the factory next door. But the company had changed hands so many times and had weathered so many recessions that sales had dwindled to a trickle. An Indonesian sultan now owned it, and the few hundred locals who still worked there held their breath and hoped that their jobs wouldn’t fly off into the sunset. In the meantime corporate jets whisked in and out of the airport all day, ferrying the One Percent in from points north to their estates out on the barrier island. The last thirty years had brought a crazy amount of wealth into Vero, and the Maseratis were starting to outnumber the Mazdas. Fortunately the rich folks lived in gated communities, which kept them at a safe distance from us normal, civilized people.

  We were airborne not long after I had parked my car in the general aviation lot. Sonny’s venerable 1964 Piper Comanche had a lot of hours on it but was well maintained, with a
big, noisy Lycoming engine that made it impossible for us to talk to each other in the cockpit without using the headsets. Somehow Sonny had kept control of the plane even though it had a dubious past; it had gathered dust in a DEA hangar while he had served two felony-possession stretches over at Okeechobee Correctional. Technically, it belonged to his sister Myra who was a dispatcher at the Sheriff’s office, although as far as I knew Myra had never flown in the aircraft, nor could she even squeeze through the cockpit door, as she weighed twice what her brother did, and Sonny was no shrinking violet.

  He kept the cruising speed at about one hundred twenty knots and flew us south along the coast before turning southwest over the Everglades. Piloting small planes around Florida has always struck me as a mindless, expensive hobby—I mean, the whole interior of the state was basically the same topography: ranches, groves, shallow lakes, and swamps. You would think that the novelty would wear off after a while, but don’t bother mentioning that to Sonny. I tried, through the headphones, and he gestured at the knitting project in my lap and laughed. He had a point; my own hobby wasn’t exactly living on the edge, and half of the things that I had knit were probably languishing in people’s closets.

  But knitting was good for my dexterity, according to Megan, and it allowed me to think without distraction. And what I was currently thinking about was not pleasant. I smelled big trouble in the Arguelles family, and it felt like more than just a runaway wife and a jilted husband. The timing of Raimundo Pimentel’s shooting death was unnerving. Even though I knew nothing concrete, I was tempted to check in with the police despite what I’d said to Gustavo. That would be the smart thing to do, promise or no promise. I would call Detective Lieutenant Heffernan in Coral Gables after we landed, I would find out who had been assigned to the Pimentel shooting, and I would try to get myself in the loop. Maybe I could pull it off without exposing Gustavo’s and Lilian’s dirty laundry, although that mattered less to me now, as I had been calling and texting both of them nonstop with no response, which was ratcheting up my blood pressure.

  On cue, my phone buzzed in my pocket with a text from Gustavo.

  Please take care of Roberto, OK?

  Can’t, I wrote back. I’m in Sonny’s plane. Where are you?

  Go home. Pick him up from school and keep him. It might be a couple days.

  Gustavo, what the hell is going on? I saw the news about Lilian’s father.

  Under control, he sent. Just get him. Please. Por favor, Vince.

  Got you covered, I sent back. But the truth was—I didn’t. I was on the way to Key West, to locate his wife. And now Gustavo was worried about Roberto, too? Damn. What was I supposed to do about that?

  I turned to watch my friend at the controls. He wore gold-framed Ray-Bans that were the only decoration on his shaved, walnut-colored head except for an earring in the shape of a peace sign. Sonny looked younger than his forty-three years, which was a miracle considering his former lifestyle, but he was nothing if not a survivor. “We have to turn around,” I said through the microphone on my headset.

  “No way,” he said. “Not until I get my conch fritters from Sloppy Joe’s.”

  I had promised Sonny a lunch at the iconic Key West hangout. “It’s Roberto. His dad just texted. He wants me to pick him up from school.”

  “What time?”

  “He has baseball until four thirty.”

  “No problem,” Sonny said over the crackle of the headphones. He pushed the throttle forward, making the engine throb even louder as the plane picked up speed. “We can make that. This old bitch is faster than she looks. And I’m hungry.”

  *

  The only taxi left at the Key West International Airport was a dented van that was painted nail-polish pink. You could rent a tandem bicycle for less, but I didn’t think I could manage it with my bad leg, and Sonny wasn’t about to pedal for both of us. We chose the van and ignored the nonstop commentary from the driver, a mature blonde who reeked of cigarettes and was dressed in a clinging blue tank top that would have looked considerably better on her granddaughter. A small dog sat on the seat next to her, yapping at Sonny whenever the driver paused to cough. The woman drove us past the beaches and low-rise condos along South Roosevelt Boulevard, which gave way to rows of small concrete-block houses as we crossed the island from south to north. I asked her to drop me off on the Palm Avenue Causeway, the last location where Lilian’s phone had registered a signal. The causeway fronted on the Garrison Bight, one of Key West’s principal harbors that sheltered a mix of houseboats, sportfishing charters, luxury yachts and anything else that would float. Even though I was working, I couldn’t help but unwind a little as the day got prettier and prettier. If you enjoyed the sun, the breeze, the water, and oh yes, the rum, Key West was one of the most chill places on the planet, as Roberto would say.

  Sonny continued on with the taxi, and the plan was that he would wait for me at the restaurant while I poked around on the docks. If I was going to get anything done, I would have to work fast. I had a two-hour window of time on the island if we were going to fly back in time to pick up Roberto, grab Royal at the sitter’s, and slip back into my house before anyone was the wiser.

  Charter Boat Row’s faded blue sign said “historic” on it, but the marina looked like any other collection of boats moored to a network of aluminum and concrete docks. Perhaps it was historic because Ernest Hemingway had tied up there once. In Key West there are little brass placards stationed about every ten feet that commemorate the locations where Hemingway lived, wrote his novels, occupied a barstool, sneezed, cleared his throat, or paused to clip his fingernails. I found a low, gray-painted structure that was flanked by a Gatorade machine, a jumble of marine equipment, and a bait cooler, and I knocked at the threshold of an open door. A shirtless, middle-aged guy was inside, bent over a long wooden table and working on something. His underwear was riding up above the back of his shorts, not quite high enough to cover an unwelcome display of plumber butt.

  He turned when he heard the knock, holding a knife and showing a smear of blood across his ample stomach. “Yeah?”

  I wiggled a dog-eared business card out of my wallet and handed it to him. It had been a long time since I’d done that, and it felt strange. “I’m a private investigator from Vero Beach. Looking for a woman from there. She was here on Sunday.”

  “A lot of people were here on Sunday,” he said. I saw a fat grouper on the filleting table behind him, half cut-up and still sleek from the salt water.

  “She may have left on a boat,” I said.

  The guy took a look at my card and handed it back. “Sorry, man. Can’t help you.”

  “Five-oh, maybe a hundred pounds, mid-forties, dark hair. She’s Cuban American. She might not have left willingly.”

  “I still can’t help. Lots of people come by here. I don’t pay much attention.”

  “Mind if I scout around?”

  “Whatever,” he said. He turned back to his fish and resumed his work with the knife.

  I walked out of the small building and into the bright midday sun. About thirty boats were currently at the marina, and there were several empty slips. Even if this was the right address, anyone who might have seen Lilian could now be out for the day, or just gone and not coming back—boaters came and went. I knocked on the doors of several of the houseboats, where I figured I’d find the more permanent residents, but I only succeeded in talking to one cellophane-skinned old guy who looked to be about a hundred and thought that I was his son. The whole exercise was a long shot, especially because it was just me and not a group of cops canvassing the waterfront with the potential threat of warrants and subpoenas.

  What I needed was help—strength in numbers. It took manpower to knock on every single door until some unlikely person admitted to having seen something. All of this was yet another reason for me to call Lieutenant Heffernan, and despite what Gustavo had asked, I was getting close to going against his wishes. If Roberto’s mother was at risk, all p
romises were on hold.

  I left the dock and began to walk west along the causeway toward town. Barbara and I had spent several months here back when we first knew each other, before I’d suffered my accident. Walking around Old Town had been one of my favorite things to do, and I decided that I would hoof it to Sloppy Joe’s, bad leg or not. I turned west onto Eaton Street, passing rows of clapboarded conch houses that reminded me of my native Vermont, although the thin-walled, uninsulated structures were built for the tropics, not the insanely cold climate where I had grown up. I was thinking about Roberto, and I was increasingly worried. The situation with his parents smelled fishier than the dead grouper on the cutting table. I decided that I would hustle to the restaurant, collect Sonny, grab a bag of fritters to go, and get the hell back to the airport. It had become clear to me that this trip was a dead end that would cost me a few hundred bucks worth of aviation fuel with nothing to show for it.

  A blacked-out minivan pulled alongside me as I walked, and a man lowered the passenger-side window. He wore sunglasses, with a coffee-brown complexion and short, dark hair underneath a white rapper cap. I couldn’t see past him to the driver, because Rapper-Cap was humongous enough to be blocking the view. I guessed that he wasn’t a goodwill ambassador from the Tourist Bureau. He looked like professional muscle, and I absent-mindedly patted my side for the gun that I hadn’t bothered to bring.

  “Need a lift there, bud?” he said. I noticed a slight Latino accent.

  “Just going to Sloppy Joe’s. A few more blocks.”

  “You walk funny, bud.” He wasn’t smiling.

  “I hurt my foot kicking somebody’s ass,” I said.

  The man leaned forward, and I got a glimpse of his partner. The driver was also Latino, and was bearded, with a wreath of black hair around the back of his head that ended in a single, oily braid. The passenger must have been the little brother, because the driver looked like three people packed into one T-shirt.

  “You’re coming with us,” the passenger said. “You gonna go peaceful?”

  “No,” I said.