Tanzi's Game (Vince Tanzi Book 3)

by C I Dennis

  He raised his hand from inside the car, and I flinched. Oh shit. I was going to get shot—again. Even if I had been carrying, he was too fast; I watched him pull the trigger, and I prepared to die, and then I realized that that wasn’t going to happen because he wasn’t holding a gun. He held a yellow Taser C2, and the twin electrode darts were headed for my chest with fifty thousand volts.

  Back when I was a deputy, we all had to endure a Taser hit as part of our training, and it sucked. It didn’t actually cause pain; you just felt like you were dead for a split-second, and then you lay helpless wherever you fell, tingling, and with your muscles bound up harder than a Genoa salami.

  The two big guys loaded me into their van and one of them jabbed a hypodermic needle into my still-paralyzed thigh. By the time the Taser’s effect wore off I was already halfway to Loopy Land. At least I wasn’t dead, I thought, as everything slid out of focus.

  *

  My new amigos had dumped me in a parking lot next to the White Street Substation, behind a row of white rental trucks. My head was swimming and I felt like throwing up, but I was able to dislodge my phone from the pocket of my trousers and dial Sonny. The cellphone felt malleable in my hand like a damp sponge.

  “Where are you, man? I been callin’ your ass for an hour.”

  “Get a taxi and pick me up. I got mugged.”

  “What?”

  “A couple of goons hit me with a Taser,” I said. “Then they shot me up with something. I’m guessing it was ketamine. It’s like I’m drunk out of my gourd.”

  “Ain’t that the date rape drug?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I believe that my virginity is still intact.”

  I gave Sonny the address, and he pulled up ten minutes later in the exact same pink taxi that had taken us in from the airport. Granny Tank Top leaned out the window. “You’re not going to throw up in my car, are you?” I got in the back without answering, and sat next to Sonny.

  “Hospital,” he said to the driver.

  “Airport,” I corrected.

  “You look like you died, man,” Sonny said.

  “And you look fabulous. But that’s probably the ketamine talking.”

  “So what the fuck was this all about?”

  “Hey, no profanity in here,” the driver said, glowering at us in the rearview mirror.

  “Not a goddamn—I mean—gosh darn clue,” I said to Sonny. “I’m guessing it was somebody trying to scare me off.”

  “You find out anything on the docks?”

  “Nope. But I must have stirred the pot.”

  “Time to call the man,” Sonny said. “You just got assaulted. That’s a felony.”

  “Time to go home and take care of business,” I said. “And then we’ll do some assaulting of our own.”

  *

  The drug had pretty much worn off by the time we landed in Vero Beach, and it had been replaced by a skull-crushing headache. Sonny offered me something from his shade tree pharmacy, but I’d already had a dalliance with painkillers a couple years back, and they were so addictive that I was now hesitant to pop even a Tylenol. I would just sweat this one out.

  I found Roberto outside his school, gym bag in hand. I hustled him into the car and sped off to Mrs. LaBombard’s, back on the mainland on Old Dixie Highway, where we collected Royal. It was almost six PM, and Mrs. LaBombard was about to give me her punctuality lecture, but I made a quick apology, extracted Barbara’s check along with an extra twenty out of my wallet, dropped them on her hall table, and ran. Barbara would be home in ten minutes unless she stopped for something, and I was determined to get to the house before her, even if I broke every traffic law to do it.

  We pulled into the driveway, and I opened the garage door with the remote. Whew. No Yukon. Roberto helped me with Royal, hastily stashing him in his playpen, while I got him a Coke and poured myself a tumbler of water from the refrigerator door. We sat down in the living room as if we’d been there all afternoon. Ten seconds after we took our seats the front door opened, and Barbara came in with a grocery bag, which she put down on the kitchen counter.

  “When did you get home?”

  “Oh, a while ago,” I said.

  “Well I hope it wasn’t too long ago,” Barbara said. “You left the garage door open, and your car is still running.”

  “Jeezum crow,” I said, shaking my head while Roberto smiled.

  “I’ll go turn it off,” Roberto said. He was still a few months away from getting his license, but he took every opportunity that he was offered to sit at the wheel, and I indulged him whenever I could. Roberto went out the kitchen door, and Barbara scooped up Royal from his playpen where he had been happily gnawing on a blue plastic elephant.

  “Roberto is going to stay the night,” I said. “Something came up with his folks.”

  “His mother’s still gone?” she asked. She was stroking Royal’s soft cheek while she held him, and he inserted a chubby hand into her mouth.

  “Both of them are gone.”

  “What’s going on?” She was paying attention now.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Just get it over with,” she said, standing. “You’re going to investigate.”

  “Yes. It may be a couple of days. I’ll involve the police at some point.”

  “Why not now? You’re still an invalid, for God’s sake. You can barely function.” Her voice was rising as her face reddened.

  “I thought I was doing pretty well.”

  “Pretty well?” She was yelling. “You took a bullet to the head, Vince. You limp, you slur your words, and you forget things all the time. You’re not up to it, and you’ll put us all in danger.”

  “Roberto could be in danger—”

  “And so you bring him into our house? Are you stupid or something?”

  My head was throbbing even worse than before. Barbara’s harsh words had lit my fuse, and the spark was burning just inches from the powder keg. I seldom lose my temper, but getting tasered, and drugged, and flying for four hours, and then busting my ass to get everybody collected and home safe just to be reamed out by my wife was too much for one day.

  “Shut up, Barbara.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  “What you said was shut up.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You’re correct.”

  Roberto came back into the house at that moment and froze in the kitchen, keys in hand.

  “You and I are going to stay at your place,” I said to him. “I’ll pack a few things.”

  Barbara turned on her heel and disappeared into the nursery with the baby.

  “I can stay at the house by myself,” Roberto said. “You don’t—”

  “Wait in the car.” I took a small suitcase from a closet and wheeled it down the hall to our bedroom. Three pairs of socks, some underwear, a few shirts, some trousers, something to sleep in, my knitting bag, and my toilet kit. I tossed in a fat paperback Dostoevsky novel that Sonny had lent me, and then reached under the bed and pulled out the gun case. I unlocked it and removed my Glock, a couple of extra clips, two boxes of ammo, and my waistband holster. It had been a while since I had handled a firearm, and the ugly black automatic felt heavier than I remembered.

  I zipped it into a side compartment of my knitting bag and quietly hoped that it would be staying right there. The part that had upset me the most about my argument with Barbara was that she had a point. I had no business investigating anything, much less packing a gun. In my present condition I was more likely to shoot off a toe than take out some bad guy. That knowledge didn’t make me any less angry, although I knew that there was nothing that I could do about it, because I would just make it worse.

  Tanzi’s Tip #2: Whoever said: “Don’t get mad, get even,” couldn’t have been married. At least not for long.

  *

  Eighteen pages into Crime and Punishment I already knew that Raskolnikov was toast, and I wasn’t going to
wade through the next five hundred pages to find out why. Sonny was crazy about the Russians, but to me they were long-winded and depressing. I had enough on my plate without having to read about someone else’s troubles.

  Roberto had gone to bed, but not to sleep—I could see the light coming from under his bedroom door. I had told him about his grandfather, and we had had a long conversation about the Pimentel family. Roberto had seemed to shrug off the news of Raimundo Pimentel’s death, but I knew that it would reverberate for a long time. He told me that he never saw any of his mother’s family except for Susanna, his aunt, although he was aware that he had two bachelor uncles who were involved in the family real estate business. The much more immediate concern for him was that his mother had taken off, and his father was now out looking for her, and neither he nor I knew any more than that. In addition to my lack of knowledge, I had my wife telling me that I wasn’t capable of doing anything about it, and two thugs threatening to break my legs if I did.

  I don’t usually care much about the why, like why Raskolnikov had killed the pawnbroker; my job as an investigator had been about uncovering the rest of it—the who, where, how, and so on. The why was for the courts. But in the case of Lilian’s disappearance I was no longer buying what I had been fed about the why. No way would she take off with some guy. And I doubted that Gustavo believed it, either. A man usually knows when his wife’s not happy. Just ask yours truly.

  My body ached and my head still hurt from the combination of the Taser, the ketamine injection, and Barbara’s stinging but accurate words. I doubted that I would get much sleep, especially since I had chosen to bed down on the Arguelles’ too-short family room sofa. Just before I finally dozed off I had a moment of clarity, like the way the sun flashes just before it disappears into the water on a Key West sunset:

  I am too old for this shit.

  Tomorrow I would call the Coral Gables cops, and I would also drop in on Bobby Bove at the Indian River Sheriff’s office. My task, for now, was to stick close to Roberto and make sure that he didn’t disappear, too. That much I figured I could handle.

  THURSDAY

  About the only thing that I don’t like about Glory’s convertible is that if you drop something between the seat and the center console, it’s gone. You are never going to see it again, even if you squeeze the bejeezus out of your hand trying to reach in, and then dig around with a kitchen knife, or a coat hanger, or a chop stick (which will inevitably snap in two), and then move the seat forward and backward while feeling around underneath, only to come up with a half-chewed, rancid apple slice that had somehow worked its way into that dead zone from Royal’s car seat. The space was the Bermuda Triangle of BMWs. But the spare key to Roberto’s place had fallen in there, so here I was sitting in his driveway after having driven him to school, unable to enter the Arguelles house.

  Of course, I could break in. That had been my specialty for years when I was investigating, and even back when I was a deputy. Shut out of your car? Call Vince. Need to investigate somewhere you might not be welcome? Give me two minutes while I do the lock. My talent had ultimately gotten me fired from the Sheriff’s office after I’d blown a murder case by “discovering” a murder weapon via a warrant-free search, and the perp had walked after my cover story fell apart under cross examination. I had been a deputy long enough to be allowed to retire, but the lesson had been learned, and these days I used my lock-picking skills judiciously, if at all.

  I had the right tool in my kit at home. Barbara hadn’t called, or texted, and by now she would be in school. She would have made arrangements for Royal’s care, probably with Mrs. LaBombard. I was in no hurry to reconcile, partly because I felt physically even worse than I had on the previous evening, and partly because I had some things to attend to before I turned myself in to the Warden, as Sonny called her, and reported for daddy-duty. I had a nine o’clock with Bobby Bove, and I figured that we’d call Coral Gables from his office.

  I drove over to my own house and opened the garage. Hanging on the wall was a mechanical grabber with a flexible shaft and a tiny LED light that helped you see where you were going if you dropped a nut or bolt deep into an engine. I worked the device into the space next to the seat and came up with something: a credit card. I put the card on the seat next to me and tried again. This time I found the keys, and I pocketed them. I had no idea how long I would be staying at Roberto’s, but I decided that it might be wise to get an extra set made while I was downtown.

  I didn’t remember losing a credit card, and I didn’t recognize the bank. And then I noticed the name: Megan Rumsford. My physical therapist? What was her card doing here? Megan’s office complex was not far from the Sheriff’s. I would return it to her after I saw Bobby.

  *

  Bobby Bove peeled a tangerine over his wastebasket while we listened to Detective Lieutenant Talbot Heffernan talk via the speakerphone. Bobby silently offered me a slice, but I shook my head. I hadn’t eaten anything since I’d been roughed up the day before, and I still wasn’t hungry.

  “The Pimentels moved over here from Hialeah around fifteen years ago,” Heffernan said. “The old man ran the bolitas racket back in the day, and we pretty much looked the other way, although the game was fixed, not to mention illegal, but nobody really gave a shit unless somebody killed someone.”

  “How often did that happen?” Bobby asked.

  “There was the occasional turf war,” Heffernan said. “And he wasn’t just doing the numbers game—his runners did some loan sharking on the side. Enough for him to buy two high-end shopping centers over here by the beach. He owns at least a dozen more of them, scattered around Dade.”

  “Who were his enemies?” Bobby said to the phone.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Heffernan said. “He’s been legit for a while now. It looked like a hit, and maybe it was just an old score being settled. So who’s the guy with you, Bobby?”

  “Tal, it’s Vince Tanzi,” I said, leaning over the phone. “We met a couple years ago.”

  “I remember,” he said. “That crack house on Sunset. You were after a runaway.”

  “Right. I’m friends with Pimentel’s grandson—his mother is Pimentel’s daughter. They live up here in Vero. The mother took off a couple of days ago, and his dad is gone now, too. Bobby is going to put out a missing persons, from here. But I saw the shooting news on TV, and I wondered about the connection.”

  “What does the daughter do?”

  “She’s a technician at the medical center. The husband is there, too, in accounting. Nice, stable people.”

  “There’s a daughter down here, and two sons,” Heffernan said. “I don’t know much about the daughter up there.”

  “She doesn’t get along with the family. Just her sister, Susanna.”

  “I went out to see Susanna yesterday. She wasn’t too cooperative,” the lieutenant said.

  “How so?” Bobby asked.

  “She wouldn’t let me in,” Heffernan said. “Said she never spoke to the old man, or the brothers. Slammed the door in my face.”

  “I hope you didn’t get your feelings hurt,” Bobby said, as he winked at me.

  “Yeah, I already went to my shrink,” Heffernan said. “He’s going to help me work through it.”

  “What about the sons?” I asked.

  “Tough nuts, both of them,” Heffernan said. “Nobody showed any emotion, let alone grief. Javier and Segundo. I know the younger one—he’s a lawyer.”

  “We’ll send you the info on the missing couple,” Bobby said. “Vince was in the Keys yesterday, looking for the woman. He got himself tasered by two big guys in a black van. It sounded like somebody didn’t want him looking around.”

  “When you say big guys, how big?” Heffernan said.

  “Like, somewhere between a Dolphins linebacker and a commercial freezer,” I said. “I didn’t get a plate number. Late-model minivan with all the chrome blacked out. I’m pretty sure they were Latino, and one
of them had this little braid in the back.”

  “That sounds like the Iturbe brothers,” Heffernan said. “Marielito gangbangers from Hialeah. They just got out of Dade Correctional last week. They worked for the Pimentels, collecting rents, and they got rough with one of the tenants. We’ve been looking for them since the shooting.”

  “OK, keep us in the loop,” Bobby said, and he hung up. He turned back to me. “Your friends might be in a situation. You want us to provide security for the boy?”

  “I got it,” I said. “Thanks for taking this on. I need to go be a househusband.”

  “How’s that working out, by the way?”

  “Not so great. I’m currently living in exile.”

  “You fucked up?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “I’m sleeping on the kid’s couch.”

  “Jeesh. You want to go get drunk and chase girls?” Bobby Bove was still single, even though he was near retirement age. “You probably couldn’t make it any worse, right?”

  “Oh yes I could,” I said.

  *

  “Omigod, I’ve been looking for that everywhere!” Megan took the credit card from my hand and stared at it like it was a winning lottery ticket. “Where did you find this?”

  “In my car, under the seat,” I said. “How did it get there?”

  “Barbara,” she said.

  “My wife?”

  “Yes. She gave me a ride from the Treasure Coast Club last week. It must have fallen out of my pocket.”

  “You know Barbara?”

  “I take her Pilates class,” Megan said. She was smiling broadly. “I can’t tell you how awesome this is. I really didn’t want to go through the hassle of replacing it.”

  “She gave you a ride?”

  “She was driving your car. She said that you guys swap vehicles when you take your trash to the dump. My Jeep died in the parking lot, and I had to get back to work. Oh, thank you Vince, you’re such a boss!”

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “Is everything OK?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You look awful.”

  “People keep saying that,” I said. “I can’t hide these things from you, can I?”