Tanzi's Game (Vince Tanzi Book 3)

by C I Dennis

  Now that’s motivation.

  I must have looked like a pole-vaulter who happened to be giving birth while in mid-jump, but I made it, and landed in a sore but uninjured heap on the floor of Lilian’s former cell. I limped outside and surveyed my surroundings.

  I was in the middle of goddamned nowhere.

  *

  It was a sweltering, two-hour limp down a gravel road to the Tamiami Trail, the highway that crosses southern Florida from Miami to Naples. I waited for an eastbound trucker and stepped onto the pavement, waving my arms wildly to flag him down. He hit the airbrakes and pulled to a stop in front of me, and I climbed up the step to the lowered passenger-side window.

  “I need your phone,” I said. “I have to call the police.”

  The truck driver had long, orange-colored hair that spilled out from underneath a railroad cap. He spit a tobacco wad out of his own window and turned back to me. “I ain’t callin’ no po-lice,” he said. “I’m five tons overweight, and my insurance is lapsed.”

  “Just take me to the nearest place with a phone,” I said. “I don’t have a car. I got hijacked. I’m on foot.”

  “Well you sure picked a hot one, didn’t ya, bud?” he said, giving me a brown-stained smile. “Hop in.”

  Tobacco Teeth ended up taking me all the way to Westchester, one town over from Coral Gables, where he had to turn north up the Palmetto Expressway. He dropped me at a tire store near the on-ramp, and I borrowed a phone and called Talbot Heffernan in his office.

  “Where the hell are you? You wouldn’t believe how many people have called here looking for you,” he said.

  “Send someone to pick me up, and I’ll explain when I see you.” I gave him the address.

  Ten minutes later, Lieutenant Heffernan himself pulled up in an unmarked cruiser, and I got into the seat.

  “I need a beer,” I said. “And some food. Let’s stop somewhere.”

  “You need a bath,” Heffernan said. “You stink to holy hell.”

  “I spent the night in a slaughterhouse.”

  “We’ll get takeout. And then you’re going to my house, and my wife will throw those clothes in the nearest dumpster.”

  *

  Heffernan had dispatched a team to the slaughterhouse that was following my directions: six miles west of the Indian casino, as I had measured from the truck’s odometer. Then, south on a deserted dirt road. Maybe they would find something that would lead them to wherever Lilian was now, but I doubted it. The Iturbes were smarter than they looked.

  The detective and I drove to Javier Pimentel’s house to get my car and my phone. I didn’t expect to see Javier there, or the Iturbes, and we didn’t, but Heffernan requested another team to watch the place. He also had the whole state looking for the silver Honda Fit, which would be distinguishable by the fact that the tightly packed-in occupants might burst out like a two-headed jack-in-the-box if you opened the door. I glanced at some of the several dozen texts and calls that I’d missed and put the phone back into my pocket. Before I tackled any of that, I needed to finish off the container of fried oysters that we had picked up at a joint on the Miracle Mile. Priorities.

  Chloe Heffernan looked shocked to see me when I pulled my car into the driveway behind her husband’s cruiser and got out. Or maybe it was the smell. She led me inside and made me shuck off my preppy red pants and blue polo, and she handed me a bath towel as she gathered the clothes. “Take your time,” she said, pointing to the bathroom. “You may need more than one shower to get the stink off.”

  “That’s the last time I stay at the Hotel Abattoir,” I said.

  *

  Chloe had set me up on the back patio under a row of leafy palms that rustled in the sea breeze. I was wearing a borrowed pair of workout pants, which had a stretch waistband to accommodate my larger frame, and she had found an XL shirt that someone had mistakenly bought for her size-L husband. She made me a pitcher of sweet tea and left me alone to make my calls. I started with Rose DiNapoli, who had left the most recent message. I had promised Rose that I would call her back more than twenty-four hours ago, and she’d left one voicemail and six texts. I got her on the first ring.

  “Vince? Where were you?”

  “I got hijacked by the Iturbe brothers,” I said. “I found Lilian, too, but they took off in the morning, before I woke up.”

  “Oh my god.”

  “I think I’m figuring this out,” I said. “It’s about money, and there’s some bad blood mixed in.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Detective Heffernan’s house. I’m catching up on my calls. Where are you?”

  “I’m—in bed,” she said.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just beaten down. You know.”

  “You mean the, um—”

  “Partly that, and partly because my boyfriend is an asshole. When I told him what happened, he said that I should go to his club and work out with him. Be strong and get over it. Those were his words. What a fucking jerk.”

  I knew better than to pick sides, so I said: “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh is right,” she said. “The wedding is off, as of last night. He went ballistic, probably because he’s put down ten grand in deposits.”

  I decided to stick my neck out. “Rose, you have to go talk to someone. That’s the only thing that will help. Your boyfriend is wrong.”

  “What do you do when bad things happen to you?” she said. “Is that what you would do? See a therapist?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I go out for oysters. I just polished off a quart.”

  I heard her laugh for the first time since we’d left Cuba. “You’ve ruined me, Vince. You know that.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You spoiled my would-be marriage, thank god,” she said. “I didn’t think that there were any decent men out there. I thought I had to settle, but I won’t now. You gave me hope. Too bad you’re married.”

  “Um, Rose—”

  “Relax, my friend. When you’re done with this you can take me out for some red snapper. I hate oysters.”

  “I knew you had a flaw,” I said.

  *

  Neither Sonny, nor Barbara, nor Megan, nor anyone in the house answered their cellphones. Royal didn’t have one yet, because the trend among parents these days is to not get a phone for their children until they can actually form words. Once that happens, it’s a free-for-all.

  I reached Roberto, who was thrilled to hear that I had at least seen his mother, if briefly. Aside from that he sounded glum. We can’t get past this stupid token code thing, he had confessed. It was unlike Roberto to not be able to hack into anything. He scared me with what he could do sometimes, and we had discussed that topic at length; my sense was that he was developing the maturity to know when to hold back. That’s not easy for a fifteen-year-old boy, and it was part of why I liked him so much.

  I asked him why he was so sure that the token code was the problem, and he said that he wasn’t. It could also be that the email program required an RSA key fob, which was a little device that generated numbers every couple of minutes that you had to type into the mail program along with your password. It was similar to a soft token program but was more secure, as you had to be in possession of the physical device. If they had used an RSA key then he would never get in, he said, because the fob would be somewhere in Cuba, in Maria Inés Calderón’s possession.

  “What about on this side?” I asked him. “Would Segundo have used one?”

  There was a long silence. Finally he said, “Doh.”

  “Is that Spanish?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s Simpson. You’re a genius, Vince.”

  I’ll take my technology praise when can I get it, and I basked in the glow of outwitting him, for once. “So now we have to find Segundo’s key fob,” I said.

  “Right,” my young associate said. “Get it to me as soon as you find it.”

  *

  Chloe Heffernan had ne
ver seen Segundo Pimentel’s RSA fob, although she’d seen pretty much everything else. Her husband had gone back to his precinct office, and she and I had taken a moment to talk after I had wrapped up my business on the phone.

  I hardly knew the woman, but she looked drawn and on the edge of something. A hit man had recently killed her employer and lover of nine years, and that would explain most of it, but there was something else. It was as if she was begging me to ask her a question, but I had no idea what it was that she wanted me to ask. I did press her about Segundo’s six-million-dollar backgammon debt to his half-sister, but she just shook her head. I also asked her why Maria Calderón stood to collect another sixty million from her Florida siblings, but she still pleaded ignorance. Or maybe she was pleading the fifth, and she just wasn’t telling me that. Something strange was going on, but all I could get out of her was my twice-washed Nantucket Reds and the dark blue polo shirt, which I thanked her for and donned before getting back into my convertible. I gave her another business card and told her that she could call me anytime. The two of us already shared the secret of her and Segundo’s love affair, and I wondered if there were other secrets that Tal Heffernan wasn’t privy to, but that I might be, if I had only known what to ask.

  I was worried about Chloe. Something was brewing, and it was starting to give off a bad odor like my clothes had before she had so carefully laundered them.

  *

  South Miami Hospital was practically deserted, and I realized that it was a late Friday afternoon and the hot season was kicking into gear. Florida is unendurable for most people in the summertime. If you lived here you either toughed it out under the air conditioning or you hightailed it to somewhere cooler. I happen to love the Florida summer, including the heat, but I’m a Vermonter by birth, and after enough winters we northern folk wouldn’t be uncomfortable in Hell, at least not until we thawed out. And think of the firewood we’d save.

  Gustavo Arguelles not only looked better, he could actually speak a few tentative words out of the slot that provided an opening to his mouth between the bandages. The docs had reduced the size of the dressing, and I could see more of his face. He was still very weak, but he could now get up and walk to and from the bathroom, and he was thrilled by the simple accomplishment. I could certainly relate to that—it hadn’t been so long ago that I had come out of my own coma and had made the long, hard trek to the john as if I was climbing Everest with Hillary and Norgay. I was delighted and surprised to see him like this, and I pressed the attending doctor to release him and let me take him home.

  “I saw Lilian,” I told Gustavo. “She was being held captive in a building west of here. The Iturbes mugged me again, and they took me out to where she was.”

  “She all right?” he whispered through the slot around his lips.

  “I think so. They took her somewhere else this morning, before I was awake. I escaped, but I saw the car, and the cops are all over it. This is going to be finished soon.”

  “How can I help?” he managed to say.

  “You just rest up. Roberto and I are on this. We’re getting close.”

  “Who kidnapped her?”

  “Lilian? I think it was her half-sister. Maria. Lilian explained some things about the family.”

  “She hates—” Gustavo started to say, but he began coughing, and it looked incredibly painful. His lungs were fragile, and he had to be in some serious pain just to breathe, let alone cough.

  “Take it easy, bud,” I said.

  Gustavo’s breathing calmed down, and he looked up at me. “The woman hates my guts,” he whispered. “Lili didn’t say?”

  “Didn’t say what?”

  “Maria Calderón and I were engaged,” he said. “And then I fell in love with Lilian. Lili and I eloped, a month before Maria and I were supposed to be married. Roberto doesn’t know any of this, by the way. He doesn’t even know who she is.”

  Now that would certainly create some bad blood, I thought. No wonder Lilian Arguelles had been treated like chattel in this crazy family financial game. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Weren’t my cases supposed to be simple? Like, some married dude was shacking up with his au pair, or some angst-ridden teenager took off to the big city, and I could make a few calls, locate them, and get paid? The Pimentels were like one of those Telemundo soap operas that we English-speakers didn’t understand, but we still got the drift—everybody was messing with everybody, and I was suddenly lacking the necessary energy to chart out all of the family intrigues.

  A nurse entered the room and began to remove Gustavo’s things from a closet and pack them into a plastic sack. “You’re outta here, Mr. G,” she said, smiling. “The doctors just said that it’s all right for Mr. Tanzi to drive you home today.”

  I saw tears forming in my friend’s eyes, and I let him have a private moment while I helped the nurse pack up his belongings. I was finally going to bring Gustavo home to my house where he would be with his son. And then I would find his wife, and I would reunite the family who had always treated me like a favorite uncle.

  The Arguelles clan was coming back together—and I would make it happen. If I had to knock a few heads, or even stage a minor Cuban revolution of my own, it would be done. I wasn’t afraid of some Bryn Mawr-socialist-extortionist-kidnapper, or her Taser-wielding minions, and anyway I had now officially had my fill of this crap. I had a baby to take care of, a marriage to salvage, and I probably also had another shitload of laundry to do when I got home, seeing how the place had been turned into Vinny’s Refugee Camp. I would drive Gustavo Arguelles there, make him comfortable, and he would mend, and so would I. My injuries weren’t as obvious as his, but I knew that I had taken some serious hits over the last few days—both emotional and physical—and it was now time to rest up for a short while, and then resume the game.

  If this were a backgammon game, I would now double my opponent. Because I had suddenly figured out where Segundo Pimentel’s key fob was, and if that would help Roberto get access to his aunt’s computer in Havana, then maybe we had the beginnings of a plan.

  *

  “It’s a key fob,” I said to Bobby Bove. “So it has to be with his car keys. You’re holding the car, right?”

  “The car but not the keys,” he said. “We had to tow it to the impound lot from Middleton’s. We couldn’t find the keys.”

  “Send the divers back?”

  “They already bitched about the gators the last time.”

  “It’s important,” I said. “I’ll be in Vero in two hours, and I really need it.”

  Gustavo’s discharge was taking forever, and by the time we made it home it would be dinnertime. I had reached Sonny, who was making a Cuban ropa vieja stew with Susanna, which he had described as being everything that I’d had in my refrigerator plus some flank steak. Roberto was on the computer, and Megan was off somewhere. Barbara hadn’t been seen.

  She had texted me several times since I had left my cellphone at Javier Pimentel’s, each time with a variation of the same message: we need to talk. She was right, but that didn’t mean I felt like talking or that I would be civil to her if we did. Gustavo was still signing paperwork when I took a seat outside his room and finally answered Barbara.

  We can talk after you bring the furniture back.

  She responded immediately. It’s not that simple.

  Yes it is, I wrote.

  I found myself staring at my cellphone, waiting for her reply. An apology, something about Royal, a kind word, whatever. Just not silence.

  Since you refuse to talk with me I’ll have to tell you this way, she finally wrote. I’ve been unfaithful to you.

  Her words hit me like the Taser darts that I’d taken the day before. Maybe worse. There it was, in black and white, right in front of my face on the tiny screen.

  I already knew that, I wrote, but I held down the button that would shut the phone off before I could send it. A nurse was wheeling Gustavo out of the room with his belongings in
a bag on his lap.

  “If you want to go get your car we’ll meet you out front,” she said. She was one of the younger ones, and she was sporting a new-looking diamond ring on her finger, without an accompanying wedding band.

  I pointed to it. “Engaged?”

  “Last night,” she said, beaming.

  Good luck, sweetheart. You’re going to need it.

  *

  Gustavo Arguelles was relaxing comfortably in my bed. I was going to have to take a headcount and decide where everyone else would be sleeping for the night. Susanna had made him a mango smoothie, and he looked a lot happier than anytime I’d seen him since he had been assaulted. Sonny had served the ropa vieja to the rest of us shortly after we had arrived, and he and Susanna had gone way overboard on the garlic. I am pretty much immune to the stuff, having grown up with my mother’s cooking, but after two bowls of the stew my breath was strong enough to peel wallpaper.

  Bobby Bove had called to say that he was on the way to my house with Segundo Pimentel’s car keys. The divers had found them in the muck with the help of a submersible metal detector. Segundo had possibly dropped them into the water in his rush to save himself, or maybe his assailant had tossed them there. Either way, it didn’t matter now, because we had them, and according to Bobby the little RSA device was still displaying six-digit numbers that would change once every minute. Roberto smiled when he heard the news and said to me: You and I are not getting any sleep tonight.

  I didn’t know about that, because I was truly exhausted. Getting the official declaration of infidelity from Barbara had been a disastrous finish to an already long day that had begun in a foul-smelling slaughterhouse and had gone downhill from there, although Gustavo’s release was cheering everyone up. I had taken Sonny aside after the meal to tell him that he was right about his friend Angelo, and he shook his head and said that he was sorry, and he wished he’d never mentioned it, but we both knew that things didn’t work like that. If your mate was cheating on you, you usually found out, and it was better for it to come from a friend who cared about you.

  Bobby Bove dropped off the key fob and declined my invitation to stay for a beer, as he had a date. A hot young chickadee, as he’d described her, and it made me think of Megan Rumsford and wonder where she was. I had been thinking of booking some P.T. for the first thing in the morning if she could do it, and I had tried calling her cell, but the call went to voicemail. That was probably for the best. I needed to follow through on finding another physical therapist, although I had mellowed on that issue somewhat since Megan had moved in with us and had behaved, relatively speaking, not counting all of the flouncing around in my too-large shirts.