Tanzi's Ice

by C I Dennis

  “I’ve decided already,” I said. “I’m going back to Vero, soon. I just have some things to finish up first.”

  “When can I move back in?” my mother asked.

  “Soon, Mom,” I said. I figured that with some luck I could wrap it up today. I’d had a revelation while I’d lain awake with Yuliana sleeping in my arms. I was pretty sure I’d figured out exactly what Tomas and Günter were up to. After I finished my breakfast, I was going to do some research on the computer, and then make a phone call.

  *

  I was Googling on my laptop in the peace of my mother’s house. She and Mrs. Tomaselli had left, but the smell of the scramble lingered. My phone vibrated.

  It was Roberto. U still up there?

  Yes. Tell your folks it’s OK 2 go hm. I think I’m almost done.

  Cool, he sent back. Miss U!

  I miss U 2! I sent. I loved that young man like a son. Maybe I would be able to handle being a dad, and if I didn’t fuck him or her up too much, my kid might turn out to be awesome like Roberto.

  *

  An hour later I was on I-89 again, heading north. More than two days had passed since I’d heard from Barbara or she’d heard from me. I wasn’t ready to call her. My current excuse was that I was too busy trying to nail Günter and Tomas, but there was more to it than that. I’m good at avoiding things, but I’m even better at realizing that I’m avoiding things. I figured I would have time to call her while I waited for Günter. He might not show up for hours, but I was pretty sure he’d show up. It was time to put my plan into gear.

  I called the number I had for Tomas that I had taken from Brooks’ cellphone.

  “Who is this?” he said.

  “I have a message for Günter Schramm,” I said.

  “I’m not his answering service,” he said. He’d recognized my voice.

  “I’ll be at the house in North Hero,” I said. “I’m waiting for him.”

  “I told you he was out of the country,” he said. “You’ll have a long wait.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, and I hung up.

  *

  No one was home at Brooks Burleigh’s and the front gate was closed. I parked my mother’s Subaru on the road and began the long walk up the hill toward the house. I had my tool bag with me, just in case the place was locked up.

  I don’t get nearly enough exercise at home, and I needed to do something about that. If I was going to start lugging children around, it was time to add some muscle. I’d seen some of the thirty-something dads in airports or on the beach looking like a Sherpa under the weight of the folding stroller, playpen, bottle bag, diaper bag, changing pad, and car seat, with little Junior strapped to their bellies in a pouch. From a distance fatherhood looked like an expedition. I had twenty years on most dads, and I decided I’d better get the weights out as soon as I got home.

  The sun was on the ski trails across the valley, and I could see the chairlifts and gondolas in the distance, ferrying people up the slopes. I was breathing hard, but I was energized, and the crisp winter air felt good. I reached the house in a few minutes and knocked, not expecting an answer. There was none, so I got out my tools.

  The front door lock was a high-end Medeco, which took more than fifteen minutes to pop. By the time I was done my fingers were frozen and I was glad to get inside. An alarm had been activated, but it didn’t bother me. I was going to be in and out, fast.

  Five minutes later I was jogging back down the driveway carrying my tool bag, three full magazines of ammunition, and the beige FN SCAR I’d fired at Brooks’ range the first time I’d met Yuliana Burleigh. I was hustling because the alarm might be wired to the Stowe cops, and I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing running down a road with an assault rifle.

  A little over an hour later I was at the house in North Hero. I parked the Subaru in the driveway where it would be seen. I looked around briefly, but was confident that I had arrived first. There was no one in the house or the other buildings. It was time to sit and wait.

  I found a plastic patio chair in the garage and took it down to the boathouse. I took it around behind the structure to the side that faced away from the main house, cleared away some snow and sat down. I rested the rifle against the side of the building, and then opened my bag and took out my knitting. Sooner or later I was going to have to finish this fucking hat.

  *

  The sunlight had faded to near-dusk when I heard the noise. My feet were frozen solid and I needed to pee, but I stayed absolutely still in my plastic chair. It was a rumbling sound, coming from inside the boathouse. Shortly after it stopped, I heard the door open on the other side of the building. Günter Schramm had arrived, after a five-hour wait.

  I gave him a minute, and then cautiously looked around the edge of the boathouse to watch him. He carried his own rifle, a Kalashnikov, and he wore winter-camouflage fatigues and a white hat. There were several canisters looped to his belt, along with an extra magazine for the rifle. He trod slowly and quietly up the slope like a hunter.

  First, he checked out the car, which he quickly dismissed. Then he approached the house and smashed open a downstairs window with the butt of his rifle. He tossed in two of the canisters; a flashbang grenade which echoed across the surface of the frozen lake, followed by an incendiary grenade that produced a halo of fire from the windows and soon engulfed the whole downstairs in flames. Anyone inside would be deaf, blind, and roasted like my mother’s garlic croutons.

  He waited with his gun raised, expecting me to emerge from the flaming house. I backed up from my position and picked up the FN SCAR. I was in no hurry; eventually he’d come back to the boathouse, and I’d empty a full magazine, which would probably saw him in two. I raised my weapon and prepared to execute the man who had murdered my father and had destroyed my brother’s hands.

  He began walking back, slowly, the fire behind him outlining his huge frame. So this was Yuliana’s ex-husband. He must have outweighed her by two hundred pounds. His eyes were blinking from the smoke and flash of the grenades, which was to my advantage, since I hoped to remain unseen at the corner of the boathouse. I let him get to twenty feet from me and then flicked the safety off my gun.

  I couldn’t do it. It would be killing in cold blood, no matter if he’d attacked my family or not. Günter Schramm opened the boathouse door, not seeing me, and stepped inside the building.

  I stood there wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. I was angrier at myself than I had ever been. I entered the brightly-lit structure in time to see Schramm lowering himself into the hatch of a yellow-and-blue research submarine that was floating alongside a wooden dock. He saw me approaching with the gun, and he quickly closed a Lexan dome over his head and started the boat. He looked like a gigantic astronaut, and he smiled and gave me the finger as the sub began a slow descent into the dark water. My quarry was slipping away before my eyes and would soon be under the ice, far away from the boathouse.

  Cold blood or not—instinct took over, and I fired. A half-dozen rounds deflected off the thick dome and ricocheted around the building before the gun jammed. Furious, I threw it at the disappearing sub and it bounced off and sank into the water.

  The splitting maul I’d used to break the lock was still inside the boathouse, leaning against a wall. I grabbed it and ran out the dock to the submarine. I swung the maul in an arc over my head and crashed it down on the hard surface of the dome. It bounced off, almost taking me into the water. I swung again, harder, and I felt a stab of pain in my wrists when it bounced off the glass again. I only had time for one more swing before the submarine would be out of my reach. I swung hard with the pointed side of the maul facing downward, and the dome shattered. Water poured through the hole as the sub sank lower. Günter Schramm’s smile turned to horror as the frigid water began to engulf him, and he struggled with the hatch cover, but it was too late.

  I watched him drown.

  The sleek blue submarine settled to the bottom and stayed
there. I threw my extra magazines in after it and left the boathouse, and then walked up the slope toward the main house, which was now fully engulfed in flames. I stood in front of the fire, warming my frozen limbs, and for the second time in two days I called Lieutenant John Pallmeister to report a death.

  *

  I sat in my car, bathed in flashing red and blue lights as the embers of the house hissed under the streams of water from the firemen’s hoses. There was almost nothing left except for a tall stone chimney. John Pallmeister emerged from the boathouse and walked up the hill over to my Subaru.

  “Get inside,” I said, and he took the passenger seat.

  “What is that thing?”

  “It’s a Hawkes Deepflight,” I said. “A rich man’s toy.”

  “It’s somebody’s coffin now.”

  “That’s Günter Schramm.”

  “I figured,” he said. “I have to book you.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “That your assault rifle?”

  “No,” I lied. “He had two of them.” Just carrying that weapon could get me a nice long sentence.

  “I’ll get you in front of Patton’s cousin, and we’ll try to have you out tonight.”

  “You know about the Cuban cigars?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I might have to hit Patton up for one,” I said. “I have a baby on the way.”

  *

  Jennifer Connelly and I waited in the holding area of the Edward J. Costello Courthouse in Burlington, a few blocks down Cherry Street from Rod Quesnel’s office. We had appeared before Robert Patton’s cousin, who had agreed to see us in the evening, and Patton himself had shown up and watched from the gallery while I was arraigned. I was released on my own recognizance, given my background as a cop and the “extraordinary” circumstances, as the judge had called them. Give that man a cigar. My new attorney signed some paperwork and showed me where to sign, and we were out on the street. Patton was waiting for us.

  “Ready for that beer?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But no karaoke.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Join us, counselor?” he asked, turning to Jennifer.

  “I can’t drink,” she said, pointing to her belly.

  “Tea, then?”

  “I think I’m having contractions,” she said. “They started in the courtroom.”

  “Oh my God,” Patton said. “You want an ambulance?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I already texted my husband. He’s parked right over there.” She pointed toward a guy waiting in a green Subaru Outback with all the correct bumper stickers along with some that I’d never seen before. We said our goodbyes and watched as she waddled across the street to the car.

  *

  Patton chose Leunig’s, a bistro around the corner on Church Street. The waiter seated us right in front of two musicians: a woman double bass player with long gray hair, and a short guy on a stool with a jazz guitar that was almost as big as he was. They were between songs, tuning up and chatting. The guitar player gave me a look like he’d recognized me. I could pass for a larger version of Junie, except I keep my hair shorter and I have a tan, unlike my brother.

  “He’s my older brother,” I volunteered.

  “I heard all about it,” he said. “We’re going to do a benefit for him.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can he have visitors?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “I’m going over there tonight.”

  “Please tell him we send our love,” the woman said. “What a fucking nightmare.”

  What had happened to Junie was probably any musician’s worst fear. The pair started a song that I recognized from Junie’s repertoire: a ballad called “Here’s That Rainy Day”. They traded solos, and I couldn’t even look at the menu, I was so distracted by the sad, beautiful music and the duo’s virtuosity. Burlington may excel in bumper stickers, but its real treasure was a community of musicians and artists who brought heat to the frigid climate.

  We ordered two beers and I downed the first half of mine in a hurry. “I figured it out last night,” I said. “There’s a website for an organization called the Canadian-American Maritime Research Foundation. It’s a cover, but it described what they supposedly did—zebra mussel study, underwater archeology and so on. They own a sub, called a Deepflight, and when I saw that it all came together. My father was in the Navy, at the Groton sub base. Tomas went into the boathouse that time, and he just vaporized. And they kept the boathouse water defrosted, but there was no boat.”

  “That explains a lot,” he said. “Fucking guy came and went as he pleased. Any idea what they were moving back and forth?”

  “It could have been anything,” I said. “The sub was big enough for several people. It could have been people, cash, drugs, whatever they wanted.”

  “Under the ice,” he said. “Slick. We have satellites, radar, ground sensors, all that stuff, but we’d never see a submarine under a foot of ice.”

  “There must be another location across the border.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “What do you have on Tomas Schultheiss? Can you pick him up?”

  “There’s the accessory thing—to your dad’s murder—but it’s thin. He’s supposedly a diplomat, which makes it a lot harder. Other than that, nothing.”

  “The guy’s a former spy,” I said. “East Germany, before the Wall. Now he’s an extortionist, a smuggler, and a killer.”

  “We’ll get him,” he said. “Sooner or later, don’t worry.”

  “I’m worried,” I said. “I don’t think he’s finished cleaning up.”

  “He changed phones,” he said. “We found the old one in a dumpster in Stowe. Everything was wiped.”

  “When?”

  This afternoon. I had a guy tracking the phone after you gave me the number. Something must have tipped him off.”

  “It was me,” I said. “I called him, to draw Günter out.”

  “You got balls,” he said.

  “I might have moved up a notch on his to-do list.”

  The waiter came and we ordered. Patton said he was paying and to order whatever I wanted. He chose the duck tacos, and I had the poutine, my father’s favorite.

  “That stuff will kill you faster than some spook can,” he said.

  “Yes, but what a way to go,” I said.

  *

  Junie’s hospital room was dark except for the LEDs on the machines. My mother and Mrs. Tomaselli had been there all day and food and flowers were everywhere. A nurse and I were making up the chair-bed when he stirred. “Vin?”

  “Junie,” I said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said.

  “I found Carla, and she’s safe. Günter is dead.”

  He blinked his eyes a few times, and I couldn’t tell whether he was completely awake. “What about Tomas?” he said.

  “He’s next,” I said, and he fell back to sleep.

  *

  The front of my phone lit up, on the small table next to my rock-hard chair-bed. It was almost midnight, but sleep had eluded me. I had too much to process before I could drift off. It was a text from Barbara.

  So hv I just ceased to exist?

  Damn. I was way late in contacting her, with no excuse. I dialed her cell.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s been crazy here.”

  “I thought you’d at least want to know what the doctor said,” she said. “And that was two days ago.”

  “What did he say?”

  “She.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “She.”

  “She said I’m healthy as a horse, and that the baby should be fine. They’re going to do some kind of special test at twelve weeks, because of my age.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “My brother’s hospital room. He’s asleep.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Somebody smashed a
ll his fingers,” I said. “On both hands.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Who would do that to him?”

  “A very bad person,” I said. “He’s out of the picture now.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I killed him.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long time. “Vince, I want you to get on a plane and come home. I can’t handle this.”

  “I can’t. I have to finish it. My family is in danger.”

  “Your family is here, too,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “Barbara—”

  “What?”

  The poutine was bunched in a tight ball at the bottom of my stomach, and I felt like I was about to be sick. But it was time to stop lying.

  “I had an affair. It’s over.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I knew it,” she said. “How many times did you fuck her?”

  I took a deep breath. “Two,” I said. “Actually, two and a half.”

  “Before or after you knew I was pregnant?”

  “Both.”

  She said nothing.

  “I promised I wouldn’t lie to you,” I said. “I feel like a worm.”

  “Fuck you, Vince Tanzi,” she said. “Don’t ever call me again.”

  “Barbara—”

  “Just stay the hell out of my life,” she said.

  “We have a child on the way.”

  “The hell we do,” she said. “You can go fuck somebody else if you want a child. This one’s mine.”

  She hung up. You can’t slam down a cell phone like you could the old kind, but if you could have, it would have been ringing in my ears.

  THURSDAY

  Yuliana texted me at five AM. I was wide awake. I had slept on and off, in what felt like ten-minute bursts that were punctuated by the mini-explosions and reverberations from Barbara’s words that would jolt me awake every time I fell asleep. Stay the hell out of my life. Bang! Then I’d drift off again, and another shell would explode. Fuck you, Vince Tanzi. Blam! No one had ever said anything like that to me. I’ve had a few enemies over the course of my life and have heard some things that would make most people’s ears curl, but I’d never heard words like that from someone I loved. It hurt.