by C I Dennis
Tanzi’s Luck
C.I. Dennis
Copyright © 2016 C.I. Dennis.
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www.cidennis.com
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Cover art by Alexander Dennis
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For Soren
Table of Contents
1. Tuesday
2. Wednesday
3. Thursday
4. Friday
5. Saturday
6. Sunday
7. Monday
8. Tuesday
9. Wednesday
10. Thursday
11. Friday
12. Saturday
13. Sunday
14. Wednesday
15. Saturday
16. Tuesday
17. Friday
About The Author
Acknowledgements
TUESDAY
Dr. Jaffe pointed to her computer screen. I put on my reading glasses and leaned across the clutter of paperwork on her desk to see. “Here’s where the bullet stopped, in Brodmann area 4,” she said. “We had to leave some small fragments, but it’s healed better than I thought it would.”
The surgeon was fast-forwarding through a series of images that displayed cross sections of my brain as if it had been run through a deli slicer. Noelle Jaffe had removed a nine-millimeter slug from it two and a half years ago, and I had almost fully recovered. There are occupational hazards that go with being a private investigator, although stopping bullets with your head isn’t usually one of them.
“You really think it’s healed?”
“Yes, Vince,” she said. “Either that or it’s just a bunch of rocks in there.”
“My ex-wife would agree with that diagnosis,” I said.
“How’s the limp?”
“It’s under control. I walk the beach every day, and that helps.”
“Don’t talk to me about the beach,” she said. “We’re supposed to have a frost tonight, and we don’t appreciate you Floridians rubbing it in.”
“You didn’t see anything else? Anything bad?”
“Why? Are you worried about something?”
I didn’t want to get into the whole business of the whiteouts, because they had only recently started happening, and I was hoping that they would just fade away. If I brought them up, the doctor would probably tell me to quit driving, and there was no way that I could manage that. I had too much work, and I needed to care for Royal, my two-year-old son. Besides, I could tell when the episodes were coming on, so I would just pull over to side of the road, recline the seat, and pretend I was napping. That was how I had handled it for the month before my trip to Vermont, and so far, so good.
“Nothing worth mentioning,” I said.
“Excellent,” the doctor said. She smiled as we stood up and I reached for my jacket. “How long are you here for?”
“I’m going to my mother’s for a couple days, and then back to Vero. I have my boy to chase around.”
“Royal is the reason you’re doing so well,” Dr. Jaffe said. “See you in six months.”
It was a long trip from Vero Beach, Florida, to Burlington, Vermont, just to see my surgeon, but I liked her. And more to the point I trusted her, since she had saved my brain, which is my second-favorite organ. The doctor was right about my motivation. Spending time with my little boy had been a big factor in my recovery from a near-fatal injury, and from my latest train wreck of a marriage.
It took a moment to remember what my rental car looked like—it was tiny, anonymous, and the cheapest one they’d offered at the airport. I located it at the back of the hospital lot and then steered through the University of Vermont campus. As I got onto the Interstate I knew that I’d timed my trip perfectly. It was the first week of October; the foliage colors were at their peak. The surrounding hills of the Green Mountains reflected the late afternoon light and were anything but green—they’d been temporarily repainted in tie-dye hues of red, orange, and yellow, and might have made a suitable backdrop for a Dead concert.
I would arrive at my mother’s by the dinner hour and would bunk in my old room, enjoy her cooking, and possibly do some leaf-peeping over the next couple of days with the rest of the fall tourists, many of whom were also from my adopted state of Florida. I missed Royal, but my ex was covering for me, and I would only be gone for a little while.
It seemed like a reasonable plan.
*
My wardrobe has gone downhill since the divorce, but I keep an eye on my waistline, I have all my hair, I brush my teeth, I hold the door open for ladies, and I even put the toilet seat down, unprompted. My mother, my sister, a gaggle of early girlfriends, my first wife Glory, and my second and now ex-wife Barbara have, over time, helped me to evolve from a knuckle-dragger to someone who can make it through a meal without a good portion of it ending up on his shirt.
That is, unless we’re talking about my mother’s lasagna.
I was finishing off a second helping of four layers of homemade pasta sandwiched between a ragù made from veal, pork and pancetta, and a creamy béchamel sauce, plus a heavy hand on the garlic press, when my mother got up from the table to answer the door. Donna Tomaselli stood at the threshold, dressed in one of the black outfits she always wore even though her husband had been gone for thirty years. Mrs. Tomaselli loved to eat, and she had a knack for showing up right as the food came out of the oven. My mother fixed her a plate without bothering to ask if she wanted one. I poured her a glass of Montepulciano after receiving a strenuous embrace into her ample bosom that might have suffocated a shorter man.
“So, how you doing, Mrs. T?” I was quickly slipping back into the Barre-speak of my youth.
“Awful, Vinny,” she said. She took a big drink from the wine glass and wiped her lips on a napkin. “If it wasn’t for your mother I’d be in the mental ward. She’s the only one keeping me sane.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Carmela,” she said. I prepared myself for the latest installment of the long-running Carmela Tomaselli soap opera that had been going on ever since Mrs. T’s daughter and I had been classmates in high school. At the last count, Carmela had ditched husband number four and was hanging out with a young mechanic from the Saab garage in Montpelier who must have had a penchant for fixing up the classics—Carmela had been a stunner in her day, but bad marriages, chain-smoking, and frequenting the downtown bars had taken their toll.
“What’s she up to now?”
“It’s not her, it’s her daughter, Grace. My granddaughter. Everybody says she’s fine, but I think they’re wrong, and Carmela keeps telling me she’s all right, but she never gave a tinker’s damn about her own daughter, forgive my language, and now I’m stuck with the goddamned dog.” She paused to cross herself after the profanity. “He already bit your mother.”
“What?” I put down the fork that was about to about to descend into a third portion of
the lasagna. It didn’t really count as another helping; I was just making sure that the edges were evened off in the pan. “You’d better start at the beginning.”
“He’s a good dog,” my mother said. “He didn’t mean to bite me. He’s scared, because Grace is gone.”
“Who is this dog?”
“She calls him Chan,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “After the actor. He’s a brute, and he barks at everybody.”
“He’s terrified, Donna,” my mother said.
“You could sue, Francine, and we’ll go on a cruise with the money. Carmela has insurance. It’s left over from one of the husbands.”
“He nipped me, that’s all,” my mother said. “He’s a nervous wreck.”
“So am I,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “Grace left college two weeks ago. She goes to Johnson State. She sent her mother a letter on the computer, one of those, you know—”
“An email,” I said.
“Right. She said she was going hiking on the Long Trail, and to come get her dog.”
“So why isn’t the dog at Carmela’s?”
“He was, for a couple days, but he barked all the time and her landlord made her get rid of him. So I got stuck with him. But I’m worried, Vinny.”
“About what?”
“Grace doesn’t go hiking. She doesn’t even own a pair of sneakers. She’s a town girl.”
“Maybe she’s with a guy?”
“And they take off hiking in the middle of the semester? Not my Grace. She’s a good granddaughter, and she’s been trying hard as a student, not like her mother. Do you remember her? She’s very beautiful.”
“It’s been a few years.”
“I have a picture,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. She opened her purse, took out a wallet, and thumbed through a sheaf of photographs in plastic slipcovers. “This is her. My Gracie.”
It was a headshot taken by a professional. The photographer’s lens had blurred the edges for a glamorous effect, which was unnecessary, because the granddaughter was beautiful, all right. The picture reminded me of black-and-white photos that I’d seen of Donna Tomaselli back in the day when any man in Barre would have given up a testicle for a date with her. Grace’s hair shined like a freshly-buffed shoe, and her dark eyes and sensuous lips radiated both innocence and sexuality.
“What’s her last name?” I said.
“Hebert,” Mrs. T said. “That was Carmela’s husband number two.”
“And she’s been hiking for two weeks?”
“That’s what Carmela says.”
“Have you talked to anyone at the school? Or the police?”
“No,” she said. “Will you go see Carmela? You know that she and I don’t get along.”
“Of course I will,” I said. “But I have to be back in Florida the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh, I love my Vinny,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “Now that you’re single again you’d better watch out. I can still make whoopee, you know.”
“Donna, for god’s sake,” my mother said.
“Duly noted, Mrs. T,” I said. She was trying to lighten the mood, but I could see the worry in her expression.
I would stop in on her daughter in the morning, and would make a few calls to the college and to some police friends from my days on the Barre force. With any luck I would clear this up in a couple of hours and get on with my leaf-peeping, although it didn’t feel like it would be that simple. Trouble has a smell, and in this case it was as strong as the garlic that was wafting up from the remains of my meal.
WEDNESDAY
Carmela Tomaselli worked as a nursing assistant at Woodridge Rehab, which is a part of the Central Vermont Hospital complex that sits on a hill overlooking the Winooski River Valley. I parked in the lot, entered the nursing home, and was greeted by the odor that they all have: Humanity vs. Lysol. A receptionist in floral-print scrubs was on the phone. She signaled me to wait while she finished her call.
“I’m here to see Carmela Tomaselli,” I said. “Vince Tanzi. She knows I’m coming.”
“I’ll page her,” she said. A couple of minutes later Carmela came around the corner, fishing out a pack of cigarettes from her purse as she approached.
“Outside,” she said, waving the back of her hand at me as if I was a mosquito. “I need a smoke.”
“Nice to see you, Carmela,” I said, although what I was thinking was more like: holy crap, you’re the same age as me? Do I look that bad?
“Mom said you want to know about Grace,” she said. Carmela led the way out into the parking lot and lit up a Virginia Slim. She still had the body of a pole dancer, but her face was puffy and florid and was framed by a tangle of bottle-blonde tresses that reached to her shoulders. You could see the black roots underneath, which was the color that her hair had been when we were kids.
“She said you told her that Grace went on a hike. How long has she been gone?”
“Am I supposed to keep track of these things?” She took a deep drag, exhaling it into the light breeze. “She’s old enough to take care of herself. I was on my own at her age.”
“You’re not worried about her?”
“My mother is the worrier. Grace is an adult. She can run off, get married, I honestly don’t give a damn, Vinny. I got her through high school, and believe me it was a struggle. She’s on a scholarship, and if she wants to throw it all away, it’s her problem.”
“Do you really think she went hiking? Your mother isn’t so sure.”
“Look, I know this sounds harsh, but she has to make her own mistakes. I did. Senior year, when I ran off with Fast Eddie? You remember?”
I remembered. Carmela Tomaselli and Fast Eddie Boudreault had been the talk of our high school for weeks. They’d taken his father’s Trans Am and driven all the way to Orlando, where she had gotten a tan, a Mickey Mouse hat, and an abortion.
“What makes you think that she’s making a mistake?”
“The email she sent me was bullshit. You know what her major is? Theater and Drama. Give me a break, Vinny. If you’re trying to help my mother, just get her some wine and tell her to relax. I let her believe the hiking thing, but my guess is that Grace is off with some guy.”
“Do you know who she might be with?”
“No idea. She’s such a child, really. I can hardly believe she’s mine, she’s so goddamn naïve sometimes. She has no idea what I go through on a daily basis. The crap that I put up with just to get by.”
I wondered what it must have been like to grow up with this woman. The booze, the cigarettes, the revolving door of boyfriends and husbands, and the hard-as-nails attitude. “I’m going to stop in at the college,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I find her.”
“Don’t bother,” she said. She dropped her cigarette on the pavement. “You’re just wasting everybody’s time, including mine.”
I walked across the lot to my car. The sun was stronger now, and the morning had only become more spectacular, but I hardly noticed. I was thinking about the old days, and about the former high school hottie who was now a bitter, self-pitying shrew. People like to tell you that life has dealt them a bad hand even when they’ve chosen most of the cards themselves.
*
Much of my work as a private investigator has to do with finding those who don’t want to be found. But some do want to be found, and they leave a trail a mile wide. Especially the girls, who may be royally pissed off at Mom and Dad over some incident but are terrified at the thought of being on their own. In this situation I employ what I call the Clueless Runaway Action Protocol, or, CRAP:
Step One. Log onto their phone, their laptop, and their social media accounts. It’s all in there somewhere, carefully laid out in tortured prose. Or worse, in poetry.
Step Two. Cherchez le boyfriend. If she’s not hiding in his bedroom, try the basement or the garage. I once found a runaway in a Porta-Potty out behind her boyfriend’s house. Some guys sure know how to show a girl a good time.
Step Three. Lean on their friends. Kids don�
�t keep secrets very well. Not that adults are any better.
A Johnson State campus safety officer named Duffy let me into her room, and we methodically tossed the place. He knew how to go about it: you have to be thorough, but there is no need to leave a mess. Grace Hebert’s phone and laptop weren’t there. So much for Step One.
The first thing I noticed was that there was no sign of a dog staying in the room—no bowl, no food, no hair from shedding. Her closet held an assortment of clothes, all on hangers and neatly arranged by color. A bureau contained socks, underwear, carefully folded jeans, tights, and jerseys. A drawer in her writing desk held pens, pencils, notepads, an older iPod, and a small purse with some change. No scribbled notes, no diaries, no photos of boys on the wall—it was the most OCD college dorm room that I’d ever seen.
In fact, it looked staged.
“She has a dog here, right?
“They’re not allowed on campus,” Duffy said as we closed up. He stood about two inches taller than me, and I fill up a doorway. I pegged the blond, walrus-mustached man at something past the usual retirement age but in excellent physical shape. He had the unflappability of someone who had been doing this work for a while. “These kids will take off without notice sometimes. I can call it in to the Lamoille County Sheriff, but you said she wrote her mother a note?”
“An email. She said she was going to hike the Long Trail. This was two weeks ago. The mother was supposed to come get the dog.”
“And you’re sure she’s not hiking?”
“No, I’m not sure.”
“You just don’t like it, right?” he said. “I’m not a hack, Mr. Tanzi. I was NYPD for nineteen years before I took this job.”
“You didn’t strike me as a campus cop.”
“Give me your number and I’ll ask around, OK? These kids are like my grandchildren.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Do you know where the trailhead is? For the Long Trail?”
“It’s a couple miles east on Route 15. It’s marked, and there’s a parking lot. You’re not going to hike it, are you?”
“I haven’t really thought about it.”
