Tanzi's Luck (Vince Tanzi Book 4)

by C I Dennis

  “Clement has a hideout up the hill—”

  “She’s not there,” I interrupted. “And they’re not at the house, or Donald’s cabin, or at the machine shed.”

  “Then I don’t know. He comes from somewhere in Florida. He owns a lot of real estate. He has houses all over the world. He needed money, and I thought that I was bailing him out with a short-term loan.”

  “How many kilos were in each container load?”

  “What? You’ve lost me, Tanzi.”

  “Heroin,” I said. “Don’t play dumb.”

  “It was a short-term loan on his properties,” Driscoll said. “His creditors were after him. Everything was signed and documented. We set up a company in the islands, I loaned him five million, and I got seven million back. He still owes me three million.”

  “A hundred percent markup on a real estate loan?”

  “He was in a bind.”

  “How does he get rid of the stuff?”

  “Look, this is going nowhere,” he said. “I’m a businessman. I move capital around for a profit. This has nothing to do with drugs.”

  “They killed your son-in-law,” I said. “Your driver was helping them, and he’s dead, too. They went after me, and you and Trish might be next. So let’s stop the posturing, OK Angus? Do you really want your daughter to die?”

  Driscoll looked away, as it he was talking to someone else. “This goes no further than this room,” he said. “I’m paying you to protect my daughter, remember?”

  “She’s being looked after.”

  “It was Fish who found out where the money was going. I had no idea. Goody knows a guy at the college who has a New York connection. They drive up here and collect it once it’s out of the container. They send middle-aged men in SUVs with their families, like they’re in Vermont for a vacation. People the police would never look at. They drive the speed limit, and they don’t get pulled over.”

  “Why did they kill Donald? And why you, if you were the bank?”

  “Donald started this. He knew a person in Europe who he’d met in grad school. Someone from an old family, not a street thug. The narcotics traffickers there are cultured people. Donald dreamed up the idea, and Goody took it and ran with it because he has more balls than Donald, and because he was broke. Donald had visions of being richer than his wife. You should never marry a woman with more money than you.”

  “So why did Cindy put two arrows in him?”

  “I don’t know, but my guess is that he got cold feet and told one of Goody’s women that he was going to bail. Donald was a talker and a wimp. Trish could have done far better.”

  “Did you argue over the money that Goody owed you? Why the pipe bomb?”

  “Pipe bomb?”

  “The one they threw into your car.”

  “I thought it was a hand grenade. That’s what the doctors told me.”

  “It was a homemade pipe bomb, like they make in the war zones in the Middle East. A length of pipe filled with gunpowder and a short fuse. As deadly as a grenade.”

  “That kid made those for Goody,” Driscoll said. “Clement showed them to me one night at his house. He had a lot of weapons. I should have known he was crazy.”

  “What kid?”

  “Trish’s mechanic. The one with the tattoos.”

  “Matty made the bombs? Is that why they murdered him?”

  Driscoll shook his head. “I’ve told you enough,” he said.

  “We’re just getting started.”

  Angus Driscoll pushed a button to lay his bed back down. “We’re done,” he said. “When you find them, do everyone a favor and kill them.”

  *

  By the time I made it back to my room I was hurting, confused, and depressed. Hurting because the medication was wearing off and I had to beg a night nurse for another hit of the happy juice. Confused, because as much as I’d learned from Angus Driscoll, I knew perfectly well that I was being fed a few tidbits of truth mixed in with a load of crap. He was going to throw Goody under the bus and claim that he’d made an innocent loan. He couldn’t tell me where anyone was, nor could he finger anybody for any of the murders, although I suspected he knew exactly who had killed whom.

  I was depressed because I was still smarting from Karen Charbonneau’s treachery, and especially from not seeing it coming. Goody had a cultlike hold on the women who surrounded him, à la Koresh, Manson, Jones, and all of the others throughout history. The unexpected part was how rational she had seemed during our conversations. I used to believe that people who were under someone’s sway like that were unthinking robots who mumbled in monotones as they carried out their master’s dastardly instructions. Karen’s demeanor was a lot subtler, far more convincing, and was a reminder: there is no such thing as absolute good or evil when it comes to people. We all carry elements of both, and only rarely can a person ignore the other side long enough to become a paragon, or a pariah.

  I had learned from Driscoll that Matty had made the bombs for Clement Goody, which didn’t surprise me, because everyone in this case was connected to everyone else like Velcro. I’d also learned how Donald Lussen had fit in to the whole scheme, and that Driscoll hadn’t liked or respected his son-in-law. I’d found out that the smack ultimately went to New York, and Angus had also told me how much he had invested and what the vig was: five million of profit on five million of front money, which was typical of the drug business and was enough of a lure to pull in even the hyper-respectable types like him.

  And then there was the coda: kill them. I didn’t believe that Angus had said that because he was concerned for my personal safety. More likely because it would be convenient for him if they were all dead because he wouldn’t have to explain his connection to a huge heroin operation. It was a loan to a trusted friend. Good lord, I had no idea.

  *

  I couldn’t sleep because my wound hurt, and because the nearer I got to solving this case, the more complicated it became. I tried to make myself drift off by thinking about Royal, imagining us on the warm sand of South Beach where I would take him to play. My little boy was old enough to go into the water now, and there were days when my muscles would ache from holding his arms and swinging him back and forth in the shallows. We collected shells, chased after shore birds, watched the pelicans fly in formation over the condos, and ate our snacks along with some accidentally embedded sand. This was my go-to visualization for sleeping, but it wasn’t working. So I was wide awake when the phone buzzed on the bedside table with a text.

  You OK? It was Rose.

  Fair to middling.

  I’m bored to death babysitting Trish. She’s such a spoiled brat.

  Her father was the banker for the heroin deals. Donald came up with the whole idea.

  Wow. You’re good.

  I’m not feeling that way at the moment.

  Why not?

  Frustrated.

  Can I ask you something?

  OK…

  Why are you alone? No woman in your life?

  A really good detective never gets married.

  Excuse me?

  Raymond Chandler said that.

  But you’ve been married twice.

  Kind of proves his point, doesn’t it?

  I didn’t hear back from her, so I returned to my imaginary beach with my baby boy and tried to sleep. It might have worked, except that half an hour later the door opened and someone came in. “Wake up,” Rose DiNapoli said. “It’s time for your sleeping pill.”

  “What are you doing here?” I attempted to sit up. “What about Trish?”

  “Trish is a big girl,” Rose said as she began to take off her clothes. “Move over. Two of us can fit in that thing.”

  I didn’t protest. Instead, I scooted over as far as I could. The room was dark except for the readouts on the machines. Rose slipped into the bed dressed in her underwear and put an arm around my chest. It felt better than anything I’d felt all day. Maybe all year.

  “I can’t do anything,
you know,” I said. “I’m useless.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. Go to sleep.”

  “Impossible,” I said, and it was, but it hardly mattered.

  SUNDAY

  “Did you know that the average groundhog excavates seven hundred pounds of dirt just digging out one den? And they usually have four or five dens?”

  “Fascinating,” I said. I was sitting up in the bed drinking coffee that Rose had brought in. She was in the visitor chair with her laptop open. Her curly black hair was unkempt, but she still looked great. “We call them woodchucks up here.”

  “And, according to this, the average groundhog den has three or four boltholes so that they can escape if they have to.”

  “Gee whiz,” I said. “Just think what the above-average groundhog might have? Why are you telling me this?”

  Rose closed the laptop. “Do you remember when I found you spread eagled on the bed in Goody’s root cellar?”

  “I’d blocked that out until now.”

  “That bed was huge. Eight feet across. You remember the stairway? Narrow, with stone steps?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “OK then, Sherlock. How did they get the bed in there? No way would it fit down those stairs. Goody’s a groundhog. People are the same as animals. They need to have an escape route.”

  “I thought the cops went through the place.”

  “It was dark outside, and they were too busy laughing at you. But listen—maybe we only saw part of it. Where’s the air intake? They’d have to have a ventilation system, and I didn’t see anything. Did you get plans from the guy who built it?”

  “They might not exist,” I said. “He was being paid to keep it a secret, and he didn’t do the whole job. I could call him.”

  “Don’t bother. I want to check it out myself. I think Mr. Goody is hunkered down with your girlfriends.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “No way,” she said. “You don’t have the strength yet.”

  “And you don’t have the key,” I said. I fished through the bag of clothes that was next to my bed, found the fob I’d gotten from Eric Gagnier, and held it up. “See? You’re not doing this alone. I already tried that, and look where I ended up.”

  Rose sighed. “No offense, Vince, but you’d be in the way.”

  “This is what happens when you share my bed,” I said. “I get all clingy.”

  *

  I had managed to talk my way out of the hospital, but Rose was right: I was in rough shape, and every one of the bumps on the way to Johnson felt like a ski jump from hell. I called Pallmeister for back up, and he explained that the Lamoille sheriff had assigned deputies to watch the place. He said to check in with them when we arrived, and to keep our guns handy.

  Two county cruisers were parked sided by side at the bottom of the bible camp driveway. The cops were talking with each other through their open windows. I explained our business, and they said to go ahead and look all we wanted, but no one had come or gone for days. They’d been through the whole place, and as far as they could tell their stakeout was a waste of resources.

  Clement Goody’s root cellar looked different in the crisp morning light. I could see where the land had been disturbed, smoothed over, and reseeded. A stretch of newer grass extended toward the springhouse thirty yards away, and I followed it while Rose went down the cellar stairs.

  We had announced our arrival via the roar of the Marquis’ muffler, but no one had come out to greet us. Nor had anyone been at the stone door when I’d opened it with the fob. I wasn’t up to doing stairs, as the painkillers were wearing off and every move hurt, so I wandered around outside looking for boltholes, as Rose called them. If there was one, I didn’t see anything obvious. Maybe Rose was wrong, and the gigantic bed had been stuffed down the stairway somehow. I’d called Eric during the trip up to Johnson, but his wife told me that he had scored a moose permit this year and would be at his hunting camp for a week. Bagging a moose, as an old Vermonter once said, was about as sporting as shooting a parked car. The real challenge would be hauling a thousand pounds of Bullwinkle out of the woods without having a heart attack.

  The springhouse was exactly that: a small wooden structure about a dozen feet across with big wooden doors that swung open at one side. The spring itself was in a corner and consisted of an old bathtub with a pipe extending into it. It looked like it had been dry for years. There were tire marks on the wooden floor from a large vehicle, possibly a tractor. Goody could be using the place for storage, but it was empty now, and there was no sign of a super-secret bolthole. Rose had guessed wrong, and it was time to collect her and get back to my hospital bed. I was woozy from the hospital stay, and the pain was coming on strong.

  On my way out of the springhouse I looked up. Tucked into the rafters was a tiny device: a security camera so small that you could mistake it for an insect. It was no doubt transmitting my image to Cindy Charbonneau somewhere. I resisted the temptation to raise my middle finger at the lens.

  I returned to the root cellar and called for Rose, but there was no answer from below. She must be exploring the area outside, and I’d missed her. I decided to lie my sorry, aching butt down on the back seat of the Marquis and wait.

  Fifteen minutes is my ultimate threshold of worry. After five minutes I begin to fidget, after ten I start imagining random, dire scenarios, and after fifteen I know that something is wrong. Rose was nowhere to be seen. She wouldn’t let this much time elapse without checking in with me. Something was screwed up. I took my Glock from under the seat and fastened the holster to my waistband.

  I got out of the car and inched down the stairs of the root cellar, partly because I was trying to be stealthy, but mostly because every movement hurt like sin. The lights were on, but no one was home. I checked out the space where I’d passed out three nights ago: about twenty feet square with a galley kitchen at one side, a small bath with a shower, a stainless steel table with two chairs, a TV, and the circular bed. The wall behind it was covered by floor-to-ceiling closets holding articles of clothing and canned food. No guns, no bombs, no bricks of heroin. There was nothing to see here.

  The only sign of a ventilation system was a louvered slot to the side of the closets. I took a chair from the table and climbed up for a closer look. Between the slats was the glint of a tiny lens: another camera. I was being watched again, and the hair at the back of my neck began to rise. This was messed up. Rose shouldn’t have wandered away like that, even though the place was deserted. I would go outside, honk the car horn, and give her a minute or two to come back. If she didn’t, I would drive down to the bible camp and get the deputies.

  I heard the stone door hiss to a close above me at the same time that the overhead light went out. I reached for the key fob with one hand and my gun with the other. No response from the door, no matter how many times I pushed the button. I unsnapped the holster at my waistband, drew out my gun and switched off the safety, but there was nothing to point at because the darkness was so complete that I couldn’t even see my outstretched arm. No light coming through the vents, no cracks under the door, not even an LED on the television set, because the power had been cut. My eyes couldn’t adjust. It was as if I’d been buried alive. I felt along the wall to the stairs, thinking that I should wait by the door and try to surprise anybody who entered. Someone had been watching me, all right. They had sealed the place and left me in total darkness.

  More than once I saw the familiar glow at the edge of my vision—a whiteout in the making. What if they just left me here? Would I run out of air? You think crazy thoughts when you’re in the pitch black and you’re teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Focus, Vince. Think about the people who need you. Think about Rose DiNapoli’s warm skin next to yours in the hospital bed. Think about kicking somebody’s ass when you find out who did this. Think about…nothing.

  The darkness was slowly giving way to white.

  Lie down, man. There’s a nice big bed. Just
like the last time. Take a load off.

  No…

  “Mr. Tanzi?” The door opened with a sudden explosion of sunlight and I was blinded, but I didn’t kick anyone’s ass, because I recognized the voice: Duffy Kovich, the big campus security officer. He took me by the elbow. “Here, give me that gun, OK? Let me help you up these stairs. You don’t look well. In fact, you look terrible.”

  “I was locked in,” I said, as he led me out into the daylight. “Where’s my partner? She was here with me.”

  “No idea,” he said. “Come on, come with me. I’m taking you to the health center.”

  “I need to call the State Police,” I said. “She’s a customs agent. Something happened.”

  “Let’s get you into the car, OK? Then we’ll make the call. Come on, Mr. Tanzi.”

  My eyes were starting to adjust, and I caught his expression as he slipped my Glock into the pocket of his jacket. He didn’t look sympathetic. He looked like he was about to cuff me and haul me downtown.

  “Look, Duffy, I—”

  “Just do what I say, please,” he said, cutting me off. We were standing next to his car; a mud-brown Lincoln that had Vermont plates but wore a Queens dealership logo on the back.

  Queens, as in New York.

  I was still blinking, but I wasn’t blind to what was happening here, and I realized that I had just handed over my weapon to an adversary, not a friend: Clement Goody had a contact who knew heroin dealers in New York, according to Angus Driscoll. Someone who worked at the college.

  “I want my gun back,” I said.

  “Not now,” he said.

  “Were you really NYPD, Duffy?” I asked. “Is that where you made the heroin connection?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about.” I saw his hand edge toward his pocket.

  “We’re not going to the health center, are we? And you were never a cop. More like muscle for somebody.”

  He took out the gun and pointed it at me. “I was NYPD for nineteen years, and they took away my fucking pension,” he said. “One screw up and they toss me out on the street. You know what I make here? Sixteen dollars an hour. How am I supposed to live on that?”