[Vince Tanzi 02.0] Tanzi's Ice

by C I Dennis

  “I thought you’d have a limp for life.”

  “It’s still sore sometimes,” I said. “That thing must have weighed three thousand pounds.”

  “The insurance company called me yesterday. The police found the policy when they looked through your father’s apartment. The insurance man was very nice. He said how sorry he was.”

  I took a sip of the wretched wine and looked around her kitchen. Very little had changed since I’d moved to Vero, thirty years ago. The same chintz curtains, knotty pine wood paneling, yellow Formica, and an avocado-colored fridge that hummed a little louder every time I returned home.

  “They probably want to keep the money. Did he offer you an annuity?”

  “He said they could provide an income for me for life.”

  “That means they want to sell you an annuity. You don’t have to do it, you can just take the money. We’ll go to the bank tomorrow and see what they have.”

  “When do you want to talk to the police?” she said.

  “I’ll call them after breakfast,” I said. “Did you know anything about the insurance?”

  “No. I don’t see your father much,” she said. “I mean—I didn’t see him. I have to get used to him being gone.”

  “You must be relieved.”

  “Yes and no,” she said. “He and I loved each other, once. You kids don’t understand that.”

  “Mom, I’m fifty years old. I’m not a kid. I understand what you’re saying.”

  “He did have some money,” she said. She was turned away from me, standing at the stove. I could barely hear her over the rattling of the exhaust fan. “Now and then I’d get an envelope, in my mailbox. Hundred dollar bills, held together with a paper clip. No note, no return address.”

  “How did you know it was from him?”

  “He wrote a name on the envelope. Something he used to call me when we were first married.”

  I left that alone. Her face had reddened, and it wasn’t from the heat of the boiling water on the stovetop.

  “I thought he lived on his Social Security.”

  “He had a part-time job, driving,” she said. “He came to the door once, a few years ago, to get his birth certificate. He had to apply for a passport, back when Canada stopped letting you in without one. He was dressed in a suit and tie and was driving a big white Cadillac limousine-kind-of-thing with dark windows.”

  “Limo driver? You’re kidding.”

  “He was sober. He looked nice.”

  “Do you know what company he drove for?”

  “He drove for a family in Stowe. They’re only up here for part of the year. The man’s name is Brooks Burleigh.”

  Brooks Burleigh not only had a house in Stowe, he had one in Florida, New York, London, Colorado, and god knows where else. He also owned a huge piece of northern Vermont. The Burleighs were originally loggers and were shrewd land traders. They’d accumulated a quarter-million acres of Vermont forestland, and they owned millions more north of the border in Quebec. Brooks Burleigh was the oldest son and ran the company. I’d met him once at a soirée in John’s Island, a pricey enclave in Vero Beach, but even though he was a fellow Vermonter, we were from different worlds. In his world they used Carlo Rossi Paisano to clean the bugs off the brightwork on their Range Rovers.

  “I saw him at a party once,” I said. “I was doing security. He was drunk and loud from the time he got there. Maybe he and Dad were drinking buddies.”

  “Your father stopped drinking,” she said. “He met Mr. Burleigh at one of those meetings. Neither of them drank anymore.”

  “How do you know this?”

  She took the pot off the stove and poured the pasta into a colander in the sink. The steam rose and froze in delicate, crazy patterns of rime against the surface of the window above. “He took me to dinner,” she said. “He only drank water, and a lot of coffee.” “When was this?”

  “This past October. It was our anniversary.”

  I was so shocked I accidentally took a big gulp of the cheap wine. It actually tasted OK. “Mom—”

  “Like I said, you kids don’t understand,” she interrupted.

  “He almost killed you that night. Thirty years ago.”

  “He wanted to be a married couple again,” she said. “He wanted to move back in. He said he would take care of me.”

  “Did Sheila know about this?”

  “I had to promise not to tell. He said he wasn’t ready yet, he had some things to finish, and that I couldn’t tell anyone.”

  “You were going to let him move back in?”

  “I hadn’t decided,” she said. “Maybe. But it’s no use now.”

  She put the pasta back in the empty pot and added the aglio e olio sauce. The whole room filled with the steamy aroma as she mixed it and served me a plate.

  “Do Carla and Junie know anything about this?”

  “I don’t know where Carla is,” she said. “She doesn’t keep in touch.”

  “And Junie?”

  “He’s in jail,” she said. “Up in South Burlington. He was arrested the same night your father passed away.”

  “For what?”

  “He beat up somebody, in a bar,” she said. I wasn’t surprised. James Tanzi, Junior, or “Junie” to us, had my dad’s temper and then some. He was in jail as often as he was out. “I drove up to see him, after I called you this morning. I didn’t have enough money to bail him out. But I will now.”

  “I can take care of it,” I said. “You haven’t seen that money yet.”

  “Vinny—”

  “What, Mom?”

  “He was wearing a hospital outfit. I forget what you call them.”

  “Scrubs? He was dressed in hospital scrubs, in jail?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Oh shit,” I said, and this time she didn’t protest.

  *

  I took the lower bunk in the bedroom I’d shared with my brother. It was mine; Junie was two years older than me and had permanently claimed the top bunk as his own. The bed springs sagged under my weight, and the effects of the wine and a long day of traveling were starting to make me sag also. I opened a book that I’d started on the plane, but the words blurred and after a while I turned out the light and lay there, listening to the pinging of the baseboard heater. I wasn’t drunk—just tired, although my mind was still turning over the bits of information I’d gleaned during the day. Some people count sheep—I count clues.

  Unfortunately, I’d already gathered a few clues that were pointing me in a very unpleasant direction. Junie could have entered or left Central Vermont Hospital in scrubs and not made an impression on anyone who reviewed the security tapes. The cops apparently hadn’t connected the guy they’d booked for a bar fight, dressed in scrubs, with the old man who was suffocated hours earlier. Junie was in jail in Burlington and the hospital was in Barre, thirty miles south, in a different jurisdiction. They might never make the connection.

  They might not, but I did. I didn’t like my father. I never spoke to him or visited him, and I would never forgive him for the way he had mistreated my mother while they were together. But for all my faults I don’t kill people, unless they’re about to kill me first. I’m just not wired that way.

  My brother was not like me. He could have taken out the miserable bastard.

  He’d already tried once.

  WEDNESDAY

  I checked the weather on my phone out of morbid curiosity. It was twenty-one degrees below zero, at seven in the morning. Not a record low, and not all that unusual for Vermont in January when it could go into a deep freeze for weeks and then suddenly jump back above the freezing point, during what the locals called January Thaw. If you live in this state you find yourself constantly talking about the weather, which is so unpredictable as to be bipolar, and you skeptically listen to the hopelessly inaccurate television forecasters who are tolerated, affectionately, as one might tolerate a doddering older relative.

  My mother was up already coo
king sausage biscuits, which are my downfall along with everything else she makes.

  “Did you sleep OK?” she asked, as I lumbered, unshaven, into the kitchen.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m getting a little big for that bed though.”

  She gave a nervous laugh. “Vinny, what are they going to ask me?”

  “We’ll find out, Mom,” I said. She slid a plate of the biscuits in front of me, and I could feel my arteries clogging in anticipation. “They said they want to know about the insurance policy. They don’t think you did anything to Dad. You have an alibi, right?”

  “You mean can I prove I wasn’t there when he died?”

  “Yes.”

  “I went to bed early that night. Mrs. Tomaselli came over to visit, but she left before it got dark. I made some food and watched the six o’clock news and then went to bed.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue,” I said. “They want to know about the money. They’ll ask you about that.”

  “What should I tell them?”

  “You can just answer their questions. And it’s OK to tell them that you and he had talked about getting back together. That would give them a reason for him to leave you the money.”

  “OK,” she said, but she was clearly nervous.

  “If they ask anything you shouldn’t answer, I’ll tell you,” I said. “It’s going to be fine, Mom.”

  “I don’t even know if the car will start,” she said.

  “They can come here,” I said. “And Mom—I wouldn’t say anything about Junie right now, OK? I’m thinking of going up to see him.”

  “Are you going to bail him out?”

  I thought about that. “Probably,” I said. “I’ll add it to his bill.”

  *

  Lieutenant John Pallmeister and a shorter, bulldog-faced guy in a black overcoat stamped their boots on the rug in the small vestibule that led into my mother’s kitchen.

  “Vince,” Pallmeister said, extending his hand without a smile. “This is Robert Patton, Border Patrol.”

  I shook both their hands, still gloved and ice cold. “This is my mother, Francine.”

  “I have some sausage biscuits left over,” she said.

  “Thank you Mrs. Tanzi but we’ll get out of your hair just as quickly as possible,” the shorter one said. He appeared to be in charge. They took off their hats and coats, passed out business cards, and sat down at the kitchen table. My mother filled two mugs of coffee and set them down in front of the cops.

  “What brings the Border Patrol into this?” I asked.

  “The policy was bought here, but it was funded from Canada,” Patton said. “The premiums were more than thirty thousand dollars a year. Did Mr. Tanzi have access to that kind of money?”

  “Doubtful,” I said.

  “Mrs. Tanzi?” he said, directing the question to her.

  “He had a little money,” she said. “But—oh dear, this is so confusing.”

  “How much?”

  “He would give me some cash now and then,” she said. “A few hundred dollars. He had a job, for the last few years.”

  “You guys can’t find out who paid the premiums?” I said.

  “Somebody knew what they were doing,” John Pallmeister said. Patton looked sideways at him and frowned. Apparently, the State Police were along for the ride on this one.

  “Are you guys actually looking for the killer? Or is something else going on here?”

  “We have a lot of work to do,” Patton said. “John’s group is covering the basic police work. They’ll be looking at the hospital records, checking out leads and so on. You were a cop, you know what I mean. My group is looking at the money aspect. That’s routine, when we have a cross-border transfer like this.”

  “Is she going to get a check from the insurance company?”

  “It would be a good idea to just wait on that,” Patton said. “We have an investigation going, and the payment won’t happen until it’s closed. Mrs. Tanzi, you shouldn’t make any financial moves based on the anticipation of this money.”

  “What does that mean?” my mother asked.

  “It means you might not get the money, Mom,” I said. “Not if it’s part of some kind of illegal activity.”

  Neither of the cops spoke. My mother got up to refill their cups. “I don’t really need any money,” she said.

  “Did you know anything about it?” Patton asked her. “The life insurance?”

  “No,” she said. “It was a shock. Jimmy and I—” she trailed off, holding the coffee pot.

  “You can tell them, Mom.”

  “We were going to get back together,” she said, blushing slightly.

  “There are some things for you in his apartment,” Pallmeister said. “Letters he wrote but apparently didn’t send you. You can go in the apartment now if you like, we’re done with that part of our investigation.” He took a key from his pocket and put it on the table.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “How well do you know Brooks Burleigh?” Patton asked me. I noticed he had a lopsided eye, and his nose was crooked. Somewhere along the line he’d taken some punches.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I did see him once at a party in Florida where I was working. Maybe five years ago. He was drunk.”

  “He’s been sober for three years,” Patton said. “So was your father. You have any family in Quebec?”

  “No,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering,” Patton said.

  “Come on,” I said. “You want us to answer your questions, you need to answer ours.”

  “This is a police investigation,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “You can leave then.”

  “Vinny—” my mother began.

  “It’s OK, we’re done,” Patton said. He and Pallmeister stood up and put on their coats. “Tanzi, come outside for a second,” he said to me. It was a command, not a request. I donned my flimsy parka and stepped out into the frigid morning. We stood outside the vestibule, our combined breath rising in a cloud of steam toward the weak sun.

  “Let’s be clear,” he said. “You may be a P.I., but this is a federal investigation. Stay out of it.”

  “Yes, let’s be clear,” I said. “I don’t work for you. So have a nice day.” As in, fuck off.

  “You have no idea of the money and man-hours that are into this,” he said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Look. I know your background. You’re good at what you do. But I need you to lay off. Please.”

  “Are you going to try to find out who killed Jimmy Tanzi?”

  “We think it was a pro,” he said.

  “You do? Why?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve already said too much.”

  Lieutenant Pallmeister started his cruiser, and Robert Patton eased into the passenger seat. He turned to me before he shut the door. “Any reason your father would cross the border into Quebec? Like, seventeen times in the past year?”

  “He liked poutine,” I said. Poutine is Quebecois soul food; a big pile of French fries, cheese curd, and brown gravy. It’s a one-way ticket to a quadruple bypass.

  Patton, the bulldog-face, actually cracked a faint smile. “We’ll be in touch,” he said.

  *

  My mother’s ancient Subaru Outback started on the first try, although the belts squealed in protest until they warmed with the rotation of the pulleys. In Vermont you have your choice of driving a pickup truck or a Subaru. Everything else is going to get you dismissed as a clueless flatlander. Along with your choice of Outback or pickup, you can also choose the obligatory bumper stickers: Bernie ’12 (Vermont’s Socialist senator), VPR, Goddess Within, Free Tibet, Got Milk, or My Other Car Is a Bicycle. That’s for the Subaru. For the pickup there’s your favorite NASCAR driver’s number, Calvin peeing on a Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or Dodge (whichever one you’re not driving), Gut Deer?, Ditch the Bitch Let’s Go Muddin’, I Brake For Moose, and of course, I Heart the Red Sox, or m
ore to the point, Yankees Suck. There’s some cross-pollination, but you don’t want to mix up the stereotypes too much, like putting a goddess sticker alongside a Gut Deer sticker, or you’ll confuse people.

  I scraped the ice from both the outside and the inside of the windshield and drove down the hill to the center of Barre. The outskirts of the town are dominated by huge sheds that house the stonecutting operations. My father cut gravestones, or “memorials” as they call them in the business, for forty years until his back couldn’t take it any longer and his Social Security check had to take over the bar bill. His father had worked there too, and there was a family plot in the Hope Cemetery that featured my grandfather Basilio’s stunning carving of a trout jumping from a granite brook. The stonecutters had come over from Italy beginning in the nineteenth century, and there was an unofficial competition even among the poorest of them as to who could make the most beautiful gravestone for their own family. The Hope Cemetery is actually a tourist attraction in the warm weather.

  I started up the long hill to the interstate, and my cell rang. It was Barbara. “Do you miss me yet?”

  “Remember that Dan Hicks’ song?” I asked. “How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?”

  “Dan Hicks, he was like Tommy Dorsey, right?”

  “I don’t know why I hang out with you young babes,” I said.

  “Because you’re a cradle-robbing pervert,” she said, and we laughed. “I passed my biochem quiz.”

  “Awesome.”

  “I think I can do this,” she said.

  “I know you can. You are going to be a wicked good nurse.”

  “Wicked?”

  “That’s Vermont-speak. It’s starting to come back.”

  “I really do miss you.”

  “We weren’t even going to see each other until Friday,” I said. “You’re supposed to be studying.”