[Vince Tanzi 02.0] Tanzi's Ice

by C I Dennis

  “Good.”

  “They re-interviewed all the people at the hospital, but nobody saw the big guy in the dark coat.”

  “That figures,” I said.

  “Yeah. Oh, and I pulled some strings and got the DNA results, about half an hour ago.”

  “And?”

  “No match,” he said. “If it was the big guy, he’s not in the database.”

  “At least it’s not Junie,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Pallmeister said to say he’s sorry for the fuck-up.”

  I saw Yuliana approaching the plane with Ed and Brooks in tow. They were carrying several pieces of the type of luggage that I could only afford if I took out a second mortgage.

  “Gotta go,” I said. “I’m flying to our nation’s capital.”

  *

  Brooks was too busy to talk. He’d opened his briefcase upon entering the plane and was studying some papers. He’d smiled and greeted me, but his body language said to leave him alone. I worked on Roberto’s hat for a while, and then got out my phone to check in with Barbara.

  So how much do kids cost anyway? I sent.

  $500K incldg college, per Newsweek, she replied. Better start saving.

  Up here they give you five cents for returning your beer bottles.

  That’s not what I’d call a financial plan, she wrote.

  You doing OK?

  Nervous.

  About what?

  Everything. You.

  Me?

  Miss Capri Pants, she sent.

  No worries, I wrote.

  She’s way too hot.

  Hadn’t noticed.

  Yah, right.

  I love you Barbara.

  Oh shit, she wrote back, after a long pause.

  You OK?

  You made me start crying.

  Sorry.

  Don’t be, she wrote. Just come home.

  ASAP, I sent. It’s getting complicated.

  Be careful.

  XO, I sent back.

  *

  Yuliana and Ed prepared to land us at Ronald Reagan, which I took as a sign of Brooks’ clout. Ed had told me during a pee break that most of the private flights to D.C. went to Dulles, twenty-five miles out of the city, while Reagan was right near the downtown area, and that’s where we were touching down. I wondered if some poor FAA guy had been caught on a video with his pants around his ankles.

  I’d squeezed into the plane’s bathroom and changed into the same suit I had worn for my father’s wake. I’d recycled the white shirt, but if this gig lasted for any amount of time, I would need to check in at a men’s shop. We were escorted to an area where the rental cars were kept and a valet handed me the keys to a black limo. I loaded the bags, set the GPS, and headed into town, toward the Willard.

  The hotel was a Washington landmark, and like the rest of the city, polished marble was everywhere. I wondered if the stone had come from Vermont, and if the great-grandfathers of the kids I’d grown up with had quarried it, shaped it, and sent it down by rail. I offloaded my boss and his entourage, and was directed to the garage by a doorman. Several other chauffeurs were gathered at one end, smoking cigarettes and gabbing. I grabbed my own bag, locked the car, and headed for the lobby.

  A bellhop took my suitcase and escorted me to the room. Brooks had reserved four of them, and if mine was any indication, his must have looked like the interior of Versailles. I was starting to get used to this jet-set thing. The Best Western would never look the same.

  Yuliana texted me.

  R U hungry?

  Yes.

  Oysters?

  Hell yes.

  Be ready in 5 mins, she wrote.

  *

  Ten minutes later there was a knock on my door. She was dressed for the city: black pants, a silver-grey blouse, and a medium-weight black leather jacket. “You clean up good,” I told her.

  “You look nice, too,” she said. Her voice was quiet, and oddly shy.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Tired from the flying,” she said. “It wears me out. You have to really concentrate.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, and we took the elevator down to the lobby, not talking. I was a little tired too, but I figured that some oysters would perk me up.

  *

  The Oceanaire was two blocks away on F Street. It was an expense-account kind of place with well-dressed patrons who were picking at seafood and drinking. Washington is foreign turf to me, but from what I’ve been told, most of the important business is done in restaurants like this.

  A waiter seated us and gave us menus. I ordered a dozen Wellfleets, my favorites, and Yuliana chose the Malpeques from Prince Edward Island. She picked the wine, a New Zealand chardonnay that I’d never heard of.

  “How did you know I love oysters?”

  “I did my homework on you, remember?”

  “So what other dark secrets do you know about me?”

  “That’s all,” she said.

  “Come on.”

  She looked away, at the other diners. “I recognize that guy,” she said. “Over there. He’s on CNN, right?”

  “Yuliana, are you dodging my question?”

  “All right. I know a lot. Brooks had me do the research, before he made you the offer.”

  “Like what?”

  “I know about your wife,” she said. “Glory. I read about it in the Press Journal archives. Your father had told me about it, too. He was so sad for you.”

  I felt a stab, as if somebody had inserted a dull knife and tried to shuck me open, like the oysters we were about to have. “It’s been over a year now,” I said. “It seems like last week.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you still…how do I say this?”

  “Mourning? Yes.”

  “No,” she said. “The word I was searching for was healing.”

  The waiter arrived and poured us each a glass of wine. I took a sip, which turned into a gulp. I was thirsty. “Yes,” I said. “I’m still healing.”

  “Is that why you’re not sure about Barbara?”

  “How do you know that? That didn’t come up in your background check.”

  “I’m a woman, Vince.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I said.

  She took a tiny sip from her glass.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I said.

  “OK,” she said.

  “Do you want out?”

  She looked at me. “Of us?”

  “No,” I said. “Of Brooks. The second chance.”

  She took another sip of the wine and looked back into her glass as she spoke. “Your father was going to blow the whistle,” she said. “I was the one who gave him the video. In fact, I gave him the computer. He didn’t have a complete understanding of what they were really doing, but when he did, he came to me. We were going to try to get out.”

  “But they killed him first.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I’m responsible.”

  “No you’re not,” I said. Her eyes were welling up with tears. I was getting pretty good at making women cry.

  “It’s even worse now,” she said. “He’s dead, and I’m falling in love with his son.”

  “Yuliana—”

  “Please don’t say anything.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Especially that,” she said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said.

  We were quiet for a while. Our oysters arrived, and I devoured one while she picked at hers with a little two-tined spear.

  “I’m a lost cause, Vince. I don’t know why you’d even bother.”

  “I have this damsel-in-distress thing,” I said. “It can get me into trouble.”

  She pierced one of her Malpeques and dangled it near her lips, without putting it in her mouth. That was, without question, the sexiest thing that a woman could ever do in the presence of a man who loved oysters.

  “So,” she said, “you�
��re saying you want to save me? Then what happens? You get me pregnant like Barbara, and then you dump me?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  She saw my face drop. “Vince. That was awful. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I deserved it,” I said. “I’m in an unfamiliar place. Meeting you has kind of moved the furniture around.”

  “So you have feelings for me?”

  “That depends on what you mean by feelings,” I said. “I’m intimidated. I’m in awe. I’m completely turned on. And I feel like I’ll go straight to hell if I ever touch you again.”

  “You’re such a Catholic,” she said.

  I laughed. “You did your homework, all right. You know me way too well.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “No one really knows anyone else, and they know even less about themselves.”

  “Damn right,” I said.

  “I’m not going to knock on your door tonight,” she said. “If you want me, you have to come to mine.” She took a big gulp of her wine.

  “Finish your oysters,” I said, and I waved at the waiter for the bill.

  *

  I didn’t have to knock on her door because we went directly to her room. It was larger than mine and was littered with her clothes. “Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I was trying on outfits.”

  I unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it back off her shoulders. She wore a patterned bra, and I reached behind her and undid it with only a little fumbling. She unbuttoned my twice-worn shirt and stroked the hair on my chest. I put my fingertips on her breasts. They were small and delicate, and her erect nipples pointed at me like a firing squad.

  “I’m built like a boy,” she said. “Your tits are bigger than mine.”

  “You are very beautiful, Yuliana,” I said. “You know you are. No more apologizing.” I reached for the switch on the wall, and stopped.

  “Do you want me to leave the light on again?”

  “No,” she said. “Not this time.”

  “Tell me what you want,” I said.

  “I want you,” she said, and I made the room go dark.

  *

  It wasn’t about being Catholic. I hadn’t been to church in years except for weddings and funerals. It was about being a human being. I had made a decision, and no visits to the confessional, no penance, nothing would get me off the hook. Somebody was about to get hurt. It could be Yuliana, or Barbara, or me, or all three of us, and the responsibility would be mine.

  I held Yuliana in my arms while she slept. Her skin was still moist from our lovemaking, and just touching her made me want her all over again.

  Harry Houdini, where the hell are you when I need you?

  MONDAY

  Brooks’ seven AM meeting was cancelled and he was pissed. I was driving him to the Rayburn House, and he had just received a call from Yuliana. I only heard his side of the conversation, but apparently a staffer had called her and said that his boss was not feeling well and had to cancel. He sputtered in the back seat while I watched him in the rearview mirror.

  “Set the navigation system for Leesburg,” he said. “Here’s the address.” He passed his phone to me and I punched the information into the limo’s GPS. We were going to Octavio Muñoz’s house. Muñoz was a congressman from Florida’s 18th Congressional district, which covered Miami, the Keys, and a chunk of the Everglades.

  I didn’t know much about Muñoz except that he was a freshman congressman who played polo and had married rich. His wife’s family was Cuban, and they owned a big piece of southern Florida, especially around Coral Gables where you only needed to own a small piece of it to be wealthy. Even with the real estate crash the big land-owning families had hardly felt the pinch.

  We took the Dulles Toll Road out of town. The traffic, despite the early hour, was a nightmare. The road coming in was a parking lot, and even going away from town it was worse than anything I’d seen in other cities. The D.C. area had been a sleepy tidal backwater until air conditioning had become ubiquitous and changed everything. Now the city and its environs hummed year-round, and in the last thirty years the population had exploded, while the infrastructure had not kept up. I knew a retiree in Vero who had commuted ten miles to the Pentagon every morning and had to leave for work at five AM, otherwise it would take hours.

  Brooks made calls while I drove. It was all business, and all about deals. He had an interesting style on the phone—he knew when to shut up. He listened for long periods, and then he would respond with a few carefully chosen words. Good listeners are the best negotiators.

  He put down his phone and asked me how far away we were.

  “The nav system says twenty more minutes, but it’ll be longer unless this traffic thins out.”

  “I hate to waste the goddamn day in the car.”

  “It’s nice out, at least,” I said. It was well above freezing and there was no snow, just brown grass and bare trees. We finally got off the Toll Road and into horse country, with mini-estates dotting the low hills, and miles of whitewashed fence. The GPS led me around Leesburg and south down Highway 15, then onto a back road which turned to gravel. The houses were set farther apart here, and it looked like the equivalent of Brooks’ neighborhood in Stowe. The Blue Ridge Mountains spread out in the background, and if they weren’t as dramatic as the backdrop of Mount Mansfield, they had a subtle beauty all their own.

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “What?” he said.

  “My father had an insurance policy,” I said.

  “I can’t discuss that right now,” he said. He picked up his phone. “Octavio? It’s Brooks Burleigh. Listen, I’m on the way to your house. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He was quiet for a little while. “No, it can’t wait. Waiting would be very risky for you.”

  He put the phone down and caught my eyes in the mirror. “I’ll have Yuliana wire your first month’s pay to your bank today. Sixteen thousand and change. Let’s round it off to twenty. Call it a signing bonus.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And I got the message. No more questions. I was his now, bought and paid for.

  *

  I waited in the car while he went into the house, carrying only a slim tablet computer. The place was a McMansion, oversized, with zero personality. It was probably built in the 1990’s real estate boom, and it had all the hallmarks of new wealth—a pool, a horse barn, a multi-bay garage for the toys, and at least 10,000 square feet of house. I bet they used less than a thousand of it to actually live in.

  I have the cop habit of counting the security cameras and checking out the alarm system whenever I approach a place. This one was fully wired. It figured—a U.S. congressman was a big deal, and even if I could not see any evidence of bodyguard-types, they probably weren’t far away.

  I had no idea how long he would be in there, but I thought I’d make some calls. The first one was to Robert Patton. I’d had an idea when Brooks had handed me his phone, earlier.

  “Patton,”

  “Tanzi.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Do you know what a Radio Tactics Aceso is?”

  “We just ordered ten more of them last week.”

  “I have some files to send you. Give me your email address. Your personal one.”

  He gave it to me. “What do you have?”

  “Brooks Burleigh’s contacts, emails, and texts.”

  “Damn,” he said. “You looking for a job?”

  “I have one, for the time being. Pallmeister asked me the same thing.”

  “We have better benefits,” he said.

  “I’ll get the files to you later,” I said. “I don’t have my laptop. I’m working.”

  “Watch out,” he said. “If they find out what you’re doing, you’re in trouble.”

  “I know,” I said. The proof of that was lying in a funeral home basement waiting for the ground to thaw.

  The phone had buzzed twice while I’d had it to my ear, talking to Patton. One was a text from Yuliana. Right b
elow it was a text from Barbara. Even my phone was trying to mess with me. I answered Barbara’s first.

  Where R U? she’d sent.

  Virginia, I replied.

  What? On the way home?

  Not yet. Business here.

  Srsly?

  I took a job with that guy. The one with the jet.

  U took a JOB? When were U going 2 tell me this??

  Not permanent.

  Call me.

  Can’t talk now, I sent.

  She didn’t send an answer, but the lack of one conveyed her message.

  Yuliana had simply written: I’m sore.

  Me too, I sent back.

  I’m in the Jacuzzi, she sent.

  Don’t drop the phone.

  Haha, she sent back. Where R U?

  I shivered. I had just received the exact same text from Barbara.

  Leesburg, I wrote. Some rich guy’s house.

  When do U get back?

  Don’t know.

  When U do, come straight to my rm.

  Ur nt my boss.

  Yes I am LOL.

  Then that’s harassment LOL.

  Maybe U shld take a vacation. Fly off w me 4 a few days.

  I’ve been wrkng less than 2 days.

  I want U, she wrote.

  Hold that thought, I sent back, and I put the phone away. Brooks was coming out.

  *

  “Coming out” was something of an understatement. It was more like he had been fired from a cannon. The door had burst open, and Brooks was sprinting across the gravel driveway toward me. Not far behind him was a middle-aged man in an untucked flannel shirt, with thick white hair like Brooks’ and a deep tan. It was Octavio Muñoz, and he was gaining on Brooks. The tablet computer was nowhere to be seen.

  Brooks opened the limo door and jumped in. “Go!” he yelled, and I stepped on the gas, leaving the enraged congressman in the driveway, screaming obscenities that you wouldn’t find in a Spanish-English dictionary. “Fucking madman,” Brooks said, as he wiped his forehead with a napkin from the limo’s bar.

  I tried not to smile, and I knew better than to speak unless spoken to. But I was quietly laughing my ass off. Brooks had tried to squeeze the guy, obviously, and the congressman had not taken it well. I couldn’t help myself—I had to ask him something.