by C I Dennis
“I told you I’d call you if anything came up. Something did. He abducted a client of mine, at gunpoint. She’s OK; I found them, and it’s over. He went back to Tampa with his father.”
“Did you witness it?”
“Not the actual abduction, but I’m the one who got her out of the trunk of his car, and I witnessed him pointing a gun at me.”
“I’ll need you to come in,” she said. “Where are you?”
“Vero,” I said. “I can’t get over there today, and there’s a storm heading up the coast.”
“You’re the one who is the former police officer, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Retired. I’m a P.I. now.”
“That’s good enough for me. I’m going to pick him up and put him in the Hillsborough Juvenile facility. Don’t say anything, I don’t want him running.”
“OK,” I said.
“Mr. Tanzi?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll call you after the storm passes through; I’m going to need you over here for a statement. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He doesn’t have the gun anymore.” I didn’t bother to explain where it had come from in the first place.
“Good,” she said, and we hung up.
I tried Frank at the office, and they said he was already gone for the day. I dialed his cell, and it went to voicemail. I thought about leaving a message, but didn’t. I’d just try him later.
*
I wasn’t ready to go home yet, so I dawdled around Central Beach. I ended up at Humiston Park; Barbara’s destination on her daily walk. A group of young mothers in loose dresses and big sunglasses chatted while their children played on swings and climbed on something that looked like a huge plastic fish. The kids were barefoot, and they laughed and chased each other while their moms socialized.
I found a shady bench and watched the kids play. The wind had picked up, and I could hear the breakers, now definitely getting louder in advance of the storm. One of these days a Category Five hurricane would come and take out the whole barrier island. It wasn’t much more than an overgrown sandbar—with several billion dollars’ worth of structures on it. Coastal Florida seems so civilized until the one-hundred-forty-mile-an-hour winds come along and fling manhole covers around like poker chips.
I was beginning to get used to my chest pain and my drug regimen. It didn’t hurt any less, but it would eventually get better, and I was lucky to be alive. My ribs would heal faster than my heart, which was having a hard time over Glory’s infidelity. For now I needed to compartmentalize the emotions—I had work to do. Later on I would see how I felt. I figured I would get over it in thirty years or so. We Catholics may be all about sin and forgiveness, but we Italians are all about holding a grudge.
There was a ring around the sun. They say that it’s caused by ice crystals in cirrus clouds, although the notion of ice anywhere seems implausible in the August heat. They also say it’s a sign that a storm is coming. I had hurricane shutters on the house, and I figured that the wind would be reminding me to lock them down tonight.
*
Frank Velutto’s tan Mercedes was in my driveway when I got home. I parked the BMW next to it and got out. He wasn’t in the car, and there was no one in the neighborhood except the couple across the street, outside making storm preparations. They ignored me; I was the neighborhood pariah after my jail stretch, even though the case had been thrown out. It was almost seven o’clock, and I wanted to shower and shave before I went over to Barbara’s, plus I needed to pack a bag if I was going to sleep over.
The door to my house was unlocked and the alarm turned off. I surprised Frank in the kitchen; he jumped when I said his name.
“Vinny, sorry, I let myself in,” he said.
“Where’d you get the key?”
“Carole had one, remember?” he said. He had not only let himself in, he’d poured himself a scotch, and a generous one at that.
“And the alarm?” I asked.
“Yeah, we had that too,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”
Actually, I remembered that I had changed the code when I’d gotten out of jail back in the spring, and I certainly hadn’t told Frank. Only Roberto and I knew what the sequence was. But Frank was a cop, and cops knew all the guys at the alarm company. They could just switch it off if he said so.
“Frank, what are you doing here?”
“Um...I came to ask you something, Vin.” He looked wasted, like he’d already had plenty to drink.
“So ask.”
“You remember that computer you got Glory? The thin one?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is kind of awkward, but I was wondering if you wanted to sell it. I was thinking of getting one for Carole, and I didn’t know how to ask you.”
“I thought you and Carole were separated.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to fix that.”
“So, Frank, you break into my house and make yourself a drink and now you want to buy Glory’s computer?”
“Hey, I didn’t break in. I had a key, OK?” He backed out of the kitchen, and we migrated toward the living room. “I’m sorry about taking your booze. I didn’t think you would care and...I’m fucking messed up, man.”
“I see that,” I said.
“So where’s the computer?” he said. I looked around the room. I could see several drawers that were open that weren’t open when I’d left the house in the morning. Frank had gone through the place already.
“It’s not here,” I said. “Don’t you remember? Your forensics guys went through the place, and they didn’t find it.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. In fact, according to the report Frank had been the first cop on the scene. He’d excused himself from the case because we were friends, but he’d directed the initial part of the investigation.
“So, you still got it?” he said.
“I tossed it in the river,” I said.
Frank’s face went dark. I knew that look. It was the same as my dad’s, right before his fury would explode. “You’re fucking with me, right Vinny?”
“No,” I said. “It’s in the river.”
“Then who’s sending me the fucking emails? From Glory’s account? Who’s telling me she’s not dead, and she’s coming to get me? You want to answer me that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Frank.”
“Last week. I fucking jumped out of my skin. ‘I’M NOT DEAD BUT YOU’RE GOING TO BE.’ You scared the shit out of me until I figured it out. I felt like coming over and burning your fucking house down.”
Roberto. Holy shit. Frank was the guy...Pacobell6969. Roberto had flushed the grouse.
“Somebody else sent that email. Not me.” I felt oddly calm. Frank was getting more and more agitated. “I’m going to get myself a drink,” I said.
I got a bottle of bourbon from the cabinet and poured a highball glass half-full. At the same time I took my phone out of my pocket and touched an app that worked as a recording machine. I put the phone down on the cabinet, next to the bourbon bottle. I had a feeling that I would want this conversation on tape.
“So you’re Pacobell.”
“Christ,” he said, and he slumped into a chair. “Who else knows?”
“I’m not going to tell you that,” I said.
He pulled out his gun, a Glock 26 just like mine. He aimed it at my chest. “Who else knows, Vin,” he said, his voice now measured and calm. “Who sent the email?”
“Put it away, Frank. I already got drawn on today, and I’m not in the mood.”
“I’ll do it, Vin. I already tried once.”
I thought about that, and another tumbler clicked into place. “At the Ford dealership?”
“Yeah.”
“OK Frank, a fourteen-year-old kid knows. You going to shoot him too? Because we found out you were fucking my wife?”
He put the gun down and hung his head. “Yo
u don’t get it, do you,” he said. “But you will. You’re too fucking smart.”
I looked at his gun, the Baby Glock. It was the same caliber as mine, a nine millimeter. The final tumbler clicked, and the bolt slid open.
“So tell me how it happened,” I said.
He looked at the rug and began to talk, in a hollow monotone. “She wouldn’t talk to me. I would drive up to her on the street and she wouldn’t even look at me. For six months she was crazy about me and then she just turned it off.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You and I went out for a drink. I’d emailed her five times that day—I was going crazy. I just wanted to see her. I had a pocketful of crushed-up Ambien, and I put it in your drink when you went to take a whiz. I wanted to get you good and fucked up, and I didn’t care if it killed you, either. And then you went home and passed out, and I let myself in. I had a key, and I used to know the fucking alarm code, she gave it to me. We used to do it right here on the couch, when you were out of town.”
He took a big swig of his scotch. His words were hitting me like little poison darts, and the venom was racing through my blood.
“She’s in the living room, she’s reading a book and she’s had some wine, and I’m a little drunk too. She’s way pissed off that I came to the house and she’s yelling and I start yelling and she’s afraid you’re going to wake up. I grab her, I’m trying to kiss her and she knees me hard in the balls and I fall on the floor and I can’t fucking draw a breath. She’s screaming at me and I pull out my piece and I shoot her once in the stomach. She’s on the floor and then you come out and fall down the stairs head first and you look like you’re dead. You still have your gun on your belt so I take it out and put it in your hand, then put another one into Glory, in the chest.”
“Two bullets, two guns.” My words sounded far away, like someone else had said them.
“I loved your wife, Vinny. I couldn’t help myself. I killed her and I ruined your life and I ruined mine.”
I felt my own gun, in the holster at the small of my back. It would be easy to just put a slug in him. Everything was on tape. I never wanted to kill somebody more in my life. Frank was now crying, which made me hate him even more.
“I never meant to hurt her,” he said. He put his drink down. “I miss her every day.” He stood up and walked over to the half-bath in the entry hall and closed the door.
I took a long drink from the bourbon glass. It was the first hard liquor I’d had in a while, and it burned on the way down. Hearing Frank Velutto say that he missed Glory was the last poisoned arrow that I could take. I reached behind my back and unsnapped the Glock.
There was a loud bang from the half-bath. I opened the door. Frank was seated on the john, slumped forward, with the back of his head blown away. His gun was on the floor. Glory had painted the walls a deep crimson, and Frank’s blood was exactly the same color, just wetter. He beat me to it.
*
My first call was to the Sheriff’s office. I got through to the duty officer, Bobby Bove, who had been around for as long as I had and knew his job. I gave him the basics, and he said there were two deputies out near the house, but he’d get someone to cover and would come over first, and I thanked him. I needed someone with some experience to survey the damage before some rookie hothead got there and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
I called Barbara next, but the phone rang and went to her message machine. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had just passed out; sooner or later the shock of what she’d been through would sink in. I left a message telling her that I wouldn’t be over and to stay inside, and to call the police if anything was wrong.
I went upstairs and flushed the rest of the pain pills down the toilet. I didn’t want to complicate things any more than they already were. Everything else I left untouched, and I waited outside on the front lawn for Bobby. The wind was coming up hard now, and the palm trees were swaying like drunks coming home from a bar.
Bobby arrived within minutes. I told him where Frank was, and he asked for my gun, which I handed over to him. He dropped it into a plastic bag. I also told him where my cell phone was, next to the bourbon bottle. I asked him to be careful with it; it had a recording that would explain what had happened. Shortly afterward the street turned into a carnival of flashing blue lights, and I was led to one of the gathering squad cars and locked in the back. A few stray neighbors collected at the end of the driveway, wondering who I’d killed now.
*
The interrogation room at the county office was familiar to me, from both sides of the table. Besides Bobby there was a new assistant D.A. who I hadn’t met before named Bill Thornton. He was African American, half-a-foot taller than me, and he didn’t look pleased to have been roused from his bed. They made me listen to the tape several times and explain the sequence of events in my own words. They were respectful, but they were in shock too. When cops lose one of their own, even if it’s not exactly in the line of duty, the rest of them are just that much closer to their own mortality. No one congratulated me on solving Glory’s murder. By three in the morning it was clear that they had a suicide, not a homicide, and Bobby Bove drove me home. He took me into the house while I collected my things, since it was still taped off for the forensics team to return to in the morning. I thanked him, got into the BMW, and drove to the Spring Hill Suites, where I took a room and lay on the bed in my clothes, thinking about my dead wife and her dead lover while the glass in the windows began to shiver from the fury of the oncoming wind.
WEDNESDAY
The rain and the un-medicated pain in my ribs woke me, otherwise I might have slept until noon. I turned on the TV and every channel was talking about the storm which was off the coast around Jupiter and was headed north. The forecasters said it was poking along at a slow pace, but was still a Category Two, and wherever it made landfall would get walloped.
There were four messages on my cell phone, three from newspapers and one from Barbara. Someone at the Sheriff’s office must have leaked what happened, but I had no interest in talking to the press. I called Barbara, and she answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” she said. Her voice sounded anxious.
“At the Spring Hill Suites.” It hurt to talk. I was wishing I hadn’t flushed my stash and was already making plans to see Sonny, my pharmacist.
“Vince, what’s going on? I’m in my car, going to the high school. They evacuated the whole island.”
“Come here, I have a room. I have a few things to explain.”
“There was something on the news...” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell you when you get here.”
I got a quick shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes. I didn’t have anything for the rain, but I still planned to venture out, even if I’d get soaked. I had to stop at Sonny’s, and from there I was going to drive back to Lake Wales, to the juice plant. The way hurricanes worked it might not even be raining there.
Barbara showed up at my door looking like she’d gone swimming in her clothes. It wasn’t cold, but she was shivering just the same. She shucked off her jacket and sat on the side of the bed, peeling off her tan shorts.
“I’m going to use your shower,” she said.
“OK,” I said, and I turned my head away, suddenly modest. I pretended to look at the TV.
I called Sonny while she bathed, and he said he’d get me a refill, I could come over any time. Barbara was out of the shower, toweling off with the door slightly ajar, the steamy air escaping from the bath into the room. I pretended not to watch as she wrapped her hair in a towel and wrapped another one around her torso.
“There’s a robe in the closet,” I said.
“Too late,” she said. “You’ve already had your peep show.” I blushed.
She sat next to me on the bed. “So. What happened?” she said.
“A cop named Frank Velutto shot himself in my house,” I said. “Last night when I came home.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” I said. “But I thought about it. I found out some things about my marriage that I didn’t know.”
“So he’s the guy.”
“What guy?”
“The guy who had an affair with your wife,” she said.
“How do you know about that?” I’d never said anything to Barbara about the emails. “Was that on the news?”
“No. I didn’t tell you this, Vince, but Glory and I were kind of...friends. She took a Pilates class from me, at the club. We got to know each other, and sometimes we’d have lunch after class. She asked me, a couple of years ago, if I’d ever had an affair. I said no, but that opened the floodgates. She didn’t tell me who it was, but she gave me all the details and said that she was desperate to end it. She loved you a lot, you know.”
“Not enough to be faithful,” I said.
“Being faithful has nothing to do with how much you love somebody,” she snapped, “so don’t give me that crap.”
“I’m—”
“You’re just as guilty as anyone else. You slept with me, and I’m married. Don’t confuse love and desire, they’re two different things.”
“Jesus, I didn’t...”
Barbara held out her hand to silence me. “I know you loved your wife, and I know she loved you back. You were lucky.” She got up and stormed back into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
I crossed the room and opened the bathroom door. She was sitting on the john, naked except for the towel around her hair. “Barbara—”
“Get out of here!” she said. I closed the door and went back to the bed. There were too many emotions swirling around in my head, and my ribs ached. The news blared from the TV while the rain beat against the window, trying to drown it out. The latest storm projection now had Vero Beach right in the crosshairs.
I took the easy way out and left her a brief note, then closed the door quietly behind me and went down the hall and out the front of the hotel into the cascading rain. I was soaked down to my underwear before I got halfway to the BMW.