by C I Dennis
“Who are those two?” Mrs. Tomaselli whispered, too close, into my ear.
“Friends of Dad,” I said. “He worked for them.”
“She’s a looker,” she said.
Yuliana broke free and came over. I introduced her, and she took Mrs. Tomaselli’s hand. Yuliana looked at me. “You have the prettiest date here, Vince,” and Mrs. Tomaselli laughed.
“No, your gentleman friend does,” Mrs. Tomaselli said, pointing over to Brooks. “You are lovely, dearie.”
“He’s my boss, not my date, but thank you.” Yuliana leaned into my other ear. “Are you holding up OK?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Ready for a drink?”
“God, yes,” I said. I’d been laying off since the Rumple Minze episode, but I was ready now.
“Come with me,” she said, and she led me toward the door. I put on my coat and we went out into the frigid late afternoon, across the parking lot to a white Cadillac Escalade that was spattered with streaks of road salt. Yuliana pushed a button on her key, which started the engine, and the interior of the SUV lit up like a concert hall. She opened a rear passenger door, and we climbed in.
“Where’s the pool table?” I said.
“The seat folds down and makes a bed,” she said.
“I see,” I said. “This model must be very popular with homeless people.”
She laughed and sat next to me on the back seat. She opened a purse and produced an engraved silver flask. “Vodka?” She pronounced it “Wodka”.
“Da,” I said. I took a swig. I don’t usually drink vodka, so I had no way to tell whether it was the good stuff or the cheap stuff, but I figured it was top-shelf even if Brooks didn’t partake any more.
She took a sip, and we passed it back and forth, not talking, letting the alcohol defrost us. The car’s lights had automatically dimmed, and the faint remnants of afternoon sun provided a weak glow to accompany the booze.
“So what’s on your mind, Vince? What’s the matter?”
“Well, my father’s inside, lying in his casket.”
“But that’s not what it is.” She went silent, and waited.
“OK,” I said. “I got a call. The woman I see—is pregnant.”
“Barbara? She’s mid-forties, right?”
“Right.”
“Congratulations,” she said. She tipped the flask to her lips and drank some more.
“I’m scared shitless,” I said.
“Nothing scares you.”
“This does,” I said.
“You can handle it,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“You’re strong. You’re smart. And you’re kind.”
“I don’t feel very smart,” I said. “I feel like a fool.”
“Because you slept with me, then found out your girlfriend was pregnant?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’ve been very honest with you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I prefer kindness over honesty. Here, have some more.” She extended the flask, and I took a long swig. I finally looked her directly in the eyes. The sable coat covered everything but her face and hands, and I wanted to just open it up, climb in there with her, and sleep until the spring like a couple of hibernating bears.
“Yuliana, you are so gorgeous,” I said.
“No flirting at wakes, remember?”
“Oh. Right,” I said.
“Are you going to take the job?”
I had made up my mind the night before. I was going to turn him down, despite the money. It didn’t smell right, Yuliana had warned me not to take it, and I had a case to work on. Everything about it said no.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?”
“The money,” I said. Kids were expensive. Barbara would probably want to stay home, and I’d want to support that decision. Two hundred grand would go a long way, even if I didn’t stay for long. Also, I figured I had my best chance of finding out what happened to my father by sticking close to Brooks Burleigh.
“It’s very seductive,” she said. “You’re honest, at least.”
“Are you going to stay?”
“I’ll come back after my maternity leave,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes,” she said. “You knocked me up last night.”
I looked at her, puzzled, and then smiled when I realized she was teasing.
“Two can play that game,” she said.
“Jeezum crow,” I said. “You women. I think I’d better just give up and go gay.”
“They’re worse,” she said. We laughed, then drained the rest of the flask and went back inside.
*
Brooks had asked me to start tonight, but I told him no. I wanted a little alone time with my mother, and he understood. I also needed to check out everything on his phone that I’d downloaded, but I didn’t mention that. And if I had time, I was going to watch the security tapes from the hospital, which could take hours. What I really wanted to do was to just chill in one of my mother’s living room chairs and knit, but I’d had a little too much “wodka”, and I didn’t want Roberto’s hat to come out looking like Mickey Mouse’s ears.
My mother was in the kitchen making American chop suey. She used fresh pasta and plenty of garlic, and the whole house filled with the smell. I had the laptop open and started with Brooks’ Mail folder. It was almost all business-related. Land deals—correspondence between attorneys, regulators, bankers, surveyors, tax accountants, soil engineers, timber buyers, hedge fund investors, foundations, environmental groups, bureaucrats, and politicians. It was dense reading, and after half an hour I knew I wasn’t going to find anything juicy in his emails, he was too careful. The Apps folder held nothing, unless it had any meaning to Roberto. The Docs folder was empty except for a legal agreement pertaining to a timber deal in Chile. I open the Texts folder and began to read.
Lots of them were to and from Yuliana. She was very brief with him, and professional. He flirted a little, and teased a lot, but she deflected it. It was largely domestic stuff like what’s for dinner, don’t forget to pick up some half-and-half, and so on. Yuliana had said that they weren’t lovers, but their texts had the casual intimacy of a long-married couple.
There were also quite a few exchanges between Brooks and Tomas, whose cell number I made a note of. I understood very little of it. It wasn’t personal correspondence; more like messages between a field commander and a platoon leader—brief, serious, and possibly coded. A lot of it didn’t make sense, and I decided that Brooks and Tomas had a language of their own. I was going to have to find out more about Tomas, especially after Carla had mentioned her connection to him. She had described him as a “snake”. If she could tolerate someone like Ginny, then Tomas must be some kind of serious badass.
I read the cryptic texts chronologically. The last one was yesterday afternoon, about the time I was having it out with Barbara after our hasty lovemaking.
PRGM HACKD. That was Tomas, who apparently was one of those annoying people who wrote in all caps.
Which one, Brooks had sent back.
VID.
DK wht yr refrng to.
STNDUL
Sht. Source?
TRACING NOW
Let me kno, Brooks wrote.
I read it three times. I’d figured it out the first time, even with the after effects of splitting the flask with Yuliana. I just wanted to make sure it was what I thought it was, because it was bad, and I was scared shitless for the second time in a day.
I dialed Gustavo’s cell, and he answered on the first ring.
“It’s Vince,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
“Listen…do you have anywhere that you could go for the weekend?”
“What do you mean?”
“That video. I think someone traced it. It might have been protected somehow, and someone might be able to find out who got into it.”
“Lilian’s
sister will take us. She’s in Miami.”
“Tell Roberto to stay off the computer.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” he said.
“Sorry about this,” I said.
“Not your fault.”
“Yes it is,” I said, and we hung up.
OK, now I was pissed. A threat to Roberto, of any kind, was unacceptable. I was glad about one thing though, which was that I’d taken the driving job. I’d have a better chance of figuring out what the fuck was going on, which I needed to do, fast.
SATURDAY
I got up at sunrise, which in late January occurs around seven thirty. My back was sore from the old bunk bed mattress, which should have been thrown out years ago. My childhood bedroom certainly made a change from the previous night’s accommodations at the Hôtel Le St-James.
I looked for something to eat in the kitchen and found a box of Shredded Wheat that was relatively fresh. I crumbled up two cakes, poured some milk on them and sat down in front of my laptop.
I had downloaded the security videos while I’d slept. The files were huge, and I figured that my next AT&T data bill would come in somewhere in the neighborhood of a really bad night at the poker table. There were sixteen cameras: two at the main entrance, two at the emergency room drop-off, four in the lobby, two in the parking lots, and six others scattered around various exterior locations. I was able to view all sixteen on the screen at the same time, and I could slow down the frames-per-second rate whenever someone appeared at any of the locations. Almost all the traffic was in and out of the front door, and it didn’t take me long to find Junie. He’d gone in alone just before six, and came back out the same way about fifteen minutes later. I could see the pant legs of his hospital scrubs protruding from his cheap parka, and he wore no hat. James Tanzi Junior, master of disguise.
Everyone else looked like visitors. I saw Sheila returning, at six thirty. There were no emergency admissions that I could see. Things got busy at seven PM when the nurses’ shifts changed and most of them went out the front door to the parking lot. I ran the tapes right up until they stopped at eight PM. I’d seen nothing that piqued my curiosity—no hit men, just a bunch of good old Vermont folks coming to see their sick relatives on a Sunday evening.
I decided to rewind the tapes and try again. My mother had entered the kitchen and was making coffee, but she could see that I was engrossed, and she left me alone. I was missing something. If this had been a pro job they would have been in and out, quickly. I focused on the front door, trying to see if anyone in the six-to-six-thirty window had both entered and left during that time.
Zero. It took me half an hour to view it three more times, speeded up. Still nothing.
My mother put a cup down in front of me. She watched, over my shoulder.
“Is that the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“When was that taken?”
“Sunday night,” I said. “Right around when Dad was killed.”
“They pick up garbage on Sunday night?” she said. “That’s strange.” She pointed to one of the video feeds I had ignored. It was a back entrance labeled “KITCHEN”. A garbage truck was pulling up to it, and a guy got out of the driver’s side and entered the building. I zoomed in.
The camera had been placed up high so that I could only see his profile from above, but it was clear that he was a very large man. He wore a dark wool coat and leather gloves, and was seriously overdressed for his job.
Another man stepped out of the truck from the passenger’s side. This one had an overcoat on also, and his face was briefly illuminated as he lit a cigarette and waited for his friend to return. The overhead camera revealed a bald spot on his hatless head. I recognized him, even though the image was grainy.
It was Tomas. Tomas the Snake. My sister Carla was right.
Less than ten minutes later, according to the clock on the security tape, the big dude returned, and they got into the truck and left. Nobody had picked up any garbage.
But they’d done their work.
*
My call to Lieutenant John Pallmeister went to voicemail, but he called back within minutes. “Everything OK?” he asked. “You sounded like something was up.”
“You can let Junie go,” I said. “I found your killer.”
“What?”
“Two guys on the security tapes. One of them is muscle, and I’ve met the other one.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Tomas. I flew up from Florida in Burleigh’s private jet with him, Thursday night. I don’t know his last name but I’ll get it.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s Schultheiss.”
“You know him?”
“You’d better check in with Patton,” he said. “He’s going to go ape shit.”
“He’s not too fond of me.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Are you going to spring Junie?”
“I doubt it. We have to wait for the DNA results.”
“Look at the tape,” I said. “Kitchen door, just after six PM. Two guys in dress overcoats, riding in a garbage truck.”
“Good catch, Vince. You want a gig with us?”
“I just took one. I’m Brooks Burleigh’s new driver.”
*
When I don’t know what to do next, I clean my gun. I retrieved it from the floor of my mother’s Subaru after leaving it there all night, which was dumb, but I’d been distracted by the whole Roberto thing, and then the security tapes, and oh-by-the-way, my girlfriend was pregnant. I didn’t have any gun oil, but there was some 3-In-One in my mother’s closet and that would do the job. My Glock is an ugly piece of weaponry, but it has never jammed or given me an ounce of trouble, knock on wood. I gave it a fresh coat of oil and came to a decision. I needed to get some backup.
Roberto’s hacking skills were way beyond my comprehension, and in all likelihood he’d be fine. He had explained to me before how he could hide behind strings of untraceable IP addresses through proxy servers and so-on, and anyone looking for him would think he was in China. He said that’s what all the kids did, as nobody trusted the Chinese, and when a trace led there, the pursuers threw up their hands. Maybe that was what would happen if Tomas tried to track Roberto’s hacking, but maybe not. I don’t like having to call the authorities in on a case; it’s an invitation to screw things up. I was a cop for twenty-five years, and I know. But it was time. I dialed Robert Patton’s number on my cell.
“I don’t believe you have the balls to call me,” he said.
“Take it easy, Patton, this is important.”
“Take it easy?” he said, the pitch of his voice rising. “Three years and a couple million bucks in resources, down the shithole? One guy, one fucking guy shows up uninvited, and the whole fucking investigation gets ruined. You got some big stones calling me, Tanzi.”
“I need your help,” I said.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Call the Red Cross.”
“If you’re investigating Tomas Schultheiss, I have him on tape. He was an accessory to my father’s murder.”
“I’m not investigating anyone. The investigation got called off, yesterday afternoon. They said we were using up valuable resources and wasting taxpayer money.”
“What? Who said?”
“The fuckheads at Homeland Security. They pulled the plug. They blame the assholes in Congress.”
“Is your line recorded?”
“Why?”
“Is it?”
“No,” he said.
“I have a video of Dulles Stanton getting laid. Your boss. He doesn’t look all that good in his birthday suit.”
“Where?”
“On my father’s computer. It was buried—a pro encryption job.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“More like a girl,” I said. “Young and beautiful. I think he was set up.”
“Honey trap,” he said. “Interesting.”
“Your investigation got canc
elled out of the blue?”
“No warning. We were totally blindsided.”
“Maybe there’s a connection.”
There was a silence. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“I just took a job as Brooks Burleigh’s driver.”
“OK,” he said. I could hear him calming down. “That’s good. I can work with that.”
“I thought you were shut down,” I said. “They’ll reassign you, right?”
“I’ve got four weeks of vacation time that I haven’t taken,” he said. “Let’s get a beer.”
“The Skinny Pancake, in Montpelier?”
“That’s a hippie joint.”
“They serve Heady Topper beer,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wear my Birkenstocks.”
I laughed. “It’s a little cold for sandals.”
“Noon,” he said. “If I nail Brooks Burleigh, you’ll be out of a job.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said.
*
Barbara texted me a link, and I went to the URL on my phone. It was an ad for a maple crib and changing table set, posted on the Treasure Coast Craigslist for $200. I laughed and texted back.
Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourslvs?
Those go for $700 in the store, she replied.
Fine with me, I replied.
Going to OBGYN on Monday.
Cool, I sent.
Everything ok?
Dandy. Going 2 be here a while. Don’t wait up, I added.
OK. MissU.
XO, I sent.
XO2.
*
Two days after the storm the trees were shedding their icy glaze as the temperature rose. The power crews had worked nonstop, and only a few hundred homes were still in the dark. I switched on the radio on the way to Montpelier in time to hear the weatherman say that the fun wasn’t over—it was supposed to warm up even more in the evening, and then snow. Twelve to eighteen inches were possible for the northern half of the state, with more at the higher elevations. That much snow would cripple most parts of the country, but in Vermont they just called it “good sledding” and dug out.