by C I Dennis
“This is delicious,” I said, spooning in some of the soup.
“I deep-fried the bird,” Kermit said. “Only way to go.”
“What else is in it?” I asked.
“Whatever we had in the fridge,” he said. “It don’t much matter what you put in, it all cooks down real nice.”
“Kermit, who was Mr. Rudy? I saw the name in a letter my father wrote.”
He looked at his wife, and she didn’t say anything. He turned back to me. “You remember that Mr. Tomas?”
“Yes.”
“Same feller. When your father took him to Canada, sometimes he was Mr. Tomas and sometimes he was Mr. Rudy. Nobody knew about it, but your father saw the passport.”
“I had a feeling that was what you’d say.”
“Never liked him much,” he said. “Neither did Jimmy. We called him Mr. Rude behind his back.”
“Did the police ask you about him?”
“Yep. They quizzed us something awful, after the plane crash. But I’d forgot about the other name he used.”
“Any ideas about where he’d be?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Did you know his last name?”
“Your father might have,” he said. “But we don’t. Wish we could help ya.”
*
I didn’t have the heart to go up the hill to Brooks Burleigh’s farm. I figured that the house had been thoroughly picked over by the various federal and state agencies who had a dog in that race. Nor could I face going to Tomas’ mountaintop schloss—that place gave me the creeps, and the Feds had no doubt sanitized it as well. I thought about my father’s letters. The authorities had missed perhaps the best piece of information you could possibly find, right there in a letter on his desk. He had practically named his killer. What a bunch of boobs. On the other hand, I had taken that critical information, stashed it in a suitcase, and only stumbled on it almost a year later because I was looking for a power cord. Any more mistakes like that and I’d be asked to send back my Dick Tracy decoder ring.
I drove through Stowe and went up the Mountain Road as far as the ski area, thinking. The hill was busy with early-season skiers enjoying the man-made snow. On the way back down I checked in with Patton and Pallmeister separately, but neither of them had turned up anything that looked like a fit. I told them that the Rudy we were looking for was definitely Tomas Schultheiss, according to Kermit and Eunice. He had used an alias, apparently several times, and Pallmeister had nothing to say, but Patton was a different story. He was angry with himself.
“I can’t believe I missed this,” he said. “You have to present a passport these days, either the regular kind or the card.”
“To get into Canada? Yes, I know.”
“We keep records. Your father went to and from all the time, we tracked him as part of the investigation. If he drove Mr. Rudy in, I’ll have a record. With his whole name.”
“I bet I can beat you to it,” I said. “Dinner at Leunig’s.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m not quite sure yet,” I said. But as I was driving past a gas station on the Mountain Road, one of the Tetris pieces fell into place. I pulled the Subaru into the lot and parked next to a small building with a sign out front that said LaBounty Car Rental.
*
A rusty truck was parked outside the hut, and a young man waved me in when I knocked at the door. He had a kerosene heater going, but it was still cold inside.
“You work here all winter?” I said.
“We got a woodstove, but my dad took it to his deer camp. Meanwhile I’m sittin’ here freezing.”
“I have kind of a strange question,” I said. “Did I ever rent a van from you?”
“When?” he said. “You look a little familiar.”
“Last winter,” I said. “The end of January.”
“Let me look,” he said. “You can’t remember?”
“I had an accident,” I said. “It kind of jumbled things around.”
“What’s your name?”
“Vince Tanzi,” I said.
He opened his computer and looked for a while. “Nope. You’re not a customer.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. No Vince Tanzi. You ain’t in the database.”
I was puzzled. I remembered renting a van that day. I went to Canada, I saw Patton, and I rented some kind of van, and when I’d passed this place it rang a distinct bell. That was all I could remember, however hard I tried.
“Shit,” I said. “Dead end.”
“You a cop?”
“I used to be,” I said. “I’m a private investigator now.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A guy named Rudy,” I said. “I thought I remembered renting a van from you. I was thinking that might lead me to him.”
“You mean Rudolf Meijer,” he said. “Now I remember you. You were supposed to meet him here, and I told you where he was. He’s the one who rented the van, not you.”
“Rudolf Meijer,” I said. Bingo. “Do you know where he is?”
“Never saw him after that,” he said.
“He’s the one who blew up the plane,” I said. “Morrisville airport.”
“Fuckin’ A,” he said.
“The police are going to want to interview you. They’ll want to look over your records. Don’t worry about it, OK? Just cooperate.”
“Jeez,” he said. “We do a lot of business under the table. Cash.”
“I said the police, not the IRS. Help them anyway you can. Rudy Meijer is a killer.”
“OK,” he said, and I left. It was time to call Patton and tell him I’d won the bet.
*
“You’re a father now,” Robert Patton said. “You can’t risk another Leunig’s poutine.” He’d driven down from Burlington, and we were getting a coffee at the Red Hen Bakery in Middlesex. Patton had dismissed it as another hippie joint, but he came around after he tried one of their coconut macaroons.
“Sore loser,” I said.
“So now what do we do?”
“I’m not running this show.”
“You wouldn’t know that,” he said. “So far you’ve turned up everything important in this case.”
“You’re running a whole department,” I said. “I’m just a hack who’s had eight months to obsess about this.”
“If I didn’t have to spend the whole day doing paperwork, I might be able to solve something,” he said.
“You should be a P.I. The only paperwork I do is when I send the bill to the client.”
“I actually like my job,” he said.
“And I actually envy you,” I said. “I miss being a cop.”
“My offer still stands.”
“I can barely walk,” I said. “Let alone bust people.”
“I admire the shit out of you, Tanzi. You’re no hack.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I like you too. But let’s not get a room.”
He laughed, and I suddenly remembered Yuliana saying that. I was telling Brooks Burleigh that although I ought to detest him, I couldn’t help liking him, and he’d said something nice back. We’d been on the way to the airport. In the Escalade. Two more Tetris pieces had fallen into place.
“Do me a favor,” I said to Patton. “Play it back for me. That day.”
“You still don’t remember?”
“No,” I said. “Just a few things, and I’m not sure I even have them right. I thought I’d rented a van, but it was Tomas.”
“OK,” he said. “You went to Canada after him, and then you called me. I got you and your Glock waved through at the border. He was gone when you got there.”
“I sort of remember that.”
“Then you called me again, and I told you your sister was missing. You drove to my office and gave me the laptop.”
“Whose laptop?”
“Tomas’. It had all the sex tapes on it, and tons of other stuff. You said Tomas left it in your car. Without that
we would never have broken the case.”
Down came another rectangle, and I manipulated it into place. I remembered stealing Tomas’ laptop out of his house. Roberto had hacked into it, and led me to the LaBounty car rental place. I’d told Patton that Tomas had left the computer in my car so that he’d have a clean trail, with no illegal searches that would disqualify the evidence.
“You were on your way to Burleigh’s after you left my office. You said you’d agreed to drive them to the airport in Morrisville, and you were in a wicked hurry.”
“Did I tell you about the Rudy Meijer alias? I think I figured it out from the laptop."
“No, and we apparently never put that together. The guy had everything protected, and the techs said somebody had tried to remote in and clean up. They never said anything about another identity, so either they missed it or it was wiped. They found the sex tapes though.”
“The videos might have been something of a distraction,” I said.
He laughed, and continued. “According to the airport attendant, Burleigh and the girl were going to D.C., and the guy said Schultheiss had placed a bag on the plane before they got there. The attendant was the one who found you in the parking lot after you’d been shot. We assumed it was Schultheiss who shot you, but you don’t remember, right?”
I closed my eyes. Sometimes the right side of my head, where the bullet had entered, would throb like hell and things would go eerily bright, as if I was still under the operating room lights. The Tetris puzzle was almost complete.
I remembered Yuliana’s kiss. I remembered the explosion and the plane falling out of the sky. And I remembered seeing a bullet headed for me, rotating in slow motion, coming out of the barrel of Tomas Schultheiss’ gun.
*
My mother was sitting in her chair, with Royal on her lap. He was silent and was looking straight at her with his brown eyes wide open and a little string of drool hanging from his chin.
“They’ve been like that for the past hour,” Barbara said as I went into the kitchen. “She has him mesmerized. I wish I could get him to do that.”
“Let’s take her back to Vero,” I said.
“Would she go?”
“Probably not,” I said. “All her friends are in Barre.”
“OK, then we’ll just move here,” she said.
“Not a chance,” I said. “I want Royal to grow up with access to cultural activities.”
“In Florida? Like what?”
“Like gator wrestling,” I said.
“He and I are staying here,” she said. “You can go back and gator wrestle.”
I poured a late cup of coffee, my third and final one for the day. It was after lunchtime, but I’d filled up on soup at Kermit’s and a croissant at the Red Hen. “I have to work on the computer for a while,” I said.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Just catching up on some old business,” I said. “I remembered some things I’d forgotten.”
*
“We found Meijer’s passport record. It’s Canadian, and it had a bogus address in Montreal,” Robert Patton said. I’d taken the call in the bathroom. I didn’t want to alert the whole family to the fact that I was after Tomas Schultheiss.
“Anything else?”
“Two documented crossings with your father. Both at Rouses Point.”
“He was probably going to the place where the submarine was kept.”
“Yeah.”
“But we don’t have a good address for Rudy Meijer,” I said.
“I’m working on it,” he said, “and I’ve put it out on Interpol, in case he turns up somewhere overseas.”
“Good idea,” I said.
“He looks different,” he said. “The passport was renewed this summer. We compared it to an earlier one. He has longer hair, thicker eyebrows, and so on. We think he got some surgery, and maybe some hair implants.”
“Can you email it to me?”
“Sure. You mean, just in case you run into him?”
“Something like that,” I said. “It’s deer season you know.”
There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Vince, are you in any shape for that kind of thing?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Be patient. We’ll find him,” he said. “You lay low.”
*
My mother was napping after a hearty sliced turkey sandwich. The food and the bustle of having family around had completely worn her out. I had been on the computer for a good part of the afternoon, searching. I’d learned from Roberto how to use keywords and their variations, and it had easily doubled my efficiency. Barbara had gone out for a walk and Royal lay across my lap, bundled up in a blue fleece outfit that was part pajamas and part sleeping bag. I loved holding him, talking to him, and I even—sort of—enjoyed changing his diaper. It was part of being a dad, and it made me feel like I had a place in the world.
Royal was sound asleep, so I lowered him into his crib-basinet thing and covered him up. It was quiet in the house, and I went to the front hall and pulled down a folding ladder from a door in the ceiling. There was a small, unfinished attic above the house, and I wondered if my father’s old guns were still up there.
*
Mrs. Tomaselli caught me red-handed. She was coming in the door with some groceries, and I was hurriedly cleaning my father’s old Remington 700 deer rifle. It was in decent shape and had a scope, but it badly needed oiling and cleaning, and I held it between my legs and wiped it with gun oil. An over-under Beretta 20 gauge shotgun was leaning up against a cabinet—that was my father’s bird gun, and it also had some corrosion, but I figured I’d at least test it when I got out into the woods. But Mrs. T. had spoiled my little gunsmithing session.
“Are you going to start a war?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just cleaning my dad’s old guns.”
She picked up the Beretta and sighted it. “I had one just like this, forty years ago. I used to go out for partridge with my nephews.”
“If you want it, it’s yours,” I said.
“Really?”
“Sure,” I said. “You may want to have it checked out first though. It’s in rough shape.”
“This would keep the squirrels off the feeders,” she said.
“There wouldn’t be any squirrel left if you hit one,” I said. “You can have it, but be careful.”
“I’ll take it out to my car,” she said. “There’s a baby in the house.”
“Take this box of shells too,” I said. “They might be too old.”
“You better hurry up and finish that before your wife gets home.”
“I’m hurrying,” I said.
She took the shotgun outside, and then came in and began unpacking groceries, humming while she worked, in a sweet warble like the older women I used to sit next to at Mass. I did what I could to resuscitate the rifle, then I put it back in its leather case and took it out to the Subaru. When I came back into the kitchen, she was seated at the Formica table and she motioned for me to sit down.
“We need to have a little talk,” she said.
“OK.” I took a chair across from her.
“You’re a father now.”
“I know that.”
“Everything is different, Vinny. You need to put your wife and child first, before anything. And I mean anything.”
“Just going out to see if I can get a deer.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Like my mother used to say, you can’t shit an old-timer.”
“Your mother used to say that?”
“Horrors, no,” she said, smiling. “My mother was a proper lady. Not me.”
I smiled back. “You’re a lady, Mrs. T.”
Her expression turned serious. “She’s in the Hope Cemetery. Go get it out of your system.”
“Your mother?”
“No, not my mother,” she said. “Your friend. With the cute accent.”
“Yuliana? Is in the Hope Cemetery?”
&n
bsp; “She and her boss. What’s left of them. They didn’t find much after the plane crashed. His family buried the remains there, next to each other.”
“Oh,” I said. My head began to throb, and I began to see the familiar operating-room light.
“Vinny? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, but my insides were churning. I took a deep breath and returned to the conversation.
“Are you and Barbara getting along?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“I guess so isn’t good enough,” she said. “You listen to me. You have to worship her. Spoil her. Make her laugh. Especially now, with your baby in the picture.”
“You’re right,” I said. And she was. Some people can just cut to the chase. I needed to step up my husband game, and my dad game, if I really loved them. They needed me.
“The graves are in the Woodside section, way in the back by the trees.”
“You’ve been there?”
“I put some flowers out for you, last spring,” she said. “Go. Say goodbye and move on.”
*
Barbara came back half an hour after Royal had woken up. I’d been putting on the miles, walking him around the house and trying to calm him. I sang him little songs while I held him, but I wondered if my off-key baritone croaking might be making it worse.
“Here you go,” I said to her as soon as she’d put her bags down. “I think he wants something I don’t have.” I handed him off to her with a move that any NFL quarterback would have admired.
“When we get home, I’m going to buy a breast pump,” she said. “Then you won’t be able to get out of it so easily.”
“Vince Tanzi, Stay-At-Home Private Eye,” I said.
“I’ll have that stenciled on the glass of your office window,” she said. She smiled, her cheeks flush from the cold. The temperature was dropping, and the weather called for a frigid night with the possibility of snow. Deer hunters like fresh snow—it makes it easier to track their quarry. But I was going to put all that out of my mind for now, and have an evening at home with my family.