Tanzi's Luck (Vince Tanzi Book 4)

by C I Dennis

  The flaw in that plan was that both of them wanted to screw her. My strategy was to position myself as the better way out. I was connected to her grandmother, I would encourage her recovery and treatment, and I wasn’t trying to get her in bed. I was offering a way to put this behind her and fix what had gone wrong in her life, even though I’d partially lost my temper while doing it. But Grace was from Barre, and she knew about tempers. We Italian Americans can get overexcited when we’re trying to make a point, and the point that I was making was that I cared about her. I hoped that she would get the message and that my cellphone would ring before this got any worse.

  I called my mother to check on her and the dog. They were getting along fine, according to her. I ran a load of clothes in the laundry, opened the mail, paid some bills, turned on the radio, turned it off again after the fifteenth car dealership ad in a row, checked my email, and I was about to start cleaning out the fridge when I realized that it was almost midnight and I was wide awake because I couldn’t turn my brain off. There was just too much going on.

  I sat in my recliner and tried to break it down:

  My ex-wife was coming on to me, which was awkward and needed to be handled delicately if we were going to successfully co-parent our son.

  Grace Hebert was shacked up with her seventy-year-old lover in a luxury hotel, and I hoped that she was considering what I’d said to her by the pool.

  And last but not least, I was thinking about Karen Charbonneau’s mouth covering mine, right around this time the previous night. Damn. Maybe I wouldn’t be getting any sleep at all.

  My phone buzzed on the glass table next to my chair.

  Everything OK?

  I didn’t recognize the number. Who is this?

  Karen.

  I was just thinking about you.

  Good thoughts?

  Ha. How did you get my number?

  From Cindy. She says you’re in Florida.

  Caught at my own game. Cindy Charbonneau had installed something on my cellphone, and I’d forgotten about it, but she hadn’t. Too bad it was so late in the night, or I would call Roberto and have him remove it.

  No privacy in this world, I wrote.

  OMG I’m so sorry, Karen sent back.

  I didn’t mean it that way, I wrote. I’m glad you got in touch.

  Really?

  Yes.

  I miss you, she wrote.

  I didn’t write anything back for a minute, and I must have waited too long, because she fired off three more texts in a row:

  OMG

  I just made a complete ass of myself, didn’t I?

  I can’t believe I texted u. U must think I’m a total stalker.

  Rather than keeping up the text dialogue, I dialed her, which is a known breach of texting protocol, but I was too wiped out to focus on the tiny screen and my fat fingers could no longer find the keys.

  “Hello?” she said, as if she wasn’t sure who had called her.

  “It’s Vince.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “It’s been a long day, and this is a nice way to finish it.”

  Karen said nothing, and I listened to the faint sound of static on the line, mixed with her breathing. Finally, she spoke. “You could have stayed here last night.”

  “You said you didn’t want to sleep with me. No more addictive behavior.”

  “That was the reason you left?”

  “I had to feed Chan,” I said. “And…”

  “And what?”

  “I’m damaged goods, Karen. My wife left me because of it. I’m not really boyfriend material.”

  “You mean, you can’t—”

  “I can have a sex life, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m just—a slowed down version of myself. I limp, I screw up, and I’m not who I used to be. I was a pretty good husband to my first wife, for the most part, but I failed Barbara.”

  “Or she failed you?”

  “She did some things, yes.”

  “Vince,” Karen said. “Suppose someone met you, and they didn’t know the old you, but they liked you for the way you are now.”

  “They’d be getting shortchanged.”

  “Oh my god, you really are a project.”

  “I found Grace,” I said. “She’s shacked up in a hotel in Palm Beach with Angus Driscoll. I met with her this afternoon.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “So where do you go from here?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Ideally, I would get her to Vermont and put her in rehab.”

  “Would you bring her back yourself?”

  “Probably,” I said. “I also need to deal with the dog.”

  “I want that to happen,” Karen said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like to see you again. I could use a project.”

  TUESDAY

  At first I thought it was Chan barking, although as I rose from my bed I remembered that he was in Vermont. Then I thought it must be the alarm that I’d set for five AM. It was neither—my doorbell was ringing.

  I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and looked out the kitchen window. A white Mercedes sedan was idling in the driveway with no one inside. My doorbell continued to ring, and I opened it without bothering to look through the peephole, which is the kind of bad decision that you might make at three in the morning.

  Fish Falzarano stood at the threshold, dressed in a black shirt and slacks. His eyes were set so far apart that I had to choose which one to look at. “What are you—” I began, but he stepped forward and punched me in the stomach before I could react. His fist must have grazed a lower rib, because I felt a combination of instant, breathless nausea and searing pain. I fell onto the floor tiles, gasping for breath. The moment my wind came back I drew in as much air as I could, but the room exploded into a burst of light, and I knew that I was losing consciousness.

  “Where is she?” I heard him yell, although I could no longer see him.

  “Who?”

  He leaned down and grabbed me by the front of my T-shirt and shook it. “Don’t fuck with me, Tanzi,” he said. “She told Driscoll she was leaving with you.”

  “Know…nothing…about that,” I said, trying to get air into my lungs. “I left her at the hotel.”

  Fish shook me again, but that was the end of our conversation, because the white light was going dark. He released his grip from my shirt. “Useless piece of shit,” he said, just before I passed out.

  *

  I didn’t call in the assault, even though I could have. Fish’s prints were all over my house seeing how he’d opened every door, pulled the clothes out of the closets, and even scattered Royal’s toys around while I lay on the floor of the entryway. The place had been trashed, along with the owner. I’d regained consciousness after he left, heaved whatever was in my stomach into the toilet bowl, and had gone back to bed for a couple hours of sleep, punctuated by my labored breathing. He had definitely bruised a rib. But there was no need to sic the authorities on him, because sooner or later I would pick my spot and I would blindside him like he’d done to me. It’s always nice to have something to look forward to.

  I called Rose at six AM to tell her that breakfast wasn’t going to happen because I could barely rise from my bed. She found out from the hotel staff that Grace had taken a cab to the airport while Angus Driscoll was dining alone. Grace must have made some kind of excuse and slipped away. She also must have said that she was “leaving with me,” which was encouraging but wasn’t true, because I had heard nothing from her, and she had my cell number. If she had decided that I was her best option, I couldn’t understand why she had taken a flight out, although even that was in question. Rose said that Patton’s team hadn’t found her on any of the outgoing flight manifests.

  The day had only begun and already someone had beaten the crap out of me, and the woman who I’d been pu
rsuing for a full week had disappeared once again. I thought about making breakfast, but my stomach hurt too much to consider it even though I needed the food. I needed more sleep, too. Most of all, I needed a break.

  You make your own breaks, Chan would have said. I wished that he were here. I started thinking about how I might transport him to Florida if I were to adopt him. Flying in the cargo hold of a commercial jet would freak him out, and he would never let me live that down. It was a twenty-four-hour drive from Barre to Vero, and I couldn’t risk a trip that long because of the whiteouts. Bus? I didn’t think that they allowed animals. Private jet? Way too expensive. Those things were for the Angus Driscolls and the Clement Goodys of the world.

  Private jet…

  I called Rose DiNapoli. “Did you speak with the cab company directly? The one who picked up Grace?”

  “No, I got it from the front desk,” she said. “They said she asked the concierge for a car to the airport.”

  “Which airport?”

  Rose said nothing. I figured that her silence meant that she understood where I was going with this. “I didn’t ask,” she finally said. “Damn.”

  “North Palm Beach,” I said. “That’s where most of the private flights go.”

  “Right.”

  “Let me know what you find out, OK?”

  “I’m sorry, Vince. I shouldn’t have assumed—”

  “Forget about it,” I said. “We’ll find her.”

  *

  I’d had to lie down again because I was feeling worthless after being beaten up and getting next to no sleep. My lower rib cage ached, and my ego was sorely bruised after being sucker punched by Fish Falzarano. All I could do now was to wait until Patton or Rose got back to me with Grace’s potential whereabouts, and I wasn’t motivated to do anything except lie back in the recliner and hope that the phone would ring. The sooner the better, because I sensed that Grace Hebert was in full crisis mode. Somehow she had telegraphed to Angus Driscoll that she was going to accept my offer to help straighten her out. And then she’d disappeared, leaving him alone at the dinner table with his forty-dollar Brussels sprouts. Grace had said enough to make Angus send Fish Falzarano all the way to Vero to rough me up, but Fish hadn’t learned anything from me except that I was asleep enough to open a door to a stranger in the middle of the night.

  My phone vibrated with a text from Roberto. You’re back? Saw a car in your driveway.

  Yes, I answered. But I’m a little under the weather.

  Flu?

  Somebody beat me up.

  Impossible, he wrote.

  I’m not Superman.

  I’m done after this class. Pick me up in ten, OK?

  I didn’t want to contribute to Roberto’s truancy, but he was a student at St. Edwards, and they didn’t screw around at that school. If they allowed him to leave early, then it was probably all right. I went into my bathroom, took a five-minute shower and ran a razor across my face. I dressed in fresh clothes from my closet and brushed my teeth. All of this would make me a few minutes late for Roberto, but he would be cool with it, and I was tired of smelling like something in the refrigerator that needed to be thrown out.

  Roberto stood at the curb in front of his school. I hadn’t seen him for a week, and it seemed like he’d grown an inch taller. Perhaps he had. Boys his age can become men while you’re not paying attention.

  “Dude,” he said, as he got into the Prius. “This is a rental, I hope?”

  “Nah, I sold the BMW,” I said. “I went all crunchy granola up in Vermont.”

  Roberto did a double take until he realized that I was kidding. No way would I give up the convertible that was waiting for me at the Orlando airport where I’d left it before my trip north.

  “Don’t scare me like that,” he said, and we both laughed. Next to Royal, Roberto Arguelles was my favorite person in the universe. “Give me your cell and I’ll fix it. So who beat you up?”

  I filled him in at length on the events of the last several days. I talked the whole way back to my house, while he listened and simultaneously removed Cindy Charbonneau’s tracking app from my phone. Roberto doesn’t say a lot, but it’s not that he’s distracted. He’s listening, parsing, analyzing, and then offering me suggestions, and sometimes, encouragement. It made a nice change from the grief that I’d been taking from Chan.

  “Why don’t you believe that Matty committed suicide?” he said as we pulled into my driveway.

  “It didn’t feel right,” I said. “I met him, twice.”

  “Then why would someone kill him?”

  “I don’t know yet. It could have been Angus Driscoll. Driscoll might have killed Lussen, and then set up Matty. Somebody planted the bow in his shop, because Matty had no reason to own it. He didn’t hunt.”

  “Where do you think the girl went to?”

  “Grace? I don’t know. I was hoping that she would call me and ask for my help. She needs it.”

  Roberto and I got out of the car and entered my house. He took a container of orange juice from the fridge and poured each of us a serving. We sat at our usual seats at the kitchen counter, and I stared at my glass while he drained his. Roberto was very quiet, but I could tell that he was giving me the once-over. “You look different,” he said.

  “You look taller.”

  “Are you sick? You’re really pale.”

  “I might have a broken rib. Other than that, I’m just ducky.” Which wasn’t entirely true, because the inside of my house had suddenly taken on a bright sheen. The kitchen glowed like an overexposed photograph, and Roberto’s form was backlit as if he had been charged with electricity.

  “Vince? Are you OK?”

  The phone rang, but I couldn’t get out of my chair to answer it. In fact, I couldn’t move at all. Roberto rushed to my side and attempted to prop me up, which was good, because without him I would have been on the floor.

  The message machine amplified the call: Vince? Hey, it’s Rose, and you were right. There was a flight out of North Palm that went to Vermont. A private jet chartered by some group called the New Commitment Society. Does that help at all? Call me, will you?

  The room began to spin and I grabbed the edge of the counter, but I was in the lead car of a roller coaster and there was no getting off. “Clement Goody,” I said to Roberto, slurring the name. My chair toppled and we both crashed down. I was about to pass out again, and in my remaining split second of consciousness I knew that this was another goddamned whiteout. It would be the last one. I was done with them.

  *

  “There’s quite a crowd in the waiting area,” the doctor said. He was tall and slender with skin the color of nutmeg. I read the tag on his lapel, which had been elongated to accommodate his surname. He peered into my eyes with a small flashlight and hummed a few notes now and then as if he was remembering every other line of a song. “Your former wife, your son, the boy who called the ambulance, his parents, and a woman who said she is your associate. I just went out and spoke with them.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “The same thing I’m going to tell you. You’re not in any immediate danger, but you need another surgery. We took scans while you were unconscious, and I shared them with Dr. Jaffe in Vermont.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She agrees with my diagnosis. There’s a bone fragment that has moved. It’s not in a good place, and it’s probably the reason you lost consciousness. Has that happened to you before?”

  It was time to confess, seeing how they had already decided that I would be going under the knife. “Yes. It’s happened a few times, starting a couple of months ago.”

  “Really? I though that Dr. Jaffe just examined you.”

  “I didn’t bring it up.”

  He gave me a disapproving look. “You survived a traumatic brain injury, Mr. Tanzi. You know how cats have nine lives?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve used up eight. Don’t be disingenuous with people who wan
t to help you. You don’t have that luxury.”

  “I don’t have time for surgery,” I said. “I’m in the middle of a case.”

  “Does it involve leaving your house? Driving?”

  “Probably.”

  “You can’t drive. You could put off the surgery for a week or two, although you might experience more seizures. I’m going to release you on the condition that you go home and take it easy. Dr. Jaffe wants to do the procedure in Vermont if you’re willing to travel.”

  “I am.”

  “Schedule it with her. You’ll need a companion for the trip.”

  “I can arrange that,” I said, although I had no idea who I would ask.

  “I’ll call a nurse to remove your IV and you can get dressed. I’m quite serious about the driving, sir. I can have your license pulled.”

  “No need,” I said. “I used to be a deputy sheriff. I understand what you’re saying.”

  “I wish you well with the surgery, Mr. Tanzi.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Kalanadhabhatla,” I said.

  He arched his eyebrows. “How did you do that? Everybody calls me Dr. K.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  *

  My entourage took me back to the house by caravan, and I shooed them all away when we got there, except for Rose DiNapoli, who wouldn’t be shooed. She had called Robert Patton, and he’d “assigned” her to me, as she described it. I wondered how Patton would justify the expense of a customs agent’s time, hotel bills, and everything else that he had had done to help me in my pursuit of Grace Hebert. There was nothing in it for Homeland Security, and someone had to be looking over his budgetary shoulder. I appreciated the help, and I hoped that it wouldn’t land him in trouble, but I figured he’d been with the Border Patrol for years and he knew the back alleys.