by C I Dennis
THURSDAY
I woke up at four AM feeling like I’d swallowed a whole tube of Crest. Once I’m awake, that’s it—there’s no going back to sleep, I can only choose between lying there, worrying about ridiculous, trivial things that are blown out of proportion in the funhouse mirror of half-sleep, or getting up and starting the day. I got up.
The night clerk at the Marriott was asleep in front of the TV, so I decided to just leave the room key on the desk. When the Subaru started on the first try, I realized the weather had actually warmed up some overnight. My inner thermostat said it had to be above zero. I checked the phone to confirm—plus one degree. I was just grateful to be back in the positive category.
I’d been putting off the obvious, which was to check out my father’s apartment. It was in Waterbury, off the same interstate exit as Stowe. But Waterbury was no glitzy resort; it was a blue-collar town along the Winooski River that had seen the old lumber and textile mills gradually replaced by government offices and hipster industries like Green Mountain Coffee, Ben & Jerry’s, and Alchemist Beer—makers of Heady Topper, a double-alcohol IPA that felled strong men like a just-sharpened chainsaw.
A few cars were on the streets when I pulled in to Waterbury—early birds, going to their jobs. The state mental hospital was there, or had been, before Hurricane Irene had washed away a good chunk of Vermont in August of 2011. When we were kids, the mental hospital was where our parents would threaten to ship us off to, if we didn’t behave. The old hospital campus was already run down well before it got the coup de grace from Irene, and much of the population had been mainstreamed into the community in recent years, for better or for worse. Carla had actually been there for an evaluation when she was eighteen, but they determined that she was a pothead, not a psycho, and everyone calmed down. There are far more serious drug issues than marijuana use, and in my opinion the people who wrote the stupid laws ought to just roll a fat one, get the giggles and eat a whole bag of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Milanos before they attempt any further legislation.
My dad’s apartment was on the ground floor of a brick building that dated from the railroad days. I entered the hallway and was completely alone. It was still early in the morning; the sun wouldn’t rise for another hour. I didn’t have the key that Lieutenant Pallmeister had given my mother, but a quick look at the door hardware and I was unconcerned. The deadbolt wasn’t set, and the door handle was a vintage Kwikset that I could eventually manage with a paper clip, but I noticed the doorjamb was loose, and all I needed was a quick slide of my Piggly Wiggly customer card and I was in. The Vero Beach Piggly Wiggly had closed years ago, but their card was the perfect thickness for certain jobs, so I kept it in a safe place in my wallet. I would collect the rest of my lock-picking tools in Vero in case I needed to get past anything more sophisticated.
Everything was neat and tidy inside. I left my gloves on, more out of habit than out of any concern for leaving prints. My father had lived a Spartan existence—there was hardly any furniture, no magazines, no books, nothing to play music on and a nearly-empty fridge except for some yoghurts and a bag of celery that was going limp. There was a water cooler in the living room, with a full glass bottle on top. Ex-alcoholics can’t get enough water; I’d seen this in other people’s houses. A closet held his clothes, which were neatly arranged. The same for his bureau. An old oak desk held pencils, writing paper, a few bills and some change. Two envelopes lay on top, addressed to “Betty Boop”. I smiled—that had to be his pet name for my mother. I decided to just pocket the letters without reading them; I had no desire to embarrass my mom.
His bed was neatly made, his toothbrush was hung up, the floors were clean and the dishes were put away. Everything was way too perfect. Someone had sanitized the place.
I decided to take a fresh look. I turned out the lights, went back into the hall, and then re-entered the apartment. Reboot. I flicked on the light and started all over again. I was missing something.
When I found it, I knew it wasn’t intended to be hidden; I had just missed it. A shiny, nearly-new MacBook Pro lay on top of the fridge, above my line of sight. It was the same model I had at home, except that mine was full of the snooping software that Roberto had helped me install. God knew what my 74-year-old father was doing with a fancy new Mac. God, and maybe a few other people. If they had already been here to sanitize the place, I could assume that the computer would also have been wiped clean. I put it in my coat, locked the door and left. If there was time, I’d get Roberto to check it over while I was in Vero. The kid could find things on computers that their owners thought were buried. He coaxed them from the grave like zombies. There are no secrets on hard drives; it’s all in there, somewhere.
*
The Morrisville-Stowe airport had been updated in recent years to accommodate the private jet phenomenon—there were four of them on the tarmac, parked wingtip-to-wingtip, and a fifth, a big Bombardier 605, waited with the engines already running. I checked in at the small structure that was both control tower and flight lounge. A young man rose from his desk to greet me.
“How’s it going?” he said.
“Good ‘n’ you?” I responded.
“You with Miss Burleigh?”
“Yes.”
“She’s on the aircraft, doing pre-flight. I’ll take you out.”
He put on a ski parka and led me to the big, shiny Bombardier. Yuliana smiled and waved from the cockpit window. There was a guy seated next to her wearing a hat and a white shirt with epaulets. She took off her headset, opened the door of the jet, and lowered the steps.
“This is Ed,” she said as I stepped aboard. The pilot turned to greet me.
“Hi, Ed,” I said.
“Hi, Mr. Tanzi,” he said. “Sorry about your father.”
“Thanks.” I guess I was going have to get used to people saying that.
Yuliana wore tailored grey wool pants that hugged her hips, with a white blouse underneath a black Patagonia fleece vest. Steel-rimmed Ray-bans covered her dark eyes, and I noticed that today she wore makeup, including a deep red lipstick that provided a brilliant contrast to her otherwise monochrome outfit and made her lips the thing that I looked at first.
“Are we all set, Ed?” she said.
“Yes, Ms. Burleigh.”
“Sit anywhere, Vince,” she said, and she sat back down in the cockpit next to the pilot. She put her headset back on and began to flip switches and check dials as the jet’s engines powered up. Apparently she knew how to fly one of these babies, and I added it to the list of surprising things about her. Brooks Burleigh had his own Bond Girl as a personal assistant. Maybe next week she’d take me spelunking, or we’d play polo, or go bungee-jumping, or do all three at the same time.
I strapped myself in to a beige leather seat that was bigger than a Barcalounger and stowed my bag underneath me. There were seven of the gigantic, cushy seats, and a bench at the back that I guessed would fold out to make a bed. I was surrounded by polished wood, sleek metal, and soft, tanned cowhide that must have come from some seriously pampered cows. This was not like flying first class; it was more like getting a massage.
The jet taxied, powered up fully, and then sprinted down the runway and shot into the sky at a forty-five degree angle. I watched the trees and hills get smaller as we passed over Mount Mansfield and swung in a long arc toward the south. This thing was a hot rod; a commercial jet was a school bus by comparison.
The plane leveled off, and Yuliana took her headphones off and came aft. She closed the double-paneled door that separated us from Ed, up front. It was just her and me.
“So, how long have you been flying?”
“Are you trying to guess how old I am?” she said. “I’m thirty seven.”
“OK, let’s try again,” I said. “Where did you learn to fly?”
“Moldovan Air Force,” she said. “I was twenty-four. The year before I met Brooks. He was a visiting VIP, and they assigned me to escort him.” She sat
in the seat facing me. “We’re not lovers though.”
“I didn’t ask,” I said.
“Your eyes asked.”
She was right, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge that.
“I have some work to do,” she said. She withdrew a silver MacBook from her briefcase and powered it up. It looked exactly like my father’s, which was in my own bag.
“There’s Wi-Fi here?”
“Yes,” she said. “And you can use your cell.”
“Cool,” I said, which sounded ridiculous. At least I didn’t say gee whiz.
She busied herself on her computer. I decided to check out my father’s, and found that it was protected by a password. Unlike Roberto, I have no clue about how to hack past those things, but just for the hell of it I typed in “bettyboop”, and it worked. A slight chill ran through me as I realized I had divined my dead father’s thought process.
I opened up Gmail and signed in. There were dozens of emails that I would read later. I wrote a quick message to Roberto to ask about his availability and described what I had in mind. He replied in less than a minute, telling me to type a URL into the Safari browser. I did what he said and a program opened, with a box that asked if it was all right to allow “MAD$KILZZ” to take over, and I accepted. That was one of his hacker ID’s. My cellphone buzzed with a text, and I took it out of my pocket. Yuliana was busy, not paying me any attention.
Lv it running and I’ll look arnd.
Aren’t u in school? I sent back.
Home. Got mono.
Oh no, I texted.
Sucks.
Text me when you’re done, I wrote, and put the phone back in my pocket.
“There’s coffee in the back,” Yuliana said, looking up from her computer.
“I’m downloading something,” I said.
“I’ll get us some,” she said, and she walked to the back of the cabin. She returned with two mugs that had a “BB” monogram on them.
“Thanks.”
“Do you have anything to do while we’re in Vero?”
“A couple chores,” I said.
“Do you need a car?”
“I have somebody meeting me,” I said. I heard myself say somebody, not girlfriend.
“OK,” she said. “I’m going to go take over for a while.” She got up and went back through the partition doors into the cockpit.
I checked my father’s computer. Roberto’s cursor whizzed around and programs popped open and closed again like Fourth of July fireworks. He was in his element.
I took my knitting from my bag and went to work. I was part way through a watch cap that I wanted to have done for Roberto before his ski trip to Colorado in February. It was black, like everything else he currently wore, and the stitches were tightly spaced so I had to use size six circular needles, and the whole thing was a bitch. I have pretty good finger dexterity from picking locks, but I’d only started this hobby after Barbara hid my phone and my laptop when we were in Key West and challenged me to live without them for a month. I’d produced three baby blankets for a friend, who was very pleased, although they only had one baby, not three.
My phone buzzed.
Done.
Find anything?
Porn, he wrote.
Yr kidding, right?
No.
Seriously?
Only looked bcuz it was heavly encrypted. Gov’t quality encryption.
I’m home this afternoon. Will stop in, I texted.
Porn on my father’s computer? Never too old, I guess. I didn’t understand what he meant about government-quality encryption, but I’d ask him when I saw him. My afternoon was already filling up.
*
I knit while Yuliana flew. We cruised almost as high as the commercial jets, and the clouds scattered and thinned after we crossed the Mason-Dixon Line. I checked the Vero weather on my phone—it had warmed considerably and would be sunny and in the seventies when we landed. I looked forward to thawing out, even if it was only for one afternoon.
Yuliana came through the door as I was watching the coastline; I’d recognized the Jacksonville skyline and the high-rises along the beach.
“Landing in about twenty,” she said. “I’m going to change.”
She walked past me to the rear of the aircraft, shucked off the fleece vest, unbuttoned her blouse and exposed her tanned, sleek shoulders. Oops. I turned my head forward. I should be sticking, as it were, to my knitting. I picked up the needles and began the rhythmic motion. Yuliana gave out a small cry and I turned around, instinctively. She was struggling with the zipper of her pants, and her top half was exposed except for a lacy white bra. I snapped my head forward again and realized I’d lost count of the stitches. “Fuck,” I said, too loud.
Her phone rang from the seat across from me. It was the oh-mama-mia-let-me-go melody from “Bohemian Rhapsody”, by Queen. “That’s Brooks,” she said behind me, and she came forward, picked up the phone and sat across from me, clothed only in her bra and panties. My blood pressure rose to a level well above my IQ, and I tried my best to look downward into my yarn.
“Yes, he’s with me,” she said. “He’s knitting a hat.” She chuckled sweetly. “You didn’t tell me he was handsome.”
I dropped a stitch, and had to unwind part of the row.
“Sure. No, he has plans. OK. See you soon.” She hung up the phone, and didn’t get out of the seat.
“Is this what you used to wear in the Moldovan Air Force?” I asked.
“Underneath,” she said, and gave me a you-are-my-prisoner smile. “Are you going to change?”
I had a short sleeve shirt in my bag, but enough flesh had been exposed for one flight. “I’ll wait,” I said.
Yuliana went back and slipped on a pair of white Capri pants and a striped top. She turned to me before re-entering the cockpit. “Remember to fasten your seatbelt,” she said.
I heeded her advice and clipped it shut. I know when I’m about to be taken for a ride.
*
It may have been in the seventies in Vero, but the temperature was considerably cooler inside Barbara’s Yukon, and the air conditioning wasn’t even running. She had watched me get off the plane and cross the tarmac with Yuliana Burleigh, who, just to make it worse, had smiled and laughed the whole way to the general aviation terminal. I couldn’t have been in any more trouble if I’d carried her in my arms.
I had introduced them briefly and attempted to steer Barbara to the exit as quickly as possible before anyone’s eyeballs got scratched out. Miss Capri Pants, as Barbara now called her, had invited us to dinner before the flight back, but Barbara told her that we had other plans and gave her a theatrical wink. Yuliana caught my glance, and I rolled my eyes, which made her giggle, which in turn ratcheted up Barbara’s anxiety level. Yuliana and I agreed to meet back at the airport by nine.
I drove, while Barbara simmered. “So who the hell is Miss Yooo-liana Burleigh?” she said, mimicking her Slavic accent.
“She was at the airport and looked kind of lost, so I offered her a ride,” I said.
“Cut the bullshit, Vinny,” she said. She only called me that when she wanted to piss me off.
“She’s the personal assistant of a rich guy,” I said. “My father worked for them.”
“So why are they flying you around in a jet?”
“That’s a very good question,” I said. “Exactly what I’d like to find out. It smells funny.”
“It smells like Clive Christian Number One.”
“What?”
“It’s a very expensive perfume. She was wearing it. You’d better not come home smelling like that.”
“I usually come home smelling like food.”
“I’m glad you’re here, whatever you smell like,” she said, and she put her hand on my arm. The interior of the car approached normal room temperature.
“So you’re going to be nice to me now?”
“I’m going to take you home and put my scent on you,” she said.
<
br /> *
I noticed a car in the rearview mirror that had been there for a while as we’d made our way through town. I took a turn, and it followed. I took another, and it disappeared.
“Vince, where are you going?”
“Bear with me a sec,” I said. I slowed, and the car appeared again. It was a Crown Vic. It could have been an unmarked cruiser, but it didn’t have the usual giveaways like the cheap rims and big antenna. I turned into a Walgreens. “Be out in a minute,” I said as I parked.
I waited inside the store and watched the lot. The Crown Vic parked across from us, and two very big guys got out. They didn’t look like cops—more like muscle. I started looking for a rear exit.
They came up behind me and shoved me roughly into a storeroom, and one of them clipped me on the back of my head for good measure. I wasn’t carrying; I’d left the Glock in Vermont. I swung a leg out and kicked Big Guy #1 in the shin, which made him double over, and I punched him, hard, in the solar plexus. The other guy went into a crouch, and I jumped sideways and kicked him in the neck—kind of a flashy Chuck Norris move, but it fooled him and he fell backward into some boxes. Both of them lay there and groaned, and I considered bolting, but I wanted to know who they were. I pulled a wallet out of Big Guy #2’s pants and found his ID and a Border Patrol badge. Shit.
“Why didn’t you identify yourself?”
“Fuck you,” Big #2 said. Big #1 was still trying to get his wind back.
“You work for Robert Patton?”
“We’re supposed to take you in,” he said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. I had Robert Patton’s card in my wallet, and I called his cell.
“Patton,” he answered.