Tanzi's Game (Vince Tanzi Book 3) Read online

  “And then?”

  Chloe Heffernan’s freckled face was pale with fear. “And then he said, ‘You and I are going to make love tonight.’”

  “So?”

  “So, we haven’t made love in over a year. He goes to prostitutes. I’ve seen the emails. He likes the young ones, and I guess I have no business arguing with that, seeing how I’ve been in love with Segundo Pimentel for nine years. But I saw the look on his face.”

  “Go on.”

  She was staring at the cement surface of the patio floor, unable to look upward. “I don’t think he wants to make love to me,” she said. “I think he wants to kill me.”

  *

  It was nearly noon, and we had heard nothing back from Maria Inés Calderón, but Roberto and I had been busy with Chloe Heffernan, examining the spreadsheets on Segundo Pimentel’s tablet computer. Susanna Pimentel and Rose DiNapoli were looking over our shoulders, with Susanna translating where needed and Rose helping with the forensic accounting, as that had been one of her duties at ICE.

  It was all there, in an Excel file folder labeled “BACKGAMMON66”. The files looked innocuous enough, but when Roberto keyed in the password and the RSA fob number like he had with the emails, an entirely new set of spreadsheets was revealed. The spreadsheets contained the meticulously detailed books of a vast money-laundering operation, complete with names, bank account numbers, transaction amounts, and even the discounts and markups that had put some serious coin into the pockets of the parties on both sides. Maria’s twenty million had come from it, and Javier and Segundo’s rake-off had kept their debt serviced without having to sell any properties, but when the finance minister had needed to call in the sixty-million-dollar principal, they couldn’t do it, and Maria Inés Calderón’s political future was suddenly in jeopardy. The last thing that Cuba needed was another Batista ripping off the country.

  And so, I had finally found out what Segundo had meant when he’d told Gustavo that this was all about backgammon. He hadn’t meant the game that he loved so dearly.

  He had been referring to a much bigger, nastier game involving dirty money, politics, and his own family’s financial survival. This other game had not only cost them their entire fortune but had also taken the lives of three of them while a fourth remained captive. It was all laid out in dollars and cents in the file named BACKGAMMON66. At last I now had an explanation.

  And, some leverage. When Maria Calderón wrote back, we would be ready.

  I was also waiting to hear back from Bobby Bove after a call I had made to him explaining that I needed a diver, yet again. This time I had asked him to hire a private contractor and to go watch the dive himself, and to keep everybody else—including the Coral Gables police—out of the loop for the time being. When I’d told him what they might find, he had gone along with it. Chloe had provided a detailed description of the location: directly off of the stern of one of those floating, ten-deck behemoths that ferried you around the islands and plied you with endless food and cheap drinks while you played the slots, worked on your sunburn, and swapped accounts of your recent colonoscopies with that nice couple from New Rochelle. I had suggested to Bobby that he ask the crew to give him some notice if they were about to motor off, because we didn’t want to accidentally turn the diver into a shish kabob. Bobby said he would check in again with me as soon as he got to Miami.

  Sonny made us a batch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and I washed mine down with a glass of milk. Still no word from Maria Calderón, but I hoped that she was near her computer, because it was time to end this. I had decided that we would initiate the conversation. I would be the one writing, not Roberto, because I didn’t want to run the risk of her terrifying him again with her nastiness.

  I had Roberto open up the email account for me, and I began to type.

  This is Vince Tanzi, I wrote. It’s time for your answer.

  The answer is no, she wrote back almost immediately.

  I typed out my response. I double you.

  This is not a game, Mr. Tanzi.

  But you treat it as if it were, I replied. Somehow you think that you have the advantage.

  I am a vice president of Cuba, she wrote. And who are you?

  Just a guy, I responded. A palestino, like you called your dead brother. But I’m looking at Segundo Pimentel’s spreadsheets here, and they’re pretty interesting. He kept very detailed records.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about. Segundo owed me money, that’s all.

  I’m talking about a file called BACKGAMMON, I wrote. Bank accounts, deposits, sources, everything. I’ll email you a copy. Your name comes up a lot.

  There was no response, and I took advantage of the lull to have Roberto load up the attachment from the tablet. I mailed it off, and we waited by the computer screen for several long minutes.

  What do you want?

  Ha. Gotcha, lady.

  I think that’s obvious, I wrote back. And release her immediately, or the spreadsheets go to the Miami Herald. They have a Cuba desk that would love this.

  Return the funds first or no deal.

  If I don’t get a phone call from Lilian within half an hour the files go to the media. You’ll get your money. We don’t want it. Goodbye.

  I reached behind the computer and shut the damn thing off. I was shaking, because I was so angry, and so scared. I couldn’t predict what Maria Calderón would do next. She might be ruthless enough to make things worse. But I had done the best that I could, and now the only thing to do was wait.

  *

  The half hour had come and gone, and all I could think of was that I had been operating way beyond my capabilities, and somebody else was going to pay the price for my incompetence, namely Roberto, or his mother, or his father, who had been pacing around my living room like an expectant dad who happened to have his neck in a plastic brace with metal rods bracketing the lower half of his face. Nobody wanted to talk, and we didn’t even want to look at each other for fear that we would somehow jinx it, and Lilian would be lost. If she truly was, then I would keep Maria Calderón’s money, and I would use it to stage an invasion that would make the Bay of Pigs incident look like kids with sparklers on the Fourth of July.

  My cellphone rang in my pocket, and I prayed that it was Lilian Arguelles, but it was Bobby.

  “My diver just pulled a Walther PPK out of Davy Jones’ locker,” he said. “It had a nasty-looking silencer on it, too. And by the way, nobody heard any shooting at Javier Pimentel’s hotel. So give, Tanzi. Who’s the shooter?”

  “This is ugly,” I said. I had been a deputy for more than two decades, and it went against the grain to give up a fellow cop, but it was what it was. “Talbot Heffernan. He thought that he was coming into some money, because Segundo Pimentel had named Heffernan’s wife as his heir. Our detective friend thought that he was about to score, big time.”

  “Why was she getting the money?”

  “She and her boss had a thing going,” I said. “Heffernan must have found out. So he killed Raimundo, and then Segundo, and then his wife is in line for the money. Millions, by the way. And then—and I’m not sure about this part—but I’m guessing that Javier told him he was getting nothing, which was true because Segundo had already spent most of his inheritance.”

  “Holy crap,” Bobby said. “Sex and money. A two-fer.”

  “There’s more to this, but right now you need to find Tal Heffernan. His wife saw him dump the weapon, and she thinks that she’s next.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Right here,” I said. “If you ever need a place to hide, my rates are reasonable.”

  “I’ll pass for now,” Bobby said. “So—”

  Roberto approached me and interrupted my phone conversation with a frantic wave. He had his own phone to his ear, and he lowered it. There were tears welling up in his eyes, and I had a sick, empty feeling in my stomach, until he suddenly smiled through the tears.

  “My mom wants to speak with
you,” he said, and he handed me his phone.

  *

  If I had owned a school bus, I would have taken the entire population of my refugee camp along with me, but I had the convertible, with Roberto crammed into the back seat and Rose in the passenger seat next to me. Sonny had stayed behind with Susanna, Chloe, and Gustavo. Before I left I gave him the keys to my gun cabinet, because as elated as I was about Lilian’s release, this wasn’t necessarily over.

  Lilian had been tossed out of a car onto the sidewalk of 10th Avenue in Hialeah in front of an auto parts store that doubled as a junkyard. Her abductors had tied a pillowcase over her head and had cuffed her, and she said that she had a few scrapes but she was OK. The guys in the auto parts store had seen the whole thing and had called 911. I’d called Bobby shortly after we had left the house, and he was also on the way and would beat us there by an hour and a half. Lilian would be taken care of, Bobby promised. He said he would call us as soon as he picked her up. They might go to the emergency room, or to the Hialeah P.D., depending on how Bobby thought she was doing.

  I was so excited about seeing Roberto reunited with his mother after two excruciatingly long weeks that I hardly noticed the drive, and the three of us chatted about whatever popped into our heads, told each other jokes, and even sang along at full volume with the Celine Dion CD that Barbara had left in my car and Rose DiNapoli had inserted into the player. Life was not only good, it was friggin’ great. You have to cherish the few successes that you are given, because they are all too often fleeting.

  Rose was as giddy as I was, and she made silly faces as she mimicked the Quebecois singer, although Rose’s singing was so far off key that it was painful. But it didn’t matter, because the three of us were drunk with relief, and within a short time we would collect Lilian Arguelles, and I would wrap up the case.

  Party time, right?

  Tanzi’s Tip #11: Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched, but keep in mind that after they hatch they run around so goddamn fast you’ll never be able to count them.

  We met Bobby and Lilian in the lobby of the police station where they were waiting on a bench. Lilian looked pale and weak, but that didn’t stop her from jumping up and embracing her son, which was one of those moments when you are glad to be alive and all the badness in the world goes away for a while. She finally released Roberto from their monumental hug, and I was next. Lilian comes up to about my belly button, so I had to stoop to return her embrace.

  “I can’t ever thank you enough, Vince,” she said. “I will never be able to repay you for this.”

  “You already have,” I said. Which was true. Lilian had seen me through some very bad times after Glory had died. “It was your son who made this happen. He’s a man now.”

  “I highly doubt that,” she said. “Men pick up their rooms, and I expect to find a mess when I get home.”

  Roberto laughed, and we helped her out of the police station and into the back of my car. I stood by the door for a moment while Bobby Bove and I talked.

  “They tracked his car,” he said. “He was driving an unmarked, north on I-95, and he disabled the GPS somewhere around St. Lucie. They radioed him a bunch of times, but he won’t answer.”

  “Get a car to my house,” I said. “Send your best people. His wife’s in there.”

  “Yeah, you told me.”

  “She thinks that he wants to kill her, too.”

  “You told me that, too,” Bobby said. “I’m on this, Vince. You go home and get some rest. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “It’s over. You can relax now. Nice work, man.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But I was a long way from feeling relaxed. Maybe it was simply that I needed to come down from the crazy adrenaline rush that you experience when you have recently been scared shitless.

  Or maybe it was something else. Maybe my chickens had hatched, and I hadn’t counted them correctly.

  *

  We dropped Rose off at her bungalow-style house in Fort Lauderdale, which allowed Roberto, Lilian and me to breathe again in the cramped confines of the Beemer. Rose gave me a peck on the cheek through the lowered window of my car, and I promised to stay in touch, to which she said: you’re not getting off that easy, Tanzi, and I smiled. I was definitely going to be in touch with her supervisor, and I would tell the person that Agent DiNapoli had just helped break up a money-laundering racket that had involved millions, although I would reluctantly keep Maria Inés Calderón’s name out of it. I had made a deal with the Devil, and I keep my promises, however distasteful.

  We were back at my house by cocktail time. I poured myself one while Gustavo and his wife reunited, and then she began packing up his things. The Arguelles family was going home; they had a lot of catching up to do. Sonny had left a note saying that he had taken Susanna and Chloe over to his place in Gifford to hang out with Venus and Pluto, his two pit bulls who had been cared for by his neighbor while he’d been helping me out. Two deputies were stationed in a car under a leafy palm that shaded the end of my driveway, and they had been told to not let anyone inside the house, not even if they flashed a badge. Bobby Bove had quietly put out a statement about Talbot Heffernan, which was awkward seeing how he was a detective lieutenant, but Bove said that he had already sent the gun to ballistics, and the guys there were coming in on a Sunday evening to make sure that there was a match. If there was, the whole state would be looking for Heffernan.

  Bobby had also alerted people to be on the lookout for the Iturbe brothers, who were now driving another van—dark green this time, according to the employees at the body shop in Hialeah who had seen them dump Lilian. Lilian had explained on the trip back that the Iturbes had been her captors from the beginning and had snatched her from her home in Vero, given her the ketamine treatment, and imprisoned her at the slaughterhouse for nearly two weeks until I was taken there, and then they had moved her to a house in Hialeah where she’d been tied up and gagged.

  It was Pepe Iturbe who had sent the original message to Gustavo using Lilian’s phone, saying please to not worry. I have met someone. Pepe’s English was almost as wretched as my Spanish, but he had wanted to throw everyone off the trail, and it had worked for about a day. He had also dumped Lilian’s phone in the Florida Straits shortly afterward, which had fooled all of us into thinking that she was in Cuba. That one had worked for almost two weeks.

  Lilian had also said that the Iturbes had planned to leave me in the slaughterhouse. She said they didn’t like me. If I ever saw them again I would tell them how hurt and disappointed I was about that, right after I beat them senseless with a nine-iron.

  I finished my drink, which with my lack of sleep had felt like a double, or maybe a quadruple. Roberto and I took his and Gustavo’s bags out to my car, and I crammed the whole family into the convertible for the three-block ride to their house. The air was slightly dank when we opened the door, and Lilian said that she was going to get to bed early, and tomorrow morning she would turn the place inside out. I had no doubt that she would, and that it would smell like an operating room when she was finished. After two horrible weeks in the slaughterhouse she would need to purge the experience, and cleaning up was a good start. My cure for trauma was fried oysters, but for Lilian it was Pine-Sol, bleach, and elbow grease.

  My phone rang in my pocket. I didn’t even want to look. The drink was hitting me, but the exhaustion was far worse, and all I wanted to do was flop into my bed and get about two consecutive days’ worth of sleep. Whoever it was, they could wait. But it was Barbara, and I had already held her off for too long. She was right—we had to talk. I needed to explain what had happened with Megan, and there was also the subject of her own affair. I would be so much more ready to tackle this when I was rested, but I pushed the button and answered the call. It was time to get it over with, whatever the consequences.

  “I’m sorry about this morning,” I said. “And you’re right. We need—”
<
br />   “Where’s Royal?” she said. It was more of a scream.

  “With you?”

  “You didn’t take him?”

  “I—I don’t even know where you live.” Royal? No. No way.

  “I was out back planting flowers,” she said. “The front door was locked, but he was gone when I came back inside.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Just now. Oh please, Vince. This can’t be happening. Please.”

  I ran through my list of who could have taken him. The Iturbes? Was this Maria Calderón having her revenge on me? Talbot Heffernan? Somebody else who had it in for me? There were plenty of people who I had busted over the years, and maybe one of them had just gotten out.

  “Give me your address,” I shouted into the phone. “And stay put.”

  *

  I have lost some of my mobility since the accident, but I can still drive like a NASCAR racer, even with no sleep, a stiff drink in me, and one hand on the wheel with the other one holding the phone while I called Bobby Bove who was in his car and was on the way back from Miami. I didn’t even know what to tell them to look for, except for the green van and Tal Heffernan’s unmarked cruiser, but I wanted every law officer in the county looking, and I pleaded with them to set up roadblocks, but it was probably already too late. It took me less than ten minutes to get to Barbara’s house-sit, which was located in a faux-Tudor development out by the interstate, and by the time that I arrived I knew that Royal’s abductor could already be long gone. I was weeping with frustration, and cursing my stupidity for ever having exposed my family to anything that could have made this happen. I knew that Barbara had been right all along: my work was just too dangerous, and that may be all right for a spouse to live with, but it was unacceptable for a nine-month-old child. How could I be such a goddamned fool?