3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany Read online

  The two of us run up the stairs, me leading the way. The door to Mr. DeWitt’s office is wide open with heavy black smoke as thick as a refinery fire pouring out. I take a deep breath, pull my handkerchief out of my pocket and push it against my nose and mouth, squint my eyes, and charge inside. Three steps in, I ram my shin into either the coffee table or some other low-lying piece of furniture. Ouch. Now, I’m limping. “Mr. DeWitt, D’Wayne, where are you?” I attempt to scream through the cloth which is really stupid since, if I’m temporarily deaf, wouldn’t he be too? And if he did answer my call, I couldn’t hear him anyway.

  I get down on my hands and knees to grab any remaining good air in the room and to search for survivors. I head for what I hope is the back of the room where Mr. DeWitt had his desk, but my journey is interrupted by a swift kick to my rear, and a body falling over me like a giant domino. The Behemoth splays out onto the space in front of me and rolls around like an out of control Pilate’s ball. I take a detour around him and push my way through the debris. Luckily, there are no flames. The smoke is beginning to dissipate. I see some motion to the right of me, crawl toward the movement, and find a shoe with a foot inside. I straighten up slightly and hit my head on the top of the desk. Ouch. I feel upward to the leg attached, and continue until I have the entire body in my grasp. It’s D’Wayne DeWitt. He’s covered in soot. His brown suit is now charcoal.

  I hear sirens in the distance, which is a double positive for me. One, I know the Fire Department is on its way and two, I can hear again. I cannot immediately tell if D’Wayne is breathing or not. I pinch his nostrils shut with my thumb and forefinger. I’m just about to lock lips with his and blow my breath into his lungs when he starts to cough. This is a relief because that kind of activity during the cold and flu season is just asking for trouble.

  The Behemoth has managed to work his way beside me. “You get his feet.” I tell the Behemoth. A leader always emerges during a time of crisis.

  “Huh?”

  “You got a better idea?” I ask.

  “Dun’t know.”

  We manage to pull Mr. DeWitt out from under his desk. With the Behemoth at the bottom and myself at the top, we pull and push the stretched out D’Wayne DeWitt through the smoke and debris and back through the door to his office. Once we’re on the stairway level, I kick the door shut. I order the Behemoth to keep going down. A half flight of stairs later the smoke has dissipated. We rest the unconscious DeWitt against the railing. He’s breathing, but not real well.

  “Didn’t you ever take CPR training?” I ask, but don’t wait for his standard “Dun’t know” response. I position myself behind D’Wayne and begin a semi-Heimlich maneuver. I wrap my arms around his waist and push up repeatedly on his diaphragm. He’s breathing fairly well by the time the paramedics come and slap an oxygen mask over his face.

  They offer me a mask and I accept believing that a few shots of pure oxygen can’t be a bad idea. The Behemoth declines, “Dun’t like notin’ on my nose.”

  To each his own.

  Four or five of Chicago’s finest rush by us, run up the stairs and into the smoke-filled office. They let loose with a spray of fire retardant that would put an overly aggressive crop duster to shame. The walls, the furniture, the artwork, and all the accompanying design touches are covered with thick, white foam. The original motif of the room is history replaced with a winter wonderland of white, gooey, cotton candy fluff. A glittering, wintry, sci-fi, Currier & Ives take on the traditional work space.

  “D’Wayne can you hear me?” I ask, figuring a loss of hearing would be a common occurrence in these circumstances.

  He coughs.

  A paramedic removes D’Wayne’s oxygen mask, lifts a bottle of water to his lips, and pours. D’Wayne spits it out onto the Behemoth’s bad suit.

  “Dat wasn’t gud.”

  D’Wayne coughs some more, comes to, and grabs the bottle from the paramedic. He takes a quick swig and spits that out too. This time the Behemoth dodges the stream.

  “Fool me once …,” I compliment him.

  The paramedic takes a cloth, wets it, and wipes D’Wayne’s face the same way he’d bathe an infant.

  “What’d I tell you, Sherlock?” These are the first words out of the victim’s mouth; not ones I would have expected, or personally have used in this situation.

  I hurry to think of what he told me and the first item that crosses my mind is the hourly amount he’s paying me: twice my regular rate, and three times what Mr. Jamison Wentworth Richmond III divvies out.

  “I told you someone was trying to kill me,” he says.

  “That seems to be pretty much a given at this point.”

  “Where’s Fearn?” Mr. DeWitt asks the Behemoth.

  “Dun’t know.” Standard answer.

  “You think Gibby Fearn did this?” I ask.

  “Dun’t know.”

  I point my head at Mr. DeWitt. “I’m asking him, not you.”

  “Still dun’t know.”

  I bet the Behemoth is a real riot when he plays charades.

  The paramedic is working on Mr. DeWitt, getting more fluids into him, sitting him up straighter, and placing a wet compress against his forehead.

  “Why would Gibby want to kill you?”

  “Isn’t that what I hired you to find out?”

  The chances of using Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt as a reference for future employment are becoming bleaker by the moment.

  “Well, yeah, but …,” I hesitate for a moment. “What motive would he have, besides taking another step up the corporate ladder?”

  “Ask him.”

  A seat stretcher arrives, the kind that allows the victim to be transported in a seated position down stairs, or across difficult terrain. Mr. DeWitt is carried away like a king on a throne by two firemen-porters. I turn to the Behemoth. “Why would Gibby want to kill Mr. DeWitt?” I question incredulously.

  “Dun’t know.”

  Why do I bother?

  I climb up the half flight of steps to return to the scene of the crime and wade around in the sticky goo on the floor. Now with the smoke mostly gone, I see where I found Mr. DeWitt on the floor, in the back of the room, behind where his desk used to sit. I reach down and retrieve a smart phone lying in the corner. Lucky for me the inspecting fireman’s back is turned away from me. The phone is hot to the touch. I wrap my handkerchief around it and push some of its buttons hoping to get the screen to come alive, but no luck. It’s either totally ruined or merely no longer brainy. I slip it in my pocket for future reference. I walk back over to the blasted out windows where another fireman stands holding a cylindrical metal object in his hand.

  “Souvenir?” I ask.

  “Fourth of July leftover,” he tells me.

  “Amateur?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Why didn’t the whole place go up in flames?” I ask.

  “Fireworks are not incendiary devices as a rule,” the fireman says showing me the metal tube, which is closed at one end.

  “This one certainly had a smoking addiction,” I add.

  “Yeah, it sure did.”

  I leave the fireman to finish his job. I call “Wait” Jack Wayt and tell him the story. He’s hardly thrilled and says he’ll be over within a half hour. I call Neula “No-No” Noonan and repeat what I told Jack, but before she responds to my information she asks, “Is Jack coming over?”

  Back downstairs I knock on the No Admittance door and, this time, it buzzes open. Inside, I find the Behemoth on the phone. He hangs up almost immediately.

  “That Gibby?”

  I’m sure he wants to say “Dun’t know,” but he looks up and says nothing. He rises from his chair.

  “The cops are coming,” I tell him. “You better wait at the bar.”

  “Dun’t drink.”

  “Don’t start.”

  The Behemoth leaves the room.

  Alone at last. The first thing I do is go to the two doors on the opposite side of the ro
om. One is a closet. The other is the size of a closet, but there are no shelves or any racks to hang coats. However, there is the beginning, or the end, of the cylindrical tube that runs to the accounting room in the basement. I open the slide at end of the cylinder and find it empty, but I can feel the suction of air pressure. I close the door and examine the contents of the smaller desk where the Behemoth sat. I find eight Fantastic Four, three Superman, and two Batman comic books. There’s also an empty shoulder holster large enough to carry a very damaging handgun, a box of bullets, a stapler, two pens, and an unopened packet of mints. I take the mints as evidence and close the drawer. I’m about to examine Gibby Fearn’s desk, but there’s something I have to take care of first. I insert one of my business cards against the locking catch before heading down the hall to the men’s room. When nature calls, I must answer.

  I stand at the urinal, doing my business, looking up at the Tribune’s sports pages inside a glass case attached to the wall. There are articles on the Bulls and the Bears. The Cubs are considering a blockbuster trade. A lot of good that’ll do. In the lower corner of the last sports page, there’s a picture of a guy I’ve seen somewhere before. This is where it’s great to have a photographic memory. He’s not a sports figure any Chicago fan would recognize, but I do. The accompanying short article reports that Oscar Odie, an ex-athlete, now a personal trainer, has been busted for dealing steroids in local locker rooms. He’s the gym rat I saw in Monroe Chevelier’s office. It’s always nice to see a familiar face in the paper.

  “Wait.”

  I stop the moment I step out of the men’s room.

  “Sherlock, you ever use a stool softener?”

  “No, Jack.”

  “Damn,” Jack says and snaps his fingers. “All right, what happened?” he asks as we walk down the hallway to the stairway.

  I give Jack the lowdown. He listens without comment. “Mr. DeWitt thinks it might be Gibby Fearn, the manager of the Zanadu,” I end with.

  “Why?”

  “He told me to ask him.”

  “And Fearn’s going to say, ‘Hey, of course I tried to blow him up’?” Jack says.

  “I didn’t say that was what I was going to do,” I say in full retreat mode. “That’s just what he told me to do.”

  “Well, that’s dumb.” Jack has a way with words.

  The two of us are outside Mr. DeWitt’s office when “No-No” arrives. Before saying “Hello,” she hands Jack a small bottle of Pepto Bismol. “I know how you get if your food doesn’t digest properly,” she says with a slight smile.

  “Thanks.” Jack opens the bottle and takes a healthy pink swig.

  I wait for Jack to ask “No-No” the same softener question he did to me, but Jack must consider certain ailments guys only stuff.

  “The fireman said it was the work of amateurs,” I tell my cohorts.

  “No, no, I don’t think so,” “No-No” comments.

  “Why not?”

  “Too much smoke.” “No-No” has a good point.

  “I followed Mr. DeWitt this afternoon,” I inform them. “He did a tour of his own special kind of drug stores before stopping for a bucket of ribs.”

  “Where?”

  The question comes from “No-No”. I answer, “Rory’s Rib Tips.”

  “The drug stops, Sherlock, not the take-out place,” Jack snaps back.

  “One off 15th Street and one near the Robert Taylor Homes,” I qualify my information. “I got the addresses in the car.”

  “Rory’s has great cornbread,” “No-No” can’t help but add.

  I continue, “Mr. DeWitt also stopped off at the Northern Trust over on Wacker. He’s probably checking on the money being skimmed off the top of the Zanadu coffers.”

  “You sure about that, Sherlock?”

  “A truck pulls up every night and carts off the cash,” I tell them. “I’ve seen it.”

  “That means we gotta call in the IRS,” “No-No” says.

  “This case is growing faster than the Asian Flu,” Jack says. “I don’t need this, Sherlock.”

  “Well, I also suspect a little private cash is being lifted too,” I add. “A little guy with a ponytail takes a briefcase full of it out every night.”

  “As if I don’t have enough wrinkles,” Jack laments. “You gotta add another one.”

  “I think your lines make you look distinguished,” “No-No” says. Her new tactic of recapturing her lost love is now fully evident. Best of luck, “No-No.”

  We plod around in the goo and muck long enough to ruin a good pair of shoes. We find nothing of interest. “Let’s go down to the manager’s office,” I suggest.

  I get no argument.

  “Why’s the door propped open?” is Jack’s question before we enter Gibby Fearn’s office.

  “Beats me,” I comment as I remove my business card from the lock. “One of you should make a note of that.”

  “No, no. I don’t think so.”

  Inside, Jack goes straight for the two doors and opens the one on the left. “What’s in here?”

  “Closet.”

  He opens the one on the right. “What’s in here?”

  “A pneumatic tube.”

  “It looks pretty old to me,” Jack says.

  “Not new as in a new car,” “No-No” tells Jack. “It’s pronounced the same way, but it’s spelled differently. It means something operated by air or gas under pressure.”

  “Kinda like my stomach.”

  “It’s how they moved the money from this floor to an office in the basement where they fudged two sets of books,” I explain.

  I walk over to Gibby’s desk. “No-No” lumbers over to the Behemoth’s desk. Jack sits down and takes another swig of Pepto Bismol. “Some days I can almost count the drip, drip, drip of my stomach acids,” he says.

  “Oh, honey,” “No-No” says. “I’m so sorry you’re feeling poorly.”

  Jack burps up a little pink, but re-swallows it immediately.

  Gibby Fearn is a very organized manager. His files are perfectly lined up and alphabetized with a handwritten tab attached to each one. The papers inside them are in perfect order, organized by date with the newest on the top. The largest files are labeled: Personnel, Music, Repair, OSHA, Health Insurance, Payroll, and Maintenance.

  “Where’s the computers?” Jack asks.

  “If you have a computer, you have records,” “No-No” answers. “If you have records, you have evidence.”

  “And if you have evidence, you got problems,” Jack sums up.

  “I’m telling you, they’re lifting a slew of money out of this place,” I say. It’s no wonder why Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt hasn’t quibbled about my hourly rate.

  I open the middle drawer in Gibby’s desk, take one look, and ask. “Either of you got a pair of latex gloves handy?”

  “No-No” dons her gloves as I pull the drawer all the way out. Jack joins us to see the array of evidence: a coil of thin wire, a blasting cap, and a small clock, all resting on a thin layer of black powder.

  “This guy is either the dumbest criminal on the face of the earth or this is the worst job of implicating someone since Judas tried to blame everything on Mary Magdalene.”

  Jack evidently never went to Sunday school. Years from now my daughters could be making the same types of comments. Heaven forbid.

  “No, no. I don’t think so. No criminal is this stupid,” “No-No” says.

  “I don’t know,” I say, “I’ve known some pretty stupid crooks.”

  “What are you doing?” The voice comes from the other side of the room.

  The three of us look up to see Gibby Fearn coming through the door.

  “This your office?” “No-No” asks.

  “Yes.”

  “This your desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “This your stuff?”

  Gibby joins us at his desk to see the contents of the drawer. “No,” he answers
the question.

  “Sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “You’re under arrest for attempted murder,” “No-No” tells him.

  “What?”

  Jack fumbles around searching for his handcuffs. He turns to the two of us. “I hope one of you thought to bring along a set of bracelets.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” “No-No” says giving him a sexy little smile as she pulls out a pair from behind her, “I always carry a pair.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “I’ve taken on my first attractively-challenged relationship charity case, Mr. Sherlock.”

  “Good for you, Tiffany.”

  “You want to know who it is?”

  “Neula “No-No” Noonan.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “I’m a detective, remember?”

  “Wow, you’re awesome.

  We arrive at the Cook County Jail, the biggest jail in the United States. If that doesn’t say something about Chicago, I don’t know what does.

  “They have valet service?” Tiffany asks.

  “No,” I answer. “This is the kind of place you want to lock your car and take your keys with you.”

  “I hate that.”

  There is really no dress code for visitors at the Cook County Jail, but if there were, Tiffany’s corduroy mini-skirt, hooker-hose, high heels, and form-fitting, black turtleneck sweater would be listed as Riot Worthy.

  The first portal we pass through is similar to the security one at O’Hare. You place all your personals in a plastic container: shoes, belt, phone, money, etc. then, proceed to the scanner where you lift up both arms and the x-rays sweep across your body to determine if you’re concealing anything. One bored cop watches me, yawns, and waves me through, but the entire contingent of six officers come over to make sure Tiffany isn’t hiding anything underneath a sweater already so tight you could see the perforated edges of a postage stamp underneath. The officers argue about whether rank outweighs tenure in order to determine who is the most qualified to frisk Tiffany for hidden contraband. Before my assistant is asked to, “Put your hands on the counter and spread ‘em wide,” I intervene.

  “Let’s not overdo our duties gentlemen, especially on someone with a daddy who has some very good friends in some very high places.”