3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany Read online

  One of the cops asks, “Who?”

  I whisper to him.

  “You’re good to go, Miss,” he says, as he waves Tiffany through. “And please enjoy your visit to the Cook County Jail.”

  As we head for the next security checkpoint, Tiffany asks, “Does that scanner pick up tan lines, Mr. Sherlock?”

  “On you, it probably does.”

  “Hey, Sherlock,” Sergeant Dirk McKee remembers me from my days on the force. “Your hand ever heal up after you punched that idiot captain of yours in the nose?” he asks as we pass through the checkpoint. “You know I got that on disc and when I need an attitude pick-me-up I watch it over and over.”

  “So happy you enjoy it, Dirk,” I tell my old buddy with a smirk on my face.

  Wouldn’t you know it, the one time I get mad, not only do I punch my supervisor, but I do it on local television, which makes its way to the Internet, which becomes a Most Watched on You Tube. Lucky me.

  “You really cracked that jerk a good one, Sherlock,” Dirk says with an air of respect. “You shudda punched the DA too.”

  “Next time.”

  “Who you wanta see?” Dirk asks.

  “Gibby Fearn.”

  “Oh, yeah, the new guy,” Dirk says. “Wait in there, I’ll bring him in.”

  Tiffany and I enter a square box room. It’s decorated with a table, three chairs, and nothing else. Tiffany sits down and immediately notices her chair is bolted to the floor. “This room could use a lot of feng shui,” she remarks.

  I sit.

  “You know, Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany says, “you always seem to know so many people no matter where we go. I can’t imagine a better person to visit disgusting places with than you.”

  “Coming from you, Tiffany, that means so much.”

  Dirk leads a shackled Gibby into the room and sits him in the chair across from us. “You want me to keep the bracelets on him?” Dirk asks.

  “Not necessary,” I answer. “This one’s harmless.”

  Dirk unshackles Gibby and stands in the back of the room, his Taser at the ready.

  “Is this bullshit or what?” is Gibby’s first question.

  “Agreed, but it might be good bullshit, if there is such a thing,” I say.

  Gibby stares at me with very angry eyes.

  “Hi, Mr. Fearn. Remember me? Tiffany Richmond?”

  Gibby is the only male in the entire jail who will see Tiffany today and not salivate; well, at least the only straight male. He doesn’t answer my protégé’s question. “What are you doin' here?” he asks.

  “We came to chat.”

  “Why would I talk to you?” He asks, as is his custom. “The only person I’m talking to is my lawyer.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You got a better way of getting me out of here?”

  “Not now.”

  “What else do I got, except to blow the lid off the Zanadu scam?”

  “That’s a bad choice of words, Gibby.”

  “Who else knows what I know?”

  “I don’t know,” I say emphatically. “But if I were you, I’d seriously consider the consequences of explaining how the laundry got dirty.”

  “What, and rot away in this hellhole twenty-four-seven?”

  “Gibby, it would be kind of dumb of you to spill the beans, and end up dead as a result.”

  “Right,” Tiffany adds, “that would be totally dumb.”

  “Take my advice, Gibby, don’t say a word to anyone, in here, out there, to a lawyer, to a cop, to anybody. Just sit tight and wait.”

  Gibby peers up at the two of us. “I was only doing my job.”

  “And that could be the worst thing you could say.” I’m as sincere as I can be. “Trust me, Gibby. Wait, please wait.”

  Gibby doesn’t respond.

  “Dirk,” I say to my old buddy, “we’re done here.”

  Gibby is re-shackled and led out of the room. He doesn’t even say “goodbye.” You would think a guy in the hospitality industry would be a little more polite.

  Tiffany turns to me and asks, “You think he’s going to keep his mouth shut, Mr. Sherlock?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “No one ever listens to me. Why should he?”

  ---

  “Coming in for an upgrade, Sherlock?” Les asks as soon as he sees the two of us enter his store.

  The Meaner Wiener board behind him lists a number of new phones that weren’t listed before. “Got some real beauties in this morning.”

  I pull out the cooked phone I found in the remains of Mr. DeWitt’s office and hand it to Les.

  “I don’t do trade-ins,” Les tells me.

  “Can you get it to work?”

  Les fondles the phone. “What did you do to it? Drop it in a barbecue pit?”

  “Pretty close.”

  As Les fiddles with the phone, Tiffany asks, “What’s the best plan you have?”

  “Get rich and move to Costa Rica,” Les says without hesitation.

  “I meant monthly cell phone plan?”

  “I have a one-time only, flat rate, pay me, go away, and talk and text to your heart’s content plan.”

  “How much does it cost?”

  “How much you got?”

  “I don’t know,” Tiffany says. “I wouldn’t know where to start counting my money.”

  “Do you like older men?”

  “Older or as old as you?” Tiffany asks.

  I better get the conversation back on track. “Les, can you get the phone to work?”

  Les quits finagling with it. “It’s roasted and toasted, dead as the Betamax, never to speak again,” he tells me, holding up the phone. “But for less than a buck and a half, I can replace it with a Samsung 4G with all the bells and whistles. I’ll even throw in an app for locating the North Star so you can find your way home no matter where you are on the face of the earth.”

  “All I need to know is the last call made on it,” I say.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me,” Tiffany takes the phone in hand, flips off the back panel, removes the SIM Card, and asks Les, “You got a phone that works?”

  “Hopefully.” He hands her the fryer basket.

  Tiffany picks out a cell phone, opens its back, exchanges the SIM card, turns the phone on, waits, punches a few keys, and points the screen towards me. “It’s not a number, Tiffany says. “It’s a password.”

  “I hate those things,” Les says.

  The screen shows a 2, 4, @, S, and a W. “It’s not a password,” I tell them.

  “How would you know, Mr. Sherlock?” Tiffany asks. “You’re so tech-challenged, you’re like behind Edison before he invented the telephone.”

  “It’s a remote code.”

  “So, the last time he used it, he was ordering up a movie?” Tiffany asks.

  “You know,” Les tells Tiffany. “If you’re interested in a cheap Netflix package, I can do that.”

  “No thanks,” Tiffany says. “I’m already well bundled.”

  “You certainly are,” he says.

  I place Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt’s SIM card in my wallet for safekeeping. “So long, Les.”

  “Call me if you’d like to chat,” Les says to Tiffany.

  “By the way, do you need any relationship advice?” she asks him.

  “I might. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m doing a non-profit relationship service for a certain type of people and you look exactly like one of them,” Tiffany explains.

  “For you, I’m always available.”

  As we leave the former hot dog stand, I conjure up The Original Carlo in my head and plug in my new bits of information. Wide-open spaces are finally starting to fill in.

  Back in her Lexus, Tiffany asks, “Where to next?”

  “The IRS.”

  “Are you getting audited?”

  “Tiffany, the only reason I would
ever get audited is because they can’t figure out how I can exist making next to nothing.”

  “My Daddy says IRS stands for Irrational Recovery Service.”

  “For most people it stands for I Regret Swindling.”

  ---

  The appointment is for 1:30. When we enter the conference room on the 59th floor of the Kluczynski Building, we hear, “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Remember that problem I was having with my feet?” “Wait” Jack Wayt asks me.

  “You had your shoes tied too tight.”

  “It might have been a touch of gout.”

  “Try wearing loafers, Jack.”

  Tiffany jumps into the conversation with, “Detective Wayt, don’t you think Neula’s looking good since she went on her new diet?”

  “Neula’s been on more diets than Oprah, Kirstie Alley, and all the Biggest Loser contestants combined.”

  “She’s already lost four pounds,” Tiffany informs Jack.

  “Neula losing four pounds is like a suitcase falling out of a 747.”

  “She’s doing it for you,” Tiffany snaps back at Jack. “The least you can do is show some appreciation for what she’s going through.”

  I can only hope and pray “No-No” hasn’t received a free stomach pump.

  “Yeah,” Jack reluctantly tells Tiffany. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The door opens and a man who looks a frail seventy, moves slower than a cripple at eighty, and has the demeanor of a curmudgeon at ninety, enters the room. “I’m Holler.”

  Jack and I both stand and offer our hands to shake.

  “Lloyd Holler,” he says. “That’s two L’s in Lloyd and two L’s in Holler. Lloyd Holler.”

  “I’m Jack.”

  “I’m Sherlock.”

  “I’m Tiffany, and that’s two F’s in Tiffany.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Detective in training,” Tiffany proudly tells him.

  “Stick around, little lady, I’ve been around these blocks more than a mailman,” Lloyd informs her.

  Lloyd sits at the head of the far end of the table, four or five chairs from us. He exchanges one pair of coke-bottle glasses for an even thicker pair of the same, and coughs up some phlegm. He wipes the disgusting liquid into an already multi-stained handkerchief. “One of you got paper and pen?”

  Jack hands over a pad and cheap pen, but only after putting on a pair of latex gloves.

  “The cheat, who is he?” Lloyd asks, spewing a spray of spittle in our direction. “I’ll break him in two.”

  “D’Wayne DeWitt,” I answer.

  “Spell it.”

  “It has two D’s, just like your name,” Tiffany makes the connection.

  I spell the name slowly, voicing the apostrophe and giving a slight melody in my rendition. My efforts are not appreciated.

  “Got a Social Security Number?” Lloyd barks.

  “No.”

  “I got to do everything?” Lloyd Holler hollers at us.

  “He works at the Zanadu,” I tell Agent Codger.

  “What the hell’s a Zanadu?”

  “It’s like only the hottest club in the city,” Tiffany, with two F’s, energetically informs him.

  “A disco?”

  “Kinda,” Tiffany explains.

  “I used to disco,” Lloyd admits.

  I try not to imagine what Mr. Holler did on a dance floor with that handkerchief.

  “What was your fave busta-move to bust?” Tiffany asks.

  “This is America, little lady, speak English,” Lloyd admonishes Tiffany, who has no clue what he’s referring to.

  I attempt to get the conversation back on track. “This D’Wayne—”

  “Is he a big case?” Lloyd spits out an interruption. “Because I only got six months, two weeks, and three days to wrap it up.” Lloyd’s nose is running faster than Tennyson’s Brook.

  “What happens then?” Tiffany asks. “Are you scheduled to die or something?”

  “No, retire.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Anything I want.”

  I tell Lloyd, with two L’s, Holler, with two L’s, everything I know about Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt, including the Non-Brink’s Brink’s truck, the account at Northern Trust, even the addresses of the places Mr. DeWitt visited the day I tailed him. Holler takes notes, not very many, but a few.

  “That’s all you got?” Lloyd loudly spits out again. If this keeps up, there’ll be a puddle of snot on the table big enough to float the Commodore’s yacht.

  “That’s it.”

  “So, now I got to go out and bust my butt to nail this guy? Don’t you flatfoots ever bring in anybody ready to get scorched?”

  “Sorry.”

  Lloyd hocks up a goober which, fortunately, he catches in his handy handkerchief before it gets anywhere near us. He exchanges his reading glasses for his walking glasses, gives us a departing scowl, and rises slowly from his chair. “If you ask me, they should have never done away with debtor’s prisons.” He leaves the room without further comment.

  “I’ll bet he’s a lot of fun in the carpool to work,” Jack remarks, depositing his gloves in the trash.

  “Agent two L’s doesn’t impress me as a guy with a lot of hobbies,” I mention. “I sure hope he takes up some before he retires.”

  “Snake charming might be a good fit,” Jack says.

  “Or maybe a handkerchief tester,” Tiffany suggests.

  “Let’s get out of here before I get infected with some two L bacteria,” Jack says.

  As we head for the exit, Tiffany says, “My Daddy is right again.”

  Jack and I gaze at Tiffany, waiting for the inevitable big “payoff.”

  “He told me IRS guys are meaner than a cripple with no insurance.”

  For once I couldn’t agree more.

  ---

  Tiffany is already late for an appointment to waste another three hundred bucks with her life coach, so I have her drop me off at the ‘L’. Before climbing out of her car, she asks, “What do you think of the ‘Nice’ me, Mr. Sherlock?”

  The question takes me a bit by surprise. “Well, it’s not really important what I think, Tiffany, it’s what you think that’s important.”

  She’s lost in thought for a few seconds, which is a lot for Tiffany. “Well, being free of seeing myself wearing red is certainly a big relief. I can’t tell you the pain that it caused me. And I like that I’m like doing so many good deeds now, especially my relationship advice for the attractively challenged, but …” she hesitates. “I’m just not feeling it.”

  “In what way? What’s missing?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Tiffany, you had a traumatic experience back at the Zanadu. You saw your whole life pass before your eyes,” I tell her. “I’m glad you’re rebounding from that experience in a positive way, but sometimes you have to give things a little time to let life sort itself out.”

  “You think I might be moving too fast?” she asks.

  “You have to let water seek its own level.”

  “What does water have to do with me?”

  “It’s an expression, Tiffany,” I explain. “After a flood, water needs time to run off and get back to the level where it’s supposed to be.”

  “You want me to run off?”

  “No, Tiffany. I want you to take your time, be introspective, really think your life through, and then make decisions on what to do next.”

  “Mr. Sherlock, I hate thinking. That’s why I hired a life coach.”

  ---

  I’m sitting in the bleachers, waiting for the Bailouts to take the floor for their final practice of the year. The game on Saturday is our one last chance for a perfect record of 0-8, all lost by virtue of the Slaughter Rule. What an accomplishment for a first year coach.

  Mrs. Whiner is seated next to me. She has a stack of paper in her hands from w
hich she reads aloud, describing in extensive detail how to post-up, split the defense, use the fast break, and spread the floor. I have no clue what she’s talking about, because I’m not listening. And it feels really good not to listen, to be on the other side of the fence for a change, so to speak.

  I’ve tuned her out while I’m having an epiphany of my own. The obvious has dawned on me like the sun coming up over Lake Michigan. All of a sudden things are as clear as Tiffany’s diamond earrings. I feel a great sense of relief and it feels wonderful.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Whiner,” I say to the obnoxious woman, having no clue if she’s even finished with her diatribe. My team enters the gym. They hardly seem happy to be here. “Okay, Bailouts, let’s take the court.”

  Kelly arrives, playing with her cell phone. The item has become almost an extension of her hand. I interrupt her thumb sweeping the screen. “Can you get music on that thing?”

  “Ah, duh, Dad.”

  “Good,” I tell her. “Find some dance music and be ready to play it when I tell you.”

  “Hip Hop?”

  “Well, certainly not the Bunny Hop.”

  “What’s the Bunny Hop?”

  I order the girls to line up at half court. “Our last game Saturday is going to be different, girls,” I announce.

  “We can’t lose any worse than we’ve lost before,” little Annie says.

  “What’s the point of practicing, if we’re going to get slaughtered anyway?” Allison asks.

  “Are they going to call the Slaughter Rule halfway through the first half?” Kaylyn asks.

  The “Little” Whiner informs the team, “My Mom says we should be using more pick and rolls.”

  “On Saturday, we’re going to pick our roles a lot more carefully.”

  “What are we going to do, Dad?” Care asks.

  “What’s right, for a change.”

  The first drill I have the team do is my new Dribbling Dance Drill. “Every time you bounce the ball, you’ve got to bounce your booty along with it,” I explain.

  The team looks at me as if I’ve got all my screws loose.

  “I want to see more moves than a can of worms on steroids.”

  I signal Kelly to start the music, grab a ball and give the team an example of what I want. I shuck, jive, jute and boogie as I bounce the ball before me. I must look like an idiot, but in seconds the girls join in and we have a basketball dance-a-thon. It’s so much fun, even Kelly steps up and in. The girls are throwing one arm up, while dribbling with the other. They swing their hips, tap their toes, and whirl their dervishes to the beat of the song and the bouncing ball. At the end of the awful music, every member of the team is laughing hysterically.