3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany Read online

  “Doing what?”

  “I’m on a stakeout.”

  “Oh, I’ve done those,” she says with a downward wave of her hand. The only thing stakeouts are good for is a snappy-nap.”

  “We have to get off the sidewalk,” I tell her, leading her to my car.

  “Oh, no, I can’t get into your car. I might get a rash.”

  “We can’t stay out here,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be seen.”

  “If I were you,” she says, “I’d rather be seen out here than in that crummy car of yours.”

  “I don’t have a choice. I’m incognito.”

  She looks at me with her You’re telling me something I don’t want to know look. “Are you wearing Depends?” she asks.

  “No, Tiffany, I’m incognito, not incontinent.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” she says. “Incontinent sounds very Parisian.”

  “If you say so, Tiffany.”

  America’s private educational system is failing its youth almost as badly as the public one is.

  “Tell you what,” she says. “Since I’m already here, I’ll go undercover into the store. What do you want me to do?”

  There’s no getting rid of her. “Buy some sundries.”

  I get back in my car. Tiffany goes shopping. Three minutes later, a mid-sized bus with markings I can’t read pulls up in front of the store. I count at least thirty Asian individuals as one by one they slowly file out of it; all of them clearly senior citizens, none of them especially healthy. They enter the store very orderly and methodically, just as if they have done this many times before. No sooner has the last one entered than Tiffany comes bounding out and sprints my way--a difficult task with four-inch clogs on your feet.

  “It’s like Pearl Harbor déjà vu, Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany says excitedly as she reaches my car. “They must have busted through one of those immigration fences on our Chinese border.”

  Tiffany’s ignorance of geography is as bad as her vocabulary. Or it was a really, really long bus ride for the group. “What were they doing in there?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. They were all clumped together, making sounds like silverware bouncing off marble tile.” She’s talking a mile a minute. “My first thought was they all had yellow fever.”

  “Do you know the symptoms of yellow fever?”

  “No.”

  I’ll ask Jack Wayt next time I see him. He’ll know.

  “It was, like, really freaky,” she says. She wipes down the front of her dress as if she’s ridding herself of a horde of unwelcome ants. “It was like I was a minority person.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

  Tiffany becomes quite emphatic, “There’s only one thing to do.”

  “What’s that, Tiffany?”

  “Exfoliate.”

  Although she hates my car, Tiffany makes me drive her to her Lexus, which is parked less than a hundred feet away. “What’s that noise? She asks.

  “There’s a hole in my muffler.”

  She gives me a quizzical look. “You’re not wearing a muffler.”

  “The car’s muffler.”

  “It’s not that cold,” she says. “But anything that covers this car is an improvement.”

  We arrive at her car. “Mr. Sherlock, I have to talk to you.”

  “I can’t now, Tiffany. I’m working.”

  “All right, but soon, okay?”

  After Tiffany takes off, I take her parking spot, get out of my car, and go inside Evanscago Drugs. Enough of this going incognito.

  It’s a madhouse inside. Thirty or so Asian senior citizens are milling around eating rice cakes. All unhappily wait for their names to be called by the pharmacist who can’t speak Mandarin or any Asian language for that matter. The craziness is compounded by the fact that some of them can’t hear very well or they’re totally deaf, some can’t walk and they just stumble along, and some are just whacked out to begin with, probably because they can’t find the sundries section. I’ve seen enough. Case closed. I’m out of here.

  Outside, I call Mr. Richmond. He must see my name on his phone screen because he bounces me straight to his voice mail. I’m succinct in explaining a pretty common Medicare Insurance scam and add that Tiffany was instrumental in helping me crack the case. Next, I call the Evanston Police Department and ask to speak to Bruce Lansky, a detective I used to know back in the day when I was in the CPD. We have a nice chat, catch up on crimes, and I tell him of the scam going down at Evanscago Drugs. He tells me “I owe you a lunch, Sherlock.”

  I ask him instead just to give me the cash he’d spend on our lunch. He laughs. I don’t. I wasn’t kidding.

  ---

  It’s a nice, cool fall day. The air is clean and crisp, the sun is shining, a good day for a walk along the lakefront. I start out at Evanston’s Clark Street Beach and walk north through the Northwestern University campus. Fall is, by far, the best season in Chicago.

  I make the mistake of taking my cell phone with me. “Wait” Jack Wayt calls to inform me that he has contracted a toenail fungus, which could be deadly since his fungi closely resembles the photo of a fungus featured on his favorite website Diseases ‘R Us. After we discuss possible cures and remedies, including amputation, Jack goes over what he found in the area of my almost demise. “Traces of coke, meth, oxy, some seeds. I’m telling you, Sherlock, once these new medical pot dispensaries are up and running it’s really going to cut into weed sales on the streets,” he says.

  “And that’s a good thing?” I ask.

  “One less bell to answer,” he sings, poorly.

  In California and other states, if you want to smoke dope legally, all you gotta do is go into your neighborhood cannabis clinic and tell the “Doctor” you’ve got an “anxiety problem.” He’ll ask you what you’re so anxious about and you tell him: “Because I don’t have any pot.” So, he’ll write you a prescription for medical marijuana which you can purchase in the front of the store. Suddenly you’re cured.

  “Did you find out who owned the place?” I ask.

  “The usual off-shore corporation that’s more time and effort to uncover than it’s worth.”

  “Has the building been used recently?” I keep the questions coming.

  “As far as we know, no.”

  “Did anything come up on the three digits I got off that limo license plate?” I’m referring to Mr. Ponytail’s vehicle.

  “No,” Jack says. “It’s a lot easier to trace a car if you get the entire plate number.”

  “If I add that the guy driving the limo had a little ponytail, would that help?” I ask.

  “I doubt it.”

  We talk for a few more minutes on what we don’t know about the case. Jack then tells me he has to go “soak in a tub of Epsom Salts,” and hangs up.

  I walk another hundred yards and my phone rings again. I’m supposed to look at the screen before I answer, but I always forget to do that. “Hello.”

  “This is a courtesy call,” the voice says.

  I interrupt, “Before you start, let me tell you I don’t buy anything from anybody who calls me on the phone or sends me anything in the mail.”

  “I ain’t selling nothing.”

  I interrupt him again, “I don’t do phone surveys either.”

  “Listen bud.”

  “And I’d like to help all the charities that call, but I’m a charity case myself.”

  “Listen,” he raises his guttural voice, “you keep your nose outta where it don’t belong or you ain’t gonna have no nose to stick in no place.” He hangs up.

  I hate telemarketers. Whatever happened to the No Call List?

  I fumble around with the phone, somehow getting to the “Calls” screen and see Private Caller at the top of the list. I manage to find my way back to the main screen, hit *69 and get a busy signal. Private Caller comes back on the screen. I’ll have to stop by More4LesMobile and inquire ab
out having Private Caller installed on my phone.

  I’m approaching the Northwestern campus athletic fields. I’m willing to bet that most people around here don’t know that the ground they’re walking on used to be Lake Michigan. The terra firma beneath them is nothing more than an honest-to-goodness landfill, or in this case “lakefill.” Northwestern is probably the only university in the country that manufactures its own land for its own expansion. I turn around and start back south and my phone rings for the third time. In life, some say everything comes in threes.

  “Hello.”

  “Gibby Fearn.”

  “How are you?”

  “A person here wants to speak with you,” Gibby says, putting all pleasantries aside.

  “Put him on the phone.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “If he wants to speak with me, why didn’t you just wait until he was around, and then call me?” Seems logical to me.

  “Why don’t you be here at nine,” Gibby asks/orders.

  “Where?”

  “Where else? Zanadu.”

  I seem to be in the middle of a streak of bad-mannered phone callers.

  “Who should I ask for?” I ask.

  “Who do you think?” Gibby says. “I’ll make the introductions.”

  “Should I bring anything?” I’d hate to show up, discover it’s pot luck, and not have a dish.

  “Nine.” Click.

  I’m almost back to my car when the rule of three plus one kicks in. Ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Sherlock.”

  “Tiffany, where are you?”

  “I’m getting a peel.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “We have to talk,” she says.

  “We are talking,” I remind her.

  “Not about that. It's personal what we have to talk about.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, when can we talk?”

  “How about tonight?” I ask. “I have to be at Zanadu at nine. Want to join me?”

  “Like on a date?” she asks in a tone that suggests she is going to be exposed to a deadly bacteria.

  “No.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sherlock, that’s a relief,” she says breathing a little easier. “I thought you were asking me out. That would be, like, totally creepy.”

  ---

  Arson and Sterno wear matching pink, shiny, silk jumpsuits. They resemble two mountains of coal wrapped in breast cancer ribbons.

  Sterno opens the rope wide for Tiffany to enter, but again slams the door on me.

  “Look on your list,” I tell them. “Richard Sherlock.”

  Arson runs his finger down the first page on his clipboard and stops suddenly. “How’d you get on the list?” he asks.

  “I told you, I don’t follow the trends, I set ’em.”

  The rope comes off its mooring and I pass by, “Nice to see you boys. Love the new look.”

  The second door is wide open. No Slimy Guy to recheck the people who have already been checked. We walk right in. The god-awful rap music is still blaring away, but the place isn’t yet cooking. It’s a little easier to make yourself heard. “I need you to go find Bruno,” I tell Tiffany.

  “I’ll start my surveillance at the bar,” she says.

  “And, if he’s not working, find out why.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Gibby wants to introduce me to somebody.”

  “Isn’t that nice,” Tiffany says sweetly. “Why?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  We walk through the dance floor, but split when we come to the bar. Tiffany goes right, I go left. I arrive at the door marked No Admittance, knock, and wait. The door automatically opens and I walk in. The Behemoth sits in the same chair, reading the same Fantastic Four comic book; talk about a slow reader. The guy has on an ill-fitting blue suit this time, but it’s the same brand and style as the one he had on before; no doubt the product of a 2 for 1 sale. Gibby quickly removes a bill counting apparatus, placing it into the lower drawer of his desk, before he comes around the desk to greet me.

  I hear the whoosh/plop sound. “What’s that noise?”

  “What noise?” Gibby asks.

  “That whoosh/plop noise.”

  “Dun’t know,” the Behemoth speaks without lifting his eyes from the Fantastic Four. The plot must be quite intriguing.

  “Every time I come in here,” I tell the pair. “I hear the same weird noise.”

  “Do you hear it now?” Gibby asks.

  I pause to listen. “No.”

  “I dun’t neither,” the Behemoth adds.

  Gibby heads for the door and motions for me to follow. “Why don’t you come with me?”

  Before leaving the room, I turn to the Behemoth. “You know the Fantastic Four save the world in the end of that comic book.”

  The Behemoth peers up from the page and gives me a big brute sneer. I think I hit a nerve.

  Gibby leads me down a narrow hallway that parallels the back side of the bar. We reach an unmarked door. He punches a code onto the small keyboard and the door unlocks. We go through and find ourselves in a back stairwell. I follow him up one flight to another door. He knocks. A light goes on above us, the camera turns on, and the lock on the door clicks. Gibby pushes it open.

  The office is more suited for the top floor of a Wall Street brokerage firm than a nightclub with disco balls. The only thing missing is a downtown view. Tasteful art on the walls, Oriental rugs, ultra-modern furniture, a wet bar, and a very large desk three oak trees gave their lives for. I feel about as out of place as a plaid suit at a funeral. A black guy, maybe mid-forties, impeccably dressed, comes forward.

  “Mr. DeWitt,” the stern, business-like Gibby, says. “This is Mr. Sherlock. Mr. Sherlock, Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt.”

  DeWitt looks me up and looks me down.

  “You can call me, Richard,” I say extending my hand to shake.

  DeWitt ignores my outstretched hand. “You can call me, Mr. DeWitt.”

  And so I shall.

  DeWitt motions for Gibby to leave the room. He does so without hesitation. Mr. DeWitt moves to the corner and pulls the drawstrings on a set of curtains on the left. Once open, the Zanadu Club lies beneath us like an IMAX movie being played with no sound and lousy plot. “Sit,” he says motioning me towards a couch. “Drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He pours himself a glass of ice water from a Waterford pitcher on the coffee table, and sits across from me. “Miss being on the force?” he asks.

  “Some days,” I tell him. “Mostly, I miss my paychecks.”

  Mr. DeWitt folds his hands above his lap. He wears diamonds on two fingers and in one ear lobe. “I have a problem, Mr. Sherlock.”

  I immediately think, “Just one?” I got a whole slew of them, my kids, my ex-wife, the rent, the electric bill, gas prices, car, etc., etc., etc.

  “Are you available for hire?” he asks.

  Is a rabbi Jewish? Is the Pope Catholic? Is Buddha a Buddhist?

  “I better ask what the problem is,” I tell him.

  “Someone is trying to destroy my business.”

  I look out on the dance floor packed to the gills with well-dressed partiers. “Whoever it is, Mr. DeWitt, it doesn’t look like they’re doing a very good job.”

  “Trust me. Poisonous seeds have been planted and they are ready to take root.”

  “A few spiked drinks aren’t going to kill your vibe. They might even help it.”

  “Success breeds envy. Envy breeds ideas. Ideas breed ill-conceived actions.”

  I lean forward a bit. “What exactly do you think they’re going to do,” I ask, “that could put a dent into what you’ve got going here?”

  “Kill me.”

  I pause to contemplate his answer. “That certainly wouldn’t help your bottom line.”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

  He sits straight as an honest judge, staring
right into me, with absolutely no emotion of his face.

  “Did someone try to slip a Mickey into your drink?” I ask attempting to link two crimes into one investigation.

  “I don’t drink.”

  “Well, what exactly did he, or she, or they, try to do?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  D’Wayne DeWitt is not being very helpful to the cause of his new employee. “Then why do you suspect someone is attempting to kill you?”

  “I know,” he says. “And that’s all you need to know.”

  D’Wayne DeWitt might be better off spending an hour with Miss Freeda, Palm Reader, Tarot Master, and Seer to the Stars. “From what I have seen, you already employ enough muscle to keep the Taliban at bay.”

  Mr. DeWitt shifts in his chair ever so slightly. “All I want you to do is find out what is going on. You don’t have to stop them, confront them, or come up with a plan to solve the problem. All I want to know is who and what.”

  “And then what?” I ask.

  “I’ll be happy and you’ll be paid.”

  Something is wrong with this picture; actually there are many things wrong with this picture.

  “Four hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses,” he says.

  But that isn’t one of them.

  He pulls a gold money clip out of his pocket, counts out a number of hundreds, and offers them to me. “On account,” he says.

  Once I lay my hands on the money, I know my fate is sealed. I contemplate it for less than a nanosecond and grab the cash. Boy, do I need this cash. “I’ll start tomorrow.”

  Mr. DeWitt rises from his chair. “You’ll start tonight.”

  Well, it’s clear who will be the head ramrod on this wagon train. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re the detective.”

  “I’ll get right on it.” I rise. With the wad of money in my pocket, pressing against my leg, I feel as if I have risen from years in a financial coma. The dawn has broken. Spring has sprung. Unplug me from life support. I’m alive. I’m alive.

  I am almost to the door when I turn around and ask, “By the way, do you have a guy working for you, kinda short, wears aviator glasses, and has a little ponytail running down the back of his neck?”

  “No.”

  I believe I just found my starting place.