3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany

by Jim Stevens

  “Is that the same reason I got nabbed the first time around too?”

  “That was a little bit different, and I apologize for the inconvenience.” His manner of speaking is very reserved and a little too nonchalant for me.

  “Next time, just call, okay?”

  He takes his time, crosses one leg over the other, and glances around the room. “Nice place isn’t it?” he says. “A business associate of mine owns it. He lets me use it while I’m in town.”

  “If you ever need a place that’s downscale, I got one for rent.”

  The dark-haired gentleman politely ignores my remark. He folds his hands like a praying child and rests them in his lap. “I have an internal problem with one of my businesses and I need some assistance in defining the scope and depth of the situation.”

  “Let me guess,” I say. “The Zanadu Club.”

  “You’re very perceptive, Mr. Sherlock.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cappilino.”

  He gives me a slight, knowing smile. “I’m not Jimmy Cappilino.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “A reasonable facsimile,” he says, “since Jimmy Cappilino does not exist.”

  “I’ll take him off my Christmas card list.”

  “You do that, you’ll save yourself a stamp, Mr. Sherlock.”

  I try my best to size this guy up. “Was I referred to you by someone, Mr. ---?” I ask.

  “You can call me Rogers.”

  “Mister Rogers, you mean like the guy who wears the sweaters on TV?”

  “Or like the naval officer Henry Fonda played in the movie or Hammerstein’s partner.” He leans slightly forward. “There’s a certain amount of chicanery going on within the walls of my business and it bothers me greatly. I would like you to find out what it is and report back to me.”

  There’s no doubt in my mind that Mr. Rogers knows I’m working for more than one master at the Zanadu, but I see no reason to bring this up in our present conversation.

  “All I ask is we have a similar working relationship as an attorney and his client,” he specifies.

  “That can be difficult in my business,” I tell him.

  “I will make it worth your while.” He reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a leather wallet, opens it, counts out ten one hundred dollar bills, and hands them to me. I can’t remember a time when I found it so easy to get paid. With Mr. Richmond, ninety days is his starting point.

  He stands up. “I have had my associate put a number into your phone, so you can reach me.”

  Considering my current state of uneasiness, I decide it’s best not to mention that I don’t know how to operate my cell phone.

  “Don’t call unless you have something to report,” he lays down one law. “I’m not one for small talk.”

  The Thug and the girls return as if on cue.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Sherlock,” the dark-haired man says politely and turns away to admire the Picasso.

  We are escorted out the door. Once outside, the Thug returns our cell phones. My kids are relieved beyond belief. Kelly grips hers as if it is a winning lottery ticket. “Oh my God,” she says, “I’ve missed you.”

  Mr. Ponytail looks up at us from behind the wheel of the Caddy.

  “We’ll find our own way home,” I tell our host.

  “Sure?” The Thug asks.

  “Positive,” I tell him and add, “Why don’t you use the time to go buy yourself a new fedora?”

  “I might do dat.”

  I take a hand of each of my daughters and lead them down the street towards Armitage.

  “You got some really weird friends, Dad,” Kelly tells me.

  “They are hardly my friends.”

  “I din’t tink dat,” Care says.

  “And if I ever hear either of you talking like that idiot back there, neither of you will see another Fruit Roll Up until you’re twenty-one.”

  We walk over to an Italian ice place on Armitage, just a little past Sheffield Avenue. It’s fall, but the ice tastes great anyway. We kill a half-hour waiting for Tiffany, whom the girls called, to pick us up. When she arrives, she double-parks, and hops out of the Lexus; excited as a kid going into a candy store. “Hi, little dudettes.”

  “Hi, Tiffany,” they say almost in unison.

  Tiffany can’t wait to give me the news. “Mr. Sherlock, you won’t believe what my new life coach wants me to do.”

  “You’re right. I won’t.”

  “She says I should be channeling out of my inner Sword of Damocles which has overtaken my aura and put that energy into new positions of power and prestige.” She’s so excited, she can’t stop. “I didn’t even know I had a Sword of Damocles. I thought the best I had was the diamond stickpin Grandmama Moomah gave me.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Tiffany,” I tell her. “Most people don’t even know Damocles had a sword.”

  “Tiffany,” Kelly says, “that’s sounds so totally cool.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t it?” Tiffany says with a smile.

  “Tiffany, do you have any idea what your life coach is talking about?” I ask.

  “She says I have to begin putting out positive vibes in my momentums to attract the positive ions in the universe waiting to be tapped into action.”

  “And how did Dr. R. Bosley Radcliff suggest you do that?”

  “The doc said I should find ways of bringing out a new ‘Nice’ Tiffany to replace the old “Not So Nice” Tiffany.”

  “Did she give you any ways to become ‘Nice’?”

  “She’s leaving it up to me,” Tiffany tells us. “I’m going to come up with ideas and we’ll discuss them in our next session.”

  “Another three-hundred dollar session?”

  “And worth every penny, Mr. Sherlock, although I hate pennies.”

  “Well,” I admit, “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.” Maybe three hundred dollars is a small price to pay for Tiffany’s happiness; I just wish I were the one getting paid.

  My phone rings, but before I can answer it, Kelly says, “Dad, you need some new ringtones.”

  “Forget it, Kelly.” I answer the phone. It’s “Wait” Jack Wayt.

  “Wait,” he says in greeting. “It’s Saturday, Sherlock. You know what happens on Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “I start to feel the effects of my Adult ADHD.”

  “Is that why you’re calling me?”

  “No,” he says. “I’m at Bruno’s condo. You better get over here.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.”

  I can’t figure out how to end the call so I turn off my cell phone. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Where, Dad?”

  “Crime scene.”

  “Bruno’s?” Tiffany asks.

  “That’s the place.”

  “Can we come?” Kelly asks.

  Tiffany tells the girls, “You don’t want to go there. That place stinks worse than the perfume section at Target.”

  The girls have already been taken against their/my will, which is plenty for one day. A blood-soaked murder scene will not add anything positive to their upbringing. The problem is what do I do with them?

  “Tiffany, are you busy?” I ask.

  “I’m always busy.”

  “Doing what, may I ask?”

  “Nothing really,” she says. “I’m just naturally busy.”

  “Would you mind taking Kelly and Care to Water Tower Place?”

  “Ah, YES!” erupts from my pair of spendthrift offspring.

  “I can’t,” Tiffany says. “I just remembered I got a date.”

  Damn.

  “With Monroe,” Tiffany says with an odd smile on her lips. “This might be the night.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Where is he taking you?” Care asks.

  “I don’t know, but it better be someplace expensive.”
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  “So, can we come with you to the murder scene?” Kelly asks me again.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not good parenting for a father to have his kids visit a condo where a guy got bludgeoned to death.”

  “Why not?” Care asks.

  “We see that on TV every day,” Kelly says.

  “Why don’t I drop you off at the library,” I suggest. “And you can spend a couple hours getting smarter.”

  “That’s totally lame. If we can’t go see all that blood, we want to go shopping.”

  “How about a movie?”

  “There’s nothing we want to see except new clothes.” Kelly doesn’t stop there. “You said we could go to Water Tower Place if Tiffany was with us.”

  I had to open my big mouth. Now, I’m stuck. “Tiffany, will you give them a ride?”

  “No problem.”

  I pull out my wallet. “Here’s four hundred dollars,” I give them each two bills. “Spend it wisely.”

  Kelly grips the bills tighter than Moses did the Ten Commandments. Her eyes widen as she stares at them as if they were tickets to heaven. Care rolls the money up and stuffs it into her front pocket. I couldn’t have had two more different kids.

  ---

  I have Tiffany drop me off in front of Bruno’s building. Before getting out of her car, I turn to my girls. “I’ll see you at the bottom of the escalators at four o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Have a good time.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany says pointing to the building. “Your buddy is working.”

  I see Guido, the jerk doorman, opening the door for some old lady.

  “You know,” Tiffany says. “He looks familiar.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do run into a lot of doormen,” I remind her. “And they’re all in uniform.”

  “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of that.”

  “And you prefer to group all service people into one easy to identify category.”

  “That saves me a lot of effort on my part, so I can put that time into attracting more positive ions to the new ‘Nice’ me.”

  “Good luck with that, Tiffany.”

  I exit the car, repeating to the girls, “Remember, four o’clock.”

  The Lexus speeds away. I walk up the driveway and through the revolving outer door.

  “You, again,” Guido greets me.

  “Open the door for me.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m here on official police business.”

  “I got reamed big time after you got in here the last time,” he tells me. “How’d you do that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He’s not sure how to respond, so he doesn’t.

  “I’m sorry if I put a black mark on your career path, Guido.” I apologize and dig him in one sentence.

  “This is hardly my career,” he says sourly.

  Guido opens the inner door. I pass through, go straight to the elevator bank, and take the second car to the 41st floor.

  “Wait” Jack Wayt sits on a couch in Bruno’s apartment. “Wait,” he says before I can say “Hello.”

  “What?”

  “Sherlock, I think I’m feeling a touch of gout in my little toe.” He lifts his left foot.

  “Maybe you tied your shoe too tight,” I suggest.

  Jack reaches down, unties the knot, loosens the laces, and reties his shoe. “That’s better,” he says. “You ever consider going into medicine?”

  “I’ve considered everything to keep from doing what I’m doing.”

  The crime lab had a field day in Bruno’s place. Big swaths of the carpet have been cut out as well as the drywall with the blood splatter. There are two big holes in the bedroom wall. All the drawers are open and their surfaces are covered with dust from fingerprint kits. The fireplace mantle has been pulled off the wall. Some hard-driving real estate agent is going to have a lot of refurbishing to do to before he puts this unit on the market.

  “Come on,” Jack says. “I want you to see something.”

  I follow Jack to the hallway between the front room and the bedroom. He opens the linen closet door, pulls out two stacks of towels, reaches in, and removes a piece of drywall from the far end that at first glance looks like regular wall. “The crime boys were so busy ripping the place apart, they forgot to check the obvious.” He moves to the side so I can see.

  Stacks of boxes, bottles, and vials of prescription drugs fill a foot of cabinet space in the rear of a hidden cupboard. “What are they?” I ask.

  “Steroids.”

  “This wasn’t what was in the drawer I found,” I say reminding myself as well as Jack.

  “You’ve got enough steroids and growth hormones here to put a major league locker room to shame,” Jack says.

  This doesn’t make sense. “Bruno was in a much different business than I thought.”

  “You know, Sherlock,” Jack says. “If I owned the Cubs, I’d make every player on the team bulk up. Even if they got caught, who’d care? At least the fans wouldn’t have had to wait until next year.”

  “Wouldn’t work, they’re the Cubs,” I tell him. I pause before I ask, “You talk to anyone at the Zanadu who said Bruno was pushing muscle meds?”

  “No, but there wasn’t much doubt he was pushing everything else,” Jack says.

  I peer back into the stash in the linen closet, “Could these be for personal use?”

  “Only if he was trying to become the Incredible Hulk,” Jack says.

  Jack replaces the false front to the cupboard, and we return to the front room where I first found him. He sits on the couch. I sit in a chair.

  “Anything else you find that I should know about?” I ask him.

  “No, not about this,” he says.

  “There is something we have to talk about, Jack.”

  “What?”

  I swallow hard and take a deep breath. I’m sure Jack is not going to like what comes out of my mouth next. “Jack, “No-No” wants to know if you still have feelings for her.”

  “Damn it, Sherlock,” he snaps back at me. “I invite you over here to help you out, and you turn into Cupid.”

  “I had to ask you, Jack. I didn’t have a choice. “No-No” was going to charge me with breaking and entering if I didn’t.”

  “She was bluffing. How naïve about women are you?”

  “Really, really naïve,” I tell him.

  Jack’s dander is way up. “Let me tell you two things about women, Sherlock.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can’t live with ‘em,” he pauses for effect. “And you can’t live with ‘em.”

  I can only wonder: where was my mentor when I met my ex-wife?

  “Jack,” I say as calmly as I’m able. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “And you can’t make me, Sherlock.”

  I give it a minute or two for the subject to dissipate then get up to leave.

  “Where’re you going?” he asks.

  “I got to pick up my kids. Thanks for letting me in on the new wrinkles.”

  “That’s not why I brought you over here. Sit down.” Jack opens his tattered briefcase, pulls out a stack of money, and tosses it on the table my way. “I need you to do something.”

  “What?”

  “Buy me some drugs.”

  “Why? I already cured your gout.”

  “Not that kind of drugs. I need some cocaine.”

  “Jack …”

  “Here’s the address,” he hands me a slip of paper. “Make sure you use the top ten bills.”

  I look down at the wad of cash. I only wish.

  CHAPTER 13

  The girls come down the escalator at eight minutes before five, both loaded down with rope-handled bags from some well-known expensive s
tores. “I thought I told you four o’clock.”

  “You did,” Care admits.

  “But we wanted to make sure we spent all the money you gave us so we wouldn’t have to waste any of it going home on the ‘L’,” Kelly says.

  “How did you afford all that?” I ask, pointing to their stashes.

  “Shopping,” Kelly says. “It’s an art.”

  We walk to the Chicago Avenue station and catch a train heading north. It’s dinnertime by the time we get into our neighborhood, so I decide we stop at a local spot and eat. They have burgers. I have fish. They tell me of their shopping forays and describe each item they purchased. They are truly happy. It’s amazing what having a little money in your pocket can do for you and your family. I even feel pretty good about it.

  We walk to our apartment, and, once in the door, I tell them, “I have to run an errand tonight. I don’t want you fighting over the TV remote.”

  Neither listen. They’re both playing with their cell phones.

  I go into my bedroom, change into jeans and a sweatshirt, and return to the girls who have taken their purchases, spread them out over the furniture, and are taking pictures with their cell phones to send to their Facebook friends.

  “Keep the doors locked and don’t let anybody in,” I say this extra loud. “If anybody knocks, call me on your phone and I’ll tell you what to do.”

  I hope they’re listening; sometimes all I can do is hope.

  ---

  The address “Wait” Jack Wayt gave me is on the Westside. The one-story brick building is on a street off Madison Street, a particularly crummy neighborhood that’s a mile or so west of the United Center. The entrance to the building, which was previously a retail operation selling retread tires to owners of cars like my Toyota, is off the rear alley. It's a perfect retail location—if you’re in the drug business.

  If you’ve ever considered delving into the sale of illegal substances, you might want to reconsider. It’s not a great line of work. It has a business model that is structured like a pyramid. The enormous base is made up of uneducated street kids who have flunked out of school and have very few other employment options available to them. The drug lords at the top of the pyramid realize these dumb, impressionable punks are ripe for picking, so they hire them at a minuscule wage with no fringe benefits and make them salesmen. The middle section of the pyramid is composed of the drug distributors. Although they’re paid much better than the sellers on the street, often in 18-Carat bling instead of cold cash, these Johnny-come-lately entrepreneurs run the greatest risk of all. If they get busted, they wind up in the slammer for a very long time.