3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany

by Jim Stevens

  “And?” I ask.

  “From what you told me, I thought I could put this s.o.b. on a skewer, slow roast him over hot coals, and eat him for lunch,” Lloyd says. “And all I discover is that he’s as clean as a Chicago blizzard.”

  “He’s a drug dealer,” I tell Lloyd.

  “Not according to his financials.”

  “I watched him pay a call on his retail outlets.”

  “Properties that he owns or rents, with all property taxes paid up to date.”

  “How about the money he’s getting from the Zanadu?”

  “He’s a paid consultant,” Holler hollers at me. “They paid him sixty grand last year. Perfectly legal.”

  “He rides around in a big ass limo and lives in a penthouse.”

  “All inherited.”

  “Inherited? From who? The guy grew up in the ghetto.”

  “All perfectly legal, you bonehead.”

  “I’m telling you,” I plead my case. “I can’t be wrong about this guy.”

  “Yes, you can, because you’re an idiot. Don’t bother me again, unless you got a guy I can fry at high heat.” Lloyd makes one last swipe at his dripping nose with his well-soaked handkerchief and leaves the room.

  “Way to go, Sherlock,” “No-No” says.

  “Yeah,” Jack adds, “now we’re all going to get audited next year.”

  ---

  “If you think we’re letting your friends in,” Sterno tells me, “you’re smokin’ some really nasty weed.”

  We’re at the Zanadu. I’m at the head of the line. Thankfully, Jack and “No-No” are out of earshot.

  “Those two look like bookends at a fat farm reading group,” Arson adds, seeing my detective buddies standing by their car.

  “Don’t get your Calvins in a bunch, boys,” I tell them. “Has the guy with the ponytail arrived yet?”

  “Yeah, ten minutes ago.”

  I walk over to my detective friends. “He’s here.”

  Jack gets into the driver’s seat, “No-No” rides shotgun, and I slip in the back of a standard-issue black Chevy Impala. I’ve always wondered why police departments all buy the same cars for undercover work; same make, same model, same color. Do they actually consider that “good” cover?

  “I was wondering if you’d like to stop by on Sunday for dinner, Jack?” “No-No” asks as we sit and wait.

  “You’re not having that rabbit food that Tiffany’s been making you eat?”

  “No, I’m taking Sunday off. No diets on the Sabbath.”

  “Well, I’ll have to see how I’m feeling,” Jack tells her. “Last Sunday, I came down with what I thought was the beginning of a brain tumor.”

  “How would you know something like that?” I ask.

  “I was feeling an odd growth on my cerebellum.”

  “Jeesh,” I can’t help myself and say from the back seat.

  I look up and see Mr. Ponytail coming out of the Zanadu with his metal briefcase in hand. “That’s our boy. He’s going to get into that limo, so get ready.”

  “No, no,” “No-No” says. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

  Jack ignores her advice and puts the Chevy in gear. He carefully follows Mr. Ponytail until he gets off the expressway at Harlem and turns north. The flashers go on, and the limo pulls over. Jack and “No-No” get out. Jack goes to the driver’s side window. “No-No” stands to the right with her hand on the butt of her gun.

  From where I sit, I can’t hear what Jack has to say at the window, but when Mr. Ponytail exits the car, it’s obvious he’s not a happy camper. Jack motions to “No-No” to start searching the car from the passenger’s side as he and the victim watch.

  The entire process takes about fifteen minutes.

  “No-No” climbs into the Chevy first, followed by Jack. There is a pause before both doors slam shut simultaneously.

  Jack makes the first comment. “You IDIOT!”

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” “No-No” adds.

  “He says he’s going to press charges, Sherlock,” Jack tells me, his voice echoing in the closed car.

  “No, no, I said. This is a dumb idea,” “No-No” says.

  “If the Chief finds out about this one,” Jack says. “He’ll have us both back walking a beat.”

  No cop walks a beat anymore, but this is probably not a good time to correct my friends.

  “No-No” adds, “There was even a decal on limo’s front window that said he ‘supports our brave police and firemen.’”

  “You didn’t find anything?” I ask, incredulous at the results.

  “No, we didn’t, Sherlock.” Jack slams his fists onto the steering wheel. “I can feel my heart starting to palpitate. If I drop dead, Sherlock, it’s your fault.”

  Jack holds a hand to his chest, as “No-No” rubs his shoulder to make it all better.

  “Did you open the briefcase?” I have to ask.

  “Of course we opened the briefcase,” Jack screams again.

  “And it was as empty as your empty head,” “No-No” finishes the thought.

  “I can’t believe it,” I tell them. “I’ve watched that guy carry money out of the Zanadu every night I’ve been there. Did you find out who he was?”

  “He’s an independent limo driver, with his license and insurance paid up in full.”

  “He hasn’t had a parking ticket in three years,” “No-No” finishes the crime report.

  “You screwed up with the IRS and now you’ve screwed up with us,” Jack informs me.

  “That’s two strikes, Sherlock,” “No-No” says.

  “Well,” I say, to make it all better, “at least you two are now agreeing on something.”

  CHAPTER 18

  My back is killing me.

  I wake up this morning and I’m tighter than a shrink-wrapped Slinky. My lumbar vertebrae ache worse than a jilted lover. It must be a delayed reaction to the hit I took when I was thrown backwards after the explosion in D’Wayne DeWitt’s office. It takes me ten minutes just to reach out and grab the bottle of ibuprofen only to find one pill remaining inside which slips through my fingers before I can get it into my mouth.

  I take a breather and squiggle my body to the edge of the bed and do my best to lower myself to the floor. Of course this doesn’t work either and I flop to the carpet like a dying salmon. Ouch! The pain is riveting through my body like lightning through thunderclouds. I’m angry, not only at my body, but for not finishing Oh, My Aching Back the last time I was in the Barnes & Noble.

  It must take me twenty minutes just to get up onto all fours and another twenty minutes to inch my way to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and crawl into the small space. If you’ve never taken a shower on all fours, I can assure you, you’re not missing much. By the time the hot water heater’s water runs out and turns cold, I am semi-standing. I get a robe around me and walk out of the bathroom, slumped over worse than a stoop-shouldered octogenarian.

  I lay on the floor in the front room, lift my feet to the couch and stare at The Original Carlo, which is the only item in the room that could possibly make me feel worse than I already feel. So far, all that’s gone right in this case is safely tucked away in a recipe box in a cupboard in my kitchen.

  There are more unanswered questions, plot holes, and unconnected dots gazing down upon me than bullets of pain shooting into my back.

  Everything is wrong, really wrong. My IRS visit and subsequent hollering from Lloyd, with two L’s, Holler, with two L’s, was a disaster. Mr. Ponytail’s empty briefcase makes absolutely no sense. I’m investigating the chicanery that’s going on in an upscale nightclub where maybe the only profit they make is from the money they steal from themselves. But I can’t find any dirty money anywhere. How lousy of a detective can I be? I know Mr. DeWitt is as dirty as one of Monroe’s T-shirts after a workout and, yet, he miraculously acquired all of his assets by inheriting them. Huh? Why is there a Br
ink’s and a Non-Brink’s truck in competition? Bruno had a profitable sideline dealing drugs out of the Zanadu and used some of his profits to bulk himself up, but how could he be so stupid as to let someone waste him in his own condo, which by the way was a place he shouldn’t have been able to afford? And where does Mr. Rogers or Jimmy Cappilino fit into all of this? I have no clue. What started out with something as simple as Tiffany getting roofied, has turned into a maze with more dead ends than a poorly planned housing project.

  I lie in a prone position for over two hours and come up with nothing except more emotional, mental, and physical pain. What a way to start the day.

  Around eleven, I get to the phone and call Tiffany. It rings about nine times before it kicks to her voice mail. I leave a message for her to meet me at the Zanadu.

  I force myself to eat a couple of pieces of toast. The bread should slow down the four, ancient ibuprofen I found in the bottom of the junk drawer in the kitchen. This cure is currently eating a hole through the lining of my stomach. I get dressed, take about a month of Sundays to get down the three flights of stairs, and walk the block and a half to my car. Getting in is an excruciating experience, which I know will only be topped in severity when I have to get out. Whether the Toyota will start is always a mystery, but it does on the first try; something is finally going right.

  As I putt-putt down the street, I happen to glance in the rear view mirror to see sparks flying off the back of my car like Fourth of July sparklers gone wild. Whatever went right has now reversed itself. I stop the car, get out (painfully, exactly as I suspected), and somehow manage to get down on my hands and knees to see the muffler resting on the street pavement, its back end severed from the tail pipe like a rusted out plumbing trap from the early 1800’s.

  Ten minutes later I pull into AAAAA Auto, obviously a business wanting to be first in the Yellow Pages. I’m the only customer in the shop.

  “How much to …?”

  “We don’t junk cars here,” Albert, the owner, service manager, and mechanic tells me before I can finish my sentence.

  “… fix the muffler?”

  “You want to fix something on this car?” he asks. “Why?”

  “Because it’s broken.”

  “The whole car’s broken.”

  “You want to fix it or not?” I ask, standing humped over worse than that Notre Dame bell-ringer.

  “I’ll feel like a mortician applying make-up to a 90-year-old corpse,” Albert admits.

  “You want to fix the muffler or not?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But I’ll have to order the part. Maybe I can find one on eBay.”

  “That’s it,” I reach the end of my short rope. “I’m taking my business to Quadruple ‘A’ Auto.”

  “Oh, come on, buddy,” Albert says. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  “Not today.”

  “That’s surprising, because you sure have no trouble driving one.”

  “Just fix the muffler.”

  “Go in; make yourself at home,” Albert says, pointing me to his customer waiting area.

  I hobble into the filthy room, which has more grease stains than Albert’s coveralls. I attempt to sit in the cheap plastic patio chair, but it’s too painful. I find four paper floor mats that read You’re AAAAA-OKAY at AAAAA and line them up on the stained, cheap carpet. I lie down upon them and put my feet up on the chair. A few minutes later I manage to get out my cell phone and call Tiffany.

  “Oh, Mister Sherlock,” she answers.

  “Tiffany, why didn’t you call me back?” I have no problem making my voice sound disgruntled.

  “I wasn’t supposed to call you back.”

  “I left you a voice mail,” I continue.

  “Nobody does voice mail anymore,” she informs me. “We text or we do Facebook.”

  “Tiffany, I need your help.”

  “I know. There are so many places we can begin.”

  “You have to come here and get me,” I tell her. “My car broke down.”

  “And that’s a surprise?”

  I give her the address of where I currently lie.

  “Mr. Sherlock, I have some very disturbing news.”

  “Does it have anything to do with your life coach?”

  “Kinda, maybe, but not really.”

  Lying on the floor of a greasy auto repair shop is depressing enough, “Can it wait, Tiffany?” I ask. “I’m not doing real well right now.”

  “It’s pretty devastating,” she says.

  “I don’t think I could handle any more devastation at the moment. Could you please just get in your car and get up here?” I plead.

  “No problem, Mr. Sherlock.”

  At midday it’s about a twenty-minute ride from Tiffany’s penthouse to where my feet rest on a plastic chair. Tiffany arrives an hour and a half later.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I came right away.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did,” she argues. “I hung up the phone, put on my make-up, did my hair, found something to wear, fixed myself a power shake, answered a couple text messages, checked my Facebook page, got in the car, stopped for a latté, and drove right here. It’s not like I dilly-dallied around or anything.”

  I shake my head. “No, I guess not.”

  “Why are you on the floor, Mr. Sherlock?” she asks as she peers down upon me.

  “My back went out.”

  “Went out where?”

  “At the Zanadu when Mr. DeWitt’s office exploded.”

  “You left your back at the Zanadu?”

  “So to speak,” I tell her. “Help me up.”

  Tiffany gets me to my feet. On the way to her Lexus I tell Albert, “I’ll be back to get my car later.”

  “No way, buddy,” he says, coming over to us as he wipes the grease off his hands onto an already overly greasy rag. “You ain’t sticking me with that clunker.”

  “You think I would just leave and never some back?” I ask.

  “That’s what I’d do.”

  “Me, too, Mr. Sherlock, I hate your car.”

  I give him a down payment of two hundred dollars. “This enough assurance that I’ll be back?”

  “Make it three hundred.”

  ---

  I test Tiffany’s patience as I carefully slide into her car. Not much of a test because after about thirty seconds she remarks, “Mr. Sherlock, could you please hurry up? I need another latté.”

  “I’m sorry my suffering is holding you up.”

  When I’m finally settled in the front seat, she asks, “Where to?”

  “Zanadu.”

  “Are we going to look for your back?”

  “No, we’re going to find a checkbook.”

  “A checkbook,” Tiffany says. “I love checkbooks.”

  Tiffany pulls out of AAAAA Auto like a NASCAR driver out of a pit stop.

  The Lexus might have ergonomic seats, but no amount of ergo can make my back feel any better. Every time Tiffany does one of her sudden lane changes, I go into convulsive end-of-life spasms.

  “Mr. Sherlock, you want to hear my devastating news?”

  “Oh, sure. Why not?”

  “I found out that the PNBBA competition is being held in three weeks.”

  “What?”

  “When I heard the news and put two and one together, I was devastated.”

  “Tiffany, what’s a PNBBA?”

  “The Professional Natural Body Building Association.”

  I sit speechless.

  “It’s their annual Posedown in Pittsburgh,” Tiffany tells me as if this is as common knowledge as the best spa for a facial in Chicago.

  “You’ve totally lost me,” I tell her between shots of pain to my vertebrae. “Is this something you want to attend?”

  “I’m not going. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.”

  “Why not? It sounds like a swell
time.”

  Tiffany makes a lane change that slams my body into the door, as if I need any more pain and suffering.

  “It’s a contest to see which bulked up, over-muscled, six packed, abs-bulging, bicepted weightlifter has the ugliest muscles on his body.”

  “Did your life coach tell you to go?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you telling me this?

  “Guess who’s posing at the Posedown?”

  “Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

  “Maybe in the eighty and over category, but in the thirty-somethings’ category, guess whose striking a pose?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Monroe.”

  “Monroe Chevelier?”

  “Is that totally gross or what?” Tiffany says.

  I let this sink into my brain for a minute or two.

  “He’ll be all oiled up in one of those speedo thongs, primping like a centerfold in some gay porno magazine.”

  “Have you ever seen a centerfold in a gay porno magazine?”

  “No, but I’ve got a good imagination, Mr. Sherlock.”

  This is interesting. “So, that night in your bedroom, Monroe was practicing for the upcoming event?”

  “Or he was trying to impress me,” Tiffany says. “A lot of guys do that.”

  A connection, finally a connection.

  ---

  Tiffany parks in front of one of the bays at Zanadu’s loading dock, making a beer truck driver very angry. “We’ll just be a minute,” she yells at the guy as she helps lift me out of the car. “We just have to go in and get his back, back.”

  Tiffany walks, I stagger up the ramp and into the club. There are a number of workers busy setting up for a big night, including Bruno’s bruised barback. It suddenly dawns on me the reason for his bruises. “Excuse me,” I say to the young man. “Could I see your Green Card?”

  “No hablo Inglés,” he says, moving quickly away from us.

  “He said he doesn’t speak American,” Tiffany translates. “You know, I just realized something. Hispanic people have green cards and white people like me have platinum cards. Isn’t it interesting how the world divides itself by colors?”