by Jim Stevens
“What do you want?”
Herman McFadden is an obese, unwashed, disgusting, porn-addicted, forty-something, financial genius who owes his freedom to yours truly. A few years back, Herman was up on a murder rap with enough evidence working against him to put him in the Joliet joint for six life terms. There were more fingers pointing at Herman than at Steve Bartman during a Cubs playoff game.
But to me, it didn’t make sense. No one could be that guilty of any crime. I questioned Herman for over three hours, which wasn’t pleasant since he smelled like a pair of often used and never washed sweat socks, but I came away convinced he didn’t do it. Two weeks later, I had it figured out and they arrested the real murderer —Herman’s next door neighbor.
“Maybe I just happened to be in the neighborhood and dropped in to say ‘hello.’”
“If you’re going to do that, the least you can do is bring Tiffany.”
Herman not only has a thing for my assistant, but also wants to be her agent in the porn business. He claims producers will pay big money for rich girl, ingénue types.
“Tiffany doesn’t get up until ten.”
“Tiffany is a ten,” Herman declares. “Does she ever ask about me?”
“Yes, she does, but not necessarily in the way you’d want her to.”
“I always leave a lasting impression on women.”
“Agreed, although I’m sure most shower it off.”
I open two of the windows in the apartment to encourage some cross ventilation and relief from Herman’s body odor. “I need you to do some hacking.”
“I don’t hack, Sherlock.”
“And I don’t pay too much alimony.” I tell him. I pull out a notebook-sized page with a list of names and hand it to him.
“Moomah Richmond,” Herman says, seeing the first name on the list. “She’s got more money than Bernie Madoff owes.”
“Recognize any of the other names?”
“There used to be a girl in porn named Schnooks. No, wait, her name was Snookered.”
“Find out what you can.”
“I’ll get to it, when I get to it.”
“And that will be today, Herman.”
_____
I leave Herman’s apartment hopefully before any air-borne viruses had taken up residence on my body. I stand leaning on the fender of my car, take out my “To Do List.” One item seems to jump off the page toward me. I wonder if Tiffany was right. There’s only one way to find out. I find my cell phone and dial.
The assistant answers. “Wealth Management. May I help you?”
“Is Miss Andrews available?” As soon as I say this I wonder if the person will think the call is personal and not business.
“May I say who’s calling?”
“Richard Sherlock.”
A few seconds elapse. My palms get a bit sweaty and not because of the humidity.
“Anthea Andrews.”
“It’s Sherlock, remember me?”
She laughs. “Vaguely.”
“I was wondering if you had time for lunch.”
“Is this business or personal?” she asks.
I didn’t expect this question. I swallow my next words, stop, and ask “Do I have to answer that question right now?”
_____
She waits in a back booth of an establishment that’s more like a restaurant than coffee shop, a block or two from Northern Trust. She’s still gorgeous. On my way back downtown I made the decision to first talk business, see how that goes, then decide on any additional topics.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” I say. “Each week Mrs. Richmond visits her money?”
“More or less.”
“She sits in the Richmond Suite like King Midas?”
“Good way of putting it.”
“Does she count it, let it flow through her fingers, throw it up in the air like graffiti?”
“Sometimes,” Anthea says, as if this is normal behavior. “Mostly she enjoys playing with the jewelry. She’ll lay it out, rearrange it, try some of it on, and fondle the diamonds.”
Anthea punctuates her words with cute, little smiles. My God, this woman is attractive.
“Is she lucid during these excursions?”
“Hard to tell.”
“Does she ever come by herself?”
“Seldom. It’s more fun to share the good times with a friend.”
“Is she always with one of her children?”
“I would assume so.”
I squirm a bit in the chair. My first rule of life is: Assume nothing.
“I can check the records if you want,” she offers, and gives me a little smile.
I try to return a cute smile of my own, but I’m pretty sure I fail miserably. Thankfully, the waitress arrives to take our orders.
Anthea has a salad. I order one too. I would usually order a sandwich in a place like this, but I fear crunching into a BLT might make me look like a slob.
The waitress leaves our table and I retreat back to Moomah. “How much money does she have in this bank?”
“I am not at liberty to say, but I will tell you that certain accounts are uncountable.”
So is my bank account, but for the opposite reason.
“Tell me how the trust fund works.”
“I’m not supposed to.”
“Please, make an exception.”
Anthea places her hands on the edge of the table as if she were in church praying. “Each child, except her first son Jamison, receives a monthly stipend of five thousand dollars.”
“That’s all?”
“She hasn’t changed the amount since 2005, although I am sure many requests have been made for her to do so.”
“Which does not make for a happy family?”
“Probably not.”
“What about Jamison, why isn’t he in this mix?”
“He’s in a class by himself.”
“So am I, but I doubt if it’s the same one.”
She chuckles at my honest wit.
“Moomah’s first husband, Jamison Wentworth the Second, sole owner of the insurance business, and she, had one child: Jamison Wentworth the Third. When JW died, his will specified fifty-one percent of the company pass directly to his only son and the remainder to his wife. On his twenty-first birthday, Jamison the Third, took control of the insurance business. In the next twenty years, he built it into one of the most successful in the country, while his mother spent her time marrying, and re-marrying. So, to answer your original question, five thousand dollars a month to Jamison Wentworth Richmond the Third would be shoe shine money.”
“Jamison is the Executive Trustee of her estate?”
“Yes.”
“And that doesn’t sit well with his half-siblings.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“So, all the remaining siblings who came from the subsequent husbands of Moomah are waiting for the old lady to crap out so they can cash in?”
“I’ve never seen her will, but I would assume so.”
There she goes with another assumption. I let it ride. When you are as beautiful as Anthea, a lot of things get left to ride.
“It must be tough sitting on the edge of a fortune.”
“I do believe you get the gist of the situation,” Anthea says.
I pause, because I have an odd thought. I get a lot of these. “Does it bother you being around so much money all the time?”
“People who work in ice cream parlors seldom eat ice cream,” Anthea says with a cute, dimpled smile.
“But money tastes better, doesn’t add calories, and has a much longer, lingering effect.”
“Well, let me ask you this. You work with crime every day, do you ever get the urge to dip into that pot of gold?”
“Constantly.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Guilt.”
She chuckles. “Guilt can be a powerful motivator.”
“So can greed.”
Our food arrives. Anthea gi
ngerly picks at her salad, while I inhale mine. I’m hungry. I ask a few more Moomah questions, but mostly we chit and chat. She takes every opportunity to smile. She’s got great teeth. Once she reaches over and touches my hand after I said something she either thought was clever or pretended it was clever.
Maybe Tiffany is correct. It’s been so long since a woman has shown an interest in me, I wouldn’t know it if it slapped me upside the head. The only question is: Why?
I decide it’s time to walk the plank. “May I ask you something?”
“You’ve been asking the entire lunch,” she says.
“This is different.”
She smiles again. “Ask away.”
I put down my fork, clear my throat. “Are you married, engaged, engaged to be engaged, living with someone, in love, or in like at the present time?” Before she can answer I continue. “And if the answer is ‘no’, do you have any interest in any of those?”
This time she laughs. “No, and yes.”
Anthea tells me of her two husbands, her choice not to have children, her banker daddy, her years at Sarah Lawrence, the fear of her upcoming fortieth birthday, her dream to have a business of her own, and her inability to find men of her caliber. The last one worries me. The only caliber I have is in the gun I refuse to wear.
I didn’t drown at the end of the plank the first time, so I throw all caution to the wind. “Would you like to go out on a date sometime?”
“Sure.”
I’m speechless. I don’t know what to suggest. Dinner and a movie?
Anthea saves me from my lack of preparation. “Actually,” she says, “I have a fundraiser for Feed the Needy this week. Would you care to join me?”
I hesitate. This has gone so well, she’s asking me out.
“Don’t worry, you won’t be asked to contribute,” she adds.
“I’d love to go, but only if I can sign up as a recipient?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The bill comes. I offer, but she picks up the tab, claiming, “Expense account.”
_____
I have never done well with women. My first crush was Mary Jane Mobley in the second grade. That ended in an embarrassing wetting of pants (mine, not hers). My high school girlfriend’s father told me if I ever got his daughter, Eden “in trouble” he’d shoot me. Then he pulled out a shotgun from the hall closet to emphasize his point. Ms. Brady and I parted company shortly thereafter. My college sweetheart felt free to fool around, especially if it was with someone more athletic, richer, or better looking than me, which was pretty much all the remaining males on campus. Relationships with the opposite sex have not been my strong suit. One look at my tenure with my ex-wife, our subsequent divorce, and the pain and suffering aftermath I continue to endure in its aftermath, further proves my point.
I turn my cell phone back on around one-thirty, and find two text messages from Tiffany. 1. “Where R U, Mr S?” 2.” My dad wants 2 talk 2U ASAP, Mr S.” There’s also one voice-mail from her. “I’m thinking about putting a slight curl in my hair. What do you think?” I certainly hope she hit the wrong speed-dial button for this last missive.
There’s also a message from my boss: “A private detective wants five hundred dollars for some incriminating photos of a litigant who’s suing us. What gives, Sherlock?”
Mr. Richmond never speaks to me directly. He has this uncanny knack of calling when I am not answering my phone and leaving messages on my voice-mail. I get very few voice-mails from my boss, and I can’t remember one I enjoyed hearing. He is, of course, speaking of the pictures of the philandering workers’ “comper” that I was paid to deliver, but instead I ended up in a dumpster, covered in pizza slime.
_____
In the small community of private dicks in Chicagoland Leonard Louie is “affectionately” known as Louie the Louse. Louie has no scruples. He’s a liar, a cheat, a backstabber, a thief, and an overall illegal manipulator of the highest order. Leonard Louie should have been a criminal. Instead he secured a PI’s license and has been legally breaking the law with unbridled abandon for years. Tales of Louie planting evidence, tapping phones, breaking and entering, bribing, and strong-arming witnesses are as widespread in Chicago as lying politicians.
Leonard Louie is also the most successful, profitable, and busiest private eye in Chicago. Three additional reasons why I hate him.
I sit in his palatial office. “Leonard, you can’t do this to me.”
“Sure I can, Sherlock.”
“I need those pictures.”
“That’s why I’m sure I can,” he tells me, as he leans back in his leather desk chair.
Leonard Louie was the guy who busted down the door at the motel on the Westside while I was swimming around in the dumpster dung. He has laid out a dozen 8x10 glossies of my guy jumping out of bed, clutching his pants, and running from the room.
“I couldn’t have gotten better pictures if I had the guy dancing a jig on St. Patty’s Day.”
“What the heck were you doing there, anyway?”
“Working. That motel is a gold mine. If I’m not busy, I hang around and take pictures of cheating husbands. It’s fun.”
“Don’t do this, Leonard.”
“Sorry, Sherlock, business is business.”
“Whatever happened to professional courtesy?” I ask.
“Beats me.”
Leonard is having a swell time; I’m not. So, I might as well get down to it, “How much?”
“Six hundred.”
“Mr. Richmond said you wanted five hundred.”
“He lied.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I lied. From you, I want six hundred.”
“That’s robbery, Leonard.”
“Seven hundred, that’s more like robbery.”
“Seven hundred?”
“Okay, six hundred. Consider it a professional courtesy discount.”
I give up, and write out a check for six hundred dollars.
“Don’t you have cash?”
“No.”
“I should charge you an extra fee for printing out the pictures,” he says. “Printer ink is expensive.”
“Cost of doing business, Leonard.”
Leonard lights up a cigar, a big fat cigar that came in a tin tube marked Made in Havana. He plops his lizard cowboy boots on the edge of the desk, takes a puff of the rancid tobacco, and blows the smoke my way. “They recover any of the money from the kidnapping the other night?” he asks.
“What kidnapping?” I try to play dumb.
He looks at me as if I’m an idiot, which in this situation I am.
“No,” I relent.
”Think they’d give me a piece of the action if I recovered the cash?”
“No.”
“So, if I recover it, I should just keep it for myself?” He asks in all seriousness.
“No.”
“Finders keepers.”
“I don’t think so, Leonard.”
“Ya know something, Sherlock,” he says, and doesn’t wait for my answer. “You’re in the wrong business.”
“Really, what business should I be in?”
“Have you ever thought of the priesthood?”
“After today, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.” I rise from the chair and reach for the pictures.
“Whoa, there cowboy,” Leonard says, scooping up the photos. “Not so fast.”
“I paid you. Give me the pictures.”
“You get the pictures. . .when your check clears.”
“I’m good for it.”
Leonard gives me his, “You can’t bullshit a bull shitter look.”
“Leonard. . .”
“I’ll bring the pictures to court. Don’t worry.”
Five minutes after leaving Leonard Louie Investigations, I return Tiffany’s calls.
“Mr. Sherlock. . .”
“Yes, Tiffany.”
“Guess what?”
“You’ve decided
on a slight curl in your hair?”
“How did you know that?”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
“Wow, you’re good.”
“What’s up?”
“Mr. Sherlock, are you going ghetto on me?”
“What?”
“You asked me, ‘Whasup.’”
“I did?”
“That’s ghetto.”
“Tiffany, what did you call me about?”
“Right now, or when I called you before?”
“You pick.”
“Oh, yeah, I have some news for you.” Tiffany giggles.
“Which is…”
“Moomah’s engaged.”
CHAPTER 12
I meet Tiffany at Starbucks.
“What’s his name?”
“Johnny Spaccone.”
“How did they meet?” I ask as she sips a cup of coffee. With so many extras added, I don’t know how they can still call it coffee.
“I’m not sure, probably Match.com,” she says, licking the white froth off her upper lip. “That’s how a lot of old people meet these days. You should try it.”
“I’m not that good in person, Tiffany. How good could I be on the Internet?”
“You can be anybody you want on the Internet. That’s why I’d never use it.”
I sip the bitter coffee. How Starbucks can become a multi-million dollar corporation serving bitter, foul tasting coffee, proves I have the same propensity for understanding business as I have for women. “Have you met this guy?”
“No, Bertha told me about him,” Tiffany says. “She thinks he’s a gigolo.”
“Gigolo Johnny Spaccone?”
“Sounds about right. How are we going to bust him?”
“Bust him for what?”
“Bertha says he’s much younger than Moomah.”
“So is ninety-nine percent of the population.”
“We can’t be too careful.”
“It’s not a crime to be young, Tiffany.” I have a thought. “Maybe Moomah’s one of those cougar women, preying on younger men?”
“Moomah doesn’t go to church.”
The American educational system is failing its youth.
“We have to get to the bottom of this before they get to the altar.”
“I tell you what, Tiffany. You be in charge of investigating Johnny Spaccone.”