by Jim Stevens
“It happened in the late afternoon. There was no struggle. Bruno never saw it coming,” “No-No” counters.
“The blood found in the building where you got shot at Sherlock was matched to a gangbanger who died that night at the Cook County ER.”
“And Tiffany here wasn’t roofied, she was slipped a mixture of HGH, testosterone, and adrenaline,” I add to break up the tit-for-tat between the detectives.
“What?” Tiffany exclaims.
“Evidently the upper had a downer effect on your system, Tiffany.”
“Oh my God! This doesn’t mean I’m going to start growing hair in weird places and want to join a roller derby league, does it?” she asks.
“Remember, the doc pumped most of it out of your system.”
Tiffany lets out a “Whew,” then says, “I’m telling you, that stomach pump machine is going to be the next electric light bulb.”
“Nobody in the apartments next door, or on this floor, heard anything that day,” “No-No” says, getting back to the demise of poor Bruno.
“And there isn’t a print in this place that’s worth a damn,” Jack sums up.
“You think Bruno was dealing steroids from the bar?” “No-No” asks me.
“Jack thinks so, I’m not so sure,” I answer.
“Who cares what Jack thinks,” “No-No” tosses in.
“Zanadu is crawling with drug dealers,” Jack makes his point.
“If the killer was in business with Bruno, he would’ve taken the drugs with him after he whacked him,” “No-No” says.
“I know. That part doesn’t make any sense,” I answer.
“Maybe they were fighting about taking drugs and not selling drugs?” Jack throws out.
“Bruno was a seller, not a user.” “No-No” adds. “There were no traces of narcotics in his system from the autopsy.”
“Then why would he have a bunch of little party favors stashed away in those tin boxes?” I question back.
“He was a bartender,” Jack says. “To him, it could’ve been like having a well-stocked liquor cabinet for visiting guests.”
“Or the killer was a user and Bruno was cutting him off?” “No-No” twists it around.
Tiffany raises her hand high, as if she’s had a brainstorm. “I’ve got it,” she says excitedly. “It’s a crime of passion. Don’t you see? They’re gay.”
“Who’s gay?”
“Bruno and his killer.”
“What?” Jack says.
“It’s like this. Bruno’s gay lover can’t get the ape off his back. They have a spat. Bruno smoothes things over and thinks everything is hunky-dory. But on their way to the bedroom for some smokin’ hot make-up sex, roid rage kicks in and then wham, Bruno takes a couple of whacks to his skull.”
I’m not buying any of this so I tell the group, “I’m not buying any of this.”
“Oops, I just remembered something,” Tiffany blurts out. “I’m totally wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“Bruno wasn’t gay!”
“How do you know that?” “No-No” questions her.
“I’ve got gaydar. If Bruno was gay, I would’ve known it.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely! Nobody’s got gaydar like I’ve got gaydar,” Tiffany says as if this is a trait people would be proud of having. “I can spot a gay guy at sixty paces, even if he’s wearing a Larry, the Cable Guy T-shirt.”
“You still believe Bruno’s death, Tiffany’s Mickey, and the Zanadu are all connected?” Jack asks me.
“I did,” I tell him, “now I’m not so sure.”
“I’m going to stay on the dealer angle,” Jack says.
“I’ll go back over Bruno’s rap sheet,” “No-No” says. “Maybe there’s something in it I missed. He was a low-level hood before he started mixing spirits.”
“I’ll be at the Zanadu,” I say. “Suspects never fall far from the crime tree.”
Tiffany gets up off the coffee table. “I gotta go. I have an appointment with my new Life Coach twenty minutes ago.”
“Let’s go,” I tell her. “I’d hate for you to be later than your usual late.”
As Tiffany and I reach the front door, Jack asks, “By the way, was the deadbolt locked when you broke in and found the body, Sherlock?”
I hesitate before I answer. “I don’t remember.”
“What do you mean ‘you don’t remember’?” “No-No” asks.
Neula already holds a B and E charge against me on her You owe me Sherlock list. I certainly don’t want to add my illegal lock picking set to her collection. “I thought you had a memory like a Polaroid,” she says.
“Not anymore,” I tell her, which is actually the truth since Polaroid went out of business.
“Let’s just work on the angle that Sherlock found some way to get around a locked deadbolt,” Jack says. He knows I picked the lock, because he would have done exactly the same thing.
“Bruno couldn’t have locked the door after he was dead,” I conclude.
“His keys were on the kitchen counter,” “No-No” adds.
“Buildings have rules about having personal deadbolts.” Jack takes another step in this process.
“So,” “No-No” says, “all we gotta do is find an extra set of keys and we have our killer.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jack says.
“Maybe Bruno had a significant other, who he gave a set of keys, because he trusted and cherished their relationship,” Tiffany says to the detective pair. “Just like you two used to have.”
---
Every high-rise condo building employs a maintenance engineer. He’s the guy responsible for keeping the heat, the air conditioning, and the electricity on, the water running, the facility neat, and the tenants happy. In Bruno’s building, that guy is named Clyde. I cleverly discovered this fact by reading Clyde on the patch above the pocket on the front of his blue uniform overalls.
“You wouldn’t happen to know how I could get a hold of Guido, would you?” I ask him.
The older gentleman removes an ancient Rolodex from the bottom drawer of a well-battered and bruised desk. He spins it slowly being careful not to allow the address cards to shoot out like lottery tickets from the machine on the 7-11 counter. He finally finds the right card, and tells me. “I got a cell phone number.”
“By the way,” I continue, “you didn’t notice anybody odd coming and going in the building the day Bruno got bonked, did you?”
“People come and go all day around here,” he says. “But I can’t remember anybody any weirder than the usual weirdos.”
“What’s the rule on personal deadbolts?”
“We don’t like ‘em, but as long as the building has a duplicate key, we look the other way.”
“You have a duplicate key for 4112?”
He gets up from his cluttered desk, selects a key from the forty-odd ones that he has on his chain, and goes to a four-foot by four-foot metal box bolted to the wall. He unlocks and opens the box, revealing sixty rows of hooks, the majority of which have keys hanging on them. “Yeah, I got it right here.” He holds the key out for me to see.
“Thank you.” “No-No” is not going to want to hear about this.
Outside, after Tiffany retrieves her car keys from the doorman and he removes the phony ticket off her windshield, he tells her, “Drop by anytime.”
Before we climb into the Lexus, I ask Tiffany how she got into the condo building the day she smuggled me in.
“All you have to do is wait for the doorman to leave his little desk for a minute or two, then you go in the outer door, duck into the little mail room each building has, take out your set of keys, pretend you’re getting your mail, and hang out. Then you wait for another tenant to get his mail and go in with him, or you stand by the inner door with your keys out and someone coming in from the garage, who you smile and wave to, opens the door for you.”
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br /> “But what happens if the doorman comes back and sees you standing by the inner door or in the mail room?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says, “that’s never happened.”
I punch the number that Clyde gave me into my cell phone.
“Hello.”
“Is this Guido?”
“Yeah, who’s this?” The voice sounds groggy. Maybe he’s hungover. Maybe he’s depressed. Maybe he’s both.
“It’s Richard Sherlock.”
“You’re the son of a bitch who helped me lose my job,” he says.
“If that was the case, I apologize, but Guido—”
“What, asshole?”
“Do you remember anyone going in to see Bruno that afternoon?”
“I already told the cops everything, ask them.”
“Do you remember if you got buzzed that afternoon to let someone in the rear door and, when you got there, no one was waiting to get in?”
“How stupid do you think I am, Sherlock?”
I don’t answer, instead I tell him sincerely. “Guido, if you need a reference for a new job, I’d be more than happy to—”
“Go to hell.”
Click. Buzz.
I try to help someone out and this is the thanks I get.
Tiffany fires up the Lexus and informs me, “I have to go, Mr. Sherlock. Now I’m really late being late for my appointment.”
“I have to do some surveillance work later. Do you have plans for this evening?”
“Nobody makes plans for a Monday. Mondays are for revitalizing your skin and your system so you’ll look your best by the weekend.”
How can I be so stupid?
Tiffany drops me off in front of the Sun-Times building. I bid her farewell and wish her a memorable hour with her new Life Coach. I go inside, take the elevator to the bottom floor, and say hello to my old buddy, Theobald.
“Sherlock, what brings you down here, besides the elevator?”
Theobald is the master embalmer of the Chicago Sun-Times’ Morgue. He’s been preserving the written word of this newspaper since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over that lantern way back in the day. He looks about two hundred years old and it’s been at least that long since he’s seen the sun. His skin is whiter than a bleached hospital sheet.
“D’Wayne DeWitt, ever heard of him?” I ask him.
“Haven’t seen that name since George Bush.”
“Which one?”
“Can’t remember.”
“It doesn’t matter. Can you check the files?”
“Sure. You want George H.W. or George W.?”
“Neither. I’m looking for D’Wayne DeWitt.” I write the name down on a piece of scrap paper so I won’t have to constantly spell it for him.
We start with the computerized files and work our way back in time. D’Wayne was born in 1970 at Cook County Hospital, 7 lb. 3 oz. Mother, Darlene DeWitt. Father not listed. There were no records for time served until he was nineteen, when he did a nine-month stretch in County for possession, his third offense. He was called as a witness in a drug trial when he was twenty-six, but info on this is pretty sketchy. Next time he pops up is in Joliet, where he gets a five-year sentence in 1999 for dealing. Darlene must have taught D’Wayne how to behave because he gets out in two. Then nothing. D’Wayne either avoids capture, gets smarter, or goes legit; the last is a long shot in my book.
We then search every article on the Zanadu Club. There is a ton of them. I have to wade through every event, party, gala, and bash held at the venue—boring to say the least. There’s little on the construction, ownership, management, or corporate affiliations of the business. A good PR firm knows how to avoid publicity as well as get publicity. My eyes are going blurry. I’ve had enough for one day. I thank Theobald, and tell him they now have sun block up to 100 SPF.
He tells me, “Don’t need sun block, Sherlock. I tan naturally.”
I need time to ponder all possibilities. I go home. On the ‘L’ I call “Wait” Jack Wayt and ask him to find D’Wayne DeWitt’s home address. It takes him less than ten minutes to call me back. Besides the address, he warns me, “Stay out of the ghetto tonight, something big is going down.”
CHAPTER 15
While Tiffany forks out at least another three hundred dollars for her new life coach, I decide to go it alone. I take one last look at all that is missing on The Original Carlo, grab my keys, and head for my car, which is down the block. It fires up on the third try. Lucky me.
I take the short drive towards Lake Michigan, get on the Drive going south and get off at Belmont. I park in the park, across the street from a condo building facing Belmont Harbor. From here I have a clear view of everyone’s comings and goings. I don’t have to wait long to find out if “Wait” Jack Wayt was right about the address. A limo pulls up at four. D’Wayne DeWitt walks out the front door, climbs inside, and off he goes. I strain my eyes to see the driver, but no luck. The windows are tinted darker than a moonless night.
Tailing someone is never easy, but I take chase anyway. Putt-putting along in my Toyota, I stay a few car lengths back until the limo heads into the Loop. I lose them on Randolph Street, but I figure out where they are headed. A few minutes later I catch up with them at the Northern Trust Bank on Wacker Drive. It’s the same branch Tiffany, the Non-Brinks Brink’s truck, and I visited the other evening. Mr. DeWitt goes inside. The limo pulls out. I park in the cabstand, leave the car running, and wait. Cabs honk. I get out of my car, lift up the Toyota’s hood, and mouth a few swear words. The honks cease.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. DeWitt emerges. This was no quick ATM visit. The limo comes around the corner, stops, and picks up its passenger. I rush to close the hood and follow. Next stop is a non-descript building off 15th street on the near South Side. Mr. DeWitt’s visit is less than ten minutes. The third stop is a similar building eight or ten minutes away, close to the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project. He stays only five minutes. I can’t blame him. You can easily get mugged, robbed, or shot in this neighborhood. If the locals are looking for action, I can only hope they have the good sense to target the guy in the limo and not the one in the crummy Toyota. The final stop is at Rory’s Rib Tips. The limo pulls up to the drive-thru window, and cold, hard cash is exchanged for what looks like the DeLuxe Bucket of Bones, with greens, mashed potatoes, and cornbread. I make a note to tell Mr. DeWitt that it’s not a person attempting to kill him, but cholesterol.
The last leg of the journey takes us to the Zanadu Club where Mr. DeWitt is deposited at the employee entrance. The limo exits the scene. I go off to find a free place to park, which happens to be about six blocks away.
It’s Monday night. The Zanadu is open, but has all the appearances of being closed. There’s no Arson, Sterno, velvet rope, or loser line. Monday would be perfect for a Seniors Only Night. They could play Big Band tunes, serve easily chewable food, and play bingo in the bar area. I’ll suggest this to Gibby Fearn.
I enter. The dance floor is empty, no people and no music. In the bar area, there are about nine people sipping beers or drinks, watching a baseball playoff game on three HDTV screens; neither the Cubs nor the White Sox are involved. No surprise there. The bartender who replaced Bruno is on duty, paying his dues for being the last one hired. “Excuse me,” I say to the new man on the job. “Is Mr. DeWitt in?”
“Who?” the bartender replies. Evidently he’s a lot newer to the job than I thought.
I walk down the rear hallway to the No Admittance door and knock, wait for the camera to click on, and the door to open. Neither happens. At the stairway, the door is locked. I walk back out past the bar area to the edge of the dance floor where I can look up to see if the lights are on in Mr. DeWitt’s penthouse office. The curtains are closed. I can’t see a thing.
I need to see my client and ask him a few questions, most notably what was he doing visiting suspected retail drug outlets? But the first order of business is getting t
hrough that door and up the stairs to get that all important employee/client face-to-face time. I am so close, yet so far away. I thoughtfully contemplate the situation and realize that there’re only four choices opened to me. I could scream. I could pound on the stairway door. I could pick the lock, walk up the stairs, and drop on in. Or I could go to the bar, buy a couple bags of Beer Nuts, and toss a handful against his windows like a groom wanting to elope. It is always good to have choices in life, even if all them are pretty lousy. Screaming is obnoxious, pounding is childish, picking locks is illegal, and tossing Beer Nuts is just plain stupid; plus the Zanadu doesn’t sell Beer Nuts. I eliminate them all and contemplate some new and better ideas, but not for long.
BOOM!
The silence of a Monday night nightclub is shattered by an explosion from D’Wayne DeWitt’s penthouse office. Two panels of glass windows are blown out like an Iraqi IED exploded. The force of the blast knocks me back into a wall and down on the floor. I grab a table and use it to cover up my face and upper torso as shards of glass hit all around me harder than metal confetti. Smoke billows out of the two open windows as if multiple tear gas canisters were tossed inside. There must have been screams from the bar area, but I hear nothing. My hearing goes into temporary hiatus as my eardrums try to recover from the initial blast.
I look up to see the DJ’s platform swaying like a circus trapeze. Next, I focus on the bar area where six of the patrons have hit the deck and the other three remain glued to their stools watching the TVs. It must be a real good game. I get to my feet, find a shaky balance, and run to the new bartender who is busy shutting off beer taps that evidently were opened by the force of the blast. Two of the patrons reach over with their mugs and help themselves.
“You got a key to the stairway door?” I scream at the barkeep, but have no idea how loud since I’m temporarily deaf.
He says something, but I can’t read lips. I run to the hallway and, as I am headed to the door, I’m met by Gibby’s comic book reading Behemoth. “What happened?”
“Dun’t know,” he mouths then pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the door.