3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany

by Jim Stevens

  “Fascinating, truly fascinating,” I agree.

  It takes us a while, but we finally make it to the door labeled No Admittance. I knock, the camera turns on, and the door clicks open. Inside, the Behemoth is reading The Fantastic Four.

  “You haven’t finished that yet?”

  “Dun’t know.”

  “Hello, Tiffany,” says the Slimy Guy, the same guy who I encountered at the inner door to the Zanadu the first night I was here. He’s obviously the new VP of Operations. All of Gibby’s pictures, flare, and knick-knacks are nowhere to be seen.

  “How are you?” he says to Tiffany.

  They exchange air kisses. I’m in no shape for kissing, air or otherwise. I put out my hand to shake. “You know, I never got your name.”

  “It’s Massey.”

  “Something Massey or Massey Something?” I ask.

  “Just Massey.”

  “Are you like one of those rock stars who only have one name?” Tiffany asks, “like Sting or Bono?”

  “Isn’t Bono’s first name, Sonny?” I ask.

  “Dun’t know,” the Behemoth answers.

  Massey returns to his new desk, which has only half the number of framed pictures as Gibby had. “Mr. DeWitt has informed me that you are no longer in his employ.”

  “That’s correct,” I tell him. “But I still work for Mr. Rogers.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Jimmy Cappilino?”

  “Who?” Massey sounds like an owl.

  “The owner of the corporation that owns the Zanadu.”

  Massey doesn’t answer, but the Behemoth does, “Dun’t know.”

  “I need to see the financials,” I say.

  “No can do,” Massey speaks.

  “I can get a warrant,” I tell him.

  “How? You’re not a cop,” Massey says in response.

  “He used to be,” Tiffany says.

  “That doesn’t count.”

  “You’ve had a doping incident, an explosion, and a fire,” I remind him in my sternest detective voice. “I can have this place shut down in an hour.”

  “No, you can’t,” Massey shoots right back at me. “You can barely stand up.”

  I guess my voice doesn’t match my present physical demeanor.

  “Can we see your checkbook?” Tiffany asks him.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Show me yours first.” Massey’s right back at Tiffany.

  “No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “I pay my bills by credit card or on-line,” Tiffany explains.

  Massey sits back as smug as a kid with a secret. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

  “I’ll show you mine,” I enter the conversation.

  “I’m sure there’s not much to see there,” Massey says.

  This has been a real fun visit. We’ll have to come back and do it again real soon.

  “Anything else I can help you with?” Massey asks.

  I try one last intimidation. “If your clientele find out the place was bombed, I doubt that it would be good for business.”

  “Actually, they already know and so far it’s been pretty good for our street cred.” He smiles a sickly, smug smile. I hate when people do that.

  Tiffany and I leave the office. On our way back to the loading dock, I see Arson and Sterno playing grab ass in the corner. I give some quick instructions to Tiffany. She walks over to the boys, chats then up, and returns a few minutes later. “Harris Bank,” she tells me.

  That’s all I needed to know.

  “Are we going there next?” Tiffany asks.

  “No, we’re going back to jail.”

  ---

  I would have thought the thrill would have been gone, or at least diminished, but no. The boys in the jailhouse line up like fans along the red carpet at the Academy Awards to watch Tiffany go through the metal detector.

  We sit in the same room as before. Gibby is escorted in by Dirk McGee. Mr. Fearn’s attitude has not improved.

  “You here to give me more advice?” he asks.

  “Did you take the last advice I gave you?”

  “What difference would it make?”

  I’ll take that as a “no.”

  “Want to get out of here, Gibby?”

  “What do you think?”

  So far we’ve had five exchanges, all questions with no distinct answers. At this rate, we won’t get anywhere in our conversation.

  “I can get you out of here,” I tell him breaking the cycle.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “To start with, quit asking me questions.”

  Gibby gives me a dirty look.

  “Mr. Sherlock hates when you answer one of his questions with a question,” Tiffany informs him.

  “I’ve got an attorney,” Gibby says. “You wanna know what he said?”

  Another question; nobody listens to me.

  “Sure, why not.”

  “He told me not to talk to you.” Gibby leans forward. “For all I know, you could be recording this conversation and I could be incriminating myself.”

  “No way,” Tiffany says. “Mr. Sherlock is terrible with anything electronic. He doesn’t even know how to text.”

  I look over at Dirk standing at the back of the room. The look on his face tells me Oftentimes, life is easier behind bars.

  I cut to the chase. “I need to know who really owns the Zanadu.”

  “Why would I want to tell you that?” Gibby snaps back at me. “Everybody tells me not to tell anybody anything, including you.”

  “But I’m on your side.”

  “How the hell do I know that?”

  “You can trust Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany assures him.

  “Doesn’t he work for DeWitt?” Gibby is back to the questions.

  “Nope. He got fired,” Tiffany says.

  “If I tell him anything,” Gibby says to Tiffany, “what do I have left to bargain with.”

  “You’re going to have to trust somebody,” I tell him.

  “How about this? You tell us something without actually telling us?” Tiffany suggests.

  I must have reached the point of no return with Tiffany because I know exactly what she means. I explain for Gibby, “We’ll paint the picture and you merely nod your head ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”

  “You can’t nod ‘no,’ Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany informs me. “You can only nod ‘yes.’ You can shake ‘no,’ but you can’t shake ‘yes’.”

  “Thank you for clearing that up, Tiffany.”

  Gibby wrinkles his brow. I sense he may be amenable to Tiffany’s idea.

  I begin, “The Zanadu is phenomenally profitable, with piles of cash being generated each night?”

  “And who do they have to thank for that?” Gibby asks. This has not begun well.

  “You’re just supposed to shake yes or no,” Tiffany reminds him.

  “And all the money is funneled into the basement where they use two accounting systems?” I continue.

  Gibby is about to speak, but instead shrugs his shoulders.

  “That was neither a ‘no,’ nor a ‘yes’,” Tiffany translates.

  “The receipts, credit cards and whatever money can be traced, goes to the Harris branch on State?” I continue.

  “Where are you going with this?” Gibby, the one with the questions, asks.

  “The cash goes to an account at Northern Trust over on South Wacker Drive, right?”

  Gibby shakes his head.

  “No?”

  “A shake is a ‘no,’ a nod is a ‘yes,’ Mr. Sherlock.”

  I can’t believe this. “The Non-Brink’s Brink’s truck doesn’t leave the Zanadu and drop off at the bank on Wacker?”

  Gibby shakes.

  “You sure?”

  Gibby nods.

  “He’s positive,” Tiffany says.

  This doesn’t make sense. “And that guy with a ponyta
il doesn’t carry out a briefcase of cash every night?”

  Gibby shakes his head a number of times, then says, “I made a mistake.”

  “About the guy with ponytail or the account at Northern Trust?”

  Gibby shakes like a metronome.

  “That’s a ‘no, no, no,’ on that one,” Tiffany says.

  “My mistake is thinking you had some clue about what the hell is going on.” Gibby pauses. “We’re ending this now, before I say something I’m going to regret for a long, long time.”

  Dirk McGee walks forward to Gibby’s side. “This has certainly been enlightening.”

  “Next time we visit we’ll play charades,” I tell him.

  “Great,” Tiffany says, “I love charades.”

  Gibby Fearn is re-shackled and escorted out of the room. I’m getting more and more depressed by the moment.

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Sherlock?” Tiffany asks me as we walk out of the Cook County Jail.

  “I broke my first rule of life.”

  “You bought some cheap make-up?”

  “No, I made an assumption.”

  “You assumed the make-up was good before reading the label?”

  “No, Tiffany,” I say, creaking in pain, “I assumed the money from the Zanadu was going out the door faster than my ex-wife wastes my alimony payments.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “I figured Mr. DeWitt was taking his cut every night with a pack of cash. The guy with the ponytail is picking up a share for somebody, the guy I met on Armitage gets his, and the Non-Brink’s truck is delivering a skim to a no-named account at Northern Trust. And that’s not all. There’s someone doing a nightly accounting in the basement of the place, a Mr. Jimmy Cappilino who doesn’t exist, but probably gets paid too; and let’s not forget the usual stealing by the bartenders, hostesses, waitresses, barbacks, and whoever else gets to handle cash in the place. The place is a thief’s goldmine.”

  “You think Gibby is in on the take.”

  “He’s the only guy I think who’s not.”

  “But everybody else is.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, if everyone is getting a cut, why’d they screw it up by killing poor Bruno?” Tiffany asks.

  “Greed.”

  “You know what’s really great about being phenomenally rich, Mr. Sherlock?”

  “No.”

  “People like me could care less about greed.”

  This is a fact I will never realize on a personal basis.

  Tiffany pulls out of the parking structure. “You think one of the people at the club killed Bruno?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You think Bruno tried to blow up that guy Mr. DeWitt?”

  “Bruno was already dead when the bomb went off.”

  “Could have been on a timer,” Tiffany says. “He had the newest iPhone.”

  “Or Bruno had a partner trying to get even.”

  “I already told you Bruno wasn’t gay,” Tiffany corrects me.

  I think out loud. “Maybe Bruno was trying to extort the Zanadu for a bigger piece of the pie? They killed him to make a statement to anyone else who had that idea.”

  “You don’t think he was killed because he roofied me?”

  “You weren’t roofied.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tiffany says, and takes a few seconds to consider the possibilities.

  “I know who did it,” Tiffany says. “It was that no good, rotten, self-centered, egotistical, Alix Fromound. I can’t stand that evil bitch.”

  I ignore her invective and we’re both quiet for a few minutes. “Turn left, Tiffany.”

  Tiffany heads back towards the Loop. “Where to?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I answer, then reconsider. “Drive by Bruno’s building.”

  “You want to see if the new doorman got his uniform tailored yet?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  CHAPTER 19

  When in doubt on a case, perform two tasks. “Wait” Jack Wayt taught me this years ago. Retrace all the steps you’ve taken. Maybe you missed something. Maybe you didn’t combine two aspects. Maybe seeing it all in a different light will give you a new perspective. Next, retrace the money. In this case I can’t—because I didn’t find any money.

  We sit across the street from Bruno’s building and watch the new doorman in action. He’s definitely much better at his job than Guido was. He opens the door for everyone, smiles politely when he does it, and says “thank you” when he gets a tip. I’m impressed.

  I have a thought. “Come on,” I say to Tiffany. I start to get out of the car, but a bolt of pain hits me like a rubber bullet in a street riot. I can barely stifle a cry of pain.

  Tiffany is out of the car, standing at my window. “Aren’t we getting out?”

  “Go talk to the guy,” I tell her. “Three things I want you to find out.”

  I give her detailed instructions on three questions to ask. She marches right up to the new guy and chats him up as if he were her new BFF. He seems to answer every question without question. If all detectives were as gorgeous as Tiffany there would be a lot more questions answered. And time saved and cases solved.

  She returns to the car in five minutes.

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  “One, yes, he can get into the lock box of unit keys in the back. Two, Guido got fired because a lot of tenants complained about him. Three, I forgot the question, so I didn’t get an answer. And four, they told him he’s stuck wearing that oversized coat until they have some money in the budget for a new one.”

  “Two out of three isn’t bad, Tiffany, but why are you so interested in the doorman’s attire?” I ask.

  “It’s part of the new ‘Nice’ me, Mr. Sherlock; finding fashion fox pacs and pointing them out to people. It’s another way I’m helping society.”

  “By the way, how is the ‘Nice’ you doing?”

  “Parts of it I really like, like my aura improving, like not seeing myself in red, like helping the attractively challenged; but there’s some parts I’m not too wild about.”

  “Like what?” I ask and immediately begin to worry that I’m starting to sound like Tiffany.

  “Parts. I’m not sure which part, but parts.”

  “Well, you know what they say, Tiffany, ‘Parts is parts.’”

  “Whatever.”

  Our next stop is Lincoln Park. I have Tiffany pull up in front of the Greek Revival “two-flat” on Howe Street which the kids and I once visited via a Thug escort.

  “Who lives here? Tiffany asks.

  I write down the address. “I don’t know. That’s what we have to find out.”

  I have her continue down the street and park. I call Bruce Lansky, my detective friend in Evanston, a much better choice than Jack or “No-No” for obvious reasons. “Hey, instead of buying me lunch could you pull the owner of a residence for me?”

  “Sure.”

  I provide the address. Two minutes later he says, “Wendell C. Bartlett.”

  “Any record?”

  “None.”

  “Say where he works?”

  “Nope.”

  “We can still get together for lunch, but we’ll go Dutch,” I tell Bruce and hang up.

  I do my best to turn towards Tiffany. “Can you Google on that cell phone of yours?”

  “Mr. Sherlock, you are so far behind when it comes to techie stuff, you’re like living in the Stone Age without a hammer.”

  Tiffany finds Wendell C. Bartlett. He’s the head of Equalization Inc., a financial services firm specializing in accounting systems for stock and commodities trading operations. As soon as I get home, Wendell C. Bartlett is going to have his own recipe card on The Original Carlo.

  “Where to next?”

  “Northern Trust on South Wacker Drive.”

  “Oh, good, I love visiting my money.”

  It’s now late afternoon and traffic in t
he Loop is horrible. We inch our way towards the 31-story building. “Tiffany, how much money do you have in this bank?”

  “I have no clue.”

  “If you can still count it, it means you don’t have enough?”

  “That’s one way of putting it, Mr. Sherlock.”

  “Do you know anyone at Northern Trust whose name you could use to get a favor?”

  “Don’t have to,” she says. “It’s their job to know me.”

  Tiffany finds an illegal spot to park. I give her directions on what to find out. She leaves the keys in the ignition. “Now, if a cop comes, please move the car, Mr. Sherlock. My dad’s getting a little pissy about my parking tickets.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  “It’s not like I’ve had a hundred.”

  “How many have you had?”

  “Ninety-three.”

  As she gets out of the car, so do I. I figure if a cop does come and I’m not behind the wheel, by the time I do get out of my seat and into the driver’s seat and drive away, that could be enough time for the car to be towed away.

  Tiffany’s gone for about fifteen minutes. On her return, she asks, “What are you doing in my seat?”

  I give her a brief explanation before I take a long time to get out and then back in. “You didn’t move my mirrors, did you?” she asks. “I hate when anybody fools with my mirrors.”

  “What did you find out, Tiffany?”

  “The first person wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Did you tell him who you were?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He still wouldn’t tell me.”

  “So, you didn’t find out?”

  “Of course I found out,” she says. “I told the manager if he didn’t tell me, I’d have my dad pull all his money out.”

  “What did he say?”

  Tiffany pauses.

  “You didn’t forget, did you?”

  “Let me think.”

  I pause.

  “Oh, yeah. He said the Zanadu doesn’t have an account there.”

  “No?”

  “Then he asked me …”

  I cut her off, “He asked why you were asking?”

  “No. He asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with him. I told him I already had lunch.”

  Tiffany turns on the ignition. “Now, where’re we going?”

  “I better go pick up my car.”