3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany

by Jim Stevens

  I pause to turn to Massey. “By the way, Massey, for future reference, you might want to inform Arson and Sterno the worst person they can allow through their velvet rope is a nosy detective.”

  “I’ll make a note of it,” Massey says without writing anything down, his way of not listening to me.

  “So, as I wade through the case, getting absolutely nowhere, another unforeseen upending of an apple cart takes place. Somebody bashes in the skull of the bartender who was voted most likely to have spiked Tiffany’s drink. Unfortunately, I’m the one who finds the body, which is hardly something I like to do. Poor Bruno the bartender, who was living a palatial lifestyle off a mixologist’s usually skimpy salary, is dead. And from what we find in Bruno’s apartment, it’s pretty clear he had a lot more items on sale at his bar station than just kumquat martinis.”

  I move over to stand behind Guido. “The doorman at the building where Bruno lived, my man Guido here, knows all about Bruno’s second income and would give his eye teeth to get a job at the Zanadu and pick up where Bruno left off.” I take my hands from the guy’s broad shoulders and point over to Massey. “That’s the guy you want to talk to about a position—if you get the chance.” I move away slightly. “Guido and Bruno have something else in common, but I’ll get around to that in a minute.” I pause. “Let’s go back to the Zanadu.”

  “Let’s not and say we did,” Mr. DeWitt says from his desk.

  I walk toward him. “Mr. DeWitt, did you know that the guy who invented the pneumatic tube was also the guy who invented the first tricycle and underwater paint? It was some Scotsman named William Murdoch. A pretty smart guy. His tube invention caught on big time in the 1800’s. Hundreds of high-pressure tubes were used to messenger stuff from one part of a factory to another. I’ll bet that most of you don’t know that this very building used to be a factory and that it had a pneumatic tube installed in it. It’s still in place and it still works really well. Doesn’t it?”

  “Incredibly well,” Gibby says.

  I point out Gibby before continuing. “For those of you who haven’t met Gibby Fearn, he’s the one responsible for making the Zanadu the most popular club in the city.” I clap my hands for effect. “His tireless dedication to throwing the biggest bashes, hangin’ with the hippest hip-hoppers, and bringing in people with the right street cred has made the place more profitable than two dozen McDonald’s. Gibby did all the work, but someone else took all the credit.”

  “Exactly,” Gibby agrees. He shoots a cold stare at Mr. DeWitt.

  “Every two hours, Gibby and his buddy here,” I say as I move over towards the Behemoth, “go around and collect the cash and receipts from the registers. Back in the office, Gibby separates the cash from the credit cards, puts the cash in a cylindrical container, and shoots it through the tube, down to the basement where these two gentlemen …” I interrupt myself to point at the two guys in the decidedly frumpy shirts. “… count it, divide it, and prepare it for its next journey. Am I close, Gibby?”

  “Very. I had no control of the money once it left my desk,” he speaks as promised.

  “But they did treat you well, didn’t they?” I ask Gibby. “And they provided you with a bodyguard.”

  Gibby points at the Behemoth. “Except, he wasn’t there to protect me. He was there to watch me,” Gibby says.

  “That’s what I thought.” I smile at the Behemoth.

  The ogre doesn’t smile in return, but says, “Dun’t know.”

  I move next to the two guys “No-No” had brought upstairs to join the party. “And these are the gentlemen who had the enviable job of sitting in a dark, dank basement like King Midas counting his gold.”

  “We’s plumbers, jus’ here to fix a leak,” the guy on the left says.

  “Certainly dressed for it,” I say and compliment facetiously, “I love those shirts.”

  I see Tiffany’s eyebrows rise. She never knows when I’m kidding.

  “If you’re plumbers, where are your tools?” “No-No” asks them.

  “In da truck.”

  “Where’s the truck?”

  “Da valet’s got it.”

  “You don’t valet a plumbing truck,” “No-No” says.

  “Your job, boys,” I continue, “was to create a second set of books for the Zanadu, record the skim for the owners, and make sure any profit was IRS-proof.”

  “What?” Lloyd Holler hollers from his seat.

  “It gets better, Lloyd. Just hold on.”

  “Oh, no,” Lloyd argues. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  “Wrong, Sherlock,” Mr. DeWitt says from the other side of the room. “Check the returns, you’ll see almost a half-million dollars in profits from the Zanadu last year, all of which we paid taxes on.”

  “Maybe so, Mr. DeWitt,” I say directly to him, “but you know and I know that the Zanadu was more than just a profitable nightclub. The Zanadu was like a funnel. Cash came in, not just from the drunks at the bar, but from the outside as well.” I come back across the room to the buffet table where Mr. Ponytail eats. “At least once a night, a suitcase full of cash arrives via this gentleman, after he makes the rounds to a number of other retail establishments owned and operated by you and your Zanadu partners.”

  “You must have me mistaken for another guy,” Mr. Ponytail speaks. “I’m an independent limo driver. If anyone ever needs a limo to the airport, e-mail or text Fly Me to O’Hare.com,” he says to the group and pulls out a stack of business cards to pass out.

  I stop him before he can use my party to advertise his services. How tacky.

  “There’s no better place to launder cash than a nightclub that takes in a ton of it.” I say with authority. “The Zanadu was the answer to the problem of what you do when you have too much cash on your dirty hands.”

  “You can’t prove that,” Mr. DeWitt says.

  “No, but I don’t have to,” I tell him. “All I’m interested in is finding out who spiked Tiffany’s drink, which brings me back to that fateful night.”

  I look around the room. Alix seems quite fascinated at my show and tell. Monroe and Oscar are a bit pale, I’m sure they will hit the tanning booth before the big Posedown in Pittsburgh. Mr. DeWitt is pissed. Gibby Fearn shows a bit of smugness, while Lloyd Holler can’t wait to hear more. Massey takes on a nervous twitch. Tiffany loves every minute of it. Her party is now destined to become a classic in the Chicago social scene. Jack and “No-No” hold hands as they guard the door.

  “Bruno had an okay business dealing the usual cocaine, oxy, uppers, and downers over the counter at the bar. But he wanted more. Bruno was branching out into the very lucrative business of sports medicine. He had seen the real drug pros at work from his spot at the Zanadu, and figured there was a niche for him in the better muscles through chemistry field. Instead of pushing pills to party brats, Bruno was going to be a real drug kingpin. And, to keep his distance from the street hoi polloi, like a real drug dealer, he employs a partner in his sports venture as his salesman and distributor.”

  I pause, turn toward the physical trainer in the room and say, “Any of this ring any bells, Oscar?”

  “I didn’t even know the guy existed,” Oscar announces to the group.

  “Oscar is sick of being a personal trainer, dealing a few pills here and there. He wants to make some real money filling the prescriptions on a regular basis. Who would be better to do that than a guy who hangs around gyms every day?” I point at Oscar. “You knew all the players. You knew what they wanted. Look what you’ve done with Monroe; proof positive that steroids are an athlete’s best friend. The only problem is you don’t have any money to get started, and you don’t have the connections Bruno has.”

  “You got the wrong guy,” Oscar pleads his innocence.

  I digress for a few moments to hopefully make things a little easier to understand in the future. “When a regular business has competition, it fights on price or selection. It offers discounts, advertises, whatever it
takes to maintain its market share. In the illegal drug business, you kill the competition—by killing the competition. Al Capone did it on St. Valentine’s Day. And unfortunately the same type of competition has been evident in Chicago over the past few months.”

  I turn to face Oscar. “So, Oscar, you decide the best way to break into the business, is to horn in on Bruno’s action. You go to your benefactor Monroe, state your case, and come up with a plan.”

  “I did not,” Oscar says.

  I turn to face the guests. “Monroe is full of money and not just from his daddy. Monroe has a short list of clients who pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into the CEI hedge fund where he works. He is quite persuasive in acquiring investors and getting them to part with their money, because every night an unmarked armored truck drives into his building and drops off loads of cash which will be invested in the fund.” I pause to allow the info to sink in. “And the best thing about Monroe’s job is that it allows him lots of free time to bulk up and compete in body building events, like the Posedown in Pittsburgh in a couple of weeks. Let me be the first to wish you good luck in the competition, Monroe.”

  “If anyone’s taking drugs, it’s you Sherlock,” Monroe says.

  “Mr. Walter C. Bartlett over there, whom I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting personally, figured out a way to launder the cash into the fund without ringing any bank disclosure bells. Correct, Mr. Bartlett?”

  “Incorrect.”

  “You are the Walter C. Bartlett who lives in a mansion on Howe just north of Armitage?” I ask, already sure of his answer.

  “No.”

  “No?” This can’t be right. Or he’s lying.

  “I sold the place three months ago,” he emphatically states. “You want to see the paperwork? I got it.”

  I hate being wrong, and I really hate being wrong right now. “Who’d you sell it to?”

  “Some no-name corporation that paid over my asking price in cash.”

  I hesitate and look over at Jack who knows I’ve screwed up. I try to fake it. “Yeah,” I say, “I knew that.”

  I hope someone believes me.

  Walter Bartlett speaks with resounding clarity when he says, “This is all absolutely absurd.”

  “I’ll be the final judge of that,” Lloyd Holler says before blowing his nose into a handful of Kleenex.

  “I’ve had enough of this idiocy,” Walter says. “I want to go home.”

  “Walter, hang in, would ya?” I say more than ask the man. “It’s a party, enjoy yourself.”

  Mr. Bartlett does his best to suppress his irritation by folding his arms across his chest and grinding his teeth.

  I reach into a bowl, grab a handful of party treats and offer them to Mr. Bartlett, “Here, have a chocolate bullet.”

  I take a minute or two to get my act back together. I take a breath, move back into the center of the room and continue, “Somehow, either Bruno or Guido find out about Oscar’s plan, and come up with their own plan to nip this thing in the bud.”

  “This is worse than a dime store novel, Sherlock,” Guido tells me and the assembled.

  It is really too bad there are no dime stores any longer, the closest thing we now have are 99 cent stores.

  I take a beat before I continue. “So, all is coming into play, all at the same time. A showdown is inevitable. And it all happens the night Tiffany and Alix sit on opposite barstools at the Zanadu Club.” I take another beat to heighten the excited party atmosphere. “Bruno and his new employee are going to prove a point to Monroe and Oscar. Bruno spikes a martini with a ton of steroids. A couple of swallows of the PED concoction and Monroe will be knocked for a loop, which should be enough to convince him to mind his own drug business. That was the plan. The problem is the cocktail never reaches Monroe. Tiffany picks it up by mistake, takes one sip, and almost goes into anaphylactic shock when the chemicals hit her system. She drops off the barstool like a boulder in an avalanche.”

  “See,” Tiffany says to Alix, “I told you.”

  Alix shoots Tiffany an I don’t give a damn look with her cold, piercing eyes.

  I step between Guido and Tiffany. “Am I close here, Guido?”

  “You’re whacked, asshole. This is all a bunch of bullshit.”

  “So, you weren’t dealing steroids while on the job as a doorman?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t bash in Bruno’s skull with a fireplace poker?”

  “No.”

  “How about you, Oscar?”

  “How about me what?

  “Did you kill Bruno?”

  “No.”

  “Monroe?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You, Mr. DeWitt?”

  “Shut up.”

  I look at the Behemoth. “How about you?”

  “Dun’t know.”

  Well, even with his answer, I can safely take the Behemoth out of the mix.

  “Somebody in this room killed him. And if you want to make this easier and just own up to it, I’d really appreciate it.”

  No one speaks up. It was worth a try.

  I turn to the barback, still seated in the corner in the back of the room. “You saw Bruno spike the drink, didn’t you?”

  “No hablo Inglés.”

  “He told you, ‘you’ll be back in Juarez if you say anything,’ didn’t he?”

  Anybody who listens as intensely as this kid does knows how to speak English.

  “No hablo Inglés.”

  “Then Bruno punches you in the face to make his point clear.”

  The kid rubs his still swollen eye.

  “This is stupid, ridiculous, dumb bullshit,” Monroe says.

  I move to the back of the room. “Mr. DeWitt,” I address my ex-employer, “was the money-man at the Zanadu. He got his drug-dealing buddies to help put up the original dough, he figured out how to launder megabucks through the place, and how to invest it into hedge fund securities. Right, Mr. DeWitt?”

  “You’re smokin’ something, Sherlock,” is his comeback.

  “But you got greedy, didn’t you?”

  “Dis is bullshit.” Mr. DeWitt’s comebacks are going downhill rapidly.

  “So, Mr. DeWitt sets off a piss-poor explosive in his own office.”

  “And why would I do something as stupid as that?” he asks me.

  “Because your fellow Zanadu partners suspect you are taking more than your share of the illegal profits and you wanted to throw suspicion off of yourself.”

  “No way.”

  “You rig up a lousy explosive device, set it up in your office on an off-night for the club, get under your desk, and detonate it via your cell phone.”

  “Totally ridiculous,” Mr. DeWitt exclaims.

  “Then why didn’t you get showered with glass? Why didn’t you get drilled to the wall when the bomb went off? Why didn’t you ask ‘How much smoke does one of these things give off?’ to the guy who sold you the stuff?”

  “I didn’t do any of that. And if I did, why would I?” DeWitt questions me.

  “I already told you. You knew your buddies were starting to smell a much wealthier rat than themselves.”

  “No way.”

  “One of them went so far as to hire a detective, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Who?”

  “Me,” I say distinctly.

  Mr. DeWitt doesn’t choose to comment on my revelation. I can’t blame him.

  “You don’t have any proof of any of this,” Guido says. “If you did, you would’ve already made an arrest.”

  “Correct,” I say. “That’s why I’m once again going to ask for a confession.” I wait. “Which one of you killed Bruno?”

  Nobody speaks up.

  “Anybody?”

  Dead silence.

  Darn.

  I pace over to where Oscar sits, give him a quick head nod, as if to say You?

  “I was in no way involved in any drug deals or killing anybody,” Oscar says. />
  “Didn’t you get busted for dealing PED’s the other day?”

  “False accusation,” Oscar says. “My lawyer’s got me as good as out on that charge.”

  “And you can thank Monroe for that,” I tell him, bringing him down one notch.

  “This party’s over,” Mr. DeWitt says. “Get out of my office.”

  “Wait,” I sound like Jack Wayt. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s play a game within this game.”

  “We’re all tired of playing your games,” Monroe says.

  I position myself beneath the board game poster. “It’ll be like the board game Clue. We can go around the room and all come up with who, what, where and how.”

  “Yeah,” Tiffany says. “Colonel Mustard, in the drawing room, with the candlestick.”

  I can hear Jack’s audible sigh from over by the door. Hopefully, this is from too many bacon wrapped avocados.

  “I’ll start.” I pause, walk all the way around the room, and end up right behind Oscar. At this point I don’t know who did it. Being wrong with Walter Bartlett has thrown me off my game. I picture The Original Carlo in my head, replace the old Bartlett card with a new one, get even more confused, and decide to throw caution to the wind. I blurt out: “It was Guido, in Bruno’s apartment, with a fireplace poker.”

  Guido sits up straight. “You’re full of shit, Sherlock.”

  I’m not sure if it was the way he said it or if something clicked when he stood up to scream at me, but all I can see is Guido in his stained uniform coat with dark, rusty, red dots and blotches going up the sleeve. I got nothing to lose, so I walk towards him “Maybe you were angry, maybe you two had a fight, maybe you wanted to be the boss, who knows? But, the deadbolt on the door was locked, and you were the one with access to the key.”

  I’m now only a few feet away from Guido, staring right into his eyes. “You killed him. And all I have to do is have the stains on your doorman’s coat analyzed and see if they match the bloodstains on the walls.”

  Guido bolts upright, and throws a fist into my gut. Ouch. I feel it all the way to my sore back. Guido goes left as I go down. I look up to see him snatch the Waterford water pitcher off the coffee table with his right hand, grab Tiffany with his left, wrapping her up in a tight choke hold. He’s backing up as Jack and “No-No” come at him. I can hear as well as feel the beginning chaos in the room.