by Jim Stevens
“I was the one who took care of my mother; he didn’t.”
“But you did it with your father’s money.”
“What was I supposed to do, go out and get a paper route?”
“I had one, when I was a kid.” I usually don’t give personal details, but it seemed a fitting time to do so.
“Thank you, Horatio Alger.”
I was surprised he knew Horatio Alger. “You spent your time between your mother’s and father’s homes?”
“I would go from the outhouse to the penthouse and back twice a week,” Clayton shifts uncomfortably on the couch, “that was a charming experience.”
“Where were you when your father died?”
“Here.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting laid.”
“What was her name?”
“Blond, she was blond.”
“Let me guess, a special person in your life?”
“To be honest with you, she wasn’t a real blond.” Clayton was quite satisfied with his answer. “See, I can be a detective, too.”
“And how do you suggest I go about finding this non-blond-blond?”
“Make a lot of money, drive an expensive car, hang out at the right clubs, buy a lot of drinks, and she’ll come around.”
“I’ll get right on it, but if you happen to run across her name and number, let me know.”
“I’m sure it’s around here somewhere, most of them leave a calling card of sorts.”
“You were out with your brother the night before his death?”
“Yeah.”
“You two close?”
“No.”
“Then why were you together?”
“He needed a designated driver,” he pauses, “and someone to pick up his bar tab.”
“Remember what club?”
“No.”
“Did you have a good time?”
“I did after I picked up blond what’s her name.”
Tiffany comes down the stairs about as low key as Scarlett O’Hara. “I don’t see you as an earth-tone kind of guy,” she says to Clayton as she closes her notepad.
“What do you see me as?”
“Stripes.”
Exactly what Clayton will be wearing in prison, if he’s the guy who bopped his old man.
“I’ll talk to my designer.”
“And personal shopper,” Tiffany adds.
Clayton gives Tiffany a smile, probably similar to the one he gave the non-blond blond, and turns to me. “Can I go back to my treadmill, now?”
“Whatever turns you on.”
Tiffany and I leave without shaking his hand.
___
“The guy made it on his own,” Tiffany says as she fires up the Lexus.
“I doubt that.”
She swings out of the parking spot. “All you have to do is go through his suits. He started with Robert Talbott, moved up to Brooks Brothers, went Joseph Abboud, and finally went custom made.”
“You went through his closet?”
“Guys like him never throw anything away. I think they keep their old rags to remind themselves of where they came from.”
“Promise me you’ll never go inside my closet, Tiffany.”
“Don’t worry; I’m allergic to polyester.”
She makes a right on Fullerton and heads toward the lake.
“What did you think of young Clayton?”
“As a murderer or dating material?”
“You pick.”
“He has a lot of negative energy. I sense a deep shade of gray aura.”
“Aura?”
“His personal ethereal glow,” Tiffany explains. “Mine’s pink. I’m not sure about yours, Mister Sherlock; you’re a tough one to read.”
“What other interesting tidbits did you pick up on dear Clayton?”
“He’s a Gemini, so that means he may have another personality.” She takes her eyes off the road and onto me. “Don’t ever date a Gemini, Mister Sherlock; ya never know what you’re getting.”
“You think he could drop a pile of rocks on his father’s head?”
“Maybe, he’s got great pecs.”
We turned north on Clark. The Cubs must be in town, because it was stop and go all the way through Wrigleyville.
My cell rings with that ridiculous song. It was Norbert. The final autopsy report had been filed and they were releasing the body. If I wanted one more look, I’d better hurry. “Pass,” I said and hung up.
“Do you know how to reprogram this thing so it won’t sing that awful song every time I get a call?”
“Of course.”
“Will you?”
“No, I like ‘Breakaway.’” Tiffany sings, “Take a chance and break-a-wayyy.”
We arrived in Uptown around four in the afternoon. We were late; hopefully Christina had waited for us.
Uptown is a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood, originally rehabbed by the gays who could no longer afford the housing prices in Boystown, which they bought up and rehabbed a decade before. I pity gay people. They go into these decrepit, crime-filled areas, purchase old falling-apart properties, fix the places up, make the neighborhood respectable; and the straight people move in and ruin everything with their three-wheeled strollers and Starbucks coffee-klatches.
Thankfully, there still remained enough SRO hotels, drug treatment centers and Hispanic markets to keep Uptown in the up-and-coming status, instead of being recognized as the latest totally cool place to live.
The apartment was on the second floor of a brick six-flat. We rang the bell on the wrought iron gate, got buzzed inside the property, and had to perform the same task at the front door. Christina was waiting at her door when we made it up the stairs.
“Are you the insurance guy?”
“That would be us,” I said a bit out of breath.
“I need you.”
“In what sense?”
Christina ushered us into her large, spacious, attractive flat. Oak floors, paintings on the walls, a built-in hutch stocked with silver and china. The place was spotless; either the cleaning lady had just left or Christina was a neat freak.
I introduce myself, then Tiffany, who merely nods her head instead of shaking Christina’s hand. I make a mental note to ask Tiffany if she is a germ-a-phobe.
“I’ve been violated,” Christina says and rubs her hands together.
“I’m sure you have,” Tiffany spoke up before I had a chance to ask.
“How?”
“Financially,” Christina led us to an antique secretary in a small office anteroom, folded down the desktop, and slid out a laptop computer. “Somebody got into my account and cleaned me out.”
I suspected my ex-wife; she was quite adept at this type of activity.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Gone, it’s all gone.”
To be nice, Christina wasn’t a bad looking girl, or woman, if you consider anyone past thirty no longer a girl; but she did have a hard shell finish. Her hair was straight and short, her neck thicker than it should be and her arms had more bulk than needed. She wore jeans, but had the type of body that shouldn’t wear jeans, one that had no shape; it started at the top and went straight down, all the way until it stopped.
“Did you call the bank?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“That I should have signed up for their identity protection package.” Christina hands over a number of computer printed pages with numbers and whatever. “Will my insurance cover this?”
I shrug my shoulders.
Tiffany shrugs hers, too. “I don’t think my dad sells that kind of insurance.”
Tiffany is obviously weak when it comes to her daddy’s product lines.
“What am I supposed to do?”
I wanted to tell her it is much easier when you know who cleaned you out, but decided against adding my two cents to her injury. “I’d put a freeze on whatever other accounts I had, cancel your c
hecking account, and pray.”
“You’re a detective; would you help find who did this?”
“I usually don’t do this kind of work.”
Christina turned a shade of pasty pale. “It was everything I had.”
She had an odd vulnerability to her. You started feeling sorry for her as soon as you laid eyes on her.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say, not having a clue even where to start.
I smile. “Can we talk about your father?”
“Again?”
Steve and Norbert must have talked her out on the subject.
“I told the other two guys where I was, what I was doing, and that I didn’t do it. Why don’t you just go talk to them?”
“Yeah, why don’t we do that?” Tiffany blows me away with her suggestion.
“Look,” I say, “obviously you’ve had a bad day, but if I could just ask a few questions, I’ll try to make them ones the other two guys didn’t ask.”
Christina peers up at me like I’m kidding.
“Do you know of anyone who may have liked your father?”
“Liked?”
“Yeah.”
She has to pause to think. “No.”
“No business associates, partners, charity people, chauffeur, shoe-shine guy?”
“No.”
Tiffany adds, “Bartenders?”
“No, he was a lousy tipper.”
“Did you ever know him to take drugs?”
“Never.”
“What do you think of Alvin’s current wife?”
“Hate her.”
“Why?”
“She hates me.”
“And the one before her?”
“Not my type.”
“Duh,” Tiffany says.
“Your mom still living in Boston?”
“Guess so.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
Enough said on that topic. “Are you at all close with your brothers?”
“Half-brothers,” she corrected. “No.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t like me.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I preface my next question, “but I don’t sense a lot of grief at the passing of your dad.”
“You don’t get to pick your parents, detective.”
“I’d pick mine again, if I had the chance.” Tiffany perks up.
Christina gives Tiffany a look. “Daddy left while I was still in the womb. No money for years. Then, when I was a teenager, he wanted visitation, but wouldn’t pay much attention to me when I was around. He did pay the tuition for college, but wouldn’t chip in for clothing or rent. He let me dress like Little Orphan Annie, but had me drive around in a new car. I never understood him; but in some ways, I believe he did understand me.”
“And still no grief?”
“I tried very hard to love my dad; and I tried even harder to like him, but he never made it very easy.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
___
In the car, I take out a three-by-five card and write that all three of Alvin’s children share one common feeling and understanding: Each one hates the other two.
___
There is a rib place off Lawrence, The Gale Street Inn, which was not far from Christina’s apartment. Tiffany said she needed a cosmopolitan to calm her nerves.
“Lesbians give me the creeps,” she said as she sips. “You see how she was scoping me out?”
“No.”
“I thought she was going to bore through my breasts with x-ray vision.”
“How do you know she was a lesbian?”
“Oh, my God, is your gaydar on the blink? That hair, that body, that face; the woman was a les-bo from the get-go.”
“Really?”
“What do you think that comment about the old man understanding her was all about and the mother who can’t handle her being gay?”
Tiffany finishes her martini and orders a second. I was barely through half my light beer. We sit in silence for a few seconds.
“They got great ribs in this place,” I tell her.
“Disgusting.”
I wait until the air around her comment clears a bit. “Isn’t your generation supposed to be tolerant of people of other persuasions?”
“If you’d had as many knuckle-draggers as I have had, hitting on you, you wouldn’t be too tolerant, either.”
The waiter comes over. I order a full slab, half-mild, half-tangy sauce. Tiffany orders a shrimp salad. Why they would have a shrimp salad in a rib joint puzzles me.
“Don’t you find it interesting that no one so far has shown the least amount of remorse for the dearly departed Alvin J. Augustus?”
“No.”
“All the kids have done all right, the wife is living in the Ritz; but nobody seems to care that the guy’s head was squashed like a ripe melon.”
“Be patient,” Tiffany says. “After the dollars settle, tears will flow.”
“From joy or sadness?”
“What’s the difference?”
The food is served. The waiter offers me a plastic bib, which I strap around my neck. Tiffany shudders at my plebian protection, as well as the succulent pig meat in front of me.”
“Have you ever seen the way pigs are raised?” she asks with a visage of disgust.
“Have you?”
“No, but I’ve seen pictures on TV.” She picks up her fork and jostles the greens and fish around her plate. “Jews don’t eat pork because it’s filthy.”
“They don’t eat shrimp, either.”
“Jews I know, do.”
I slice between the bones. “Those shrimp you’re eating are garbage eaters just like the little pig in front of me.”
“No way.”
“The scavengers of the sea.”
Tiffany pushes the shellfish to the side of her plate and picks at the lettuce. “Alvin’s kids aren’t all that different than a lot of the kids I grew up with,” she says.
I dig in with both hands, gnawing the delicious meat from the bones. In about a half a slab, I’ll be messier than a finalist in a no-hands, pie-eating contest.
Tiffany continues, maybe to keep me from speaking and spraying the table with sauce, “Parents get so busy making money and being rich; they let the nannies and maids and servants raise their kids.”
The waiter comes by and drops off a stack of napkins and three or four Wet-Nap packets. I take the hint and wipe myself down. “Were you raised like that?”
“My mom liked being a mom. She took us out to eat, to the park, wherever. Of course, we went in a limo while the other kids crowded into a crummy mini-van.”
“You think one of Alvin’s kids did him in?”
“The biggest fear people like us have is no longer being people like us.”
9
Black must be the new black
The funeral was on Friday afternoon to accommodate the traders and brokers who were expected to be in the crowd.
Tiffany wore a black, Jackie Kennedy number, but with a plunging neckline. “The best places to meet men are at funerals,” she explains. “If the dead one had money, so will most of his buddies and the sons of his buddies.”
I notice one woman, who skirts around the church with a clipboard in hand, making hand signals and whispering orders to a number of individuals. I’ve heard of wedding planners, but never a funeral tactician.
We make our way up the side aisle to the front, so I can see how the mourners congregate and lay themselves out into an adult peanut gallery of sympathy and sorrow.
“The problem with funerals,” Tiffany remarks as we slide into the pew, “is that -- black being the new blue -- it is really difficult to buy clothes that make you look sad.” Then she adds, “Except you Mister Sherlock; your suit looks really sad.”
“Thank you, Tiffany. Hearing such a fine compliment about my choice of attire makes my day complete.”
“That
wasn’t a compliment.”
This was actually a pretty good church crowd from the point of view of a guy who never spent much time in church. About sixty people were in attendance, not including the three homeless guys sleeping in the last pew. With the absence of a coffin, there was a five-foot photo of Alvin on an easel in the center aisle up by the altar, flanked by huge bouquets of flowers. I wonder what someone will do with a picture that size after the ceremony ends; it’s way too big for an album or refrigerator door.
On a small table, in front of the photo, is a gold urn. Although my first rule of life is to assume nothing, I will assume here that what’s inside is what’s left of Alvin. The receptacle is maybe three inches wide and twelve high. It has a removable top for easy spreading or to allow a pinch or two for sprinkling purposes. There is no plaque, but I can see a metal label, the kind you sometimes see around a liquor bottle, which probably bears Alvin’s name.
Doris and Brewster sit farthest upfront, indicating Doris paid for the event. Clayton and Christina sit across from them, Clayton alone; but Christina had a lithe young brunette by her side, no doubt to help her along through these troubling times. Norbert and Steve were way in the back. Theresa sat by herself. Evidently Hector took my advice and remained in hiding. There was an elderly couple seated in front, he in a tweed coat and she in one of those dresses old ladies wear after they realize they are resigned to being old ladies. The couple carries an air about them that says “We belong.”
Seven or eight guys came still dressed in their trading smocks from the Board or the Merc. Smocks had to be unique and bright to be noticed by the floor managers; and these were no exception: bright blue, purple, hounds-tooth, and a black-and-white checkerboard that fit into a church about as well as a statue of Satan. Two participants no one could miss were a blond and redhead in short, tight, mini-skirts and leather jackets that accentuated their buxom figures to the max -- each kept her sunglasses on inside the church.