by Jim Stevens
“Can’t blame him.”
“We have to see if anyone else uses the place.”
“Why?”
“Thus, the object of your assignment.”
“Got it.”
“There is a parking spot in the back, so I want you to walk around and look down the alley once an hour. If you see a car, get the license number.” I pause. “I’ll be back at midnight to relieve you.”
“Mister Sherlock, one question,” she said a bit sheepishly. “Where do I go to the bathroom?”
“Don’t you remember what Detective Norbert told you?”
“No.”
“About the bladder?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tiffany remembers, but not happily.
“Good luck.” I open the car door. “I’ll see you at midnight.”
___
The spa treatment did Tiffany a world of good. Her face looks healthy, fresh, and relaxed when I find her asleep, resting in the reclined passenger seat of the Lexus. My tap, tap, tap on the window snaps her into consciousness.
“How long do you think you’ve been asleep?”
She rolls down the window. “Maybe a minute or two.”
“All that happened a minute or two ago?” I point to the second floor of the condo where lights were blazing inside.
“Well, maybe it was a little more than two.”
“You got to move your car, so I can park here. I take it you didn’t take any pictures.”
Tiffany stared at the unit. “I guess I kinda blew it, huh?”
“Don’t worry, what goes in has to come out.”
“What else can I do?” Tiffany was sincere. “I don’t want to let you down.”
“You can drive around back, and get the license numbers of any cars parked in their driveway.”
“Will do.” Tiffany got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side. I was getting back into the Toyota when she asked, “Do I have time for a pit stop?”
“If nature calls, answer it.”
After parking, I fiddle with the camera until the shutter speed was set for low light. I see through the cut-glass windows, shapes move inside. There was more than one, but no way of counting an exact number. Twenty minutes go by and a cab comes down the street, stops in front of the building, waits. I roll down the window, aim the camera to get a shot of the taxi’s license plate, but don’t need to press the shutter. A familiar face comes out the front door. She is dressed in a sleek, black, above-the-knee dress that clings to her body as tight as a wet tee-shirt. Her hair is brushed to perfection, which is telling, as is the fact that she carries only a small handbag. She closes the door softly, bidding goodbye to no one. She steps down the stairway slowly, not making a sound with her black high heels and climbs into the back of the cab.
I snap picture after picture. Diane is a photogenic woman.
Ten minutes later, the light goes off in the front room. I ready the camera. A man exits. In the darkness it is difficult to chart his age. I have never seen him. He is fit, has a full head of brown hair, dressed in jeans and a slightly wrinkled shirt. He wears no wedding ring, but a very expensive watch. He walks south, crosses Goethe and out of my sight.
Another five minutes ticks off the clock. The hallway light in the condo goes out. I refocus the camera, aim, wait. Two minutes. Nothing. I take my eye off the lens, glance down the block to the Astor and Schiller Street intersection. A car turns left onto Astor and heads my way. I aim the camera at the front grill and wait until I have a shot at the plate. This is going to be tough at night. What looks like a new Jaguar speeds by. I snap photos, but no way will a picture develop. I try to pick up the plate with my eyes, but it’s no better than a blur. Down the street, at the same intersection, another set of headlights turns left and heads my way, faster than the previous car.
It’s Tiffany’s Lexus. She honks her horn and waves as she goes by. I have to have a talk with that girl about being subtle.
My cell phone rings.
“Tiffany?”
“How’d you know it was me?” she asks. “You sign up for caller id?”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m in pursuit of the suspect.”
“Tiffany, back off. Get the license number; that’s all we need.”
“Oh come on, this is fun.”
I can hear her car screech to a sudden stop.
“Guess where I am?”
“Tiffany…”
“I’m behind him at the light at Oak Street.”
“Get down. He can see you in his rear view mirror.” I scream into the tiny phone. “Get the plate number and get away from him.”
“Why do you want the plate number?”
“We want to find out who it is.”
“It’s Brewster Augustus,” she yells back.
“You sure?”
“He’s going up Michigan Avenue. He’s turning left.”
“Don’t follow.”
“Why not?”
“I know where he’s going.”
“You do?”
“The Ritz.”
“I’ll follow him just to be sure, bye.”
15
No baloney since Tuesday
I pick up the end of Norbert’s tie and scratch off dried egg yolk.
“I don’t think Alvin was broke.”
“Yeah?” Norbert says.
“The fact that he was under investigation, his accountant hasn’t a clue, and he takes his wife off the payroll, tells me a scam was taking place, or Alvin was going to rabbit with his loot.”
“I thought he was blowing off the floor?”
“I didn’t say this all fits.”
“So you think he was taking a powder and somebody put a stop to his travel plans?”
“Maybe.” I stop. “Your turn.”
“Doris is scheduled to leave the Ritz on Saturday.”
“Moving back to Kenilworth with baby Brewster?” I ask.
“Don’t know about the boy.”
“She’ll need someone to protect her against the evil spirits still haunting the hallowed walls.”
Norbert burps. “I got a twist for you, Sherlock.”
“I hate twists.”
“Alvin’s tox screen came up with trace levels of arsenic, cocaine, anti-depressants and -- get this one--Rohypnol, used for date rape.”
“No self-respecting drug addict would be caught dead taking that menu of poison.”
“Rohypnol’s usually slipped in a mickey.”
“So somebody wanted to take Alvin home and have sex with him without his permission?”
“The twist gets tighter when all the amounts come up minor; not enough of any to put him down for the count.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s why I labeled it a twist.”
“Thank you, Norbert.”
“You’re welcome. Your turn.”
“We have another person of interest.”
Norbert is silent for a second, then says, “How interesting?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where did you see him?”
“On the street.”
“Sounds like a real solid lead to me.”
“If I can figure out how to download the photo into my computer, upload, reload so you can load it into your computer; we can both try to figure out who the guy is.”
“What century you living in, Sherlock?”
___
Murder cases, more than any other, are a step-by-step process. Problem is for every step taken forward, you usually take two back. Yet another reason, I dislike this job, a lack of constant forward momentum.
Tiffany picks me up at my apartment.
“We have to go back to Kenilworth.”
“We were just there.”
“I know.”
“If I spend too much time in a house like that, bad-decorator karma will seep into me by osmosis.”
>
“Do you know what osmosis is, Tiffany?”
“It’s like an STD, but in your brain.”
I don’t argue with her.
“Don’t you want to know why we’re going?” I ask as the Lexus turns onto Lakeshore Drive and heads north.
“Guess, I should ask that, huh?”
“We have to figure out why the window was broken.”
“What window?”
___
We park behind the black-and-white in the circular driveway. The cop comes to the door a minute after we ring and swallows whatever he’s eating before speaking. “Yeah?”
“Remember us?”
“No.”
“Insurance investigators.”
Peter Patrolman could care less. “Sure, come on in.”
We follow the close-to-rookie patrolman to the den where the movie Rush Hour plays on the big screen TV. There is a pile of DVDs on the coffee table next to a pizza box. He hits pause on the remote. “Only got another day here, they’re lifting the crime scene.”
“Good chance to catch up on your reading,” I remark.
Tiffany stops to watch Jackie Chan beating up a slew of bad guys in a Chinese restaurant. “I love this part,” she says.
They watch TV. I work. What is wrong with this picture?
The broken window pane remains boarded up. It is the third of a vertical group of four leaded-glass panes. It will be a custom repair job.
“Did anyone find out how this got broken?” I ask.
The cop is in the lounger, Tiffany on the couch, and Chris Tucker on the screen. No one answers my question.
The view from the window is of fifty feet of lawn, a garden, and a stand of six or seven trees, with bushes behind acting as a fence. I swivel 180 degrees to a wall of books in a dark wood, built-in bookshelf, a TV console and a door to a small bathroom on the right.
Neither of the movie fans notices my exit outside, or walk to edge of the garden near the trees. Turning back to the house, I line up the broken window for the best unobstructed view into the room. Before setting a foot into the garden, I check for broken plant limbs and footprints. There are none. I back up slowly, keeping my eyes on the window. In three steps I am at the stand of trees. There is little room to move, three, maybe four feet in either direction, before it is either too thick or the bushes get in the way. I set my bearings and go back into the house.
Tiffany is now on the edge of the couch, a slice of pizza in her hand. The cop hasn’t moved. Jackie and Chris are chasing the bad guys causing more vehicular damage than a demolition derby.
At the bookcase, I measure about six feet up and start to run my eyes across this height, sidestepping my feet like a slow motion dancer. I cover the entire wall in twenty minutes, then retrace left to right.
The movie is almost over when I see the indentation.
The bullet had split, literally split, between Tom Sawyer and David Copperfield. No wonder it was hard to find. I take both novels off the shelf, neither spine had ever been cracked, and place them on another shelf and stick my finger in the hole.
A bullet, rifle size, was sunk two or three inches into the hard wood.
“Excuse me,” I speak up.
No answer.
“Excuse me,” I repeat and get the same response. At the table I push the remote to pause.
“Hey, we’re watching that,” Peter Patrolman pipes up.
“Would you mind getting Steve or Norbert on your radio and ask if either could stop by?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now?” Tiffany remotes the movie to play.
I sit down, take a piece of pizza, remove the anchovies, and take a bite. Why anyone would ruin a good pizza with those little, too-salty fish is beyond me. The movie ends the same way as it did the ten times my kids watched it. Chris and Jackie get the bad guys and live happily ever after, or until Rush Hour 2 comes out a year later.
___
Within two hours Alvin’s home is police-party-central once again.
The lab guys pull the slug from the wall. “Came from a rifle as well as a shooter who knew what gun to use when,” Steve concludes after a lengthy thought process on how the shot came from the exact spot where I stood outside. I could have saved him a lot of time, but why bother?
“Professional,” Steve tells Norbert.
Duh.
The lab boys search for a second shot-bullet, casing, whatever, and come up empty.
“You check the garage?” I ask in the frenzy of activity.
“It’s like a classic car show in there,” Norbert says.
We visit.
Due to the fact that a person can only drive one car at a time, isn’t it overkill to own six? But, on second thought, if you have a six-car garage, you do have the responsibility to fill it up. There is a Cadillac with fins, Porsche Roadster, massive SUV, Lexus 400, a 1955 red Chevy, and a Lincoln Town Car Alvin must have used when he chauffeured in his spare time. All are meticulously maintained, as is the garage, with a floor so clean Norbert eats off it when a slice of pickle slips from his sandwich.
“You check these out?”
“I didn’t,” Norbert says, and then asks, “What for?”
“Explosives.”
Norbert looks at me as if I’m whacked. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I got a feeling.”
The lab guys enter fifteen minutes later and find absolutely nothing amiss.
“Good call, Sherlock.”
“Hey, nobody’s perfect.”
___
Northern Trust, one of the oldest banks in the nation, is located in the Rookery Building, one of the oldest buildings in the city. There are few places on earth where architecture and commerce complement each other so well.
Tiffany and I sit in the office of Vice President P. Carrington Vogel, a man who wears a pocket watch on a gold chain on his tight wool vest. He must be fifty, but there’s nary a wrinkle on his face. He moves slowly. As he fingers the new Ben Franklin I provided, the man makes a snail look like Seabiscuit.
“It is really not that odd of an occurrence,” he speaks with the monotone authority of, for lack of a better example, a banker. “I’ve had traders come in here and pull out their entire accounts as if it were an ATM.”
“You keep that kind of cash in reserve?”
“I wish they never retired the thousand dollar bill.”
“Me too,” Tiffany agrees.
“Did Alvin make a practice of doing this?”
“Never in an amount this large; a hundred-thousand-dollar man.” Vogel’s hands rest on the edge of his desk, as if he was about to say grace before a meal. “He was scared, like the rest of them.”
“Of what?”
“Going broke.”
“Alvin was worth millions, what would he be afraid of?”
Vogel has no inflection in his voice. “Every gambler fears insolvency. The greater the fear, the better the gambler.”
“When did he withdraw the four-hundred grand?”
“Two weeks ago, tomorrow.”
“Did he say what it was for?” Tiffany asks.
“No, why would he?”
“Make conversation?” she replies.
“No.”
I pull out the blank check I lifted from his office “This account active?”
“Frozen.”
“Balance?”
“Can’t say.” Vogel has not moved an inch since we sat, which includes the hair on his head and the wire-rim specs resting on his nose. The man’s heart rate must be around six beats a minute.
“Alvin’s main account is at First Options,” he says.
“That was empty,” I tell him.
“Pity.”
Vogel does not stand as we get up to leave, merely extends his right hand forward to push the one-hundred-dollar bill towards me.
Tiffany is barely out the door when she says, “Bet that guy is a real riot in the sack.”
“Talk about a riot,” I say, “l
et’s go see Herman.”
“Do we have to?”
___
I believe Herman’s fifty-inch belt is going to break in excitement when he opens his door.
“Tiffany, you came back.”
Herman clears periodicals and old newspapers for us to sit. Tiffany uses the latest copy of Juggs as protection between her butt and the stains on the couch. She crosses her legs so quickly that a breeze is created in the stuffy room.
“I need to know how he did it, Herman.”
“Did what?” Herman’s eyes have not moved off my junior partner.
“Made all that money.”
“Have you thought about the audition?” he asks Tiffany.
“Audition?”
“Over here, Herman,” I wave my hands to get his attention. “How did Alvin make his money trading? He had to have some system, didn’t he?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Can I say one thing before we get into this?” he asks, doesn’t wait for a reply, and turns again to Tiffany. “I happen to know that all the producers are begging for girls who can look sixteen on camera.”
Tiffany looks at him like he’s nuts, which he is, in a way. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You didn’t mention it to her?” Herman asks.
“I was waiting for the right time.”
“Oh.”
“Herman, tell us about Alvin. How’d he do so well in the market?”
“Alvin was smart enough to know he wasn’t that smart.”
“Come again.”
“He knew he could never predict the market.”
“I’m not following.”
“Every year a new crop of well-funded traders come on the floor, convinced they can call the market. They come from Harvard, MIT, Wharton, and bring charts and theories, computer programs, moon patterns, recipes, whatever. This pack of hungry wolves are convinced they can predict the S&P’s, corn, wheat, gold, silver, and the winner of the Kentucky Derby. So, they get on the floor and throw around their dads’ money, and guys like Alvin just sit back. When the kiddies buy, Alvin sells. When kiddies sell, Alvin buys. And in time, usually about six months to a year, Alvin has won maybe seventy-percent of the trades; and that’s enough to blow these kids back to work for their daddies in plumbing supplies or sewer construction. Alvin is smart enough to know that nobody can predict the market and willing to take the money of anyone who thinks they can.”