3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany (15 page)

I will no longer be up nights wondering what the
whoosh/plop
was all about.

The only other item of note is a small potbelly stove on the back wall of the room. Its stack runs up to the ceiling, then straight across, and up and out to the east side of the room. No way in hell this venting system would ever pass any Chicago building codes. There’s no woodpile, but an old metal trashcan sits to the left, half-full of grey ashes. I’ve seen enough. I remind myself that this is the bar business, and what I’ve seen isn’t anything abnormal in this milieu.

I re-lock the door on my way out, another trick I learned from my burglar friend Shervy Reckless. I’ve always been surprised by the fact that more thieves don’t lock up after they leave a job. It makes sense if you ask me, but nobody ever asks me.

Upstairs, on the main floor, the party is ready to begin. All that’s missing is the crowd. I walk to the edge of the floor and position myself to see the windows of the penthouse office of Mr. D’Wayne DeWitt. The curtains are open and the lights are on. Gibby was either lying or DW 2 just arrived. Whatever. It’s time to visit the boss.

I push the door open as soon as it buzzes and enter the office. Mr. DeWitt is behind his desk. On the couch are two twenty-something girls, barely dressed in micro-mini skirts, high black leather boots with four-inch heels, and dripping with gold jewelry. I wonder if they got their bling from the bag of swag.

I gulp when I see the pair. “Did I come at a bad time?”

“No.” Mr. DeWitt motions me to come towards him.

“One of your employees has been murdered,” I tell him. “I thought you might want to know.”

“Who?” he asks, not moving a muscle past his lips.

“Bruno Buttaras, the bartender.”

“That Mudda,” one of the blingsters on the couch comments. “He never fills his martinis all the way to the top.”

“Thank you,” I turn and tell her. “That was a motive I didn’t consider.”

Mr. DeWitt picks up the desk phone, pushes one button, and says, “Who is our PR person?” He waits for a moment. “Get her on the phone.”

“You’re not sending out a press release, are you?” I ask.

“Not yet,” he says in all seriousness. “Who’s the cop on the case?”

“Detective Neula Noonan.”

“Fat?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” I answer.

One look to the couch would tell you the boss isn’t into plus size women.

The phone on Mr. DeWitt’s desk rings. He picks it up, “DeWitt.” He listens for two seconds, and asks, “Did you hear one of our bartenders got iced?” He listens for one second and says, “Keep it that way.” And he hangs up. Being a fly on the wall during a conversation between Mr. DeWitt and Gibby would be a waste of time.

“Mr. DeWitt,” I sit in the chair across from him, to make this meeting more businesslike. “In order for me to investigate who may be attempting to harm you, it would help if I knew a few things.”

“What for instance?”

I press on. “Like, where you live, where you hang out, what you like to do in your spare time, and has anyone ever tried to kill you in the past?”

“Why?”

“Knowledge is power.”

“Not always,” he says.

Both girls on the couch light up cigarettes. I’m amazed how many young people smoke. I would have thought that after thousands of news stories about the health hazards of tobacco, the warning labels on the packs, and all those the PSA’s that star people with holes in their throats, the message would have gotten through. Apparently not, the girls puff away like chimneys.

I’m not really sure what to say next and the silence becomes uncomfortable. So, I tell him sincerely, “I’m only trying to do the job you hired me to do.”

He puts his fist to his chin, rubs the flesh on his upper neck, and says, “I live in a condo, I hang out here,” He points at the girls. “I do them in my spare time, and if someone did try to kill me, they missed.”

My four questions have been answered, but I don’t feel any more knowledgeable, and certainly no more powerful.

“You should be able to find out everything you need to know right here,” Mr. DeWitt says in the manner of closing our conversation. He pulls out his money clip, peels off another hunk of bills, and hands them my way. It’s difficult, but I hold myself back from jumping for joy.

“Could I get the run of the place?” I ask. “So far, the people around here have made me feel about as welcome as a Muslim at a Tea Party Rally.”

“Talk to Fearn.”

I am about to ask, “Do I have to?” But I don’t, not wanting to upset my best customer ever. I walk to the door, passing the girls on the couch. “You really shouldn’t smoke. It’s not good for you,” I tell them in fatherly tones.

“You smoke when youse was twenty-two?” the blingster on the left asks me.

“Yeah, but only when I wanted to look older.”

The one on the right looks me up and down. “And youse sayin’ that we dumb?”

Point well taken.

Downstairs, the partiers are starting to trickle in. It’s early, around dinnertime. I don’t want to go home, because it’s best I do some investigating around the club tonight. Investigating what and who, I don’t know. All I know is I have a few hours to kill. I call “Wait” Jack Wayt.

“Want dinner?” I ask before Jack can tell me his latest ailment.

“As long as it’s gluten free.”

---

“Wait.”

“What, Jack?”

“You know anything about irritable bowel syndrome?”

“No. And I don’t want to.”

Jack shifts uncomfortably in his chair. We sit. He has a cocktail. The waiter takes our orders. We chat until the food arrives.

“Anything on Bruno?” I ask.

“Small time hood. He did a couple of stints. Once for assault and once for pushing weed and a few pills,” Jack says. “Probably carried his old business into his new career.”

“You know,” I tell Jack. “It used to be you went to a bartender to find out the best place to eat, now you go to him to score some weed.”

“You smoke enough weed, you don’t care where you eat as long as you get to pig-out on a lot of food.” Jack slices a hunk of rib-eye, bathes it in its own juices, shoves it in his mouth, and masticates the meat like a cow chewing her cud. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the fast-food industry is behind the legalization of pot.”

“Did Bruno have any connection to DeWitt, when DeWitt was working the street?” I ask.

“Not that we found.”

“It’s all connected somehow,” I say to Jack, as I nibble on my free-range chicken breast. “From Tiffany, to Bruno, to Mr. DeWitt, to the guy with the pony tail.”

Jack puts another slice of steak in his mouth before he swallows the one he popped in before it. “You know in eighty percent of doping cases, the bartender has something to do with it?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“If you’re going to be in the business, Sherlock, you got to keep up.” Once a mentor, always a mentor.

“They do it for their own benefit or for the benefit of somebody else?” I ask.

“Both.”

“A dumb crime if you ask me,” I speak my piece. “For a couple hundred bucks a guy risks his job drugging some woman so some other idiot can have sex with her while she’s comatose?”

“It’s not like he’s a brain surgeon putting his medical practice on the line,” Jack tells me between chews.

“There’s something more here,” I tell him. “I can feel it.”

“I can feel something too,” Jack says gripping his gut. “It might be gastroenteritis.”

The pain can’t be too bad, because he finishes every morsel of his steak.

We spend the rest of the meal talking about people we know, people we knew, and people we don’t want to know anymore. Jack is a good guy. I enjoy his company.

“You might as well know,” he says finishing his coffee. “We got a lot going down in the next ten days. City Hall is screaming about all the kids killing each other.”

“Shouldn’t they be happy the gangs are thinning out their own herds?”

“Politicians are never satisfied,” Jack says. “If we wiped out every crime ever committed, they’d complain we used too many cops to do it.”

I pick up the tab for dinner. After this C-Note disappears, and I pay next month’s alimony, child support, and rent; plus put a very small dent in the overdue balance on my one credit card, I’ll be back to almost being broke, a situation in which I have had entirely too much practice.

---

The party at the Zanadu was for Bobo Bling, a rap artist whose latest CD,
Bang Dat Big Black
Booty
, would be available to download starting tomorrow. I did learn from overhearing a conversation that the diamond-laden braces on his teeth are known as
his grill
and considered the epitome of bling. I consider it the epitome of stupidity.

I’m off to the side of the club listening, or having no choice but to listen, to Bobo sing of bashing butts and bling. I quickly tire of hearing the MF word put into his alleged lyrics so many times, the words almost lose their disgusting flavor. And the music is so loud, the people couldn’t hear an air raid siren if one went off. I’m in the middle of a society I have no business even being near. I feel like an abacus in a roomful of computers.

But the sociology of Zanadu fascinates me. The patrons are between the ages of 25 and 35. White, Black, a few Hispanics, but no Asians. Most are straight, well-dressed, carry expensive cell phones, and text one another constantly. The Blacks hang in groups at the edge of the dance floor or up against the stage if someone is performing. The Whites inhabit the bar area. Everyone shares the dance floor.

The Black girls are the best dancers, followed by the Black dudes, followed by the White chicks. The worst dancers are the White guys, no question. White girls will dance with other White girls and Black girls will dance with other Black girls, but guys never dance with each other. Way too gay.

Blacks share their bottles of the bubbly. Whites order individual drinks. The Hispanics drink imported Mexican beer, a show of loyalty no doubt. No White guys have Black girls on their arms, but a number of Black guys hang with White girls. It’s quite obvious that Black girls don’t like White girls with Black guys. America has come a long way in solving its racial problems in the past fifty years, but watching how we now self-segregate ourselves is interesting. Maybe I should go back to school and become a sociologist. Anything would be better than being an on-call private eye.

Before tinnitus sets in, a malady I’m sure “Wait” Jack Wayt has endured, I end my sociology study. Plus, I can no longer endure one more misogynistic song from Bobo Bling. I go outside and stand across from the line of idiots waiting to get past Arson and Sterno. A few minutes pass and the Non-Brink’s Brink’s truck drives up and parks at the loading dock area of the club. The passenger, the same guy as before, exits the vehicle and waits by its rear doors. A minute or two goes by and Mr. DeWitt, the Behemoth, and the cart full of two-foot high metal boxes arrive via the
Employee Only
door. Slimy guy is nowhere to be seen. I guess he’s manning the front door to keep out the riffraff. I walk quickly in their direction to get a better view. I’m just past the valet, when a familiar Lexus pulls up.

“Tiffany, what are you doing here?” I ask as she exits her car and flips her car keys to the attendant. “You’re supposed to be home recuperating.”

“I took your advice, Mr. Sherlock,” she tells me. “I got a massage, a facial, a trim, and a mini-wax. And I was looking so hot I didn’t want to waste it by going home. So I came here, where I figured guys would trip all over themselves to hit on me. And, you know, nothing makes me feel better than that.”

I look over at the Non-Brink’s truck. The cash boxes are loaded. DeWitt signs the manifest sheet and I make a decision. “Tiffany, get your keys back from the valet. We need to tail someone.”

“Oh, boy! I love this stuff.”

I make Tiffany lay off the gas pedal and stay at least a block behind the much slower truck. We follow it east for three blocks. Thankfully, it’s nighttime, and there’s very little traffic; tailing a vehicle downtown during the day would be near impossible. The Non-Brink’s armored truck makes its way over to Wacker Drive, heading into the Loop. It takes a circuitous route to Lower Wacker Drive and proceeds southwest.

If you didn’t know, the downtown area of Chicago, known as the Loop, is built on stilts. Back in the 1800’s, after numerous floods and typhoid outbreaks, the city fathers decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River to send its sewage, industrial waste, and other disgusting filth down to their neighbors in St. Louis. The feat was an architectural marvel of engineering. And while they were reversing the river, they also raised all the buildings above the waterline to assure a flood-free city. Not a bad idea. Today, Chicago is the envy of many cities because the skyscrapers in the Loop all have one full floor on a level below ground for loading, unloading, trash pickups, and countless other necessary uses. No wonder Chicago is still called the City that Works.

“Turn right,” I order Tiffany, as the truck drives down a building ramp and disappears into an underground garage.

“Want me to drive in?” Tiffany asks.

“No.” I see the address and memorize it. “Go up top.”

We have to take a few turns to find a ramp that gets us back to street level. We backtrack to South Wacker Drive. “That’s the building,” I say, seeing the address.

There’s a Northern Trust on the first floor and at least thirty stories above it. Tiffany pulls up and parks in a taxi zone. “I didn’t know banks took deposits this late at night,” I say, knowing something is really wrong with this picture.

“Maybe there is a huge ATM in the basement and you have to use real long pin numbers to access your account,” Tiffany suggests.

“No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“I could ask Monroe,” Tiffany says. “He’d know.”

“Why would he know?”

“Because he works here,” Tiffany answers as if I already knew this fact.

“He does?”

“We were here the other day,” she tells me.

She’s right. I didn’t recognize the building.

“And I thought
I
was losing it, Mr. Sherlock.”