1 The Reluctant Dick - The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader (29 page)

“Small party, eh?”

“Intimate,” she says.

I check my watch. Tiffany is, no doubt, downstairs wondering how I have managed to last so long.

“Do you have my money, Sherlock?”

I flip two Ben Franklins on the coffee table. “I have what you’ll need to pay Nick for my time.” I wait for her to pick up the bills. “I hate to inform you, Alexis
,
but I’m not sure Diane and you were equal partners.”

“Why not?”

I’m not only fishing, but I’m casting way
, way out. “I get these hunches.
I can’t explain
the
m.

Alexis asks, “Would you trust her if you were me?”

“She makes her living screwing people.”

“So do I.”

23

Exfoliate
.
Y
ou'll feel better

I sit in front of what is now a wall of recipe cards. The
Original
Carlo
is totally covered. I remind myself that lives are a series of patterns.

Mine, for example, is a series of failed female relationships. To say I don’t do well with women is an understatement. My third grade, sixth grade, and junior year girlfriends dumped me for jocks. No wonder I’m not much of a sports fan. In college, t
he women I liked didn’t like me;
and the ones that liked me, I didn’t much care for. My ex and I fell in love and our love resulted in a pregnancy
. P
regnancy begat marriage. Marriage made for a life of diapers, credit card bills, and complaints
,
mostly about my job. In our first six months, we had less and less time together
,
and less and less love. After Kelly was born, the descent continued. To break the negative pattern, we took our first “weekend away,” which was meant to rekindle the love
-
lust my wife and I once thought we had for one another. The only success over that weekend was to get pregnant again, which doubled the daughters, diapers, bills and complaints. The only thing worse than my marriage was my divorce
. N
ot only was I taken to the cleaners, but taken back repeatedly each time a wrinkle was discovered.

Now, in the middle of the night, I search the cards for patterns and see none. I am at the point of asking all the suspects to line up and take off all their clothes so I can see if each has a similar tattoo.

___

Joan Augustus lived in one of those highrise one-bedroom condos that, in my estimation, would have been considered a cramped, boring, non-descript apartment until the downtown condo conversion boom of the 1990s turned these units into chic, urban enclaves. For Joan’s sake, I hope her condo holds its value as well as she’s held the grudge against her ex-husband.

“I should have killed him,” she tells me. “I thought about it about a million times. I planned it, plotted it, and watched it play out in my head over and over. There is a window in the bank building across the street with a perfect line of sight to the front door of the Board of Trade. I was going to sneak up there, do a Lee Harvey Oswald, blasting him with a high-powered rifle the second he stepped out of that revolving door.” She pauses, reflecting, “Would that be a fitting end or what, his blood staining the spot of concrete where the sun never shines?”

“Certainly would have been poetic. Why didn’t you do it?”

“Somebody beat me to it.”

“Too bad,” I say, “would have made my life a lot easier.”

Joan sips coffee, seated at a small table pushed against the one wall in her kitchen. “I hated him. He made my life a living hell. I had every reason in the world to kill him and I should have; I don’t deny it.”

With each word, Joan rises rapidly upward on the list of
The
Most Likely
.

“You wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it.”

“Satisfaction.”

“Pretty big risk for something you can’t take to the bank.”

“Probably why I never got around to doing it.”

“Any other reason?”

“Clayton.”

“Really
? B
ecause I don’t get the feeling he was all that enamored with his daddy, either.”

“As horrible as Alvin was, he was the father of my son.”

“Clayton is Alvin’s son?” I have no idea why I ask this question. It pops out of my mouth without forethought.

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” Joan shouts. “What kind of a person do you think I am?”

“You were just waxing nostalgic about putting a slug though his heart as he’s leaving work.”
        “That’s different.”

“Of course, silly me.”

Joan has no job, no business or career
;
and I suspect few friends. She must hang around this place all day, reading bodice-ripper paperbacks, such as the one open on the kitchen counter with a Fabio look
-
alike on the cover.

“Those two detectives tell you wh
ere I was when Alvin was killed?
”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I say, “but I never said I was good at it.”

“You want to know?”

“Not really.”

I see on her refrigerator a number of magnets, but no pictures, notes, or lists being held in place. “You could have paid somebody to kill him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Remember, ‘he made your life a living hell?’”

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“Did you know someone took a shot at him?”

“When?”

“A week or two before he died.”

“Too bad they missed.”

My back hurts. All the time sitting up nights, staring at recipe cards on the wall is taking its toll on my lumbar region.

I cut to the chase. “Who do you think killed Alvin?”

“No doubt about it, Doris whacked him.”

___

Tiffany refuses to visit Herman alone. I have to meet her at his apartment and we go in together.

“What did you find out?”

Herman removes the toothpick from his mouth, tucks it into the greasy hair behind his ear for future use, and says, “It had to be an inside job.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t touch her credit cards. Whoever did Christina got her password, pin numbers, and merely transferred all her money from her account to a number of his accounts all within a few hours.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred grand.”

“The lesbo kept two hundred grand in her checking account?” Tiffany asks rhetorically. “Even I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Her last trust fund payment kicked in a week before.”

“She tell you all this, Herman?” I ask.

“No.” Herman rubs his ample stomach. “You guys want some cheese?”

“No thanks.”

“Pass,” Tiffany adds.

“How did you find out?” I ask.

“I’m sneaky,” he says.

Herman struggles out of the non-squeaking chair, goes to the refrigerator and removes a baggie from the crisper drawer. He finds a filthy Swiss Army
k
nife in the sink and returns to his seat, where he removes the hunk of bluish cheese from the plastic, opens the knife blade and begins to shave the mold off the sides. “Ya always got to be careful not to let anyone see you put your pin number in the machine at the grocery store,” he tells Tiffany.

“I have my groceries delivered,” she explains.

“Where did Christina’s money end up?”

“The never-ending black hole known as cyberspace.” Herman whittles down the cheese as if he’s carving a duck decoy.

“Did you have any luck reviewing Alvin?”

“Nope.” Herman bites into the cheese, which I thought was Roquefort
,
but with the mold off, it is actually Muenster.

“Thought I would, but nope.”

“Doesn’t sound like you tried very hard.”

Herman chews a hunk of cheese in the side of his mouth as if it were a wad of tobacco. “They didn’t send me a lot to go on, but something’s funny about how he did it all.”

“Explain, Herman.”

“I can’t until I see his trades.”

Tiffany begins to turn pale from the smell of Herman’s cheese-tainted breath. I better get my assistant out of there before she passes out. “We got to be going, Herman, keep being sneaky.”

“Oh, I will,” he says. “Want some cheese for the road?”

“I’m going to get you his trades to look at
,
” I tell him. “You figure it out.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Herman is more interested in watching Tiffany’s backside as she heads for the door. “Ya know, Tiffany, you don’t always have to bring Mister Boring along when you come over to visit.”

“Oh, yes I do.”

Outside, as we head for her car, Tiffany says, “I feel like I should go home and take a shower. Herman’s bad breath has soaked though my clothes and is laying on my skin like a cheese fungus.”

“Herman does have that effect on people.”

Tiffany drops me off in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, not far from the Harlem
“L”
stop. “Go home, exfoliate
,
you’ll feel better,” I tell her.

The house is a small Chicago bungalow. There is a FOR SALE sign on its front lawn. On the sign is a picture of the broker, Honest Abe Benershevski, in an Uncle Sam outfit, finger pointing out with the slogan underneath reading:
I Want You in a New Home
.

I knock.

She sees me through the front drapes, then unlatches two deadbolts and opens the door.

“How did you know where I lived?” Millie asks as two cats scurry out of sight.

“I’m a detective, remember?” I stand on her doorstep. “May I come in?”

“The house is a mess.”

“Not compared to where I’ve just been.”

I step inside and am hit with the distinctive odor of well-used cat litter. “Nice place.”

“Thanks.”

“Is Mister Heffelfinger here?”

“No,” she says. “Why would he be?”

“Just wondered.”

She leads me to the front room, points to where I should sit, but another cat is stretched out on the cushion. “Sit over there,” she says, motioning.

“I won’t take a lot of your time.”

Millie sits next to the cat.

“Moving?”

“I have a sister that lives in Florida.”

I take a little time before I begin. “Millie, do you know how much Alvin was getting in rent for his trading seats at the Board?”

“He used to get eight thousand.”

“Used to?”

“I d
on’t
know anymore since he was taking the money in cash.”

“From whom?”

“The company was called Nivla or Nivia or something like that.”

“Wouldn’t you have to know the name for the license renewals and whatever?”

“I was supposed to.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Alvin said he’d handle it.”

“Why?”

“I think Alvin was using the rent as his walking around money.”

“He’d walk around with eight grand in his pocket?”

“He had a big bulge.”

A line I wasn’t going to touch.

“Do you know where this Nivia or Nivlia had offices?”

“No.”

“Did you know when he put the seats up for sale?”

“No,” she said, “but that could be why he said he’d handle the paperwork.”

“Was Alvin good at paperwork?”

“Terrible.”

“Do you think he was going to pocket the money for the seats, too?”

“That would be hard to do with all the regulations.”

“If Alvin was losing all this money in trade after trade
,
and his account was in arrears, wouldn’t the Board hold up a sale until all trades were complete?”

“Yes.”

I was about to ask my next question when a knock came on the door.

“Excuse me.” Millie gets up goes to the door and ushers in Honest Abe, who left his Uncle Sam hat at home.

“We have a showing, Millie,” he tells her.

“Oh, I forgot.”

Abe begins to open up doors and windows. “It’s not going to sell if it smells like a cat kennel.”