3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany (9 page)

It’s not even 9 o'clock, and I’m about the fortieth person in a line that stretches down the block. I can’t figure out why anyone would stand in line to get into one specific bar or club, especially if you can walk a block to another one which plays the same music and serves the same watered down drinks. I turn to a pack of female, twenty-somethings in front of me, “Excuse me, but what’s so special about this place?”

A girl in a frilly, metallic mini-dress answers, “The people, dude. You gotta party with the right people.”

“I can see that,” I respond. “But who wants to stand in line to do it?”

“Nobody.”

“So, why doesn’t this whole line just pick up and move to the club around the corner? Then you’d be partying with the right people and you wouldn’t be wasting any time standing here?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” she tells me.

Her friend, who also is dressed in a metallic mini-dress, points at my outerwear. “Is that one of those Member’s Only jackets?” She asks me.

“No.”

“I thought you were going for some weird retro look,” she says.

“No,” I tell her.

“What is it then?”

“Personal flair,” I tell her proudly with a smile.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a guy walk by us carrying one of those metallic briefcases. Is this a special “Heavy Metal Night” at Zanadu? When the guy is about twenty feet shy of the velvet rope, I notice the back of his head.

A small queue of braided hair hangs over his shirt collar.

“Girls, save my place in line, would you?” I ask my fashion-conscious new friends and take off without waiting for an answer to catch up with my last limo driver.

I’m about ten steps behind him when Arson unlatches the velvet rope and allows the guy entrance into the inner sanctum. By the time I get there, Arson and his partner, Sterno, form a hip-to-hip impenetrable wall of flesh in front of the rope.

“I’ve got to get in there,” I tell them in no uncertain terms.

“You again,” Sterno says.

“Mr. 2-in-1 shampoo,” Arson adds sarcastically.

“You’ve got to let me through,” I plead. “That guy you just let in kidnapped me the other day and dropped me off in an alley where I was shot at and almost killed.”

“Like we haven’t heard that excuse before,” Arson says.

“Come on, please?”

“You gotta stand in line,” Sterno says.

“I already stood in line.”

“That’s good,” Arson says. “Now you can go back and get some more practice at it.”

I’m watching Mr. Ponytail pass through the huge doors into the club, as I ask, “How about if I go in, talk to the kidnapper, and come right back out?”

“No, you gotta wait in line with the rest of the losers.” Sterno really knows his job.

“If I wait in line, and finally get up here, are you going to let me in?”

“Not unless you change your clothes in the meantime,” Arson tells me.

“Is that one of those Members Only jackets?” Sterno asks.

“No, my ex-wife bought me this jacket only a couple of years ago.”

“She probably knew then she was going to dump you,” Sterno says.

He might be right about that.

Arson must be hearing instructions through his earpiece, because he pulls the rope back and allows a group of four to enter. I give up. I move to the side and consider my next move. One doesn’t immediately come to mind. I turn around and walk away in the opposite direction. I wave when I reach the girls saving my place. They pretend not to notice me. They’re too busy chatting away with the two guys who were behind me in line. I’m a matchmaker by default.

I walk the streets in the immediate vicinity of the club, searching for parked limos. I find three on Kinzie Street. One has a driver waiting inside. I rule that one out. Two are parked on opposite sides of the street about one hundred yards apart. I write down their license plate numbers and wait about fifty yards away from each.

Twenty minutes go by. Nothing. I’m getting impatient. I’m standing against a sign advertising
Nightclub Parking
when the limo, which had the guy sitting inside, drives right past me. Riding shotgun is Mr. Ponytail. They go by so fast I can only pick up the first three digits of their plate. This should teach me never to rule anything out based on occupancy.

CHAPTER 7

About a week ago, before Tiffany downed her unfortunate libation, I was wasting my time in the Barnes & Noble on Clybourne Avenue. I love that store. It’s huge, has couches, tables, and a Starbucks; all there to enhance my reading pleasure. When I don’t have a lot of money, a lot to do, or both, this is one of my favorite stomping grounds. I’m here a lot.

There have been innumerable news stories concerning the demise of the brick and mortar retail bookstores. And in each of these articles, the writer gives umpteen reasons for the collapse of what once was a thriving business. It seems to me the only reason these stores are going out of business is because they let people like me in, allow them to hang around for hours reading whatever they want, and then walk out without spending a dime. If I owned B & N, I’d have floor monitors wander around with stopwatches in hand, relegating each reader to only a couple of pages per book.

One time I was in the Homeopathic Health section and came across
Oh, My Aching Back
. In this heavy on the pictures and light on the words manual, I found a number of ways to improve my bad back. There were exercises, diets, food supplements, vitamins, hot and cold compress solutions, even a chapter on inversions. I read almost half the book, memorized the exercises, replaced the book, not where I found it, but a few shelves away, and went home to try out my new regimen.

It worked! My back hasn’t felt this good since Care was crawling. Now, each morning I start my day on the floor, twisting and turning, stretching and straining, curling and coiling. As soon as I have the time, I’m going back to B & N and read the rest that miracle worker.

---

I’m in the middle of the Flounder Fetal Position when the phone rings. It’s Jamison Wentworth Richmond the Third. Well, actually not him, he never speaks to me; it’s only one of his assistants. She informs me that there has been a serious blip on their Paid Out computer screen and I have to investigate a certain pharmacy in Evanston, which is suddenly doing a land-office business on some of the most pricey pain killers on the market. Ritalin, Oxycontin and Plavix are moving off the shelves faster than anything at Walmart on Black Friday. The bulk of the cost of these little magic bullets is being billed to Medicare, but since it pains Mr. Richmond to pay out even the measly amount the government doesn’t cover, he calls me. Unfortunately, since I borrowed money from him to pay off my divorce, I have to drop everything and get on the case.

Is it any wonder I hate my job?

---

The drug store is located on the north side of Howard Street, which is the southern border of Evanston, and the northern border of Chicago. Pretty much a lower-middle-class workers’ neighborhood--which most workers would like to move out of. It used to be the territory of the Insane Unknowns street gang, but with the shifting population trends it’s now ruled by the Latin Kings. I sincerely doubt if the change in street gang affiliation has changed the property values in the area. The large sign across the front of the store reads Evanscago Drugs. Beneath Evanscago it lists drugs, liquor, and sundries as its main stock in trade. I’ve often wondered what sundries are. I never hear people say, “I have to go to the store to pick up some sundries,” or “Honey, we’re all out of sundries,” or “There’s a sale on sundries this week at Osco.” Maybe I’ll investigate sundries while I’m investigating the store.

I find a parking spot about a half block away; no parking karma today. I sit and watch. Between nine and ten a.m. only two customers enter the store. By their attire, their demeanor, and their inability to walk a straight line, it’s a good bet they’re buying the second item listed on the Evanscago sign.

There's a very small parking lot adjacent to the store, room for maybe six cars. Two of the spots are filled, one by a Lexus and one by a Mercedes. Each was there before I arrived. At a few minutes before eleven, a third Lexus enters the lot and parks. The customer gets out and enters the store. I can’t believe it. What the heck is Tiffany doing, shopping here?

I get out of my Toyota, walk up Howard Street and wait two doors down. When she emerges, I call out, “Tiffany…”

“Oh, Mr. Sherlock,” she says and hurries over.

“What are you doing here, buying some sundries?”

“What are sundries?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“Then why’d you ask me?” She pulls me aside. “I had to see you,” she tells me.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“Daddy told me.”

“You were in his office this morning bothering him?”

“How’d you know?”

“I’m a detective.”

“Mr. Sherlock, there’s something we have to talk about,” she tells me.

I look up the block and see four or five customers enter the drug store. “Tiffany, I can’t talk right now, I’m working.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m on a stakeout.”

“Oh, I’ve done those,” she says with a downward wave of her hand. The only thing stakeouts are good for is a snappy-nap.”

“We have to get off the sidewalk,” I tell her, leading her to my car.

“Oh, no, I can’t get into your car. I might get a rash.”

“We can’t stay out here,” I tell her. “I don’t want to be seen.”

“If I were you,” she says, “I’d rather be seen out here than in that crummy car of yours.”

“I don’t have a choice. I’m incognito.”

She looks at me with her
You’re telling me something I don’t want to know
look. “Are you wearing Depends?” she asks.

“No, Tiffany, I’m incognito, not incontinent.”

“Oh, that’s right,” she says. “Incontinent sounds very
Parisian
.”

“If you say so, Tiffany.”

America’s private educational system is failing its youth almost as badly as the public one is.

“Tell you what,” she says. “Since I’m already here, I’ll go undercover into the store. What do you want me to do?”

There’s no getting rid of her. “Buy some sundries.”

I get back in my car. Tiffany goes shopping. Three minutes later, a mid-sized bus with markings I can’t read pulls up in front of the store. I count at least thirty Asian individuals as one by one they slowly file out of it; all of them clearly senior citizens, none of them especially healthy. They enter the store very orderly and methodically, just as if they have done this many times before. No sooner has the last one entered than Tiffany comes bounding out and sprints my way--a difficult task with four-inch clogs on your feet.

“It’s like Pearl Harbor déjà vu, Mr. Sherlock,” Tiffany says excitedly as she reaches my car. “They must have busted through one of those immigration fences on our Chinese border.”

Tiffany’s ignorance of geography is as bad as her vocabulary. Or it was a really, really long bus ride for the group. “What were they doing in there?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They were all clumped together, making sounds like silverware bouncing off marble tile.” She’s talking a mile a minute. “My first thought was they all had yellow fever.”

“Do you know the symptoms of yellow fever?”

“No.”

I’ll ask Jack Wayt next time I see him. He’ll know.

“It was, like, really freaky,” she says. She wipes down the front of her dress as if she’s ridding herself of a horde of unwelcome ants. “It was like I was a minority person.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

Tiffany becomes quite emphatic, “There’s only one thing to do.”

“What’s that, Tiffany?”

“Exfoliate.”

Although she hates my car, Tiffany makes me drive her to her Lexus, which is parked less than a hundred feet away. “What’s that noise? She asks.

“There’s a hole in my muffler.”

She gives me a quizzical look. “You’re not wearing a muffler.”

“The car’s muffler.”

“It’s not that cold,” she says. “But anything that covers this car is an improvement.”

We arrive at her car. “Mr. Sherlock, I have to talk to you.”

“I can’t now, Tiffany. I’m working.”

“All right, but soon, okay?”

After Tiffany takes off, I take her parking spot, get out of my car, and go inside Evanscago Drugs. Enough of this going incognito.

It’s a madhouse inside. Thirty or so Asian senior citizens are milling around eating rice cakes. All unhappily wait for their names to be called by the pharmacist who can’t speak Mandarin or any Asian language for that matter. The craziness is compounded by the fact that some of them can’t hear very well or they’re totally deaf, some can’t walk and they just stumble along, and some are just whacked out to begin with, probably because they can’t find the sundries section. I’ve seen enough. Case closed. I’m out of here.

Outside, I call Mr. Richmond. He must see my name on his phone screen because he bounces me straight to his voice mail. I’m succinct in explaining a pretty common Medicare Insurance scam and add that Tiffany was instrumental in helping me crack the case. Next, I call the Evanston Police Department and ask to speak to Bruce Lansky, a detective I used to know back in the day when I was in the CPD. We have a nice chat, catch up on crimes, and I tell him of the scam going down at Evanscago Drugs. He tells me “I owe you a lunch, Sherlock.”

I ask him instead just to give me the cash he’d spend on our lunch. He laughs. I don’t. I wasn’t kidding.

---

It’s a nice, cool fall day. The air is clean and crisp, the sun is shining, a good day for a walk along the lakefront. I start out at Evanston’s Clark Street Beach and walk north through the Northwestern University campus. Fall is, by far, the best season in Chicago.

I make the mistake of taking my cell phone with me. “Wait” Jack Wayt calls to inform me that he has contracted a toenail fungus, which could be deadly since his fungi closely resembles the photo of a fungus featured on his favorite website
Diseases ‘R Us
. After we discuss possible cures and remedies, including amputation, Jack goes over what he found in the area of my almost demise. “Traces of coke, meth, oxy, some seeds. I’m telling you, Sherlock, once these new medical pot dispensaries are up and running it’s really going to cut into weed sales on the streets,” he says.