3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany by Jim Stevens Page B

says.
    “Then why did you call me?”
    “Because I’m, like, really bored doing this,” she says. “Can I go back to the bar and party now?”
    The doorknob twists on the speakeasy door. I take off running down the hallway. Somehow I find the button to break the phone connection. I hear the door creak open. I take the first left, find an unlocked room, go inside, and stop breathing. I hear footsteps go up the hallway then come back down the hallway at a slower pace. I wait until I hear another creak, wait a little longer, and find my way back to the stairway. I go up the stairs to the floor where I began.
    Tiffany’s back on the barstool having her usual great time. When she sees me, her first comment is, “You didn’t have to hang up on me. It was a simple question. You could have just said ‘no’.”
    “Sorry, Tiffany,” I apologize. “Three ninjas were coming after me with Samurai swords to cut me up into human sushi when you called.”
    “There’s never a good excuse for being rude, Mr. Sherlock.’”
    No one listens to me.
    I survey the bar scene and feel as out of place as a fat girl in a bulimia ward. “By the way, Tiffany, what did you want to talk to me about?” I finally say.
    “Oh,” she says, “that can wait. I’m having too much fun right now.”
    I make my way out of the bar area, through the dancing mob, out the first door, and back to my buddies manning Zanadu’s eye of the needle. “Arson,” I ask the big guy, “remember that guy a couple of hours ago, carrying a metal briefcase? He was short and had a little ponytail hanging down the back of his neck.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who was he?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You know him, Sterno?”
    “Some supplier.”
    “What does he supply?”
    “Supplies.”
    “He’s not very friendly,” Arson tells me as he unhooks the rope and allows two hot girls to go inside.
    Well, it’s nice to know his rudeness wasn’t merely for my benefit. “You know his name?”
    “No.”
    “How long does he stay?”
    “Not very long,” Sterno says.
    “How long?”
    “Fifteen minutes, maybe.”
    “You know what’s in his case?” I ask the two.
    “Maybe limes,” Arson says. “Or something like limes.”
    “That would certainly make for an interesting twist in the case.”
    The boys don’t get my humor.
    “Does he always have the case with him when he leaves?” I ask.
    “Yeah.”
    The guy’s got to be a bag man, one of those guys who collects the cash derived from an illegal enterprise—like selling hard drugs—and giving it to his superiors.
    I don’t go back inside Zanadu. I can only take so much techno rap music or whatever it is they’re playing. Instead, I walk around the outside perimeter of the building. On the west side there’s a loading dock, with three spaces for semi-trailer trucks. The three roll-up doors look like they haven’t been opened since the British invasion, the one the Beatles started, not King George III. The rear of the building backs right up to the Chicago River; there are no entry or exit points here. I quickly realize the need for the basement pump and the plumbing line running from it.
    There's no way I can work my way around the building from here, so I have to backtrack. I walk back across the front entrance, around the line of waiting customers, and get to the east side of the building. This is the side used for the workings of the club, where I entered the day we came to pick up the security DVDs. There’s a door marked Employees Only , two loading dock doors, both open and obviously both used frequently. There's also a separate door leading to an open maintenance room and a wide hallway, which leads to a large walk-in freezer on the left and the same size refrigerator on the right. I stand across the way, maybe fifty feet back. With the two loading doors open, the action inside the hallway is easy to see. Cases of beer and liquor are transferred, trash is deposited into dumpsters, and plastic