3 The Case of Tiffany's Epiphany by Jim Stevens

and hope for another sighting. While I'm leaning against the concrete railing over the Chicago River, I ask myself a number of questions. The first being: Why am I doing this? As far as I know, I’m not even getting paid. Tiffany isn’t hurt and is no longer in any danger. I could chalk the whole incident up to her bad choice of a cocktail. Secondly, why did the Thug in the fedora kidnap me? To scare me, to warn me, to keep me away from something or someone? Thirdly, what was that whoosh/plop sound that I can’t get out of my head? Fourthly, why does this whole thing intrigue the heck out of me? And, last but not least, will Morrie’s Bail Bonds Bailouts team ever win a game?
    I stay lost in thought for about an hour, never seeing Bruno. I make my first call on my new phone to my girls, then grab dinner at the first cheap place to eat that I can find. While I devour a turkey sandwich, I read the latest edition of the Sun Times that some thoughtful person left on the seat. By the time I leave the restaurant, it’s close to 8:30. I decide it would be a good time to go stand in line.
    ---
    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