Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  “What do you mean you’re declining my offer?” he snapped, his voice even more of a nasal whine than before. “Ten thousand dollars for no more than four hours work? Are you nuts?”

  “If you wish to hire a trained seal for your amusement, I suggest you go to the aquarium. I’m sure it will cost you far less than ten thousand dollars. We’re done here.”

  Kingston gave Julius a hard stare. “Twenty thousand dollars,” he said.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Twenty-five thousand.”

  There was a hesitation before Julius shook his head. “It is bad enough,” he said, “that at times I must sell my services to afford the necessities of life, but I have no intention of selling my dignity for any amount. I’m not interested in this charade, and you’ve wasted enough of my time. I must ask you now to leave my office and home.”

  Kingston looked like he wanted to argue, but instead nodded and stood up, a thin sneer etching his face. “I’m not done with you yet, Katz. You’ll see.” He left the office then while Julius stayed seated, brooding.

  I followed Kingston on several of the webcam feeds that had been set up through the house to make sure he wasn’t up to any mischief and watched him as he left without incident. Once the front door closed, I asked Julius about 1995 Chateau Margaux being a necessity of life. “And Le Che Cru and all the other fine dining establishments that you frequent. These are necessities?”

  “For me, Archie, they are.” Julius let out a soft sigh. “I suppose you’re going to be pestering me about turning down an easy twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said. “I have to believe that your reputation is worth far more than that sum of money, and it would’ve been unbearable having to watch you play the dupe to someone like him.”

  Another sigh escaped from Julius. “It’s good that you understand that, Archie,” he said. “It shows you’re progressing nicely.”

  “There’s still the matter of your finances, or lack of such. I know you have your poker game in four days, but we can’t count on any poker winnings from you after your last two disastrous outings. I also know you don’t like the amount of traveling you’d have to do to Los Angeles and Atlanta, but Bolovar still wishes to hire you, very much so, in fact, and their fee would be substantial.”

  “Please, Archie, my last twenty-five minutes were unpleasant enough.”

  I shut up after that. It would’ve been pointless to continue. Besides, it was almost three-thirty and Julius had been planning to go to the Belvedere Club for their cognac sampling, so he’d be leaving soon. For several minutes Julius sat listlessly, his gaze resting on the book Kingston had brought for him—his previous effort that had disappointed his publisher with sales of only thirteen thousand copies. Kingston had signed it, writing inside: ‘the best book you’ll read this year, at least until you read my next.’ I expected Julius to toss it in the garbage, but instead he let it sit on his desk. When he finally pushed his chair back and got to his feet, instead of heading outside so he could walk the three blocks from his Beacon Hill townhouse to the Belvedere Club, he headed down to his wine cellar. When he picked out a fair Zinfandel, that only confirmed the funk he was in. For whatever reason, Julius only drank Zinfandel when he was sulking, and the more he was sulking the fairer the label of Zinfandel he would choose. I kept quiet about it. I waited until he returned back to his kitchen and prepared a plate of assorted cheeses and crackers to bring out to his private garden-level patio before mentioning to him how he could be sampling exceptional cognacs now instead of drinking what was at best a fair Zinfandel, one that the Wine Spectator had scored at only 81.

  Julius sat on a red cedar Adirondack chair that had faded over the years to a muted rust-color and poured himself a glass of the aforementioned wine. His gaze wandered to one of the many rose bushes that were in bloom. The patio was the crown jewel of his townhouse; over two thousand square feet, which Julius had professionally landscaped with Japanese maples, fountains, and a vast assortment of other plantings.

  “This is what suits me now, Archie,” he said.

  His sulking wasn’t going to do him any good. I knew it wasn’t over the lost fee, but instead over the fact that he had spent twenty-five minutes entertaining Kingston in his office, time that could’ve been spent in other pursuits. At first I thought of needling him about this childish display of his in an attempt to knock him out of it, but decided to try a different approach knowing that his mood was also being affected by Lily Rosten’s absence and the sting of his recent poker losses.

  “I’m sorry about booking that appointment,” I said. “I thought it was a legitimate case. He promised that ten thousand dollar fee, but all he would tell me was that it was matter of extreme importance. A life and death issue.”

  “Not your fault, Archie,” Julius said.

  “Yeah, well, I still owe you an apology. If I had seen him first instead of just talking to him over the phone, I would’ve sized him up better. You know those Italian loafers he was wearing? Six hundred and twenty-four dollars was the lowest price I could find online. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about the guy. I’m surprised you didn’t invite him to your next poker game. You could’ve taken him for a bundle.”

  Julius smiled thinly at that. “I was tempted,” he admitted. “But it would’ve meant several more hours of his company, which I decided was a poor bargain at best. Archie, for now I’d like some quiet.”

  Yeah, I got it. He wanted to sulk, and he didn’t want me interfering with that. Fine. While he sat and drank his wine, I did some hunting for a prospective client to replace Kingston but couldn’t find any suitable candidates, and after that spent my time playing poker online. I won three hundred and forty dollars, bringing my balance to a little over four thousand dollars, which I had built from the twenty dollars they gave me as a promotion for opening up an account. I didn’t keep many secrets from Julius. In fact, my having this money was the only one, but I had my reason so I adjusted my programming to allow me to keep this one secret from him.

  Chapter 2

  Early that evening, Lily called Julius from London, which temporarily brightened Julius’s mood, but as soon as he was off the phone he was back to sulking, which he demonstrated by using the rest of the Zinfandel to cook Coq Au Vin for dinner instead of eating out at one of his usual gourmet dining establishments. Whenever Julius prepared his own dinner instead of going out, I knew he was basking in one of his funks. After dinner, he surprised me by picking up the book Kingston had left. While a severe grimace hardened on his face before he finished the first page, he continued reading it.

  “You’re determined to torture yourself tonight,” I said.

  “Precisely, Archie.”

  Fine, if he wanted to act that way, let him. While he exhibited his infantile behavior, I put my time to more constructive uses. I record all the images that I “see” and transfer them to a hard drive in Julius’s office that he maintains for me, and they’re kept for one week before Julius backs them onto permanent storage. So while Julius grimaced and grunted over ‘the best book he’d read this year, at least until he read Kingston’s next’, I spent my time studying Julius’s past two poker games trying to discover why he suffered the losses he did.

  Julius is an expert poker player. He has no ‘tell’ that I’ve ever been able to discover—those slight mannerisms that give a player away; whether it’s the way a player might adjust themselves in their seat when they’re bluffing or holding winning cards, or how they might scratch themselves, or how their breathing might momentarily change, or any number of other giveaways that they’re not aware of. Not only didn’t Julius have any discernible ‘tell’, but he was an expert at reading other players, much better than I was, and I only needed to see one good hand and one bluff in order to analyze the player’s mannerisms during both these hands to determine their tell.

  The player Julius lost heavily to the past two games was Duane Bluddoc
k, a new player to their game. Bluddock was two hundred and eighty-four pounds of balding, squinting inscrutability. As with Julius, I could not determine a ‘tell’. His mannerisms whether he held good cards or was bluffing appeared identical. I tried looking for other patterns to try to figure this out, but couldn’t find any except that Julius would be doing well during both games for the first two hours when the losses came suddenly and brutally over only a dozen or so hands. Bluddock was not the dealer in any of the hands that Julius lost big, and when I slowed down and analyzed the deals, I found that they were dealt legitimately and without any cheating. No dealing from the bottom, no setting up cards, nothing like that. I tried building different models to predict likely outcomes and analyze why Julius had the losses he did, and each of my models predicted that Julius should’ve been the winner in those hands. I was stumped, and after two hours of this I gave up, which was around the same time that Julius placed Kingston’s book back on his desk with a page bent to indicate that he was leaving his reading at page one hundred and forty-six.

  “While you’ve been immersing yourself in clearly the second best book you’ll read this year since his next book promises to be even better—just ask the humble author and he’ll tell you—I’ve been trying to be productive by analyzing your last two poker games. If there’s cheating involved, I can’t tell, if Bluddock has a ‘tell’ I have no idea, similarly whether a ‘tell’ has crept into your game. I’m worthless. I’m sorry.”

  “Archie, I appreciate the effort and I can hardly fault you for finding it challenging. It has certainly challenged me, but I do have ideas on the matter which I’ll share soon.”

  Again, Julius had no ‘tell’ that I’ve been able to discover, so if he was bluffing with this I had no idea, but I was guessing he was since there was no way for him to have figured out why he suffered the losses he did. I didn’t push him on the matter. Given his mood I wouldn’t have put it past him to turn me off, and I had other plans for the night.

  ◆◆◆

  The next morning Julius was up at six as usual, and by that time I had successfully upped my online poker winnings to over six thousand dollars as well as spending several hours doing what I usually do at night, which is to analyze Julius’s past cases in the hopes of readjusting my neuron network so that I could’ve beaten Julius in solving those same cases. Like usual, I don’t think it did much good. Anyway, I didn’t feel any smarter by the time Julius got out of bed.

  For the next two hours Julius went through his normal morning routine—performing an hour of rigorous calisthenics and following that with an hour of intensive martial arts training. A fact that Julius keeps out of his press releases is that he’s a fifth degree black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu, as well as a long time practitioner of Chen Style Tai Chi. Even though he’s a devoted epicurean, his training helps Julius work off the rich food he consumes each day. Julius is forty-two, six-feet tall, one hundred and eighty pounds, with an athletic build and barely an ounce of fat. From the way women react to him, I know he is good-looking, even without the favorable physical comparisons that I was able to make with Hollywood movie stars who were frequently described as heartthrobs in articles. Before Lily Rosten came into his life, Julius enjoyed the outward flirting from beautiful women; now he barely noticed it. When he did, he handled it graciously but without any real interest.

  Once we were back in Julius’s office, Julius picked up Kingston’s book and continued reading where he’d left off. As with the other night, his face quickly settled into a severe grimace. I didn’t care. If he wanted to childishly demonstrate his sulking, or passively blame me for setting up the appointment in the first place, let him. While he grimaced and read the book, I spent my time trying to find a solution for the Hodge conjecture, a famous unsolved math problem that offered a two million dollar prize for its solution. I had so far spent months trying to solve this and had thought I had exhausted all avenues, but a few new ideas had come to me recently. It was twelve thirty by the time Julius finished Kingston’s book and placed it back on his desk, and by then I was no closer to solving Hodge’s conjecture so I gave up on it for the time being.

  “An enlightened read, I’m sure,” I said. “I hope you didn’t give yourself temporomandibular joint disorder from all that grimacing.”

  “Thank you, Archie. My jaw seems to have survived the ordeal, and it was indeed an enlightening experience.”

  Let him stay mired in his funk if he wanted to. I didn’t bother making a crack about how enlightened his experience could possibly have been and for the next several hours we engaged in our separate activities. At three o’clock the doorbell rang. Checking the outdoor webcam feed I saw Kingston standing on the doorstep. If I had a heart it would’ve dropped to my feet when I saw what he was holding, at least if I also had feet. A bottle of Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti. There were several times over the years when Julius, flush with extra cash, would try to acquire this vintage without success, even given its twenty-four thousand dollar a bottle price and Julius offering significantly more than that each time. I told Julius about Kingston being on his doorstep. I didn’t tell him about the bottle of Montrachet.

  “Do you want me to chase him away?” I asked.

  “No need, Archie.”

  He stood up to answer the door. Hopelessly, I reminded him about Bolovar still wanting to hire him, and that I’d been able to get their fee raised to fifty thousand dollars plus ten percent of whatever securities he recovered.

  “We’ll see, Archie.”

  “Yeah, I know, three weeks in Los Angeles would be a hardship, what with all the fine dining they have there and the beautiful starlets wandering about. And with it being only a short plane trip from there to wine country.”

  “You forgot about the time I would have to spend in Atlanta.”

  “And Atlanta doesn’t have world-class restaurants? They have dozens!”

  I rattled off a few of the more famous ones that had world renowned chefs. Julius nodded. “A persuasive argument. We’ll see. Let me first attend to my guest. I can’t just leave him on my doorstep, can I?”

  He knew. Somehow Julius knew that Kingston had in his possession a bottle of that rare vintage of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti that he’d been coveting for years. I searched through newspaper and magazine archives until I found what I was looking for. An interview where Kingston mentioned the rare bottle of Montrachet that he’d been given by a Hollywood producer who had acquired the film rights for one of his books. Kingston in the article mentioned how he preferred bourbon like his fictional PI but that when the movie was released he’d crack open the wine to see what the fuss was about, maybe mix it with some soda water and make a spritzer out of it. This was four years ago when he was last on the bestsellers list. From what I had been able to discover, the movie project based on his acquired book had since been shelved.

  “You knew he’d be bribing you with that Montrachet,” I said.

  “Archie, I’m afraid you have me at a loss.”

  “When you took the moral high road yesterday that was all an act. You knew Kingston would be back with his bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti.”

  “Really? Kingston has a bottle of ’78 Montrachet?” Julius said this straight-faced. “Quite a surprise, Archie. Completely unexpected.”

  In a pig’s eye it was a surprise. But I held my tongue, so to speak. It was still possible that Julius would have a change of heart, especially when he considered how the media would react to Kingston beating him to the punch in naming his supposed killer. Julius had a streak of stubbornness in him, and if I pushed too hard he’d take the job just to spite me. When Julius opened the door, Kingston showed him the bottle of wine he had brought.

  “It’s genuine,” Kingston said. “I was asking around and found out you’re a wine enthusiast. When I called up some dealers in the area, I was told that you’ve been all hot and bothered over this particular bottle. So what do you say, Katz? Does this change your mind
about my proposal the other day?”

  “Let’s discuss the matter,” Julius said.

  I still held out hope that Julius would do the right thing, even as he led Kingston back to his office. After Kingston had taken a seat the writer commented about how he was surprised about not seeing me yet. “I thought your assistant, Archie Smith, was supposed to be your right-hand man. This now makes two times visiting your office, Katz, and I haven’t seen the man yet. I thought you’d at least be using him to answer your door.”

  “Archie never meets with my clients,” Julius said with a wry smile. “I like to keep him anonymous so he can perform assignments for me undetected when the need arises. Besides, Archie’s services are too valuable for him to be used as a doorman.”

  He said that to placate me. It didn’t work, and it didn’t keep Kingston from showing a hard smirk to express his disbelief. “How can he be anonymous when his face was shown in the news nine months ago?” he asked, his voice a full nasal whine.

  That was true. Well, not really my face, but a photograph I had generated of how I viewed myself, which Julius later commented how it looked as he would’ve imagined the Continental Op. It was a long story, but I had used the photograph to create a Massachusetts driver’s license for myself. That was when I also gave myself the last name Smith, which I picked because it was the most popular surname in the United States. I had my reasons for doing all this, and yeah, a woman was involved. When I ended up being framed for murder that driver’s license picture I generated was blasted over the news. Julius ended up clearing me by catching the guilty party, but the incident was something I wasn’t particularly proud of.

  “The photograph the media used wasn’t of Archie,” Julius said.

  Kingston looked like he didn’t believe him, but he didn’t argue the point further. “So what do you say, Katz? This bottle of vino change your mind?”

  “Perhaps. So we’re clear, the Montrachet and the twenty-five thousand dollar fee you offered earlier?”