Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  There was a hitch along Kingston’s mouth as he clearly thought the Montrachet should’ve been sufficient payment, but he decided against arguing and instead nodded. “Yeah, sure,” he agreed.

  “And this would be nonrefundable,” Julius added.

  “What do you mean nonrefundable?”

  Julius leaned back in his chair, his eyelids lowering to where it looked as if he were about to start napping. “Exactly what the word means,” he said. “If I accept your proposal I am going to start preparing for it, and I could very well end up turning down other offers for work. If this stunt of yours gets cancelled before it can be performed, I will retain full payment, including the ’78 Montrachet.”

  “Why would it get cancelled?”

  Julius shrugged. “You might change your mind,” he said. “After all, your scheme does require you to defame an innocent party by announcing them an intended murderer, and you might decide the liability issues involved aren’t worth it. Or maybe your publisher cancels your book, or a myriad of other possible reasons.”

  “Okay, whatever,” Kingston said, his cheeks turning a light pink to show his irritation.

  “Then I accept your proposal.”

  The leer Kingston flashed him all but said, ‘Your dignity’s not for sale, Katz? Like hell it isn’t. Everybody’s got their price, you included.’ This contemptuous leer only lasted a second, if even that long. He had enough innate cunning to realize he’d better nor push it. and Julius acted as if he hadn’t noticed it, but I sure noticed it and it made me feel as if an excess of heat was burning through me. This was a new sensation for me, and after a few hundred milliseconds of confusion I understood what it was. Anger. I was angry at Kingston feeling that he could buy Julius, and I was angry at the thought that Julius was going to be playing a stooge for this person. I was disappointed also, a small part because with the money Julius was going to be earning for this charade it would be months before he’d take on a new case, which would be months before I’d be able to observe his genius in action so that I could better adjust my neuron network. But I was mostly disappointed in Julius. This was the first time I had seen him trade his reputation and dignity for a fee, even if in this case the fee was a bottle of ’78 Montrachet. Between the two emotions surging through me, the anger outweighed the disappointment.

  Even though I was far from a happy camper at that moment I did my job and used legal boilerplate to put together a contract for Julius, making sure to spell out the nonrefundable aspect of the job. Once the contract was ready, I emailed Julius the file and informed Julius of it. He printed it out and, after scanning it quickly and grunting his satisfaction with it, handed it to Kingston, who must’ve been surprised to see a contract waiting for him. He gave Julius an odd look as if he thought the contract had been written up the night before, including the clause specifying the ’78 Montrachet as part of the fee, but he signed it. After that he wrote Julius a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.

  At the end of Kingston’s earlier visit he had picked up the list of suspects that he had given Julius. With the contract and payment settled, he took this same list from his inside suit jacket pocket and tried to hand it to Julius, who shook his head.

  “I remember those names from yesterday,” he said. “There is no need to show me them again.”

  “Would you like the profiles I built on them?” I asked dryly. Julius ignored me, not bothering to answer me with our agreed upon hand signals that he used when others were around. I emailed him these profiles anyway.

  “Were you being facetious the other day when you said that these people on your list, with the possible exception of your wife, all want to kill you?” Julius asked Kingston.

  “I might’ve been exaggerating, I might not have been,” Kingston said.

  “Do any of them have legitimate reasons to want to do you harm?”

  Kingston pursed his lips as he considered this.

  “What difference does that make, Katz?” he said. “I’m paying you to put on a show, that’s all.”

  “Sir, wouldn’t you like a realistic performance from me?”

  “I have faith in you, Katz, to deliver a realistic performance in any case. To answer your question; possibly, possibly not. It all depends on what you would consider a legitimate reason to kill someone. But it is all irrelevant since none of them would have the guts to go as far as murder.”

  “Would you at least share with me the perceived grudges they hold against you?”

  Kingston considered this also before shaking his head, a bare trace of a smile on his lips. “I don’t believe I would, Katz. I’m paying you a lot of money, much more than I originally expected to—I’m told that bottle of wine alone is worth twenty-five thousand dollars. I’m not saying I’m not going to get my money’s worth out of this. I could easily spend over fifty thousand dollars in advertising and get far less bang for the buck than I’m going to get with this publicity stunt. But still, for this money I’d like the entertainment value of watching the great genius detective at work, so I’d like to see you discover these reasons for yourself.”

  When Kingston said the word genius he said it with the same contempt that he had shown Julius a flash of earlier. I felt that same flush of heat burning through me, and I found myself hoping Julius would throw this man out of his office. Instead, Julius chose to ignore this man’s belittling of him and nodded slowly in agreement.

  “Very well,” he said. He took in a deep breath and let out a slow, soft sigh. “I would like to see an advance copy of your new novel.”

  “What for?”

  “Again, to create the illusion of an authentic interrogation.”

  Kingston thought about this, but shook his head. “A damn good idea, Katz, and I’d like to be able to oblige you,” he said. His mouth squeezed into a tight oval to show a constipated look as he thought more about this. “A real shame,” he continued. “It could really work well to create a stronger buzz for my book having you drop hints about what the novel’s about. Unfortunately, I can’t do it. The contract I signed with the publisher forbids me from as much as describing the book let alone showing anyone a copy before the book’s official release. I’m not even allowed to tell anyone the title. All part of the top secret publicity campaign that we agreed to.”

  Julius accepted this without any further debate, and then the two men agreed on a time for the first group interrogation, which would be at two o’clock the day after next. Kingston told Julius he’d try to arrange for each person on the list to show up at Julius’s office at that time. Of course, since he hadn’t spoken to any of them yet, he couldn’t guarantee that that time would work, especially with one of them coming from New York, but he’d let Julius know if he had a problem with any of them.

  When Kingston stood up to leave, he hesitated as if he were going to offer Julius his hand but decided against it, which was most likely because he remembered the warning I had given him when he booked his appointment—that Julius never shook hands with clients. Julius always claimed that his reason for this was he didn’t see any reason to unnecessarily expose himself to germs due to some outmoded social convention, but of course that never stopped him in the past from shaking hands with beautiful women and doing far more than just that, although I never actually witnessed him doing much more than shaking their hands. In the old days before Lily Rosten, Julius would always place me in his sock drawer whenever he’d have female company for the night, and so far Lily had yet to spend the night with him.

  When Kingston left Julius’s office, I followed his movements again through webcam feeds as he walked through Julius’s townhouse so that he could let himself out. By this time the excess heat that had been burning through me had dissipated. I understood now why Julius had spent those hours torturing himself reading Kingston’s book. He was attempting to bluff me and pretend that there was more to this job than the charade Kingston had proposed, that he was trying to glean from the book some sort of psychological insight
into Kingston. But it was only a bluff. Maybe it was for himself as much as for me as a way to convince himself to partake in such a ridiculous and ultimately demeaning sham. Once the front door closed behind Kingston I coldly informed Julius of the fact that his new client had left his townhouse without incident.

  “He did stop to study the books shelved in your hallway bookcase, and was no doubt insulted to find that you not only didn’t have a complete collection of his works, but nary a single volume. But he did leave without any thefts or other mischief.”

  “Thank you, Archie.”

  Not even a hint of sheepishness or embarrassment showed in Julius’s voice. I was amazed at the level of denial he had sunk to for him to agree to be a part of this charade.

  “I guess he didn’t have to go to the aquarium to hire himself a trained seal.”

  Julius displayed no reaction to my crack. “Things aren’t always what they first appear,” he said.

  More of that bluff. That there was something more to this assignment than just a publicity stunt. I didn’t bite on it. I knew him too well to do that.

  “I thought your dignity and reputation weren’t for sale?” I asked.

  A wry smile pulled up the edges of Julius’s lips. “I don’t believe I ever said anything about my reputation being priceless,” he said.

  “Okay, your dignity then.”

  More of his wry smile. “Technically, Archie, I don’t believe I as much sold my dignity as bartered it away.”

  It was a clever joke, but I wasn’t much up to joking then. More of that excess heat began to burn again in me. “For a lousy bottle of wine! That’s what you did it for!”

  “I hardly think you can call a ’78 Montrachet a lousy bottle of wine.” Julius’s smile faded as he sat straighter in his chair and rubbed his thumb along the knuckles of his right hand. With others, Julius kept his emotions and thoughts impenetrable, with me he didn’t bother. Right now he was showing his annoyance, but I didn’t care. “The man is a philistine,” Julius continued. “He was going to mix soda water with a ’78 Montrachet to make a wine spritzer. It would’ve been a crime to let that happen.”

  “So you were just saving humanity from an outrage?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I understand. For a bottle of wine, you’ve agreed to play a stooge.”

  Julius stopped rubbing his knuckles. He took in a slow breath and with a forced attempt at humor, said, “And of course, twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Of course, we can’t forget the twenty-five thousand dollars. So for that money and the Montrachet, you’ll be looking like a dunce to the world.”

  “Again, Archie, things are not always what they appear.”

  “Yeah, well, as far as the TV and newspaper reporters are going to be concerned, Kenneth J. Kingston will be trumping you at your own game. Should I be ordering you a dunce cap now for the occasion? I might be able to find a good deal.”

  Julius slowly began rubbing his knuckles again. “Enough of this, Archie.”

  I should’ve taken the hint, but I couldn’t help myself. “Sure, of course,” I said. “I understand. But Boss, should I get a jump on updating your biography to reference that you’re no longer Boston’s most brilliant detective, but have slipped to the second-most? Or should I wait until after Kingston plays you for a chump? Now that I think of it, after that happens I’m not even sure you could legitimately claim that title since probably every other working private investigator in Boston would be able to prove themselves intellectually superior to Kingston, so by the transitive property that would in effect make you Boston’s least brilliant detective. Not as compelling a title for you to hold, but I guess we’ll have to deal with it. If you want I can order stationary now to that effect, or I can wait until—”

  I pushed him too far. Julius cut me off, saying, “Goodnight, Archie.” And blast it! My world went black as he turned me off!

  Chapter 3

  Julius seldom turned me off. When he did it was always disorienting when I was turned back on. I commented once to Julius that it was probably a similar experience to being sucker punched, but he insisted it would have to be more akin to be being put under with anesthesia and later brought out of it. Anyway, this time even though I was in almost the same location in Julius’s office when the world came back to me, it was maybe even more disorienting than those other times because of the crowd that was now sitting around me. It was almost as if I blinked and these people magically appeared, and it took me as much as three tenths of a second to get my bearings. I was turned off on Tuesday at three thirty-seven in the afternoon, now it was Thursday at six minutes past two, also in the afternoon. I’d been turned off for almost forty-seven hours.

  There were six other people sitting in Julius’s office. I recognized all of them from the profiles I had built from the list Kingston showed Julius. Sitting on the sofa that shaded to the right of Julius’s desk were Edward Marriston, Zoe Chase and Jonathan Mable. Marriston was Kingston’s agent, Chase his editor, and Mable his ex-writing partner. In the chair directly opposite Julius’s desk was the book critic, Herbert Richardson. More in the corner of the room sat a fellow private investigator, Paul Burke, and sitting alone on the love seat that was placed to the left of Julius’s desk was Kingston’s wife, Gail. Presumably the empty seat next to her was being reserved for her husband. While all of the members of Kingston’s list were present, the perpetrator of this farce, Kenneth J. Kingston himself, was missing. The critic, Herbert Richardson, was clearly not happy with that fact. His face was folded into a severe scowl, and his cheeks were turning redder by the second.

  “The nerve of him!” Richardson exclaimed. “He asks us to be here at two o’clock on the dot, and he doesn’t even show up on time himself!”

  At first impression, Richardson appeared as if he could’ve been one of those tough guy writers, even with his meticulously groomed goatee. Square face, thick body, large hands. Once he talked, though, he ruined that illusion with a high-pitched voice, and the illusion was further obliterated by only a few seconds of observing his fussy mannerisms and overall softness.

  “What’s the reason we were brought here?” Richardson angrily demanded.

  Julius stated innocently, “From what I was told, Kenneth Kingston requested that you come here with the understanding that this is a matter of extreme personal importance to him, and that you all came here freely of your own volition. Isn’t that true?”

  Julius had provided refreshments to this crowd. Zoe Chase had a glass of what I assumed was San Pellegrino water given the empty bottle resting on a service tray in the back of the room, Paul Burke was drinking a Rolling Rock, which was what Julius would have in those rare instances when he was in the mood for beer instead of wine, and the rest of them, Julius included, had glasses of a fine Riesling judging from the empty bottles also on the same service tray. Richardson angrily took a chunk of prosciutto-wrapped Stilton and popped it in his mouth. Barely chewing the hors d’oeuvre, he swallowed and in his high-pitched voice, complained, “You can at least tell us why we’re here!”

  Julius shrugged, his manner unassuming and affable as he apologized to Richardson, telling him he couldn’t do so. “I am in the employ of Mr. Kingston and a condition upon which he insisted was that he be the one to address this gathering as to the nature of my investigation, so unfortunately my hands are tied.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Richardson grumbled. He popped another piece of prosciutto-wrapped Stilton into his mouth. This time he bothered to chew it more thoroughly. After taking a sip of Riesling, he pressed a napkin to his lips, patted the area, then turned to Kingston’s wife and demanded of her whether she knew why her husband had called all of them there.

  “I have no idea,” she said. Gail Kingston was four years younger than her husband. There was an unhealthy gauntness to her. She was more bony than what you’d call thin, with a long narrow face and a neck that looked too scrawny. From the tightness of t
he muscles along her mouth and the dull glazed look of her eyes, I was guessing she was either angry or annoyed. I couldn’t figure out which. Of course, this could’ve simply been a reaction to Richardson’s rudeness, but she had shown that same mix of anger and annoyance or whatever the emotions were before he had spoken a word. Studying the rest of the crowd, Burke seemed to be mostly amused by the situation, his eyes half-closed but still sparkling, while Marriston barely suppressed a yawn and Mable looked equally bored. Zoe Chase seemed to be the one among them who was nervous, maybe even scared. She was young, only twenty-three. Her brown hair was cut short, and she made me think of a wounded sparrow with her weak chin and large brown eyes and thin, slight build. According to her driver’s license she was five feet one inches tall and weighed ninety-two pounds, but she seemed smaller than that with the way she was seemingly shrinking inwards, almost as if she was willing herself not to be noticed. From physical comparisons I made of her to well-known celebrities, she wasn’t beautiful, but she would’ve been thought of as pretty. And she was certainly worried about something.

  Even though this was all only a sham, I played my part and reported to Julius my assessment of them. He briefly scratched along the side of his nose as a signal to me that he saw things similarly.

  Richardson was still fuming. “I came here today out of curiosity. I couldn’t care less about helping the likes of Kingston. But it is still infuriating.” He gave a quick angry glance at his watch before glaring at Julius. “It is now ten minutes past two. How much longer are we to be kept waiting here by that man?”

  “I’m not sure,” Julius said. “You’re free to leave anytime you wish.”

  Richardson closed his mouth, but he didn’t get up to leave. None of them did.

  “You don’t like Kenneth Kingston very much, do you?”

  It was a good thing Richardson wasn’t sipping his wine at that moment, because if he had, the snort he made would have sent the wine spurting out of his nose.