Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  “Yeah, well, we’re out of luck as far as that goes,” Cramer said. “I asked her to stay in the area and she agreed to.”

  After that they had a few more tactical issues to discuss, with Cramer grumbling three different times how if he could get search warrants to look for the murder weapon he’d have the case wrapped up before noon without Julius’s help.

  “That pesky fourth amendment,” Julius commented, tongue-in-cheek, after the third time Cramer complained about this.

  Cramer shot him a glance but didn’t say anything. He knew he had nothing to take to a judge to justify search warrants for those six suspects.

  It was ten minutes to six before they were done and all the cops had cleared out. By that time, the four pounds of roast beef Julius carved were history, as were two blocks of cheddar cheese, one loaf of rye bread, one loaf of pumpernickel, half a jar of mustard, and to Julius’s revulsion, a good amount of mayonnaise.

  “You really have him rattled,” I said.

  Julius was in the process of clearing away dirty dishes. He raised an eyebrow at that. “I’m not sure I follow you, Archie,” he said as if he was genuinely surprised at my comment.

  “Cramer. You got him so rattled the poor guy can’t think straight. My god, he actually bought that load of hogwash you sold him.”

  “And what load of hogwash might that be?”

  “Where should I start? How about that you’re going to look into the eyes of those six suspects and from that pick out the guilty party. Should I be ordering you a talisman, or perhaps a crystal ball? A divining rod?”

  “I believe I said I’d also be questioning each of them.”

  “Yeah, you did. And from that you’re guaranteeing by midnight that you’ll be unveiling one of them as the murderer? Pardon my French, but what a load of hogwash. Same as your explanation why one of those six has to be the killer. Yeah, maybe with what you said it’s more likely, but certainly not guaranteed. I got to give you a lot of credit for selling that with a straight face.”

  Julius gave a hurt look as he considered what I said. “You don’t think I’ll be doing as I promised Detective Cramer?”

  “You might,” I said. “Yeah, okay, let me say it’s very possible you’ll be figuring out which one of them it is by midnight. But it’s not because you’ll be looking in their eyes as you question them. It’s because you already have something. Whether you got this something from Kingston or when you had that group of possible murderers in your office, I don’t know. But you got something, and that’s why you fed Cramer that load of hogwash. Because you didn’t want to give him what you have.”

  An amused smile pulled up the corners of Julius’s lips as he continued to take care of the dirty dishes his guests left behind. “Archie,” he said, “let’s assume I’ve been able to grasp onto a straw. Not even a straw, something far more fragile and delicate than that, something which is going to require a great deal of finesse before I’m able to transform it into a club to catch Kingston’s killer and my would-be assassin. Would you have me hand this to the police, knowing that they would obliterate it and leave me, as well as anyone else, no chance of catching this creature?”

  “Before you had a half-baked suspicion. Now you’re grasping onto a straw. Or something not even a straw since it’s too fragile and delicate to be a straw. So which is it?”

  “None of the above, Archie,” Julius said. “I misspoke earlier. What I have is barely half-baked, and certainly not as tangible to ever have been thought of as a straw. It’s something far more ethereal than that.”

  “Okay, straw, a wisp of something fragile and ethereal, or a barely half-baked suspicion, whatever you want to call it, I’d love to hear what you have.”

  “Archie,” Julius said, “whatever it is, I have too perilous a grasp on it to feel comfortable talking about it. Maybe later when it’s firmer in my mind.”

  So he wanted to be cute and hold this to himself. Or maybe he had nothing, and was only trying to bluff me as he did Cramer. Or maybe in his sleep-deprived state, he was hallucinating whatever it was he thought he had. Whichever of these it was, I wasn’t going to get it out of him, at least not then.

  “You know,” I said, “Cramer did have a good idea. If you’re not above some breaking and entering, I could put Tom Durkin on the job looking for that gun.”

  Julius shook his head. “It’s doubtful that he would find the murder weapon by breaking into their homes,” he said. “There are too many places it could be hidden, and even searching for the gun in this manner would threaten the one chance I have of catching this person.”

  “Fine,” I said. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but it wasn’t worth arguing. “There’s a good chance the press is going to find out about the shooting here. I’m surprised they haven’t yet. If they do, you want me to stonewall them or give them a statement?”

  Julius’s eyes dimmed as he considered this. “Archie, why don’t you confirm that an attempt was made on my life. Also that I suspect it was done by the same person who murdered Kingston, and that the reason this attempt was made is because this killer knows that I’ll be naming him by midnight tonight.”

  “You’re sure you want to go on the record like this?”

  “Quite sure, Archie.”

  “What if they don’t call? You want me to put out a press release?”

  “For now, let’s give them the opportunity to call. If they don’t, we’ll see.”

  “Okay, if they call I’ll give them your statement. I sure hope you can pull this off. We’ll look pretty damn stupid if you don’t. It’s six o’clock in the morning, normally the time you’d be waking up. If you want to catch a few hours sleep, I’ll take care of the reporters and any other assignments you might have for me.”

  “Thank you, Archie, but a few hours sleep now would be worse than no sleep at all. It would only leave me in a sluggish state. I’ll wait until I catch this killer before I sleep again.”

  This last part about waiting to sleep until he caught this killer was just bravado on his part. I didn’t doubt that Julius would catch this guy if he put his mind to it, but this whole bit of guaranteeing that he’d do it by midnight was a bluff, and I hated the idea of passing this bluff onto the media. But I didn’t bother arguing with him. I was just glad he was going to be focusing his mind on it. With the money he now had in his bank account, as well as the hundred dollar bills thickening his wallet, it probably would’ve taken him getting shot at before he’d be willing to focus his genius on anything.

  Chapter 14

  That morning Julius set about to follow his normal routine of exercise and martial arts training, and as usual when he went about this he left me on his dresser bureau while he went up to the martial arts studio that he had built on the top floor of his townhouse. While he spent his time doing exercises, kicks, punches, and generally beating the hell out of a heavy bag, I tried to figure out what half-baked ethereal wisp of a suspicion Julius believed he was trying to get a grasp on. I went back to the beginning and analyzed both of Kenneth Kingston’s visits to Julius’s office and then Julius’s meeting with the six potential murder suspects, and by the time I finished I was still clueless. I tried studying the way these people acted and got nothing out of it. I tried working more on my simulations and got nowhere. When I worked on building motives for each of the suspects, I ended up with little more than the obvious ways each of them felt towards Kingston. With Herbert Richardson it was hostility. Jonathan Mable, jealously. Zoe Chase, fear. Edward Marriston, loathing.

  Paul Burke and Gail Kingston were harder to pin down, but I decided for Burke there had to be some humiliation over being publicly ridiculed by Kingston’s Paul Buck creation, and with Gail Kingston I threw up my virtual hands with no idea how she felt towards her dead husband. Was she angry at him, annoyed with him, or worried about him as she told Julius? Whichever it was, hell if I knew. So that was what I had. Nothing. Zip. Zero. Whatever wisp Julius was trying to grasp elude
d me entirely, if that wisp even existed. Since Julius had no tell, except when he wanted to, the whole thing could still turn out to be a bluff on his part.

  Usually by eight-fifteen Julius would come back down from his workout. That morning he didn’t, and I decided he was probably spending extra time sweating in his steam room. He had one installed in the back of his martial arts studio, and after not being able to get any sleep the previous night, he was probably taking some steam to help him recuperate. Since he only had webcams installed in his wine cellar and throughout the first floor of the townhouse, I couldn’t check up on him, but I didn’t worry about it.

  Right around twenty minutes past eight I was interrupted from my search for Julius’s wisp of a half-baked suspicion. From the trickle of phone calls I started receiving from local TV and newspaper reporters, word must’ve finally leaked about the shooting outside Julius’s front door. I gave them the statement that Julius asked me to and little else, although I told each of them that if they played nice and kept away from Julius’s townhouse they’d be invited to the press conference after Julius caught the wretch who perforated Kingston’s ticker and tried to do the same to his, but if they made a pest of themselves they’d be left out in the cold. None of them liked that much. All of them had a barrage of questions, which I stonewalled, and all of them wanted to send their folks to shoot either photos or video of Julius’s bullet-ridden front door. I told them no dice, that if they did that I’d find out about it, and they’d be placed promptly on the not-to-invite list where they’d remain for eternity. They grumbled, complained and, in some cases, whined about this, but it did them no good. They also grumbled, complained and whined even louder when I cut their calls short, which I had to do as more calls kept piling up.

  By eight-thirty what had started as a trickle became a torrential downpour as the news about the shooting must’ve spread. Handling these calls kept me too busy to work any further on my simulations or even pay much attention when nine o’clock rolled around and still no sign of Julius. There was something I was curious about, and when a reporter called who I was chummy with even though we usually traded insults, I asked how the story got leaked. He didn’t know. “It’s just out there,” he told me. “The cops won’t confirm or deny it, which is as good as confirming it.” He hesitated for a moment before adding, “Something else that’s floating out there. That maybe Julius staged this himself.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  I could almost imagine this reporter’s face becoming flustered on the other end of the connection as he tried to think of a plausible reason to explain why Julius might’ve done something like that. “I don’t know,” he said, his tone every bit as flustered as I imagined his expression. “It could be that he’s taking some heat after letting a client get bumped off and not doing anything about it. This way he can save face by now jumping into the fray and being the hero.”

  “Not a chance,” I told him. “First off, Julius couldn’t care less about whatever heat anyone wants to give him as long as his wine cellar is well-stocked, which it is. Second, real bullets were fired at Julius with the intent to kill. This wasn’t staged, and it’s only a miracle that Julius is still breathing.”

  “You witness this?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’m keeping that to myself for the time being, but it doesn’t change that the attempt on Julius’s life was very real. It’s not something up for debate. You got my guarantee on that.”

  He didn’t like my answer, and he didn’t like it any better when I cut him off with all the other questions he still had for me, but again, the calls were coming fast and furious and I had no choice. It wasn’t until nine-thirty that this torrential downpour of calls once again slowed to a trickle, and it was at that time that Julius came down from the third floor looking showered and refreshed, and showing no signs that he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Julius slipped his ear piece in, and after I finished with the last of the media calls I filled him in on how I’d been spending my time.

  “Sounds like you’ve had a busy morning,” Julius said.

  “You’re not kidding,” I told him “Everyone called, both the local and national guys. None of them were left happy. If you’d like I could appease them somewhat and send them webcam footage of your bullet-ridden front door.”

  “I’d rather that you didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I don’t blame you. A bunch of vultures, I’ll tell you. I think my threats will keep them from your door. And speaking of doors, do you want me to get the bullet holes filled in and the door painted?”

  “A splendid idea, Archie.”

  “Okay, I’ll get someone here this morning.” I then paused before adding, “I was wondering about who leaked the story about you being shot at. I asked some of the reporters I’m friendly with, but they didn’t seem to know, and I didn’t find anything hacking into their phone records or email accounts. I guess it could’ve come from the police. I’d hate to think it was one of your neighbors. Up until now they’ve been good about keeping your affairs quiet.”

  “That is a concern,” Julius agreed. He had been dressing while I filled him in, and he had already put on a light tan-colored button-down shirt, gray suit pants, a pair of argyle socks, and was finishing up tying a Windsor knot into a rich burgundy-colored tie that he had selected for the day. As he put on his suit jacket, a look of concern pinched his features. After slipping on his shoes, he picked me up from his dresser and attached me to his tie as he always did each morning.

  “By the way, I think you’re bluffing,” I told him.

  He was still too distracted from whatever it was that was concerning him to pay me much mind, and he barely raised an eyebrow at my comment. “What am I bluffing about, Archie?” he asked.

  “About the fact that you’re trying to grasp onto some half-baked wisp of whatever,” I said. “My bet is you’ve got nothing, at least as far as whoever it was who plugged Kingston and shot at you.”

  “So why would I make the promise that I did to Detective Cramer, and let you make the same promise to the world?”

  “Because you weren’t happy that someone thought they could take a shot at you. Three shots, really. You want to catch this guy, or gal, whichever the case might be, so you conned Cramer with your ridiculous promise. And being supremely confident of your abilities, you figured that if Cramer dragged each of those suspects over here for you to interrogate, that something will come up. A clue, a spark of genius, something. How’s that sound?”

  “Interesting, Archie,” Julius murmured softly, his forehead wrinkled slightly to show that he was still distracted by some thought. “There is a flaw in your theory. If I truly don’t have anything, then couldn’t the murderer be someone outside of those six people? You yourself mentioned that my explanation to Detective Cramer wasn’t completely sound. Wouldn’t that leave too much of a risk that I’d be falling flat on my face?”

  “I thought of that,” I said. “I’m guessing you decided to play the odds since there’s a good chance it is one of those six, both for the reasons you gave Cramer and also the list Kingston made. I mean, why would he make that list to begin with if one of those six weren’t planning to kill him?”

  “You could be right, Archie,” Julius said. He buttoned the top button of his suit jacket and headed out of his bedroom moving at a determined pace. Once he was on the stairs he added, “I guess you’ll have to wait until midnight to see how all this plays out.”

  Again, I had no way of reading him, but I was sticking with the bluffing angle. When Julius reached the first floor level, he surprised me by bypassing the kitchen and instead heading straight to his office. Julius’s morning routine was to have coffee and breakfast before setting foot into his office, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. For years, Julius had been an unabashed bachelor, and I wasn’t used to this madly-in-love stuff that he had going with Lily Rosten. He spent some time tracking her down in London, but once he got her on the phone, I understood what wa
s going on. With the story of his being shot at breaking, he wanted to let her know he was okay before she heard about it in the news over there. While he talked to her I tried not to eavesdrop, and instead worked on tweaking my neuron network so I’d be better able to recognize this from Julius in the future. After he got off the phone with Lily, he headed straight to the kitchen for coffee and breakfast.

  “Lily okay with you being shot at?” I asked.

  Julius sighed. “Not exactly,” he said. “But I think she’ll feel better once this person has been arrested.”

  So it wasn’t just someone having the audacity to think they could use Julius as target practice that got the fire under him. I’m sure that was a big part of it, but he also wanted to catch this person to reassure Lily. Again, this whole departure of Julius from confirmed bachelor to committed relationship was new to me and had me off balance, but I was learning.

  Minutes later, while Julius was pouring a cup of his freshly-brewed and specially-shipped French roast, I received a call from Paul Burke. He sounded beat, like he hadn’t slept that night either. I put him on hold to ask Julius whether he wanted to be patched in. He nodded that he did.

  “Rough night?” I asked Burke once I was back with him.

  “You wouldn’t know the half of it,” he told me.

  “I don’t know. I think I can imagine how rough it would be hiding in bushes until two-thirty in the morning. Even rougher, camping out all those hours only to miss your target.”

  He laughed at that, but it was a dead laugh. “You’re a funny guy,” he said. “If you ever lost your gig with Julius you could do standup at any of the comedy clubs in town. You’re right about me being camped out last night. But it wasn’t in any bushes and it wasn’t until two-thirty in the morning, and it also wasn’t so I could take potshots at your boss. I’m still looking for my runaway teenager. On a tip, I spent another night in the same dirty rat-infested alley looking for her, and I was camped out there until six this morning. And guess who was waiting for me when I got home? The police. They finished grilling me five minutes ago about what happened to your boss last night. And they weren’t happy that I couldn’t give them a better alibi. So that really happened, huh? They weren’t just kidding me? Someone took shots at Julius?”