More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  A car alarm sounded. It only lasted for a second, but it was enough to distract Julius and let Cather rush in and grab the .38 away from him. An apologetic smile showed on Cather’s face as he pointed the gun at Julius’s chest. But there was something wrong with the smile. Something vicious about it. And I realized what was also in it. Resentment. I wondered about the cause of that. Whether Cather actually believed that he should’ve had the fame and reputation Julius had.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Julius,” Cather said, although he didn’t sound sorry about it. “I’ve always liked you, and I wouldn’t have sold that dog if I had any idea you were going to be investigating Luther’s murder. I had that guy in England two months ago offering me six hundred grand, and when I looked for a replacement bulldog I did it only as a lark. I knew I couldn’t get away with a switch, at least with Luther alive. But when he was killed that changed things. Six hundred grand, Julius. To my credit, I gave the cops the full seven days to solve Luther’s murder before sending you that bomb. You can’t blame me for that, or for this.”

  Julius took several steps back, but he didn’t look away when Cather pulled the trigger. I wanted to turn off my visual receptors and not see what was going to happen, but I needed to have a recording to show the police—at least from Cather confessing up until what happened after he pulled the trigger. This was an example of what I mentioned earlier about Cather not being as smart as he thought he was. He might not have known Julius was a fifth degree black belt in Shaolin kung fu, but he knew Julius was trained in martial arts, so he should’ve realized that it wouldn’t be that easy for him to grab the gun from Julius. He didn’t know what I really am, and so he couldn’t have known that I triggered the car alarm, but he still should’ve found the alarm going off suspicious, and he should’ve also known Julius wouldn’t have been so easily distracted. If he was half as smart as he thought he was, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger, and he certainly wouldn’t have shown that look of shocked surprise when the gun exploded, at least for that split second while he was still alive.

  ◆◆◆

  Four months later gifts of wine were still coming in from friends, past clients, wine enthusiasts, and celebrities of all kinds. The highlight today was a full case of 1978 Montrachet, which given its price tag of twenty-four grand a bottle, was an extravagant gift, even if it came from a multi-billionaire.

  Before the explosion, Julius had more than five thousand bottles in his wine collection. He now had over forty-two hundred bottles in his newly built cellar, and the only ones he bought came from the case of 1990 Château Beauséjour-Duffau-Lagarosse that he had acquired at auction before the bombing. He was still missing several of his most prized vintages, but any wine expert comparing Julius’s previous inventory with his current one would give his current collection the edge. Julius might even grudgingly do so if he was pestered enough. Or maybe if he was under the influence of Sodium Pentothal.

  These days I make sure that all packages Julius receive are safe. It wasn’t hard for me to learn how to do so—all it took was some rudimentary research to show me how to use a range of emitted frequencies so I can detect electronics hidden in a package. No one was ever going to slip another bomb past Julius as long as I was around.

  Julius’s rebuilt townhouse is similar to what he had before. He did make a few alterations in the design and furnishings so that his home would be more accommodating to Lily, which is ironic. While they still see each other, it’s somehow different now between them, and they’ve put their plans of living together on hold, at least for now.

  Julia was right about the booby-trapped gun changing Julius. He was never what anyone would call warm and fuzzy, but since Cather blew himself up he’s become more distant. He won’t talk to me about it, but I know he’s trying to come to terms with what he did. I think he’s being too hard on himself. Yeah, he might’ve given Cather enough rope to hang himself, but the reason Cather is dead is because he tried for a second time to kill Julius. I’ve since analyzed thousands of literary novels dealing with morality, and I’ve been able to reconcile my role in Cather’s death. In fact, I’ve decided that if I was in Julius’s shoes, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.

  Legally, Julius is in the clear. Cramer didn’t believe for a second that Cather surprised Julius in the garage parking lot as Julius said. In fact, Cramer belligerently accused Julius of setting Cather up, claiming that it would’ve been impossible for a man like Cather to get the better of Julius. He’s right of course, but he has no way of proving it. Not with the recording I made, and not with the booby-trapped gun being a dead-end. That was why Julius needed his sister to obtain it. She has the necessary connections to get a weapon like that so it can never be traced back to anyone.

  I’m no expert on the affairs of the heart. In fact, I admit I’m a bare novice. But I strongly suspect the shift in Julius’s and Lily’s relationship is due to him needing to reconcile with himself what he did. I could be wrong. It could that he’s afraid he’s endangering her. That there could be another Willie Cather out there who could also in the future put her in jeopardy.

  Whichever it is, I hope Julius is able to work past it. I hope he and Lily are able to get back to where they were. It doesn’t take a lot of computing power to know that he was happier after meeting Lily, at least before Cather blew up his home.

  JULIUS KATZ AND THE GIFTWRAPPED MURDER

  “What do you know,” I said as I checked the outdoor webcam to see who had rung the bell. “You’ve got none other than Thomas Lind standing outside your front door.”

  If it had been anyone else arriving unannounced at Julius’s Beacon Hill townhouse at nine-thirty in the morning making a nuisance of himself, it’s doubtful Julius would’ve let this person interfere with his morning newspaper and coffee, and would’ve most likely had me disconnect the doorbell so he could enjoy his morning rituals in peace. But Lind was an entirely different matter. Four days earlier Lind’s business partner, Andrew Connogher, was found shot dead in a Cambridge apartment, and subsequently Lind went missing. With the police requesting information about the whereabouts of the missing multimillionaire businessman, the news has been abuzz with rumors regarding the hostility between the two men ostensibly caused by Connogher attempting over the last three months to have Lind removed from the company he built.

  Julius put down the front section of the newspaper. “Archie, if this is some kind of ploy—”

  “Nope. This is no ploy. And in case you’re wondering, I had nothing to do with Boston’s, or I guess I should say, Cambridge’s most wanted standing outside your door looking kind of gamey. Do you want me to call the police and let them pick him up? There might be a reward in it for you.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  As I said, Thomas Lind’s a different matter, and so Julius broke his cardinal rule against allowing potential clients from showing up without appointments at his townhouse. Since Julius wears me as a tie clip, the first thing I noticed when he opened the front door to his townhouse was how dirty Lind’s overcoat appeared to be, and the next was how disheveled the man looked. Lind was fifty-seven, and from the online photos I had found of him he was good-looking in a rough sort of way, with a ruddy complexion, strong jaw, broad shoulders, and carefully combed blond hair that had started to show some gray. The man standing in front of Julius looked haggard, his eyes bloodshot, his skin gray and unhealthy, and his hair in the same disarray as if he had walked through a windstorm. It took me two hundred milliseconds to reconcile that this man really was Thomas Lind, and it was only then that I noticed something heavy dragging down his overcoat pocket. Enough of an outline showed that I was able to figure out what it was. Julius noticed it also and asked Lind if he was there to use the gun that he had brought.

  Lind shook his head. He looked anxious standing out there in the open, as if he were afraid a cop would come by at any moment and nab him. “Katz, can we talk?” he asked.

  Julius ste
pped aside so that Lind could enter his home. After Julius closed the front door, he led the fugitive millionaire into his office, and motioned for him to take the large cream-colored leather chair that was opposite his desk. Lind sat slumped in it, his shoulders looking anything but broad at that moment. Once Julius took his chair, he leaned back and considered Lind silently while the other man seemed to wilt.

  “This is no good,” Julius said at last. “If you want to confess to killing Andrew Connogher, you should go to the police. And if you’re here instead to hire me to concoct an airtight alibi for you, that’s no good either. I suggest that you leave here at once and consult a lawyer.”

  The muscles along Lind’s jaw tightened, and one of them began visibly pulsating. “I’m not here for either of those reasons,” he said. He pushed a hand through his hair and over his scalp, which did little in helping its messiness. “I don’t know whether or not I killed Andrew.”

  “Preposterous.”

  “No, it’s true.” His jaw muscles clenched tighter. “That’s why I’m here. I want to hire you to find out if I killed him.”

  I could tell Julius was dubious about what Lind had told him. Not from his expression, which showed nothing, but because Julius was usually a gracious host and he wasn’t offering Lind the coffee that the man so clearly needed. The thing is, Julius hates feeding murderers, or even providing them with beverages, and seldom did so. Given the fact that he sat there gazing blandly at Lind told me everything I needed to know.

  “If you wish to explain to me why you don’t know whether you murdered Connogher with the gun that you brought here, go ahead. But I should warn you that you will be doing so at your peril.”

  Lind nodded as if more to himself than to Julius. “That night I was home drinking several more glasses of scotch than I should have. Sometime around midnight I must’ve blacked out. The next thing I was aware of was lying in an alley with this in my pocket.”

  Lind pulled a .32-caliber pistol from his overcoat pocket and placed the gun on Julius’s desk. The police hadn’t released what caliber gun had been used, but when the story broke I was curious enough about it to hack into the Cambridge Police’s computer system, and yeah, a .32 was used. At the time I told Julius about it.

  “What time was this?” Julius asked.

  “Six thirty in the morning. The alley turned out to be off Tremont Street in the Inman Square area of Cambridge. I can’t tell you how I got there or where the gun came from. I just don’t know. When I took out my cell phone to call for a cab I saw the messages from my wife and found out about Andrew and that the police wanted me for questioning.”

  “So you ran.”

  Lind’s mouth weakened as if he took Julius’s comment more as an accusation than a statement of fact. “I was confused,” he said. A slight pink broke through the dead-fish coloring of his cheeks, which I took as embarrassment on his part. “I had no idea where I had been or what I had done, and after finding out Andrew was murdered and that I might’ve had the murder weapon in my coat pocket, I wanted to go someplace where I could be alone and try to remember what had happened. I certainly didn’t want to be questioned by the police right then being as clueless as I was. I think anyone else would’ve felt the same under the circumstances. And yes, I ran. I used one of the company cars to drive to Maine where I spent the last four days holed up in a cabin racking my brain trying to remember what I had done.”

  “Again, this is utterly preposterous.”

  Lind waved Julius’s statement away with a tired hand. “It’s what happened,” he said. “Look, all I care about is knowing the truth. If I was trying to get away with murder, I would’ve tossed this gun somewhere deep in the woods of Maine. But that’s not what I’m after. If I’m the one who shot Andrew, then I’ll take what’s coming to me. I just don’t know if I did it, and as much as I hated the guy, it’s hard for me to imagine murdering anyone. Even him.”

  “If not you, then why’d you have the gun?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very possible I did it. I could’ve gotten my hands on a gun and somehow found out where he was.” Lind looked away from Julius and for a moment his jaw clenched even tighter than earlier. In a voice that sounded almost as if he were being strangled, he added, “Or maybe it was something else. I could’ve called someone who despised Andrew as much as I did. Maybe I ended up being picked up by this person and then passed out completely. Maybe that gave the person an idea to kill Andrew and plant the gun on me.”

  For a good ten seconds Julius sat motionless as he stared at Lind, and then he slowly began drumming the fingers of his right hand against the surface of the desk. I knew what he was thinking. Since rebuilding his townhouse after a bomb destroyed everything he owned, friends, former clients, and celebrities have sent him an impressive collection of wine to stock his new wine cellar, but he was still missing some of his favorite vintages, and to replace them was going to cost the type of fee that Thomas Lind would be willing to pay. So at that moment he was trying to decide how badly he wanted those missing vintages. The drumming stopped as he came to a decision.

  “Mr. Lind, as much as I see this case having the potential to cause me a worse headache than the one you supposedly woke up with four days ago, I will take it on under the following conditions. First, my fee will be one hundred thousand dollars. This will be whether my investigation lasts one minute or one year.”

  Lind nodded resolutely. “Agreed,” he said.

  “My assignment will be limited to discovering whether you murdered Andrew Connogher, and I will report my findings to both you and the police. If you did not murder Connogher, and in the course of my investigation I stumble upon the identity of his murderer, I will report that also, but I am under no obligation to solve his murder.”

  Lind swallowed hard, but again he agreed.

  “That gun will not be destroyed or tampered with. And it must be turned over to the police, at least by the time I’ve finished my investigation. If not before then.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I will not be hired by you directly, but by a lawyer representing you,” Julius said, stating his final condition. “If you haven’t already hired a criminal defense attorney, I can recommend Henry Zack. I’ve used him many times in the past, and he is very good at keeping the presumed innocent out of prison.”

  “I’m not hiring you to build a legal defense for me,” Lind stated, his jaw jutting out. “I don’t care about that part of it.”

  “I do care about it,” Julius said. “I cannot offer the same client confidentiality that a lawyer can, not that I care to. Whatever I discover if I am hired, the police will know it. But the confidentiality cuts both ways. If you were to hire me directly, I would be forced to tell the police about the gun, which at this time could damage my ability to investigate this matter. I would also be subject to harassment from the police, and possibly subject to a material witness charge. No sir, this final condition is nonnegotiable.”

  Lind’s jaw jutted out another half of an inch, but he nodded his agreement to Julius’s terms.

  ◆◆◆

  Julius must’ve had a change of heart regarding Lind, because as he waited for Henry Zack to arrive he left Lind alone in his office so that he could make coffee and put together a tray of pastries. Since I communicate to Julius through an earpiece, I could’ve told him this without his prospective client overhearing me, but I waited until we were alone in the kitchen before mentioning how he chose an interesting amount for his fee. “What’s left after taxes from a hundred grand should just about cover the cost of all your lost vintages that you’ve been pining for.”

  “Indeed,” Julius murmured distractedly as he sliced up an apple strudel into smaller pieces.

  “Yeah. You might have enough left over to dine once at Le Che Cru, but not much more than that.” I paused before adding, “I’ve been studying his mannerisms, and I’ve been unable to find his tell. How about you?”

  Julius was an expert poker player, a
nd while I could usually quickly pick up a player’s tell—those slight mannerisms that indicate when a player is bluffing or lying—Julius was better at it than me. If Lind had shown a tell that I had missed, Julius would’ve picked it up, but Julius shook his head and murmured that he didn’t spot it either.

  “So he’s either got as good a poker face as you or he’s been telling the truth,” I said.

  “There are other alternatives, Archie.”

  “Yeah, well, I think he’s been telling the truth. Maybe it’s because of the Cornel Woolrich novels used in building my knowledge base, but the idea that Lind could’ve blacked out and called someone to pick him up at his home and not remember anything about it, or what he might’ve done, doesn’t sound all that farfetched to me. I hacked into his home phone records and three calls were made after midnight the night Connogher was killed. Maybe he made those calls. Or maybe his wife did. Whichever of them it was, it’s worth checking out.”

  Julius’s lips tightened into a thin grimace as I gave him the names of the three people who were called. Again, he remarked that this was all preposterous, although with less certainty than before.

  “Maybe,” I said. If I had shoulders I would’ve shrugged, but since I don’t, I just imagined doing so. “But forgetting the Cornel Woolrich novels, there are plenty of case studies documented where people have done things while blacked out that they can’t remember later.”

  “Not precise enough, Archie. These are cases where the individuals claimed to have blacked out, and further claimed that they couldn’t later remember what they had done.”