More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  “You goddamn lying clown—”

  Sara Fiske cut off her task force partner by asking how the video was altered.

  “Two minutes and twelve seconds of the video were replaced with video from another night. The altered video starts one minute and fifty seconds after Cramer left Hoskow’s residence. The time gap missing around both ends of the altered video is only milliseconds, but is still enough for forensics to state as a certainty this happened.”

  “You’re thinking someone edited out the real killer from the video?”

  Julius shrugged. “It’s the obvious assumption.”

  “And you think it has to be one of us three?”

  Another shrug from Julius. “You were the only ones who had access to the video during the time it could’ve been done.”

  Edward Landreen was starting to look more than a little green around the gills. “I didn’t do this,” he stammered out. “You don’t need any real expertise to edit the video in the way you said was done here. That’s all I want to say.”

  “Shut up!”

  Landreen did as Grantham ordered, and seemed to wilt under Grantham’s glare. Fiske had ignored this, and had kept her eyes locked on Julius’s.

  “Why frame Cramer, if that’s what happened?” she asked.

  “With Detective Cramer’s testimony compromised, Walter Maguire will walk in two weeks. The obvious assumption is Billy Quinn arranged this to get his right-hand man off on the bank-robbery charge, which Quinn most likely needed done to keep Maguire from making a deal that would implicate him.”

  “Okay. Interesting. So you’re saying one of us is a stooge for Quinn.”

  “Yes. Without doubt. Given enough time I’m sure Detective Griff would be able to connect one of you to Quinn, no matter how careful that person might’ve been to keep that from happening. Fortunately there’s a much quicker way to resolve this. The killer performed a bit of subterfuge after shooting Hoskow. The nine-one-one was made not only to establish time of death, but to keep the police from realizing that Hoskow owned a smartphone. Any lead homicide detective could’ve reasonably assumed Hoskow used only burner cellphones since that was left behind. The killer took Hoskow’s smartphone, and later broke it and dropped it in a dumpster behind Washington Street, but he didn’t break it enough, nor did he remove the SIM card. Because of that Detective Griff was able to locate it.”

  Griff added in the same deadpanned voice he used earlier, “Forensics is going over it now, compiling a list of text messages and phone calls made and received.”

  “What if that doesn’t lead you to Quinn’s stooge?” Fiske asked.

  Julius shrugged. “The killer made a critical mistake throwing the phone away where he did. Would you like to explain it to them, Detective?”

  Griff nodded, his eyes barely slits as he took in Grantham, Fiske, and Landreen. “Whichever one of you dumped the phone, I’m sure you picked the location because you knew there were no city surveillance cameras in the area. Where you screwed up was you walked right past a pawnshop with a security camera that caught you. I have an officer right now searching through their security recordings.” He checked his watch. “He should be calling any minute letting me know which of you it is.”

  Fiske wheeled around in her seat to face Grantham. He was still standing against the wall, his arms once again crossed over his chest, but he had gotten very quiet. He seemed taken aback by the way Fiske stared at him.

  “It was you,” she said.

  Grantham blinked several times as he looked back at her. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “You’re the one who’s been working for Quinn. When I think of all the times you disappeared over the last year and a half and all the times Quinn seemed magically one step ahead of us, it adds up.”

  Grantham reacted as if he’d been slapped. “Are you nuts?” he forced out, his voice an octave higher than earlier.

  She was out of her chair moving toward him as if she planned to slap him, but she stumbled—or at least appeared to, because what she was really doing was going for a Colt .25 automatic that she had hidden in an ankle holster. Grantham stood dumbfounded as all this happened. If it was just him, she would’ve had the gun out, but it wasn’t just him. Julius had moved quickly out of his chair the split second she left hers, and he tackled her the moment she reached for her gun. The two of them grappled on the floor for the next five point two seconds until he was able to wrestle the gun away from her, his fifth degree black belt in Shaolin kung fu coming in handy. Griff joined the action then and got Fiske’s hands cuffed behind her back. As Julius and Griff brought her to her feet, Grantham stood goggling at her.

  “What they said was true?” he asked, his voice sounding as dumbfounded as he looked. “You were willing to frame a cop and murder for Quinn?”

  She made a face as if she wanted to spit at him. She didn’t look very attractive right then. “Grow up,” she said in a voice so icy that I felt a shiver run through my central processing unit.

  ◆◆◆

  Much later that night Julius was preparing himself a sandwich using sundried tomatoes, ten-year-aged Vermont cheddar cheese, a homemade chipotle sauce, and a sirloin steak that he had grilled the night before. While he did this, one of the Malbec gems that he had read about earlier that day decanted.

  For several hours I’d been trying to figure out on my own what Fiske would’ve done if Julius hadn’t wrestled her gun away, and as he was slicing the sirloin steak I gave up and asked him about it.

  “What did she think she was going to do? Shoot all of you?”

  Julius shuddered. “God knows,” he said.

  “Let’s say she was successful. What then? How did she think she was going to get out of a precinct full of cops?”

  “She wasn’t thinking. At that point she was little more than a cornered animal who was going to do whatever she had to to survive, even if it made little sense. Archie, if you had seen the look in her eyes and the savagery that had taken over her face while I fought to get control of her gun…”

  Julius let the sentence die. I hadn’t been able to see any of that because her body had blocked me while she and Julius had thrashed about on the floor. I considered what he said, and decided that no amount of tweaks to my neuron network would ever allow me to anticipate how someone as desperate and homicidal as Fiske would act when trapped.

  “You’re lucky she didn’t call you on your bluff,” I said.

  Julius had finished putting his sandwich together, and he used a chef’s knife to cut it diagonally. “It was a gamble,” he conceded. “But still, a good one. She knew we’d recovered Hoskow’s phone. She must’ve also remembered walking past the pawnshop. It was reasonable for her to think we were telling the truth about the existence of a store security recording.”

  “Before she went for her gun, did you know it was her?”

  “No. Not an inkling. The woman is as pure a sociopath as I’ve encountered.”

  “What if she had called your bluff?”

  Julius poured a small amount of his gem of a Malbec into a glass, sniffed, then tasted it. Satisfied he poured himself a more substantial amount of it, and brought that and the sandwich to his kitchen table.

  He shrugged. “Possibly the recovered smartphone has something incriminating that would’ve pointed to her. If not, then Griff would’ve had his hands full trying to figure out which of them it was. Maybe he would’ve found a witness to her murdering McCrawley, or someone who spotted her dumping the car on Kneeland Avenue. But possibly not. Quinn might’ve had one of his associates murder McCrawley for her. It might’ve come down to Griff needing to find the cash payments Quinn made to her, which could’ve proven difficult. Now, though, he’ll be able to get the court orders he needs to unearth whatever money Quinn paid her, although the odds are the district attorney won’t need to build a case against her. Most likely she’ll be flipping on Quinn for a better deal, if she hasn’t done so already.”

&
nbsp; I spent the next three hundred and eighteen milliseconds processing this, and decided I was glad that Fiske bit on the bait the way she did, and even gladder Julius was able to get the gun away from her before she started shooting everyone in sight.

  “You still haven’t told me why you looked into this in the first place.”

  Julius smiled thinly. “As I mentioned earlier, the idea of Cramer murdering that man was preposterous.”

  “Yeah, okay, granted that’s true, although I’m sure there are circumstances where that wouldn’t be true, you usually like to be well compensated for your brain power, and I don’t see how that’s going to happen this time. I was thinking for a while that Quinn being involved might lead to a payday, but I can’t see that anymore.”

  Julius took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it deliberately for the next fourteen point nine seconds. After a sip of wine, he said, “Archie, I had no ulterior motive. If Cramer didn’t murder that man, that meant he was being framed, and the idea of that was distasteful enough for me to look into the matter. When he told me that a confidential informant sent him to Hoskow’s residence, there was no question that he had been framed. If he had murdered Hoskow he would’ve stonewalled me and refused to have given me McCrawley’s name—”

  “What if he had planned ahead and arranged for McCrawley to give a story about sending Cramer to that house so Cramer would have an excuse for going there?”

  “If he had done that, he would’ve allowed McCrawley to later blackmail him for murder. If Cramer were guilty, he wouldn’t have told anyone about going to Hoskow’s home, and he certainly wouldn’t have given me the name of a confidential informant who could refute him, especially one who would soon be found dead in a car trunk. Once I knew for a fact that Cramer was innocent, I felt obliged to help him.”

  I was going to make a crack asking him how he expected to continue to buy his wine and dine at the finer Boston restaurants with this newfound sense of nobility, but a knock on the front door stopped me. I checked the outdoor webcam feed.

  “Speaking of the devil, Cramer’s outside,” I said. “It looks like he has a gift for you. Something in a small paper bag. He doesn’t look too happy for someone who’s just been exonerated.”

  Julius made a face over the prospect of having his dinner interfered with, but he put his sandwich down, pushed himself away from the table, and headed off to answer the door.

  Cramer was out of his jail clothes and back in the same suit I’ve always seen him in, although it looked more rumpled than usual. He also looked uncomfortable as he tried to force a smile.

  “I’d like to thank you, Julius, for what you did.”

  “Happy to have helped, Detective.”

  “Yeah, sure. I picked this up in the North End.” Cramer handed the paper bag to Julius. “It’s gelato. Hazelnut espresso. It seemed like the kind of flavor you’d like.”

  “Thank you. It will go nicely with my dinner. A steak sandwich with a surprisingly good Malbec. Would you care to join me? The steak is excellent. New York strip sirloin, dry-aged for twenty-eight days, and grilled medium rare by me last night.”

  “No thanks. After the last twenty-four hours I’ve had, right now I just want to tie one on. But I wanted to thank you, and tell you that I’m paying you your usual fee. I might need to pay you in installments, but you’re getting every penny I owe you.”

  “I incurred no expenses and suffered no undue hardships, and since no payment was discussed ahead of time, none is expected, nor will any be accepted. Other than this gelato, of course.”

  Cramer was eyeing Julius carefully. “I told you before I won’t be owing you any favors.”

  “Yes, I distinctly remember that.”

  Cramer was shaking his head, scowling. “If you don’t want payment, that’s your business. If you do, send me a bill. I’m not going to beg you to take my money.” He was about to walk away, but he stopped himself. As he turned back to Julius, his face colored to a familiar beet red.

  “Mike Griff told me how you figured this out,” he said, his voice growing exceedingly raspy, “and it sounded like a load of bull to me. I’d bet my last dollar that you got your hands on a copy of that video before you ever visited Griff. I swear to God, if I can ever prove you or your henchman, Archie Smith, did that, I’ll see you locked away for theft of police evidence.”

  Julius smiled thinly at that. “You’re welcome, Detective.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Cramer was about to storm off, but wavered for a moment and turned back to face Julius. “The hell with it,” he muttered. “A steak sandwich sounds damn good right now. Do you got any beer? I’m not much of a wine drinker.”

  “Yes, certainly.”

  Julius stepped aside so that Cramer could enter his townhouse. As he let the newly vindicated police detective precede him to the kitchen, I commented about how I’d been demoted from assistant to henchman. “Or is that a promotion? I really can’t tell. Anyway, it looks like the remaining steak that you’d been saving for a Sunday morning frittata for you and Lily is as good as gone now. All in all, I think you would’ve been better off if you’d spent your afternoon sampling cognac as you had planned.”

  That elicited a chuckle from Julius, which he quickly suppressed. The first time I’d ever accomplished that, and I wasn’t even trying!

  JULIUS KATZ AND THE TERMINATED AGENT

  At 9:39:43 a.m. Julius was willingly entertaining a new client in his office as he ate breakfast. Anyone who knew Julius as well as I did would’ve thought the world had tipped onto its axis, or maybe the river Styx had frozen over into a skating rink, or at the very least, pigs had sprouted wings and were flapping themselves across the Boston skyline.

  Let me explain. To say Julius’s morning routine is set in stone, at least when he’s home (which is almost always), would be a gross understatement. To say his routine was set in titanium would be closer to the truth. Every morning Julius wakes promptly at six-thirty, performs a two-hour martial arts workout in the private studio located on the third floor of his townhouse, then showers, shaves and dresses before heading downstairs. Normally it wouldn’t be until nine forty-five that he’d step into his office, bringing with him coffee, a light breakfast, and the morning’s newspaper, and he certainly wouldn’t be willing to turn his brain on for any work until ten-thirty, at the earliest. But here he was, sans newspaper, with a pot of French roast coffee, a plate of croissants, and a jar of special strawberry jam that he has shipped monthly from France, all of which he was willing to share with his client, although she didn’t seem to have much of an appetite for croissants, or anything else, for that matter. During the roughly nine minutes that she’d been in his office, she’d had two small sips of coffee, and even that seemed a struggle for her.

  The client, Susan Vance, was thirty-nine, had a slender build, and medium-length brown hair. According to her driver’s license, she was five feet five inches in height, although it was hard to tell that at the moment given how much she was slumping in her chair. From pictures I found of her online from earlier than three weeks ago, including her driver’s license photo, it was easy to see that she was normally someone who would’ve been considered attractive in a wholesome sort of way, but at that moment it would’ve been impossible to tell that with how worn-out she appeared and how brittle her expression looked as she fought to keep some semblance of composure. Without that struggle, her face would’ve most likely crumbled. It wasn’t hard to understand why. Three weeks ago to the day her husband Philip Vance was found shot to death in a Cambridge alley, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the police were zeroing in on her as their prime suspect and an arrest for first-degree murder seemed imminent.

  The murder of Philip Vance was a big deal in Boston. People usually aren’t found shot to death in Cambridge alleys, especially not well-known literary agents. With rumors leaking out of infidelity on his part and the existence of a recent and large life insurance policy, the story exploded in the local media. If I had e
yebrows I might’ve raised one when Julius came home earlier than expected last night from his dinner date with Lily Rosten at Le Che Cru, and I might’ve arched this hypothetical eyebrow even higher when he told me to call Susan Vance and arrange for her to come to his office the next morning.

  “If that’s what you want,” I said, “but I was curious enough about this murder that over the last three weeks I’ve been hacking into the Cambridge police department’s computer system to see what they’ve got, and the rumors the media’s been spreading are all true. Philip Vance was cheating on his wife for at least the past year and a five-million-dollar life insurance policy was taken out two months ago. What the papers haven’t yet reported is that Susan Vance followed her husband to The Blue Parrot in Cambridge the night he was shot. She admitted as much to the police, which doesn’t mean a whole lot since she was seen parked out in front of the restaurant that night. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always happy to see you take on a new case and be willing to exercise your brain, but the odds are good that she did it, and even better that she’s going to be arrested any minute now. Are you sure you want me to call her? The case looks like a loser.”

  “Yes, Archie, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, no skin off my nose. But why your sudden interest?”

  Julius smiled bleakly. “Susan Vance is a friend of Lily’s, and Lily is concerned about her. She’s also convinced her friend is innocent, and she asked me to look into it.”

  I knew Lily worked with the widow Vance, but I didn’t know they were friends. At least it explained why Julius was willing to consider a murder investigation given that his bank account was reasonably flush.

  “What time should I ask her here? Ten-thirty?”

  “Better make it earlier. Nine-thirty. On the dot. Please also call Tom Durkin and Saul Penzer, and see if they’ll be available.”