More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  “We both already know who that is. Your new client had motive and opportunity, and I’ve got more than enough for an arrest and conviction, and none of your cheap sleight of hand tricks is going to change that. The only reason I arranged for that surveillance was to see if I could add a few more nails to her coffin, but anything I got from that would’ve only been gravy.” He clamped his mouth shut momentarily, and then in a more heavily strained voice added, “Once I leave here I’ll be getting an arrest warrant signed, and I’ll have her booked by three this afternoon.”

  “That would be unfortunate. It would also be a waste of your time and Susan Vance’s. If you can be patient and wait seven hours, perhaps eight, I should be able to deliver you Philip Vance’s actual murderer.”

  Cramer eyed Julius cautiously. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  Julius shrugged. “If I were you’d never know it. But what would be the point? Either I hand you Vance’s killer at that time with enough evidence to satisfy you, or I don’t, in which case you arrest Susan then. If you think she might try fleeing the country in the meantime, then you’ve more grossly misread her than I had imagined. The knowledge that her husband had been planning to murder her for money compounded by the stress of expecting the police to arrest her for a crime she’s innocent of has left that poor woman with barely the strength to function. But if you really do believe something as preposterous as that, then put a man on her.”

  “What do you have?” Cramer demanded.

  “Far less than you, and nothing that you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re going to give me that bull about how a genius like you chooses to process what you know is yours alone.” Cramer glared at his watch then turned his glare back to Julius. “I should tell you to go to hell. But I’ll give you those seven hours. If you’re only bluffing me like I think you are, I’ll be dragging your client straight to jail right afterwards.”

  Cramer turned and all but stomped out of the kitchen. I followed him over the webcam feed to make sure he didn’t take a detour and leave the surveillance bug in Julius’s office or elsewhere within the townhouse, but he behaved himself and made a beeline to the front door, taking the bug with him. The sound of the front door slamming behind him could be heard plainly.

  “Quite a bombastic fellow when he wants to be,” I remarked.

  “Indeed. Did the listening device leave with him?”

  “Yeah, it did.”

  Julius moved back to his office and retrieved the manuscripts and laptop from his safe, then went back to the same manuscript he’d been reading when Cramer arrived. I didn’t bother sharing with Julius that I agreed with Cramer that he was only bluffing, hoping he’d be able to pull a miracle out of his hat, and instead continued to try to find evidence that Vance had been planning to meet his girlfriend the night he was murdered. At twelve eighteen I got a call from Tom Durkin that he was able to convince Paul Tinker of the folly of his ways. Tinker was one of Vance’s former clients that Julius wanted to speak with. Last night I’d called both Chapins and the three authors Julius was interested in, and Amanda Chapin and two of the authors were willing to cooperate, while Tinker unceremoniously hung up on me and wouldn’t answer when I tried calling back, and Stewart Chapin suggested I force a certain part of the human anatomy that I don’t possess up another part of anatomy that I also don’t have. After I reported to Julius my failure with those two, he assigned Tom Durkin to find leverage on Tinker, and sicced Saul Penzer on Chapin.

  I asked Tom how he was able to get Tinker to cooperate. He chuckled and told me that it wasn’t too hard, and he’d tell me later, which meant that Tinker was within earshot of him. He suggested that he bring Tinker over to Julius’s office by quarter to one.

  I relayed the message to Julius. The first meeting he had scheduled with one of the cooperative suspects was at one thirty, which meant he’d have to rush things with Tinker and would have little to no break before questioning the next suspect. While he made a face at the prospect of having to see Tinker then, surprisingly he nodded his assent.

  ◆◆◆

  Paul Tinker was a forty-two-year-old, thin, bony-looking man with a long narrow face and thinning red hair. From the way he was dressed, including a tweed jacket with leather patches on each elbow, he looked very much the part of a college professor, or more specifically, an aggrieved college professor, which made sense since his full-time job was as an associate professor of English at one of the local universities and he clearly wasn’t happy that he’d been strong-armed into meeting with Julius. That was evident from the way his lips were pushed into a small angry oval and how he was trying his damnedest to look down his thin, pointy nose at Julius. After Tom had delivered Tinker, he called me back to tell me how he convinced the associate English professor to be more cooperative, and it was pretty much what I expected. Namely, if Tinker didn’t accompany him to Julius’s office, Tom was going to spread the word around the university’s English department that Julius considered Tinker a suspect in Vance’s murder. This helped explain why Tinker refused Julius’s offer for refreshments and was now looking more and more as if he had bitten into a rotten egg as he sat across from Julius’s desk with one bony leg crossed over what was most likely an even bonier knee.

  “I should sue you for slander,” Tinker said in a thin, whiny voice that perfectly matched his expression.

  Julius raised an eyebrow. “How did I slander you?”

  “By having your thug threaten to spread rumors about me.” In an exaggeratedly aggrieved tone he added, “That you suspect me of murdering Vance.”

  “I’m surprised. While your field of study is English and not law, I still would’ve expected you to understand the definition of slander. A defamation of character charge wouldn’t get you anywhere, but at least would be more appropriate. I have read your email exchanges with Vance. You threatened to destroy him and then six days later he is murdered. Of course I consider you a suspect. It would be gross incompetence on my part not to.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You know full well I meant destroy professionally and not to harm him physically.”

  “That is not what you wrote. In another email you promised to punch him in the face the next time you met up with him.”

  Tinker broke eye contact with Julius. Some of the starch had come out of him.

  “I was naturally angry at the way he had treated me. But I’m not someone who gets into fights or shoots someone to death in an alley.” A light pink flushed his cheeks. He curled the fingers on his left hand and forced his attention on his nails, which to me looked like they could use a trimming. “My animosity toward him was more than justified.”

  “Why was that?”

  Tinker’s eyes shifted to meet Julius’s, and they showed a mix of righteous indignation and injury. “I engaged him fifteen months ago to sell a literary novel that I had spent eleven years writing. My first and only novel to date. I found out five weeks ago he had sent my novel to one editor in all that time. That was it! One editor!”

  He realized that he’d raised his voice, and he made a conscious effort to lower it as he continued, “Of course I was angry, and Vance’s refusal to answer my phone calls making me leave one message after the next, all of which went unanswered, only made me angrier. But that doesn’t mean I would do something as barbaric as to hunt him down in the street and shoot him.”

  I said to Julius, “I suppose he limits his barbarism only to punching people in the face. Something I just uncovered that you might find interesting. While he’s not a registered gun owner, one of this students was arrested a year ago for illegally selling a gun. The cops screwed up the arrest and the charge was dropped. Student’s name is Ed Markowitz.”

  Julius signaled to me that it was indeed interesting. To Tinker, he said, “I sympathize. I was able to read portions of your novel, and it deserved better. I found the writing engaging—”

  “Wait a minute! How did you get a copy of my novel?”

  �
��A copy was in Philip Vance’s possession. Given your phone and email activity with him and the threats you made against him, I considered it advisable to review it. Whether or not you murdered Vance, I will be returning the manuscript to you at the completion of my investigation. Let’s try and make this simple. Where were you between nine forty-five and eleven o’clock the night of March tenth?”

  “That was the night Vance was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was alone in my university office grading papers. The reason I can tell you that without needing to think about it is I knew you’d ask me that.”

  “Can anyone verify your whereabouts that night?”

  Tinker shook his head. “Not that I know of, but the idea of me murdering Vance is ridiculous.” He tried smiling. It came out on the sickly side. “Even if I might’ve wanted to punch him in the nose.”

  “Have you ever purchased a .38-caliber pistol?”

  A hitch showed alongside his mouth. It might’ve been over his nervousness or surprise of Julius asking that question, or it might’ve been because he caught himself from correcting Julius about the murder weapon. The police hadn’t released that bit of information yet, but thanks to my hacking, Julius knew that a nine-millimeter gun was used to plug Vance. Before this reaction from Tinker I had thought he was too much of a milquetoast to have committed this murder, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  Tinker recovered quickly from what might’ve almost been an involuntary slip, and with a forced indignation said, “Of course not.”

  “Tell me about Ed Markowitz.”

  He tried to bluff Julius that he didn’t recognize the name, at least not right away. It wasn’t a bad bluff, but it didn’t fool me, and I’m sure it didn’t fool Julius. Julius cut him off and told him that Markowitz was one of his students.

  “That’s right. I wasn’t thinking about my students. What about Mr. Markowitz?”

  “Did you purchase a gun from him?”

  He blinked. Both literarily and figuratively. “No, of course not! Why would you ask me that?”

  “For obvious reasons given that Markowitz was arrested for illegally selling a handgun last year.”

  Another blink. “I wouldn’t know about that. All I can tell you is that Mr. Markowitz is in good standing with the university.”

  “Mr. Tinker, if need be I will put an operative full-time on uncovering whether or not you’ve had any dealings outside of the classroom with Markowitz. If you have had any, you should come clean now as they will be discovered.”

  Yet another blink. “Go ahead. You’ll be wasting your time and money. There’s nothing there.”

  Julius rested his coffee cup on his desk and leaned back in his chair while he stared unblinkingly at Tinker for the next twenty-five seconds. To me, Tinker squirmed more than he should’ve during this. “Did you murder Philip Vance?”

  Yet one more blink. “I won’t dignify that with an answer.”

  I told Julius, “You have him rattled. Whether it’s because he’s a murderer or he’s completely lost his nerve, I can’t tell. I’ll bet anything, though, that he knew about Markowitz’s arrest.”

  Julius signaled that he agreed with me, and then stared silently at Tinker for the next forty-three seconds while the associate English professor appeared to wilt badly. When Julius spoke next it was to summarily dismiss Tinker. “We’re done. If you did murder Vance, you should tell me now and save yourself the stress of waiting for me to discover that fact, because I will be discovering it.”

  “This is absolutely ridiculous,” Tinker muttered as he stood up. He looked shaky to me as got to his feet and left Julius’s office, and even more so as he walked to the front door and exited the townhouse.

  I waited until Tinker was out of view from the outdoor webcam before saying to Julius, “He’s had some sort of relationship with Markowitz. Maybe Markowitz sells stuff other than guns. Maybe drugs. But it definitely freaked out the good professor when you brought up Markowitz’s name.”

  “Yes, it certainly did,” Julius agreed.

  “I was surprised you ended things so abruptly. It looked to me like you had him on the ropes.”

  Julius made a face. “It would’ve been a waste of time. I wasn’t going to get anything further from him. Please call Saul for me.”

  I did as Julius asked and patched Saul through after he answered.

  “I might’ve found something,” Saul reported. “Fifty grand is missing from an escrow account at the real estate office where Chapin works. The only reason the missing money was discovered was because I gave them the impression that I was working for an independent auditor, otherwise it probably would’ve gone under the radar for another three months. I’ve been wanting to talk to Chapin about it and see how he reacts, but he hasn’t been at work yet today, and doesn’t seem to be at home either.”

  “Very good, Saul. Excellent, actually. For now I need to change your assignment and have you watch a college student by the name of Ed Markowitz and see if he’s approached by a person of interest named Paul Tinker. Archie will send you addresses and other relevant information, including photos.”

  I did as Julius asked, and afterwards Julius asked me to monitor Chapin’s credit card usage and cellphone activity, which I would’ve done anyway. Chapin was back to being my top choice, although I still hadn’t given up on Tinker. I didn’t bother mentioning the obvious to Julius, which was that fifty grand would be more than enough to buy a murder. Instead, I told Julius that he never had a theory regarding the murder.

  “You might luck out and catch Vance’s murderer before the seven-hour deadline you gave Cramer, but you were bluffing him earlier,” I said. “You’re all over the place now trying to get enough evidence to pin it on either Tinker or Chapin.”

  Julius smiled thinly at that. “Not true, Archie. But we shall see.”

  So he was trying to bluff me also. Fine. If he had a theory, it was the same one that I’d been working on with Chapin as the killer, but I didn’t argue the point any further with him. Instead I spent the thirteen minutes before Julius’s one-thirty appointment trying to find evidence that Chapin had hired a hit man, and while I did this, Julius spent his time scowling at another of the manuscripts. Julius’s appointment ended up being eight minutes and thirty-one seconds late which caused his scowl to deepen and also gave me more time not to get anywhere with my search.

  When the doorbell rang Julius promptly answered the front door and escorted Amanda Chapin to his office. According to her driver’s license, she was nine years younger than Susan Vance, two inches shorter, and eight pounds heavier. Her hair was a darker brown and she was certainly curvier. I had little trouble recognizing that she’d be considered pretty, maybe even beautiful, although probably no more so than Susan Vance, at least when Susan wasn’t being weighed down by her husband’s murder and the threat of a lifetime in prison.

  If Julius was annoyed at her being late, he didn’t let on, and instead graciously thanked her for meeting with him and offered refreshments, which she accepted. I watched her over a webcam feed to make sure she stayed put in her chair while Julius left her briefly to fetch coffee and pastries from the kitchen. Once he was seated again behind his desk, she volunteered that she agreed to meet with him because she wanted to do whatever she could to see that woman arrested.

  “By woman, you mean Susan Vance?”

  “Yes, of course.” Her lips curled in disgust as she added, “I don’t understand why she hasn’t been arrested yet. She must’ve stalked Phil to that restaurant.”

  “Were you supposed to meet him there?”

  “Thank God, no. If I had she probably would’ve shot me also.”

  “Do you know who he was supposed to meet?”

  She shrugged. “Probably a client.”

  “Where was your husband that night?”

  “I don’t know. I was home alone all evening, and Stewart didn’t come wandering in until after one.” She took a sip of her coffee. Anger flashed i
n her eyes as she stared at a spot on the wall to the left of Julius. “He was probably with one of his hookups. What the newspapers haven’t been mentioning is that my dear husband has been cheating on me for years.”

  “So your affair with Vance was retaliation?”

  “It started off that way,” she acknowledged. “Over time it became more than that. Phil was going to leave his wife, I was going to leave Stewart. We were going to have a life together.” Her mouth twisted harshly as she added, “But she used a gun to put an end to that.”

  “When did Vance start talking to you about ending his marriage?”

  “Maybe two and a half months ago. But I don’t see how knowing that is going to help you prove that woman murdered Phil.”

  “Madam, it helps. I need to know that and a lot more to catch the killer. How did your husband find out about your affair?”

  “I was careless.” From the way her lips barely moved as if she were a ventriloquist’s dummy and how strained her voice became, she didn’t care for this line of questioning and was only reluctantly answering Julius. "I’d left my phone unlocked and my dear husband went through my text messages. I didn’t know he did this until later. But while he didn’t confront me about it then, he called Phil’s wife.” She shook her head, and muttered under her breath, “What a jerk.”

  “Why are you and your husband still living together?”

  She shrugged and without much conviction said, “We haven’t decided to call it quits yet. We’re rethinking things.”

  “Haven’t you suspected your husband of killing Vance?”

  “That Neanderthal?” She shook her head. “Not a chance. He wouldn’t have waited outside the restaurant to shoot Phil. That wouldn’t be Stewart’s style. If he had stalked Phil to that place, he would’ve gone in there and started a fistfight.”

  Julius could’ve pressed the matter, especially given the missing fifty grand at Chapin’s workplace, but he instead asked her why Vance took out a five million dollar life insurance policy naming him and his wife as each other’s sole beneficiaries if Vance was planning to leave her.