More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  I didn’t say a word about the poker game the rest of Sunday. I even resisted the temptation to ask Julius whether I should change his Sunday dinner reservation with Lily from Le Che Cru to The Happy Pig Whistle. I waited Monday morning until after Julius had his morning coffee and finished reading the newspaper before emailing him a list of wines.

  “If I have these put up for auction today, the money should be in your account by the end of the week,” I said.

  He made a face as if he’d just tasted a fine Cabernet that had gone bad and deleted the email without reading it.

  “I don’t see what choice you’ve got,” I said. “There are no imminent cases offering a big payday, and with the way you’ve been turning down every well-healed potential client over the last six months they’ve gotten used to going elsewhere and it might take me weeks or longer to find you one, which won’t help with the property-tax bill that’s due next week.”

  Julius didn’t bother answering me. So he was going to be that way. Fine. I still spent the next hour making calls and trying to drum up business, but the problem was everyone had gotten used to thinking of Julius in the past tense. He might’ve once been Boston’s most brilliant detective, but thanks to the Philip Vance murder case paying off as much as it did, it had been over six months since he had taken a case and he’d become yesterday’s news. I didn’t mention any of this to Julius, but after he had lunch and was back in his office, I asked him whether I should scare up some publicity.

  “I could see if one of the local papers wants to do an interview,” I suggested.

  At this point Julius had picked up a biography about the writer Shirley Jackson. Without bothering to look away from the book, he muttered, “Not necessary.”

  I gave up. What was the point?

  For the rest of the afternoon Julius appeared immersed in his book while I spent the time trying to figure out Hodge’s conjecture, which was one of the Millennium Prize problems and paid a million bucks to anyone who came up with a solution. By five I’d gotten nowhere with it. Julius, though, surprised me by marking his place in the book. He got up and searched a bookcase before removing from a bottom shelf a leather-bound Boston city atlas. He brought this back to his desk and searched through the atlas until he found the neighborhood he was looking for, and then gave me a list of addresses.

  “Archie, please find the owners of these buildings.”

  One of the addresses was for Donald Prescott’s wine shop, and I knew Prescott owned the building. The other addresses were for the rest of the buildings within the same block. This task turned out to be a lot tougher than I would’ve thought, and it wasn’t until after Julius had eaten dinner and was back in his office drinking cappuccino that I told him with the exception of Prescott’s building, the rest appeared to be owned by shell companies.

  “I’ve hacked into hundreds of different databases and unraveled their ownerships as much as I believe is possible, and I can’t tell you if any of these shell companies are owned by the same person,” I said. “I’m guessing you’re thinking Grushnier owns these buildings. What else are you thinking? That he wants Prescott’s building and the missing wine is somehow tied to that?”

  Julius grunted as he took another sip of cappuccino and leaned further back in his chair. “Archie, I was only satisfying a curiosity, that’s all. Please call Prescott and tell him I wish to speak to him.”

  What a load of bunk! He must’ve had something more concrete in mind, otherwise he wouldn’t have been asking me to call Prescott for him. But I would’ve had better luck solving Hodge’s conjecture that night than getting anything else out of him, so I did as he asked, and told Julius I had to leave a message. I spent the next two hours wasting my time, first trying to connect Desmond Grushnier to the shell companies I had uncovered and then trying to figure out how stealing a case of wine—albeit, expensive wine—could pressure Prescott to sell his building, if in fact that was what was behind the pilfered wine. It made no sense. Prescott had insurance for his store, and while he would’ve had to take a three-grand loss because of the deductible, he’d be able to absorb that. In fact, the fee I had worked out with him earlier was that three-grand deductible if I was successful since his main concern was finding out which of his employees was a thief.

  By ten o’clock I had given up. Julius had long since returned to the Shirley Jackson biography, but I could tell from the way he had started drumming his fingers on the chair’s arm that he was beginning to get antsy. At two minutes past ten, he cleared his throat and asked that I try calling Prescott again.

  I made the call, and a harried but familiar voice answered who wasn’t Prescott. We talked for a minute and then I told Julius that I had Detective Mike Griff on the phone. “Prescott was arrested and is being processed as we speak. Griff wants to talk to you. Should I patch him through?”

  “What charge?”

  “Homicide. I didn’t get that or any of it from Griff, but from hacking into the Boston Police Department’s computer system. At eight twenty-three this evening police responded to a nine-one-one call and found Prescott leaving the apartment of his employee, Jim Duncan, carrying a case of the previously purloined Lafite Rothschild. Inside the apartment they found Duncan dead in his bedroom with his head bashed in by a tire iron.”

  “Who made the nine-one-one call?”

  “The report doesn’t say. I searched through the call logs and it appears to have been made by a burner phone. What should I tell Griff?”

  “Patch him through.”

  Julius picked up his cell phone and I did as he asked. Griff sounded more harried than earlier as he tried to get Julius to tell him why he was calling Prescott while Julius played dumb and asked Griff why a homicide detective was answering Prescott’s phone.

  Julius asked, “Was Donald Prescott murdered?”

  “No.”

  “I see. So he must’ve been arrested for homicide. Was a case of Lafite Rothschild found at the murder site?”

  Now Griff’s voice became more suspicious than harried. “What do you know about that wine?” he demanded.

  “My assistant, Archie Smith, took a freelance job from Prescott four days ago to find out which of his employees was responsible for the theft. Archie told me about this today and it sparked my curiosity, which I have since satisfied, at least to a degree. I wanted to speak to Prescott because if a theory I’m working on turns out to be correct, his stolen wine would be turning up soon.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “Perhaps it would be better if we spoke in person.”

  Julius was lucky the murder had happened in Boston and not Cambridge, because if he was dealing with Detective Mark Cramer instead of Griff, Cramer would’ve told him to go to hell and hung up on him, or possibly even tried having him arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Griff, though, understood the value of having Julius’s eyes on a case, and after some grumbling, he agreed to Julius’s terms.

  Fifty minutes later Julius, his attorney, Henry Zack, and a worn-out looking Donald Prescott met in a holding cell at the New Sudbury Street police station, which was one of the conditions that Julius had insisted upon with Griff.

  Prescott, sixty-two, looked as badly rumpled as the dark blue suit he was wearing. His tie had been removed, but he hadn’t bothered to unbutton the top shirt button, and his jowls drooped over the collar as he sat slumped on a steel cot. After nodding bleakly to Julius, he tried to profess his innocence, but Julius stopped him and instead focused on the matter at hand: namely, having Prescott hire Zack as his lawyer, and further, hire Julius to get him out of the mess he was in. While Prescott blanched at the terms Julius demanded, he nonetheless signed the contract that was presented to him. After that, Julius made a phone call, and the three of them were brought to one of the precinct’s conference rooms where Griff sat waiting. Another condition that Julius had insisted on was for Griff to delay Prescott’s processing until after they met, so Prescott hadn’t yet officially b
een charged with murder.

  As with the other times I’d seen him, Griff looked as if he hadn’t slept in days and his thick five o’clock shadow was thick enough to give the bottom half of his face the appearance of being smeared with a coat of bluish-black paint.

  “Julius, I’ve been playing nice even though we caught Prescott red-handed in what looks like an open-and-shut case,” the Boston homicide detective said. “Let’s hear your theory.”

  “Looks can be deceiving,” Zack offered.

  Griff gave the bantamweight lawyer an annoyed look, but before he could say anything cutting, Julius spoke up.

  “Mike, I’ve got every intention of fulfilling my obligation, but first a couple of questions. What sent the police to Jim Duncan’s apartment? A nine-one-one call?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did the caller leave his or her name?”

  “No. It was made anonymously and with a burner phone. Someone claiming to hear a scream. The operator couldn’t tell whether it was a man or husky-sounding woman. That type of call isn’t as suspicious as it might sound given Duncan’s neighborhood.” He turned to glare at Zack. “We’ve gotten convictions with less.”

  “Did the police find Mr. Prescott carrying a case of Lafite Rothschild?”

  “If that’s what that wine is, yeah. They stopped him just as he was stepping out of Duncan’s apartment.”

  “Can you describe the apartment?”

  “A one-bedroom in a brownstone.”

  “What floor?”

  “Basement level.”

  “So it has its own entrance?”

  “Yeah.” Griff fixed his glare on Prescott. “Anyone could go in and out of it without other tenants seeing him.”

  Julius turned to Prescott. “Where’d you’d get the wine?”

  Prescott blinked twice and turned to Zack, who nodded for him to answer Julius’s question.

  “That should be obvious,” he said. “From Jim Duncan’s apartment.”

  “You’re trying to pull his bacon out of the fire, and he has to be a smartass,” I told Julius

  Julius ignored me. He asked Prescott, “You expected to find the wine there?”

  “Of course I did. I wouldn’t have gone there otherwise.”

  Patiently, Julius asked him why he expected to find the wine there.

  Prescott cleared his throat. “I received a text message from Duncan that he had the wine and if I wanted it I needed to go to his apartment.”

  “When you got this message you headed straight over?”

  “I first tried calling him, but he didn’t answer.”

  Julius turned again to Griff. “I’m sure you’ve looked at Mr. Prescott’s text messages and call logs.”

  Griff had folded his arms across his chest. “So? It doesn’t prove he didn’t go there and kill Duncan and grab the wine, which is exactly how it looks.”

  Julius didn’t bother to agree or disagree with Griff about how it looked. Instead he asked Prescott, “What happened when you arrived at Duncan’s apartment?”

  Prescott looked again at Zack, and got back another nod from the attorney.

  “I rang the bell,” he said. “When no one answered, I tried the door, found it unlocked, and saw the stolen Lafite Rothschild on the living room floor. I tried calling out for Duncan. When he didn’t answer I took the wine. I was walking out the door when I was stopped by the police.”

  I told Julius that Prescott’s blinking only showed that he was nervous, but didn’t prove he was lying. Since I talk to him over a wireless earpiece, he was the only one who heard me, and he signaled that he agreed with me.

  Griff had gone from looking harried to exasperated. “I thought you had a theory you were going to share with me?” he complained to Julius.

  “Two more questions for Mr. Prescott, then you will have my theory.” Julius turned again to Prescott and asked, “Has anyone tried purchasing your building where you have your wine shop?”

  This caused Prescott to blink three times. “Yes, an offer was made two months ago. A generous offer, in fact. I turned it down. I have no interest in selling.”

  “Who made this offer?”

  Three more blinks. “I never got the man’s name. He gave me a business card that only had the name of the company he was representing and a phone number. I threw it out the same day. I don’t remember the name of the company.”

  Julius had brought along his Boston city atlas. He opened it up to the page he had marked and pointed out Prescott’s building to Griff. “Archie has been trying to determine the ownership of the other buildings on this same block, and so far all he’s come up with is a tangle of shell companies.”

  “You’re thinking the same person owns them?”

  “That’s part of my theory. In order to prove the most significant aspect of it, I need one of the bottles of recovered Lafite Rothschild, a corkscrew, and two wine glasses.”

  Griff gaped at Julius as if he were nuts. “I’m not giving you evidence so you can drink it,” he said flatly.

  “Evidence of what? I don’t believe the wine will be able to testify in court, at least not in the way you’re expecting. Beside, I’m only asking for one bottle, not all twelve. If Mr. Prescott, the rightful owner, doesn’t object, neither should you.”

  Griff didn’t like what Julius was asking, and there was some stubbornness and seven minutes and eighteen seconds of flat out refusal. But in the end the worry that there actually might be something about the wine that could lead to Prescott’s acquittal on the stand had him agreeing to let Julius open one of the bottles, and while Prescott wasn’t nuts about the idea either, he gave his permission. I was beginning to have an idea of what Julius was thinking, but since I didn’t have taste buds or olfactory senses, all I could do was watch as Julius uncorked the bottle and poured wine into the two glasses, one of which he handed to Prescott. Both Julius and Prescott sniffed the wine before tasting it, and both spat out their wine in coffee mugs that Griff had provided. Prescott looked stunned after the tasting. Julius grunted in a way to show this was exactly what he was expecting.

  “Not bad for a forty-dollar Bordeaux, but it’s certainly not Lafite Rothschild,” Julius said. He told Griff he didn’t expect the wine was poisoned, but it should be tested anyway.

  “You’re saying the wine’s been replaced by cheaper stuff?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what’s that supposed to prove?”

  Julius asked Prescott if having the wine stolen could’ve damaged him seriously enough to be forced to sell his building. Prescott said the loss would’ve stung, but not much more than that. “If the wine wasn’t recovered, I could’ve absorbed the three-thousand-dollar insurance loss,” he added.

  “What would’ve happened if you had put the counterfeit wine up for auction?”

  “That was what I’d been planning to do, and it would’ve been devastating.” Prescott’s round face deflated even more as he thought about Julius’s hypothetical. “Word of that would’ve gotten out among serious wine collectors, and I’d be finished.”

  “And if the same offer was then made for your building?”

  “I would’ve had to take it.”

  Griff rubbed the thick stubble covering his face as he absorbed this. “Julius, I admit it’s an interesting story,” he said. “But that’s all it is. Interesting. It doesn’t prove Prescott didn’t kill Duncan.”

  “Possibly not, but is it interesting enough for you to hold Mr. Prescott for twenty-four hours before charging him? Because I expect to give you the real murderer before those twenty-four hours expire.”

  Griff stopped rubbing his jaw. If Julius had a tell, I’d never been able to figure it out, and I was sure the same was true with Griff. He had no idea whether Julius was bluffing, but he also knew you could go broke betting against Julius, except those rare poker games when the stars are perfectly aligned against him.

  The homicide detective made his decision. “You’ve got until six tomorrow ev
ening,” he said.

  I waited until after Julius had a short conversation with Zack and we were walking back to his townhouse before telling him that he’d been bluffing earlier. “You can’t possibly know that Prescott is innocent. Even if he was being set up to auction off a bogus case of Lafite Rothschild, he still could’ve killed Duncan in a fit of rage.”

  Julius took out his cellphone so that he wouldn’t appear to be a crazy man talking to himself. “Prescott wasn’t lying, Archie.”

  “He could’ve been. Outside of all that blinking, he could still have a damn good poker face.”

  “He doesn’t. I was able to pick up his tell that shows as brightly as a flashing red light when he’s lying. It’s when you see him struggling not to blink.”

  I searched through the video I had recorded that night, and I didn’t see Prescott do that once. “How’d you pick up that tell if he didn’t show it?”

  “He did, Archie. Just not tonight.”

  “When then?”

  Julius’s jaw muscles momentarily tightened. “A year ago when he promised me he’d put aside a certain vintage of pinot noir that I wanted.”