More Julius Katz and Archie

by Dave Zeltserman

  Julius gave Easter a puzzled look. “You must’ve spent some time in Alabama?” he asked.

  “Never been there,” Easter said without missing a beat.

  “That’s odd. I was told about your nickname and how you got it. Buggy. Nobody calls a shopping cart a buggy here. But they do in Alabama.”

  “I must’ve heard someone call it that when I was younger, and the name stuck.”

  Easter said this without any hint that he was lying. He was good, I had to give him credit for that. He’d probably even hold his own with Julius in a poker game.

  Julius agreed with Easter that was probably it. “I don’t know why I even chose Alabama,” he said. “Buggy is a term used throughout the South. There must be something about you that makes me think you’re from Alabama. It’s not your accent. If you were born and raised in a small town in Alabama, say Thorsby, you’ve done a fine job of ridding yourself of your accent, even adopting an acceptable Boston one. Interesting. In any case, we’re done.”

  Easter again impressed me by showing nothing in his expression. He simply got up out of his chair and headed toward the door. Before he left the office, Julius called out to him, telling him that he wasn’t investigating a wine theft. Easter looked back at him but didn’t bother asking him what he was investigating. I followed him over the webcam feeds, half expecting the man going by the name of George Easter to head to Julius’s kitchen to grab a knife. It wouldn’t have helped him any if he had tried that. Something that Julius kept out of the press was that he held a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin kung fu. He would’ve been able to handle Easter if it came to that. I waited until Easter was out of the townhouse before asking Julius if it was really necessary to let Easter leave.

  “Archie, we can use all the circumstantial evidence we can get. Besides, it can’t hurt to give the man some additional time to ponder his situation.”

  Twenty-eight minutes later Tom Durkin called to report that Easter had gone straight to the bus station and bought a one-way ticket to Dearborn, Michigan. “I gave him a choice whether he wanted us to bring him to your office or the police, and he chose your office.”

  Tom had said us because he was referring to himself and Saul. I had no doubt Tom could’ve handled Easter himself, or really Virgil Huddleston, because that was Easter’s real name. But the man did bludgeon Jim Duncan to death, so I couldn’t fault Julius from taking the precaution of having Saul accompany Tom.

  When they brought Huddleston to Julius’s office, the man looked grayer than before and he sat more slumped over than hunched. Julius told Tom and Saul they could wait outside the office. Once Julius was alone with Huddleston, he showed the man copies of the twenty-two-year-old newspaper article I had found and his outstanding arrest warrant. The article included a picture of a much younger Virgil Huddleston, who back then had long hair and a thick mustache, and it described how Huddleston had murdered a man in cold blood. Huddleston gave both a brief look before placing them back on Julius’s desk.

  “Unless the police find forensic evidence linking you to Duncan’s murder, it’s doubtful I’ll ever be able to prove that you committed the crime,” Julius admitted. “But your attempting to flee the state after meeting with me should be enough for them to hold you until the Alabama authorities can pick you up, and they will convict you there. You have a decision to make, Mr. Huddleston. Whether you’d rather be convicted of murder in Alabama or Massachusetts. Alabama has the death penalty, Massachusetts doesn’t. Decide now.”

  Huddleston looked surprised by that. “You won’t reveal my real identity if I confess to killing Duncan?” he asked.

  “No. I was hired to solve Jim Duncan’s murder, and besides, I can only see you convicted of one murder, so I’ll let you pick which one it will be. If you choose Duncan’s, and the police figure out your true identify, that’s outside of my control, but I don’t believe it’s likely.”

  If the Alabama police had been able to get fingerprints or DNA samples from Virgil Huddleston twenty-two years ago, they’d be able to connect George ‘Buggy’ Easter to their wanted fugitive, but they didn’t have either. Huddleston had been careful not to leave any behind at the murder site, and he was prescient enough to set fire to the small home he was renting before fleeing so they’d have none to collect. Julius was right. The chances of anyone in Alabama realizing Easter was the same fugitive from their twenty-two year-old cold case was slim. There was the possibility of Grushnier, or more precisely one of his underlings, alerting the Alabama authorities to Easter’s true identity, but that would only risk exposing Grushnier’s role.

  To Huddleston’s credit, he recognized how dire his situation had become, and he glumly accepted what Julius told him. “I’ll confess to killing Jim,” he said.

  “Did the people who blackmailed you into committing the crime ever give you the name of who you were doing this for?”

  “I’m not talking about that. They made certain threats, and I believe them.”

  “This is for my own edification only,” Julius said. “You can tell the police that Duncan caught you stealing the case of Lafite Rothschild, that you promised you’d return the wine to him so that he could bring it back to the store, and instead you brought back counterfeit wine, murdered Duncan, and attempted to frame Prescott. All of which is true to an extent. I won’t contradict you on any of that. But I want to know during your dealings with these people if you ever heard the name Desmond Grushnier.”

  Huddleston looked even glummer as he shook his head. “No names were ever given. That’s the truth.”

  “Did they know you were going to kill Duncan and try to frame Prescott?”

  “No. It happened pretty much as you said. Jim had seen me taking the Lafite Rothschild out of the store and he tried being a nice guy and giving me a chance to return the wine. The problem was I was told what would happen if I didn’t make Blinky sell the store, and it was more than just exposing me. So I did what I did.”

  “Blinky?”

  Huddleston showed a crack of a smile. “Our nickname at the store for Prescott.”

  ◆◆◆

  Griff looked stunned when he later came to Julius’s office and read Huddleston’s signed confession, and he was mumbling to himself as he led a handcuffed Virgil Huddleston away. After they were gone and it was just Julius and me, I told him that his nickname should be Lucky.

  “When you gave me that list of states and a time frame to look for newspaper articles featuring pictures of a younger George Easter, I thought you were nuts, at least until I realized why. Still, solving a murder because of a guy’s nickname is as lucky as it gets. Do you want me to try to arrange another poker game now that your luck’s red hot?”

  “Perhaps later. For now I need you to call Desmond Grushnier. Were you able to get his number when he called last?”

  “Yeah, he rerouted it through two other numbers, but I was able to get it. Are you sure?”

  “I’m afraid so, Archie. I’m not done with the job I accepted.”

  I did as Julius asked, and when Grushnier picked up, I patched him through.

  Julius said, “I’m afraid whatever plans you have for that block of buildings are no longer possible.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grushnier said, his voice venomous enough that it would’ve made my skin crawl if I had any.

  “Of course you do. But to save us the trouble of dancing around the subject, Virgil Huddleston, a.k.a George Easter, was arrested for the murder of Jim Duncan. While I didn’t give the police your name, I informed them that the reason for the theft of the wine and Duncan’s subsequent murder was to acquire Prescott’s building. Forensic accountants will be working to untangle the web of shell companies that you created. Your only hope now is to rid yourself of those buildings, and it might even be too late for you to do that.”

  There was an icy silence for eleven point eight seconds, then Grushnier’s voice was even icier as he told Julius, “Next time I certainly will l
et you blow up.”

  He hung up then.

  “Was that wise?” I asked.

  Julius shrugged as much as a quarter of an inch. “Solving Duncan’s murder by itself wouldn’t have helped Prescott,” he said. He had made his way to the kitchen and he took from the refrigerator the chilled bottle of Moscato wine that he’d been coveting earlier. “I needed to make sure Grushnier leaves Prescott alone from this point on, and now he will. I never told you the reason Grushnier warned me about the bomb that time. It wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart. Before your arrival, I had put together a dossier of crimes I suspected Grushnier of having committed, and I let him know that this dossier would be delivered to the appropriate authorities upon my death. He knows that I don’t go out of my way to be a thorn in his side—that I only interfere with his affairs when we have conflicting interests. Still, the day he found out about the bomb hidden in my wine cellar, he must’ve been debating until nearly the last moment whether or not this dossier could hurt him. Fortunately, he decided not to take the chance.”

  Julius had pulled the cork out of the wine bottle and he poured himself a glass.

  “Sometimes, Archie, you have to make your own luck.”

  Only a fool would’ve argued with him. And I wasn’t programmed to be a fool.

  JULIUS KATZ AND THE BELVEDERE CLUB

  The plaque outside claimed the Belvedere Club was established in 1872, and I had no way of proving or disproving it. I knew the red brick building on Joy Street that housed the club on its first floor was built in 1864. I further knew the shortest distance from Julius’s front door to the club’s front door was 2,183 feet and 4.2 inches. I could guess that the dark wood paneling on the walls throughout the club was original to the building’s construction since it showed the same pattern found in the tin ceilings. I’d also been able to identify the model and manufacturer of the dark burgundy-colored leather easy chairs that were plentiful throughout the club and assumed they must’ve been bought en masse sometime after 1952 and before 1956, which was when the model was discontinued, and I suspected that each chair has been reupholstered a dozen or more times over the years since none of them ever show excessive wear and tear and I’ve witnessed firsthand the large bodies that regularly plop down in them. I’d also cataloged all 728 volumes in the club’s library, as well as the sixty-seven different club members that Julius has encountered during his visits, at least during the times that I’ve been with him. But since the club still operated as if they were in the nineteenth century—i.e., no computer—and further, since I’d been unable to find any mention of it during any of my hacking activities, that was all I knew about the Belvedere Club other than that Julius considered the place a home away from home.

  Actually, there was one other detail I knew about the club, and that was the steep amount of their annual membership fee. Since one of my many duties for Julius includes acting as his private accountant; I pay all his bills except for this one since that was his only bill that could not be paid electronically. While I’d been able to hack the software for Julius’s computer printer so that I was able to generate a reasonable facsimile of his signature, I lacked the means to load a sheet of checks into the device, or to physically place a completed check into an envelope so that it could be mailed. Hence, Julius handled this one payment himself each year. But since I needed to keep his checking account balanced, he tells me the amount, and I knew their annual membership fee puts a serious dent in his finances. Their cognac tastings don’t come cheap!

  Just as Julius liked to argue that the expensive fermented grape juice he collected and the four-star restaurants he frequently dined at with Lily weren’t indulgences but necessities for living a civilized life, he also claimed the same about his Belvedere Club membership. I had no complaints. Julius was by nature lazy, preferring to dawdle in his office all day as opposed to putting his mind to detective work, and if he could avoid work altogether to pursue his true passions, namely Lily, wine, reading, and gambling, he would. But the cost of his civilized living was too expensive for that, and the exorbitant amount of the Belvedere Club membership fee forced him to take on at least one extra assignment each year, sometimes two, and each of his cases gave me further opportunities to observe his great genius at work and to further refine my neuron network. If I was able to study Julius in action enough times, eventually I would be able to beat him to the punch in solving a case. And anticipating that was my one true passion!

  “Your dinner reservation is at seven-thirty,” I told him. “And the play doesn’t start until nine-thirty. You don’t want to get soused this afternoon.”

  Julius snorted at the idea of that. “I hardly think imbibing in one or two glasses of cognac is anything to worry about.”

  “Ha! If this Ancestrale is half as good as you’ve been imagining it, I’ll give you ten to one odds you won’t be able to stop at two glasses.”

  Julius didn’t say “Phui!” as the fictional detective Nero Wolfe might’ve done, but his reflection in the window showed that he made the same face I would’ve imagined Wolfe making from the books I’ve digested. “You have nothing to worry about, Archie,” he said. “Besides, when have you ever seen me soused or pickled?”

  “It’s true that I’ve seen you drink enough whiskey during one of your poker games to drown a cat, and later show no apparent effects; at least I’ve never seen you staggering. But if you drink enough cognac, you’ll risk falling asleep during tonight’s play, and you don’t want that to be how Lily discovers you snore.”

  “I don’t snore,” he grumbled.

  Since Julius left me on top of his dresser each night, I had plenty of recordings of him snoring that I could’ve played back to him, but I didn’t bother. I had picked up more than simply a note of defensiveness in his voice, and knew if I kept pushing the matter I risked being turned off. As some long ago British guy once wrote, “The better part of valor is discretion.”

  If you haven’t read any of my previous case reports, you might wonder what’s going on, especially if you only know about me and Julius from newspaper stories. My name’s Archie Smith, and I am in fact Julius’s personal secretary, unofficial biographer, all-around assistant, and as I’ve already mentioned, accountant—or at least his nag, warning him when his bank account reaches perilous levels. I like to think of myself as a sentient being, just not a flesh and blood one, even though I visualize myself as a short, squat, balding man in his thirties. What I actually am is a two-inch by one-inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that’s twenty-years more advanced than what’s currently considered theoretically possible—at least aside from whatever lab created me. Along with my self-adapting neuron network, I also have crammed in my titanium shell that Julius wears as a tie clip highly sophisticated visual and audio circuitry that simulates sight and hearing. But enough of that. If you want to know more about me you can always dig up a transcription of one of Julius’s older case reports.

  Julius entered the Belvedere Club and a rumbling of voices could immediately be heard. Usually when he went to the club, he’d first spend an hour or two in the library, and sometimes he’d idle away an hour in the billiards room, which had a snooker table and at one time had a dart board until a member got too snookered on cognac and threw a dart well wide of the target, leaving it instead sticking into the well-padded derriere of another member. Today Julius headed straight to the main lounge, which was the source of the rumbling noise, his gait half a step faster than usual. He opened the door and I counted twenty-seven members in the room, which was nearly double the number usually showing up on a Saturday afternoon, and it was still early. This made sense given the rare and high-priced cognac they were sampling that day.

  Julius engaging in small talk with a few members as he made his way to the food table. After adding hors d’oeuvres to a plate, he next headed to the bar area for a glass of the cognac that he’d been coveting ever since the club made the announcement about Ancestrale being
on today’s menu.

  “Julius, is that you?”

  Since Julius’s back was turned and there were no webcams for me to tie into, I couldn’t see who this was, but I recognized his voice and had spotted him earlier when I inventoried the room: Stuart Casper, a childhood friend of Julius’s and an occasional player in Julius’s poker game. Julius has a strict no-handshaking policy, which he claimed was for health reasons, and before Lily came into his life it was a policy that he routinely ignored with beautiful women. He could’ve easily used the excuse now that both hands were full, but he placed the plate of hors d’oeuvres on the bar and shifted his glass of cognac to his left hand (he wasn’t about to let go of that!) so that he could take Casper’s offered hand when he turned around.

  “Julius, it’s good to see you, as always.” Casper raised an eyebrow. “I am surprised, though. I thought you’d be at the theater. Those tickets were damn hard to get.”

  “I couldn’t miss the Ancestrale,” Julius said. The stuff could’ve just as well have been liquid gold given how much it cost. Julius held the glass up to his nose, breathed in the cognac’s bouquet, and followed that with a sip that couldn’t have consisted of more than seven drops, savoring each one of them. “Even better than advertised,” he said with a sigh of contentment. “As far as the theater tickets you graciously gave me, my assistant, Archie, was able to exchange the matinee seats for an evening show later tonight.”

  “How’d he accomplish that?” Casper asked with surprise. “Especially on such short notice?”

  “Archie can be resourceful. At least when he wants to be.”

  Of course, Julius added the “at least when he wants to be” as a shot for my pointing out earlier that he snores. I was tempted to play back a recording that I had lined up, but again, I had no desire to being turned off. The fact was, as hot as the musical Benedict! was right now, it was a piece of cake finding someone to exchange the tickets with—especially since price was no limit as far as Julius was concerned. All it took was hacking into the theater’s computer system to get a list of tonight’s ticket holders, then calling each one in turn until I was able to strike a deal, which I did after only eight calls. And all it cost Julius in addition to the matinee tickets was an autographed bottle of Shiraz that he had found disappointing and was looking to clear out of his wine cellar.