(an excerpt from Detectives and Spies)
THREE
sections. Four different types of mystery and crime stories.
Whether it’s the brilliant Boston detective Julius Katz, or
his sister Julia, the first three stories in the KATZ section are traditional
mysteries. A crime has been committed, the potential suspects are questioned,
and the guilty party is exposed. While the fourth story in the KATZ section, Archie’s Been Stolen!, has the same
style, tone and humor as all the other Julius Katz and Archie stories, it’s a
caper. There’s no mystery to solve, only a heist of sorts to commit.
The three stories in the BRICK section are crime thrillers
featuring investigator Morris Brick, his bull terrier Parker, and the rest of
the MBI team. These stories and the five Morris Brick novels that I wrote under
the Jacob Stone pseudonym for Kensington have similar humor and style, are
fast-paced, and are populated by hardened criminals and mobsters. Where they
differ is the novels have very bad people committing horrific acts while the
stories are lighter. While there’s plenty of danger in these stories,
ultimately no one gets badly hurt.
The two stories in the STONE section features Hell’s only
operating private eye, Mike Stone, from my novel Everybody Lies in Hell. Even
with the unique setting and the fantastic elements, such as souls being
tormented by demons and demonic racing horses that bite the heads off of
jockeys, these are hardboiled PI stories. These stories are about stripping
away the self-deceptions and lies we tell ourselves to expose the ugly truths
underneath, and there’s not much more hardboiled than that!
So given that these are all mystery and crime stories, why
the title Detectives and Spies? While
all the stories have either detectives or spies acting as detectives, three of
the stories are a merging of the mystery and spy genres.
JULIUS KATZ AND THE RUINED ROAST
AT ten-fourteen a.m. Julius put down
the daily edition of the Boston Globe, got up from behind his desk and perused
his bookshelves before selecting a biography of the Word War Two spy, Virginia
Hall. He had found excuses to turn down the last five potential clients who
were desperate to hire him, so why not spend the rest of the day loafing just
like he had the past week? Me, I felt a jangling throughout, which I knew from
past experience was a sensation akin to nervousness. The reason? It appeared as
if my plans were about to go kaput thanks to a late delivery. My first three
text messages all got the same response, and my last one went unanswered. Since
all I could do was wait, that’s what I did. Two minutes later I would’ve sighed
in relief if I had lungs, but since I don’t, I simply imagined myself doing so.
Seven seconds after that the doorbell rang.
Julius
ignored the doorbell. He didn’t even bother to ask me to check the outdoor
webcam feed to see who it was. I waited until he turned to the next page of his
book before telling him that three boxes of pastries had been left outside his
door.
Annoyance
tightened his lips for all of 110 milliseconds. “Archie, please explain the
reason for this,” he said with forced patience.
“Nothing
too nefarious,” I said. “I ordered them, although they were supposed to have
been delivered an hour and five minutes ago. You really should retrieve them
before squirrels, or worse, make a meal out of them.”
If
Julius was curious about my motive, he didn’t show it. Instead he took his time
reading another page before telling me in a rather curt tone that I should call
around to find someone who would pick up the food before it attracts pests to
his Beacon Hill townhouse.
“Sure,
if that’s what you want, but it would be a shame. The order is from Lenora’s
Bakery and it includes six of their famous chocolate pecan roses, which are
damned hard to get even though as far as I can tell they’re little more than a
fancy brioche roll baked into the shape of a rose.”
That
got Julius to put his book down. He wasn’t about to give me the satisfaction of
running, but still, he moved at a determined pace to retrieve the pastries,
which was what I expected given all the recent hullabaloo about Lenora’s after
their roses were proclaimed by the Globe’s food critic to be a regional
treasure. Julius would have ordered some himself, except the bakery’s policy
was not to take orders for the roses. Instead it was first come first serve,
and they only baked a few hundred each morning and would sell out within a half
hour of their seven a.m. opening. At that time each morning Julius would be
engaged in his two-hour martial arts workout, which was something he wasn’t
about to forego even for a morning pastry that the critics called beyond exquisite. I got lucky when I
called to wheedle a delivery from them. While Lenora Chapel, the owner of the
bakery, kept the recipe for the roses a well-guarded secret, she suspected that
a recently fired employee had brought her recipe for something called a peach-hazelnut snail to a rival bakery
and wanted to know if this person was working there. A little hacking on my
part proved Lenora correct, which was all her lawyer needed to issue a cease
and desist letter, and hence the delivery this morning.
Julius
waited until he had brought the boxes of pastries safely back to his office and
was able to examine them and verify that the prized rolls were indeed included
before asking how I had managed this.
“A
little wheeling and dealing on my part,” I said. “Nothing for you to be
concerned about.”
Julius’s
eyelids lowered an eighth of an inch. He asked, “Who did you arrange to come
here this morning?”
“Is it
impossible to believe that I got you those roses and other treats out of the
goodness of my heart, even though I don’t have one?”
“Archie,
please, none of this sophistry.”
“Fine.
The four main suspects for the Charlie Lacey murder. They want to hire you.”
That
brought a thin smile to him. “Archie, I am grateful for these pastries, but if
you thought that I would reciprocate by meeting with them, then you need to
recalibrate your neuron network.”
Of
course, I never thought that even for a microsecond. I fully understand how
stubborn Julius is. When the news broke that the comic Charlie Lacey dropped
dead of cyanide poisoning during the middle of his roast at a Cambridge comedy
club, Julius claimed that the reputed mob boss Billy Quinn was the murderer
simply because the news reported that Quinn was in attendance. It didn’t matter
that Quinn was there only because Lacey was his godson and that the police had
ruled him out as a suspect, Julius wasn’t about to admit he had made a mistake.
This was sort of like Schrödinger’s cat—as long as Lacey’s murder wasn’t
solved, Quinn could both be the murderer and not the murderer, and Julius could
be both right and wrong.
“That’s
not what I was thinking,” I told Julius. “I wanted to get you those roses
because I knew how much you wanted them, especially since they’ll be a nice
surprise for Lily when she gets back from visiting her parents. But I did think
the gesture would soften you up enough to listen to reason. Forget the
publicity you’d get from this case, the four suspects coming here are willing
to put a hundred grand in escrow for you simply agreeing to take the case,
which works out to 57,550 dollars after taxes, and that should be enough for you
to make the winning bid for a bottle of 1990 Domaine Georges & Christophe
Roumier Musigny Grand Cru that goes up for auction this Saturday.”
That
got Julius’s attention, as well it should since this was a vintage he’d been
trying to acquire for years. He contemplated the matter for all of three point
two seconds before telling me that a twenty-five thousand dollar bid should be
sufficient.
“That
might be true,” I said. “That’s what the wine is supposed to be worth, but the
last bottle that went up for auction sold for 52,500 dollars. But whether you’d
have to pay twenty-five grand or more for that fermented bottle of grape juice
is irrelevant since you can’t pay that much and also cover your next two
months’ expenses unless you cut out your expensive dinners at Le Che Cru with
Lily and skip the illegal poker game next Friday at Phil Weinstein’s restaurant
and its ten grand buy-in.”
Julius’s
tone held a petulant note as he said, “You’re assuming I’ll be losing my buy-in
instead of walking away from the game with substantial winnings.”
“Yeah,
I know, you’re a world-class poker player, and you should clean and fillet the
guppies you’ll be playing with, but luck’s a funny thing, especially bad luck,
and I remember nights when you’ve done everything right and still busted out.
If you’d like I can provide you specifics.”
Julius
sat stone-faced while he drummed the fingers on his right hand against his
desk’s surface, which was always a clear sign that he was annoyed with me.
“Blast it,” he said after five point seven seconds of drumming. “I already told
you who the murderer is.”
“Yeah,
I know. Billy Quinn. The video recording of the roast that the police took
custody of hasn’t helped them make an arrest. Maybe if I were able to find it,
you’d pinpoint where it showed Quinn poisoning Lacey’s drink, but I’ve hacked
all of the Cambridge Police Department’s computers, and I can’t find the video
recording on any of them. So prove the impossible and earn yourself that
hundred grand.”
Julius
brooded for the next eight point three seconds, but from the way he grimaced he
must’ve decided that he wanted the bottle of Grand Cru more than the luxury of
spending his time goofing off, and even more than opening up the box with his
own version of Schrödinger’s cat and having to admit that his earlier
ill-formed opinion was wrong.
He
asked, “Archie, when will that mob be descending on my door?”
Four
comics were now a mob? I didn’t argue the point and instead told him that they
were scheduled to arrive in eight minutes.
He cast
a glum look at the box filled with Lenora’s acclaimed roses. “That doesn’t
leave me enough time to properly appreciate one of them,” he said.
“Yeah,
well, I’m sorry about that. As I told you the delivery was late.” I simulated
taking a breath and holding it, which for me was pausing my central processing
unit for fifty milliseconds, then said, “There’s still time for me to cancel
the meeting if you want.”
Julius’s
expression turned glummer, but otherwise he didn’t bother to answer me. He got
up from his chair and brought the boxes of pastries to his kitchen.
(continued in Detectives and Spies)
