Julius Katz Mysteries (11 page)

“You didn’t actually solve Denise Penny’s murder,” I said. “You were only bluffing them, expecting to be able to read their tells to figure out who the murderer was. If the murderer had been a good enough poker player, you would’ve struck out.”

“Perhaps you’re correct, Archie, but I liked my chances,” Julius said with a thin smile. “Both murders had a rushed and panicky feel, and I doubted the murderer would be able to sit here and not give himself away. I also suspected Hanson from the beginning.”

“Why?”

“Blackmail seemed the likely motive for both murders, and Hanson was the only name on the list that was easily identifiable. I doubt Henke would’ve recognized any of the other people on the list, or would’ve suspected they were wealthy enough to be worth blackmailing. Also, Archie, Denise Penny appeared more opportunistic than altruistic. I was working under the assumption that she attended the event where she was photographed two weeks ago so that she could make contact with Hanson at a public place and let him know she had something damaging on him. Her plan must’ve been to wait until she had you agreeing to go to her apartment before arranging for Hanson to pay her her blackmail.”

“I feel deeply insulted that she thought I’d be such a dupe as to witness her blackmailing Hanson and keep quiet about it,” I said.

“I doubt that was the case,” Julius said with a sympathetic smile. “She probably only wanted Hanson to see you with her to convince him that you were in on the scheme, but I suspect that she would have sent you out of her apartment on a ruse of some sort so that payment could’ve been made outside of your view.”

“It must’ve been a shock to her when I didn’t show up,” I said.

“I suppose it was.”

“I still can’t believe how badly she fooled me,” I said. “I keep trying to adjust my neuron network so that I could’ve spotted her treachery, but I can’t quite get there. I guess I’m just a sap who’s ripe for the conning.”

Julius put down his book, his eyes thoughtful. “I don’t think that’s it, Archie,” he said. “I think it’s that you’ve reached a point now where you’re all too human. Blame it on that. No more dating, okay?”

“Deal,” I agreed. Murders were tough enough, forget dating. This was a deal I was only too happy to make.

###

About the Author

Dave
Zeltserman
:

I was born in Boston and have lived in the Boston area my whole life except for five years when I was at the University of Colorado in Boulder working on my B.S. in Applied Math and Computer Science.

I spent a lot of hours as a kid watching old movies with Hitchcock, the Marx Brothers, and film noir being my favorite, especially
The Roaring Twenties
,
The Third
M
an
and
The
M
altese Falcon
. I also always read a lot, everything from comic books, Mad Magazine, pulps (Robert E. Howard being my favorite), and science fiction. When I was 15 and spending a few weeks during the summer at my uncle's house in Maine, I picked up a dog-eared copy of
I, the Jury
by Mickey Spillane, and from that point on was hooked on crime fiction. From Spillane, I moved on to Hammett, Chandler, Rex Stout, Ross Macdonald, and many other crime writers before eventually discovering Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford in the early ‘90s. Thompson, in particular, had a big impact on my writing, not only in the way he got into the heads of broken psychopaths and had you rooting for them, but in the way he took chances in his writing. For years before I read my first Jim Thompson novel,
Hell of a Woman
, I was trying to write what amounted to bad Ross Macdonald. Once I started reading Thompson, it opened my eyes to how I could break every rule I wanted to as long as I could make it work, and this led me to finding my own voice. My first book,
Fast Lane
, was probably equally inspired by Macdonald and Thompson—it had the sins of the father theme that Macdonald did so well, but written from the unreliable narrator and mind of the killer that Thompson excelled at. Years after writing
Fast Lane
, I read about Macdonald's last unfinished Lew Archer novel, and was amazed to find that it had a major plot-point in common with
Fast Lane
. Of course, my Julius Katz stories are heavily inspired by Rex Stout, and are almost the polar opposite of my crime noir novels.

Fast Lane
was sold first to the Italian publisher, Meridiano Zero, in 2004, and was later published by a small U.S. publisher. Since 2008, I’ve had ten books published, and have seen two of them (
Small Crimes
and
Pariah
) named by the Washington Post as best books of the year, one of them named by NPR as one of the five best crime and mystery books of the year (
Small Crimes
), and another short-listed by the ALA for best horror novel of the year (
The Caretaker of Lorne Field
). My books are now also being published in Italy, France, Germany, Holland and Lithuania, and my latest crime novel, Outsourced, has been optioned by Impact Pictures and Constantin Film.

To learn more about my books and writing, please visit me at http://www.davezeltserman.com