Norma Brewer shook her head adamantly, her mouth nearly disappearing as she pushed her lips hard together. “My brother’s a lawyer. He could tie this up in the courts for years. I implore you, Mr. Katz, I need your help.”
Julius started drumming his fingers along the surface of his desk again. I knew he wanted an excuse not to take this case. The only thing he disliked more than working was working on a case that involved family disputes, which he found generally unseemly. While he drummed along the desk, I filled him in on what I was able to find out about Lawrence Brewer by hacking into the Massachusetts Bar Association database.
“While I still strongly advise you against hiring me, I will take this assignment if you insist,” Julius said with a pained sigh. “But I will need a retainer check for twenty thousand dollars.”
Twenty thousand dollars would pay for the case of Romanée Conti Burgundy. Norma Brewer took out a checkbook and started to write out a check. Julius stopped her.
“I can’t guarantee results,” he told her. “And it will be left to my discretion how I proceed and for how long. I will need to meet your mother, and if I am not satisfied that she needs the care you claim she does, I will end the assignment immediately. There will be no refund offered. If that is satisfactory to you, then feel free to hire me.”
Norma Brewer hesitated for only a moment, then finished writing out the check. She handed it to Julius, who glanced at it casually and placed it inside the top drawer of his desk.
“I’ll have my assistant, Archie, call you later this afternoon to arrange a time tomorrow morning for me to meet your mother.”
Julius stood up and escorted the two sisters out of the office and towards the front door. Norma Brewer seemed taken aback by the suddenness of this, and commented on how she thought Julius would have more questions for her about her brother.
“Not at this time,” Julius said. “Later, perhaps.”
He hurried her along. Helen meekly allowed herself to be herded with her sister out the door. Norma tried sputtering out some more questions, which Julius met with a few mindless platitudes. Relief washed over his face once he had the door closed and those two out of his home. His townhouse was three levels, not including the basement, which he had converted into a wine cellar. With a lightness in his step, he went down to the cellar and picked out a bottle of 1961 Bordeaux from Chateau Léoville Barton. “Rich, full-bodied, with the barest hint of sweet black fruits,” Julius murmured for my benefit, although it was unnecessary since I had already looked up The Wine Spectator’s report on it. Once we were back upstairs, Julius prepared a selection of cheeses and dried meats, then brought it all out to his garden-level patio where he placed the tray on a table. He sat on a red cedar Adirondack chair that had faded over the years to a muted rust color. The patio was the crown jewel of his townhouse — over two thousand square feet, and Julius had it professionally landscaped with Japanese maples, fountains, a variety of rose bushes, and a vast assortment of other plantings. He opened the Bordeaux and rolled the cork between his forefinger and thumb, testing it, then smelled the cork. Satisfied, he poured himself a glass. I asked him what time I should arrange for him to meet the mother.
He held the wineglass up against the late afternoon light, studied the wine’s composition, then took a sip and savored it. After he put the glass down he told me eleven o’clock would be satisfactory. I called Norma Brewer on her cell phone and arranged it. Afterwards I asked Julius if he wanted me to make an appointment with Norma Brewer’s brother.
“That won’t be necessary,” he said.
I watched as he finished a glass of Bordeaux and poured himself another, then as he sampled the Stilton and Gruyére cheeses that he had brought out with him. I could tell he had put the case completely out of his mind. While Julius drank his wine I performed a database search on the brother. I told Julius this and asked if he would like a report.
“Not now, Archie. We’ll see, maybe later.”
I digested this and came to the obvious conclusion. “You don’t plan on doing any work on this case,” I said. “You’re going to meet the mother and no matter what her condition you’re going to tell your client that you’re dropping the case.”
Julius didn’t bother responding. His eyes glazed as he drank more of the wine.
“You’re just going to take her money and do nothing to earn it.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions, Archie.”
“I don’t think so.”
He smiled slightly. “I’m still not convinced what you do can be considered thinking.”
“You took her money. You have an obligation—”
“I’m well aware of my obligations.” He put the glass down and sighed heavily. “It’s a fool’s errand, Archie. If Lawrence Brewer is as his sister says he is, then there’s nothing I’ll be able to do to change his position regarding his mother.”
“You could find something to use against him,” I said. “He’s a lawyer. If you were able to threaten him with disbarment—”
“Threaten his livelihood?” Julius shook his head. “No, Archie, I believe that would have the opposite effect by making him need his mother’s money all the more. Please, no more of this. Not now, anyway. Let me enjoy my wine, this view, and the late afternoon air.”
“You had no right taking payment unless you were serious about investigating this—”
My world went black as Julius turned me off.
Julius seldom turned me off. When he did it was always disorienting when I was turned back on. This time it was especially so, and it took me as much as three-tenths of a second to get my bearings and realize that Julius and I were being jostled back and forth in the backseat of a cab. According to my internal clock it was 10:48 in the morning, and using GPS to track our position, I had us eight point two miles from Emma Brewer’s home in Brookline.
Julius chuckled lightly. “I hope you had a good rest, Archie.”
“Yeah, just wonderful.” I still felt off-kilter as I tried to adjust my frame of reference from being on Julius’s patio one moment to the inside of a cab now. I told him about this and that I guessed the sensation was similar to what humans felt when they were knocked unconscious by a sucker punch.
“A touch of passive-aggressiveness in that statement, Archie. I’m impressed with how lifelike your personality is developing. But getting back to your comment, I would think it’s more like being put under with anesthesia,” Julius said.
“Wha? Wha’s that you say?” The cab driver had turned around. He had a thick Russian or Slavic accent. I tried to match the inflections in his voice with samples I found over the Internet, and felt confident that I had his birthplace pinned down to Kiev. The man looked disheveled and had obviously gone several days without shaving or washing his hair. Julius told the man that he was talking to himself, and not to mind him. The cab driver turned back around to face the traffic. He muttered to himself in Russian about the loony Americans he had to drive around all day. I translated this for Julius, who barely cracked a smile from it.
“After turning me off last night, did you try the new French restaurant on Charles Street that you’ve had your heart set on?”
Julius made a face as if he had sipped wine that had turned to vinegar.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Les Cuisses de Grenouilles Provencale were dry and nearly inedible, and they were out of ’ninety-eight Chateau Latour.”