Read Online Death on a High Floor by Charles Rosenberg - Free Book Online

Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but you need to fire her and get yourself a real lawyer. One who isn’t a bigger suspect than you are.”
    “She’s not the lead. She’s just backing up Oscar Quesana,” I said.
    He turned to face me again. “Oscar Quesana? For God’s sake, Oscar does murders!”
    “That’s what I’m suspected of, Harry. Remember?”
    “Right. Of course. Nevertheless, you need an entirely different class of lawyer. But surely you already know that.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Or perhaps the stress has addled your brain.”
    My goal in going there had been to learn more about Simon. Not to discuss my choice of lawyers.
    “Harry, you may be right, and pardon me, but I don’t want to talk about that right now. I came to talk about Simon and who had a motive to kill him. Besides Jenna.”
    “Well, I suppose it could have been somebody from the nether world which he had been—how shall I put it—exploring?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Simon had developed an interest in high stakes gambling. The kind where you wear a tux, play with silver chips in an elegant private room, and are served champagne by women who look like they just stepped out of a James Bond movie. Unfortunately, gambling turned out not to be Simon’s forte.”
    “He owed them money?”
    “In the vicinity of five million dollars.”
    “To whom, exactly, did he owe it?”
    “He declined to tell me. All I know is that he didn’t have the sum and that it was woefully overdue.” Harry had begun to pace up and down in front of the windows with his hands behind his back. He had always been a guy who couldn’t stay put.
    “Who else knows about it?”
    “Well, the policeman who came to visit me last night, for one. Spitz I think his name was. He asked about it.”
    “Spritz.”
    “Yes, that’s right. Spritz.”
    “Did he tell you how he knew about it?” I asked.
    “No, Robert, he didn’t. But as I think you know, when the police interview you, they generally ask the questions.”
    “What else did he want to know?”
    “In addition to asking about the gambling debts—about which I knew and know almost nothing—he inquired about Simon’s interest in ancient coins.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    Harry walked over to a low cabinet and bent down to open it. He lowered himself slowly, in a way that betrayed the age of his joints. I had known him since he was in his early fifties, and it pained me to watch.
    He pulled from the cabinet a thin, white, folio-sized book, not yet bound, and brought it over to me. “I told Spritz that Simon had been a collector for more than twenty years and showed him this.”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s the printer’s proof copy of Simon’s private catalog. For his coin collection.”
    I was taken aback. Normally, museums make catalogs of their coin collections. I opened it. It was arranged chronologically, coin by coin. I paged to the section that covered the 50 years before Christ. There, exactly where I had expected them, were thumbnail pictures of both sides of the Ides denariusof Brutus . Brutus’ portrait on one side, double daggers and the words “Eid Mar”—Ides of March—on the other.
    “This is a picture of the one I sold him?”
    “Yes. Although he was planning to strike it from the final, bound edition.”
    “What did you tell Spritz about it?”
    “Not much.”
    “Meaning?”
    “I’m afraid I volunteered that you and Simon were having a tiff about the authenticity of the Ides .”
    “So you know about our dispute, then?”
    “Sure. Did you ever take the coin back, as Simon asked, and return his money?”
    I hesitated. I do not make a habit of lying. Little white lies in social situations, maybe.
    “I did,” I said. “At his request, I picked it up from his office last Saturday morning when I was in for a few hours. I’ll need to send his estate a check.”
    Harry gave me what I interpreted as an odd look.
    “So you came to agree the Ides was a