Benjamin Katz is a private detective who sets up shop in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. His girlfriend, Cassandra, joins him in the business; she and Benjamin marry at the end of the second novel. Since the two main characters eventually work for the US intelligence service, history plays an important role in the plots. The initial setting is Los Angeles, but Benjamin and Cassandra both move to Atlanta.
Each Kats novel begins with a murder to be solved. The novels, after the initial first chapter describing the murder, flash back to events leading up to the murder. Somewhere in the first third of each book, the action catches up with the murder, then proceeds to the conclusion.
Benjamin Kats was recruited by the CIA while he was still in the Marines; Cassandra is recruited just before they marry. The detective business is their cover for their occasional government assignments.
Throughout the Cold War, the CIA maintained a large number of contract agents to be “eyes and ears” in foreign countries. These agents fed raw information to analysts who would then provide reports for American diplomatic and military policy makers. Benjamin Kats, ostensibly working for international corporations, actually gathers information for his government. In order to maintain plausibility as a private investigator, Benjamin must work regular cases as well as government cases.
Each Kats novel begins with a murder to be solved. The novels, after the initial first chapter describing the murder, flash back to events leading up to the murder. Somewhere in the first third of each book, the action catches up with the murder, then proceeds to the conclusion.
Benjamin Kats was recruited by the CIA while he was still in the Marines; Cassandra is recruited just before they marry. The detective business is their cover for their occasional government assignments.
Throughout the Cold War, the CIA maintained a large number of contract agents to be “eyes and ears” in foreign countries. These agents fed raw information to analysts who would then provide reports for American diplomatic and military policy makers. Benjamin Kats, ostensibly working for international corporations, actually gathers information for his government. In order to maintain plausibility as a private investigator, Benjamin must work regular cases as well as government cases.
1
Think fast, not deep
Think fast, not deep
It was half way through the year, August, 1980 to be exact. I was on a container ship so this wasn’t the cruise of a life time, it was just business. This was another one of those jobs I’d rather not think about until a week after it was over. I’m a private investigator and I do a lot of different jobs each year, but those that take turns like this kind of leave me scratching my head in amazement.
In times like this, I’ve realized I should take stock of my life and asked the question, have I chosen the right career? Did I miss an opportunity that could have changed my life for the better, or at least something safer? But, not having the time to debate the relative merits of this situation, I attributed it to my predilection to act with gargantuan gobs of chutzpa.
Right next door to me, the Japanese couple’s cabin mirrored mine. Obviously the couple had settled in for a much longer haul than I was in for since they had way more personal stuff crammed into their space.
I’m only six foot one, but the doors were so low that I had to stoop over slightly to stand in the entrance of their disheveled room. Deciding not to go in yet, I scanned the area for something not trashed; nothing leapt out at me. All the books had been searched, then thrown in a pile on the floor. The shaving cream can lay emptied into the sink, where someone had cut the can with a large knife, something with enough strength to splay open the moderately thick metal. The toothpaste, deodorant and makeup containers had suffered the same fate as the shaving cream.
Stacked in the corner of the shallow closet, six empty suitcases made quite a tower. Actually the closet formed only an indentation in the wall with two metal bars to hang cloths on, one bar near the ceiling and the other half way down. Two dressers stood on either side of the double bed the only bed in the room. My room had two narrow single beds and I swear those beds in my room were at least three inches narrower than a real single bed.
The dressers were small, with only four short drawers, but they looked large in that small an area. Like the ones in my room, these dressers were constructed with solid wood and finished with a high gloss varnish; I think they were made from white pine. I noticed that the drawer was constructed of solid wood with dovetail joints at the front and back; the construction was quite fine for a place like this. All eight drawers had been not so meticulously emptied on the floor then stacked in the small shower stall. Whether to call it a shower stall, a toilet room or a wash room since all three occupied the exact same diminutive space, I never could figure out. Whoever had done the hurried rearranging, also did a through job of searching the contents of the drawers and all the hanging clothes; seams were ripped, and shoe soles cut off while someone had looked for something.
A faint smell of sandalwood hung in the air, although I didn’t remember smelling that before as I passed the door several times in the past day. My cabin held a slight musty odor to it, accented by the scent of a lemon wood polish. Behind all these up front smells was the faint odor of diesel fuel, the life blood of this ship. I wondered if they had burned incense the night before while they were keeping me awake, bumping the wall next to me. Perhaps they were smoking tobacco, either wacky or real, in their cabin in violation of ship rules and needed a cover-up. Perhaps one of them had a killer gas attack and didn’t want the embarrassment. It no longer mattered.
I did notice the silence, the louder engine noises were now absent since we were in port. I couldn’t hear any voices, nor loud banging from containers being moved about on deck. Ten minutes earlier, some noises had come from the stern of the ship, as if the crew were shuffling boxes in preparation for a major off loading, but nothing now. The whole time I was on that ship, I noticed that no one listened to music. Even bad music would have been appreciated once and a while.
About the only thing in the room that hadn’t been slit open was the body on the floor.
I looked more carefully at this poor guy’s head wound; the dark red flow almost stopped, blood had begun to coagulate. A heart beat would make the fluid spurt with a pulse, but the wound oozed so I guessed the murder had taken place within the last half hour or so. I didn’t see any breathing, and I debated if I should actually enter the murder scene to check for a pulse. I had a strong sense that I should not go into that room, I also had a strong sense that the man was quite dead. He had to have been there for the destruction of all his material goods, or shortly thereafter, because he lay on top of all the junk on the floor. Unless he still hid behind the partially opened door, the killer had to be long gone since one could see almost the entire cabin from my vantage point; as I’ve said over and over, these cabins were quite small. I had not heard any loud gunshot, so it had to be a silenced automatic.
Yoshihiro was a pleasant man, he didn’t deserve to be killed. His pockets were turned inside out and some of his clothes were torn. I wondered if whoever had tossed his room found what they wanted before killing him. I kind of doubted it.
“Mr. Katz .” Wolfgang slid around the corner of the hallway behind me. I guessed my decision to enter the cabin was made for me; I would not be going in. “Drop your gun slowly to the ground.”
I cautiously turned to face the crisply dressed officer who was pointing a shotgun at me; it was a nicely engraved Beretta over and under twelve gauge.
“I don’t have a gun, I didn’t shoot him,” I insisted.
“I think the police should decide that.” Wolfgang lowered the shotgun to his waist, still pointing it at my chest.
“Just think about it.” I raised my hands slowly in the air. “My gun is in your safe. I walked here, in fact I haven’t yet walked all the way into the room; did you hear a gunshot?”
“No.” He thought about that for a second. “But the ship is quite noisy, that might mask a shot.”
“Not in a metal room with lots of hard surfaces for the sound to bounce off of,” I observed quickly. “It had to be a gun with a silencer, and for the silencer to work it had to be an automatic. I have a revolver which hasn’t been fired in a while, as well as it being in your safe, if I haven’t already mentioned that.”
“It’s not my place to investigate anything like this once we’re docked in port.” Wolfgang shook his head, as if he had made up his mind that I was some mass murderer who deserved hanging in that disheveled small room. “I’d rather handle it myself, but that’s impossible now. We’ll wait right in this hallway until the police get here to arrest you for murder.”
“It could be you who killed this man, or one of your crew.” I pointed to the body. “Have you considered that?”
“I’m sure the police will question all of us before they are through.”
The Captain tried to appear grim but couldn’t. He appeared happy that I was the one he found staring at the dead man.
“But I’m sure they will question you more than any of the rest of us,” he added.
Damn, things like this put a real crimp in an investigation, you know. This whole thing started more than a week ago when Cassandra left me, and Billy Sullivan showed up on my front porch a few days later. I should have known that two bad things are usually followed by a third.
-Katz Box, chapter 1-
In times like this, I’ve realized I should take stock of my life and asked the question, have I chosen the right career? Did I miss an opportunity that could have changed my life for the better, or at least something safer? But, not having the time to debate the relative merits of this situation, I attributed it to my predilection to act with gargantuan gobs of chutzpa.
Right next door to me, the Japanese couple’s cabin mirrored mine. Obviously the couple had settled in for a much longer haul than I was in for since they had way more personal stuff crammed into their space.
I’m only six foot one, but the doors were so low that I had to stoop over slightly to stand in the entrance of their disheveled room. Deciding not to go in yet, I scanned the area for something not trashed; nothing leapt out at me. All the books had been searched, then thrown in a pile on the floor. The shaving cream can lay emptied into the sink, where someone had cut the can with a large knife, something with enough strength to splay open the moderately thick metal. The toothpaste, deodorant and makeup containers had suffered the same fate as the shaving cream.
Stacked in the corner of the shallow closet, six empty suitcases made quite a tower. Actually the closet formed only an indentation in the wall with two metal bars to hang cloths on, one bar near the ceiling and the other half way down. Two dressers stood on either side of the double bed the only bed in the room. My room had two narrow single beds and I swear those beds in my room were at least three inches narrower than a real single bed.
The dressers were small, with only four short drawers, but they looked large in that small an area. Like the ones in my room, these dressers were constructed with solid wood and finished with a high gloss varnish; I think they were made from white pine. I noticed that the drawer was constructed of solid wood with dovetail joints at the front and back; the construction was quite fine for a place like this. All eight drawers had been not so meticulously emptied on the floor then stacked in the small shower stall. Whether to call it a shower stall, a toilet room or a wash room since all three occupied the exact same diminutive space, I never could figure out. Whoever had done the hurried rearranging, also did a through job of searching the contents of the drawers and all the hanging clothes; seams were ripped, and shoe soles cut off while someone had looked for something.
A faint smell of sandalwood hung in the air, although I didn’t remember smelling that before as I passed the door several times in the past day. My cabin held a slight musty odor to it, accented by the scent of a lemon wood polish. Behind all these up front smells was the faint odor of diesel fuel, the life blood of this ship. I wondered if they had burned incense the night before while they were keeping me awake, bumping the wall next to me. Perhaps they were smoking tobacco, either wacky or real, in their cabin in violation of ship rules and needed a cover-up. Perhaps one of them had a killer gas attack and didn’t want the embarrassment. It no longer mattered.
I did notice the silence, the louder engine noises were now absent since we were in port. I couldn’t hear any voices, nor loud banging from containers being moved about on deck. Ten minutes earlier, some noises had come from the stern of the ship, as if the crew were shuffling boxes in preparation for a major off loading, but nothing now. The whole time I was on that ship, I noticed that no one listened to music. Even bad music would have been appreciated once and a while.
About the only thing in the room that hadn’t been slit open was the body on the floor.
I looked more carefully at this poor guy’s head wound; the dark red flow almost stopped, blood had begun to coagulate. A heart beat would make the fluid spurt with a pulse, but the wound oozed so I guessed the murder had taken place within the last half hour or so. I didn’t see any breathing, and I debated if I should actually enter the murder scene to check for a pulse. I had a strong sense that I should not go into that room, I also had a strong sense that the man was quite dead. He had to have been there for the destruction of all his material goods, or shortly thereafter, because he lay on top of all the junk on the floor. Unless he still hid behind the partially opened door, the killer had to be long gone since one could see almost the entire cabin from my vantage point; as I’ve said over and over, these cabins were quite small. I had not heard any loud gunshot, so it had to be a silenced automatic.
Yoshihiro was a pleasant man, he didn’t deserve to be killed. His pockets were turned inside out and some of his clothes were torn. I wondered if whoever had tossed his room found what they wanted before killing him. I kind of doubted it.
“Mr. Katz .” Wolfgang slid around the corner of the hallway behind me. I guessed my decision to enter the cabin was made for me; I would not be going in. “Drop your gun slowly to the ground.”
I cautiously turned to face the crisply dressed officer who was pointing a shotgun at me; it was a nicely engraved Beretta over and under twelve gauge.
“I don’t have a gun, I didn’t shoot him,” I insisted.
“I think the police should decide that.” Wolfgang lowered the shotgun to his waist, still pointing it at my chest.
“Just think about it.” I raised my hands slowly in the air. “My gun is in your safe. I walked here, in fact I haven’t yet walked all the way into the room; did you hear a gunshot?”
“No.” He thought about that for a second. “But the ship is quite noisy, that might mask a shot.”
“Not in a metal room with lots of hard surfaces for the sound to bounce off of,” I observed quickly. “It had to be a gun with a silencer, and for the silencer to work it had to be an automatic. I have a revolver which hasn’t been fired in a while, as well as it being in your safe, if I haven’t already mentioned that.”
“It’s not my place to investigate anything like this once we’re docked in port.” Wolfgang shook his head, as if he had made up his mind that I was some mass murderer who deserved hanging in that disheveled small room. “I’d rather handle it myself, but that’s impossible now. We’ll wait right in this hallway until the police get here to arrest you for murder.”
“It could be you who killed this man, or one of your crew.” I pointed to the body. “Have you considered that?”
“I’m sure the police will question all of us before they are through.”
The Captain tried to appear grim but couldn’t. He appeared happy that I was the one he found staring at the dead man.
“But I’m sure they will question you more than any of the rest of us,” he added.
Damn, things like this put a real crimp in an investigation, you know. This whole thing started more than a week ago when Cassandra left me, and Billy Sullivan showed up on my front porch a few days later. I should have known that two bad things are usually followed by a third.
-Katz Box, chapter 1-