John Roberts - Oracle of the Dead

“My family and my wife’s have nothing to do with it,” I assured him. “I know both men, I know their armies, I know the Senate. Caesar’s the man, count on it.”

“Very well then. But what’s going to happen when Caesar’s top dog on the pile, eh?” He had a self-made provincial’s directness that I liked.

“I wish I knew that. It would make all the difference. Best would be if Caesar would reorder the Senate and the law courts, which are in need of reordering, set the calendar to rights, which is his job anyway as Pontifex Maximus, review the constitution, make adjustments where they’re needed, and then step down, the way Sulla did. Only I hope he can do it without killing as many people as Sulla did. I know he wants to go to war against Parthia. Crassus was his friend and he wants to avenge him, get the Roman prisoners of Carrhae back, and retake the eagles Crassus lost. And, of course, add to his own laurels. If he’ll just settle affairs at Rome to his liking and run off to his next war, Italy will have gotten off lightly.”

“You think he’ll be dictator then? Sulla broke the power of the Tribunes of the Plebs.”

“He’ll be dictator in fact even if he doesn’t get the title voted by the Senate. And Tribunes can be obnoxious troublemakers, but we need them. Without them the people are at the mercy of the senators, many of whom are a pack of self-seeking thieves. Believe me, I know, being one of them myself. One of the better ones, mind you.”

He laughed heartily at this. “Well, Praetor, you’ve answered me honestly, and now I’ll tell you something that may be of use to you in the coming months. Pompey is a great favorite in this district. People like him. He’s popular, and when he visits he’s cheered and praised and we always throw a good banquet for him.” Then he leaned close. “But nobody here is going to get in a war for him. Popularity is one thing. Loyalty unto death is another. We don’t know Caesar very well down here, but we’re not going to give him any trouble, either. Next time you see your wife’s uncle, you tell him that.”

“I will, and I appreciate the confidence. Now, tell me, do you know if this Syrian had any doings with the Temple of Apollo and Hecate’s Oracle? You know I’ve been investigating the murders there.”

“That I do and so does the whole countryside. It’s the prime subject of gossip these days.” He thought a while. “Rumor has it the man was thick with every thief, from bandit to burglar, for a hundred miles around. If anyone there was stealing, they may well have dealt with him. But men like him stay alive and in business by being discreet. Same for the thieves. I can’t say his name was linked with anyone there, but then I don’t get to hear the gossip in the lowest taverns.”

Shortly after this we were joined by the tanner Aureus, the Syrian’s citizen partner. He was a burly, tough-looking specimen, his hands stained brown by the noxious liquids of the tanning vats. Apparently, he didn’t leave all the work to his slaves. The introductions were brief.

“Aureus, we can be pretty sure that your partner was a fence,” I began.

“I can tell you he was a thief. That’s why I was suing him.”

“What caused you to be suspicious of him?”

“Well, to start with, he was a Syrian. They’re all thieves.”

“Yet you went into partnership with him.”

“Well, a foreign businessman has to have a citizen partner. That’s the law. So it only makes sense to partner with one. Doesn’t mean you have to share his whole life. I only saw the man once a year, around Saturnalia, to settle accounts. Over the years I got suspicious, because he was living mighty high while he was telling me his business was barely clearing expenses.”

“Living high?” I said. I nodded toward the office across the street. “It looks to me as if he was living with great austerity.”

“That place? That’s just where he stayed when he was in town doing business. Go visit his villa outside of town. It’s better than the one the duumvir here owns.”

I looked at Belasus. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s a fine place. He bought it about ten years ago, I think.”

“So, you see? He was cheating me.” Aureus shook his head. “Looks like I’ll never get my money now.”

“File a suit against his estate,” Belasus advised. “I doubt the man has a relative to claim it. He was a foreigner and may never have filed a will. Praetor Terentianus will probably condemn the property and it’ll be sold at auction. Get your claim in quickly and you should get a nice piece of the sale price.”

The man grinned. “Thanks, Duumvir, I’ll do that.” I dismissed the man, telling him I might have more questions for him.

“There goes another vote for me next election,” Belasus said contentedly.

Hermes came from the office with a scroll in his hand. “This was in one of the chests. It’s an old one, going by the color of the papyrus. I’m not sure I understand everything, but some things look suspicious. See what you can make of it.” He left it with me and went back inside. I puzzled over the abbreviations and eccentric spelling but it could have been worse. At least the man wrote in Latin, of a sort.

“As near as I can tell,” I told my companion, “this says that he took delivery of some rings, some gold and silver plate, some gems, and a sword with an ivory hilt and sheath from one Sextus Porcius.” I looked at him. “Any relation to your colleague?”

He shook his head. “That family’s never used the name Sextus that I know of. Might be a distant relative. Porcius is one of the most common names in this district. There was a Porcius family when Pompeii was founded. By now their descendants and the descendants of the family’s freedmen must number in the thousands.”

“It’s not exactly rare in the rest of Italy, either,” I said. “My fellow senator Cato is a Porcius, and I think his family came from Etruria. No help there, then. But this inventory is standard burglar’s loot: small items of high resale value, precious metals and gemstones and so forth. One sale could be legitimate, but I’ll bet my men find more like this.”

“Pretty foolish to put it in writing, don’t you think?”

“Some people are fanatic record keepers. They can’t help it. They always think someone is going to cheat them and have to keep track of every denarius. It’s a sort of sickness.”

As I had foretold, within the hour we had at least thirty more such records, all detailing the same sort of items. There were also records of the legitimate cargoes the man had bought on speculation and sold at a profit or, more often, at a loss, but the former outnumbered the latter by a great margin.

“No question about it,” Belasus said with a sigh. “We have here the district’s biggest fence. Well, good riddance to him. I, for one, don’t plan to waste much time finding out who the killer might be. The man did a public service exterminating this wretch.”

“I doubt you’ll find the killer here, anyway,” I muttered.

“Eh? What was that, Praetor?”

“Nothing. Just talking to myself, for which I have no excuse in such good company.” I laid aside the scroll I had been reading. “It’s getting too dark to read.”

“So it is,” Belasus said. “Come to my house for some dinner, you and your men. I’m a widower, my daughters are married, my sons are with the eagles in Macedonia, and I’ve nothing but room. We’ll make a boy’s night of it.”

“That is the finest offer I’ve had in months,” I told him, truthfully.

I called my men out of the office and the duumvir put an official seal on the door. We went to a market and stopped by a caterer’s shop where Belasus ordered up a small banquet to be delivered to his house. The caterer was a man who knew the duumvir ’s likes and dislikes and needed to be told very little. Belasus explained that, as an elected duumvir he did a good deal of entertaining, but didn’t like to be troubled with a great staff of servants, so he had all his larger meals catered. This made eminently good sense to me. In the street we encountered some friends of his whom he invited to dinner in the usual fashion of politicians. “All bachelors and widowers,” he confided to me, “and all good conversationalists. They won’t bring along any women.”