Dutch Blue Error

by William G. Tapply

  “This is Mr. Coyne,” said Philip. “Deborah just evicted him from the wake.”

  “Brady Coyne,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.”

  “Doc is okay. Or Charlie. Mary—that’s my wife—calls me Charlie. But, Jesus, not Doctor. Please.”

  “Doc, then. You were his…?”

  “Hell, no. I just messed around in his mouth a little. Full set, uppers and lowers. He liked the way I made him look. Wanted me to tinker with his nose when I was done with his teeth. I declined. Beyond redemption, his nose. Fran mainly liked the medication I prescribed for the pain.”

  Doc Adams waited, an expectant grin playing at the corners of his mouth. Martinelli chuckled. “Two shots of Cutty, straight up, every four hours, as needed. Right, Doc?”

  “Absolutely. The secret to my surgical success. I am very popular with my patients.”

  “Understandable,” I observed.

  “I’d be happy to introduce you to these other chaps,” he said, “but I’m afraid we haven’t exchanged names.”

  One of them turned and said, “We don’t really know each other, either. Just met. Our mutual friend is in the other room.” He held out his hand to me. “I’m Schwartz. This is, ah, Remington—right?—yeah, and Bertinelli.”

  “Bertelli,” corrected the eldest of the three.

  “Whatever.”

  “Coyne,” I said, shaking hands with each of them. They were all older than me. Schwartz I estimated to be in his mid-fifties. He had a thin, fox face and a dark beard streaked with gray. Remington I guessed at sixty—an ex-athlete gone to fat, with a thick neck and bulging shoulders. Bertelli was short and dark and wrinkled and bald. I recognized him as the one I’d first seen kneeling beside Shaughnessey’s casket.

  The little room was windowless and oppressive. Doc Adams dropped his empty plastic cup into a waste basket, nodded and waved to us, murmured a few words to Martinelli, and left. I wanted to follow him, but instead I followed the example of the others and opened my shirt collar and jerked loose the knot of my tie.

  “Damn tragedy about Frannie,” said Remington to no one in particular. “Damn tragedy.” Remington, I guessed, had knocked back several shots of Scotch already. The flush on his face was from more than the heat of the room.

  “You never know,” said Bertelli. “I read where this math professor at B. U. got killed in his own home—fancy place in Winchester, I think it was. Turns out the guy was a faggot and he’d go down to the Combat Zone picking up sailors, whatever, and bring ’em home, and sometimes they’d stay with him for a few days. He’d give ’em clothes, buy them presents. All the time nobody had any idea. Except his wife. She knew all about it. So this one time he makes the mistake of bringing the wrong guy home.”

  “Frannie wasn’t like that,” said Martinelli.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” said Bertelli. “Just that you never can tell what’s gonna happen to a guy. That’s all I meant. I didn’t mean nothing about Frannie. You know, they said that math professor got stabbed something like forty times. Blood all over the place. Wife found him. They never did find the guy who did it. I’m not saying nothing about Frannie. It’s just, you know, you think you know a guy…”

  I didn’t know what they were talking about, and it must have showed on my face. “You knew what happened to Frannie, didn’t you?” said Martinelli to me.

  I shrugged. “I just saw the obit in the paper.”

  “Well, Deborah didn’t want it mentioned in the obituary. Frannie was murdered. The story was in the papers when it happened.”

  “I missed the story,” I said. Actually, I vaguely remembered seeing something. But because Shaughnessey’s name didn’t mean anything to me at the time, I hadn’t made the connection.

  “Yeah,” said Martinelli. “Poor Frannie. Back of his head all bashed in. Police are saying they think it was some kid looking for drugs or money. Or maybe both. Black guy was seen in the area. His apartment was turned upside down. Stuff from the medicine chest all over the place. Course, they don’t know what was taken. Guy busted a window on the first floor. They figure Frannie came home and surprised him.” Martinelli turned to Bertelli. “Frannie wasn’t like that professor. He didn’t have weird friends.”

  “That explains it,” I said.

  “Explains what?”

  “Why his daughter…”

  “Why Deborah is out of sorts?” Martinelli laughed. “She’s not out of sorts. Believe me, I know. That’s the way she is. A bitch. Don’t feel bad.”

  “Still, it was stupid of me to mention anything to her.”

  “Mention what?”

  I hesitated. “Oh, just a small business transaction. Nothing, really. Certainly nothing that should be discussed at a wake. If I’d had any idea he had been murdered…”

  “Hey, forget it,” said Martinelli. “Like I said, that’s just the way she is.”

  “What sort of business are you in?” said Schwartz to me.

  “I’m an attorney.”

  “Frannie in some sort of trouble?”

  “He wasn’t my client.” I lit another cigarette.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean to pry.” Schwartz put his hand on my arm. “I had business with him, too.”

  I shrugged and sipped the Cutty Sark. It tasted awful, mainly because it didn’t taste like bourbon. I put down the plastic glass and turned to leave. I’d heard enough, and the stifling heat of the little room was beginning to make me nauseous.

  The young man in the dark suit still stood by the book in the lobby. I nodded to him on my way out.

  “Mr. Coyne,” he said.

  I turned around. “Yes?”

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  “It was three, four years ago. I was a patrolman then. I testified for the husband in a custody case. You represented the mother.”

  I shrugged.

  “You remember. The woman had stabbed the guy in an argument. They were divorced, and he was trying to get custody of the kid. I was the one who arrested her. What I remember about the case was that I told this story about how she was so violent and had attacked the guy with a paring knife—I mean, what kind of a mother could she be, stabbing people with knives?—and you didn’t even cross-examine me. Man, there was blood all over that kitchen. She slashed his arm a couple of times. Nothing realty serious. But all that blood. How’d that case turn out, anyway?”

  “We won.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “Your testimony was a big help.”

  He frowned. “But I was testifying for the other side. For the husband who wanted the kid back. Your client was the mother with the knife.”

  “And a very good mother, too. As your testimony helped us establish. Protecting her baby, her nest, at all costs. Risking her life for her child. She’d have fought to the death for that child, just as you said. A fanatically devoted mother. I remember you, now. You did a good job.”

  He grinned. “I wondered why you didn’t cross-examine.”

  I smiled. “No need. You’d said it all. So you’re a detective now, I gather.”

  “Right. Investigating this Shaughnessey case.”

  “Checking out the folks who come to the wake, eh? You figure the person who killed Shaughnessey will come here?”

  He shook his head. “No, not really. This is pretty much a guaranteed waste of time. The captain’s bright idea. We’ve got this pegged as your average B and E. Some kid broke in and lost his head when Shaughnessey got home. Smashed him too hard. Place was in a shambles. We haven’t got much to go on. Assume there’s some drugs missing. He had prescriptions for Valium, and we couldn’t find any Valium in his place, so we assume that was taken. Probably money, though we don’t know, of course. Otherwise, we know of no motive. One of those random things. Daughter’s been no help whatsoever. A black guy was seen outside the building that evening, not that that means a hell of a lot.”

  “But you’ll c
heck out everyone who comes to the wake?”

  “Yes. And the funeral.”

  “You’ll make sure everybody can account for his whereabouts the night of the murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll ask about their relationship with the deceased.”

  “Right.”

  “And you’ll end up eliminating everybody as a possible suspect.”

  “Doubtless.”

  “And then you’ll write it off and get back to work on your other cases.”

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Coyne. We’re looking for a black male, mid-twenties, six feet tall…”

  “Come off it,” I said.

  He smiled. “We’ll do all we can. Really.”

  “I suppose so,” I said. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Leo Kirk. Lieutenant Leo Kirk.”

  “When you get around to checking me out,” I said, “I do have something you might find relevant to this case.” I gave him my card.

  “What kind of something?”

  “Shaughnessey owned something valuable, that’s all.”

  “Is it missing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You think someone murdered Shaughnessey so they could steal this whatever-it-is? What is it, anyway?”

  “A postage stamp.”

  “Yeah?” Kirk cocked his head at me, then shrugged. “Okay. I’ll get in touch with you.”

  6

  I PASSED UP SHAUGHNESSEY’S funeral on Wednesday. I knew I’d have to talk to his daughter sometime. But I didn’t really look forward to it. And I felt pretty certain that she wouldn’t greet me with hugs and kisses at her father’s funeral.

  On Thursday I thought of calling her. Then I decided I’d give her a few days to recover from her ordeal. So I shuffled manila folders around on my desk for a while and selected a separation agreement that I should have finished a week ago. My client, the wife, wanted use of the summer place in Osterville for the season. Her husband wanted to split it, a month each. My client contended that the family had always gone there together, that the children should be at the Cape for the summer as they always had been, that the custody agreement did not provide for the husband to have the kids for a whole month at a time, that they certainly couldn’t live together for a month, and that therefore he could visit them at the Cape for his weekends but that she, the wife, should be allowed to live there for the entire ten weeks.

  I thought I had a pretty good case. Her husband’s attorney thought he was in good shape, too. We’d iron it out over martinis and a big chef’s salad at Locke Ober’s. There was no hurry. Summer was ten months away. I inserted a couple of commas and changed a few “whereas’s” in the document and took it out to Zerk for typing.

  He was on the phone. When he saw me he gestured with his free hand to the telephone. “It’s for you,” he mouthed.

  “Who is it?”

  Zerk covered the phone with his hand.

  “A lady. Wouldn’t give her name. I asked real nice, too. I asked was it business or personal, and she told me it was none of my business, just let me talk to Mr. Coyne, if you please. Sounds personal.”

  “Sounds unpleasant,” I said, and I went back to my office to take the call.

  “This is Deborah Martinelli. Francis Shaughnessey’s daughter. And no, I’m not calling to apologize, nor do I expect you to have the grace to apologize, either. My father was buried yesterday and I now have his affairs to disentangle and I came across your card in my purse. If you had business with my father, what was it?”

  She sounded breathless, like an inexperienced actress reciting her lines too rapidly. She also sounded angry. I didn’t like it.

  “You are a tough cookie, aren’t you?” I said mildly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “For all you know,” I said, “I could be a very nice person. For all you know, I could be your father’s long-lost brother. Hell, for all you know, I might have an opportunity for you to make a quarter of a million dollars without lifting a finger.”

  “Somehow I doubt any of that, Mr. Coyne. Can you just tell me what it is you want?”

  “The only definitely untrue thing is, I’m not your uncle. Thank God. Some people actually think I’m a reasonably tolerable person. Not my ex-wife, although that in itself might be considered an endorsement. And as for the quarter million, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Of course, if you’d rather rant and rave…”

  She hesitated. “Okay. Talk.” Her voice sounded a shade less hostile. Just a shade.

  So I talked. I told her about the Dutch Blue Error, carefully avoiding the use of Ollie Weston’s name. I told her that her father had used a fake name, that he had been scrupulously careful about his dealings with me, and that I remained prepared to pay a quarter-million dollars for the stamp.

  “And you think whoever killed him was after the stamp,” she said.

  “I don’t know. Seems possible. I’d like to find out.”

  “I knew about the stamp,” she said. “He picked it up overseas last winter. He was very pleased with himself. He kept it locked away. Out of harm’s way, he liked to say. Ironic, huh? He said it would bring him lots of money. He was always doing that—buying and selling things.”

  “Locked away,” I repeated. “Where?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t care where it’s hidden. I’d just like to buy it from you. Why don’t you go and get the stamp, and we’ll arrange for my client to buy it.”

  She was silent for a long time. I could hear her breathing. I lit a Winston and waited.

  “I haven’t been back there since he died.” The hostility had drained out of her voice completely, replaced by a flatness that suggested an effort at control.

  “Where?”

  “His place. His townhouse. I’m not exactly thrilled at the idea of going there.”

  “Well, I can understand that.”

  “Oh, can you really?”

  “Matter of fact, yes,” I said. “I think I can.”

  “Somehow,” she said, “I doubt if you can, Mr. Coyne. Not unless you happen to have stumbled upon your father’s body lying in the middle of his living room with the back of his head all smashed in and blood all over the place, and his arm twisted around funny so that you can see right away that he’s dead, and when you bend over to look at him his eyes are staring right at you. “She paused. “You ever do that?”

  “No. I never did. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I did. So I’m not looking forward to going back.”

  “Maybe if you brought your husband.”

  “Philip? No, not Philip. We’re not together. Philip and I are negotiating a divorce, as you lawyers like to say. That, by the way, did not please my father. He adored old Philip. Wanted to talk me out of it. That’s why I went there that night. So he could talk me out of divorcing Philip. Which he would not have succeeded in doing. So, no. I’m not asking Philip.”

  “A friend, then.”

  “I don’t have that kind of a friend.”

  I resisted the temptation to tell her that I didn’t find that surprising. “How about a policeman? The detective who was at the funeral, maybe. Kirk. I’m sure they’ve been through the place already.”

  “Oh, I imagine they have,” she said, sounding tired now. “No doubt they’ve been through it all. Messing up the underwear in his bureau, rolling up the rugs, digging through his papers. No. I don’t want a policeman with me.”

  “Well.

  We were silent for several moments. When she spoke, the businesslike energy, the hostile edge, had returned to her voice. “What are your rates, Mr. Coyne?”

  “You can’t afford me.”

  “Oh, I expect I can.”

  “I gear my rates to the desirability of the case, Mrs. Martinelli. You can’t afford me.”

  Surprisingly, I heard her laugh. “You know, you’re a real prick.”

  “That,” I sai
d, “may be the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”

  “Not for hire, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn.”

  I hesitated. Unbidden, the image of those unworldly, silver eyes flashed in my mind. “I might do you a favor, though,” I said.

  “You might?”

  “Yup. And you wouldn’t even have to ask nicely, either.”

  “You’ll go with me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just to be friendly?”

  “Yup.”

  “Hey, okay. That’s nice. Thanks.”

  “Don’t go getting all syrupy on me, now. I wouldn’t know how to deal with that.”

  “I’ll try to be careful. So, then. What time is good for you?”

  “Tomorrow morning? Around ten?” I glanced at my desk calendar to verify. “Yes, that would be a good time for me. Shall we meet there?”

  “Fine. Ten is fine.” She gave me a Mt. Vernon Street address. Beacon Hill. Very swank, old Boston. I didn’t realize they let Dorchester Irish onto Beacon Hill. Times change. I jotted the address onto a scrap of paper, asked her for her own address and phone number, and learned that she lived way out in Carlisle, a little rural community west of the bedroom suburbs of Boston. Also a nice address, Carlisle. People in Carlisle owned horses, sent their kids to the Fenn School, thence to Wellesley and Amherst, played polo, and traveled to Europe a lot in the winter to ski.

  “The stamp is in the house, then,” I said.

  “In a strongbox, yes. If it’s still there.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “Tomorrow at ten. Yes.”

  “Okay. See you then.”

  Friday morning carried the promise of one of those perfect New England fall days—crisp and clear, with the faint hint of an east wind wafting in off the ocean to blow away the city smells. It was a great day for golf.

  I checked into the office and told Zerk he was the boss for a while. Then I headed for Beacon Hill on foot. I strolled down Newbury Street past the tony shoe stores and little restaurants. I crossed over to Beacon Street at Dartmouth, and then down Charles Street at the foot of the Hill. I paused to look into the windows of the antique and craft shops and successfully resisted the impulse to go into a little place that sold old books.