Dutch Blue Error

by William G. Tapply

  “‘The Dreamer,’” I said. “That was the name of the statue. Anyway, I don’t see how you can eliminate the stamp as a motive so easily.”

  Kirk sighed. His dark eyes stared up at me over the rim of his cup. “One of the things we learn in police work is that ninety-nine times out of a hundred things turn out to be exactly what they seem to be. What looks like suicide usually is suicide. A guy who looks guilty to us usually is—even when some smart lawyer gets him off. This looks like a robbery that went bad. Guy panicked. Stamp or no stamp.”

  “Some kid looking for drugs,” I said. I remembered Deborah Martinelli’s words. “A random act. A freak.”

  “Right. Drugs or money. Hell, there were valuable works of art in that place. None of them were gone. Most places that are broken into, there are valuable things around. So Shaughnessey had a stamp, and you can’t find it. Not too hard to hide a little stamp, eh? Anyway, you said yourself that no one even knew he had it.”

  I sopped up the sauce on my plate with a hunk of bread, wiped my mouth, and lit a cigarette. “You finished with the daughter now?”

  “Yes. Unless something else turns up.”

  “Which is unlikely, right? I mean, this case is headed for the inactive file. Eventually you’ll nab some kid and he’ll confess, you hope. Or maybe you’ll get lucky, and someone’s snitch will put you on to somebody. In the meantime, you’re all overworked and underpaid and have higher-visibility crimes to solve.”

  “Look, Mr. Coyne. This stamp thing is pretty farfetched. Hey, if it turns up, then it’ll look different, you know? But let’s face it. We haven’t got anything to go on. What do you expect me to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s not my job.”

  “We find a guy, it’s your job to get him off, am I right?” Kirk smiled darkly. “Whether it’s some crazy lady slashing her old man with a paring knife or a hopped-up delinquent looting somebody’s home for money and drugs.”

  I nodded. “My job right now is simple. I want to buy a stamp for my client.”

  “Funny way to practice law.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  By the time I got back to the office Zerk was gone. He left me a note propped up on his typewriter. “Call Massa Weston. I got a dinner date tonight. Went home to wash my armpits. See you Monday.”

  I mourned, briefly, the bleak weekend I faced. I’d lug home a stack of those manila folders, dump them on the table by the sliding glass doors that looked out over the harbor, and feel their accusing eyes on me every time I walked past them. I’d spend Saturday morning in the laundromat. Peanut butter sandwich for lunch. Try to make a dent on the stack of folders in the afternoon. Maybe take a nap. Saturday night I’d eat alone, then argue baseball with my friend, Pat, the bartender at the Shamrock. We’d evaluate the hookers who plied their trade there, and Pat would try to persuade me to verify our assessments. I’d decline. Sunday afternoon I’d catch the Patriots on the tube. Then back to the manila folders.

  I had no reason to wash my armpits.

  I went into my office and phoned Ollie Weston. I had been putting it off. Ollie did not receive bad news with equanimity.

  He expelled a loud breath into the telephone when I told him that Francis X. Shaughnessey, a.k.a. Daniel F. X. Sullivan, had been murdered in his Beacon Hill townhouse, and that the Dutch Blue Error he owned was missing.

  “God damn it, Brady.”

  “It’s gone, Ollie. What can I tell you?”

  “So find it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s, ah, not my line.”

  He sighed. “I know. Listen. You figure the murderer got the stamp?”

  “I’m leaning that way. The police aren’t.”

  “Okay.” He paused for a moment. “Okay,” he repeated. “We’re in good shape, actually. Whoever got the stamp must be smart enough to understand the same thing that Sullivan, or whatever his name was, did. That it’s no good unless he sells it to me.”

  “I don’t know, Ollie.”

  “Of course you do. It’s simple. Sooner or later he’ll come to me with the stamp. That’s why he took it.”

  “Maybe. If someone took it.”

  “If no one took it, then eventually what’s-her-name will find it. Same difference.”

  “I’m glad you’re taking it so well, Ollie.”

  “What’ve I got to lose? If the stamp never turns up, I’m where I was before I knew there was a second Blue Error. Owning the most valuable postage stamp in the world. And saving two hundred and fifty grand, by the way. If it does turn up, it’ll be mine anyway. Either way, we’re golden.”

  “Unless the guy who took it goes public with it.”

  “He won’t. Anyone smart enough to go after the stamp is smart enough to bring it to me. Anyway, going public means a murder rap.”

  “But not if he goes to you.”

  “We can work that out,” said Oliver Hazard Perry Weston. “Don’t worry your head about the Dutch Blue Error, Brady.”

  “Ollie, as your attorney, I have to warn you…”

  “No you don’t,” said Ollie sharply. “I said not to worry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  7

  SEVERAL WORK DAYS PASSED. I thought about the Dutch Blue Error very little. Ollie Weston said I didn’t have to, and I always try to do as my clients ask.

  Zerk went to Washington, stayed three days, and returned grouchy He also did a hell of a job for me on a patent search. When I told him so he growled at me.

  I was at my desk, finally making an impression on that stack of manila folders, when Zerk stuck his head into my office. His forehead was wrinkled and his mouth turned down in a quizzical grimace.

  “Phone for you,” he said.

  “Who is it?” He usually buzzed me from his own desk.

  “Dopplinger.”

  “What’s he want?”

  Zerk shrugged, and closed the door. I picked up the phone. “This is Brady Coyne,” I said.

  “Can you come over here?” Dopplinger’s voice was low, as if he were afraid of being overheard.

  “Why? Where are you?”

  “At the museum. I’ll be in my lab. I can’t talk to you now. Please hurry. Come now.”

  “Can’t you tell me what this is about?”

  “Just hurry. Please.” I heard the click of the receiver.

  “Be back,” I said to Zerk on the way out. He looked up from his papers, stared at me for a moment, and nodded.

  I decided to drive over the river to the Peabody Museum. I figured the traffic wouldn’t be too bad in the early afternoon. I was wrong, of course. The Metropolitan District Commission, in its infinite wisdom, had selected that very day to repaint the lines on the road that passed over the B. U. Bridge. To make matters worse, an MDC cop was directing traffic.

  I found a parking place on the street only a block from the Peabody Museum. I took the front steps two at a time, recalling the urgency in Albert Dopplinger’s voice. It had been more than an hour from the time of his call to the time of my arrival.

  I took two wrong turns in the bowels of the museum before I found myself in the corridor two floors below ground level. As they had been the other time I was there, all the doors were closed. This time I noticed that each door had a name stenciled in tiny letters above the knob. I found the one that said DOPPLINCER, A. and knocked softly.

  When there was no answer, I knocked again more loudly and called, “Albert. It’s me. Brady Coyne. Open up.”

  I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I opened it slowly and called, “Albert. Are you in there?”

  The big room was dark. I could make out the black, eerie shapes of scientific apparatus silhouetted by the light that filtered in from the open doorway. I stepped into the room and felt along the wall for the light switches. The fluorescent lights fluttered, then blinked on brightly. Shadows were suddenly transformed into objects—microscopes, lamps, test-tube holders, glass vials and containers.

&
nbsp; And Albert Dopplinger.

  He lay behind the long island that bisected the room. I saw his feet first. I moved quickly to him. He was on his stomach his legs splayed apart. One side of his face rested on an arm, which was curled under him. His eyes were closed. The other arm reached straight out. I bent over him.

  “Hey, Albert. You okay?” I touched his arm, then shook it. He didn’t respond. I picked up his glasses, which lay by his elbow. One of the lenses had been broken. I knelt beside him and placed two fingers under his jaw. I felt no pulse. I pressed harder, and still could find nothing.

  Then I saw the hole in his head—a neat, round, empty little hole just above the hairline at the base of his skull, a tiny black eye staring blankly at me. I touched it gingerly, and my finger came away red.

  I sat back on my heels, squeezing my hands together between my thighs and hugging my elbows against my ribs to control the quivering that began to travel up my spine to the back of my own neck.

  “Jesus…” I whispered, and barely finished pronouncing the curse—or prayer—when my jaw was snapped backward and the breath was cut from my throat and a suffocating blackness covered my face. “Sorry, pal,” said a voice. I tried to claw my way free to breathe, and the pressure on my throat increased. I was aware of loud breathing, and grunting sounds, and I couldn’t tell which were mine. Sweet-tasting fumes invaded my mouth and nose and burned into my lungs, and suddenly the pain disappeared and red and yellow lights flashed and faded and I felt myself sinking gratefully into a deep, painless sleep.

  It was a sleep full of images and sensations. I seemed to float, then sink. I rode waves, climbing up toward consciousness where the images became clearer, then falling back into a soft, gray fog. There were voices and distorted faces—faces with eyes that seemed to melt and drip down cheeks like broken eggs. I tried to hold myself at the crest of a wave, and a voice said, “Take it easy. Relax. Let it go.” And I did let it go, and plummeted back into a bottomless black pit.

  After a while the images and the voices and the motion went away, and I slept.

  When I awoke and opened my eyes, the light stabbed my pupils like sharp needles, and I squeezed my eyes quickly shut. I moved my head and heard myself cry out in surprise. “Oh!” And then it became a groan, as the blade of pain became a generalized hammering ache in my neck and the back of my head.

  I tried opening my eyes again. Cautiously, I lifted my eyelids a millimeter, and then another. The blurred face of my dear, dear friend Xerxes Garrett hovered over me. I closed one eye, and his face, wrinkled with concern, came into focus.

  “Oh, shit,” I moaned.

  “Take it easy, man. You’re okay.” Zerk’s hands were on my shoulders, moving me into a sitting position. I realized we were in my car. Zerk sat behind the wheel, and I was sprawled on the seat beside him. “You think you can sit up so I can move out of here before a cop comes along?”

  I started to nod. I stopped myself quickly when someone pounded a spike into my head. “Sure,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

  He started the car, and we began to move. That was when my stomach began to pound into my diaphragm like a big, powerful fist, and I vomited magnificently into my lap.

  “Oh, Christ, man,” said Zerk.

  “I’m sorry,” I moaned.

  “We gotta keep going now,” he said. “Think you can open your window?”

  I managed to roll down the window. I lay my head back against the car seat, my eyes closed. Cambridge air had never tasted as sweet as that which blew in through the window of my BMW as Zerk maneuvered down Mass Ave and out Boylston to Memorial Drive.

  “I’m gonna take you home, my man,” said Zerk. I sighed in reply, and with my head back and my mouth open and my lap full of my own puke, I slept.

  I remember Zerk dragging me from the car in the garage in the basement of my apartment building. I remember him wrestling me into the elevator, and the young woman who squeezed in with us before the door slid closed, and Zerk saying to her, “My friend here had a bit too much to drink, you know.”

  She got out on the very next floor.

  Zerk hauled me into my shower and held me under the armpits while cold water poured over both of us. We stood there, fully dressed, the freezing water slowly driving the fog from my brain. I tried tolling my head around on my neck and found only an aching stiffness there. I looked at Zerk, his dark face grim, his brown eyes staring intently into mine, the water sitting in big droplets in his short, thickly curled hair and dripping from his nose and chin.

  “That’s a good suit you’ve got on, there,” I said to him.

  “I’ll send you the cleaning bill,” he replied. “You might consider burning yours.”

  “You gonna tell me what happened to me?”

  “Later. Right now, why don’t you get your clothes off and get yourself a proper shower. I’ll make us some soup.”

  “No soup.”

  “Not hungry?”

  “Oh, I’m hungry,” I said, feeling better by the minute. “Matter of fact, now that you mention it, I’m famished. But I don’t have any soup.”

  “What kind of a place do you live in, you got no soup?”

  “I’ve got lots of frozen dinners. Or beef stew. I think there’s a can of Dinty Moore’s in there.”

  “God!” muttered Zerk. But he left me to my shower. I adjusted it to a comfortable warmth, stripped off my clothes, and lathered myself up, as if I might wash away all the pain and sickness and dirt. Before I stepped out I actually found myself humming. It was an old Turtles tune. “Happy Together.” Boy, it felt good to feel good!

  I was buffing my back with my big, soft towel when I noticed my face in the mirror, and my face reminded me of the other face I had seen, the one with the long banana nose and the closed eyes, and that reminded me of the little black hole at the back of Albert Dopplinger’s skull, and that was when I felt the bile rise again in my throat.

  I knelt by the toilet and gagged and hacked and finished what I had started in the car. I flushed the toilet and rested my head on the seat for a minute. Then I stood and rinsed out my mouth and splashed cold water onto my face.

  Zerk tapped on the door. “You nearly done?”

  “I think so.”

  He opened the door and shoved my old wool bathrobe at me. “Put this on and come out, then. Beef stew’s hot.”

  “I, ah, think I’ll just have some tea. If you don’t mind. Please.”

  I heard Zerk chuckle and close the door.

  Zerk was wearing one of my flannel shirts and a pair of old Levi’s he found on the floor of my closet. The shirt stretched tight across his chest, and the cuffs came halfway up his forearms. The pants fit him fine, except they were perhaps an inch too short. He sat across from me at the trestle table in my combination living-dining room. I looked out past him toward the Boston Harbor. I figured a large part of my monthly rent (recently jacked up by several hundred dollars) paid for that view. It was worth it. I never tired of it. The sun had set behind us. The water lay still and black as carbon paper, but the sky still glimmered with the after-light of daytime. Specks of green and yellow and red lights blinked on the surface of the harbor. Running lights. Boats making port. Here and there the flash of white sails appeared, skidding and darting like water bugs.

  Zerk gobbled all the beef stew. I sipped my tea cautiously. It seemed to settle all right. I stirred in a teaspoon of honey and drank more boldly.

  “You gonna tell me all about this, or what?” I said.

  “You have to thank me for saving your life, first.”

  “Thank you. So what happened?”

  He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and downed a big swig of Schlitz from a can he’d found in the refrigerator. “After you left this afternoon, I sat there for a while, like a dutiful secretary. But I couldn’t get the tone of Dopplinger’s voice out of my head. Did you notice it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Scared. Or nervous, at least. Urgent.”

  “Right. Real
urgent. Anyhow, I probably sat there half an hour, and then I said the hell with it, I’m going over there. So I hopped the subway. Took forever, naturally. When I got to the museum I went right to Albert’s lab. Figured that’s where you were headed. The door was closed. I knocked, and when no one answered I tried the knob. It was unlocked, so I went in. I flicked on the lights. You and Albert were lying there, side by side, and I thought you both were dead.”

  “We weren’t, though.”

  “You weren’t. He was.”

  “Right. I remember.”

  “Very dead. Shot neatly in the back of the head. Once. No exit wound. A thirty-two, I’d guess. Judging from the burn marks, the gun was pressed right against his skull. It’d make almost no noise that way.”

  “An execution,” I said.

  “Like that, yeah,” said Zerk. “So, anyhow, I lugged you the hell out of there. Luckily, I’d noticed where you left the car on my way to the place, so I fished the keys from your pocket and managed to shove you in. People hardly looked at us. Guess lots of folks go to the Peabody Museum in the afternoon to get loaded. I waited around for a while till you decided to wake up and blow lunch. Then I brought you home. And here we are.” He appraised me, his eyes crinkling into the beginning of a grin. “You didn’t see the guy, huh?”

  “No. He said something to me—‘Sorry, pal,’ I think it was. Something like that. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. Then…”

  I got up and took my mug of tea to the sliders and gazed out over the dark ocean. An airliner passed in front of me in its landing pattern, heading over to Logan. A couple of big ships showed their lights. It calmed me. It always did. I slid the doors open to let in some fresh air. It smelled of fog and seaweed. It was warm for September. Rain was in the air. I stepped out onto my little wrought-iron balcony. Zerk followed. We each sat on a plastic and aluminum folding chair. I put my feet up on the railing, and I felt the damp breeze blow up under my bathrobe. It felt good, that cool breath of the sea.

  “I’m going to have to make sense out of all this sometime,” I said. “I mean, he was in some kind of trouble. Albert.”