Dutch Blue Error (4 page)

“You tell her I’m thriving on Big Macs and frozen pizza and Spaghetti-O’s?”

“I tell her you’re the envy of all us married guys and probably would hate to sit around the dining room table listening to the kids bicker and Jenny talk about her tennis pro and me complain about the bills.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re wrong there. There’s nothing I’d like better. But I’ve got an appointment tonight.”

“Cancel it.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Charlie. “I don’t have to get up in the morning.”

Ollie Weston’s big Victorian mansion in Belmont perches high on a hill, far back from the road. The twelve-foot iron fence, fully wired and tied directly into the Belmont Police Station, is screened by hemlocks and giant old rhododendrons. I entered the Weston estate through the tall iron gates, which swung silently open when I spoke into a telephone set in a box in one of the twin stone pillars. The long, peastone driveway terminated under a portico at the front door. I left my BMW beside the Weston Mercedes, climbed the steps onto the L-shaped front porch, and rang the bell. Off to my right, the lights of Cambridge and, beyond, Boston, blinked in the Indian summer dusk. I could distinguish the lights of my tall office building in Copley Square, flanked by the twin landmarks of The Pru and the Hancock Tower.

“Come right in, sir. Mr. Weston is expecting you.”

“Jesus, Edwin. You startled me,” I said to Ollie’s man Friday, who has the disconcerting ability of gliding around as silently as if he were on ice skates, which I suppose is a trick of his trade.

I followed Edwin into the living room where the combination lock hid behind
The Road to Serfdom.
Standing by the bookshelves was Perry. We exchanged nods. Ollie was seated in a big leather armchair. On the table in front of him stood a chess game waiting to be played. The black men were carved out of a green, translucent stone which looked like jade. The other pieces were milky white. Probably some kind of marble. Or, knowing Ollie, rough-cut diamonds.

Another table stood by Ollie’s right elbow, where I saw a tray with three brandy snifters and a decanter two-thirds full of the amber liquid, and a black telephone. Ollie’s wheelchair was nowhere in sight.

“Pull up a chair,” greeted Ollie. “Your move.”

I waved my hand. “No games tonight, Ollie. Offer me a drink, and let’s talk about how we should handle this.”

Ollie shrugged his thick shoulders. “Games are hard to avoid, my friend. Let’s have some brandy, Perry.”

Perry poured drinks for each of us and handed them around. Ollie lifted his glass up in front of his face and swirled the brandy gently, peering through it. Then he held the glass by the bowl, cupped in the palm of his hand, and stuck his long nose into it. He snuffled noisily and sighed. Only then did he sip. I could see his cheeks working as he rolled the liquor around in his mouth. Perry solemnly imitated his father’s ritual, but I didn’t. I sipped deeply from my glass and let the good brandy slide hotly down my throat.

“You, sir, are an unreconstructed peasant,” said Ollie good-naturedly. “Fine brandy is wasted on you. Remind me to serve you Old Hipboot next time you come.”

“Hey,” I said. “Old Hipboot is good booze.”

Ollie studied his glass for a moment. “Here’s how we play it,” he said, glancing briefly at Perry before settling his attention on me. “Tell me if this sounds okay. Our friend calls. I answer, tell him you’re to handle the transaction, and give him right over to you. You set up a meeting. You must meet with him face to face. At that meeting you will, first, verify that he
has
the stamp, and, second, arrange to have it authenticated. You will reassure him that I am quite serious about meeting his price. He may expect us to dicker. Don’t. Authenticate the stamp, then buy it. Okay?”

“Sure. Sounds fine. How do we authenticate it, though?”

“Fellow by the name of Albert Dopplinger. He’s an assistant curator at the Peabody Museum, specialist in paper and wood artifacts. Paintings and books, mostly. His lab has all the latest equipment. He knows all about inks, paints, the manufacture of paper, and so forth. He’s done some work for me personally. I’ve already talked to him. He says he’ll have no problem authenticating the stamp. He’s acknowledged among philatelists as one of the preeminent experts in the area of old stamps, though he isn’t a philatelist himself. He’s got no interest in collecting things. Just likes to examine them. Which suits me fine. The last person I want involved in this is some philatelic dealer or agent. This Dopplinger, I think, we can trust to remain discreet. We’ll pay him well. And he knows he can count on a tidy little sidelight moonlighting for me.”

“That sounds easy enough,” I said. “What else?”

“Well, there is one little problem,” said Ollie. He sipped his brandy. I waited for him to continue.

“You sure you won’t play chess?” he said after a moment. “Most instructive game.”

“C’mon, Ollie. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is this. Dopplinger says that in order for him to authenticate the duplicate Dutch Blue Error he’ll need to have the original for comparison. You’ll have to bring my stamp with you. You appreciate what that means, don’t you?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “It means,” I said, “that I’ll be carrying the equivalent of a million dollars in cash.”

“Or close to it. Yes. Of course, the stamp without the papers isn’t worth that much, and those I’ll keep in my vault. Still, if that stamp gets into the wrong hands…”

“It’ll cost you a fortune to get it back. I understand. That’s a heavy responsibility, Ollie.”

“I pay you heavy fees. Are you licensed?”

“Huh?”

“Licensed. To carry.”

Perry, who had remained standing, and who appeared not to be paying any attention to our discussion, suddenly blurted, “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

I glanced at Perry, then at Ollie. “Oh. You mean a gun. Sure. But do you think…?”

“Absolutely. You carry my stamp, you carry a gun. And make sure our friend knows you have it.”

Perry rolled his eyes. I shrugged, then nodded. We sat back to wait for the phone to ring. Perry pretended to study the rows of books. I fired up a Winston. Ollie cradled his nearly empty brandy glass in both of his hands on his stomach as he slouched in his big chair. His eyes were closed. He looked very old. His skin had taken on that transparent, waxy cast of the terminally ill. Ollie Weston, with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his stomach, looked like a corpse.

“Get his name,” Ollie said suddenly, his eyes still closed.

“Huh?”

“When he calls. Get his name, if you can. I’d like to check up on him.”

“Okay.” I glanced at my watch. It read 8:58. I looked at the telephone, willing it to ring. When it did, precisely two minutes later, I jumped as if I had been stabbed.

Ollie picked up the receiver after the third ring, said “Yes?” listened a moment, then said, “I’m putting you on to Mr. Coyne, my attorney.” Then he handed the phone to me.

“This is Brady Coyne,” I said. “With whom am I speaking?”

“Never mind that, Mr. Coyne. Are you prepared to do business with me?”

“Not over the phone I’m not. Would you please identify yourself?”

“Not yet.” The man’s voice was devoid of inflection, as near as I could tell. It was deep, well modulated, and sounded cultivated. An educated person, I thought, and an older man, nearer Ollie’s age than mine. “You want to meet me, then,” he continued. “All right. Listen carefully. Tomorrow afternoon at three. Do you know the Wursthaus?”

“In Harvard Square. Yes, I know it.”

“Awful food, I’m sure you’ll agree. Take a booth by yourself. Order a bottle of Beck’s. Put a briefcase on the table. Wear a red necktie. I’ll find you.”

“Three o’clock at the Wursthaus. Bottle of Beck’s, brief case on the table, red necktie. Okay,” I said. “Now, may I please know who this is?”

“In due time, Mr. Coyne,” the voice answered. “And I trust you’re not planning anything fancy.”

“Fancy?”

“I intend to be very cautious about this, you see. I hold all the cards, don’t you agree?”

“Look, mister. I’m an attorney. I’m helping my client consummate a business deal. That’s all. Mr. Weston is an upstanding and honorable…”

“When there’s a quarter-million dollars at stake, nobody’s upstanding or honorable,” he interrupted. “Tomorrow at three, then.”

“How will I recognize you?”

“When I sit down with you, that will be me. If I turn out to be a lady, it’s not me.”

“May I please have your name?”

“See you at the Wursthaus.” There was a click at the other end of the line.

Ollie was staring at me as I hung up the phone. “So what’s his name?”

“He wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Jesus, Brady. The one thing I ask you to do is get his name. You should have gotten his name.”

“Easy for you to say,” I said. “You don’t have to get up in the morning.”

Ollie said he didn’t get it. Perry, leaning back against the bookshelves, smiled as if he did.

I
TOOK THE SUBWAY TO CAMBRIDGE
from my office, because I knew I’d never find a parking space in the Square. On the other hand, the ride on the T was no pleasure, either. I vowed that I’d either walk all the way back, or at least walk to my office from the Park Street stop. Boston’s subway lines aren’t really laid out the way the roads are, following the old cow paths from Colonial days. It just seems that way. There is some logic to the relationships among the Green Line and the Orange Line and Park Street Under and the North Station. It just eludes me. I go to New York three or four times a year and have no problem navigating the Manhattan underground. I’ve lived in Boston my whole life, and I still carry a knot of anxiety in my stomach every time I descend into my city’s subterranean labyrinth.

Zerk tells me that it’s a racist thing. Maybe he’s right. The black kids race through the cars at night in groups of five or six. More often than not, they don’t bother to assault, rob, rape, or stab anybody. On the other hand, sometimes they do. During rush hour I experience what claustrophobics must feel in an elevator. I begin to sweat, my hands tremble, and my knees turn to chocolate mousse. I always keep one hand in my hip pocket to guard my wallet while I stand in the overcrowded cars, propped up by sweaty people on all sides of me.

Harvard Square seems downright respectable to me nowadays. Fewer glassy-eyed girls with scratched faces and dirty bare feet loiter on the sidewalks asking for handouts, fewer Bill Russell-sized dudes in African garb and grand, curly helmets slouch around trying to look militant. There’s more of a mix of secretaries, businessmen, professorial types, students, and out-of-towners bustling around in front of the Coop and along Mt. Auburn Street, in and out of the bookstores and the tall, glass-fronted shops that sell colorful fabrics and Scandinavian furniture.

Perhaps I don’t go there at the right times of day—or night—but it seems that most of the people I see in Harvard Square are a lot like me.

I had to wait a few minutes before a booth opened up at the Wursthaus. I slid into it, hoisted my briefcase (which I don’t carry with me normally) onto the table, and ordered a Beck’s from the fat waitress. I wore a solid red tie which I found in the back of my closet. I hadn’t worn it for several years, since the time at a party when a girl who was telling me about meeting Red Auerbach at Joyce Chen’s interrupted herself to observe that my tie looked like my tongue hanging down to lap my own penis. I laughed at the time, complimented the girl on her vivid imagination, and relegated the necktie to the back of my closet.

“You’re Mr. Coyne?”

He had managed to slide into the booth across from me almost before I noticed him. It was as if he had materialized there. I glanced-at my watch. The digital readout said precisely 3:00 p.m. This guy was prompt. He’d make the trains run.

“Let’s see,” I said. “Briefcase. Beck’s. Ugly red tie. I must be Coyne.”

He didn’t offer a smile, nor did he extend either his hand or his name to me. A shock of thin, white hair fell over his forehead. His red scalp gleamed through it. A great, purple rutabaga of a nose was heaved up out of the red, furrowed clay of his face. Small, blue eyes glittered out of the florid puffiness of his flesh. Late sixties, overweight, alcohol problem. A Boston Irishman, I guessed. Southie High, B.A. in Business Administration at B. C. to account for the veneer of cultured speech I had noticed on the telephone. Flynn, Shea, Callahan, O’Leary. Mother waitressed at Durgin Park to put him through school. Old man a motorman on the MBTA. I thought I knew the type. Now where the hell would a guy like this get a rare postage stamp worth a quarter-million dollars?

“You ready to do business, Mr. Coyne?”

“I don’t even know your name,” I said. “Perhaps now that we’ve met face-to-face, you could introduce yourself.”

His broad smile revealed excellent teeth. Too excellent. An expensive set of dentures, uppers and lowers. “Of course,” he said, reaching his hand across the table. “Daniel F. X. Sullivan, at your service.”

I took his hand. “Pleasure, Mr. Sullivan.” I didn’t bother telling him that I didn’t believe we were using his real name. For now, I couldn’t see that it mattered. “Yes, I’m prepared to do business,” I continued. “My client doesn’t wish to haggle with you. He considers your price reasonable, provided the item is what you claim it to be.”

Sullivan, or whatever his name really was, bowed his head. “Mr. Weston is a wise man. Haggling would prove counterproductive to him. I assure you, Mr. Coyne, the item is genuine.”

“Regardless, I’m sure you understand that he wishes to take no chances in that regard. I have arranged to have your item authenticated. Unless, of course, you can provide documents…”

“I have no documents. I told you, no one knows that I possess this stamp. That, as we both know, is what makes it valuable to Mr. Weston. The stamp was discovered. Its value was unsuspected until it came into my hands. I have told nobody about it, except Mr. Weston.”

“That was shrewd,” I said. “You must know a lot about the world of rare stamps, Mr. Sullivan, to go straight to the man who owns the only other copy of the Dutch Blue Error.”