Dutch Blue Error (12 page)

“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.”

“Um-hm.”

“And he called me.” I paused. Zerk said nothing. “Query: Why did he call me? Why
me
?”

“You asking me for an answer?”

“Hell, yes, I’m asking you for an answer.”

“Okay,” said Zerk. “Then, hypothesis: You’re the first lawyer he could think of. He had a legal problem. Accused of a crime, threatened with a lawsuit, whatever. Wanted advice, wanted counsel.”

“Hm,” I said doubtfully. “Could be.”

“You think it had something to do with the stamp, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, it’s a good hypothesis.”

“It is,” nodded Zerk. “Then the question becomes:
What
did it have to do with the stamp?”

“The stamp’s missing. Albert found it.”

“Therefore?”

I shrugged. “Therefore, he called me. To tell me. Shit, Zerk, I don’t know.”

“Keep a couple things in mind,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Like when he called you he was scared. That, in retrospect, seems very reasonable because, in the second place, somebody assassinated him.”

“If Albert had the stamp…”

“Yes.”

“Somebody murdered him for it,” I finished. “Possibly the same guy who killed Shaughnessey.”

“Very possibly.”

“And now that person has the stamp.”

“In which case,” said Zerk, “we should be hearing from him.”

“Which explains why he didn’t kill me.”

“I was wondering about that one,” said Zerk.

“Okay,” I said. “This is good. Let’s keep going. There are other possibilities. Begin with different premises. Like,
if
it had to do with the stamp, but if Albert
didn’t
have it. Where does that lead us?”

Zerk was silent for so long I didn’t think he had heard me. By now it was completely dark outside, except for the faint glow of city lights that lent texture to the blackness. Finally he said, “If Albert didn’t have the stamp, but someone thought he did, they might, you know, torture him, threaten him…”

“Sure. And then, when they’re done, kill him.”

“Which leaves unanswered the question of why
you
weren’t tortured, maybe. And then killed,” he added with what I thought was unnecessary candor.

“They didn’t have time. They heard you coming,” I said.

“In which case you’ll be hearing from them. Or him, or whoever.”

“Either way. Oh, Jesus,” I said, the image of the little black hole in the back of Albert’s head flashing in my brain again.

“There’s another possibility,” said Zerk slowly. “Suppose all of this had something
else
to do with the stamp—something based on a premise other than the one which holds that Albert had the stamp, or knew of its whereabouts.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the guy who killed Albert already had the stamp, and wanted Albert to authenticate it, and then had to shoot him to protect his secret.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” I said. “Whoever had the stamp has stolen property, and, most likely, a murder on his hands already. He’d lay low for a while. Besides, the authentication of a dead man isn’t much good. I wouldn’t think. It could never be used.”

I heard Zerk yawn. “Yeah, maybe. This is better than patent law. But it’s tiring. Think there’s another Schlitz in the fridge?”

“Help yourself,” I said. “I’ll have one, if there’s two in there.”

He returned in a moment and handed me a can. I placed it against my forehead. The shock of its icy touch made me sit up a little straighter. Zerk took his seat again and lifted his feet up onto the railing beside mine.

“One thing’s for sure,” I said, after we had sat in silence for a while, sipping our beers.

“What’s that?” said Zerk lazily.

“We’ve got to go to the police.”

“Why?”

“Because, my friend, we are lawyers, and a crime has been committed, and it’s our obligation to justice to go to the police. That’s why. And you know it.”

“But…”

“Never mind. This is fundamental. We may be considered suspects, ever think of that? Hell, I left the scene of a crime. So did you. And you are the one who removed me from that scene. The cops right now are probably looking for a big black guy who dragged a half-conscious white guy out of the museum at or about the estimated time of the crime. Our fingerprints are probably all over the place. The door knob. The light switch.” I tilted my head back and took a long swig of Schlitz. “So if you don’t like the lawyers doing their duty to the cause of justice argument, try some of those others. Self-preservation.”

“Sure. Okay. But…”

“But, nothing, damn it. We go. First thing in the morning. We should go tonight, actually. But I feel shitty. We go together and we tell them everything.”

“Even about the stamp?”

“Everything. Of course. We tell the truth. We leave out nothing. Understood?”

“Sure,” he said softly. “Understood.”

We finished our beers in the damp, dark silence, high above the Boston Harbor. The night air caressed my thighs under my bathrobe. I thought of Deborah Martinelli. Then I thought of her father. Then Albert. Victims. Two men had been murdered now. I wondered if there was any way any of it could possibly be unrelated to the Dutch Blue Error.

“I
BEEN UP ALL
night with this fuckin’ thing. Why the hell they can’t find bodies at the beginning of my shift, I don’t know. It’s always at the end. Or else in the middle of the goddam night, and they gotta call me at home. You sure you don’t want some of this coffee? I mean, it’s terrible—pure mud, you can feel it rot your stomach. I don’t blame you.” Lt. Cornelius Mullins, Homicide Inspector for the Cambridge police, ran his fingers through his thinning black hair. His necktie was askew, and his collar hung open. His shirtsleeves were rolled halfway up his thick forearms.

He rubbed the palm of his hand across his mouth, as if he were trying to wipe off the black stubble of his beard. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “Okay. So what do you know about this thing, anyway, Mr. Coyne?”

I summarized for him the events of the previous day—Albert Dopplinger’s telephone call, my arrival at the museum, Albert’s dead body, the attack on my person, and my rescue at the hands of Zerk. Mullins kept his eyes closed while I related my tale. He slouched in his chair, his head back. He looked as if he were sleeping.

“How long did you say it took you to get there?” he asked, his eyes still shut.

“To the museum? An hour, at least. There was a big traffic jam on the B.U. Bridge.”

“So you arrived at what time?”

“I told you. Around three, I’d guess. I didn’t check.”

“And what time did the deceased call you?”

I flapped my hands. “Little before two, I’d say. Zerk could probably tell you.”

Mullins opened his eyes. “I imagine they’re asking him,” he said.

They had separated me and Zerk as soon as we told them why we were there. Inspector Mullins had led me down a long corridor lined with doors with opaque glass windows. Two uniformed policemen had taken Zerk in another direction.

“Why did he call you?”

“Albert? I don’t know. He didn’t say. Just, like I told you, that it was urgent.”

“Was that his word?”

“He said he wanted me to hurry. His tone was urgent.”

“So what do you think was urgent, that he should call you? You said you hardly knew him.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he say he wanted a lawyer?”

“No. Not like that.”

“And you’d only met him once.”

“Right. And we talked on the phone once, too.”

“So why did he call
you
?”

I shook my head. “I told you, I have no idea.”

“What about this stamp you mentioned? Did it have something to do with the stamp?”

“Look, Inspector,” I said. “I’m a lawyer, and I know you have to do what you’re doing. But I told you everything. I didn’t need to come here. But I did. Voluntarily. I don’t appreciate being treated like a suspect. If I can help you in any way, I’d be happy to. But don’t interrogate me.” I paused. He was leaning forward, looking at me, his elbows on his desk and his chin resting on his fists. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”

He snorted through his nose. “Of course you are. You know that. Everybody is. Don’t worry about it. What I’m trying to do is, I’m trying to see if there’s something you forgot to mention, see, something you didn’t tell me that’s clanking around up there in your head somewhere, in your subconscious, that maybe I can help you to remember if I ask the right questions. And, sure, if you start contradicting yourself, then I’ll start wondering about you. So. What about this stamp, now?”

“I don’t know if this had anything to do with the stamp or not, except that was the only context I knew Dopplinger in. As I told you, the man who owned the stamp was murdered, and no one seems to know where it is. I don’t see how Albert Dopplinger fits into that. Except he knew about the stamp, and he was murdered, too. I surely don’t see how
I
fit into that, except that I’d like to buy the stamp for my client.”

Mullins rested his forehead in a bowl he made with his two hands. It didn’t look like he’d be able to finish our interview. Without looking up at me, he said, “Why did your friend go to the museum?”