Dutch Blue Error (24 page)

“Thanks, Perry,” said Ollie, smiling around the cigar in his mouth. “It wasn’t much, true, but you
did
contribute something useful for a change.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed. “You son of a bitch,” he whispered. “Now you’ve spoiled it all.”

The report of Perry’s automatic was startlingly loud for so tiny a weapon. I saw Ollie Weston’s head jerk, then sag onto his chest. A narrow, shiny red streak trickled slowly down his leathery neck from the black hole beneath his ear.

I leaped up and went to Ollie. I knelt in front of him and looked up into his face. His eyes were staring into his lap.

His lips were drawn back over his teeth, which still clenched the smoldering cigar. I reached for his wrist, felt for his pulse, and held my fingers on it. It beat slowly and faintly.

I looked up at Perry, who was staring expressionlessly at Ollie. “He’s still alive,” I said.

Perry seemed transfixed. The gun in his hand was pointed at me.

I tried to take the cigar from Ollie’s mouth. It broke off in his teeth. Then I felt again for his pulse. It seemed fainter and more irregular.

“For Christ’s sake, get on the phone. Call an ambulance or something,” I shouted at Perry. He continued to stare at his father. The gun did not waver in his hand.

Ollie blinked and groaned weakly. He lifted his hand a couple of inches from his lap and turned it so that his palm faced up. His eyelids flickered. He looked at me. I detected the crinkle of a smile. He wanted to tell me something. I put my ear to his mouth.

“A thousand damn quail,” he whispered.

I looked into his face. He widened his eyes as if he wanted to say more. Then his pupils rolled up into his head, and his hand fell back into his lap. From deep in his big chest came a gagging groan. His powerful head lolled on his chest. I clutched at his wrist. There was no pulse.

I sat back on my heels and looked up at Perry. “He’s dead.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed at me. He seemed to shiver. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and when he opened them they were clear and glittering. He motioned to me with his gun.

“Get over there,” he said, his voice low and steady.

“You just killed your father, Perry,” I said to him, trying to keep my own voice calm. “Why don’t you just give me the gun now.”

I held out my hand carefully toward him. He took a quick step backward. “Yes,” he said, watching me. “I did. I killed the bastard. I always knew he was a cruel son of a bitch. But I never thought he was stupid.”

“You found Albert’s notebook, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Perry laughed. “Isn’t that ironic, him burning
that
stamp? He wouldn’t listen to me. Never would. He always had to be right, never could admit that he might be wrong and
I
could be right. Well, he did his last cruel, stupid thing, didn’t he?”

“Come on, Perry. Give me that gun. It’s all over now.”

Perry’s eyes darted wildly around the room, then settled on me. He blinked, as if he were seeing me for the first time. Then he smiled.

“No,” he said. “It’s not over. Move over there.”

At that moment a chime sounded from the front of the house. Perry’s head jerked around.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “The doorbell. Who the hell can that be?”

“Ask not,” I said. “It tolls for thee.”

“Shut up.”

“The Fuller Brush man, perchance. Avon calling.”

Perry jabbed at me with the gun. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.” He gestured toward the back of the house.

“Don’t you think you should see who’s at the door?”

“Why should I?”

“I told you, the police know I’m here.”

Perry frowned for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah, okay. We’ll take a look. Let’s see who it is. If you try anything, I’ll shoot him, whoever it is. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“I mean it. I’ll kill him. I’ve got nothing to lose. Just do what I say. Let’s go.”

Perry directed me out of the room, through the grand hallway; and out into the big slate-tiled foyer by the front door. He gestured for me to stand beside the doorway, out of sight from anybody standing outside the door, but only a few feet from where Perry stood to open it.

He pulled the door open with his left hand. He held his right hand, with the gun in it, behind his back. I saw him smile.

“Yes?”

“This
is
the Weston house?” The voice belonged to Zerk. I wondered where all the police were.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for my friend. Brady Coyne. He told me he’d be here tonight.”

“And you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“More or less.”

I saw Perry smile. “Sure. He’s here. Come on in.” He stood back and opened the door all the way.

Zerk walked in. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but…”

He saw me standing there, grinning foolishly at him. Then he saw the gun in Perry’s hand. “Ah, shit,” he mumbled.

Perry closed the door and gestured at Zerk to stand beside me. He kept waving the gun back and forth from Zerk to me and back to Zerk.

“You should have called the police,” I said. “You trying to be some kind of hero?”

Zerk rolled his eyes.
“Me?”

“Okay, so we’re both dumb. But you should have called Kirk.”

Zerk turned down the corners of his mouth. “Not likely.”

“You guys shut up,” said Perry. “Listen. We’re going to leave here now. One of you tries something, the other one gets it. I mean it. Tell him, Brady.”

“He means it.”

“I’ve killed three people already.”

“He’s killed three people already,” I said. “Including his old man.”

Zerk turned to stare at me. I nodded.

“Christ!” he muttered.

“Put your hands on top of your heads and walk out that door,” ordered Perry. “Go slow and stay close beside each other. Remember what I said.”

“Just like the movies,” I said.

“Japanese prisoners of war,” added Zerk.

“I said, shut up,” said Perry.

We moved out the door onto the big veranda. Zerk’s little yellow Volkswagen was parked behind my white BMW in the circular drive. I looked for a police car. I listened for the thump of helicopters. There was nothing else out there. Just me and Zerk and a crazy man with a gun pointed at our backs.

I felt the muzzle of the gun poke my kidneys. “Okay,” said Perry. “You get in and drive the white car. Remember, your friend is here with me. Just open the door slowly and slide in. Leave the door open.”

I did as I was told. I heard Perry instruct Zerk. “And you. You open the back door. Just open it and step aside.” Zerk obeyed. “Okay. Now you get in the front seat. Easy. Just open the door and get in. Leave the door open.”

Zerk slid in beside me.

At that instant I heard a familiar voice. “Hold it right there, Weston. Drop the gun.”

I glanced around and saw Leo Kirk step out from the shadows near the veranda. He was crouched, his feet wide apart. The gun he clutched in his two hands was extended straight in front of him. It was aimed at Perry.

The rest happened in an instantaneous flash. Two gunshots, sudden and ear-shattering. A moment’s pause, then a third shot. And then a voice, small and wondering, a moan combined with a sigh. “Oh.” And silence.

Leo Kirk moved forward, his weapon still gripped in both hands and pointed at Perry Weston’s crumpled body. Zerk and I climbed out of the car and stood with Kirk, staring down at Perry. Kirk knelt, held a finger against Perry’s throat, then looked up at me. He shook his head.

“He’s dead.”

I nodded.

The cop stood up, shrugged his shoulders, and walked into the house. His gun still dangled from his hand. Zerk and I went and sat on the front steps. “You
did
call the cops,” I said.

“Yeah. I don’t have to like them to know when discretion, as they say, is the better part of valor. Kirk’s parked out in the street. We decided if you were in trouble, we’d have a better chance of helping you out if the cops didn’t start pounding on the door.”

“Good thinking.”

“That was Kirk’s idea.”

“You took quite a risk.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I seem to be doing these days. It worked.”

I stared out at Perry Weston’s body. “In a way, it worked.”

A few minutes later Kirk came back from inside the house and sat heavily beside us. “There’s another body in there,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “Perry did that.”

“I called an ambulance and all the rest. They’re on their way. We’ve got to wait. So why don’t you tell me what happened?”

So I told him.

When I finished my recitation, Kirk stated at me. “The Lone Ranger rides again, eh?”

I glanced at Zerk. “I left my faithful Indian companion home.”

“Ha, ha,” said Zerk sarcastically. “Another ethnic slur.”

“Why the hell didn’t you call me?” said Kirk.

“It was all supposition,” I said. “Just a story I put together in my head. I would’ve looked like an ass if I’d been wrong.”

“You didn’t look so smart when we got here,” said Zerk mildly.

“Besides,” I continued, ignoring him, “I didn’t figure there was enough for you to get a warrant, so what could you do?”

“That’s for us to decide,” said Kirk.

“I
am
an attorney, you know.” It sounded more defensive than I’d intended. “In my judgment…”

“Okay, okay. So you’re an attorney. What I still don’t understand is why Perry shot the old man.”

“Several reasons. First, Ollie never respected Perry, never gave him encouragement, never acknowledged that Perry was a man. Treated him like a boy. Made it clear he didn’t trust him. I don’t imagine there was much love there. Ollie was not a demonstrative man in that respect. And remember—Ollie brought up Perry himself. With help from butlers and nannies and so forth. Perry’s mother swallowed a bottle of pills when he was a baby. So you can figure it out.”

“Yeah, yeah. All that Oedipal stuff. Still…”

“Okay, the stamp. Perry finally had proved himself, he figured. Just like his daddy. He went out and killed a couple of people, stole the stamp, and would once and for all show his pop he was a real man, deserving full respect. He made the grand presentation, and Ollie spat in his face by burning it.”

“I still don’t get it,” said Kirk. “He burned the duplicate. But he still had the original stamp. Seems to me Perry had done a good thing, and both he and Ollie knew it, and Petty should have understood that burning the stamp made sense.”

I shook my head. “There’s the irony. The stamp Ollie burned was the original Dutch Blue Error. The
only
Dutch Blue Error. Not a duplicate. There was no duplicate Blue Error. Ollie’s stamp, the one he owned all those years, was a fake. Shaughnessey’s stamp was the only real one. So Ollie burned the real stamp and kept the fake. Perry knew that. Ollie didn’t.”

“But Albert said…” began Zerk.

“Albert knew,” I answered. “When we took the stamps to him, he saw immediately that the stamp Ollie had always owned was a fake, and the one Shaughnessey brought was the genuine article. Naturally, Albert wasn’t going to let Shaughnessey know that. He was loyal to Ollie, and he knew that it would change everything. So he waited, and then called Ollie to tell him. Except Perry answered the phone. So Albert told Perry. He didn’t realize, of course, that Perry had already killed Shaughnessey for the stamp, or that, in Perry’s warped little brain, all secrets had to be protected—at any price. Perry agreed to meet Albert—to see the evidence. Then he killed Albert. To maintain the secret of the stamp. And he took Albert’s notebook, which contained the evidence. And when he handed the stamp to Ollie this evening, he was about to make the grand announcement that he, Perry, had done what Ollie himself hadn’t been able to do—get the real Dutch Blue Error. But Ollie deprived him of that great satisfaction.”

“He burned the stamp.”

“Yes,” I said. “And that’s when Perry broke. All that was left was all the pent-up frustration and rage. A whole lifetime of it.”

“So he shot him.”

“Yes.”

“And all those years Ollie’s stamp was a fake,” mused Zerk. “How could that be?”

“Schwartz did it. He owned the original and offered it for sale to Ollie back in sixty-seven. So far, so good. But then he got greedy. He had a fake made—a good fake, of course, using one of the original orange stamps and carefully altering the color to make it blue. Same old paper, and so forth. Same old stamp, actually, except for the color. It’d take an expert like Albert to detect it, and even then it’d be hard to do without the genuine Blue Error to compare it with. So Schwartz felt pretty safe. He kept the original stamp and sold Ollie the fake. To make it work, he gave Ollie the papers of authentication for the real stamp. And last winter, nearly twenty years later, he had the chance to sell the genuine stamp to Shaughnessey, who traveled in the same circles as Schwartz, and who was not beneath cutting a few ethical corners to turn over a buck. Schwartz didn’t tell Shaughnessey what a bargain he was getting. He didn’t need to. He gave Shaughnessey a good price on the stamp plus Ollie’s name, and sat back to let the chips fall wherever.”

“I’ll be damned.” breathed Kirk.

“So when I heard all that from Schwartz, all I had to do was try to figure out who could’ve learned it. I eliminated everyone but Perry. But it was still a guess. I came here hoping I could smoke him out.”

“Which you did. Damn near got yourself smoked, too,” said Zerk.

“Both of us,” I said.

Sirens sounded in the distance, and a minute later several official vehicles skidded into the driveway, their red and blue lights flashing eerily. Kirk stood up and went to talk with the men who piled out of the cars. Some moved into the house. Others gathered around Perry’s body. Zerk and I remained seated on the steps, ignored by the others. I lit a Winston and leaned back to watch.

After a while Kirk wandered over and stood in front of us. “You guys can go, if you want. I’ll be in touch with you, Brady. Lots of questions, but they can wait.”

Zerk and I stood up. I held out my hand to Kirk. “Thanks,” I said.

“That was my first,” he said, his eyes searching mine.