Part 4 (1/2)
”Now what?” Fedderman asked out of the depths of his despair.
”One thing I know,” Meyer said. ”The impossible doesn't ever happen. Only possible things happen.”
”To me the impossible happens,” said Fedderman.
”If it isn't you and it isn't Sprenger,” Meyer said, ”then it has to be Mary Alice.”
”Impossible!”
”So we are comparing two impossible things, and it being Mary Alice is not quite as impossible as what happened.”
”Maybe I follow you,” Hirsh said. ”My head hurts. I hurt all over. I'm coming down. I should be in bed with a pill.”
”Did she bring that same purse,” I asked Fedderman.
”Purse?”
”The one she had today is like a picnic basket made of straw painted white. Did she have the same purse the last time?”
”Yes. No. How should I know? There are five clients. What difference does it make?”
”I wish I knew if if it made any difference. That junk you saw in the Sprenger collection. Could it have come out of your stock here in the store?” it made any difference. That junk you saw in the Sprenger collection. Could it have come out of your stock here in the store?”
”What I saw? Some of it, maybe. Very little. I didn't have long enough to study it, you understand. A dealer has a good memory for defective pieces. No, I'd say probably none of it from my stock, or I would have recognized one piece anyway. Besides, it was higher catalog value than what I stock here.”
I remembered Meyer's interesting thought. ”Hirsh,” I asked, ”suppose whoever switched the goods has sold the Sprenger items to the trade. Could you identify them?”
He thought, nodded, and gave me a show-and-tell answer. Once again the projection viewer came out. He put a slide box in place and in the darkened office clicked through a half-dozen slides and stopped at a block of four blue stamps imprinted ”Graf Zeppelin” across the top. They were a two-dollar-and-sixty-cent denomination.
”This is one I picked up for Sprenger. It was in a Mozian auction catalog last year. It is absolutely superb, and I had to go to fourteen hundred for it. I take an Ektachrome-X transparency of everything I put in an investment account. I use a medical Nikon, and I keep it right here on this mount. Built-in flash. Now you see where the perforations cross in the middle of the block, those little holes? They make a certain pattern. Distinctive. Maybe unique? Not quite. Now look out at the corners. See this top left corner? That paper between the perforations, right on the comer, is so long, it looks as if maybe there was a pulled perforation on the stamp that was up here, in the original sheet. Okay, add that corner to the pattern in the middle, and it is is unique. Any dealer could look at this slide, go through a couple dozen blocks and pick this one out with no trouble. Individual stamps would be a lot harder, especially perforated. Imperforate, usually they are cut so the margins are something you can recognize. Of course, postally used stuff, old stuff, the cancellation is unique.” unique. Any dealer could look at this slide, go through a couple dozen blocks and pick this one out with no trouble. Individual stamps would be a lot harder, especially perforated. Imperforate, usually they are cut so the margins are something you can recognize. Of course, postally used stuff, old stuff, the cancellation is unique.”
As he put his toys away, I said, ”Could you get prints made from the slides of the most valuable items and circulate them to your friends in the trade?”
”A waste of time and money. These days, believe me, there are more stamp collections being ripped off than ever in history. Information comes in all the time. Watch for this, watch for that. Hoodlums come in here to the store, and they tell me their uncle left them some stamps in an alb.u.m, do I want to take a look, maybe buy them? I say I've got all the stock I want. They'll find people who'll buy. But not me. I don't need the grief. After fifty years in the business, I should be a fence? Am I going to look at the stamps the hoodlum brings in and call a cop? Who needs a gasoline bomb through the front door?”
”Then there's no way?” Meyer asked.
Fedderman sighed. ”If all that stuff goes back into circulation, a lot of those pieces have have to find their way into the auction houses. Every catalog, there are pictures of the best pieces. Like if there are two thousand lots listed in the catalog, there could be a hundred photographs of the best items. One day last week I sat in here, I went through a couple dozen catalogs to try to spot any item from the Sprenger account. H. R. Harmer, Harmer, Rooke and Company, Schiff, Herst, Mozian, Siegel, Apfelbaum. Nothing.” to find their way into the auction houses. Every catalog, there are pictures of the best pieces. Like if there are two thousand lots listed in the catalog, there could be a hundred photographs of the best items. One day last week I sat in here, I went through a couple dozen catalogs to try to spot any item from the Sprenger account. H. R. Harmer, Harmer, Rooke and Company, Schiff, Herst, Mozian, Siegel, Apfelbaum. Nothing.”
”Oh,” said Meyer, his disappointment obvious.
”I think I am going home to bed, the way I feel,” Fedderman said. ”What are you fellows going to do now?”
I said, ”I am going to get Mary Alice to help me.”
”How do you mean?” Hirsh asked.
”If she knows more than she's told us, the only thing she can do is play along with me.”
”But that kind of person,” Hirsh said, ”she would help if if you ask. It wouldn't prove anything.” you ask. It wouldn't prove anything.”
”Suppose I get to the point where I ask something or do something which would make her back away fast if she was innocent, and she doesn't back away?”
He stared at me, uneasy and upset. ”She is a good person. She isn't used to anything rough.”
”Rough?” I asked him.
”No offense,” he said.
Meyer said, ”You look terrible, Hirsh. Travis will drive you home.”
”It's not even as far as the bank, but the other way. So I can't walk it?”
”I'll walk with you,” Meyer said.
”Why should you bother?
”Why shouldn't I?”
On the way out through the store, by prearrangement, Hirsh told his two ladies that Mr. Travis McGee was going to do what he could to help out in this terrible situation, and he would appreciate it if they would answer questions and show him things and so on. Meyer told me he would go his own way, do a little research maybe, take a bus probably, and see me at Bahia Mar.
Chapter Six.
Jane Lawson went off on her lunch break about fifteen minutes after Meyer and Hirsh left. A man came in to buy a beginner's stamp-collecting outfit for his son's birthday. I imitated a browser, leafing through big gla.s.sine pages on a countertop easel, looking at incredibly florid stamps from improbable countries, like Ajman, Zambia, and Bangladesh.
I liked the way Mary Alice handled the customer. She was plugging an outfit which, with stamps, alb.u.m, manual, hinges, and so on, came to $24.95. The man finally said he couldn't go over fifteen dollars. She told him there was a $14.95 kit, but she could a.s.semble something better for him. She took items from stock, added them up, and told him it came to $14.50. Then she threw in another packet of stamps as a birthday present from Mr. Fedderman. She did not patronize the man. She made it seem like a better deal than the more expensive spread.
The narrow store seemed jammed full of merchandise in a bewildering confusion. But as I got used to it, I could see there was a logical order to the storage and display, and see that everything was bright and clean.
After the man left, she moved over to where I stood at the counter and said, ”It's sort of a policy in the trade, you know, to encourage kids to collect. But look at what some of these countries are doing. This stuff is just a bunch of... gummed labels. And they grind it out in such millions, they'll never be worth more than what they're worth this minute. I've told Hirsh I wish they'd all get together and boycott the countries that take advantage.” She turned a page. ”Look here. This is a new issue for Grenada; it's an island near Trinidad that used to be part of the British Empire. They've got a contract with some company that grinds out stamps and sends a few of them to Grenada for postal use and sends the rest directly to dealers like us and splits the profit with the government in Grenada. It's just a racket. Gee, I guess we're no better. Our government encourages collectors. Every stamp that isn't used means no postal service is required, so it's practically all profit. People buy all the commemoratives as they come out, in whole sheets and tuck them away like an investment. Some investment! You go to sell them, somebody will take them off your hands like for seven percent discount off face value. That's because they print hundreds of millions of every one.” She hesitated. ”I guess you don't want to know about stuff like that.”
”Why not? If I was looking into a theft of paintings, I'd want to know something about art.”
”What are you? Some kind of investigator? I know you are Meyer's friend. He's such a dear, sweet man. We all love him.”
Before I could answer, a man came in and was greeted by name. She went back to the safe and brought out five little brown envelopes. The man sat on a stool, took out his own magnifying gla.s.s and, one by one, inspected the gold coins. Big coins. Mary Alice waited patiently. Finally he said, ”Okay, dear. These three. Tell Hirsh this one is a slider, and I don't like the strike on this one. That makes six hundred and twenty, doesn't it?”
She used scratch paper and said, ”Six forty-four eighty with tax, Mr. Sulzer.”
He produced six hundreds and one fifty. She made out a receipt and gave him his change. He said, ”When are you going to change your mind about some nice Sunday?”
”If I do, I'll let you know, okay?”
”How is he doing locating a 1930?”
”Gee, I don't know. He was complaining about finding one that wasn't the quality you want. I really don't know much about coins, like I keep telling you. If he finds one, I'm sure he'll phone.”