Dutch Blue Error (13 page)

“Zerk? I don’t know. I guess he felt uneasy.”

“Uneasy?”

“Yes. He answered the phone when Dopplinger called.”

“Does Mr. Garrett always follow you when you visit distraught clients?”

“Dopplinger wasn’t my client.”

“Has Garrett
ever
followed you like that before?”

“I never had a phone call like that before.”

Mullins’s head snapped up. “
Has
he?”

I frowned at him. “No. He’s never followed me like that before. But…”

“How long would you figure it’d take him to get to the museum by subway?”

“Oh, half an hour, maybe. Depends.”

“And by taxi?”

“If he went by the B. U. Bridge, over an hour, yesterday. Usually fifteen, twenty minutes. Look, Inspector, what’re you suggesting here?”

“Nothing,” said Mullins. “What do you think I’m suggesting?”

“All these implications about Zerk. He was worried about me. He came and rescued me after whoever was in that laboratory gassed me. He came here voluntarily, just like I did. He’s an attorney. You’re trying to make him into a suspect.”

Mullins smiled tiredly. “I told you, Mr. Coyne. Everybody’s a suspect. Okay. I’ll level with you. We have a witness who said he saw a black man who fits Mr. Garrett’s description lurking around the downstairs area in the museum about the time the murder would have occurred.
Before
three. Before you got there. I’m betting our witness can identify your friend. You already told me that Garrett knew where Dopplinger’s lab was located. He could have buzzed over there way ahead of you. Hell, Mr. Coyne, it could’ve been Garrett who chloroformed you, for all you know. He might’ve been in that room all the time.”

“Zerk? Come on. That’s ridiculous.”

Mullins shrugged.

“Is he being held?”

“He came here like you did. To help the police investigate an apparent homicide. That’s all.”

“Because if he is, he’s got the right to have an attorney present. I want to be present.”

“He’s just telling his story, Mr. Coyne. Just like you. He’ll be informed of his rights if it’s necessary.” Mullins heaved himself to his feet and lumbered to the coffee pot which sat on a hot plate in the corner of his office.” Sure you don’t want some of this? Naw. You don’t. Vile stuff. Can you think of anything else?”

I thought for a moment. “What about Albert’s notebook? Anything in it?”

“Notebook?”

“He carried a notebook in his pants pocket.”

Mullins shrugged. “We didn’t find any notebook.”

I sighed. “Probably in his office or something.”

Mullins leaned forward and peered at me. “You feeling okay today?”

“A little shaky,” I admitted. “What’d you say you thought it was? Chloroform?”

“I imagine so. They—he, whoever shot Dopplinger—chloroformed him first. Damned if I know why. We found a saturated rag in the room. Place was full of chemicals, of course. You know anybody who owns a twenty-two caliber weapon, Mr. Coyne?”

Mullins knocked me off balance with his abrupt change of subject. I couldn’t tell if he was being careless and unstructured, or if he was a clever interrogator. I was beginning to suspect the latter.

“No,” I answered. “No—wait a minute. Look, I don’t know many people who own guns, period. I have one, but I keep it in my safe in my office. It’s a thirty-eight,” I added quickly. “But this man who died—Sullivan—Shaughnessey, that is—he had a twenty-two. Or at least he
said
he had one. Is that what killed Dopplinger? A twenty-two?”

“Evidently. So it appears. That’s preliminary. They’ll dig the slug out of his head and know for sure. Just by looking at the entry wound, they can pretty much tell.”

“I would have said it was bigger,” I said. “A thirty-two, maybe.”

“You examined lots of bullet holes in people’s heads, Mr. Coyne?”

I smiled. “No, not many.”

“So Shaughnessey had a twenty-two, you say.” Mullins seemed to ruminate on this piece of information. He looked as if he was chewing up his tongue. “Well, it’s doubtful Shaughnessey killed Dopplinger, now, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Doubtful.”

“I’d like to come up with Shaughnessey’s gun.”

“Maybe I can get it for you,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I know his daughter. Shaughnessey’s daughter.”

“Safe to say, Mr. Coyne, that if she can put her hands on that gun, it won’t be the one we’re looking for. Still, I’d appreciate it. Mr. Garrett have a gun?”

“No. I don’t know. Not that I know of.” I tapped out a Winston and lit it. “You’re on the wrong track. Zerk didn’t do this.”

“Oh, I don’t think he did. I just don’t think he didn’t, yet, either.”

I nodded. Mullins rolled his shoulders, groaned, and began to rummage among the chaotic mess of papers on his desk. Somewhere among them he found a half-smoked cigar. He crammed it into his mouth and lit it. The little office was immediately filled with the smell of burning peat. “Nothing like a good cigar,” sighed Mullins.

“It’s because he’s black, isn’t it?” I said.

“Who? Mr. Garrett? Why, yes, I guess in this case it is.”

“What do you mean, in this case?”

“In
this
case, Mr. Coyne, our witness saw a black man. If your friend Mr. Garrett was white, we probably wouldn’t give him a second thought.”

“I explained to you why Zerk was seen there.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Mullins blew a big cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “Look, we appreciate your coming here, Mr. Coyne. Saved us a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Sure. Trying to identify you and bring you in and all.”

“Me?”

“Oh, sure. We got several witnesses saw you. Didn’t I mention that?”

“No.”

“Oh, well. You’ll be around if we need you, huh?”

“You mean, don’t leave town.”

Mullins waved his hand. “Nah. You know. Something might come up. I might think of something to ask you. That’s all.”

I took a business card from my wallet and handed it to him. He glanced at it and flipped it onto his desk, where I figured it would be devoured by the chaos of papers there. “You can go, Mr. Coyne,” he said. I stood. Mullins remained seated. I leaned across his desk to shake his hand. His grip was limp. He rubbed his eyes with his wrist. “Christ, I gotta get some sleep. Some racket this is. I shoulda been a lawyer.” He waved me out with the back of his hand. “Be in touch. Close that door behind you, will you?”

I went back down the long corridor to the open area by the front desk. I couldn’t find Zerk. After several minutes of waiting for the desk officer to get off the telephone, I managed to learn that Zerk was still being questioned, and, no, he wasn’t being held, why don’t you have a seat if you want to wait for him.

The longer I waited, the angrier I became. I imagined they were grilling him. I had about decided to demand that I see him when he appeared. One look at his face told me to move him fast. I grabbed his arm and pulled him outside the station.

“Mothafucks,” he muttered. “Oh, those mothafucks!”

“Take it easy,” I said. “Let’s get some coffee.”

He allowed me to steer him to a little coffee shop around the corner from the police station. We sat across from each other in a booth. A sleepy waitress brought coffee without being asked. “Anythin’ else, boys?”

“Just the coffee,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Bastards,” spat Zerk. “They want to put me in a lineup.”

“They didn’t, did they?”

“No. They want me to come back.”

“Not without your lawyer, you won’t.”

“My lawyer?”

“Me.”

He stared at me for a moment, then lowered his eyes to his coffee cup. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Honkie law. Maybe I should get myself a black lawyer.”

I thrust my face across the table at him. “What the hell is
that
supposed to mean?”

Zerk glared at me. “They puttin’
you
in a lineup? Tell me something. Did they call
you
‘boy’ in there? They ask
you
if you had a record? They tell
you
they were going to check you out in Akron? They ask
you
where you were at such and so time, if
you
owned a gun? They question
your
sexual preferences, Counselor?”

I shook my head. “Mostly, no,” I said softly. “It was nothing like that, Zerk. Shit, friend, I’m truly sorry.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Me, too. I’m truly sorry I ever let you talk me into going there.”

“You had to. Somebody saw you there.”

“Sure. Bet somebody saw
you
there, too.”

I nodded. “Yes. Somebody did.”

“But you’re not going into any lineup.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Mothafucks.” Zerk sipped his coffee, his face dark and furrowed. “The law. Justice. Piss on it.”

I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee. Zerk was silent. We avoided each other’s eyes.

Finally I said, “Look. I’ve got to know some things.”

His eyes shifted to meet mine. “Things?”

“Yes. Like, what time did you get to the museum? And why did you go there in the first place? And how long were you there before you found me? And where in the museum did you go before you went to Albert’s laboratory? Those kinds of things.”

“You son of a bitch.”

I banged the table with my fist. “God
damn
it, will you listen to me! You were there. And they’re looking for a black man who fits your general description for the Shaughnessey murder. Sooner or later the Cambridge cops and the Boston cops are going to put their heads together and make a connection.”

“My ‘general description.’ Yeah. A black man. Period.”

“You’ll have trouble making a civil rights case out of it, my friend.”

Zerk pondered his coffee cup for a moment, then he looked up at me. “Yeah. Okay, so you’re right. Now what?”

“For now, I’m your lawyer. I’m rusty as hell on criminal law, Zerk, but if you’re really in any trouble, I’ll get you the best damn lawyer in town. In the meantime, I can take care of your rights.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“It’s the least I can do for the man who saved my life.”

“I didn’t save your fuckin’ life,” he said. But he looked into my eyes, and the creases in his face seemed to smooth out a little. “Wouldn’t save your honkie life, Counselor. Not worth saving. No sir. I just didn’t want to lose a good job. That’s all. Watching out for old number one.”

I smiled. “You’re learning. Learning fast.”

Two days later Leo Kirk showed up at my office. He was accompanied by a dumpy guy named Stone with big jowls and no hair, whom he introduced as his partner.

“Kirk and Stone,” I said. “Sounds like a law firm.”

“Would that it were,” said Kirk gloomily. “I hate having to work for a living.”

Stone puffed a little cigar with a plastic tip. It was dwarfed in the vast, red expanse of his face. “Let’s not fuck around, Leo,” he said. He kept the cigar clenched in his teeth when he talked. “Let’s just get to it.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve decided that maybe Francis Shaughnessey wasn’t murdered by some random burglar. You’ve been talking to Mullins in Cambridge. You want to ask me a few questions.”

“Not quite,” said Kirk. “Actually, we want to ask your associate a few questions. Mr. Garrett.”

“You don’t need my permission.”

“He’s right,” said Stone. “I told you. Let’s just take him along;”

Kirk ignored his partner. “This is not, uh, official, Mr. Coyne. We’re not accusing Mr. Garrett of anything. We’re coming into your place of business, disrupting your routine, and we would like a few minutes of the man’s time. That’s all.”

“Very considerate,” I said. “It’s all right with me. I can’t speak for Mr. Garrett.”

“Look,” said Kirk earnestly. “As far as I’m concerned, what happened in Cambridge the other day is just a coincidence. I really haven’t…”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said.

“See?” said Stone.

“But Zerk had nothing to do with either of them,” I finished.

Kirk sighed. “Well, I don’t know. But, see, we got this eyewitness who saw a guy outside Shaughnessey’s place that night, and we got a sketch…”

“Black guy,” I said.

“Right. Black guy. Big. Six-one, two.”

“Curly hair, probably.”

“Aw, come on, Mr. Coyne. You know better than that.”

“I know that white people see big black guys on the street at night and that’s all they see—big black guys. Must be several thousand big black guys in Boston. Many of them can be seen on the streets.”

Stone reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He smoothed it open and laid it on my desk. “Big black guy with a neat little mustache. Looks a lot like Harry Belafonte. Except blacker. And,” he added, narrowing his eyes, “our witness happens to be a domestic for some nice rich folks in Louisburg Square. Black lady.”

I examined the sketch. It looked like Zerk. It looked a lot like him. The eyes, the hairline, the mouth. I glanced up at the two detectives. “Okay. I’ll call him in. If you guys don’t mind, I think I’ll stay while you talk to him.”

Kirk shrugged, and I pressed the button on the intercom.

“Yeah?” came Zerk’s voice.

“Come in for a minute, will you?”

“You gentlemen need coffee? Sweet rolls?”

“Cut the shit, Zerk. Come in here, please.”

“Yassah,” he said.

When he came in I introduced him to Kirk and Stone. He scowled when he shook their hands.

“Couple questions, Mr. Garrett,” said Kirk.

“What is this?” said Zerk to me.

“They’re investigating the Shaughnessey murder.”

“Aha!”

“Where were you on the evening of Monday, September eighteenth?” said Stone.

“I was murdering this guy up on Beacon Hill. I’ve got this heavy habit, see, man, and I was, see, strung out…”

“Don’t fuck with us,” said Stone, his eyes squinting through the smoke that curled up from his little cigar.

“Just answer him, Zerk,” I said.

“Why?”

I sighed. “We’re lawyers. We want to help them solve their case.”

“I’m helping. I’m confessing.”

“Don’t, Zerk.”

“They got it all figured out. You know that.”

“Do you remember where you were that evening?” said Kirk.