The Scarlet Ruse Read online

  The reason was obvious as soon as Fedderman explained it to me. He made a formal legal agreement with each client. If at any time the client wanted to get out from under, Hirsh Fedderman would pay him a sum equal to the total investment plus five percent per year on the principal amount invested. Or, if the client desired, he could take over the investment collection himself, at which point the agreement became void.

  "It's just to make them feel safe is all," Fedderman said.

  "They don't know me. They don't know if the stamps are real or forgeries. I started it this way a long time ago.

  I've never closed one out the way it says there in the agreement. But some have been closed out, sure. There was one closed out six years ago.

  About fifty thousand he had in it. I got together with the executor, and we auctioned the whole thing through Robert Siegel Auction Galleries, and a very happy widow got a hundred and forty thousand."

  "They can get big money that easily?" I asked.

  Fedderman looked at me with kindly contempt.

  "Mr. Mcgee, any year maybe twenty-five millions, maybe fifty millions go through the auction houses all over the world.

  Maybe more. Who knows? Compared to the stock exchanges, very small potatoes. But if the merchandise was available, the stamp auctions would be twice as big. Three times. That is because shrewd men know what has happened to classic merchandise during forty years of inflation. They'll buy all they can find. You put money in a Swiss bank, next year it's worth five percent less. The same money in a rarity, it has to be five percent more because the money is worth less, and the demand adds more percent. So in true rarities these days, the increment, it's fifteen to twenty percent per year."

  "How many clients do you have right now?"

  "Only six. This one and five more. Average. Sometimes ten, sometimes three."

  "How much do you invest in a given year?"

  He shrugged.

  "Last year, over five hundred thousand."

  "Where do you find the rare stamps to invest in?"

  "All over the country there are dealers who know I'm in the market for the very best in U. S." British, and British Colonials. Those are what I know best. Say a dealer gets a chance to bid on an estate. It's got some classics which make it too rich for him. He phones me and he says, "Hirsh, I've got here in a collection all the 1869 pictorials in singles used and unused, with and without grills, with double grills, triple grills. I've got special cancellations on singles and pairs, and I've got some blocks of four. Some are fine, some superb, average very fine."

  So maybe it's Comeskey in Utica, New York, maybe Tippet over in Sarasota, I fly there and figure what I can use and maybe I add enough to the pot so he can bid in the whole collection, and I take the '69s, and he takes the rest. Or I get tipped about things coming up at auction and move in and make a buy before they print up the catalog.

  Or there is a collector tired of some good part of his collection, and he knows me. Or a dealer needs some ready cash on stuff he's had tucked away for years, watching the price go up. I deal fair. I never take advantage. Three years ago a collector wanted to sell me his early Bermuda. He had some fakes of the early Postmasters' Stamps from Hamilton and St. George. At eighteen and twenty thousand each and looking like some dumb kid printed them in a cellar, no wonder there's fakes lots of them around. He threw in fifteen or so fakes he'd picked up over the years.

  I sat right here and went over them. One bothered me. It was Stanley Gibbons catalog number 03, center-dated 1850. The W.B. Perot signature was way off. Too far away from the original. Know what I mean? The rest of it was so damned perfect. Would a counterfeiter be so stupid? Not with several thousand dollars at stake. Okay, so maybe Perot was sick or out of town or had a busted hand that day. It took six months, but I got an authentication out of the Royal Philatelic Society, and I sent the collector my check for nine thousand, which was the best offer I could get for the stamp at that time. I put the stamp in a client investment account. You wouldn't believe the kind of word of mouth advertising I got out of that."

  The whole thing seemed unreal to me. He claimed to have made fifty thousand last year as a buying agent for the investment accounts. But here he was in a narrow little sidestreet store.

  "Your problem, Mr. Mcgee, I can see it on your face.

  You think all this stamp stuff is like bubble gum wrappers, like maybe baseball cards, trade three of your players for one of mine. It doesn't seem like grownups, right? Let me show you how grownup it can get, okay?"

  He opened an old cast-iron safe, took out a little file drawer, took out some glassine envelopes. With small, flat-bladed tongs he took out two stamps and put them in front of me.

  "Here, look at these two through this magnifying glass.

  These are both the five-dollar Columbian Exposition of 1893, unused.

  Printed in black. Profile of Columbus. Catalog seven hundred. For stamps like these, the retail should be a thousand each. Quality.

  Perfect centering. No tears or folds or bends. No short perforations.

  No perforations missing. Nice clean imprint, sharp and bright, no fading. A fresh, crisp look. Right? Now I turn them over.

  Keep looking. See? Full original gum on each. Nobody ever stuck a hinge on either one and stuck it in an album.

  Perfect? You are looking at two thousand dollars retail?

  Wrong! This one is a thousand dollars. This other one is schlock.

  I'll show you."

  He got out a pistol-grip light on a cord, turned it on, and turned off the overheads. We were in almost complete darkness.

  "Black light," he said.

  "Look at the stamp there." Two irregular oval areas glowed. One was the size of a lima bean, the other the size of a grain of rice, Fedderman turned the lights on again.

  "Let me tell you what is maybe the history of this piece of junk here.

  Back in 1893 maybe some uncle goes to the Exposition and he brings back a fine gift, all the stamps, and maybe a souvenir album. So a kid licks this one like putting it on an envelope and sticks it in the album, along with the others. This one maybe had one straight edge, where it was at the edge of the sheet when it was printed. Okay, maybe it spends thirty, forty years in that album. Finally somebody tries to soak it off. Hard to do after the glue has set. They don't get it all off. Some of the stamp comes off on the album paper. That leaves a place called a thin. A nice centered stamp like this with no gum and two thins and a straight edge, nothing else wrong, it goes for maybe a hundred and fifty, hundred and a quarter retail, perhaps ninety bucks wholesale.

  Okay, last year or the year before, somebody buys this dog along with some others of the same kind of high value dogs.

  They take them to Germany. Right now, working somewhere in West Germany, there is a pure genius. He makes up some land of stuff to fill the thins. He gets the gum from low-denomination Columbians. He puts it on perfect, no slop-over between the perfs. And he reperfs the straight edge perfect as an angel. I'm telling you, back around World War One, Sam Singer was the stamp doctor in this country. Then there was a fellow in Paris named Zareski who was pretty good, especially faking cancellations. But this German is the best yet. Very dangerous. And I'm showing you why I'm worth the ten percent I get for doing the investing." Suddenly he slumped, sighed.

  "Sure. Hirsh Fedderman is so damned smart. When you think nobody can take you, somebody takes you."

  "Tell Travis what happened," Meyer said, It took Feddennan a few moments to pull himself together.

  "Eighteen months ago, a little longer ago, I guess, this man phones up, his name is Frank Sprenger, he wants to have a talk with me about investing in stamps. He says he heard about me from so and so. I knew the name. Excuse me, I don't like to give out names. It's a confidential relationship. So I drove over to the Beach, and he's got a condominium apartment, like a penthouse, in the Seascape.

  It's in the afternoon. There is a party going on, girls and laughing and loud music and so for
th. Sprenger comes and takes me into a bedroom down a hall and shuts the door.

  He is big and broad, and he has a great tan. He has a great haircut.

  He smells like pine trees. He is not going to tell me what he does for a living. It is entertainment, maybe.

  Like with girls or horses or importing grass. Why should I care who I deal with? The protections are there. I do a clean business and pay my taxes. I give my sales talk. He listens good. He asks the right questions. I show him a sample of the agreement and a sample receipt like I sign to show the total investment and a sample inventory list like he can have if he wants. He says he will let me know. He finally lets me know it is yes. We meet at the bank and set up the box, and I sign the agreement, and we get it notarized. He says he can't say how much or how often, but it will usually be cash and is that okay? I tell him okay. He gives me forty thousand in cash in a big brown manila envelope right there, and I put it in my business account.

  Who wants to walk these streets with money like that? He had the two fellows who came with him waiting in the car.

  I'm alone. The items I showed you, that's not Sprenger's account.

  Sprenger said he didn't want anything well known, any special item that dealers would know on sight.

  I said it would make a little more volume. He said okay, but keep the volume down."

  "Did his request mean anything to you?" I asked Fedderman.

  "What do you mean?"

  "He planned to turn over cash in unpredictable amounts for merchandise which couldn't be traced. Did you make any guesses about him from that?"

  "Guesses? A man can do a lot of guessing. Why should I care? I can prove the money turned over to me from my copy of the receipt and from my deposit record. I can show where it went, show my percentage for my own taxes. Suppose it isn't his money. Suppose he's getting ready to run.

  Any time he wants, he can meet me at the bank, give me back my signed agreement, take the merchandise home."

  "What did you invest in?"

  "Superb unused blocks of four without plate numbers.

  High values. Columbians, Trans-Mississippi, Zeppelins.

  Some larger multiples, like a beautiful block of nine of the two-dollar Trans-Miss., mint, sixty-five hundred it cost me.

  Same kind of purchases of Canadian Jubilee in the high dollar values.

  Also some older stuff when they were perfect singles, used or unused, like a nice mint copy each of Canada numbers one, two, five, seven, nine, and thirteen.

  Twelve thousand, five hundred right there. Value." He leaned toward me.

  "It is the most valuable stuff, Mr. Mcgee, on a size and weight basis, the world has ever known. Some years ago Ray Weil and his brother, Roger, bought a Hawaiian stamp at auction for forty thousand.

  Very thin paper. Some newspaper guy in New Orleans, I think it was, figured out that it came to one and a half billion dollars a pound." "I'm im."

  "It doesn't come with bubble gum." "I said I'm impressed, Mr. Fedderman."

  "Call me Hirsh, please."

  "Hirsh, I want to know what happened. How did you get taken? Or did you get taken?"

  "You know those early Canadas? The way I came onto them, there was this old guy up in Jacksonville, he "

  "Hirsh!"

  "Okay, I'm sorry. They were switched."

  "What do you mean?" "I mean what I said! Sprenger did a lot of business with me. A lot! I had to really hustle to find the right stuff. I know the figure by heart. Call it nineteen months. Three hundred and ninety-five thousand.

  My ten percent on top of that. Four hundred and thirty-four thousand five hundred, that's what he has in it. Cash every six to eight weeks.

  Right now I've got about nineteen hundred and fifty dollars of his money to spend. It can't come out perfectly even, right?"

  "It was switched, you say?"

  "Let me show you something," he said. He got up and trotted out of the office into the store and came back in a few minutes and closed the door again. He put a slim, handsome album in front of me. It was in a black, fiber, dust case. The album was of padded blue imitation leather. The pages had transparent slots for stamps, and Mylar inter leafing

  "This is a brand made abroad. Lighthouse. Same color and size as Sprenger's. I provide it, after making the first investment. Right here on the front bottom corner, in gold, his book says Frank A.

  Sprenger. I get it done at the luggage place in the next block. This size fits nice in a middle-size safety deposit box. Here is the procedure. I buy something for Sprenger's account. Mary Alice keeps the records on the investment accounts. Mary Alice Mcdermit. Missus, but separated. She's been with me almost five years. Very sharp girl.

  Okay, I turn the item over to her, and she fixes up a Hawid or a Showguard mount or mounts and posts the price from the invoice in the ledger, on the page for Sprenger's account. She puts the item in the safe, and then when Sprenger can meet me at the bank, Mary Alice comes along too, and we take the box into one of the bigger rooms where there is room for three to sit down at a table. I show Sprenger what I bought for him and answer questions if he has any, and Mary Alice puts the item or items in the album just like this one as we sit there. Then it goes back in the box, and we get an attendant, and it gets locked into the hole in the wall and we leave."

  "He comes alone?"

  "He comes alone into the bank. Yes. There is usually somebody else in his car."

  "The stamps were switched?"

  "Listen. Almost two weeks ago, the seventh. Thursday.

  He was able to make it at eleven in the morning. I walked over with Mary Alice. I had some Zepps and some early colonials. Barbados and Bermuda.

  Solid investment stuff.

  Thirty-three thousand worth. Too much to keep here.

  Okay, it was like always. We went in. I showed him what I had. No questions. Mary Alice put them in the stock book. She wondered if she should put the Barbados on an earlier page with other Barbados. She looked back at that page. She had to turn some pages to find what she wanted.

  I got a look at the pages. Meyer, like I told you, I thought my heart was going to stop. I've got eyes like an eagle.

  Fifty years I've been looking at stamps. Across a room a diamond dealer can tell a good stone, Right? I'd bought prime merchandise for Sprenger.

  And I am looking at junk. It is not so obvious Mary Alice could tell.

  Sprenger couldn't tell in a year. What am I looking at?

  Bad centering. Some toning and staining. Some pulled perfs. Instead of very fine to superb, I am looking at good space fillers, if that. I felt for a minute like the room was spinning. What saved me, I didn't have any breath to say anything. Then my mind is racing, and I get hold of myself. When Mary Alice has put the new buys in, I take the stock book and leaf through it, saying something about Sprenger will never be sorry he made the investment. It is worse than I thought.

  Blocks reassembled from singles. Repairs.

  Scratches. Little stains. Not counting what Mary Alice had just put in, I had bought three hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars worth of standard classics. Mostly superb condition. Total catalog would run maybe three hundred and twenty-five. I was looking at stuff that was one fifth and one sixth and one tenth catalog anywhere. Sixty-five thousand at the best. Somehow I got the strength to walk out of there on my own legs. You think I've had a night's sleep since then?" Meyer said, "Hirsh got in touch with me."

  "It had been too long since I saw you last," Fedderman said.

  "What is the matter with the world? Old friends don't see each other.

  What I wanted, Meyer, was to borrow your mind. Such a logical mind! I get excited, and I can't think two and two."

  "I listened to the story," Meyer said, "and it made me wonder if Frank Sprenger might be the kind of barracuda who'd steal his own property and make Hirsh pay him for the loss. The deposit box is in a busy bank.

  Hirsh here is not an unusual type. His signature isn't complex or ornate.
/>   Sprenger would know the way Hirsh usually greeted the different vault attendants. Sprenger had an inventory list of everything in the investment collection. I asked Hirsh if defective duplicates would be hard to find. He said some of them would take awhile, mostly no. So it began to seem plausible that Sprenger had somebody accumulate the same items, and then they went to the bank together and switched, took the good ones out of the stock book, and put the defective ones in.

  Somebody successfully passed as Hirsh Fedderman."

  "You like that assumption?" I asked Meyer.

  "I don't like it any better than you do. It is a very touchy thing.