Brimmer could have played a country druggist in a Frank Capra film. He was of less than average height, and he stooped slightly at the shoulders, as if he spent a long time bending over a desk. His thinning pepper-and-salt hair was parted slightly off the middle. He was dressed conservatively in gray suit pants and a white dress shirt. He wore a whale-motif blue tie knotted in a Windsor.
“I’m Paul Trout, and this is my wife, Gamay. We’re looking for any material you might have on Caleb Nye.”
Brimmer’s watery blue eyes widened behind his wire-rimmed bifocals.
“Caleb Nye! Now, that’s a name you don’t hear very often. How did you come to know about our local Jonah?”
“My wife and I are whaling-history buffs. We came across Caleb’s name in connection with Captain Horatio Dobbs. We were on our way to the Whaling Museum and saw your sign.”
“Well, you are in luck. I can put my hands on some brochures from his traveling show. They’re in storage at my workshop.”
“We wondered if there were any logbooks available for the Princessthat may have survived the Nye mansion fire,” Gamay said.
Brimmer frowned.
“The fire was a tragedy. As an antiquarian, I can only guess at the rare volumes he had in his library. But all is not lost. I may be able to get my hands on a Princesslogbook. She sailed for many years before she became part of the Stone Fleet, sunk off Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. The logbooks were dispersed to museums and private collectors. I’d need a finder’s fee up front.”
“Of course,” Gamay said. “Would you be able to find the logbook for 1848?”
Brimmer’s eyes narrowed behind his bifocals.
“Why that particular log?”
“It was Captain Dobbs’s last whaling voyage,” she replied. “We’d be prepared to pay whatever it takes.”
Brimmer pinched his chin between his forefinger and thumb.
“I believe I may be able to help you,” he said.
“Then the log wasn’t destroyed?” Paul asked.
“Possibly not. There’s a little-known story about Caleb Nye. He married a Fairhaven girl, but the family was not pleased at her betrothal to someone considered a freak, rich as he was, and they kept the matter quiet. The Nyes even had a daughter who was given some of the books from the library as a dowry. I have contacts I can check with, but I’d need a few hours. Can I call you?”
Paul handed Brimmer a business card with his cell-phone number on it.
Brimmer saw the logo.
“NUMA? Splendid.A query from your renowned agency might open doors.”
“Please let us know as soon as you hear something,” Paul said.
Gamay signed an agreement and wrote out a check for the large finder’s fee. They shook hands all around.
HARVEY BRIMMER WATCHED through the window of his shop until the Trouts were out of sight, then he hung a CLOSED sign on the door and went to his office behind the showroom. The documents and maps in his shop were actually overpriced prints of originals or low-end antiques for the tourist trade.
Brimmer picked up the phone and dialed a number from his Rolodex.
“Harvey Brimmer,” he said to the person at the other end of the line. “We talked a few days ago about a rare book. I’ve got some buyers interested in the same property. The price may go up. Yes, I can wait for your call. Don’t be too long.”
He hung up and sat back in his chair, a smug expression on his face. He remembered the first time someone had asked about the Princesslogbook of 1848. The call had come in years before from a young woman at Harvard. He told her he would put out the word, but she said she would have to wait because she was going home to China. He hadn’t thought about the inquiry again until a few weeks ago when an Asian man dropped by the shop looking for the same item. The man was an unlikely customer, young and tough-looking, and he didn’t hide his irritation when he was told the book was not available.
Brimmer could not have known that the visit from the young man had been instigated when Song Lee called Dr. Huang from Bonefish Key and mentioned the story of the New Bedford anomaly. She told her mentor that she was convinced that the medical curiosity had a bearing on her work and she was thinking of going to New Bedford to see an antique book dealer named Brimmer when she had time.
As instructed, Dr. Huang had passed along the details of every conversation he had with the young epidemiologist. Within minutes, a call had gone out to a social club in Boston’s Chinatown with orders to visit Brimmer’s shop. Soon after that, the leader of the local Ghost Dragons chapter walked into Brimmer’s shop and said he was looking for the 1848 logbook of the Princess.
Now the couple from NUMA.
Brimmer didn’t know what was going on, but there was nothing a dealer liked better than to have collectors bidding against one another. He would go through the motions and make a few calls. He would keep the finder’s fees from all three parties and offer them something else. He was a master of bait and switch. Business had been off lately, and this promised to be a profitable day.
What he didn’t know was that it would be his lastday.
THE TROUTS STEPPED FROM the dim shop into the afternoon sunshine and walked up Johnny Cake Hill to the Seamen’s Bethel. They tossed a few bills in the donation box and went inside the old whaling men’s church. The pulpit had been rebuilt in recent years to resemble a ship’s prow, as it had in Herman Melville’s time.
Paul waited for a couple of tourists to leave and then turned to Gamay.
“What did you think of Brimmer?” he asked.
“I think he’s a slippery old eel,” she said. “My advice is not to hold our breath waiting for him to come through. He’ll dig out the first logbook he can get his hands on, forge a new date, and try to sell it to us.”
“Did you see his expression change when we mentioned Captain Dobbs’s 1848 logbook?” he said.
“Couldn’t miss it!” she said. “Brimmer forgot his Mr. Friendly impersonation.”
Paul let his eye wander to the marble tablets hung on the wall that were inscribed with the names of captains and crews lost in the far corners of the world.
“Those old whalers were tough as nails,” he said.
“Some were tougher than others,” she said, “if you can believe Song Lee’s story about the New Bedford pod.”
Paul pursed his lips.
“That medical phenomenon is a link between the past and the present. I’d love to read the paper that Lee wrote at Harvard.”
Gamay slipped her BlackBerry out of her handbag. “Do you remember the name of Lee’s professor?”
“How could I forget?” Paul said with a smile. “His name was Codman.”
“Trout . . . Cod . . . Why are practically all you New Englanders named after fish?”
“Because we didn’t have wine connoisseurs for fathers.”
“Touche,” she said.
She called up the Harvard Medical School on her BlackBerry, thumb-typed Codman’s name into a person finder, and called the number shown on the screen. A man who identified himself as Lysander Codman answered the call.
“Hello, Dr. Codman? My name is Dr. Gamay Morgan-Trout. I’m a friend of Dr. Song Lee. I’m hoping that you remember her.”
“Dr. Lee? How could I forget that brilliant young woman? How is she these days?”
“We saw her yesterday, and she’s fine. She’s working with some NUMA colleagues of mine, but she mentioned a paper she had done at Harvard and submitted to you. It has something to do with a medical phenomenon called the New Bedford anomaly.”
“Oh, yes,” Codman said. Gamay could hear him chuckling. “It was an unusual subject.”
“We told Song Lee we’d be in the neighborhood, and she asked if my husband and I could swing by and pick up a copy for her. She’s lost the original.”
The professor had no reason to have kept a paper from one of hundreds of students who had passed through his classroom, but he said, “Normally, I wouldn’t hold on to a student’s paper, but the subject was so bizarre I kept it in what I call the Book of the Dead,as Charles Fort termed subjects that can be neither proven nor disproven. I’m sure I can put my hands on it.”