Deuce’s next step is to strong-arm the club members into believing they need a master-at-arms for the sake of privacy at their meetings; not surprisingly, Deuce is a shoo-in. He and Snake Redmond spend the better part of the next few weeks poring over stamp catalogs and books about the hobby of stamp collecting.
Their inmate friends are stumped, befuddled as to why the two men have suddenly developed an interest in philately. So are Walpole staff members, but who’s to question such an innocent and harmless diversion? Besides, these two guys are really enthusiastic, and the fact is, you can learn a lot from stamps. You get interested in what they depict, the country, the history, and the events they reflect, and pretty soon you want to know more. It’s educational.
In late winter Deuce and Snake tell their counselors that they’re so far into stamps that they want to make a big deal out of the upcoming fifteenth anniversary of collecting in prison. They’ve got it all planned out. The counselors are a bit skeptical, but they take the proposal to the administration and the plan gets approved.
Late in April the inmates will host an exhibit of fine stamp collections. Collectors will be invited from all over the country. The 906 Stamp Club invites collectors to bring their best to be displayed for everyone to enjoy. Collections mailed ahead to the prison will be sealed in glass display cases and kept under lock and key in a guarded room. The guys in the prison workshop will make trophies to give out as awards.
The judges will be philatelic experts from the community, and there’s no shortage of them. Anything tangible can be, and is, collected by someone somewhere. And when it comes to postage stamps, collecting is one of the world’s most popular hobbies. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was famous for it. So was the late Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman, the popular Roman Catholic prelate from Whitman, Massachusetts, not 25 miles away.
The collectors themselves are a singular lot. They spend lifetimes amassing and curating collections that are unique by virtue of the items’ value, beauty, or intrinsic importance; and unless mania or rampant greed is involved, the process is rewarding. It is soothing in the way that any pleasing, repetitive action is soothing. It is uniquely personal and often private. There always is an element of romance to collecting as well, both in the artifacts themselves and in what each represents. To share a collection with a like-minded admirer is to bask in mutual attention, validation, and a kind of affection. What is collected is, in a very real sense, loved.
The exhibit will be in the auditorium on April 24. Press releases are sent out to all the newspapers in metropolitan Boston. Prominent philatelists and local and state politicians are invited. The prison administration is excited. Walpole is widely known as one of the roughest prisons in the system, and it could use some favorable notice for a change. Visitors will be served punch and hors d’oeuvres from the prison kitchen.
As the day approaches, invitation acceptances come in by the dozens; so do some stamp collections. Several of them are extensive, complete, and very valuable. As promised, they are immediately set in display cases.
As the 906’s master-at-arms, Deuce himself seals off the collections in a locked room. Philatelic judges are lined up.
All is in readiness, and at the appointed hour a milling throng of guests and dignitaries passes through the doors of Walpole’s auditorium for the stamp show. Collections are in cases set up on easels around the room, so it takes awhile before anyone notices just how sparse some of the displays are. A few are missing all together. Gradually murmurs of discontent turn to alarm and then insistent complaints. The crowd is ushered out. The auditorium doors are closed faster than they were opened. Prison Superintendent Robert J. Moore, having gone in a matter of moments from proud emcee and host to hapless dupe, is mortified and furious. He apologizes as fast as he can and vows he’ll get to the bottom of this fiasco.
Of course he never does. Nobody does. By the time the exhibition doors open to the public, the best parts of the collections already have been carefully removed from their albums, tucked inside a crate of license plates, and shipped to the state Department of Transportation, where a friend of Deuce’s pilfers the stamps.
One of the defrauded collectors is Jack Langer, a dressmaker from Rego Park in New York. His collection included United Nations stamps and famous autographs, in particular the signature of President Harry S. Truman.
“I sent that exhibit behind the Iron Curtain and got it back safely, but I haven’t been able to get them back from Walpole,” he tells reporters at the time.
Langer writes an angry letter to Warden Moore. “Be advised how I intend to terminate this stinking mess,” he says. “I shall file a formal complaint with Gov. (Francis W.) Sargent. I shall institute legal action for recovery of the monetary value of the collection. I shall also institute criminal action if I can.”
Langer even offers a reward for the return of his collection. He tries hard and long to recover his beloved stamps, but nothing works. His best efforts fail.
When the philatelic material is fenced, the return to Deuce and Snake Redmond is about six thousand dollars. The haul easily brings more than twenty thousand dollars in 1971 currency, the equivalent today of nearly $118,000.
The caper makes Deuce happy, and it takes the wobble out of his self-confidence. He can still do whatever he needs to do, even in prison. Damn! He feels better about himself. He’s back on his game. What else could possibly matter?