Just a Corpse at Twilight (23 page)

De Gier, well above all this in his loft, liked to sit in his tub and practice jazz trumpet to amuse Tabriz. Instead of reading French literature, he now borrowed South American books from the university library, which he found fascinating as, again refusing to own a dictionary, he had to guess what the Spanish or Portuguese words meant. Nellie hardly saw her unwelcome tenant as de Gier, using professional skills, managed to avoid her awesome presence. He rigged up a kitchenette, and started off each day with a ceremonial meal, enjoyed while sitting down on the carpet or, weather permitting, squatting on his small balcony in the shadow of Nellie's rooftop stone angel, bravely and forever blowing the trumpet of eternal blessings. He had his other meals out, mostly in the Chinese restaurants of Amsterdam's inner city. Massive weeds, grown from seedlings found in city alleys and on speedway shoulders, tended carefully, grew from large pots in the loft and on the balcony, where they attracted songbirds.

Chapter 25

"When we pointed the bone," Katrien had asked the commissaris the evening before Grijpstra and de Gier returned, "the party the bone points at was supposed to die?"

"I'm afraid that's correct, Katrien."

"We weren't playing?"

"No, Katrien."

"The party the bone points at dies straightaway?"

"Soon," the commissaris said.

"You really believe that?"

"Katrien," the commissaris said. "Of course I really believe that. Pointing the bone, if done properly, according to rules that de Gier left with me, is terminal magic. And we did it right. All conditions were met. We were serious. You and Nellie, in spite of what you two pretend to be sometimes, are evolved and powerful spirits. You assisted me voluntarily. The tribe requested our help and empowered our action by appropriate ritual. Of course Hairy Harry and Billy Boy terminated their temporal projections."

"How, Jan?"

"Quickly," the commissaris said.

"You sure?"

"That's what I asked for when I pointed the bone."

Katrien was knitting. The needles ticked peacefully. Sparrows chirpedin the garden. An ice cream truckplayedits chimes in the Queen'sBoulevard at the other side of the house.

"Why do you think I sent de Gier to New Guinea?" the commissaris asked.

Katrien put her knitting down. "You're arrogant, Jan. De Gier wanted to live with warriors, Papuans engaged in tribal warfare. He talked about it for years. Palm trees and jungle glades and naked women and tom-toms and hallucinogenic plants . . ."

"I nurtured de Gel's desire on my own behalf," the commissaris said. "I couldn't go myself I am getting too feeble."

"So de Gier is your extension?"

The commissaris sat quietly.

"I asked you a question. You're being rude."

"No," the commissaris said. "I'm too old to be rude. I want to tell you this, Katrien. I've often wondered whether there was anything we could do to make things happen a little bit better, and how far we should go once we learned how to use real power. For mutual benefit, of course."

"As defined by who?"

The commissaris sat straight in his chair, hands on his knees, eyes wide open.

"Jan ?"

"Yes, Katrien."

Katrien was knitting again. Her voice was casual. "Tell me, where did Grijpstra and de Gier get all that money?"

"I think they found it, Katrien."

"Where?"

"I could tell you," the commissaris said.

"Tell me."

"I don't think it would be a good idea if you told Nellie."

"I thought Nellie was advanced and all that."

"Grijpstra should tell her himself," the commissaris said.

"I won't tell Nellie. Now tell me, Jan."

The commissaris told Katrien that he was reasonably sure the money had been found in an antique townhouse, in Amsterdam's Blood Alley, in the inner city, a little over two years ago. Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, who had investigated a bar in Blood Alley at that time, announced their resignation a few days later.

"An investigation to do with a body?" Katrien asked.

With a missing body, a Japanese tourist, who later turned up safe and sound. The found Japanese missing person liked to drink in a Blood Alley bar.

"You followed up?"

The commissaris shrugged. Of course he followed up. Didn't hejust love mysteries? His very own trusted assistants, suddenly resigning, citing that as he, the commissaris, was about to be pensioned off, they couldn't stay on. "A likely story, Katrien."

"I thought it was touching, Jan."

"Grijpstra retiring on his savings? A couple of hundreds? And de Gier on his inheritance from his mother? A couple of thousands? Next thing Grijpstra is remodeling Nellie's house and de Gier is off to New Guinea."

"I remember," Katrien said. "You were running about in your father's broad-brimmed felt hat and Uncle Pier's little round glasses and that oversize overcoat you found in the garbage and you smelled ofjenever when you came home late." Katrien sniffed. "Retired, ha!
Otium cum dignitate
indeed." She found her smile again. "So what happened in Blood Alley that made millionaires out of our musketeers?"

Information is found in bars. The commissaris told her that while illegally investigating his former associates' sudden wealth, he had visited the bar in Blood Alley, assuming the persona of a retired city clerk, a drinking man, sitting quietly at the counter, hearing the alley's seasoned drinkers discussing a house further along the alley, about to be impounded for nonpayment of taxes, where three middle-aged black males used to live, citizens of Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the South American East Coast. The three men drove Maseratis that were traded for new Maseratis as soon as ashtrays filled up or tape decks malfunctioned. A Maserati is a very expensive Italian brand ofsports car. Those citizens of the republic of Suriname, a very poor country, just loved driving their ever-new Maseratis.

"Subjects left their station, Jan?"

Nobody had answered the door of the Blood Alley house. The telephone had been disconnected. The cars, abandoned and vandalized, were still in the alley. Grijpstra and de Gier had had the vehicles towed to Headquarters. A search turned up unpaid traffic tickets. The Maseratis were auctioned off by the city.

"The owners didn't show?"

No. The commissaris, at that time, recalled a narcotics case that mentioned the Maserati owners as suspects.

"Suspected of what, Jan?"

Of importing frozen fruit juice that wasn't. The product hidden in the fruit juice cans was cocaine. Strangely enough, the alleged smugglers were heroin users. Suspects had been brought in on charges a few times but released for lack of police cells, a common Amsterdam problem, but they were still being harassed by detectives, asked to visit Headquarters to answer questions, waylaid in the street, telephoned at odd times.

"Aha," Katrien said.

""You see possibilities?" the commissaris asked.

"Panic?" Katrien asked. "The addicted Suriname suspects, driven crazy by being constantly under surveillance, ran home? Leaving their treasure?"

The commissaris confirmed that addicts often react erratically because of the narcotics side effect, paranoia. Having come that far, the commissaris had asked a former Murder Brigade assistant, Sergeant-Detective Simon Car-dozo, to check with Suriname, where the Dutch Ministry of Justice pays off informers. There was a rumor in Suriname's capital that the three suspects were arrested by the military police on their return to Paramaribo. The rumor said that the military police, who handled the "frozen fruit juice" flow from Suriname to Amsterdam, wanted their share of the profits. The three suspects hadn't brought any money with them. They were tortured inefficiently and died before they could tell the MPs where the Amsterdam treasure, the proceeds of sales of narcotics, was hidden.

"Ach," Katrien said. "And Grijpstra and de Gier found the lost millions? Hidden in that Blood Alley house? Oh dear."

The commissaris said fortunes in cash left by drug dealers had been found by his department before and had been turned over to the administration.

"Aha," Katrien said. "Yes, I remember. You thought the money either disappeared outright or got squandered somehow."

The commissaris sighed as he held her hand. The old couple thought about the declining police reputation, unreported serious crimes, killer psychopaths released for bureaucratic reasons, unemployed youth gangs robbing the weak and elderly. Katrien was shaking her head. "So Grijpstra and de Gier just kept the cash? And you approve?"

"Not really, dear."

"You'll make them hand in the treasure somehow? But they're spending the money, Jan. There won't be much left."

The commissaris shook his head. "The treasure has been growing, dear."

"So it's you again," Katrien said. "How come you're always behind every mystery I run into? So that's what you've been advising Grijpstra about. All that talk about investments. I couldn't figure it out, why you were discussing shares and foreign exchange and interest and whatnot with Grijpstra of all people. Oh dear, oh dear."

"I was always good with numbers," the commissaris said. "I almost doubled the original value of Grijpstra's haul."

Katrien gaped.

The commissaris smiled proudly. "That's after what they were both spending is deducted, ofcourse. We did well with the dollar's fluctuation. I bought and sold Deutsche Marks then, and buying Philips at nineteen and selling at over thirty helped too, of course. Then there was Gillette. We went short on gold for a bit. We also bet that the British Labor Party would lose, so that the British Stock Index would go up, and, Katrien, didn't it ever?" He shook his head. "It's all in bonds now. I'm out ofinspiration, but there's twice as much as there was."

"What if those two start spending again?" Katrien asked. "Nellie says de Gier is buying a car."

The commissaris shrugged. "An old Citroen Deux Chevaux. Something he can leave in the street without its getting stolen. The agency makes good money, I hear. By now they're eager to get rid of their burden."

"You have something in mind?"

"Don't know yet, dear. Support the buccaneers who shoot up whalers? Give away anticonception devices in starving nations? Advertise euthanasia and sterilization? Help NASA to transport Homo sapiens to far away places, one way? You know of something better?"

"Hospitals for crippled kids," Katrien said. "I'll do some research, find us an organization where the staff isn't off on donation-supported cruises."

"Katrien?" the commissaris asked later that day. "I have this leaflet here, about this cruise. It's a small vessel belonging to some biological society, quite luxurious, with staterooms, leaving next month. Bird watching. On the coast of Maine. And as I've been feeling much better lately. . .all we have to do is catch a Concorde."

Chapter 26

Some weeks later a rubber boat was lowered down the side of the biological cruise ship
Lazy Loon,
out of New York, now anchored in Jameson Bay, Maine. Autumn was almost over, and the boat's passenger wore a sheepskin coat. He wasn't Katrien's favorite person that day but she could still stand at the
Lazy Loon's
railing and wave down at him.

The rubber boat's operator, a marine biology student, insisted on showing his passenger harbor seals, a gray seal, the dorsal fins of dolphins, an immature bald eagle, ajellyfish, and two loons, before dropping him off at Beth's Diner.

"Akiapola'au?" the commissaris asked as she brought him a menu. He mentioned his last name.

"That's Algonquin?" Aki asked. "But you have a Dutch accent. You must be the chief from Amsterdam. How are Rinus and Krip? Beth! Look who we have here."

Beth brought blueberry muffins on the house.

Aki and Beth sat at his table. "We are going to Hawaii soon."

"For good?" the commissaris asked.

"Just to winter a while," Aki said, "We can afford to now. Are you going to see what Ishmael has done with his canning factory? All those colors and corridors and depth and 'perspectives.' Something about emptiness and space. If you get it, will you tell us?"

"Bad George?" the commissaris asked. "Flash Farnsworth?"

Beth brought more muffins and filtered Kona coffee.

"The
Kathy Four
is sailing down Eggemoggin Reach just now, Flash radioed in. They're going mackerel fishing. Ishmael flew down yesterday. His new Cessna has sea floats. There'll be the three of them there, sharing good times."

"The four of them," the commissaris said.

The women laughed. "You've been told about Kathy Two?"

Kathy Two was doing just fine.

"Lorraine?" the commissaris asked.

Lorraine was back in New York, lecturing on her loon research. She was seeing her former husband, who was telling her about his wife. She was seeing his wife too.

"Bildah Farnsworth?"

Beth drove the commissaris to Bildah Farnsworth's hilltop residence, formerly the property of Hairy Harry.

Bildah was home. Beth introduced the commissaris. "You two should talk," Beth said. She drove off.

Bildah, a small-sized older man with neat sharp features, faded blue eyes behind rimless glasses, bald under his felt hat, and wearing a sheepskin jacket ("You know, we look alike?"), took the commissaris for a walk.

"You know," Bildah said, "when someone is indicted here, he always says, 'I didn't do anything wrong."'

"I'm not indicting you," the commissaris said.

Bildah looked glum. "You might still be my conscience."

The commissaris explained his theory about conscience, that it was a fickle thing, tiedloosely together by the strings of habit and memory, inflicted by impressions received early on in life, far too relative to be trusted.

"You're retired, I hear," Bildah said. "I had you checked out somewhat. You knew our previous sheriff, Jim. Jim spoke highly ofyou. He became a game warden, you know, in the Florida Keys. Trying to protect some small type of deer that gets hit by traffic."

"Good," the commissaris said, "and I'm glad you think you did nothing wrong."