The Perfidious Parrot (17 page)

Why not let go of poor de Gier and take the much superior Grijpstra, who, besides, did not like to sail on small boats.

Sergeant Symonds said she would just love to but she couldn’t, really. De Gier had already been arrested and to change paperwork via Monroe County’s bureaucracy was just too much work. “I truly like you better,” Sergeant Symonds said. She liked the commissaris even better but the commissaris
wasn’t interested in taking over de Gier’s precarious position. Besides, the commissaris did like to sail on small boats.

The commissaris accompanied Grijpstra to pay de Gier’s bail: fifty thousand dollars in five hundred bills of one hundred dollars each. Quite a sizable package. The commissaris got the cash after G&G’s Luxembourg bank guaranteed payment by fax through an American correspondent. While Ramona counted the cash the commissaris studied the portrait of Mynah. “I keep a portrait of Turtle on my desk.”

Ramona looked at his wedding ring. “Not your wife’s?”

“Katrien,” the commissaris said, “keeps changing. Turtle is more eternal.”

Ramona looked serious. “You’re looking for eternity, sir?”

“Who isn’t?” the commissaris asked. The unchangeable, symbolized somewhat by Turtle’s timeless face, fascinated him. “The wisdom of an ancient reptile, beyond fear and desire.”

“You’re neither?” Ramona asked.

“I am free in essence,” the commissaris said, “I think. But then, who isn’t?”

“Mynah is noisy,” Sergeant Symonds said, “especially when he imitates the sound of my cappuccino machine.”

Grijpstra would not believe that a bird could do that.

Ramona imitated the bird’s imitation of her cappuccino machine.

Grijpstra applauded.

“But you do love your wife,” Ramona said to the commissaris, “even if she does keep changing.”

“Certainly, certainly,” the commissaris said, “and you love your …” he checked the rest of her desktop. “Of who you do not keep a photo here?”

Ramona said that it was all over with Mary-Margaret and that
she couldn’t believe that it had ever not been all over for what, after all the arguments and disappointments, does a human relationship amount to? Isn’t it just a battle between opposite egos? Domestic violence. Cause for most calls for police assistance. “Is it the same in Europe?” Sergeant Symonds asked. Grijpstra said domestic violence had always upset him. It was nice to be away from that now. Also at home. Although his second wife did sometimes resemble his first, she didn’t throw things.

The commissaris studied the bird’s photo. “Except for Mynah you have no close relationships?”

“What is it to you?”

The commissaris smiled. He said in an avuncular tone, “Ramona, my dear …”

Ramona, mollified by the commissaris’s act, said that an older man was her friend now. She sometimes felt bad about that, she had drawn some satisfaction from being gay, but some older men were okay, perhaps. She smiled at the commissaris. “You could be okay, but my old man looks more athletic.” Prompted by the commissaris she said that her friend lived in a lane behind Petrona Street, in one of the ships-carpenter–designed little rectangular houses, overshadowed by flame trees. During spring and early summer the trees seemed to be on fire due to their exuberantly orange and red flowers. Ramona’s friend was a retired psychiatrist who had come to the conclusion that all human personalities are irreparably unpleasant. Unmarried and childless, he led a scholarly life among inherited antiques, brought in long ago by Key West wreckers. Behind his oleander hedge her friend mildly disliked people, although he sometimes tolerated Ramona’s company and was fond of her bird who liked to come with her.

“Gabriel likes to cook for us.”

“Do you and Gabriel do it?” Grijpstra asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

Grijpstra scratched his chins. “I sometimes wonder if happy couples do it.”

“Do you and your wife do it?” Ramona asked.

Grijpstra admitted to gradually preferring to think about it.

“With your wife?”

“Sure,” Grijpstra said.

“Does Gabriel make you feel safe?” the commissaris asked, using his grandfatherly mode again.

“I comfort him,” Ramona said. “Gabriel, even if he dislikes it maybe, still lives in the universe. The universe is essentially female. The female sometimes comforts.”

“Mutual safety?” the commissaris asked hopefully.

Yes, perhaps. Ramona said that she liked spending time behind Gabriel’s protective hedge and the sign that hung from a flame tree’s branch, nicely written in the old man’s precise hand, carmine on white. T
HE LION IS OKAY
, it said. If one touched the gate the lion, well inside the house, growled; if one opened the gate the lion would roar just behind the front door. The growling and roaring were randomly programmed by a Sony-made device, or was it Philips Electronics?

“De Gier did not murder our Englishman,” the commissaris said as he left the sergeant’s office.

“Of course he didn’t,” Sergeant Symonds said.

“Do return him some time,” Grijpstra said. “We need him for routine jobs.”

“So do I,” said Sergeant Symonds.

“You’re looking all disgruntled,” the boatswain on the
Rodney
’s gangway said, “but the weather forecast is good. Good weather all the way to Puerto Rico.” Grijpstra wasn’t reassured. He had studied the commissaris’s maps again. Puerto Rico to St. Maarten still seemed some distance. “And after that?” Grijpstra asked, worried.

“Winds higher than thirty-four knots not expected.” The boatswain did expect a bit of a breeze around the Virgin Islands.

Grijpstra, a few minutes later, replaced the snacks he had taken from the refrigerator in the luxurious cabin he and the commissaris were sharing. The ship was moving. “De Gier was right,” Grijpstra said. “This is going to be bad.”

The gold telephone on a night table between the beds played a little song which the commissaris remembered from his student days, a ribald chorus sung by a strident male voice accompanied by tuba honking and drum thumping. The commissaris picked up the phone.

Carl Ambagt informed his passengers that the
Admiraal Rodney
was about to leave port. He invited his guests to the bridge, to enjoy their farewell to Key West. Carl mentioned sun-kissed beaches, Victorian houses with bizarre towers, pagoda-shaped pine trees, a crumbling brick fortress, rare tropical birds riding the thermals.

“Our client is being a poet,” the commissaris said in the ship’s corridor. “He is actually quite funny sometimes. That’s annoying, Grijpstra. I don’t like it when the enemy tries to twist himself out of my characterization. Carl is a despicable bounder. Bluffing scoundrels should have no eye for beauty. Atypical and therefore unacceptable misbehavior, Grijpstra. Hitler pets his loving dog. My half-witted brother-in-law reads Cormac McCarthy. You are a sensitive and creative percussionist. None of that fits.”

“De Gier?” asked Grijpstra.

The commissaris scowled. “My star pupil? He who makes no progress? He who is getting worse maybe?”

“Your wife?”

The commissaris sighed. “Only Turtle.”

The ship, hitting a wave, shuddered.

Grijpstra belched defensively.

The Ambagts waited for their guests on the
Rodney
’s bridge where the first mate studied his monitors and auxiliary screens and a sailor moved the wheel with a single finger. A servant brought deck chairs to the teak aft deck and placed them in the shadow of the helicopter parked there. A coffee table, a marble black woman, nude, lying on her back, holding up a plate-glass sheet with her hands and feet, bore an artful array of nuts and cheeses, and colored alcoholic beverages in decanters.

“Welcome,” Skipper Peter said, “to our priceless yacht, Mister Detectives.”

Key West’s south coast slid past the slowly moving vessel.

Skipper Peter pointed at the Martello Tower rising above a tourist beach. “That’s where Key West’s wreckers used to keep watch.”

Grijpstra wanted the shore to stop sliding.

The commissaris was mystified by the term “wreckers.”

De Ambagts explained while the servant poured bourbon for Peter, a cola drink for Carl, iced tea for the commissaris and “please, nothing” for Grijpstra.

Key West’s first wreckers, said Peter and Carl, were Calusa Indians. After their extermination Europeans took over. “Key West” is an English adaptation of the Spanish “Cayo Hueso.” Cayo = boil. Hueso = bone. Key West started out as a skeleton covered sea-blemish. The bones were of murdered shipwrecked sailors.

The island might look peaceful, Carl said, pointing at trees, beaches and buildings and calling attention to flowering vines, orange trees, the cloud-shaped gum trees, the green velvet lawns, a cute couple of old gay gents on their tandem bicycle riding down a gravel path, and equally cute heterosexual combinations, walking along slowly, wearing identical straw hats and holding hands, the terraces of restaurants with yellow and blue parasols and—Peter interrupted his son gruffly—stores selling stuff nobody needs, T-shirts with funny texts, pre-torn jeans, fishnet underwear, plastic turds glued to the visors of pink hats, day-glow hats stuck through with tin foil fish. “But in the old days, hey?” shouted Skipper Peter, “when there were still some
real
folks around?”

“Real folks?” the commissaris asked.

Carl said that his father was referring to pirates and wreckers. The real-motivated.

The explanation continued. The Calusas, the Florida Indians, used to be peaceful, Carl said. They caught broilable fish and deer. They grew tossable salads. They were happy and healthy and lived in palm-leaf beach houses, pleasant even at the height of summer, because movable screens could direct cooling breezes. Calusas paddled hollowed-out canoes, visiting families on other islands.

One of the world’s paradises, soon to be under the Spanish cross on which hung the Spanish Jesus.

Spanish forces would annihilate the natives but a project of that magnitude, Skipper Peter said, seemingly sober, speaking articulately, takes time and effort. Father Ambagt, peering around his swollen, blood-red nose, compared the changed situation with Rome, not built in a day, not torn down in a day either. The Calusas did not agree with being killed off. They shot poison arrows from the mangroves. Camouflaged canoes floated quietly through narrow swamp channels, before their crews jumped the invaders. Nude Calusa women offered fruit juices to lure steel-helmeted Spanish sailors.

Young Ambagt took his guests to the
Rodney
’s bridge. A ship-shaped icon showed on the computer’s large screen. The moving icon was the
Rodney
herself, stationary dots were reefs, stationary lines were sandbanks. Flashing arrows were dangerous currents. Seventeenth-century sailors only saw the sea’s surface but the Calusas knew where hidden coral reefs waited to rip vessels apart. The Calusas, dressed up in captured Spanish
clothes, entrapped ships, by waving flags, or with lanterns at night.

But the Calusas were still primitives, Skipper Peter said, excitedly waving his tumbler. They weren’t good at handling firearms. They didn’t adapt to new values.

“Lack of values,” the commissaris said.

“Exactly.” Carl said. He raised his hand didactically. “Primitives cannot look beyond their own morals. Faced with change they stay stuck with obsolete codes.” Calusas still believed in pacts. Pacts, agreements, honor, that sort of thing works when there is plenty of space and resources, but time was running out for that. “Drop all that garbage when a million Spanish are trying to get in. If not …”

“… you will be tortured, raped, and killed,” grinned Skipper Peter.

“Fifteen thousand Calusas,” Carl said, “that’s all we are talking about here, just a little tribe with painted faces, doing a bit of hey-ho around the bonfire, so what you do is invite the dimwits for Big Macs with Mayo and you fill them up with mass-produced chemical hootch and then you beat them all to death.”

“Leaving some of the shapelier ones,” grinned Skipper Peter.

“If you must,” frowned Carl.

“After use, they go too,” Skipper Peter said, winking, toasting, smacking, spilling liquor and snacks.

Carl addressed the commissaris. “The Calusas came to an end but ships kept coming and we kept the wrecking habit. Why do away with a good thing?” He smiled. “Right?”

“All that useless stupidity.” The commissaris looked at the fading island. “And we could all have had such a good time.
Pool shamanic and western medical knowledge of birth control and euthanasia. Keep the population level. Fifteen thousand Calusas, fifteen thousand visitors. Oysters Rockefeller around the campfire. Blossoming shrubs. Cuban coffee and cigars. Nuzzling under the palm trees. Music. Singing the Reds.”

“The Reds?” Carl asked.

“The Blues,” the commissaris said, “might not have happened.”

Grijpstra forgot his nausea for the moment. He said he liked the Blues, even if only for contrast. Who needs being happy all the time? Who wants to keep singing the Reds around campfires, even while nuzzling firm-fleshed primitives?

The commissaris was about to mention the possibility of going beyond the duality of being massacred by mutual egotism and being bored by bourgeois’s get-togetherism when the sea became rougher and Grijpstra started retching again.

“Really, Henk,” the commissaris said.

Carl Ambagt hadn’t noticed the interlude. “We, of course, improved on the art of wrecking.” He tapped the commissaris on the knee. “Listen here. Indians are the thing now, crystals and drumbeat journeys and power animals and bouncing around the tepee, and peyote, but what is it worth, right?” Carl smiled all-knowingly. “Throw in five dollars plus tax and all that Native American bullshit may buy two cappuccinos. Just imagine, the Calusas had been living here for thousands of years and they never thought of inventing a sailship. They had everything here, this is America for fuck’s sake, and Native Americans never thought of mixing up a bit of explosive.”