The Perfidious Parrot (22 page)

The commissaris checked the date and time on his watch. “The weekend is about to start in Europe. Tomorrow is Saturday. I won’t know until next week whether your father has paid us.” He looked at the clearing sky and asked what the green lines were on the horizon. “The last of the Bahamas,” Carl said. “The beginning of Haiti.” It would be better to steer somewhat north now. Cuba was still close. Although you had armed activity between drug runners there, the sea near the Bahamas was considerably safer than Cuban waters. Cuba liked to confiscate luxury yachts straying within her territorial waters. You could buy yourself out of course but there would be delays, jail time, extra fines just before leaving, all kinds of trouble.

“The Cuban Navy is the enemy here?”

“Right.” Carl laughed. “Castro went broke, Castro became a pirate.”

The commissaris enquired as to why that was funny.

“The more chaos the better,” Carl said happily. “That’s what me and Dad like about the Caribbean. No safety. Once things are safe we can forget our profits. More trouble, more money.”

“Muddy water?”

“Good fishing,” Carl agreed. “Piracy. Wreckery. Do-as-you-pleasery. Going back to true motives. Taking care of Number One.”

“Egotism,” the commissaris agreed.

Carl grinned. “Serving the needs of the One and Only.”

“But,” the commissaris asked, “given your self-serving natures, how do you obtain cooperation from others?”

“We dangle money in front of them.”

The commissaris spread a hand and looked at nothing lying on its palm.

“One hundred thousand has just been electronically conveyed into your account,” Carl pleaded. “True. I swear by all that is holy.”

“By your own greediness?” the commissaris asked.

The commissaris and Carl looked out from the ship’s stern. The FEADship followed calm seas along a long reef. Dolphins gamboled. The setting sun illuminated their gleaming grey-green bodies. An albatross planed on a parallel course, effortlessly aloft on its seven-feet wingspan. Islands showed as emerald lines on the horizon.

Grijpstra appeared and lowered his heavy body painfully into a deckchair. “Are you going to do something now?” Carl asked the commissaris.

“You didn’t stick to your side of the bargain,” the commissaris said sternly. “The deal is off. We’ll negotiate afresh. Another hundred thousand up front if you please.”

“Never.” Carl snarled. “You’ll have to deliver.”

“De Gier phoned,” Grijpstra said. “The Key West sergeant let him go and he is on his way to St. Eustatius. He’ll stay at Old Rum House. There were some problems but it worked out in the end.”

Carl, mumbling furiously, walked out of earshot.

“Bad problems?” the commissaris asked.

“Ant bites, sir. He needed injections.”

“Oh dear.” The commissaris looked worried.

“Mosquitoes too, flies, anything,” Grijpstra said. “He woke up naked in the Key West Cemetery.”

“Drinking?” the commissaris asked.

“Papaya juice,” Grijpstra said.

Carl waved at bikini-clad girls on a sailboat. “Helllooooh.” The girls ignored the towering yacht.

“And de Gier found out something,” Grijpstra said. “He has a plan.”

“Stupid bitches.” Carl had come back. “Rattling about on that plastic shoe box.” He turned his back to the railing. “What plan would that be?”

“If de Gier’s plan fits in with mine, as I’m sure it will, and you will pay that second hundred thousand, as I am sure you will,” the commissaris said, “you will recoup your loss.”

“I did pay,” Carl said.

“Half.” The commissaris smiled, “Or so you say.”

“Toast,” Grijpstra told the servant. “No butter. Tea without sugar. Tepid. Nothing special.”

The servant noted the order. Grijpstra said that a slice of smoked salmon, thinly cut, just a sliver, might be added. Maybe a pickled pepper.

“Okay,” Carl said after the servant had left. “You’re right. The money will go via Veracruz in Mexico and Mexico is slow.” He looked sad. “Petty bank clerks have to prove their power at the expense of us real people.”

“You have any cash on board?” the commissaris asked.

“Do I have cash on board?” Carl asked. “With these retard islands around us? Say something goes wrong. You think they have ever heard of credit cards here?”

“Pay us that second hundred thousand in cash.” The commissaris pointed at an approaching green line. “That must be Haiti.” He unfolded his map. “Maybe not such a good place for cash transactions, but here, next stop, that would be the Dominican Republic. How about this Puerto Plata? That means “money harbor,” does it not? There should be a bank there. Suppose you give me the cash here and drop me off in Puerto Plata tomorrow. I can have your cash transferred to our Amsterdam account.”

Carl complained. Why should they pay double? The commissaris comforted him, it all came out of the same million due to them later, did it not?

Yes, if the stolen cargo was recovered.

It would be, the commissaris assured him, but not if the cash wasn’t provided right now.

“It hasn’t been earned,” Carl wailed.

“Nobody gets what is earned,” the commissaris said. “You get what you have negotiated for.” He had read that in a magazine in the airplane flying to Miami.

The next morning the ship’s drinking water problem hadn’t yet been solved. The cook used bottled water to cook breakfast.
The ship was out of milk and eggs Benedict had to be made with nondairy creamer. After brushing his teeth again, the commissaris was helicoptered ashore by Carl.

“And?” Carl asked when they left the Dominican bank, “What do I get now for my two hundred thousand dollars?”

“Once we get down to work,” the commissaris said, “we tend to work quickly. More or less have to, you know. It’s like the murder cases we used to solve. Delays wipe out tracks.”

The commissaris hummed and grinned after the helicopter had landed on the
Rodney
’s rear deck once again.

“Glad to see that you feel better now.” Carl switched off the chopper’s engine. “I bet you can see some tracks now, right?”

“The world is an open book,” the commissaris said.

“But you have to able to read it,” Grijpstra said after Carl returned from a briefing with his father. “We all have our special skills. You slip up with yours …”

“… we repair the damage,” the commissaris concluded. He looked concerned. “How is your father?”

His father was worried, Carl said. Skipper Peter was watching his online computer’s monitors suspended from his cabin’s ceiling. The monitors showed the world’s fluctuating markets. Ambagt Senior had been speculating of late, while concentrating on so-called “turn-around” stocks, buying at what he hoped were lows. “Bad for his heart. Too much tension.”

Speaking of tension, the commissaris said, it was about time for him to take a nap.

Grijpstra joined him.

“What does de Gier know now?” Grijpstra asked when they were back in their cabin.

“What we know, Henk.”

“What do we know, sir?”

The commissaris indicated the bathroom. Grijpstra opened the taps. The commissaris whispered into Grijpstra’s ear.

“Frogs?” Grijpstra asked.

“Shshsh,” the commissaris said. “Souza was frightened by frogs, remember? And the other thing de Gier will have found out about is that Quadrant Bank is also an insurer.”

“Thomas Stewart-Wynne’s employer? That sent him out here?”

“Since you couldn’t get through to Quadrant from here,” the commissaris whispered, “I tried in Puerto Plata. I spoke to Stewart-Wynne’s chief. Our dead man in the Key West jeep specialized in checking cargo claims.”

“So the
Sibylle
was insured after all?” Grijpstra winked slyly. “So what do you think happened?”

“The piracy happened,” the commissaris said.

Grijpstra’s smile widened.

De Gier met Karate at Key West Airport. De Gier didn’t ask but Karate told him anyway, he wasn’t doing too well. Karate had been squeezed by a fat man who overflowed his seat in the Amsterdam-Miami airplane. “A giant condom filled with yogurt.” The stewardess had been old and ugly. Karate did not demand fawning servility but just a little common pleasant behavior, when a passenger asks for another mini-bag of stale peanuts and another can of lukewarm juice from concentrate, was that too much? Karate indicated his moist crotch. “Happened when the mummy flight-attendant poured coffee. The plane fell into an air pocket. She was in league with the pilot. The pilot had aimed for the air pocket. Coffee time? Into the air pocket, hoho.” The plane’s movie was bad. Ketchup would be on the next flight. He had finked out, offering excuses: his passport had to be renewed, his tropical costume was still at the cleaners. Ketchup had found a new pal to sleep over with. Fine. Okay. It wasn’t that Karate insisted
on faithfulness, no sir, he knew full well that loyalty to a pal wasn’t “being in with the crowd anymore,” but, hear here, when you’re working on a project you make time to be together—or was he being old-fashioned now?

And what was all this wetness in Florida? “Since when does it pour in this tropical super swamp?”

And why did Karate have to sit on the luggage carrier of a rental bicycle? What was wrong with hiring a Mercedes or a Ferrari? “Damn it all, I got mud on my pants now.” If de Gier wouldn’t mind could he perhaps avoid the next puddle? “Oh, please! Again!”

And what kind of birds were flying above them? Not vultures, were they?

And why were de Gier’s face and hands all puffy? Bug bites? Woke up in the cemetery? This very cemetery they were passing? Woke up in the nude? Had been lucky that he hadn’t been eaten by the cemetery’s crocodiles slithering from the swampy area over there? Crocodiles dig up graves to get at the corpses? But what was a nude de Gier waking in the Key West cemetery for?

Papaya juice in a lap dance bar? Been taken out to the cemetery by pernicious parrots? Hahaha.

No, no, Karate wasn’t laughing, he was just clearing his throat. Karate had caught a bad cold in the airplane, been infected by a circulating virus. “Same air keeps coming by. Same virus gets you good each time.” Karate was still coughing when de Gier, in a suite in the Eggemoggin Hotel, explained what Karate, and Ketchup who was about to arrive, had to do that night. All the main points were repeated clearly.

Subject is Mickey Donegan. William Street trailer camp. A
degenerate de Gier look-alike, complete with ridiculous mustache. The Perfidious Parrot. Old convertible Chevy in bad shape. No alcohol for him and Ketchup while the project was on. No papaya juice either. Bottled sodas only, to be opened in their presence. A map of Key West. Yes, Karate would study same with attention. The black cross was William Street, the red cross, The Perfidious Parrot.

“Got it?” de Gier asked.

Karate had gotten most if it. He didn’t get why de Gier wasn’t doing this himself, why he, Karate, and Ketchup, the treacherous fink, had to come all the way from Amsterdam at their own expense—okay, they did have that free pass on Royal Dutch Airlines—all the way to sopping-wet swampy Florida to arrange a “situation.” Surely this wasn’t because of the fee Ambagt & Son was paying Karate and Ketchup for finding Grijpstra and de Gier a million dollar job, was it? Surely not. This couldn’t be some type of revenge, could it? Really. Petty. Did de Gier have any idea how tired Karate was? Ever heard of jet lag? Plus lack of sleep because of some stupid movie that just missed being bad enough to make him switch off the earphones?

Karate’s indignation interfered with his breathing. He became red in the face. De Gier had to slap the little man’s cheeks to bring him to reason.

“Rest,” de Gier said. “Set your alarm so that you can meet Ketchup’s plane. Remember to pay for this hotel suite yourselves. A mere thousand a day. Small change for you carpetbaggers.”

“And where will you be when we get all this going?” Karate asked.

“Around,” de Gier said, “around and around. Not to worry.”

“And how do we know what happens in the end?”

De Gier promised that he, at a future meeting, probably in the billiards-café of the stripping lady in Amsterdam, would report in detail, submitting newspaper cuttings, for there might be a few.

“
Will
be a few,” Karate laughed. “This should indeed hit the papers. Leave it to us, Mr. Former Sergeant, sir. Hahaha.”

Former Special Forces Specialist Michael C. Donegan, presently self-employed, promised himself that, starting probably today, he would go easy on his daily intake of alcohol. Two wake-up demons were too many wake-up demons. He was used to facing one hangover demon. Mickey could ignore it. He would just swing his long legs off the orange-crate bed in the plywood camper parked on the worst corner lot of the Williams Street Trailer Park, and simply walk through the apparently solid image. The demon always just stood there. Sometimes it was in drag, pretending to be Mickey’s deceased mother, sometimes it amused itself by being a zombie with the body of a human corpse and the head of a parrot. On mornings following official holidays it might resemble a regular devil, complete with horns and fangs, waving a red hot poker. One wake-up demon was nothing special. It might follow him outside but would waft away if hit by spray from Mickey’s shower-head, attached to a garden hose dangling from a fig tree’s air root. Or maybe it was the light that made the hangover demon fade. Once the demon was dealt with Mickey was free to figure out some scheme to provide himself with beer money. The
hangover demon was irritating but could be dealt with, but now there were two demons, and he couldn’t walk through them. He had tried but they pushed him back on the bed, gently, while politely addressing him in some European version of English. The Euro-speak sounded as if its practitioners had flies stuck in their throats and were trying to get rid of the bothersome insects. “Chchchch-chuh, how are you doing, Mickey?”

“Hey!” Mickey said.

“Beer?” one demon asked. It offered a cold can of Heineken. It seemed to say “Heineken” too but the vowels were all wrong and it snarled as it pronounced them, showing its upper teeth as a dog will do when it welcomes its master after mistaking him for an intruder. A friendly embarrassed snarl.