The Perfidious Parrot (8 page)

Or was it a flipped-out hunter hiding between the bushes at the other side of the brook? The “silence” area between the Amsterdam satellite towns of Abcoude and Ouderkerk does qualify for pheasant hunting but it wasn’t the season now. The shots weren’t fired by a shotgun. No loud bangs here but sharp cracks, normally associated with the firing of an automatic assault gun. An American liberation weapon, the M-16 used by the Dutch Army? The Kalshnikov used by Eastern European forces?

Now bullets whined close to the commissaris’ head.

He knelt between waving grass plumes. The tall pheasant feather on his hat was hit and snapped in two.

Katrien had been wrong once again, the commissaris thought when, back at the windmill parking lot, he got back into the old Citroën. The situation wasn’t dangerous at all. All the shots had missed him. De Gier’s cracked ribs were healing nicely. Grijpstra wouldn’t be sick to his stomach forever. These harmless assaults could be explained as invitations to return to the good life. As encouragements, loving touches from the guiding hand of a benevolent spirit.

Yessir, as far as he was concerned, and he
was
concerned now, the invitation could be accepted.

The commissaris whistled a popular football jingle, “Kick Ass
Hahahah, Kick Ass Hahahah,” following an arrangement for mini-trumpet, drums, percussion keyboards and voice, composed by de Gier. He stopped at a carwash on the way home. He noted with pleasure that the weather happened to be superb. He was still whistling when he pushed his front door open.

“Oh no,” Katrien said when she saw his face.

He kissed her cheek. “What’s wrong, my darling?”

“And I can’t go along to take care of you,” Katrien said. “You knew that. You’re slipping out of reach again. And I have to play grandmother here. Stay away from those tropical beauties, Jan. Don’t overeat now. Don’t forget your pain pills. Stay close to G&G, they like to protect you. Beware, dear.”

“Let the enemy beware,” said the commissaris, hissing the tune of “Kick Ass, Hahahah.”

The commissaris, stumbling about the loft, found a pith helmet and a tropical suit, with a tunic that buttoned all the way up to the chin. He shouted. “A
tutup
coat, vintage Dutch Indies, from the good old days!” He held the coat up. “Dad used to wear this, on the plantation, Katrien, during the twenties. Real shantung, still as good as new. I bet you this sort of thing is in fashion again, I’ll be the king of the Caribbean.” Back in the living room, duly uniformed complete with cork-and-linen helmet, the commissaris marched stiffly around Katrien, stopped, clicked his heels, saluted.

“What do you think,” he asked shyly. “Does this look okay on me, Katrien?”

Katrien laughed, then cried.

The nice thing about life, the commissaris thought, during the meeting in the Run Street billiard café, is that nothing ever works out as advertised. Grijpstra’s and de Gier’s show-off talk apparently was based on very little. The strip-lady might exist but if she did she had that day off. The balcony was empty. The pianist wasn’t there. The billiard table was hidden below its dust cover.

Grijpstra talked about nurse Sayukta’s visit to de Gier’s loft to see if he really grew weeds there. “A mutually useful relationship, sir. Sex traded for insights. The nurse is an adept of the Hindu sadhana. De Gier needs practice after all that reading.”

“That so?” the commissaris asked de Gier.

“Never,” de Gier said.

The commissaris rummaged in his briefcase. “I have a map of the Antilles here.”

Although Ambagt & Son’s proposal, on the commissaris’s advice, had been accepted by Detection G&G, including the
commissaris himself as on-the-spot counselor, de Gier had not been convinced the job was a good thing. Grijpstra tried to persuade his laggard partner. “The Caribbean is good for you, Rinus. Sayuktas galore, and not the tame version you see in Holland. Out there they water-ski, nude.”

De Gier thought that the wild Sayuktas, roaming their own habitat without any measure of control, could make him ill. He wanted to stay in his loft with his meadow parsnips and green-headed coneflowers. “While using a nature-cured healthy body the spirit develops.”

“Please,” Grijpstra said. “You should get rid of your mangy rat buds and dogshit poppies. Why do you think those noxious weeds survive in the city?”

The commissaris spread his map between bottles of fake beer. “Look here, Rinus, these are the islands where
Sibylle
lost her cargo. St. Eustatius, here. Saba. And here is St. Maarten where the
Admiraal Rodney
is going.”

Grijpstra was in daily telephone contact with their clients. Young Ambagt reported that the yacht was now in Bermuda. Some minor engine trouble, nothing bad, but not something that could be repaired on a resort island either. It might be better if the
Rodney
headed for Florida. “The Ambagts want us to fly to Key West and board their boat there.”

“And from there to the Antilles.” The commissaris looked pleased. “That’s where this adventure started.”

Grijpstra thumped the map. “YesyesYES.”

“You’re going to be seasick, Henk,” de Gier warned.

Grijpstra slapped his partner’s shoulder. “Key West! I read about it. At the dentist’s office. Supposed to be beautiful. KLM charter flights connect Amsterdam directly to the Florida Keys
but it will be more fun if we go to Miami and drive a car from there.” Grijpstra’s blunt forefinger traced the route. A hundred and forty miles of speedway and bridges connecting islands. “This bridge here is over seven miles long. Gulf of Mexico on the right side, Caribbean on the left side. We rent a Cadillac, that would be all right, wouldn’t it, sir? And play CDs while we drive. I’ll bring my new Wallace Roney.”

“Sir,” de Gier said. “This is ridiculous. Are we going to give in to bad guys? Because they slapped me about and dunked Grijpstra?”

“Nah.” The commissaris estimated distances on his map. Key West, the most southern point of the USA, was at some distance from Bermuda—about a week’s steady going for the disabled
Admiraal Rodney
. He suggested that they leave the next morning, make Grijpstra’s car trip, spend a few days in Key West and while waiting for father and son Ambagt, look around. “Yes. That’s it. We’ll do that.”

Katrien, like de Gier, had also accused him of putting himself into criminal hands. And there was the matter of rank. Ketchup and Karate were mere constables, trying, Katrien said, to pull a staff officer down. Peons taking on executives. “But so what, Katrien?” he had replied. “Can we afford to underestimate talent within the lower echelons?” The strength, energy, even intelligence of Ketchup and Karate were not to be sneezed at. Certainly, he had misgivings about their motivations. He did not assume that the two rascals longed for the good old days of pre-drug trade peace and quiet. K&K always tended toward evil. “They’re in this for the money, Katrien. But they can be of help.”

“Shouldn’t you devise a plan that would punish those two
little weasels?” Katrien asked. “Poor Grijpstra and de Gier … K&K are bad, Jan. They could have gone after you too. No, don’t look stupid now. Everybody knows you go hiking in the nature reserve every day, they could have pushed you off a dike, run you over with a tractor”—Katrien laughed, she knew she was exaggerating—“they could even have shot you.”

“Haha,” laughed the commissaris.

He wasn’t into punishing people. Punished people, like beaten dogs, tend to get nasty. It is better to wait for people to do something right for a change and then flatter them to high heaven. Besides, K&K, together with Inspector Cardozo, linked him to the might of the Dutch state. Piracy, the commissaris thought, wasn’t this something? Michiel the sailor’s corpse pecked by seagulls, a fact documented—according to Grijpstra—by a color photograph. Captain Souza, found in his cabin in a helpless condition. They were obviously confronting a cruel and daredevil enemy. Any help would be nice.

“I say,” the commissaris said, “Grijpstra, I forgot to ask you. What happened to the
Sibylle
’s captain, Souza, that poor chap.”

“Taken home to Aruba, sir.”

“Young Ambagt said so?”

“Yes sir, the
Sibylle
captain was helicoptered to St. Maarten and ambulanced to the airport. Something wrong with his legs. Poor circulation. Gangrene in both feet.”

“And the captain knew nothing about the assault on his vessel?”

“Too intoxicated, sir.”

“Aruba,” de Gier looked at the map. “And the yacht, the
Rodney
is now in Bermuda’s harbor? Didn’t you say that
Ambagt & Son once had their office in Bermuda? Before they became sailors?”

The commissaris quoted a police file shown him by Inspector Cardozo. Peter and Carl Ambagt, some twenty years ago, started their career as Rotterdam-based car thieves. The garage they kept on the Schiedam Dike was a “chop shop” where stolen cars are quickly taken apart. Parts were then sold all over the country. Carl did the stealing, mostly of expensive Ford models, and Peter was in charge of chopping and dealing.

Peter Ambagt was arrested and spent a year in the jail at North Canal, Rotterdam. Carl was released on probation.

Prosecutors underestimated the size of their case. Shortly after Peter was released the Ambagts started their crude oil business in Bermuda, well-capitalized.

“Capital earned by the sale of car parts?” Grijpstra asked. De Gier thought this quite likely. The total value of a car’s parts is about three times the value of the new car. The Ambagts would have sold them at wholesale so their prices would have been lower. Suppose you do a car a day. Say three hundred cars a year (allowing for off-days) at twenty thousand each. That would be six million a year, gross.

“Costs?” Grijpstra asked.

De Gier was still calculating. Help. Rent. Having dinner in the “The Meuse” Yacht Club. Peter Ambagt had a male Chinese prostitute habit to keep up in the Cat’s Creek quarter his file had said. Then there were Carl’s linen blazers and Swiss gold watches. Say they made a profit of three million a year, say they kept it up for five years, that would give them savings of fifteen million as starting capital for the oil business. Yes?

The commissaris didn’t see how the calculation could be too
far out. According to Cardozo’s police file the Ambagts’s subsequent oil business was conducted from far-away Bermuda, well out of reach of the Dutch police. The Ambagts started off by buying Russian oil and shipping it to South Africa. South Africa at the time was unpopular with all western countries. The embargo included crude oil. South Africa has no energy sources of its own. Red Russia couldn’t deal directly with the white Protestant Boers but would sell to anybody via third parties. “And then …” the commissaris hit the table top with his small fist, “… haha!”

“Haha what, sir?” asked Grijpstra.

An absolute wonderful construction, the commissaris said. How did the rascals ever think of it! Real smart Alecs those two. The Russians had to be sure they would get their money so payment was arranged with a letter of credit, a transfer of dollars guaranteed by a Bermuda bank. The cash was released as soon as the Russians could prove delivery of the oil. The South Africans paid Ambagt & Son, Ambagt & Son paid the Russians, and in between was
paperwork
.

“Bureaucracy,” the commissaris said. “You know what Professor Mindera of Erasmus University says about bureaucracy.
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency
.” The commissaris raised an all-knowing finger. “Bureaucracy is based on lack of trust. Its paranoid fear requires tedious paperwork. Eventually even the best of us get irritated by dotted lines and multiple choices. Frustration with red tape tempts us to beat the system. Become crooks.”

“Professor Mindera said all that?” de Gier asked.

“The latter part I said,” said the commissaris.

The Russian paperwork was unbelievably complicated but
Peter Ambagt learned how to fill in the forms. After a year of regular business the old man placed an enormous order. A fleet of chartered tankers filled up in Leningrad. He didn’t apply for a letter of credit and blamed the paperwork delay on his banks. The loaded tankers were taking up valuable Leningrad harbor space. Peter Ambagt telephoned his Russian suppliers: hadn’t he always paid, wasn’t he trustworthy, the papers were in the mail. “Please send off your tankers. Please? Pretty please?”

“Da,”
the Russians said. “Yes.”

Russian tugs pulled the tankers to sea. Off went the oil fleet.

“Ah,” de Gier said, thinking ahead. “So Ambagt & Son were paid by the South Africans as soon as the tankers hit Capetown but Ambagt and Son never paid the Russians. A fortune was made for their cost was zero. But didn’t they run a risk here? Didn’t Russia send Ivans?”

“Ivans?” Grijpstra asked.

“Ivan Bondsky,” the commissaris said. “Ivan shoot-the-pheasant-feather-of-my-hatsky.”

“What?”
Grijpstra asked.

“But there was a change of regime in Moscow,” the commissaris answered his own question. “No more Ivans.” He laughed. “And that’s how Ambagt & Son could purchase a thirty million dollar FEADship.”

Grijpstra pointed an accusing finger at the commissaris. “Shot a feather off your head? Didn’t you just say that? Where did that happen? While you were walking behind the windmills at Abcoude? In the nature reserve?” Grijpstra’s heavy jowls trembled with fury. “So K&K got you too! Used that idiotic Kalshnikov that hangs above the fireplace at their Amstel apartment.”

De Gier’s face also flushed with anger. “An untrustworthy weapon. Shoots large caliber bullets too.” De Gier’s finger pointed accusingly. “You never told us. That’s not good, sir.”

“We’ll get the little fuckers,” Grijpstra said.

“Now, now, gentlemen,” the commissaris soothed. “Personal weaknesses cannot be taken care of on their own levels. We know that. Yes?” He peered over his little round glasses. “You, de Gier, as a student of Buddhism, and lately Hinduism, is it? Yes. Well, as a student of eastern philosophies you should know by now that Ketchup and Karate will not raise their level of being by anything we can do to them. Only their own effort, which is part of their own quest for insight, may, as a side effect, make them decent. Knowing that we will set our attitudes aside and use K&K purely for their talents.”