Blond Baboon (23 page)

“Ah,” Grijpstra said. “I see, and Mr. Bergen could hear what you were saying on the telephone.”

“Yes, most unfortunate, I should have made sure that the door was closed. It usually is, but it wasn’t this morning.”

“Go on, doctor, what did you tell your colleague?”

Dr. Havink’s meticulous voice described the course of events. He had told his colleague that the test’s results were of such a definite nature that he didn’t think that the patient had more than a week to live and that an operation would be useless. The conversation had taken about five minutes, and during that time Bergen must have left the small waiting room and gone back to the main waiting room, where, according to the nurse, he began to pace about and talk to himself in a loud voice.

“And pat his pocket,” Grijpstra said.

Yes, and pat his pocket. Mr. Bergen talked about the police, about money, and about killing. Then he left. The nurse tried to stop him but he pushed her aside. And so Dr. Havink called the police.

“I see, I see. So we may assume that Mr. Bergen understood that your verdict referred to him. He wasn’t aware that you were talking about another patient.”

“Yes. I am sorry about this. It’s an occurrence that has never happened before but it could have, obviously, for it has happened now. My arrangement here is faulty. The door between my office and the little waiting room should have been closed, and I should have told Mr. Bergen that I would be discussing his case with him in a minute but that I had to take care of something else first. The whole thing is pathetic, really. There is nothing the matter with Mr. Bergen. We did three tests on him and they were all negative, although the X-ray did show a small calcification, but mis is nothing unusual. Still, we continue checking in such a case, routine, simple routine. All Mr. Bergen has is a facial nerve infection that will cure itself; his face should have some movement again soon, in a few days, I would say. But I didn’t have a chance to tell him.”

Grijpstra sighed and looked at de Gier. De Gier was shaking his head.

“Yes, doctor. Thank you for letting us know. We’ll see if we can find Mr. Bergen. Do you happen to recall what he was wearing?”

“A dark suit, crumpled as if he had slept in it, no tie, open shirt. He hadn’t shaved.”

“Thank you.”

De Gier had put his telephone down and was standing next to the adjutant. “An alert, don’t you think? A general alert. Bergen will be running around somewhere. He wouldn’t have gone home or to his office, but I’ll check.”

Bergen’s home phone didn’t answer. A secretary at his office said he wasn’t there. “Miss Gabrielle Carnet?” Gabrielle hadn’t arrived yet. De Gier telephoned the Carnet house. No answer.

“O.K., an alert, for what it’s worm. The patrol cats never see very much, their windows are all steamed up.”

Grijpstra telephoned the radio room. He described Bergen and added that the suspect was in a state of mental breakdown and probably armed. When he put the phone down he was smiling.

“What?”

Grijpstra prodded de Gier’s stomach. “Crazy situation, don’t you think? As the commissaris said, there is nothing wrong with the man, but Bergen has imagined himself into a terminal position, a good-bye maybe, or a complete breakdown mat he hopes will leave him senseless. He must have slipped a pistol into his pocket before he went to Dr. Havink’s clinic mis morning. A pistol is a very violent instrument. He could have bought sleeping pills—he has a house of his own and a bed.”

De Gier was scratching his bottom. “Sleeping pills are never very dramatic.”

“Quite.” Grijpstra was still smiling.

“But what’s so funny?”

“Don’t you see? The fellow has made all the mistakes he could make. He gets a letter from the bank mat must be negotiable in some way. Banks always threaten, but if you owe mem enough their threats don’t stick; they can’t afford to break your business, for if they do you can’t pay mem. But Bergen insists that his business is finished. His wife sends him a lawyer’s letter and he cracks up. Can’t he sit down and figure out whether he really wants her? If he doesn’t want her there’s no problem, he can sell his house and find a good apartment somewhere, or even a few good rooms. With his money he can find a woman to go with the rooms and state his terms. But if he really wants his wife back, well, he can find her and talk to her, can’t he? There may still be an opening for an approach, but no, he chooses to rush around and mess up his house and ruin one of his cars and burn holes in the carpet.”

“Very funny, what else?”

“This paralysis, of course. You heard what Dr. Havink said. It’s a minor affliction, a nothing. It will go away if he has the patience to wait a few days. But he doesn’t even have the patience to wait for the doctor to come out of his office, for he has already convinced himself that he is suffering from brain cancer and has a week to live and he has rushed out into the street, screaming.”

“Hilarious. And now we have him wandering around, a raving lunatic with a deadly weapon. Does he have a car with him?”

“Probably. We saw a new Volvo in his driveway last night”

“So he may be anywhere by now.”

The loudspeaker in the garage’s ceiling croaked again. “Adjutant Grijpstra.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” But the adjutant turned and marched back to the phone.

The radio room constable apologized. “We know you’re busy, adjutant, but the commissaris isn’t here and die inspector is out on an urgent call and I can’t raise him. We have a call from a patrol. They were asked to go to an address on the Amsteldijk, Number One-seven-two. Neighbors heard a shot in the top apartment, first an angry male voice, then a shot. The constables broke the apartment’s door and found blood on the floor but no one is mere. The apartment belongs to a Mr. Vleuten. I have been trying to find Adjutant Geurts, he’s probably out having coffee somewhere. Shall I ask him to go to the Amsteldijk when he comes in?”

“No, we’ll go.”

“Siren?” de Gier asked.

“No.”

Grijpstra was sitting behind the wheel, the engine idling.

“Hospitals?” de Gier said. “The baboon is wounded. He isn’t the sort of man to wander around. He has a car, perhaps he can still drive it.”

“University Hospital,” Grijpstra said. “That’s where I would go if I lived on the Amsteldijk and got shot. Maybe the Wilhelmina is closer but you get stuck in traffic. Let’s have that siren.”

The small car dug itself into the heavy morning traffic, howling furiously. A large white Uzzi motorcycle appeared, and de Gier shouted at the constable riding it.

“University Hospital, lead the way.”

The constable saluted. The motorcycle’s siren joined in, and the Uzzi reared and shot away with the Volkswagen trailing its gleaming suave form while cars stopped and bicycles fled to the pavement.

“Easy,” de Gier shouted as the Volkswagen’s fender ground past a streetcar’s bumper, but Grijpstra didn’t react. He sat hunched behind the wheel, twisting it to make the car follow the motorcycle. The car’s engine whined and die sirens howled on gleefully.

The dented Volkswagen swung into the hospital’s parking lot and came to rest next to the baboon’s Rolls-Royce, shining in splendid isolation between a row of mud-spattered compacts. The motorcycle cop waved and rode off as Grijpstra and de Gier clambered out of the car and began to run toward the emergency entrance. A nurse directed them, and they found the victim sitting on a plastic chair in a small white room. Gabrielle sat on the bed, swinging her legs.

“Very good,” the baboon said, looking at his watch. “I got shot an hour ago and here you are already. The deadly detectives.”

Grijpstra grinned.

“But I’m all right,” the baboon said, and he pointed at his bandage. The bandage hid his short neck and his left ear. “A minor wound. If Gabrielle hadn’t insisted I would have used a Band-Aid.”

“And he would have bled to death, the doctor said so.”

“And I would have bled to death.”

“Who?” de Gier asked.

The baboon was rolling a cigarette.

“Who?”

The baboon looked up. “A bad man. I won’t tell you. He is in enough trouble now without your adding to it.”

“Oh,” Gabrielle said, “you are such
a fool,
baboon. Sometimes you overdo it, you know. If you don’t tell them I will.”

“Who?” De Gier’s voice hadn’t changed. He felt very patient.

“Bergen, of course. He came running into the apartment waving a gun and holding his face. He was such a
mess.”

“But why the aggression? What does Mr. Bergen have against the baboon?”

“Gabrielle being with me didn’t help much,” the baboon said and felt his bandage. “This scratch hurts, you know. Do you know that the cow’s skeleton saved me?” The baboon began to laugh, a pleasant nimbly laugh. “You should have been there. Gabrielle didn’t have any clothes on and all I had was a towel, and Bergen kept standing there, shouting away. I pressed the button and the cow came out of the cupboard, directly in his path, so he had to jump aside and he couldn’t aim, but the bullet did make contact and I fell, so he probably thought he had got me and ran. And meanwhile die cow had made its full circle and gone back into the cupboard. And Gabrielle was holding her breasts and screaming.” The baboon was wiping his eyes.

“Yes,” Gabrielle said, “very funny. And I am to blame, of course. Francesco phoned last night and foulmouthed me too. As if it’s my fault that I’m his half-sister. He has forgotten that I have been helping him, but I won’t help anybody anymore.”

“So will you make a statement now, Miss Carnet?”

“About what?”

“That Mr. Pullini pushed your mother down the stairs. We do have some sort of a witness’s statement but it isn’t

“Anything,” Gabrielle said, “anything you like. I’m tired of this tangle. That idiot Bergen thinks he can be jealous too, and that he can use me.
Nobody
can use me.” Her voice no longer purred and her eyes seemed to have shrunk and were glittering with fury. De Gier took his chance.

“There was something between you and Mr. Bergen, Miss Camel?”

“Something? What is something? We have been on business trips together and maybe we had a little too much to drink and maybe I let him get away with being such a powerful male. That was a long time ago, a year maybe. But he fussed. He fussed so much that his wife heard about it and finally left him.”

“He thought he loved you?”

“Love.” Her eyes narrowed and her lips pouted.

“You didn’t love him?”

“Of course not.”

The baboon had gotten up and was walking to die door.

“Are you leaving, Mr. Vleuten?”

“I may as well. I was waiting for the nurse to come back but it seems she won’t. I have things to do. So have you, I imagine.”

“We’ll have to find Mr. Bergen.”

The baboon stopped near the door. “Where?”

“Exactly. Where could he be?”

The baboon turned and leaned against the wall. “A good question. Have you seen him recently? I was wondering what brought on this sudden attack? He was shouting a lot but I didn’t understand him.”

Grijpstra explained.

“Cancer?”

“He thinks he has cancer, that he has a week to live.”

The baboon fingered his bandage. “I see. So I became die enemy. I’ve been the enemy before, when he thought I would marry Elaine and take the business away from him. But I didn’t and I thought that obstacle was removed. Maybe it wasn’t, maybe he kept on blaming me.”

Grijpstra leant his bulk against the wall of the sterile little room and smoked peacefully. “For taking Miss Carnet away?”

“Possibly. But there were other reasons. He was manufacturing them, ever since we met, I think. Perhaps it started when I was bringing in a lot of orders.”

“Jealousy?”

The baboon was still stroking the bandage. “More than that, I think. Bergen never felt very secure. He didn’t want to blame himself so he found me. The fact that he took a shot at me just now may prove that theory.”

Grijpstra looked at die smoke crinkling out of his cigar. “You won, he lost. Quite.”

“Not quite. Unless you can define what constitutes die ideas ‘to win* and ‘to lose.'” The baboon’s eyes were twinkling.

“Yes, Mr. Vleuten?”

“You should have seen that damned cow. Zooming at him and then turning and disappearing again. I would never have thought that the thing would protect me. I had constructed it for die absolute opposite. It was supposed to frighten me.”

“Oh, you’re so
crazy.”
Gabrielle had snuggled into the baboon’s arm. She was looking into his face, touching his cheek gendy with her pointed nails.

“I’m not so crazy,” die baboon said. “I’m just trying to do things from a different angle. Only trying. It’s hard to go against the flow, maybe it’s impossible. What happened this morning rather underlines that, doesn’t it? I create an object of fear, maybe ridiculous to others but really fearsome to me, and it saves my life. But I won’t give in.”

“Mr. Bergen,” de Gier said firmly, “we’ve got to find him. Do you have any idea where he is, baboon?”

“Bergen is under great stress. He is wandering around,” Grijpstra added. “You must have gotten to know the man fairly well. Can you think of any place Bergen would go if he thought he was in real trouble?”

The baboon was looking out the window. “Yes,” he said slowly, “yes, perhaps I know.”

“Where?”

“He surprised me once. I always thought the man had no soul, you know, that he was only concerned with selling furniture. But we came back from a trip once, in his car, and we were late, we had been speeding, for he wanted to be home in time for dinner. When we got near the city it was after seven o’clock and he said his wife wouldn’t have waited for him and he turned die car off die highway. We went to a little village on the river and had dinner there and some brandy afterward, and later we went for a walk.”

“He went to that village on purpose? You didn’t just happen to find it on your way?”

“No, he knew the place, he had been there before. He told me mat his father used to take him to the village sometimes and that they would always have dinner in mat pub and then go for a walk. We ended up in a small cemetery, very old, with moss-covered stones, and we walked about He seemed very peaceful mat evening. I had never seen him like that before.”