The Hollow-Eyed Angel (18 page)

Charlie visited the Lighthouse, the society for the blind, which promised to make inquiries about a lost seeing-eye dog. He was called a week later. A woman, who wouldn't give her name, said her blind husband had died and that she had abandoned his dog in Central Park. "You keep her. I never liked her."

The woman hung up.

Chapter 23

                                        The commissaris, dozing off in his bathtub, faced the long-legged tram driver. De Gier, musing in the Metropolitan Museum, faced a Papuan demon sculpture.

Both detectives, at about the same time, felt a wave of serious and multiple misgivings. The wave wiped out their conclusion that Charles G. Perrin could be controlled by evil. He could not. Therefore he could not commit evil either. Charlie castrate Bert? Never.

The commissaris, wide awake now, clambered out of his bathtub, dried himself and dressed quickly.

De Gier left the Metropolitan Museum and walked to the nearby Cavendish.

The commissaris planned to face the hollow-eyed tram driver directly, to pull the phantom out of her hazy dreamscapes.

The commissaris and de Gier met in the Cavendish's lobby, where they were greeted by Ignacio.
"A sus ordenes,
sefiores."

The detectives found comfortable armchairs.

"Charlie is a good guy," de Gier said. "Don't you think so, sir? That dog, the way he treated that dog, and even better, the way the dog treated Charlie. I should have seen that."

"Yes," the commissaris said.

"Also the general atmosphere of Charlie's part of number two Watts Street," de Gier said. "I felt happy there."

The commissaris had felt happy too.

"And," de Gier said, "there was the tea ceremony, and all that hoo-ha about the elevator—that was nice, didn't you think so? Moving about in an exhibition that moves? And the empty wall with the invisible incomprehensible Sanskrit "

"Arabic," the commissaris said.

"Arabic," de Gier said, "and the way he had fitted that hardwood floor together, that was beautiful. I thought, you can look at those patterns when you feel bad and it will be better. And that one, two forward in Poland and three backward "

The commissaris agreed.

"So he didn't do it," de Gier said.

The commissaris thought that might be a possibility, but he wanted to know why the hollow-eyed angel wouldn't leave him in peace, and now he meant to see the voodoo lady.

Ignacio was asked to telephone Mamere. He came back to say that Mamere was home and expected to see the commissaris within the hour.

"A hundred bucks," Ignacio said. "Bad dreams don't come cheap."

De Gier checked his map. Ignacio helped him locate Brooklyn, Flatbush and Nostrand Avenue beyond Flat-bush and told him where to catch the Number Five train.

The detectives sat quietly in the subway.

The Nostrand Avenue block where Mamere lived consisted of three-story buildings, with stores on the ground level, some separated by small alleys.

Mamere's was one of the better buildings.

De Gier waited in a coffee shop while the commissaris rang the buzzer and then hobbled up the steps.

Mamere, after pulling the blinds of her small sitting room and diffusing the light to please the spirits, sat in a large yellow reclining armchair and the commissaris sat in a large orange reclining armchair. Mamere's dog, which she told him was the grandson of the dog in the painting at Le Chat Complet, lolled a long red tongue out of its furry black face.

"Les dollars
Mamere asked.

He handed them over: two twenties, one ten, one fifty.

"Merci.
You relax now, don't care about nothing."

Nothing would please the commissaris more. He semi-dozed while Mamere hummed, then sang a fairly long song. African West Coast, the commissaris thought, although he hadn't been there. Toward the end of the song the commissaris lost his mind, although his mind never left the room, for he saw it float around Mamere's potted plants and the budgie birds in their multistoried bamboo cage, waft through the eyes of an alligator skull on a sideboard, then whirl about in the smoke of smouldering herb leaves.

He really liked being mindless.

Mindless, he saw Road Warrior drag a white-bearded man into some bushes. It didn't matter that the commissaris hadn't seen the movie and that he had never met Bert Termeer. There they were, Road Warrior screaming abuse, Bert Termeer whining for mercy.

Road Warrior shook the old man like a dog shakes a squirrel. Termeer lost his dentures. The commissaris saw Road Warrior bend over the helpless body of his enemy, saw a sharp blade flash and blood spout. He saw Road Warrior emerge from flowering azalea bushes, a zombie from the grave, moving one foot, the other foot, one foot, the other foot.

He didn't see the hollow-eyed long-legged beautiful blond angel. He asked Mamere about the angel when she let him out. "Someone you know?" Mamere asked. "More
dollars
sometime soon?"

"The angel drives a tram, Mamere."

"You can't trust angels," Mamere said.

"I saw Road Warrior and he wasn't Charlie," the commissaris said, "as I knew all along, and didn't want to know all along. I was sorry for the fellow, and I was flattered, of course. Coming to me, the Grand Old Man of Crime Detection. What did I see coming? What did you see coming? Did you see the uncle-loving nephew, fellow cop, fearless street fighter, Grijpstra's star student?" He glared at de Gier. "The truth, Rinus, stares me in the face, and my mind rushes off to look for lies. How many times has this happened?"

He sat next to de Gier in the coffee shop, sipping weak coffee and eating a donut as if that is what you do after having lost your mind for a while, then, alas, regained it. You sit in a coffee shop, between big black men on small stools, and you ask for more weak coffee and another donut.

"You know what you get when you eat a donut?" a man wearing a baseball cap the wrong way around told another. "You get a zero with the ring removed."

While riding the Number Five train back to Manhattan, de Gier wrote to the commissaris's dictation. De Gier got off at Fourteenth Street to make his dinner engagement with Maggie and the commissaris got off at Eighty-sixth Street to fax his notes home.

Chapter 24

                                        "Now what?" Grijpstra asked, reading the commissaris's latest fax. "How many fourths of June do we have here, eh?"

He put the paper down, staring at it furiously, then brightening up. "Cardozo!"

Cardozo grunted.

Grijpstra's smile widened. "Let me tell you how you do this. You really disliked that Eugene character, didn't you?" Grijpstra beamed at Cardozo, slumped behind de Gier's desk. Grijpstra suddenly scowled again. "You
did
dislike him." Grijpstra thumped the desk. "AM I RIGHT?"

Cardozo opened long-lashed eyes. "I dislike all assholes."

Grijpstra nodded. "Good, good, good. Tell you what you do. You go and find this asshole Eugene, and you meet him somewhere...lemmesee, lemmesee, what's a good place for two assholes to meet...?" Grijpstra looked out of the window, into the cruel yellow eyes of a sea gull flying by. "How about Vondel Park?"

Cardozo stared. "Meet to do what?"

"You extract information."

Cardozo grunted.

"Information as to Jo Termeer's whereabouts on June Fourth this year."

Cardozo straightened up. "We've already done that, remember. You asked Peter?"

"Phone Peter now," Grijpstra said. "Peter will know where to locate Eugene. Phone Eugene and tell him you want to meet him in Vondel Park. Today. At sunset."

"You want ME to tell YOU about my good friend Jo Termeer?" Eugene asked. "A STORM TROOPER interviews a FAIRY? Are you going to BEAT me?"

Cardozo and Eugene strolled along Vondel Park's main path. Evening fell.

Cardozo fell too, because Eugene had hooked his foot behind Cardozo's leg and put his hand against Cardozo's chest. Eugene's leg pulled, Eugene's hand pushed.

Cardozo fell, head over heels. Cardozo stood.

Eugene and Cardozo laughed. They were two karate students exercising in Amterdam's most beautiful park, between ponds where exotic ducks floated about slowly, giant carp patroled leisurely and cranes stood on one leg under ornamental shade trees.

Eugene, being the winner, shook hands with Cardozo, who was the loser.

Eugene's hand squeezed painfully. Cardozo's thumb pressed the back of Eugene's hand. Cardozo moved his other hand under Eugene's elbow. Cardozo pushed Eugene's elbow up and Eugene's hand down.

Eugene yelled and sobbed.

"Swan-wrist hold," Cardozo said. "I could have broken your arm. You want that? You don't want that." Cardozo smiled. "Now tell me everything about Jo Termeer."

Cardozo fell again, because Eugene had hooked his foot behind Cardozo's leg again and put his hand again Cardozo's chest again. Leg pulled, hand pushed.

This time the falling Cardozo pulled Eugene's arm while he kicked Eugene's knee. Cardozo jumped up again, Eugene groveled in the gravel.

"Baboon's knee," Cardozo said.

"Don't you two lads have anything better to do?" asked an elderly lady. She helped Eugene up. "You two go and study Rudolf Steiner."

"Yes, ma'am," Cardozo and Eugene said.

"But for now you can help me feed the carp."

The elderly lady, Eugene and Cardozo fed a long stale baguette of French bread, which the lady broke into small pieces, to the giant fish of Southern Pond. Greedy ducks standing on racing carp approached at speed. The ducks held out their wings to keep their balance. As the carp stopped to feed, some ducks kept going and crashed into the pond's raised shore. Other ducks fell sideways, tumbling, like long-lost friends meeting, into each other's wings. Other ducks managed to hold on, making their steeds flap muscular fish tails to free themselves.

"You two behave now," the elderly lady said. "I can't be everywhere to save you poor fellows."

Eugene and Simon sat on a bench and rolled cigarettes.

"Tell me all about Jo Termeer," Cardozo said.

"Say 'please'?" Eugene asked.

Cardozo offered a light. "Say 'thank you.'"

Cardozo's report, delivered to the commissaris as soon as he and de Gier got off their KLM Boeing, stated that, about a year ago, Eugene had linked up with Jo Termeer and Peter in a Long Leyden Transverse Street gay bar.

The three pals wined and dined together and shared holidays abroad. Peter liked to go steady. Jo liked to cruise. Peter had an even temper. Jo was highly strung.

Jo, Eugene stated, had become impossible to be with after his interview with the commissaris. He didn't show up at the hair salon much and neglected his duties at Warmoes Street Precinct. He hung about the apartment. Then, when he heard that the commissaris had gone to New York, Jo began to drink heavily and to stay out nights.

As to where Jo was on June 4, the day of Bert Termeer's death: Eugene was told Jo was walking about the Ardennes Mountains region alone. Neither he nor Peter had heard from Jo for a few days, there were no calls or postcards and Jo had brought back no mementos from his foreign journey.

Interesting fact: Jo, while on holiday on the French Riviera, about a year ago, with Peter and Eugene, had said he'd lost his passport and obtained a new one at the Dutch Consulate in Marseilles.

When asked why he was so forthcoming Eugene stated that he and Peter had changed their minds, that they now thought that solving Jo's problem would be a good thing for all parties concerned.

Chapter 25

                                        Two days after the commissaris's return, Jo Termeer was arrested after having been thrown out of the Warmoes Street Precinct, Amsterdam, three times within three hours.

Jo worked out of the Warmoes Street Precinct when he did duty as a reserve constable-first-class. The sergeant was disappointed to see Jo, whom he knew as a reliable and capable colleague, turn up drunk and disorderly.

Jo, dressed in a torn-up black leather suit and muddy boots, wearing a tattered leather gun belt and carrying a wooden copy of a riot gun in a strangely shaped holster, kept bothering the sergeant.

The first time Jo came in, the sergeant tried to treat the matter as a joke. His colleague must have been playing charades at a party. "Great act, Jo, you go home now." Jo laughed and left. When, a few minutes later, Jo staggered into the precinct, the sergeant had him removed by force. The third time Jo stumbled into the precinct he was arrested on a drunk charge and locked up.

When Jo's cell door was unlocked the next morning he wouldn't leave. The desk-sergeant remembered that Jo had been a pupil of Adjutant Grijpstra.

Jo wouldn't talk to Grijpstra at first but Grijpstra managed to cajole/threaten him into his Fiat Panda and took him home to Outfield where Peter cleaned him up.

The commissaris telephoned Peter that afternoon and asked him to bring Jo and Eugene to his house on Queens Avenue at nine that evening.

Cane chairs had been arranged on the veranda. Five chairs formed a crescent, opposite two chairs that faced each other.

Katrien put coffee on and cut up cake before leaving the house to visit with the neighbors.

The commissaris had the center seat, between Grijpstra and de Gier. Cardozo and Eugene sat on the end chairs.

Jo Termeer, wearing the same neat clothes as when he confronted the commissaris previously, sat facing Peter.

In spite of the formal setting everyone seemed relaxed, even jolly. The sky was clear, a breeze cooled the garden after a fairly hot day. Willow trees intertwined their branches on the street side. Their foliage screened the garden from cars swooshing by and the clatter of electric streetcars that liked ringing their bells.

"Is this a trial?" Jo asked before sitting down.

The commissaris said it could be, if Jo would like that.

"Are you the prosecutor, Peter?" Jo asked.

Peter said he would play any part that was required.

Jo told Grijpstra that he would prefer to be tried in a courtroom, with real judges in robes and lawyers and armed guards. Grijpstra explained that that would be difficult to arrange "for lack of reasonable cause."

"You know that, don't you, Jo?" the commissaris asked. "I've checked your file. You passed your criminal law examination with honors." The commissaris smiled his appreciation. "Now
you
tell me what the police could come up with to sustain a charge that earlier this month
you
killed your Uncle Bert in Central Park in New York."

Jo, elbows on knees, chin on hands, spoke to the floorboards of the commissaris's veranda. "Surely someone saw me dragging Uncle Bert into those azalea bushes?" He looked up anxiously. "You did check with that sergeant?"

"Hurrell?" the commissaris said. "Yes, I did. Sergeant Earl Hurrell says no one saw you near the scene of the crime."

Jo thought again. "The mounted cop, the beauty with the ponytail on the chestnut horse.
She
saw me."

"Not near the azalea bushes," de Gier said. "Policewoman McLaughlin saw a Road Warrior look-alike near a bandstand, too far away to be identifiable. I interviewed the policewoman several times."

Jo nodded. "I bet you did, Sergeant."

"Yes." De Gier looked away from smiling faces. He scratched his thigh. "Sure."

"Listen," Jo told Peter. "Let's start at the beginning. I was in New York at that time. You know I have two passports. My new passport was stamped. That's proof, isn't it?"

"I believe you destroyed your new passport," Peter said. "I believe it was a replacement for the one you said you lost on the Riviera."

Jo's muscular hands patted his knees. "Yes." He addressed the commissaris. "Maybe Kennedy Immigration has a record of my arrival. I made four trips in all, sir, three to shadow Uncle Bert, to find out what his routine was, and the fourth to kill him. Every time I arrived at Kennedy my passport was stamped. They have computers there; don't they retain such information?"

"I don't think so," the commissaris said.

Cardozo spoke up. "I checked with the U.S. Embassy. It's the same routine at Kennedy Airport as here at Schiphol. If everything looks okay no notes are made."

Cardozo and Eugene served coffee and cookies.

Turtle emerged from the long weeds bordering the commissaris's unkempt lawn. The company watched the reptile, on his 'way to a dish of lettuce, plod steadily along.

"I heard about your turtle," Jo told the commissaris. "Nice pet."

The commissaris smiled. "He is a friend, Jo."

Peter waited until Eugene and Cardozo had returned from the kitchen to ask Jo whether he had murdered his uncle.

"Sure," Jo said. "I planned it and I did it. Things worked out fine. The horse kicking Uncle made his heart play up. All I had to do was aggravate that condition."

"There is no proof you did any of that, Jo," Grijpstra said.

"How can you say that, Adjutant?" Jo's deep voice reverberated under the veranda's low roof. "You should have seen the mess we made. We were rolling around on the ground. I slapped his face. I put my knee in his balls. I shook him until his dentures went flying. I tore my nail when I was holding on to lapels of his jacket. I banged his face with the top of my head."

De Gier shook his head. "No traces, Jo."

"Please," Jo said. "What about all this DNA testing you read about in reports? What about boot prints? I have just read an article in
Police Weekly
that says a boot print is all a detective needs now." He held up a finger. "One boot print, Sergeant! I must have left hundreds."

"Jo," the commissaris said. "Sergeant Hurrell showed you Uncle Bert's body. Animals ate a good deal of it. The clothes found with the body were left by a robber. The robber and the animals erased your prints."

"Did you castrate your uncle?" Peter asked.

Jo was watching Turtle chomping a lettuce leaf.

"Tell us whether or not you cut Uncle Bert," Peter said. "I think you want to tell us that."

Perhaps the breeze changed direction, opening up the willow leaves, or it could be that a passing streetcar had an unusually loud bell. The tram's clanging penetrated the garden.

Jo was babbling now, talking about liquidating filthy perverts, which should be okay. There were all these perverts around abusing little boys. Jo kept repeating himself, mentioning his parents, who might have had problems, lovers, debts, what the hell, but they weren't gay at least. His dad and mom were just fine, they had him, didn't they? A little son, people like that, having little sons, to carry on their name, inherit the farm, and then Uncle came, and he was nice, yes goddamn it, Uncle Bert was nice, he, Jo, would never say he wasn't. They had gone on boats on the Amstel River together, and they had played at home, Sunday mornings, with a zoo that Aunt Carolien gave him for his birthday, and she unwrapped the plaster-of-Paris animals from the special silk paper that kept them from getting hurt, and he and Uncle Bert put all the animals between their little wooden fences, or in iron cages, and that's where they belonged, and sometimes Uncle Bert got the model train and made it go on rails looping all under and around the dining table, those were great games, and for lunch Aunt Carolien would make little pancakes, with ginger jam, but then after she left, Uncle would do those goddamn things damn it "

"Jo," Peter said quietly, "Jo? Can you hear me? Look at me, it's me, Peter. Eugene is here too."

"I am here," Eugene said. "We're all here, Jo."

The garden on Queens Avenue was quiet again, until, from the next house, softly, punctuated by the hollow tones of a wooden drum, came the sound of a sutra being chanted in Sanskrit.

How frightening, the commissaris thought. Am I the only one who knows that this is about the void, that there is neither wisdom nor any attainment, that there is nothing to attain, that there are no obstructions and therefore no fear, that there is no ignorance, and no ending of ignorance, no suffering, no cause of suffering, no cessation of suffering, and no path, and here we pretend to sit around being busy?

"Did you cut him?" Peter asked. "Are you sorry that you cut off his penis, is that what has been bothering you? Do you want us to forgive you?"

Jo was being Road Warrior now, driving his supercar across the Australian desert looking for perverts who had ended his hope of having a wife and a child, like the good people in the farmland north of Amsterdam, where his dad and mom had him and where it had all been just fine for a while.

"Just a little counseling," Eugene whispered to Grijpstra. "That's all he needed. I told him that, but he was always so uptight. But maybe he didn't ever have a chance. Once they are raised in strict dualism—Dutch Reformed Country Church—and then, suddenly, there is the permissive city here, add abuse to that, call up guilt, provoke lying and twisting to get out of that guilt..."

Jo looked at the commissaris. "Uncle was alive when I cut him." Jo got up and looked down at the commissaris from his great height. "I wanted you to find out, and now I want you to tell me about it. What do you make of this, sir?"

Peter stood next to Jo. He had his arm around Jo's shoulders. He asked Jo what the commissaris could tell him. Since when is a policeman a judge? Jo should thank the commissaris, who had done all he could, had investigated a crime, had located the guilty party, but couldn't dispense justice.

Jo howled, then cried.

Eugene got up. "Well, you know," Eugene said, "you have to figure this out yourself, Jobo. You did it, but you did it stupidly, because you wanted to be caught by the little old father figure, or rather"—Eugene looked at the commissaris—"the little old grandfather figure." Eugene punched Jo Termeer in the stomach. "Your stupidity is your cleverness. You left some psychological traces but this is the physical world, Jobo, the Justice Department is into sperm and blood." Eugene rubbed Jo's cheek affectionately. "Look here, if you want approval of your homemade morality, applause for Road Warriors of the Mind who castrate and kill uncles...eh." Eugene patted Jo's other cheek. "Tell you what, let me get you into a place in the country, nice and quiet, where you can figure things out and Peter and I will come see you."

"You're not a psychologist, are you?" Cardozo asked Eugene.

"He is," Peter said. "Eugene works for the Top Job Institute; he helps pick the chief executive officers of the future."

Jo sat down. He was calm now, momentarily in control of his emotions, de Gier thought. He had seen that happen before—murder suspects, during intense interrogation, unexpectedly becoming lucid.

"If I did the right thing," Jo said pleasantly, "I was ahead of my time. Present-day morality does not excuse the castration of abusive and perverted uncles. Commissaris?"

"Jo?" the commissaris asked.

"You can't get me a trial? Nothing you can do, except this"—Jo gestured—"meeting with sympathetic authorities, unofficially, while I'm in the company of my pals?"

"I'm afraid not, Jo."

"But by being bad I created my demon," Jo said. "I can't stand my demon, sir. She is driving me cra2y."

"The Bad Conscience Demon," Eugene told Cardozo when it was all over and de Gier was pouring cold jenever from a stone jug and Katrien was handing out peanuts and the commissaris was talking to Peter and Grijpstra to de Gier and Turtle was sleeping between his favorite rocks. "Did you ever study Hieronymus Bosch's paintings?" Eugene asked Cardozo. "They crawl with Bad Conscience Demons. It would be interesting for you to do that, you being a copper. We live within a certain morality, the rules of our time, and then we break those rules, and thereby create our demons. They're totally unreal but we feel we have to appease them anyway."

Eugene looked gloomy. "Or suffer forever after."

That was hours after a streetcar rang its bell at the tram stop behind the willow trees, and Jo jumped up and thanked everybody for everything and said he had to go now.