The Hollow-Eyed Angel (3 page)

She opened them again, to smile at Termeer.

"Isn't he lucky, hey? That chief of mine. A free week in New York, and I get my taxes deducted from my paycheck. The High and the Mighty."

The commissaris looked surprised.

Antoinette beamed. Now that the commissaris was going to retire anyway and she was going to miss him dearly, the distance between them had lessened. She pushed a little against him and looked down on his balding head. "New York. Some city. And the mugging isn't so bad if you keep alert. Everything is so cheap there, and the food is different everywhere, and
everything
is different, and all those other kinds of people." Antoinette's eyes grew bigger. "And those
buildings,
all that glass!"

All parties were quiet.

"So, if you were going anyway," Termeer said.

The commissaris frowned. "I weren't."

^*
The ranks of the Amsterdam Police are constable, constable-first-class, sergeant, adjutant, inspector, chief-inspector, commissaris and chief-constable.

Chapter 2

                                        "He were," Detective-Sergeant de Gier said two days later. De Gier had Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra to tea at his apartment because Grijpstra had walked out on his girlfriend that evening.

"Oh yes, oh yes, oh YES?" Grijpstra had asked, stomping down the stairs at Nellie's.

Nellie kept a hotel at the Straight Tree Ditch. A water pipe had broken that day and food had burned. Reciprocal irritation prevented sexual togetherness from reaching the level of love.

"But it did," Grijpstra said.

"Maybe for you," Nellie said and tried to explain the idea "together" but Grijpstra heard only criticism.

He was tired, after several hours of questioning a junkie charged with breaking and entering. The junkie kept falling asleep and couldn't quite remember where he had worked, the nature of the loot and where or to whom he had sold it.

"Or maybe not," the junkie said after every statement, not so much because he wanted to obstruct the course of justice but because he wanted, philosophically, to indicate relativity and the chaotic nature of All and Everything.

"But what do you know?" the junkie asked Grijpstra. "Eh? You loutish moron. You should try the drug yourself, man, then you'll be on God's steps. Won't have to try to figure out what's what anymore. Won't bother free souls like me."

Grijpstra extracted croquettes from a vending machine in Leyden Street. He could have gone to his own place, a neat upstairs apartment on the Linenmakers Canal vacated some years ago by his family. He had, in order not to be reminded of her, urged his wife to take most of the furnishings. He had never redone the large rooms. The idea at the time was that "an intelligent man really needs little." Now it often seemed as if the empty space had no need of Grijpstra. "Pure emptiness illuminated by the glow of the void," chanted poet Grijpstra when She and the Noisy Ones got the hell out. That day the sun was shining.

Appearances change. He now saw the empty apartment as an extension of Holland's overall overcast climate. "Drafty absence of necessities partly illuminated by a dangling bare bulb," composed poet Grijpstra.

A Turk listened in. The Turk was a dismal import, once welcomed by the Dutch to perform tedious hard labor. Automation made the Turk superfluous. He was on the dole now, for his residential permit was permanent. The Turk was a thin man in a threadbare coat waiting, like Grijpstra, for a streetcar to splash along. The Turk raised wispy eyebrows. "You speak, friend?"

"Inspired," Grijpstra said, "by that empty space I call home, I am composing a poem."

He repeated his line. "Drafty absence..."

The Turk smiled. "You subtle soul."

Grijpstra acknowledged the compliment by sneezing.

The Turk wished him gesundheit.

It rained harder. Grijpstra shuffled backward into the protection of the tramway shelter. The Turk imitated the big man's movements. Raindrops jumped back from the tarmac and lashed the two men against their ankles.

"Home," Grijpstra said, "empty, quiet."

The Turk knew the words but had forgotten their meaning. "Two wives," the Turk said, "two TVs. Five kids moving between loud screens forever. Upstairs neighbors fight on bare boards."

"You speak good Dutch," Grijpstra said.

"Not all that difficult," the Turk said peevishly. "Not too many 'words, no grammar to speak of."

Grijpstra liked that. He passed the Turk a croquette from his paper bag.

"Pig?" the Turk asked suspiciously.

"Calf," Grijpstra said generously.

The Turk said that he had been known to eat pig. Not by mistake either. The Turk was against religious rules that bully. The Turk would consume, Allah be praised, whatever he liked, but if he did eat pig it would be nice to be aware of his sinning. His eye caught the flash of a car's brake lights. The Turk swallowed, smiled, straightened his back, recited: "At alien streetcar stop in slashing darkness my soul glows sudden red, lit up by sin."

Grijpstra applauded a fellow artist.

The Turk said that he found it easier to compose poetry in Turkish but had learned to express himself within the local limitations. So far his Dutch poetry had been of a lower level. He raised a finger.

"Convincingly wags tail the alien mutt after been kicked silly in the butt.

"Doggerel." The Turk nudged Grijpstra. "You like?"

Grijpstra nudged the Turk. "I like."

The calf-croquette-chewing Turk stepped into his streetcar. "Blessings, friend."

Grijpstra waved. "Blessings."

The adjutant took a bus to the suburb of Outfield. He could have telephoned first. He had, in fact, held the coin the public phone would require but returned the guilder to his waistcoat pocket. Say de Gier was not at home—then Grijpstra would not have to make the bus ride, but he liked sitting and staring in crowded buses, "sharing meaningless silence with perfect strangers."

De Gier was home but didn't open up because he was listening to recorded jungle music from Papua New Guinea.

Grijpstra banged on the door and kept his finger on the buzzer.

"Tabriz," de Gier told his cat, "they have returned. Mind if I shoot through the door?"

"Gestapo," Grijpstra shouted because de Gier had Jewish ancestry and often discussed revenge. "Just once, Henk," de Gier would say. "I would feel so much better. You wouldn't mind, would you?" De Gier's Jewish grandmother had been run over by a bus in Rio de Janeiro after fleeing Holland just before the German occupation. De Gier's desire to get even was, in principle, based on Good versus Evil. He considered himself to be good. Good guy kills bad guy. After, maybe, slapping him around some.

While waiting for this opportunity de Gier went out of his way to be helpful to German tourists. He was also known to be particularly thoughtful when dealing with German suspects.

Perhaps, he told Grijpstra, only the fantasy mattered.

"Gestapo, my dear." Grijpstra leaned against the creaking front door.

De Gier opened the door suddenly, hoping that his victim would tumble into the room. Grijpstra had stepped back, however.

"I prefer to be alone tonight," de Gier said, making way so that Grijpstra could enter. "I am sure you understand."

Grijpstra was glad to know someone who put the kettle on to boil water for tea and who dropped bread slices into a toaster. De Gier, ten years younger than the adjutant, looked
filmish,
Grijpstra thought. The sergeant's short curly hair had been washed and conditioned, his large full mustache was brushed up. He ambled gracefully about in a striped cotton kimono. Mister B movie, Grijpstra thought kindly: our Action Hero, momentarily at rest, between fighting and fucking.

"How is Whatshername doing?" Grijpstra asked when de Gier pushed tea, anchovy toast and napkins, tastefully arranged on a dented silver tray, across the table.

"I don't understand Whatshername," de Gier said.

"I do understand Nellie," Grijpstra said, feeding fish to de Gier's cat, Tabriz. "Nellie wants me to move in but her hotel is too noisy." He brushed crumbs off his pinstripe suit. "I still prefer Living Apart Together."

"I prefer Nothing At All," de Gier said.

Grijpstra had heard inactivity proclaimed as solution, mere hours ago, by the junkie-burglar. But the junkie allowed for exceptions. There was the needle of course. "There could also be," the junkie had suggested respectfully, "direct divine connection via pussy."

"You dare to do away with your sexual quest?"

Grijpstra asked.

"Man may dream," de Gier said.

"Of liberty?"

"Yes, by means of doing nothing. Don't you believe in total negation?"

"I believe," Grijpstra said, "and he who believes is not sure and therefore condemned to keep trying."

Both detectives, in the continuing dialogues, brought up the commissaris as their ultimate authority. The commissaris kept trying to approach the mystery via activity, useful work.

Serving the common good.

Why else would the commissaris go to America now?

Grijpstra sang "When the Saints Go Marching In."

De Gier reached for his trumpet and played the phrase on his instrument. He put the trumpet back.

Grijpstra explained what he knew of the case so far.

"Jo Termeer mentioned that tune?" De Gier stretched his foot toward the cat who rolled over on her back expecting a massage. "How did Jo know the Saints were marching while Uncle Bert was dying? Jo wasn't there, he was here, cutting hair in this very suburb, in Outfield."

Tabriz meowed pleasurably, but loudly, while her master's toes kneaded her bare belly. De Gier kneeled next to the cat. He circled Tabriz's mouth with thumb and index finger, and tightened his grip rhythmically. Tabriz meowing became structured into a musical "wah-wah-wah."

"I spent most of the afternoon questioning Jo Termeer," de Gier said. "If I am collaborating on this case I would like to be properly briefed. I wasn't told about the Saints. I could have caught Termeer in a contradiction."

He frowned at Grijpstra.

"Termeer's information is based on double hearsay," Grijpstra said. "Uncle Bert's neighbor, landlord and part-time help, Charlie, told Jo that the song was being played when Uncle Bert was seen last. Charlie was told by passersby who were there at the time. Charlie is no witness either."

"Did neighbor Charlie interview possible witnesses to Uncle's death?" de Gier asked.

"Musical saints supposedly marched," Grijpstra said. "Not only that, an elderly couple was seen—foreign tourists—pointing out an alleged corpse to a mounted policeman." Grijpstra shook his head. "A
policewoman,
I should say."

"Aha aha," de Gier said, "all news to me, friend. So you kept the information hidden so as to hear from me what Jo would come up with when I questioned him."

"Jo Termeer didn't mention an elderly tourist couple? Middle class? Foreign?"

"No," de Gier said. "Young Termeer reported he called at the Central Park Precinct and saw the desk-sergeant. The cop only knew about a dead derelict, found under a filthy blanket, a homeless person dressed in rags, and told complainant that an investigation was in progress."

"Embarrassment of corpses?" Grijpstra asked. "America the violent? Dead bodies galore?"

"Same body," de Gier said. "Charlie had identified the corpse as his dead neighbor. Termeer also saw a Sergeant Hurrell at Central Park Precinct. There 'was the language barrier again. Hurrell may have said that he would keep Termeer informed."

"No sense," Grijpstra said sadly. "It never makes sense. It never will either, unless we attempt to put it there. Show me your flimsy construction of how the facts we have determined might possibly connect."

"I don't construct in my free time," de Gier said. "It should be your free time too. Why bother me? Bother Nellie. Paint dead ducks in your empty apartment. Go home and play your drums."

In order to placate de Gier, Grijpstra recited his newly found, improved, partly stolen and combined poetry.

"Pure emptiness illuminated by the void's divine glow,

or is it a cold absence of necessities

lit meaninglessly

by a dim bulb suspended from a peeling ceiling?

I flee either choice and wait, in wet slashing darkness, at an alien bus stop,

where my soul glows red in sinful flashes."

De Gier made Tabriz do more "wah-wah-wah." After that he applauded.

"I wasn't going to the whores," Grijpstra said.

"You were coming to me," de Gier said. "To try and fill your void with meaningless work." He smiled forgivingly. "Okay. I will humor you."

While making his report de Gier used the singsong of his native Rotterdam dialect which never failed to make Grijpstra crack up. "Please," sobbed Grijpstra. "Cut it out. Can't you speak like real people?"

Tabriz got hiccups and had to be picked up, turned over and shaken gently.

Seriousness returned.

De Gier reported, using the proper Amsterdam dialect, that Reserve Constable-First-Class Jo Termeer, during the course of an in-depth interrogation ordered by the commissaris, had made a good impression.

"Define
good,"
Grijpstra told de Gier.

De Gier explained that Termeer seemed modest, polite, reliable, concise in stating his complaint. Not a dumb fellow by any definition. Perhaps lacking in education. "Like yourself," de Gier said. "Talented, diligent, but not somebody who questions reality."

Grijpstra recognized the type. "No quest. Energy spent on artful hobbies. Termeer is into Sunday painting? Dabbles in music perhaps?"

De Gier found and consulted his notebook. "Critical viewing of movies."

"Ah," Grijpstra said. "What kind of movies?"

"Action and bizarre."

"What kind of action?" Grijpstra asked.

"Fighting movies."

"What kind of bizarre?"

"Don't know," de Gier said.

"You didn't pursue that query?"

De Gier shook his head. "Jo likes movies set in Australia."

"Bizarre Australian movies?"

De Gier nodded. "And futuristic."

"Bizarre Australian futuristic action movies,"

Grijp-stra summarized.

"That's it," de Gier said.

"Sexual preference?"

"Movie?"

"Termeer," Grijpstra said.

"Right, homosexual, lives with a colleague called Peter."

"Did you meet with Peter?"

De Gier, after the interrogation of complainant Jo Termeer at police headquarters, had driven over to Outfield, picked up Peter at the hair-care salon and interviewed Jo's partner in a nearby cafe.

"Direction of interview?" Grijpstra asked.

"Straightforward," de Gier said. "I told Peter that we were analyzing a complaint and checking some background."

"Showed your police I.D.?"

"Sure. Of course."

"Describe subject."

De Gier described Peter as a slender, active, intelligent forty-year-old black male. Fashionably dressed.

"Overdressed?"

"No."

"Mannerisms?"

"Effeminate?" de Gier asked. "No."

"How black?"

"Midnight black."