The Perfidious Parrot Read online

  Also by Janwillem van de Wetering

  FICTION

  The Grijpstra-de Gier series:

  Outsider in Amsterdam

  Tumbleweed

  The Corpse on the Dike

  Death of a Hawker

  The Japanese Corpse

  The Blond Baboon

  The Maine Massacre

  The Mind-Murders

  The Streetbird

  The Rattle-Rat

  Hard Rain

  Just a Corpse at Twilight

  The Hollow-Eyed Angel

  OTHER

  Inspector Saito’s Small Satori

  The Butterfly Hunter

  Bliss and Bluster

  Murder by Remote Control

  Seesaw Millions

  NONFICTION

  The Empty Mirror

  A Glimpse of Nothingness

  Robert van Gulik: His Life, His Work

  CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  Hugh Pine

  Huge Pine and the Good Place

  Huge Pine and Something Else

  Little Owl

  Copyright © 1997 by Janwillem van de Wetering

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  853 Broadway

  New York NY 10003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Van de Wetering, Janwillem, 1931–2008

  The perfidious parrot / Janwillem van de Wetering.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-56947-826-4

  I. Title.

  PS3572.A4292P47 1997

  813’.54—dc21 97-2548

  v3.1_r2

  Author’s Note

  This tale is based on imagination. We all know that the Military only misbehaves while under orders. Helicopters most likely thrive on salt air. Rotterdam, Holland (I was born there) is beautiful and filled with pleasant people. How could the Amsterdam Police (I served with them for seven years) possibly be corrupt?

  For my (I wish I could shimmy like my) sister Toos

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  1: Riddled by Bullets on the High Seas

  2: A Wise-Ass Threatened

  3: The Lady Likes to Strip

  4: Assaulted by Skeletons

  5: An Old Man About to Leave

  6: Hurrah and How-De-Do

  7: Rifle Fire in a Nature Reserve

  8: Double Price

  9: Vultures Circle Mount Trashmore

  10: American Scenes

  11: Portrait of a Companion Bird

  12: Airborne Seals

  13: Saintly Musical Cries

  14: The Lethal Delirium of the Amputated

  15: The Lower Level

  16: Hell on the High Seas

  17: The Devout Art of Wrecking

  18: A Jewish Grandmother

  19: Grijpstra’s Fearful Freedom

  20: Meanwhile and Even So

  21: Nude on the Cemetery

  22: A Plucked Parrot

  23: Bounty Hunters

  24: A Warrior’s Reward

  25: Looking for Little Abner

  26: A Historical Enquiry

  27: The Road is the Goal

  28: Admiral George Brydges Rodney (1718–1792)

  29: Things Often Work Out Different

  1

  RIDDLED BY BULLETS ON THE HIGH SEAS

  “You want stiffs?” Carl Ambagt asked in a singsong voice while he shot linen cuffs from beneath the sleeves of his cashmere blazer. “Listen, Mr. Detective, if you need corpses before you can get going, Dad and I will give you corpses. No problem.” The visitor gestured magnanimously, as if giving away precious objects. “No charge, free, they’re all yours. Stiffs galore.”

  Private detective Henk Grijpstra didn’t care for visitors. He looked over the head of this one who kept talking in a high penetrating voice. The open window offered a view of budding elm leaves and bright red gables on the other side of Amsterdam’s Straight Tree Ditch. He prayed. He wanted an elm branch to enter the window, grab the visitor and Whop, into the canal. After that, nothing but ducks quacking. Life goes on.

  A fellow forty years old. A short fellow. Grijpstra didn’t care for short forty-year-old fellows, and this one was arrogant, with the musical Rotterdam way of talking, each sentence ending on a lilting tone. “Right?” The endless Rotterdam question.

  Beat the short forty-year-old fellow to death.

  Visitor, visitation.

  It irritated Grijpstra that he still thought in religious terms. Whatever you learn while young can be practiced throughout life, says the Dutch proverb. Learn young, be stuck forever, Grijpstra thought.

  If there were a Lord would He grant a Grijpstra prayer?

  Fuck this fellow, Grijpstra prayed. Lord?

  Grijpstra constrained his wishful thinking. He was from Amsterdam, the capital, the spiritual heart of Holland, the center, the creative core of the Netherlands.

  Rotterdam, Holland’s second city, is considered—by Amsterdam—to be a working town. But that’s all right. Rotterdam is tolerated by Amsterdam, providing the upstart town keeps its distance. Some people work, that’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with work, if someone needs to do it, that’s perfectly fine—good luck to the working folks of Rotterdam. But let them stay home, not bother their betters with useless and repetitive information that lilts at the end.

  “Right?”

  Grijpstra’s hands, invisible behind a stack of empty folders on his desk top, groped about for something to hold on to. The antique desk was a present from Grijpstra’s former chief. The commissaris had used the desk as a fortress from whence he defended his privacy. Since his retirement, at age sixty-five, the commissaris’s defenses had been leveled. Detective-Adjutant Grijpstra retired too, ahead of time in his case. Sergeant-Detective de Gier quit as well, to help Grijpstra do nothing, well, at least do very little. The partners of Detection G&G Incorporated preferred peace and quiet in their spacious offices.

  “Several corpses, Mr. Ambagt?” Grijpstra asked, sotto voce.

  “Ah well, just one I’m really sure of,” Ambagt said contritely—but arrogantly again, Grijpstra thought, as if the little asshole was proud of his assholery, jeez.

  Ambagt was sitting comfortably, in the luxurious brown leather easy chair reserved for clients. This client did not seem impressed by the vast room under its high ceiling, supported by ancient hand-hewn beams. Even Grijpstra himself did not impress this intruder from the lower spheres and the detective was impressive: big, burly, wide in the chest, with steel gray brushed-up hair, bouncy thick eyebrows, a wrestler dressed up for the occasion. There Mr. Grijpstra presented himself to an annoying world, in a three-piece tailored suit, complete with watch chain. The silver tie, with a design of small turtles, a present from Katrien, the commissaris’s wife, upon the start of his new career, accentuated solid elegance. The superior clothes enhanced the intelligence of faded blue eyes in what Nellie, Grijpstra’s new wife, liked to call a “rugged countenance.”

  “Not counting the missing persons,” Carl Ambagt semi-shouted, happy to add to the misery. “All we found was a befuddled Captain Souza, and a dead sailor, Michiel. Otherwise not a single soul.” Ambagt dropped his voice, to indicate tragedy. “Me and Dad were just in time, the tanker was about to land herself on rocks. Right?”

  “Right on rocks, not right on rocks?” Grijpstra asked, bewildered by the Rotterdam way of questioning reality. “Yes or no?”

  “No. Right?”

  “And the missing persons?” Grijpstra asked.

  “Let me e
xplain, right?” Carl Ambagt asked.

  Carl Ambagt handled an imaginary machine pistol and imitated spraying deadly bullets.

  “This tanker of yours …” Grijpstra said.

  “… the supertanker Sibylle was robbed of its contents. The cargo was pirated,” Ambagt said. “Do you have any idea how much money we are talking about?”

  Grijpstra looked detached. His visitor didn’t have to know that the image of a crewless gigantic tanker, illegally drained of a valuable cargo, fascinated Grijpstra. In his long career with the department of Serious Crime of the Amsterdam Municipal Police such an immense felony had never come his way. He envisioned the steel vessel, a quiet ghost ship towering above tropical seas. Ambagt had told him the location: the Caribbean. The event had taken place close to the semi-Dutch isle of St. Maarten (its north half is French). Grijpstra didn’t know any tropical islands personally but he now saw pictures, a collage of impressions taken from TV and magazine advertising: golden beaches, waving palm fronds, and several swimming, sunning, ball-playing young women. He was there too, hands behind his back, his contemplative eyes shaded by the wide brim of a straw hat. “Panama Jack” Grijpstra. Grunting pleasurably, the day-dreamer observes brown and black breasts, legs and buttocks. How about his new wife, Nellie—wouldn’t she be jealous? Not at all, Nellie has just joined the picture. There she is on a surfboard, subtly pink all over. What a winner, this ex-model Nellie, nominated once to become Miss Holland, chosen Number Two because of too ample breasts. The other beach ladies, however, are attractive too, performing seductively on the golden sand, almost struck by the pirated supertanker Sibylle. A charming multicolored collection. Strange, really, Grijpstra thought, once you start traveling, racism doesn’t work too well. Out there the minority is a majority. Object becomes subject. Relativity wipes out the racist view. Good thing he didn’t consider himself to be racist. Didn’t know what the attitude meant really.

  “The chartered supertanker Sibylle,” the short fellow said. “Never invest in those suckers, they leak. Giant rustbuckets, that’s all they are. But we do use our own crews. You may be thinking accident now, right? Wrong. The sailor, Michiel, was riddled by bullets.”

  “You don’t say.” Grijpstra’s voice stayed flat, touched by just a little compassionate vibration. A bleeding corpse, missing mates. This client talked trouble.

  “Quite a bit of wind,” Ambagt was saying, “we had a problem with our spinning top. A heaving deck doesn’t make for easy landings.”

  “Spinning top?”

  “Helicopter,” Carl said.

  “The alleged piracy of a supertanker, involving murder, close to St. Maarten, in the Antilles, in the Caribbean Sea,” Grijpstra summed up. “You landed your helicopter on the vessel and noted evidence of foul play.”

  Carl Ambagt stared beyond Grijpstra’s bulk. “Ah yes.”

  Grijpstra noted signs of what could be true emotion while his visitor relived painful moments.

  “On the bridge,” Carl Ambagt said, “was Michiel’s body. All innocent-like. Nice looking young chap too.” Carl Ambagt took a Polaroid from his wallet. He studied the picture. “Michiel, the sailor, in his blue banded T-shirt. Named for our famous buccaneer admiral, Michiel de Ruyter. Remember him from the history books? Seventeenth century. Beat the bloody British time and again. Burned a British war fleet right at home, on the Thames. A great strategist. Dad has studied him, you know. Dad likes strategy—it’s made us rich and famous.”

  “I have never heard of you,” Grijpstra said.

  “You have now,” Ambagt said. “Here. Look at Michiel’s body.”

  “What are all these holes?” Grijpstra shuddered. “Was your sailor tortured?”

  “Gulls,” Carl Ambagt whispered. “You know that seagulls like carrion? They pick at dead bodies. We saw it from the sky, me and Dad—red shreds of Michiel’s flesh, within an oval of white gulls. Like an eye. Red pupil, white oval. Pecking seagulls. The whole thing was like an eye that stared at us. The eye of the raped Sibylle.”

  Grijpstra pushed the photograph away. “You mentioned Captain Souza. Captain of the ship?”

  “He was there,” Carl Ambagt said. “Master Guzberto Souza, down in his cabin.” Ambagt’s smile was crooked. “Drunk out of his mind.”

  “Not dead.”

  “As if.” Carl Ambagt nodded. “Between balls and fucking.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Jenever. Our famous national brands. Dutch gin.” Carl spelled the brand names. “Bols. Focking.” Ambagt shook his head. “That’s what fueled our captain. Kept him going while watching porno. That was his other thing, T&A on video. The never-ending show.”

  “The captain informed you of the crime committed?”

  “Captain Souza never noticed.”

  “Not even the shooting?”

  “Delirious,” Carl Ambagt said. “So what do you expect? A black man from Aruba. Dad hired Souza. I did say ‘Daaaaad, what are you doing, Daaaaad? Right?’ But it was too late. Dad and Guz, drinking themselves silly.” Carl checked his manicured nails. “Try and get between that situation.”

  “This took place in St. Maarten?”

  “Aruba.” Carl pointed at an imaginary map. “More to the left and down below, west, off Venezuela. But Dutch, of course. Amazing. Why do we hold on to those money-losing islands?”

  Grijpstra pushed the Polaroid back. He wondered why he was encouraging his visitation by asking questions. Had he forgotten that Detection G&G was a fata morgana? A mere front? That the nameplate on the gable meant nothing? Sure, something: a hoax. Put up to fool the tax inspector. Behold this beautiful gable, Mr. Tax Man. Note the varnished front door, the polished bricks, the recently repainted woodwork, the blossoming geraniums in the window planters—will you just look at the stone steps, worn smooth by clients’ trampling feet. Yes, sir, we work here and earn good money, our wealth has a legitimate source. Okay, Mr. Tax Man? Now keep going, old fart.

  However, no work was done behind this splendid gable at one of Amsterdam’s show canals, Straight Tree Ditch.

  How the hell could all this have happened? Grijpstra screamed when the ghostly hand of his conscience grabbed him during nightmares. How could he, a stolid public servant, and that faithful cooperator, de Gier, have stumbled into this demonic trap together?

  It had happened. Three years ago. There, one bad day, Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, of the municipal police, were doing their job in a ramshackle hovel in Blood Alley, Inner City, Amsterdam. De Gier forced a door. Rats scrambled about their feet. They entered a small room filled with empty bottles and porno posters. There was the sweetish foul smell of rotting food. The kitchen was an open dump. In the basement de Gier kicked his way through more refuse. An amateurishly built brick wall aroused suspicion. De Gier pushed it over with his foot. Behind the wall, in plastic bags, a treasure in small banknotes had served as rats’ nests. They counted the treasure. There was just over a million in undamaged notes.

  So what does one do, being—as the police manual has it—“engaged in the correct exercise of your public service”? You hand in the loot, straight into the hands of your own superiors, at Headquarters, Moose Canal. Decent and admirable folks, all ladies and gents, in uniform, gold- and silver-braided. The superiors address you in well modulated tones. “Good job, Adjutant. That’s right, put it down there, Sergeant. All this goes straight to the Country’s Coffers. No, that’s all right, that will be a little job we would like to perform. On your behalf, colleagues. And thanks again, indeed. Enjoy the rest of your public service today, Adjutant, Sergeant.”

  Then what do you notice? That superiors are inferior. That the authorities, so far respected by your dumb selves, are taking holidays in the Pacific, Fiji, the Marquesas, out-of-the-way places, out of an ordinary citizen’s reach. New cars appear in POLICE PARKING ONLY spots. There is revelry around the pleasure area of Leyden Square, Amsterdam. There are intimate meetings in the royal suites of the Amstel and l’Europe Hotels. Cham
pagne pops and slurred voices make fun of the abysmal, abominable adjutant and his silly, stupid sergeant.

  Haha! Hoho!

  So to whom do you complain?

  Your own chief has rheumatic troubles that keep him in his hot tub—he is about to retire anyway. The Chief Constable is in serious therapy, the Minister of Justice has been issued a golden parachute while preparing himself to walk the plank.

  However, luck is with the lucky (Grijpstra grinned sadly). It turns out, that in the same ramshackle hovel in the same Blood Alley, by the same adjutant and detective-sergeant, another treasure is found. The second treasure is a multiple of the first. This time high denomination notes—hundreds, thousands—are stacked neatly in closed metal containers.

  The detectives hesitantly open more lids. Could this be true? Swedish five thousand crown banknotes? American hundred dollar bills in ribbon-tied packages of one hundred? Even a few bars of gold?

  “Oh dear.” De Gier had wanted to bandy about the most horrifying curses. The words, none of them able to represent the seriousness of the situation, had stuck in his throat.

  Grijpstra mumbled, “Dear me.”

  Nobody was informed of the reason for these exclamations. Well, sure, the commissaris heard, he would have found out anyway—why try to be clever?

  “We’re going to keep the money, sir,” Grijpstra said.

  “We will also resign,” de Gier said. The commissaris said he was happy that they could make such a weighty decision themselves and that he would like to help invest the loot. “Grab some of the cash for your immediate necessities and bring me the rest. I’m good with numbers.”

  The commissaris, in his old model Citroën, drove the money to the independent duchy of Luxembourg and opened an investment account in the name Grijpstra and/or de Gier with permission to sign on behalf of these beneficiaries—any transaction, any amount. The bank director thought the arrangement was unusual but, hey, who was he to refuse a sizable deposit?

  It was all a matter of trust, of course.

  The predictable hardly ever happens but the unexpected, invariably, does. For de Gier that truth emerged from a stale fortune cookie. Grijpstra heard it from a brown skinned man with magnetic eyes and a white goatee. “It always turns out different,” the street guru told him.