Just a Corpse at Twilight ac-12 Read online

  "I think they found it, Katrien."

  "Where?"

  "I could tell you," the commissaris said.

  "Tell me."

  "I don't think it would be a good idea if you told Nellie."

  "I thought Nellie was advanced and all that."

  "Grijpstra should tell her himself," the commissaris said.

  "I won't tell Nellie. Now tell me, Jan."

  The commissaris told Katrien that he was reasonably sure the money had been found in an antique townhouse, in Amsterdam's Blood Alley, in the inner city, a little over two years ago. Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, who had investigated a bar in Blood Alley at that time, announced their resignation a few days later.

  "An investigation to do with a body?" Katrien asked.

  With a missing body, a Japanese tourist, who later turned up safe and sound. The found Japanese missing person liked to drink in a Blood Alley bar.

  "You followed up?"

  The commissaris shrugged. Of course he followed up. Didn't hejust love mysteries? His very own trusted assistants, suddenly resigning, citing that as he, the commissaris, was about to be pensioned off, they couldn't stay on. "A likely story, Katrien."

  "I thought it was touching, Jan."

  "Grijpstra retiring on his savings? A couple of hundreds? And de Gier on his inheritance from his mother? A couple of thousands? Next thing Grijpstra is remodeling Nellie's house and de Gier is off to New Guinea."

  "I remember," Katrien said. "You were running about in your father's broad-brimmed felt hat and Uncle Pier's little round glasses and that oversize overcoat you found in the garbage and you smelled ofjenever when you came home late." Katrien sniffed. "Retired, ha! Otium cum dignitate indeed." She found her smile again. "So what happened in Blood Alley that made millionaires out of our musketeers?"

  Information is found in bars. The commissaris told her that while illegally investigating his former associates' sudden wealth, he had visited the bar in Blood Alley, assuming the persona of a retired city clerk, a drinking man, sitting quietly at the counter, hearing the alley's seasoned drinkers discussing a house further along the alley, about to be impounded for nonpayment of taxes, where three middle-aged black males used to live, citizens of Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the South American East Coast. The three men drove Maseratis that were traded for new Maseratis as soon as ashtrays filled up or tape decks malfunctioned. A Maserati is a very expensive Italian brand ofsports car. Those citizens of the republic of Suriname, a very poor country, just loved driving their ever-new Maseratis.

  "Subjects left their station, Jan?"

  Nobody had answered the door of the Blood Alley house. The telephone had been disconnected. The cars, abandoned and vandalized, were still in the alley. Grijpstra and de Gier had had the vehicles towed to Headquarters. A search turned up unpaid traffic tickets. The Maseratis were auctioned off by the city.

  "The owners didn't show?"

  No. The commissaris, at that time, recalled a narcotics case that mentioned the Maserati owners as suspects.

  "Suspected of what, Jan?"

  Of importing frozen fruit juice that wasn't. The product hidden in the fruit juice cans was cocaine. Strangely enough, the alleged smugglers were heroin users. Suspects had been brought in on charges a few times but released for lack of police cells, a common Amsterdam problem, but they were still being harassed by detectives, asked to visit Headquarters to answer questions, waylaid in the street, telephoned at odd times.

  "Aha," Katrien said.

  "You see possibilities?" the commissaris asked.

  "Panic?" Katrien asked. "The addicted Suriname suspects, driven crazy by being constantly under surveillance, ran home? Leaving their treasure?"

  The commissaris confirmed that addicts often react erratically because of the narcotics side effect, paranoia. Having come that far, the commissaris had asked a former Murder Brigade assistant, Sergeant-Detective Simon Car-dozo, to check with Suriname, where the Dutch Ministry of Justice pays off informers. There was a rumor in Suriname's capital that the three suspects were arrested by the military police on their return to Paramaribo. The rumor said that the military police, who handled the "frozen fruit juice" flow from Suriname to Amsterdam, wanted their share of the profits. The three suspects hadn't brought any money with them. They were tortured inefficiently and died before they could tell the MPs where the Amsterdam treasure, the proceeds of sales of narcotics, was hidden.

  "Ach," Katrien said. "And Grijpstra and de Gier found the lost millions? Hidden in that Blood Alley house? Oh dear."

  The commissaris said fortunes in cash left by drug dealers had been found by his department before and had been turned over to the administration.

  "Aha," Katrien said. "Yes, I remember. You thought the money either disappeared outright or got squandered somehow."

  The commissaris sighed as he held her hand. The old couple thought about the declining police reputation, unreported serious crimes, killer psychopaths released for bureaucratic reasons, unemployed youth gangs robbing the weak and elderly. Katrien was shaking her head. "So Grijpstra and de Gier just kept the cash? And you approve?"

  "Not really, dear."

  "You'll make them hand in the treasure somehow? But they're spending the money, Jan. There won't be much left."

  The commissaris shook his head. "The treasure has been growing, dear."

  "So it's you again," Katrien said. "How come you're always behind every mystery I run into? So that's what you've been advising Grijpstra about. All that talk about investments. I couldn't figure it out, why you were discussing shares and foreign exchange and interest and whatnot with Grijpstra of all people. Oh dear, oh dear."

  "I was always good with numbers," the commissaris said. "I almost doubled the original value of Grijpstra's haul."

  Katrien gaped.

  The commissaris smiled proudly. "That's after what they were both spending is deducted, ofcourse. We did well with the dollar's fluctuation. I bought and sold Deutsche Marks then, and buying Philips at nineteen and selling at over thirty helped too, of course. Then there was Gillette. We went short on gold for a bit. We also bet that the British Labor Party would lose, so that the British Stock Index would go up, and, Katrien, didn't it ever?" He shook his head. "It's all in bonds now. I'm out ofinspiration, but there's twice as much as there was."

  "What if those two start spending again?" Katrien asked. "Nellie says de Gier is buying a car."

  The commissaris shrugged. "An old Citroen Deux Chevaux. Something he can leave in the street without its getting stolen. The agency makes good money, I hear. By now they're eager to get rid of their burden."

  "You have something in mind?"

  "Don't know yet, dear. Support the buccaneers who shoot up whalers? Give away anticonception devices in starving nations? Advertise euthanasia and sterilization? Help NASA to transport Homo sapiens to far away places, one way? You know of something better?"

  "Hospitals for crippled kids," Katrien said. "I'll do some research, find us an organization where the staff isn't off on donation-supported cruises."

  "Katrien?" the commissaris asked later that day. "I have this leaflet here, about this cruise. It's a small vessel belonging to some biological society, quite luxurious, with staterooms, leaving next month. Bird watching. On the coast of Maine. And as I've been feeling much better lately… all we have to do is catch a Concorde."

  Chapter 26

  Some weeks later a rubber boat was lowered down the side of the biological cruise ship Lazy Loon, out of New York, now anchored in Jameson Bay, Maine. Autumn was almost over, and the boat's passenger wore a sheepskin coat. He wasn't Katrien's favorite person that day but she could still stand at the Lazy Loon's railing and wave down at him.

  The rubber boat's operator, a marine biology student, insisted on showing his passenger harbor seals, a gray seal, the dorsal fins of dolphins, an immature bald eagle, ajellyfish, and two loons, before dropping him off at Beth's Diner.

 
"Akiapola'au?" the commissaris asked as she brought him a menu. He mentioned his last name.

  "That's Algonquin?" Aki asked. "But you have a Dutch accent. You must be the chief from Amsterdam. How are Rinus and Krip? Beth! Look who we have here."

  Beth brought blueberry muffins on the house.

  Aki and Beth sat at his table. "We are going to Hawaii soon."

  "For good?" the commissaris asked.

  "Just to winter a while," Aki said, "We can afford to now. Are you going to see what Ishmael has done with his canning factory? All those colors and corridors and depth and 'perspectives.' Something about emptiness and space. If you get it, will you tell us?"

  "Bad George?" the commissaris asked. "Flash Farnsworth?"

  Beth brought more muffins and filtered Kona coffee.

  "The Kathy Four is sailing down Eggemoggin Reach just now, Flash radioed in. They're going mackerel fishing. Ishmael flew down yesterday. His new Cessna has sea floats. There'll be the three of them there, sharing good times."

  "The four of them," the commissaris said.

  The women laughed. "You've been told about Kathy Two?"

  Kathy Two was doing just fine.

  "Lorraine?" the commissaris asked.

  Lorraine was back in New York, lecturing on her loon research. She was seeing her former husband, who was telling her about his wife. She was seeing his wife too.

  "Bildah Farnsworth?"

  Beth drove the commissaris to Bildah Farnsworth's hilltop residence, formerly the property of Hairy Harry.

  Bildah was home. Beth introduced the commissaris. "You two should talk," Beth said. She drove off.

  Bildah, a small-sized older man with neat sharp features, faded blue eyes behind rimless glasses, bald under his felt hat, and wearing a sheepskin jacket ("You know, we look alike?"), took the commissaris for a walk.

  "You know," Bildah said, "when someone is indicted here, he always says, 'I didn't do anything wrong."'

  "I'm not indicting you," the commissaris said.

  Bildah looked glum. "You might still be my conscience."

  The commissaris explained his theory about conscience, that it was a fickle thing, tiedloosely together by the strings of habit and memory, inflicted by impressions received early on in life, far too relative to be trusted.

  "You're retired, I hear," Bildah said. "I had you checked out somewhat. You knew our previous sheriff, Jim. Jim spoke highly ofyou. He became a game warden, you know, in the Florida Keys. Trying to protect some small type of deer that gets hit by traffic."

  "Good," the commissaris said, "and I'm glad you think you did nothing wrong."

  They walked slowly, to keep time with the commissaris's limp, under maples in autumn colors along a picket fence overgrown with scarlet vines. Jameson Bay was below.

  "A beautiful place," the commissaris said.

  Bildah nodded. "We are lucky." He touched the commissaris's sleeve. "Technically I did nothing wrong either."

  "The lady was dead when she was found in the Macho Bandido's cabin?" the commissaris asked.

  "Hairy Harry said so." Bildah looked out over the bay where the yacht was tied up to a mooring. "I didn't want the Bandido then so he registered the boat in his own name. I never saw the lady."

  "The boat is in your name now?"

  It was. Bildah explained that Hairy Harry had been married and was childless. His widow had wanted to cut her ties and go. She sold the house to Bildah.

  "For what Hairy Harry paid you? Half its value?"

  It was more than what the sheriff's widow had expected. Bildah didn't pay much for the Macho Bandido either. All the widow wanted was out. Things always came to Bildah that way-investments, property, deals. "I don't even have to put out my hand," said Bildah.

  "You accept all bounty?" the commissaris asked pleasantly.

  "You bet." Bildah smiled. "As they say-living well is the best revenge. You're rich yourself?"

  The commissaris excused his own luck. "Rich wife, good wages, a pension, lucky with numbers."

  They looked at hills on the horizon.

  "I don't believe in guilt," Bildah said. "I believe in philosophical curiosity, and in putting things together so as to enjoy some simple comforts, in continuity, for the duration, so to speak."

  The commissaris looked down at Jameson Bay, the islands, the foliage in color, the endless ocean, the yacht ready to sail.

  "You picked a good spot."

  "I should be sailing now," Bildah said, "I wanted to take a look atyour cruise ship today but Little Max had to go to the dentist and I have trouble handling Macho Bandido alone."

  They walked on. "Your men did a good job here," Bildah said. "Hairy Harry and Billy Boy were hiding a lot of cash. Your men must have told Ishmael and friends where they should look. The dead men's treasure made up for all pain and losses."

  "The tunnel on Jeremy Island, guarded by the corpse and Mr. Bear?" the commissaris asked.

  Bildah thought that was the location.

  "A lot of money?"

  Quite a fortune, Bildah thought. Sudden wealth can be destructive but Ishmael could probably handle sudden wealth. Ishmael was quite special; it seemed he shared the loot to everybody's satisfaction. Ishmael himselfonly wanted to replace his airplane.

  "You're not sorry the treasure didn't end up with you?"

  Bildah smiled, said he had enough to carry on with, thank you, and wasn't it nice to have rich neighbors? Flash had bought him a lobster dinner last time they met.

  "What about the salt bags concealing cocaine and the marijuana shipments?"

  "Big Max is arranging to take over," Bildah said. "The new sheriff may put a stop to that."

  "Take it over himself?"

  Bildah didn't think so. The new sheriff came from law enforcement in a Boston ghetto, he didn't care for drugs. If he stayed honest, the business would have to move up north.

  "A question," the commissaris said. "Why didn't you back up Hairy Harry? You were here and I was a long way out. You could have protected him and Billy Boy, yes?"

  Bildah was quiet.

  "You must have felt something was up." The commissaris took time to divulge recent doings: the ritual with Nellie and Katrien.

  "A lamb's bone," Bildah said. "So that works, does it? I always thought that sort of thing would. I've read about pointing the bone. Australian aborigines do it. I didn't know the custom had also spread to New Guinea. It's dangerous, right?"

  "Never fails." The commissaris nodded. "Kills your victim."

  Bildah nodded too. "Yes, sure, but what I read is that the force evoked and released, the power, the devil if you will, may turn halfway and kill the pointer."

  "If the gods don't agree?" The commissaris shrugged. "The gods must be environmentalists these days."

  "Challenge the subconscious?" Bildah was impressed.

  "What's to lose?" the commissaris asked. "Don't mind dying myself." He stopped and faced his host. "Now, tell me, were you aware that your men were in danger?"

  Bildah was.

  "So why didn't you protect Hairy Harry?" the commissaris asked again.

  "I didn't want to," Bildah said.

  The two old men sat on rocks, quietly taking in the view.

  "Hairy Harry who, by the way, never was my man, as you put it," Bildah said, "was clever in some little ways, a minor god in a minor universe, but abysmal ignorance made him shoot Croakie."

  Croakie, Bildah said, had been a good raven. Bildah had raised Croakie from the time he was a chick who had either Men or been pushed from his nest. Croakie was blind in one eye and lame in one leg and would sit on Bildah's shoulder. "I have no family," Bildah said. "Man is designed to be gregarious, to interact with fellow beings. So I sometimes feel lonely." He turned to the commissaris. "You have company yourself?"

  The commissaris mentioned Katrien and Turtle.

  Bildah didn't know about wives or reptiles but he and Croakie had been close. Croakie would fly upside down to make Bildah laugh. Croakie cou
ld pronounce four-letter words thoughtfully. "Croakie was free, ofcourse. He had his own window that he knew how to open so that he could sleep in my room."

  Bildah said that the sheriff and his deputy's frequent beer-drinking parties sometimes gave way to killing sprees.

  The two would fire at sparrows, sea gulls, Croakie.

  "You don't hunt yourself?" the commissaris asked.

  "Not since Korea." Bildah was in the war there. He had been a medic.

  "You don't mind drugs?"

  "Don't care for them myself," Bildah said. "But we should make them legal, don't you think?"

  The commissaris thought that might happen at some date in the future, if there still was one.

  Bildah drove the commissaris back to the harbor.

  "Did Akiapola'au look as billed?" Katrien asked, helping him up the cruise vessel's steep gangway. "Are we going to Hawaii now?"

  That evening in their stateroom, while the Lazy Loon moved in a leisurely fashion on Jameson Bay's slow swell, under a full and quiet moon, listening to loons chuckling near Squid island, the commissaris said that he would never understand it.

  "Understand what, Jan?"

  The commissaris said that he would never understand the beauty.

  "Of this?"

  "Of it all."

  Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Just a Corpse at Twilight

  About the Autnor

  Janwillem van de Wetering was born in Rotterdam in 1931, studied Zen in Daitoku-ji Monastery, Kyoto and philosophy in London, and has lived as well in Amsterdam, Cornwall, Capetown, Bogota, Lima, and Brisbane. In 1975 he settled in a small town on the coast of Maine where he still lives.

  The Amsterdam Cops series that features Adjutant Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier working as extensions of the commissaris, a wily and philosophical Amsterdam Chief of Detectives, was conceived when the author served with the Amsterdam Reserve Constabulary. To date over two million copies of his works are in print in fourteen languages.

  His joys are an ongoing study of nihilism, keeping a wooden lobster boat afloat and getting older. His pain is an inability to play the jazz trumpet.

  He has been married for a long time, no longer smokes or drinks, is kept by a superior dog (like the one in this story), and has become allergic to the guru syndrome.