The Rattle-Rat ac-10 Read online

  Troelstra's hands pushed his sunken cheeks further inward. His calm eyes stared at the visitor. "This Scherjoen, was he the corpse in the paper this morning?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "He was shot in this neighborhood and burned afterward, in a dory, or so we think; there wasn't much left of him."

  "Sometimes," Troelstra said, "it doesn't pay to try and outthink the others." He grinned. "There are too many of them. What rule did he break?"

  "We don't know much yet." The commissaris put his glass down after a carefully measured sip. "We do know that the deceased lived in Dingjum, could spend money, that's about it. What do you know?"

  "He sold sheep," Troelstra said, "to Morocco, Turkey, Algeria. Frisian sheep. More than are ever officially counted in all of Friesland. Sheep look a lot alike. There's too much administration these days, but maybe the sheep still slip through."

  "But he never came here?"

  "Other sheep dealers come here, and they talked about him. The dealers like to visit the Red Quarter. Leeuwarden, our capital, used to have a nice quarter of its own, but now they have to slide down the Great Dike, all the way down to Gomorrah here. Here we can satisfy most any desire."

  "In our lower regions?" the commissaris asked. "And what did Douwe's colleagues have to say about him?"

  "They didn't like Douwe."

  "Jealousy?"

  "Of course," Troelstra said. "But maybe more than just jealousy. Douwe wasn't too straight. Broke his agreements, or changed them later on, not quite what Frisians expect of each other."

  "Would any of your clients be a shooting man?"

  "I am a traitor," Troelstra said, "but I don't really like squealing too much."

  "Scherjoen was shot from the rear."

  Troelstra lifted the jenever jar. The commissaris nodded. He had lunched lightly and the strong gin made his body tingle. His leg no longer hurt; on the contrary, the usually sensitive nerves seemed to be alive with calm energy. How enjoyable it would be to be just a little drunk forever. Doesn't alcohol addiction exclude all other desires? The thought wasn't new to him. To simplify life's motivation should be an excellent short-term goal. Whoever is interested in alcohol can afford to forget about everything else. Any new day begins with the necessity to drown the hangover, and once that's done time flows on joyfully again. It wouldn't work out in the end, he knew that too, but the idea was still exciting. To realize the wish would be easy enough. He could retire and get up late and go to bed early and be smashed in between. With a bit of discipline, the change shouldn't be hard.

  "One more?" Troelstra asked.

  "No, thanks."

  "Coffee, freshly made?"

  "If you please."

  Troelstra handled his coffee machine with the slow, exact movements that are the result of long practice.

  "How old are you, Troelstra?"

  They shared the same age.

  "You know," Troelstra said, "I once shot a prisoner in Russia, from the rear. The Russian never knew what happened to him. He was talking to a tree, and the next thing he was out."

  "No!" the commissaris said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Troelstra nodded thoughtfully. "He had gone mad. We were out on patrol. I was in charge of the squad. Frisian boys, every one of them. There were hardly any Frisians fighting for the Germans, but the few that went out there were under my command. Good fellows, steady, courageous, supermen, all specially picked for SS training. We were liberating the world. Civilian Russia was the worst place I had ever seen-starving people in hovels, suppressed by a terrible system; we didn't know then that we were making it even worse. Suddenly there was that Russian soldier behind us, with a rifle, hand grenades on his belt; quite a young man still, and he had lost his mind. He was yelling at us and pointing at the clouds. We took his weapons and he never noticed. He was singing by then. We tried to send him off, for a prisoner would slow us down; we were about to attack."

  "Yes," the commissaris said.

  "I was the sergeant," Troelstra said. "I was supposed to know what to do. My men were looking up to me. The Russian was stamping on the snow, screaming some ditty, frothing at the mouth, eyes popping out of his head. We were close to the enemy, and he was giving our position away."

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "I could have some more coffee."

  "Java Mocha," Troelstra said. 'Too good a brand for this place but I'm getting too old to make a profit."

  "Yes?"

  "I took that Russian along," Troelstra said, "with my arm around his shoulders, friendly-like, I was his older brother. He pulled away and ran into the trees; when I found him again, he was talking to an oak."

  "You shot him?"

  "Yes."

  "And that's the way Scherjoen was helped out?"

  "I wouldn't know," Troelstra said slowly.

  An old man shuffled into the caf6, in a dirty raincoat and frayed trousers. "Jelle, a lemonade today."

  Jelle poured soda, holding the gin jar in his left hand. The old man studied first the jar, then his own trembling hands, clutching at the counter. "Yes, go ahead."

  The gin joined the lemonade in the tall glass. Jelle lifted the jar but didn't replace it. "Right," the old man said. The jar tinkled again. The man drank. He put the glass down. "Aaah," the man said happily.

  "I only meant," Troelstra said to the commissaris, "that things are often not quite what they seem. So I betrayed my country. Maybe I did. Maybe it wasn't meant that way."

  "You meant well?"

  "Things had to get better, didn't they?" Troelstra asked. "And they got worse. Isn't that the human way? We mean well and we become active and we go down even further."

  "In the beginning • • •"

  "… there was God." Troelstra scratched his chin. "But where did He go? I sometimes think about that a bit."

  The man in the dirty raincoat rattled his glass. "Same again, Jelle." Jelle poured from bottle and jar. The man's toothless smile widened. "Nice day today."

  Troelstra and the commissaris said that the old man was right.

  "It's all so easy," the old man said, "but I keep forgetting, and it takes a few glasses to remember it again. To keep it easy can be rather tricky."

  "You generally succeed?" the commissaris asked.

  "I've got a strong character," the old man said. "I never stop trying. No matter what they do to me. They won't knock me over."

  "Let's have the bill," the commissaris said.

  Troelstra looked out the window. Shadows moved through the street, dating back to a far past. Comrades-in-arms? A dying Russian? Wild men, with bones through their noses? An assistant inspector who didn't handcuff the traitor and took him to Headquarters in a streetcar?

  "That won't be necessary," Troelstra said. "I still owe you. You kept me alive. I could experience a few good moments. New Guinea is beautiful, there are some fine birds out there, colorful, with long tails, and flowering shrubs that grow nowhere else. The voyage, there and back, tropical seas, palm trees on beaches, going on for miles. And the cafe here at the end, I don't mind doing this."

  "Scherjoen?" the commissaris asked.

  "Can't help you there."

  The commissaris didn't catch on at once. He wondered whether he should ask.

  "Is there something else you can help me with?"

  "Last week…" Troelstra interrupted himself and looked at the old man, who was smiling and occupied with rolling a cigarette. "Would you mind moving up?" he asked the commissaris, who got off his stool and followed the coffee cup that Troelstra slid across the counter.

  "Last week," Troelstra said softly, "two heavy boys came here to have a few. A certain Ary, small chap and bald, and a certain Fritz, big fellow with a tuft of stiff hair on his big head. Southern types, from the Belgian border. I had some sheep dealers too, well away in the bottle. A Friday it was, when there's the cattle market in Friesland and they had collected some cash, safely tucked away in the purse. The Frisian purse is chained to the neck. It's all cash with
us up north, we don't believe in checks and such. We're a bit silly that way."

  "Frisians aren't silly," the commissaris said.

  "Maybe they are sometimes. Carrying cash into this district? Cash that comes from evading taxes should be well hidden, I believe." Troelstra smiled. "It's silly to pay taxes, of course, especially when the money leaves the country. Hasn't everybody always been after our profits? The Romans, the Spanish, the French, the Germans, we kicked them all out, and then came the Dutch."

  "And you were fighting for United Europe?"

  Now why did I say that? the commissaris thought. Here he wants to tell me something and I have to argue.

  "United Europe," Troelstra's eyelids dropped. "That's the dream. Why shouldn't it come about some day? All together and still apart? America has done it. Why don't we do the same? The State of Friesland, and the State of Germany, and the State of Russia, and so on and so forth? United above our troubles?" He poured more coffee.

  "You're too early," the commissaris said. "It'll come if we grant ourselves time."

  Troelstra held a finger alongside his nose. "That's what I think now, but I'm still not sure. Maybe the urge to fight is too strong in us. Maybe it's part of human nature. Ever seen little kids play? They'll always invent weapons and bang away at each other. Have you ever seen little kids play peacemaking games?"

  "Well…"

  "Take the movies," Troelstra said. "I fought too, I know how bad it is. Creep up to a Russian camp and see the enemy eat, or sleep, or shit in a quiet corner, and you still have to mow them down. That can't be right. So why do I go to see future air vessels destroying each other, with humans in them, eh? I enjoy watching that destruction. So how can that be? If it isn't right, I mean?"

  "About that bald Ary," the commissaris said, "and Fritz with the tuft."

  Troelstra closed one eye. "You don't know either, right?"

  "I don't know," the commissaris said.

  Troelstra laughed dryly. "Nobody knows, I think. Maybe we just do what we were planned to do, maybe we have no say. I read the paper. There's war all over the place again. Same thing all over."

  The commissaris waited.

  "Right," Troelstra said. "Here's a fight for you. Ary and Fritz were watching my sheep dealers and licking their chops. Suppose each dealer was carrying some twenty thousand in cash, and you hit them all-then you have a year's good wages. That's hardly enough if the risk is a few years in jail. Ary and Fritz had just come from jail."

  "So?"

  "So," Troelstra said, "they discussed better possibilities and I listened in a bit, for they kept ordering refills. On the cattle market in Leeuwarden…"

  "Hey, hey," the commissaris said. "And the subjects are professionals?"

  "Bank robbers," Troelstra said.

  "But listen here, at the Leeuwarden market there'll be hundreds of dealers, and there are only two of them."

  "It can be done," Troelstra said. "Each dealer has a purse, and if you pull the copper chains, they'll snap. Herd them together…"

  "Thanks." The commissaris felt for his wallet.

  "No money." Troelstra crossed his arms.

  The commissaris put down a note. "Not for me, for your customer over there."

  The old man in the dirty coat laughed gratefully. "It's really quite easy."

  "You're sure now?" the commissaris asked.

  "Have a few drinks with me, sir, and you'll know for yourself." The old man waved an all-explaining arm. "Drink your ignorant self to the center where the mystery lives. Once you see it, everything becomes clear."

  "And can you stay there?"

  The old man winked. "Follow me."

  "I'd rather go alone."

  "The method is the same," the old man said. "I'll guide you a bit of the way."

  "Perhaps later," the commissaris said, and escaped through the door.

  \\ 5 /////

  Detective First-class Simon Cardozo, temporarily serving with the Murder Brigade, objected to the easy small talk of his more established colleagues, standing around him in the Headquarters canteen. His colleagues looked down on Cardozo. He was small in size and sitting down. He also looked down on himself. A more powerful and larger-size Cardozo talked to the little one, for he had split himself in two, to simplify the situation, and was engaged in dialogue.

  Little Cardozo complained. He was not treated with respect, so he told Big Cardozo. Take this Douwe Scherjoen case, for instance. Was it acceptable to have to look at a file dropped casually on his desk? "Have a look at this," Grjjpstra had said. "Do something," de Gier had said. And gone they were, to flirt with Jane, no doubt. Jane was important. Jane was abused too, but at least she was treated with respect. She was told good things about herself so that the stupid girl would go to make eyes at the garage sergeant so that the Brigade's old Volkswagen could be repaired again. But he, Little Cardozo-who had to do real work, who had to gather data that would unmask a murderous unidentified madman, who subsequently had to arrest the merciless criminal, and subsequently had to prepare a charge that would hold up in court-he, Little Cardozo, had a file dropped on his desk. "Do something, Cardozo."

  "Now, now," Big Cardozo said.

  "Don't belittle me," Little Cardozo said. "I get enough of that from them. They hang out in some pleasant province, enjoy the sights, live off the fat of the land, while I, the stupid sucker, the shit-upon, under risky circumstances, unprotected…"

  "Now, now."

  "You keep on saying that," whined Little Cardozo. "And I don't feel well, either."

  "Do your job," Big Cardozo said. "Commit yourself to doing. Don't stew over the actions of others. If you do, you'll isolate yourself and your productivity will suffer."

  "Why don't you do something," Little Cardozo said, "instead of reading that idiot article in the Police Gazette to me? That's theory for morons."

  "You fret," Big Cardozo said. "So you're still temporarily with the Murder Brigade? So what? You want to be fixed? Whatever is fixed can't move freely. Move away, float lightly through the city, think of a theory and find some facts that'll hold it up. Aren't you lucky that you can finally work alone? Others hold hands while they stumble about, but you, carried by your very own cleverness, make your individual moves, relentlessly closing in on the culprit who cowers in darkness."

  "Now, now," Little Cardozo said.

  Both Cardozos joined and got up. The unity left the canteen. It was about to do something. What had Cardozo in mind, while he slouched out of the canteen indifferently, under his untidy uncut curls, in his crumpled corduroy suit, loosely swaggering down the corridor? Coughing. Sneezing.

  Just for a moment the unity split again so that Little Cardozo could tell Big Cardozo that he was suffering from flu. He might go home. Nobody would miss him. A temporary Murder Brigade member, left quite alone?

  Big Cardozo leaned on Little Cardozo. "Get going."

  Cardozo had to take a leak. The foaming ray of liquid that connected him to a tiled wall in the toilet made him think of water. His lighter's flame reminded him of fire. The combination of the two associations evoked the file photographs of the remnants of Douwe Scherjoen. Where were the remnants found? In a dory. The dory had been confiscated and should be somewhere in the building.

  He found it, stored in a basement corner. The brand name was still visible. LOWE. Cardozo deciphered the serial number pressed into a small copper plate, welded inside the bow. The dory looked old. Would he find out who sold that brand of boat, in a remote past, to some forgotten client? How many times would the dory have changed owners in between? Stolen? Given away? Lost and found? Where had it been found last? In the Inner Harbor. He checked the large wall map near the main entrance of the building. The Inner Harbor ends at Prince Henry Quay. Cardozo's roaming finger rubbed pink quays, extended into blue water. Boats are moored to quays.

  He caught a streetcar. He walked up and down all quays, and boarded all vessels attached to the quays. Had anyone lost a dory?

  "Not
me," a skipper said, "but over there, in the corner where the garbage floats, there used to be a dory, and it isn't there now. Filched by the boys who come here to annoy us. Useless dory, damaged, no good to anyone. It was tied up with a bit of red wire."

  So far, so good. The dory in Headquarters' basement had some red wire attached to the bow. He thanked the skipper. "Righto," the skipper said.

  Cardozo sat on a rotten post. He was the killer. He absolutely loathed Douwe Scherjoen. He closed his eyes to darken his view, so that it might be night, cloudy, pitch black all around. He had shot Douwe a few minutes ago, but he wasn't quite done. Douwe's corpse was in the way. Had he committed murder in a frenzy of hatred? Probably not. Angry amateurs will shoot a man in the chest. He had shot Douwe intelligently, according to a premeditated plan, from the rear, of course. Was the dory so that he wouldn't have to drag the corpse a great distance?

  Or had fate played tricks on him and complicated the scheme? Fate's often unreasonable chaos may upset the best of plans. Very well, the dory was here, but he hadn't brought a sufficient quantity of gasoline. No, he hadn't thought of bringing any gasoline at all, and would have to find it now, but where? Suck it from a car's tank through a tube? Where would he get the tube? Nobody ever carries a tube. Had he ripped it off a cookstove somewhere? Cookstoves are found in kitchens. Was his kitchen close by, in his home?

  Close by. Cardozo opened his eyes. His gaze wandered over the long row of houses on Prince Henry Quay. There would be a number of side streets too. If the suspect lived in the neighborhood, Cardozo was now faced with a multitude of suspects. Add to that all the skippers of the vessels moored nearby.

  Was he getting anywhere? He was getting hungry.

  At this stage of an investigation, any point is a starting point, Cardozo thought as he tripped over the high threshold of a small Chinese restaurant called Wo Hop. Mister Hop caught his prospective client and guided him to a table. Cardozo read the specials on the menu. Fried noodles. Fried rice.

  "Fried noodles," Cardozo said. "Beer."

  The restaurant consisted of a bare room furnished with plastic chairs and tables. Neon light reflected from Hop's shaven skull. The other customers were longhaired louts with skin diseases, silently picking scabs when they weren't coughing or sneezing. In the back of the room, young Chinese men in loud shirts conducted a conversation in which nouns were musically stretched, and then abruptly swallowed. Car-dozo noticed their crewcuts and staccato movements. Karate types, he thought.