The Perfidious Parrot Read online

  “Professor Mindera said all that?” de Gier asked.

  “The latter part I said,” said the commissaris.

  The Russian paperwork was unbelievably complicated but Peter Ambagt learned how to fill in the forms. After a year of regular business the old man placed an enormous order. A fleet of chartered tankers filled up in Leningrad. He didn’t apply for a letter of credit and blamed the paperwork delay on his banks. The loaded tankers were taking up valuable Leningrad harbor space. Peter Ambagt telephoned his Russian suppliers: hadn’t he always paid, wasn’t he trustworthy, the papers were in the mail. “Please send off your tankers. Please? Pretty please?”

  “Da,” the Russians said. “Yes.”

  Russian tugs pulled the tankers to sea. Off went the oil fleet.

  “Ah,” de Gier said, thinking ahead. “So Ambagt & Son were paid by the South Africans as soon as the tankers hit Capetown but Ambagt and Son never paid the Russians. A fortune was made for their cost was zero. But didn’t they run a risk here? Didn’t Russia send Ivans?”

  “Ivans?” Grijpstra asked.

  “Ivan Bondsky,” the commissaris said. “Ivan shoot-the-pheasant-feather-of-my-hatsky.”

  “What?” Grijpstra asked.

  “But there was a change of regime in Moscow,” the commissaris answered his own question. “No more Ivans.” He laughed. “And that’s how Ambagt & Son could purchase a thirty million dollar FEADship.”

  Grijpstra pointed an accusing finger at the commissaris. “Shot a feather off your head? Didn’t you just say that? Where did that happen? While you were walking behind the windmills at Abcoude? In the nature reserve?” Grijpstra’s heavy jowls trembled with fury. “So K&K got you too! Used that idiotic Kalshnikov that hangs above the fireplace at their Amstel apartment.”

  De Gier’s face also flushed with anger. “An untrustworthy weapon. Shoots large caliber bullets too.” De Gier’s finger pointed accusingly. “You never told us. That’s not good, sir.”

  “We’ll get the little fuckers,” Grijpstra said.

  “Now, now, gentlemen,” the commissaris soothed. “Personal weaknesses cannot be taken care of on their own levels. We know that. Yes?” He peered over his little round glasses. “You, de Gier, as a student of Buddhism, and lately Hinduism, is it? Yes. Well, as a student of eastern philosophies you should know by now that Ketchup and Karate will not raise their level of being by anything we can do to them. Only their own effort, which is part of their own quest for insight, may, as a side effect, make them decent. Knowing that we will set our attitudes aside and use K&K purely for their talents.”

  “For their egotistic ruthlessness,” de Gier said.

  The commissaris smiled. “Absolutely.”

  “I understand,” de Gier said.

  “He understands nothing, sir,” Grijpstra said.

  “Ambagt & Son don’t understand anything either,” the commissaris said, “and ignorance makes their practices worse. Figure for yourself. In Bermuda they had a nice villa with a pool and a few expensive hobbies maybe, nothing that couldn’t be financed with an easily produced cash flow. Was that enough?”

  “Enough is too much,” Grijpstra said. “Nellie keeps saying that. She doesn’t even want me to buy her flowers.”

  “Less is better,” de Gier said.

  “You know that now, do you?” the commissaris asked. He peered over his glasses again. “That’s nice. But did the Ambagts? I don’t think so. Bermuda was near-heaven but they were still paying some taxes. A FEADship that happened to dock in Bermuda harbor gave them the idea they could improve their independence.”

  Grijpstra looked unhappy. “Nellie gave the car I bought her to her sister. She got a used bicycle, rides it to keep her weight down.”

  “Used bikes are mostly stolen,” de Gier said.

  Grijpstra nodded. “Maybe she stole it herself. She used to do that. Stole them from the market where thieves sold stolen bikes.”

  “Now,” the commissaris said. “As soon as Ambagt & Son had invested a sizable part of their income in the Admiraal Rodney the necessity to augment their cash flow increased.” The commissaris nodded triumphantly. “See? My cousin who’s in shipping says that a vessel’s upkeep is about fifteen percent of its purchase price a year. That’s a lot more than what their Bermuda villa was costing. Another five million a year to make somehow, and their position in the oil market deteriorating.”

  “Cuba won’t pay too well,” de Gier said, “and Iran won’t supply too well.”

  “With Carl and Peter in the middle,” Grijpstra said.

  “And now,” the commissaris said, “the Ambagts want us to recoup the losses caused by the piracy of the uninsured cargo of their chartered supertanker Sibylle.”

  “And offer us one miserable million,” Grijpstra said sadly.

  “I vote that, considering the way we have been treated so far, we double our fee,” de Gier said.

  “Enough is too little?” the commissaris asked. “De Gier, I want you to order tickets right now, Amsterdam to Miami, open returns, first class, and make sure Grijpstra’s Cadillac is waiting in Miami. CD player included. We leave tomorrow.” The commissaris looked unhappy. “Double fee? Really, Rinus. Greed. You of all people.”

  “Vengeance,” de Gier said loudly. “Not greed.”

  Vengeance was unacceptable too, Grijpstra said. How could de Gier feel a need for revenge, surely not after all his meditations in the loft, his spiritual reading, the communication with magical herbs. Was Grijpstra to conclude that the method de Gier was using, the sadhana as he called it, did not work? Could Grijpstra assume that his own way of behaving normally, staying within parameters dictated by common sense.…

  “You don’t want to get even?” de Gier asked.

  “With Ketchup and Karate?” Sure enough Grijpstra wanted to get even. “We’ll get them, Rinus.” Grijpstra didn’t mind the ordinary beating de Gier had gotten, and the feather off the commissaris’s hat, well now, that wasn’t too bad was it? But he himself had almost drowned in unspeakably filthy IJ river water.

  “There are moments,” the commissaris said, “that I expect just a little more of you two.”

  Grijpstra leaned toward the commissaris. “Don’t you feel intimidated, sir?” De Gier touched the commissaris’s arm. “They did use a Russian assault rifle on you, sir.”

  “Come to think of it,” the commissaris said while he cleaned his spectacles, “they did make me nervous there, just for a moment.”

  9

  VULTURES CIRCLE MOUNT TRASHMORE

  Black-winged yellow-billed vultures followed the blue jeep below with interest. Colombians living in Key West, Florida, call the vultures chulos, the same word they use for bandits.

  “Stewy” Stewart-Wynne looked up. His jeep had been rented only minutes ago from an office in the golden hill’s shadow. Florida is flat but Key West is proud of her homemade mountain. It is a bother to transport garbage produced by some fifty thousand Key Westers to Miami, so the refuse is used to manufacture a landmark, Mount Trashmore, tirelessly pushed up by growling tractors that cover the garbage with sun-reflecting sand. Some is exposed and contains rotten food. The vultures peck and tear around the ever-busy tractors. Their stomachs filled, they spread wide wings, hop away from the steep slopes and use thermals to leisurely soar for hours. Vultures are lazy. They hardly move their wings.

  “Hello, foul-faced gobblers of carrion,” the Englishman joked from his open jeep. “Is my perfumed presence offensive to you?” He was in a good mood. He had just finished his last business project. A couple of more months of gazing out of the window back at the London office and Stewy would retire. After that there would be nothing but contentment. Walk the dog three times a day in spacious Hyde Park, without forgetting bucket and spade—Jasper was a volume crapper—water the flowers in his little solarium once a day, take care of the stuck-to-the-fridge shopping list once a week, that would be it for the duration. Anne would continue to suck oxygen from a steel bottle
, and smoke cigarettes of course. Fortunately she wasn’t much bother. Waiting for eternity, Anne would keep smoking while Jasper the dog jerked and dreamed and Stewy, well, he would be just fine he expected. Read The Times, watch some movies, listen to comedians on the BBC, have a half pint of bitter at the pub around the corner.

  Fine by me, Stewy thought. Fine by me.

  “Stewy, old boy,” the boss had said. “I hear the Caribbean is one of your former stomping grounds. It seems we have a little trouble there. You might go out there and take a look. What say, Stewy?”

  “Yes sir,” Stewy said.

  “Agent” (his official work title) Stewart-Wynne was in luck that day. Originally employed by the British financial giant Quadrant Pty. Ltd. as an investigator of dubious insurance claims he had, due to age and an unwillingness to become “computer literate,” been told to “take things lightly.” And now he was back in the field. Facing adventure. He hadn’t told his boss that he knew almost nothing about the Antilles, except for what he had noticed during a visit to Anguilla. Anne could still walk then, it had been a few years ago. A brief holiday spent in a bed & breakfast. The owner of the ramshackle former colonial “villa,” Jonathan, had made an impression. The tall distinguished looking black man was supposed to be a “seer” but behaved normally enough, except for conducting ceremonies with believers. Chickens were killed, there was a bonfire, the congregation dressed up and Jonathan showed the whites of his eyes, mumbled, sang, shook a rattle, banged a drum, a choir of young girls singing rhythmic refrains behind him. The music, and the general performance, reminded Stewy of rap with a touch of Sting. He had, in spite of British arrogance, become fascinated by his host, however.

  On his return to Anguilla, he found the bed & breakfast still there. Stewy, at company’s expense, took the best room. He told Jonathan about his investigation. Jonathan helped out. The enquiry pointed at the nearby island of St. Maarten. Another lead took Stewart-Wynne to its twin island of St. Eustatius. All lines of enquiry met in Key West. Stewy checked Key West out. It wasn’t necessary because enough proof had been obtained and even recorded. He could have returned to London and wrapped things up but his expenses were well within budget, so why not celebrate to top this thing off? Closing his career, Agent Stewart-Wynne sneaked in a nice secret week of vacation. His conscience was clear. This was the final occasion for realizing some of his fantasies. “I am a cowboy,” Agent Stewart-Wynne shouted, at the wheel of his brand new bright blue rented all-American jeep. “I am John Wayne and I do things with boys.”

  The real John Wayne would do nothing of the kind, Stewy knew that, but his John Wayne did what master Stewart-Wynne dictated. And if his John Wayne had to live in Key West’s four star Eggemoggin Hotel, well, there the splendid fellow stayed.

  Stewart-Wynne’s personality had many aspects. At St. Maarten and St. Eustatius he had enjoyed being a hiker, observing nature. On the small island of Anguilla he was the British odd man out, riding a donkey. Perhaps his personality had split because Anne wasn’t with him this time. His wife was his anchor. Anguilla’s seer, Jonathan, had raised that possibility during a long night’s dialogue where much marijuana was burned. Jonathan had suggested Stewart-Wynne should use all his personas. Jonathan compared the so-far dull British middle-class gent to an airplane found on Anguilla. The Cessna had crashed and broken a wing. The pilot disappeared, probably after stealing a sailboat. Pleased Anguilla constables had confiscated a consignment of cannabis products found in the airplane. The useless plane stood at the side of the road. Jonathan owned a melon field and his cart had broken down which was a nuisance for the field was at the other side of a three-mile-long road.

  Jonathan unscrewed the Cessna’s wings, hitched his donkey to the plane, loaded it with melons and saved himself some trouble by hauling his products to the farmer’s market. Then the donkey hurt a leg. A friendly mechanic got the plane’s engine going so the next load of melons was motored to market. “I could also,” Jonathan told Stewart-Wynne, “fly the melons to market. I still have the Cessna’s wings and there is enough technology on Anguilla to get them reattached. All the airplane’s capacity was there, just as you, as a human being, have all human capacities in you too.”

  “Is that so?” asked Stewart-Wynne politely.

  That was so. The human being, Jonathan proposed, has infinite possibilities.

  “Is that so?”

  That was so, too. The Cessna did not have to fly melons a short distance away however and Stewart-Wynne, for the moment, did not have to use his supernatural gifts. There were times, however, said Jonathan, where we need all our talents, “Like you will, Mistah Stewy, in Key West, in the very near future.”

  “How do you know, Mistah Jonathan?”

  Jonathan had been busy with a chicken again, and pieces of cloth, and his drums and rattles, had danced around a fire in a white robe at full moon while the female choir sang musical backdrop.

  “Wonderful nonsense,” Stewy thought, driving under circling vultures in his rental jeep on his way to the center of Key West where he was to airmail a postcard to Anne and have a leisurely and superb dinner afterward, in Key West’s fine restaurant, Lobster Lateta. Certain to be quite expensive, and so what, one might ask?

  Stewy wasn’t pressed to inform Quadrant Ltd. in London. The report was in his head and the cassette was in his hat.

  The vultures, meanwhile, observed the doomed cowboy. Vultures recognize potential dead flesh. Stewy had packaged his in tall snakeskin boots, with silver toes and high rubber heels, tight jeans, a plaid linen dress shirt and a two-gallon hat. Stewy intended to leave those clothes in the hotel; Anne would be too amused if she were to see them in his suitcase. She might tell his boss at Quadrant. The boss would be too amused too.

  He saw, in his rear mirror, a dented Chevrolet, an early seventies model, a semi-wreck, the type used by beach bums. Stewy remembered he had seen the vehicle before, driven by the same long-haired guy. A junkie, Stewart-Wynne thought. A drunk. People like the Chevy driver were deliberately avoiding chances of work. Most Key West hotels and restaurants displayed HELP WANTED signs. A shame really that the driver of the car behind him had fouled up his life almost as if on purpose. Now there was someone the vultures above should be interested in.

  Always something, Stewart-Wynne thought angrily. Now why was he being followed by a bad guy? Finally, at the end of his career, about to realize a little harmless dream, a man finds himself faced by possible new trouble. Stewy recalled another clever saying produced by Jonathan. Life is not one damned thing after another, no, it’s the same damned thing over and over again, the same desire to fearfully hold on to pleasurable moments.

  He decided to disregard the circling birds of carrion, the pervasive sweetly foul stench wafted down from Mount Trashmore, the rust bucket-driving bad guy. Besides, his rear mirror had emptied. The bum had probably taken a side road. Stewart-Wynne was John Wayne again.

  “Use all your aspects,” Jonathan of Anguilla had said, “in Key West you will need them.”

  John Wayne needed nothing, except a gourmet meal and, after that, drinks, in a trendy bar.

  Stewy parked the jeep in front of the Key West post office on Whitehead Street. He had bought a picture postcard for Anne. The picture showed the last Floridian Native American chief, Billy Bowlegs, about to shoot, through the chest, an officer of the ever-victorious American cavalry. Anne, anti-American since Vietnam, enjoyed contemporary Indians versus Whites movies. She would giggle, in between smoking and coughing, whenever a representative of the dominant white race bit the dust while the noble Indians smiled wisely. Billy Bowlegs had bitten the dust himself at the time but on the picture postcard he was allowed to win. The American officer who was about to be killed looked just like John Wayne.

  While he nimbly jumped out of the jeep Stewy saw a dead sparrow, resting on its beak. It happened that the parking lot was empty. In the absence of vehicles the eye automatically focused on the little animal corpse. The sparrow
, leaning forward, appeared to be both humorous and pathetic. The dead bird was spotlighted by sun rays breaking through the foliage of palms. It was late in the afternoon, and the low incoming sunlight, fragmented and contorted by the exhaust fumes of passing traffic, seemed shot through with blood.

  John Wayne sucked in his belly behind his snakeskin belt, tipped his huge hat over his eyes and, postcard in hand, swaggered lankily past the dramatically illuminated dead sparrow.

  Ominous omens everywhere. “Use all your aspects,” seer Jonathan had warned.

  Behind victim Stewart-Wynne the Chevy’s long-haired driver eased his muscular body quickly beneath Stewart-Wynne’s parked jeep. In his hand glistened a set of spanners and a pair of pliers. Stewy noticed nothing.

  10

  AMERICAN SCENES

  The commissaris, Grijpstra, and de Gier, were waved goodbye to at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport by Katrien, Nellie and Sayukta. They had a pleasant flight with good weather during take-off and landing, and thunderstorms in-between that they could look down on.

  Their reserved Cadillac waited at Miami Airport. The Avis girl explained how to get out of Miami and onto Route 1 to the Florida Keys and ultimately to Key West. Her Haitian-French accent was so attractive that the nodding listeners never took in a word. They made a number of wrong turns and reached Miami’s back side where de Gier had to drive artfully to avoid unhappy kids and the beer cans they were throwing. The commissaris, in the rear, ignoring de Gier’s cursing and Grijpstra’s wails, tried to read the Avis road map. The Cadillac was followed by a van filled with young adults with felted hair, robbers according to Grijpstra, tourist-killers, armed to the teeth. The tension of the chase took the detectives into their past.