They were driving through Amsterdam's thick late-afternoon traffic when Grijpstra touched de Gier's forearm.
"Over there, on the right, near that lamppost."
A man was staggering about, trying to reach the wall. As de Gier watched he saw the man going down on his knees, crumpling up on the pavement. The man was well dressed, about fifty years old. They were close when the man's head hit the ground. They saw the top plate of his dentures fall out; they could almost hear the click when the plastic teeth touched the stone tile.
"Drunk?" de Gier asked.
"No," Grijpstra said. "He doesn't look drunk. Ill, I would say."
De Gier felt under the dashboard for the van's microphone and switched the radio on as Grijpstra put up its volume. The radio began to crackle.
"Headquarters," de Gier said.
"Headquarters," the radio voice said. "Come in, who are you, haven't you got a number?"
"No. We are in a special car, on special duty. Van Wou Street number 187. A man has collapsed in the street. Send an ambulance and a patrol car."
"Ambulance alerted. Is that you, de Gier?"
De Gier held the microphone away from his mouth.
"Stupid bugger," he said softly, "knows my name.
I've got nothing to do with this."
"Yes, de Gier here."
"You take care of it, sergeant. We don't have a patrol car available right now. The traffic lights in your area aren't working properly and all available men are directing traffic."
"O.K.," de Gier said sadly, "we'll take care of this."
They could hear the ambulance's siren as they double-parked the van, obstructing traffic and drawing shouts from bicyclists who had to try to get around it.
"Park the van somewhere else," Grijpstra said, opening his door. "I'll see to this and you can join me later."
The man was trying to get back to his feet as Grijpstra knelt down, supporting his shoulders.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing," the man said, slurring his words. "Felt a bit faint, that's all. I'll be all right. Who are you?"
"Police."
"Leave me alone, I don't need the police."
The man picked up his teeth and put them back into his mouth. He was trying to focus his eyes but Grijpstra's bulky shape wasn't more than a blurr.
"What do we have here?" the health officer was asking, bending down to sniff the man's breath. "Haven't been drinking, have we?"
"Don't drink," the man said. "Stopped years ago, only a glass of wine with my meals, now. Felt a bit faint, that's all. Want to go home."
The health officer felt the man's pulse, counting and looking at Grijpstra at the same time.
"Police," Grijpstra said. "We happened to see this man staggering about and then he fell. What's wrong with him, you think?"
The health officer pointed at his heart and shook his head.
"Serious?"
The health officer nodded.
"You'd better go into the ambulance, sir." Grijpstra said.
"Never. I want to go home."
"Can't take him if he doesn't want to go, you know."
"Hell," Grijpstra said. "He is ill, isn't he?"
"Very ill."
"Well, take him then."
"If you say so," the health officer said, "and I'll want to see your identification."
Grijpstra produced his wallet, searched about in it and found his card.
"Adjutant H. Grijpstra, Municipal Police," the health officer read.
"What happens if we leave him here?"
"He may die and he may not. Most probably he will die."
"As bad as that?"
"Yes."
The man was on his feet now, looking perfectly all right.
"You are sure?"
"I am sure he is in very bad shape."
"Into the ambulance with you," Grijpstra snapped at the man. "I am ordering you to go into the ambulance. I am a police officer. Hurry up."
The man glared. "Are you arresting me?"
"I am ordering you to get into the ambulance."
"You'll hear about this," the man snarled. "I'll lodge a protest. I am going into the ambulance against my will. You hear?"
Together with the health officer Grijpstra pushed the man into the car.
"You'd better follow us in case we have complications," the health officer said. "You have a car with you?"
"Yes. What hospital are you taking him to?"
"Wifoelmina."
"We'll be there."
De Gier turned up and together they walked to the van. They arrived at the hospital a quarter of an hour later. The man was sitting on a wooden bench in the outpatients' department. He looked healthy and angry.
"There you are. You'll hear about this. There's nothing wrong with me. Now will you let me go home or not?"
"When the doctor has examined you," Grijpstra said, sitting down next to the man.
The man turned around to say something but seemed to change his mind, grabbing the back of his neck with both hands and going pale.
"Doctor," Grijpstra shouted. "Help! Nurse! Doctor!"
The man had fallen over his lap. A man in a white coat came rushing through a pair of swinging doors. "Here," Grijpstra shouted. The man was pulled to his legs with a nurse supporting him. The shirt was ripped off his chest and he was thumped, with all the force the man in the white coat could muster. He was thumped again and again and life seemed to return briefly before it ebbed away completely.
"Too late," the white-coated man said, looking at the body, which now slumped in Grijpstra's arms.
"Dead?" de Gier asked from the other corner of the room. The white-coated man nodded.
But another attempt was made to revive him. The body was roughly lifted and dumped on a bed. A cumbersome apparatus appeared, pushed in on wheels.
The man's tatteredshirt was torn off completely and the machine's long rubber-lined arms connected with the man's chest. The white-coated man turned dials and the body jumped, flinging its limbs away and up and down. The face seemed alive again for a brief moment but when the dial was turned again the body fell back, the eyelids no longer fluttered and the mouth sagged.
"No good," the white-coated man said, looking at Grijpstra. He pointed at a door. "In there, please. There are some forms to be filled in, about where you located him and how and so on. I'll see if we can find them. You are police officers, I assume."
"Yes!"
"I won't be a minute."
But he was several minutes, close to half an hour in fact. De Gier paced the room and Grijpstra studied a poster showing a sailboat with two men in it. The photograph was taken from a helicopter or a plane for it showed the boat from above, a white boat in a vast expanse of water. De Gier came to look at the poster too.
"Some people sail boats," de Gier said. "Other people wait in rooms."
"Yes " Grijpstra said slowly. "Two men in a boat. It looks as if they are in the middle of the ocean. They must be good friends, very close. Depending on each other. The boat is too big for one man to handle. A schooner, I think it is."
"Yes?" de Gier asked. "Are you interested in boats?"
"I am interested in solving our case, " Grijpstra said. "Do you remember that painting in Abe Rogge's room? We saw it two days ago when we were taken by his sister to see the corpse. There were two men in that boat."
"So?"
The white-coated man came in with the forms and they filled them in carefully, signing them with a flourish. "The man was a lawyer," the white-coated man said. "We identified him from the papers he had in his wallet. A pretty famous lawyer, or infamous if you prefer because he handled nasty cases only, charging a lot of money."
"Died of natural causes, did he?" de Gier asked.
"Perfectly natural," the white-coated man said. "Weak heart. Started to fibrillate. May have lived a heavy life, overworked perhaps and too many rich meals and expensive wines."
"And callgirls," de Gier said.
"Could b
e," the white-coated man said.
17
"Bert," the vegetable man said. "My name is Bert. They started calling me Uncle Bert some years ago but that isn't really my name. My name is Bert."
The detectives were shaking their host's scaly right hand in turns, mumbling their first names. "Henk," Grijpstra said. "Rinus," de Gier said. "Isaac," Cardozo said. They had arrived a little late and the house was full, filled with sweating street sellers and liquor fumes and the harsh acrid smoke of black shag tobacco rolled into handmade cigarettes. The house was close to the wide IJ River, right in the center of Amsterdam. A huge oil tanker was coming past, filling each window with its rusty bulk, honking its high-powered hooter moodily, like a lonely male whale complaining about its solitude.
"Beautiful house you've got here, Bert," Grijpstra said. "There won't be too many people in the city who've got such a clear view of the river as you have here."
"Not bad, hey? The house has been in the family since my great-grandfather built it. Could get a good price for it now, but why sell if you don't have to? The vegetable business is bringing in the daily penny and the wife and I've got a bit in the bank and no mortgage to worry about and the children all gone and settled. What ho! Like a beer?"
"Yes," Grijpstra said.
"Or a shot from the big gun? I've got some jenever that will make your ears wave and it's nice and cold too. You won't be able to drink it all night but a snort to set you off maybe?"
"I'll have a snort," Grijpstra said, "and a beer."
Bert slapped his thigh. "That's what I like. You're like me. I always want everything. If they give me a choice, that is."
"If I may," Grijpstra said, remembering the manners which his mother had once tried to hammer into him.
"You may, you may," Bert said, and steered his guest to a large trestle table loaded with bottles and plates heaped with large green gherkins, shining white onions, fat hot sausages and small dishes filled with at least ten varieties of nuts.
"Nuts," Grijpstra shouted. "Nice."
"You like nuts?"
"Favorite food. I am always buying them but they never reach my house. I eat them from the bag on the way."
"Eat them all," Bert said. "I've got more in the kitchen. Heaps of them."
Grijpstra ate, and drank, and was grateful he had been too late for his dinner and had refused Mrs.
Grijpstra's grumpy offer to warm up the cheap dried beef and glassy potatoes she had fed her family that night. The jenever burned in his throat and the nuts filled his round cheeks as he studied the room where de Gier, immaculate in a freshly laundered denim suit and a pale blue shirt, smoking a long thin cigar which accentuated his aristocratic nose and full upswept mustache, was listening to a middle-aged woman, flapping her artificial eyelashes. Cardozo was studying a TV set which showed a dainty little girl being pursued by a tall thin black-haired man through an endless and overgrown garden.
The room was as full of furniture as it was of people and it was only after his third glass of jenever that Grijpstra could accept its wallpaper, gold foil printed with roses the size of cauliflowers. There was no doubt about it, Uncle Bert was well off. It was also clear that he wasn't paying his taxes. Grijpstra turned and flattened his left hand and picked half a dozen nuts each from the ten small dishes with his right. The job took some time, and as the time passed Grijpstra thought and when Grijpstra had finished thinking he had decided that he didn't care about Uncle Bert's tax paying. His left hand was full now and he swept its contents into his mouth and chewed.
"You like music?"
Grijpstra nodded.
"I bought a record player the other day," Uncle Bert said, and pointed at a corner of the room. The corner was filled with a collection of electronic boxes, each one with its own set of knobs and dials, and connected to loudspeakers, which were pointed out one by one.
"I'll put on a record," Uncle Bert said. "The sound is magnificent. You can hear the conductor scratch his arse."
"Is that all he does?" Grijpstra asked.
"That's what he does before the music starts.
Scratch, scratch and then 'tick' (that's his baton, his little stick you know) and then VRRAMMM, that's the tuba. It's nice music, Russian. Lots of brass and then voices. They sing fighting songs. I like the Russians. They'll come one day and do away with the capitalists here. I've been a member of the party all my life. I've been to Moscow too, six times."
"What's Moscow like?" Grijpstra asked.
"Beautiful, beautiful," Uncle Bert said, and spread his large hands. "The metro stations are like palaces, and all for the people, like you and me, and they play good football down there, and the market is better."
"But you can't make a profit."
Uncle Bert's eyes clouded as he refused to let the thought in. "Yes, yes."
"No," Grijpstra said. "They won't let you make a profit. They all get the same wage. No private initiative."
"It's a good street market, and the vegetables are better. Here. I'll play that record for you."
The record started. There was too much noise around for them to hear the conductor's scratching but when the tuba broke loose the room was drowned in sound and the guests were looking at each other, still moving their mouths, dazed by the unexpected clamor and wondering what was hitting them.
"Karoompf Karoompf," the tuba grumped, and the tall thin man was still chasing the dainty girl through the endless overgrown garden, in glaring color, on a screen the size of a small tablecloth. Grijpstra put his glass down and shook his head. His spine seemed suddenly disconnected, each vertebra rattled free by the combined attack of raw alcohol and brass explosions. A choir of heavy voices had come in now, chanting a bloodcurdling song in words which seemed to consist of vowels linked by soft zylee's and zylaa's. Uncle Bert was dancing by himself in the middle of the room, his eyes closed and his mouth stretched in a smile of pure ecstatic bliss.
"What…" Grijpstra began, but he let the question go. He would have a beer, he thought, and drink it slowly.
Cardozo thumped de Gier's back. He thumped too hard and the whisky which de Gier had been holding spilled down the dress of the middle-aged woman, who was still trying to talk to him. There had been ice cubes in the whisky and the woman shrieked merrily, trying to dislodge the ice cubes between her large breasts and mouthing some inviting words which nobody could hear.
De Gier spun around, drawing back his fist, but Cardozo smiled and pointed to the window, beckoning to de Gier to follow him. They passed the TV on their way. The tall thin man had caught the girl and had his hands around her slim lovely neck. The man and the girl were still in the overgrown endless garden, close to a stone outhouse, greenish white and lit up by the moon. The girl struggled and the man leered. The warrior's chant was swelling into a gigantic crescendo and tubas, trumpets, bassoons and clarinets honked and wailed shrilly in turn, framing the voices which were coming closer and closer as the girl's lace collar was being slowly torn away.
They had arrived at the window and de Gier saw two large parrots, one gray and one red, each in its own cage.
"Listen," Cardozo shouted.
De Gier went closer to the cages. Both parrots were jumping on their narrow wooden swings. The gray parrot seemed to be singing but the other was throwing up.
"He is puking," de Gier shouted.
"Nope. He is only making the sound. Uncle Bert told me. Uncle Bert was sick some days ago and the red parrot has been imitating him ever since. He does it very well, I think. Listen."
But de Gier had escaped. He didn't want to hear a parrot vomit. He was in the corridor, away from the noise, wiping his face with his handkerchief.
"I am getting drunk," de Gier thought. "I don't want to get drunk. Must drink water from now on. Lemonade. Cola. Anything."
There was a telephone in the corridor and he dialed his own number, steadying himself against the wall with his other hand.
"This is the house of Mr. de Gier," the telephone said.
&
nbsp; "Esther?"
"Rinus."
"I am glad you came. I am at a mad party but I'll try to get home as quick as I can. How are you feeling?"
"Fine," Esther's low voice said. "I am waiting for you. Oliver has vomited all over the house. He must have been eating the geranium leaves, but I have cleared it all up now. He was asleep on my lap when you phoned."
"He always eats the geranium leaves. I am sorry he made a mess."
"I don't mind, Rinus. Will you be very long? Are you drunk?"
"I will be if I go on drinking but I won't. I'll be as quick as I can. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't work."
"Do you love me?"
"Yes. I love you. I love you more than I have ever loved anything or anybody. I love you more than I love Oliver. I'll marry you if you want me to."
He was still wiping his face with his handkerchief.
"You say that to all the girls."
"I've never said it before in my life."
"You say that to all the girls too."
"No, no. I have never said it. I've always explained that I don't want to marry, before I got too close. And I didn't want to marry. Now I do."
"You are crazy."
"Yes."
"Come home quickly."
"Yes, dear," de Gier said and hung up.
"Talking business?" Louis Zilver asked. He had just come into the corridor. Zilver was shaking his head, vainly trying to get rid of the noise in the room.
"Some party," de Gier said. "They are driving me mad in there. Are their parties always like that?"
"First time I have been to a party outside Abe Rogge's house for a long time. Abe's parties were always well organized, and he would have live music. A few jazz musicians who followed the mood of the evening, not like this canned stuff they are pouring out now. And the drinking was slower. They fill up your glass in here when the last drop is still on your lips. I haven't been going for more than an hour and I am sloshed already."
"They scare me in there," de Gier said. "I had to get away for a minute and speak to some sane person."
"I am sane," Zilver said. "Talk to me. You said they scare you. Do you really get scared sometimes?"
"Often."
"Anything in particular that scares you?"
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