Outsider in Amsterdam ac-1

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "A warrior," de Gier said.

  "Well," the detective said, as if he were apologizing, "my friends were killed over there and I have been in a hospital for a while, with a splinter of a shell in my leg, a splinter of a Dutch shell, of course. But it was another sort of life. Not monotonous at all."

  "This may be very exciting," de Gier said. "Perhaps you'll be climbing about on the roof of a house in the Vossiusstraat tonight."

  "That'll be fun," the detective said, "providing a spectacle for the hippies in the Vondelpark. It may stop them from picking their noses, for a while anyway."

  But they, found no one at the Vossiusstraat. They showed photographs to the neighbors. The neighbors recognized one of the photographs.

  "Moved out a long time ago," they said.

  "Without registering their new address," one of the detectives said. "That's one offense we can prove."

  Grijpstra chuckled and patted the eager young man on the shoulder. "We can't arrest him for an offense, and the fine is ten guilders."

  De Gier parked the car close to the Leliegracht and went off on his own to have a look at the house. A lovely gable house, recently restored by the -city's architects and resplendent in its seventeenth-century luster.

  He returned to the car and reported.

  "Those houses have small gardens in the rear," Grijpstra said. "Two of us will have to watch from there." He looked at the detectives on the back seat.

  "All right," said the smaller of the two, "we'll ask the neighbors for permission. Don't forget to let us know when it's all over, or we'll be sitting there until tomorrow morning. It has happened before."

  De Gier rang the bell and the door opened at once. He saw a wide-shouldered young man at the top of the stairs. A long-haired young man, a luxurious growth of shining golden hair hanging down to his shoulders.

  "Yes?"

  "Police. Can we come in a minute?"

  "Do you have a warrant?" the young man asked.

  "No," said de Gier, "but we can fetch one in a minute. My colleague will wait here for me to come back with it."

  The young man thought for a few seconds.

  "No," he said. "I don't want to inconvenience your colleague. Please come in."

  Grijpstra looked about him in the living room and admired what he saw. The city's architects were top notch, no doubt about it. Thick oak beams, elaborate wood-sculpture on the windows and windowsills. The aristocratic style of the past had come to life again.

  He introduced himself to the young man and his friend, who had been watching TV, but had switched the set off and got up to greet the guests.

  "Beuzekom," the young man with the golden hair said, "but I can safely assume that you are already aware of my name. And this is my friend, Ringma."

  "Please sit down," Ringma said, and pointed at a low couch with an inviting smile. Ringma was a little fellow with a rat's face; he was going bald but he had allowed the fringe on his head to grow and the spare hairs partly covered his small ears.

  Grijpstra sat down and looked longingly at the bar that occupied a corner of the room. Beuzekom stood behind the bar.

  "What can I offer you?"

  "Something nonalcoholic," Grijpstra said.

  "Lemonade? Tonic? Limejuice ice and water?"

  "Lemonade," Grijpstra said.

  Beuzekom cut two lemons and squeezed them with a practiced gesture using a small strainer. Ice cubes tinkled. A silver stirring ladle appeared as if by magic. The glass was served on a small antique tray, solid silver.

  "Have you ever been a barman?" asked de Gier, who had been watching the performance with interest.

  Beuzekom smiled. "Can you see it? You are right. As a student I used to make some money during the holidays. I started as a lavatory scraper on a cruise ship, I was promoted to cabin steward on the second trip and became barman on the third. Nice work, and it brought in a little pocket money as well. Would you like a lemonade, too?"

  "Yes, please," de Gier said.

  "I hope you don't mind if we drink something a little stronger?"

  Beuzekom poured two glasses from a bottle of an expensive brand of whisky.

  "Neat?" he asked Ringma.

  "On the rocks," Ringma said.

  "And what can we do for you two gentlemen?" Beuzekom asked. He had sat down, in a highbacked velvet-covered chair and smiled down on his guests.

  "The fellow has charm," de Gier thought. "It pours out of him. It requires an effort of will to dislike him."

  De Gier made an effort of will.

  "You have been convicted of drug dealing," Grijpstra said, put his glass down, pursed his lips and paused.

  "That's correct," Beuzekom said, after a while. "The police are well informed. Three months in jail, one suspended. Ringma was acquitted for lack of proof. He did the housekeeping while I was away. But that's a year ago now, I had almost forgotten."

  "And now there is some indication," Grijpstra said, "that you are back in the business. You may have been buying hash, packed in small casks. Hash that looks like mizo-soup paste. According to the information we received you picked up the merchandise yourself, in a house at the Haarlemmer Houttuinen, property of Piet Verboom, now deceased."

  Beuzekom nodded, gulped his drink down, and shivered. "First drink today," he said. "Always gives me the shivers."

  The room gradually filled itself with a nervous silence. Its occupants merely looked at each other.

  Beuzekom poured himself another drink. "Your information is correct, up to a point. I did buy some mizosoup paste from Verboom for he was overstocked. I thought I might be able to sell it to other restaurants. But so far I haven't had any luck, not yet anyway. There are some restaurants in The Hague I have to try. I bought five casks and I still have five casks. They are here, in the house. Would you like to see them?"

  "Damn," thought de Gier, who had been studying Ringma's face meanwhile. Ringma's eyes had twinkled.

  "I'd like to see them," Grijpstra said.

  "Give us a hand, Ringma," Beuzekom said and together they rolled five little casks into the room. They hadn't been opened and had been wound with thick rope.

  "Shall we open them up?"

  Grijpstra nodded.

  "Don't," Ringma said. "Once we have opened them we can't sell them anymore. They are nicely closed and that rope looks very decorative. I'll never be able to make them look the way they look now. I am no Japanese."

  "Don't be a bore," Beuzekom said. "Open them up yourself and be careful about it. Maybe you can get them back into their original state afterwards. If the police think that they contain hash they'll keep on thinking it unless they have been proved wrong. You know there is no hash in the casks, and I know there is no hash in the casks, but what matters now is that the police will know there is no hash in the casks."

  "All right," Ringma said, and began to loosen the knots as carefully as he could. It took him a few minutes to open the first cask.

  De Gier dug into its contents with a spoon and tasted it. It was no hash. He dug a hole into the paste and Beuzekom produced a long meatfork so that de Gier could get right to the bottom.

  Meanwhile Ringma opened the other four casks.

  "Convinced?" Beuzekom asked in the end.

  "Can we search the house?" Grijpstra asked.

  "But of course," Ringma said. "We have nothing to hide. But don't make a mess, please. I'll have to tidy it all up again if you do."

  "You are the woman about the house?" de Gier asked.

  Ringma giggled. "Yes."

  They didn't find anything except cupboards full of expensive clothes, antique furniture, luxurious wall-to-wall carpets, and a few paintings of the lesser old masters.

  "Let's give in," Grijpstra said. "Can you explain that mizo-soup business?"

  "No," de Gier said.

  "It's illogical," Grijpstra said. "What would these men do with the mizo-soup paste? And what happened to the rest of it? Didn't those Hindist Society people tell us that Piet sold the
m various lots of twenty casks each? Perhaps we can prove the sale, there should be purchase invoices in Piet's bookkeeping files. We might get some statements signed by those boys in the houseboat. If Johan and Eduard declare that Piet Verboom didn't use more than one cask a month in his restaurant and that he sold his surplus and that these men here were the buyers…"

  De Gier wasn't impressed.

  "It will never hold in court if the public prosecutor would allow it to get into court. All right, so these men bought mizo soup from Piet. Well, they still have it don't they? And who cares about mizo soup anyway? If we want to make it stick we have to produce evidence of dealing in drugs."

  "Yes," Grijpstra said thoughtfully. "Hash is only a soft drug but sixty casks of it is a lot of soft drug. The prosecutor would be very interested. But where are the sixty casks? These five we found were planted here, in case we would ever discover the link between these dealers and Piet's Society. Mizo soup? Sure, here is mizo soup. The real stuff must have been sold as fast as it got here, maybe it never got here. Maybe they have another address, the inner city if full of little cellars."

  "Well," Beuzekom asked when the detectives had returned to the living room, "did you find anything?"

  "No," Grijpstra said.

  "So you must be satisfied that we are in the clear. Another lemonade?"

  "Not for me," Grijpstra said.

  "I'll have a drink," de Gier said. "You go home, Grijpstra. I think I'll have another little chat with Mr. Beuzekom and his friend."

  He winked at Grijpstra behind Beuzekom's back.

  "All right," Grijpstra said. "I'll see you in the morning. Try and be on time. It can be done, you know, you mustn't give up. It's all a matter of habit."

  Beuzekom had relaxed in his velvet chair and Ringma was stretched out on the settee. Grijpstra had been gone for more than two hours. Of the two bottles on the bar one was empty and one half full.

  "Are you allowed to drink when you are on duty?" Beuzekom asked. He spoke with some difficulty but his grammar was still impeccable.

  "I am not on duty now," de Gier said. "I only work eight hours a day, just like everybody else. I am visiting, visiting good friends."

  "Ha," Ringma said, "filthy fuzz!"

  "Now, now," Beuzekom said, "be nice to the guests, little mate. Maybe this gentleman is filthy fuzz but now he is here at our invitation. You can call him names when you meet him in the street. 'Fascist,' or 'SS man,' that sort of thing, and then run for it."

  Ringma began to cackle.

  "Mizo soup hahaha," Ringma cackled, "and they are looking for hash. They are suckers, aren't they Beuz?"

  "Shut up, little mate," Beuzekom said. "We don't even know what the gentleman are looking for. And you must respect another fellow's job. If you hadn't been so lazy at school you might have joined the police yourself."

  "Come off it," Ringma cackled and fell off the settee.

  De Gier waited until Ringma's cramps had subsided.

  "What you told me is very interesting," de Gier said, "the story of your life I mean. So you graduated in psychology, did you?"

  "Yes," Beuzekom said, "and I graduated in the shortest possible number of years. I was, the professors said, a remarkably intelligent student. But I never got a job. Well, I did get a sort of job, assistant to somebody's assistant, at about the same pay a bus driver gets. So I got myself fired. I hadn't studied to become a clerk."

  "So you aren't working now," de Gier said.

  "No," Beuzekom said, "I don't work. I get unemployment pay, eighty percent of my last wage."

  "Nonsense," de Gier said, "this is an expensive house and you are living in style."

  "Part of a house," Beuzekom corrected.

  "An expensive part of a house," de Gier repeated. "Sorry. But it is expensive. High rent. And you must have things in it worth at least fifty thousand."

  "Where?" Ringma asked. He jumped off his settee and began to run around the room. "Where? Where? Fifty red backs. You see fifty red backs anywhere Beuz?"

  "Easy now," Beuzekom said. "We don't have fifty thousand worth of things in the house. Our guest is dreaming aloud."

  "Balls," de Gier said. "Color TV, three thousand at least, antique furniture, restored, worth twenty thousand, carpets worth eight, old paintings worth fifteen. Clothes, at least five. I am over fifty thousand already, do you want me to go on?"

  "You can go on forever," Beuzekom said, "but you talk rubbish. Ten thousand would just about cover the lot. The TV was bought new but I got a nice discount. The other stuff was all bought at auctions, or at factory prices, or in some other intelligent way. You don't think I am the type who allows himself to be robbed by shopkeepers do you? You can save about seventy percent markup if you know how to go about it."

  "Maybe you can save thirty percent," de Gier said, "and then I can still count up to fifty thousand in this house."

  "I inherited some money from my father," Beuzekom said.

  "Are you working, Ringma?" de Gier asked.

  Beuzekom had gone to the bar to fill his glass again and turned around halfway.

  "I am a pimp, sir," he said, "but don't tell anyone. My little mate earns a lot of money. But not illegally, he even declares his income. We occasionally have a sugar uncle who visits our little mate. How much did you write in your taxform last year, Ringma?"

  "Twenty," Ringma said.

  "So you see?" Beuzekom asked. "My nice little self-employed charmer. Twenty red backs he earned, all with his little bottom. And some of it we spent on furniture and what have you, and it's all around you. We don't deal in drugs. Drugs are dangerous. You people caught me once. I don't like being caught. I am still a dealer, but not in drugs."

  "Aren't you driving around in a little Mercedes bus?" de Gier asked. "Those buses aren't cheap, you know."

  "Don't be an utter bore," Beuzekom said. "Your lot never know where to stop. On and on and on and on. That Mercedes camper is in my brother's name. He bought the bus for his holidays but his garage is full, you can't put three cars into one garage. So I have the bus when he doesn't need her for his holidays. I have a garage and I look after the car. I am his only brother and he likes me. Do you want to see the car's registration?"

  "Please," de Gier said.

  Beuzekom lost his temper.

  "All right, I'll show it to you. But after that you can clear out. I haven't done anything, I won't do anything and I'll never do anything that would land me in jail again. I didn't get my brains for nothing. I deal in antique furniture, in Persian rugs, in odd lots, in anything that'll give me a good profit. Within a year I'll register my business. I have been at it for more than a year now and I am a hardworking and patient man. The turnover is growing. I thought you were a pleasant fellow when you came in and you have your job to do but you shouldn't make an ass of yourself."

  "You can give me another drink," de Gier said and held up his glass.

  "I'd like to shuffle around for a bit," Ringma said. "You like music, filthy fuzz?"

  "Yes," de Gier said.

  "Well, if you do, you can select your own tune," Ringma said and pointed at the lowest shelf of the bookcase that contained several feet of stacked records.

  De Gier took his glass to the bookcase, sat down, and looked through the records. He took his time and Beuzekom filled his glass again. De Gier selected a Japanese record, showing a picture of a fluteplayer on its cover.

  The flute was a bamboo flute and the music very delicate. It seemed as if its notes were altogether different from the notes de Gier could abstract from his own metal flute. De Gier remembered that he had read about bamboo flutes. Their insides cannot be calculated and each flute has its individual sound, depending on the uneven parts inside the naturally formed bamboo, even depending on the thin hairs and splinters waving about with each breath of air.

  De Gier stretched out on the thick carpet and listened to the flute. He was drunk. He hadn't had much to eat that day, sandwiches at the police canteen and a bowl of hot noo
dles at a Chinese restaurant. The seven glasses of whisky had changed his perception. The flute made him tremble a little. He saw a temple and a whisp of a girl, dancing on a balcony, the night was very black behind her but some mysterious light showed up her movements. And the flute went on. The vision became so real that he surrendered completely to it, leaving the world of crime and misery in which he had plodded all day, all year, all his life it seemed. His thoughts were very quick it seemed, clicking through his brain. He switched off his thoughts and returned to the vision. A temple, a dancing girl on its balcony and he, the observer. He had to bundle what little force he could muster to return to the room of the house in Amsterdam. He was a detective again, investigating a crime, questioning two suspects in their own surroundings, only interested in information and prepared to perform a little act to get close to the source of the required information. He opened his eyes and sat up.

  He saw Ringma dance. Beuzekom had switched off the lights of the room and only the light of the streetlamps filtering through the curtains lit the frail little body. Of Ringma's ratface and balding head nothing could be seen. Ringma danced, using small steps, hardly lifting his feet. Suddenly he crouched, making himself very small, and jumped. He jumped high, nearly touching the ceiling and landed elasticly. He stood still and started a movement of his arms and hands, silhouetting against the white curtains. Ringma was a doll, a bewitched doll moving mechanically, drawing life from someone else. De Gier looked around and saw Beuzekom, still standing behind the bar, staring fixedly at his little friend.

  The flute broke halfway through a note, there was the metal sound of a gong suddenly struck, the record stopped and Ringma collapsed.

  Beuzekom walked over to his friend and patted him softly on the head. "My little mate used to be a ballet dancer once," he said to de Gier.

  "Let's have a drink," Ringma said hoarsely, "a tiny little drink, Beuz."

  Beuzekom poured him a small whisky.

  "That was very good," de Gier said.

  After a few minutes the conversation started again.

  Beuzekom had lit a thick church candle and was observing his visitor.

  "How much do you make in the police?" he asked.

  "Not much," de Gier answered.