The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  De Gier’s rage continued.

  “Okay,” Karate said, “Something else. Remember what you said about Hieronymus Bosch? That wasn’t nice you know.”

  De Gier forced his mouth to form and emit words. “As soon as I get out of here I’ll throw you off Easter Dock.”

  “Comparing us to Hieronymus Bosch imagery,” Karate said.

  “Ketchup too,” de Gier said. “Off Easter Dock, unless I can find filthier water.”

  Karate opened his file. “Ketchup,” Karate said, “is off duty this morning. Instead of sleeping in, he researched Bosch in the public library. This here is a portrait of Hieronymus himself. Photocopied out of the encyclopedia, enlarged and laminated; no skimping on energy or money. This is for you. First we save your life, then we bring you presents.”

  “This is Bosch?” de Gier asked. He studied the kind old-man’s face. “The one who created all those horrors?”

  “Authentic,” Karate said. “A portrait done by a contemporary artist.”

  De Gier held the picture at arm’s length. “Where did this honeybun find my monkish confrontation? Where, in his sweet pure mind, did Bosch see an old whore on her moped, and her starving hyena hound?”

  Karate didn’t listen. “You told us we were black-winged minidevil’s henchmen, drawn by Bosch.”

  De Gier studied Bosch’s long strong tapered fingers, quietly resting on a drawing board. “Miles Davis had such hands.”

  Karate spoke with some intensity. “Bosch was a good citizen, paid his taxes, an important man in his town, he organized religious processions, he helped support the poor.”

  “Nice face,” de Gier said, caressing, with his fingertips, the smiling old eyes of the medieval painter.

  “A God-serving thinker,” Karate said. “Like me and Ketchup. Me and Ketchup celebrate mass Sundays. The Virgin Mother has her niche in our house. We burn candles.”

  De Gier reached for his water glass and pain pills. His sore ribs moved. He groaned and fell back against his pillows. Karate passed him the glass and pills.

  “Thanks to corrupt cops like you,” de Gier said tonelessly, “crack gets dealt to kids.”

  “That makes us black-winged horrors?” Karate asked. “We are having the best time possible, considering the circumstances and our talents. What would you rather have us do? Watch goldfish in the constable’s room, in between comparing numbers of open warrants and available cells? Lament politics? Collect guilders for the next birthday party of some worthless colleague? Join the Criticizers Club for coffee and cake at headquarters each Sunday?”

  “Your cooperation with criminals,” de Gier said, “kills kids.”

  “You know,” Karate said, “there is a serious kids-surplus in Holland. Kids grow up and buy cars. Ever consider the slowing flow of traffic? Will that get better when the population doubles?”

  “We won’t take the Ambagt job,” de Gier said.

  Karate looked at his motionless hands, perched on his knees.

  “You know,” de Gier said, “that Grijpstra and I retired.”

  Karate got up, marched to the door, came about face, stood to attention. “Do your job,” the constable barked. “Your shingle at Straight Tree Ditch says nothing about doing nothing. It says ‘detection.’ ”

  “Bye,” de Gier said.

  Karate banged the door. The dying man sat up. He smiled at de Gier. “How silly of me,” he said, “all my life I wondered about it and I could have seen it if I hadn’t been keeping myself so busy.” His voice was both hoarse and deep. “It’s both beautiful and simple.”

  “What?” de Gier asked, but the dying man had died.

  6

  HURRAH AND HOW-DE-DO

  “Where is the sloop that was supposed to pick us up?” Grijpstra asked Inspector Cardozo at the quay at Dry Dock Point near the Central Railway Station.

  Cardozo waited patiently, on the legal side of the harbor’s sign, ONLY OWNERS AND CREWS ALLOWED. Grijpstra looked at the moored sailboats. He remembered that de Gier liked to stop off here, in the past, in the midst of duty. The sergeant would admire foreign flags, weathered sails, frayed ropes, exotic types sucking bent tobacco pipes and sporting massive earrings. The sergeant would prattle about the mouth of the Orinoco river, the East Coast of Papua New Guinea, the Russian peninsula of Sakhalin, even the Dutch North Sea islands. Setting up desires, Grijpstra thought now. A process that was now proving to be painful. Cracked ribs and hospital beds? All due to long ago’s daydreams. And he, old-buddy Grijpstra, got sucked along with them. But was that bad?

  The spring day, observed by present-day Grijpstra, was pleasant. Crested grebes, their pointed heads crowned with tufted feathers, flirted as they swam around each other. A great blue heron winged by slowly. A finch chanted from within weeds sprouting between the quay’s cobblestoned walls. Young women in tight shorts and T-shirts were raising sails on a yacht. Grijpstra enquired about their destination. “We’re going to win the Inland Sea race today,” a girl said. “Men are losers now. You won’t be needed.”

  “There,” Cardozo said.

  A sloop rowed by six uniformed sailors approached smartly. A boatswain, wearing a hat with visor, stood in the bow and saluted. “Mister Grijpstra and Inspector Cardozo?” the boatswain asked smartly.

  The beautifully crafted wooden sloop slid across the waves of the river IJ. The passengers shared a caned bench between the rowing sailors and the commanding boatswain. The sailors, muscular young men with sparkling teeth, pulled long oars.

  “Hur-rah,” the boatswain sang. “How-de-do,” the sailors responded.

  Inspector Cardozo thought how wonderful life could be and how his life was not. How he still lived with his parents and took a bus to work every morning. How he looked forward to Thursdays because his mother didn’t cook on Thursdays. Thursday nights he sneaked out for sushi. Simon Cardozo thought about the brand new three-storied super yacht towering above them, with a gleaming streamlined steering tower in front of a shiny helicopter clamped to the aft deck.

  Different ways to deal with a lifetime.

  What he faced here, Cardozo thought, was a heavenly floating castle for billionaires who were offering his former superiors a million dollars to take care of an exciting Caribbean problem.

  Small-timer Simon Cardozo wondered about other people’s big time.

  “Could this be that houseboat the little fellow was talking about?” Grijpstra asked. “Big, eh, Simon? Must be something to keep that tub clean and going. Nicely turned out though.”

  “Careful please,” the boatswain said, helping them step on the gangway that had been lowered by the ship’s automatic hydraulic crane.

  Carl Ambagt, dressed in a tailored merchant marine officer’s uniform, welcomed his guests. “Now you believe me? You think the Tax Office owns toys like this? Want the ship’s tour?

  “Agile like a shark,” Carl said, “Strong as a whale.” He walked ahead on the deck of sandpapered teak, across the main cabin-suite’s Tibetan rugs, guiding the way through the living quarters for the owners, past a bar room decked out in white marble, a gallery of modern art, a gadget-equipped kitchen.

  “Crew’s quarters are below,” Ambagt said. “Furnished oriental style—tatami-matted floors, brightly colored lacquered furniture, lots of fans and gongs and pipe racks.” He indicated a door. “Cup of Chinese tea for the gents?”

  “Your mother is aboard too?”

  “Who?” Carl asked.

  “Is she alive?”

  Carl gestured widely. “Do you know that the Admiraal Rodney measures three hundred and fifty tons? Cruises at thirty kilometers an hour, sails seven thousand kilometers without taking on fuel? That, if we leave tonight, we could be in the Caribbean in a mere eight days?” He addressed Grijpstra. “And that de Gier and yourself will meet us there? On St. Maarten? To start up your quest?”

  “No,” Grijpstra said.

  “Oh yes,” a gruff voice said. Skipper Peter Ambagt, in a stained admiral’s uniform wit
h bedraggled braid, leaning on a gold tipped invalid’s steel tripod, greeted his guests. In contrast to his diminutive son the man was a giant. Father and son had the same square faces but the skipper’s large nose was bulbous and obscenely purple. His scraggly eyebrows hung down dismally and his long sideburns needed brushing.

  “You smartasses are going to recoup our loss on the old tank tub,” Ambagt Senior said, slurring his speech in between hiccups. “I am glad to see you’re here to clinch the deal, Mister Clever.”

  “I was just curious,” Grijpstra said. “Your son mentioned your houseboat and we wanted to take a look.”

  “Houseboat? Trying to be funny now?” The old man tried to focus his eyes. His unsteady hand pointed at Cardozo. “And you are the fuzz here?”

  “Inspector Simon Cardozo,” Grijpstra said.

  “And you are in charge here,” Cardozo said, looking at the gold ornamentation on Ambagt Senior’s hat.

  The old man, without turning around, addressed the servant standing behind him. “A cold one, my dear.” Ambagt Senior lowered his body into a deck chair. “Carl and I hold Liberian captain’s papers.” His long yellow teeth showed in a wide smile. “That’s in Africa.” He pointed at decorations pinned to his tunic—silver monkey heads, trailing multicolored ribbons. “Issued by the Head Honcho there. He personally pinned them on, just in time, a day before His Excellency was executed.” He stood to attention for a moment, then noticed his visitors again. “Cardozo?”

  “Sir?” Cardozo asked.

  “Your name is familiar.”

  “It is?”

  The skipper snapped his fingers. “St. Eustatius cemetery, that’s where I saw that name. Your ancestors made good deals on that island. Jewish Amsterdam merchants with Portuguese names because that’s where they came from. Inquisition time. Remember?”

  “No, Skipper Peter.”

  “So now you know.” Ambagt Senior dabbed his swollen nose with the tip of a blood stained handkerchief. “St. Eustatius, The Golden Rock.” The skipper looked over Cardozo’s head. “The golden past, alas.” He looked at Grijpstra. “One million smackaroos for you and your partner, ten percent up front, balance to be collected when you recover the Sibylle loss.” His cane fell while he bent his cadaverous body toward Grijpstra. “Is that a deal, Lucky Fatso?”

  Cardozo picked up the cane and gave it to Skipper Ambagt.

  He wasn’t thanked.

  Grijpstra said “No.”

  The sloop, wind pushing, sailors pulling strongly, crossed the IJ river on the return trip to Dry Dock Point. Grijpstra enjoyed the sea breeze. Cardozo looked nervous. “You know,” Cardozo said, “Ketchup and Karate planned the attack on de Gier.”

  “Hur-rah,” Grijpstra chanted along with the rowing sailors.

  “To put some pressure behind Ambagt & Son’s proposition,” Cardozo said nervously.

  “How-de-do,” sang Grijpstra along with the rowing sailors.

  “Because de Gier refused to accept that job.”

  “Hur-rah.”

  “And now you are the one who refuses.”

  “How-de-do.”

  “You know you are the endangered party now?”

  “Hur-rah.”

  “And so am I,” Cardozo said. “Because I am with you.”

  “Please,” Grijpstra said.

  “I think we are about to be pushed overboard and drowned,” Cardozo said.

  “Please,” Grijpstra said. “My dear fellow. We are in a sloop owned and operated by Ambagt & Son. Nothing could be safer.”

  “Operated by Ambagt & Company employees,” Cardozo said. “Not by Ambagts.”

  Grijpstra had to laugh. “So who could possibly push us over?”

  “That police boat,” Cardozo said. He pointed. Behind a foaming bow wave a harbor patrol boat approached at full speed. Blue lights sparked above the cabin. A siren wailed. The boatswain in charge of the sloop looked up in fear. He pushed his rudder. The patrol boat, alongside now, didn’t have enough space to turn. The sloop’s portside oars splintered against the steel side of the patrol boat. Sailors, boatswain and passengers raced to starboard. The sloop capsized. “Didn’t I say so?” Cardozo shouted shrilly.

  7

  RIFLE FIRE IN A NATURE RESERVE

  “I keep telling you,” Katrien said to the commissaris during breakfast, while beheading her egg, “and you just sit there smiling like a retard. Is this Alzheimer’s now?” She looked worried. “Yoohoo? Jan?”

  “Who are you?” the commissaris asked. “Do I know you?”

  Katrien got angry. De Gier was spending his second day in the hospital and Grijpstra, according to Nellie, kept kneeling in his bathroom while filling up the toilet bowl with slime imbibed at the bottom of the river IJ. Inspector Cardozo had found out that the water police who had run the sloop down were intimate friends of Ketchup and Karate. Nothing but trouble everywhere and the commissaris was putting too much cream into his coffee. All this was bad.

  “Cholesterol,” Katrien said. “Think of your waistline.”

  “What waistline?” the commissaris asked. “And what do I have to do with de Gier and Grijpstra?”

  “More than with me,” Katrien said, “and K&K knew that.” Grijpstra and de Gier were dear boys, she would admit that, and not inexperienced, not really dumb, quite capable of solving simple problems but the minute a situation became slightly complicated there they were at the commissaris’s door, begging for their master’s guidance. “Without you there would be no Detection G&G Incorporated.”

  “I told you a million times,” the commissaris said, “don’t exaggerate, dear Katrien.”

  Katrien swore, while sweeping her hands about furiously and raising her voice, that, on the contrary, she had been minimizing the situation. Grijpstra and de Gier had, during their lengthy police training by her husband, changed into the commissaris’s efficient projections. A triumphant triad had scoured the Amsterdam underworld. Grijpstra/de Gier, marionetted by their chief. Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum, and the Holy Ghost on top. Now that G&G (Katrien smiled disdainfully) were working in their own so-called business, was she to understand that the situation had changed?

  “But they are not working, dear,” the commissaris said. The commissaris cut himself a large slice of honeycake, buttered it thickly, ate the slice quickly. “So-called or otherwise. Grijpstra keeps Nellie happy by shopping with her and watching TV, de Gier has his plantation of weeds and Nietzsche if he isn’t reading in Spanish.”

  The commissaris reached for the Gouda cheese. His wife slapped his hand.

  “All that fat,” his wife said. “Better go for your walk, dear.” She pleaded. “You know what is going on here, don’t you? I happened to see Nellie yesterday. The woman is right. Ketchup and Karate recommended you to those yachting people. That Antillean business is well beyond G&G’s powers. Those Rotterdam folks definitely need you in charge of their project. Those are bad guys, Jan. They lost their illegal goods and they are poor losers. They’ll do anything to even things out.”

  “Nellie and you?” The commissaris shook his head. “Tarot cards again?”

  Katrien ate her diet biscuits with sugar-free imitation fruit spread. “Nothing to do with you.”

  “Nothing is good,” the commissaris said.

  “All my effort for nothing,” Katrien said. “The cards say you will have a nice time with this case.” She bit her lip. “And I have to baby-sit. I am jealous I suppose.”

  “So what you are saying,” the commissaris summarized professionally, “is that our potential client, Ambagt & Son, while wandering about the fun Caribbean island of St. Maarten in between sailing their royal cruiser, happened to run into Ketchup and Karate who like to spend their time off in the Netherlands Antilles. Ambagt & Son are in the crude oil business, K&K are in the corrupt police business, in Amsterdam of all places, hub of the criminal universe these days. Skipper Peter and young Carl knew at once that K&K are bad. There is a discrepancy of lifestyle. The Amsterdam Municipal Polic
e pays real wages but even when two constables first class, both childless, combine their salaries the happy couple cannot afford a summer cottage in well-heeled Philipsburg, St. Maarten. Mortgage free. Like their superb apartment in Amsterdam, overlooking the river. And they fly across the ocean like evil-faced gadflies. On what kind of money? Could I have one of those biscuits, do you think?”

  “Never,” his wife said.

  She gave him one anyway.

  “Tastes like fax paper,” the commissaris said. “No. Tastes like unprinted E-mail.” He thought. “Some combination, Katrien. Two policemen serving Lucifer in our magic city here, connecting to St. Maarten, owned by Dutch and Italian gangsters. Can you see that meeting? A tropical bar? Striptease performed by selected beauties from, didn’t I read that somewhere, Santo Domingo, home of the western hemisphere’s most luscious …”

  “Yes,” Katrien said. “I see it. So do you. Wouldn’t you like to do the selecting?”

  “Bongos,” the commissaris said. “You can hear good bongos in Amsterdam now but real bongos, no. And out there, there’ll be Mexicans on trumpets and black drummers out of New York, taught by Tony Williams or even,” the commissaris smiled dreamily, “or even by Jack de Johnette, Katrien.”

  “How nice.” His wife began to clear the table.

  “I am only sketching in the circumstances,” the commissaris said. “While all this goes on in the background it turns out that Ambagt & Son has suffered a severe loss, a tanker-load of crude oil taken by pirates. The amount involved could be their entire working capital for all we know, but they have no recourse as they themselves are illegal. Liberian citizens selling Iranian energy to Cuba right under the nose of Uncle Sam?

  “And even if they were still Dutch, and reported the piracy to the Dutch Rijks Police in St. Maarten? A lieutenant in charge of a dozen constables trying to safeguard tourists going wild in casinos and stripbars and worse? Besides, the piracy took place in international waters, the high seas. Yo ho.”

  “What?” Katrien asked.

  “Yo ho,” the commissaris said enthusiastically. “Not a chance, Katrien. But what happens? Haven’t I always said so? Good luck comes to those who are lucky.”