“Bankrupt.” De Gier pushed Grijpstra into a cobblestoned front yard. Rusted deckchairs were stacked between tree stumps. Wildflowers grew from cracks. “I’m the only guest here. The place is to be auctioned off. A maid is supposed to make beds and sweep but I haven’t seen her yet. The phone and fax work. A manager comes in later in the morning, she lets me do my own cooking.”
Grijpstra checked his watch. Time to eat? He noted that the ground didn’t sway and that he wasn’t feeling nauseous either. He suggested breakfast.
“Fried fish with a slice of lemon?” de Gier asked. “I can bake biscuits too.”
Grijpstra preferred a steak, or some sausage maybe.
De Gier had found goat meat at Oranjestad’s farmers market. “Maybe okay for stew. Fish is less hairy.”
Grijpstra chose eggs. De Gier cooked on flickering gas flames, in dented pots, using instruments that he had derusted by rubbing them on bricks. A large omelet rose slowly. He picked thyme and parsley from what was left of a kitchen garden in the yard and cut the herbs with an axe that he had sharpened on a grindstone. He toasted bread above the stove’s flames, manufactured milk from powder and tap water that he filtered through a clean handkerchief and boiled before mixing. He smashed coffee beans, using the axe’s backside after wrapping the beans in a tea cloth he had found.
He let the coffee boil briefly. “Never too long, Henk. I’m using grandmother Sarah’s formula. Watch this.” He spoke melodiously. “Twen-ty one twen-ty two twen-ty three, rea-DEEE, off the flame the pot goes-EEEE.”
De Gier served brunch outside, on cracked but clean plates, arranged on a rock wall protecting the hotel yard from a steep drop down to the beach. Grijpstra was told to pick a bouquet of poinciana flowers and find a vase in the hotel lobby. De Gier spread paper napkins and pulled up chairs.
“I don’t dislike this,” Grijpstra said, enjoying omelet and tasty trimmings, fresh coffee, cool sea breeze and view.
“We get twenty percent off,” de Gier said, “for lack of service.”
“Why pick St. Eustatius?” Grijpstra asked. “Wouldn’t the tourist haven of St. Maarten be more convenient? The Rodney crew claims this place is a pain.”
“Work,” de Gier said.
“?”
“You look stupid like that,” de Gier said. “Please. We have a job to do. We’re being paid. Crude oil. Supertanker. Piracy. A dead man. Two dead man, counting the cowboy driving through our Key West dinner. We’re supposed to arrange a happy ending.”
Grijpstra grunted.
De Gier patted Grijpstra’s cheek. “It’ll be all right. Now think along with me. Twelve million gallons of oil were pumped out of the pirated Sibylle. Where? At sea? Are you kidding? Into what? Into another supertanker? Never. Two metal whales wallowing next to each other, one spewing, one sucking. And nobody notices?” He pointed at the ocean. A yacht sailed by, her skipper alert at the rudder, his girlfriend showing herself off on the foredeck. The Rodney was at anchor, with crew members moving about on her decks. The ferry plane to St. Maarten had just taken off from Statia’s airstrip. The plane banked giving pilots and passengers plenty of opportunity to see the ocean below. A tanker and a cruiseship moved slowly on the horizon.
“I know,” Grijpstra said. “I have been thinking about that. A lot of traffic even further along, on the open ocean. I asked the boatswain on the Rodney. There are busy shipping routes all through the Caribbean, plus random boats. American war planes keep an eye out too.”
“So don’t you think anything unusual, such as two supertankers in intimate contact, would be seen, talked about?”
Grijpstra acknowledged the possibility.
So that didn’t happen, de Gier said. “The Sibylle was entered from some fast small vessel that then disappeared. The tanker was hijacked and taken to a place where she could be off-loaded. There were only a handful of pirates. You don’t need an invading army to subdue a small crew.”
“Certainly not at night.” Grijpstra nodded. “The Sibylle crew is drunk. Asleep. Watching skin-flicks. One man on the bridge, that young fellow they did away with. The ship would have been on automatic pilot. Then what happened?”
“Tell me,” de Gier said.
Grijpstra thought.
“Where would pirates aiming to exchange crude for cash take a tanker?” de Gier asked. “To a transfer station, maybe?” De Gier pointed to the north side of St. Eustatius. “To a nice long pier with equipment that drains the oil from the holds and pumps the cargo into storage tanks?”
“Why here?” Grijpstra asked. “There may be many transfer stations around here. The map shows lots of islands.” He pointed both ways. “All the way northwest to Florida. All the way down south to Venezuela.”
De Gier shook his head. “The empty Sibylle was found floating in this area, near the only island that sports an oil terminal that does not belong to one of the big brand names.” He pointed at the pier again, at the far side of the island. A supertanker was moored on one side, another was maneuvering close by.
“They do seem to ripen faster in the tropics,” Grijpstra said, admiring schoolgirls running about on the beach below. “Would that be a dance class? What gracious young ladies.” He looked at de Gier sternly. “How come you know so much? And how come that beautiful Key West sergeant didn’t keep you as a pet? Did she catch Stewart-Wynne’s killer already?” He made an effort not to look at the dancing girls. “Why was the insurance cowboy killed anyway? Did he figure out what was going on down here?”
“What else?” de Gier asked. “The fool identified the pirates and then hung around so that these pirates could get themselves a hit man who arranged an accident. We watched the outcome while we were trying to crack lobster tails.”
“Pirates are professionals.” Grijpstra shook his head. “They shot up that poor sailor boy on the Sibylle, why not shoot up the cowboy too? Who needs a hit man?”
“Simple,” de Gier said. “You’re the senior detective. You tell me.”
Grijpstra, applying experience, identified with the criminal minds.
“Yes?” de Gier asked patiently.
“Our pirates must be American,” Grijpstra said grudgingly. “They can misbehave here in this lawless territory, but they better behave at home.”
“What American pirates live in Key West?” de Gier asked.
“No prompting.” Grijpstra held up a defensive hand. “The pirates must be members of the U.S. military who were moonlighting here. We saw them in action when you got me out on that leaky schooner. By the time they learned that the Englishman was on to them they were back at their home base. And then he turned up there too.”
De Gier nodded.
Grijpstra thumped de Gier’s shoulder. “Special Forces couldn’t take a risk, right? Not on U.S. territory, in Key West. So who was their hitman?”
“Mickey,” de Gier said. “A former Green Beret, a specialist in assassination whom they could trust. But Mickey got himself arrested by the Key West Police. So the moonlighters had to take Mickey out.”
De Gier went to his room and came back with the cuttings Sergeant Ramona Symonds had faxed him.
Grijpstra grunted and mumbled while reading. He thumped de Gier again. “You know this is about puppets manipulating puppets? Pirates unmasked by the English inspector, who is hit by Mickey. You arrested by Sergeant Ramona because you’re in the way and she figures you’ll save her trouble. You using Ketchup and Karate so that Ramona gets Mickey. But Mickey gets hit by pirates?” Grijpstra laughed out loud, hitting his thighs. “Ketchup and Karate who tried to play us for puppets. On behalf of the Ambagts, our ultimate puppeteers. Nice. Were K&K hurt badly, the little rascals?”
“You bet,” de Gier said happily.
“And that nice police sergeant?” Grijpstra asked timidly. “She rewarded you?”
“Some woman,” de Gier said happily.
Grijpstra wasn’t interested in details, he proclaimed. Whether de Gier had been properly rewarded for his services ma
de no difference to Grijpstra. What can you expect from a woman who cohabits with a bird? “I suppose you just had coffee?” Grijpstra asked.
“No,” de Gier said.
“Is that so?” Grijpstra asked. He didn’t want to pry. But one abstract aspect interested him a little. Grijpstra, since the advent of Nellie some years ago back, hadn’t been “in practice” so to speak. Not in “playing the field.” He had heard, however, that things were rather different now. It wasn’t so much that the female, innocently falling backwards, pulled the male, by happenstance as it were, into a close relationship. Females, the true dominants in human sex, had come out in the open. Males, Grijpstra had heard, were supposed to be shy now. “Or not?”
“Ramona was shy,” de Gier said.
“And you?”
“I’m always shy.”
“So? You both managed?” Grijpstra tried not to raise his voice. “What happened?”
De Gier scratched his left buttock. “The usual, I guess.”
“What’s usual,” Grijpstra asked, “about a beautiful black bisexual woman with a bird as a roommate?”
De Gier said that Ramona had been quite usual about the whole thing.
“And you?”
“The same with me.”
What had really impressed him, de Gier reported, was Ramona’s apartment, which he thought to be artistic, a study in yellows, oranges and some reds, cushions, carpets, a couch, a painted table, the furniture dominated by a wall-sized wooden collage. Ramona’s ancestors, she had told de Gier, were West African. Her original tribe had a custom. All members, when entering adulthood, had to put together decorative arrangements that symbolized their spiritual path and aspirations. The collage then served as an inspiration for daily life. Ramona had chosen stylized bird heads on a sheet of weathered plywood that she found on a beach. The bird heads, that she had sculpted from dried mangrove roots and sun-bleached seashells, formed the outline of a crocodile’s body. “Symbolic,” de Gier said.
“Of sex?” Grijpstra asked.
“No. Of a course of life that she had chosen.” You know what was funny, de Gier asked Grijpstra, the collage had reminded him of the symbolism of Grijpstra’s series of Dead Duck on Amsterdam Canal paintings.
“My dead ducks,” Grijpstra said crossly, “are just goddamn dead ducks.”
De Gier said that Ramona said that her bird heads were symbolic of petty ego-aspects becoming part of the universal spirit, and that the crocodile, in West African art, signifies enlightenment. The birds having been eaten by the crocodile, and then, together, becoming the crocodile are “like your ducks slowly dissolving into an Amsterdam canal.” De Gier tried to explain a little further. Grijpstra’s obsession with showing dead ducks could symbolize Grijpstra’s wish to do away with his customary stupidity, greed (of adding to Grijpstra-ness), jealousy, fear (of losing Grijpstra-ness). “We all get tired of our ego-clinging.…” De Gier paused for dramatic effect. “Once we’ve pierced the veils, Ramona’s beautiful African crocodile will swim in your purified Amsterdam canal. You see that? Don’t you?”
“So the sex you two enjoyed was mutually helpful?” Grijpstra asked hopefully.
De Gier said he sincerely hoped so. He folded the newspaper cuttings and the police report and put them in his shirt pocket. There wasn’t much to add. Happenstance, once again, was a factor. The Key West Police didn’t think that the military had posted sharpshooters all over the city and arranged for Mickey’s escape so that they could get at their target. Of course, anyone involved in the raid of the Sibylle would have been prepared to kill Mickey before he could betray them, but with the man in jail … who would have supposed that he would escape to rob a supermarket of some tobacco?
“Happenstance,” de Gier said. “The ultimate puppeteer, isn’t that what the commissaris called it?”
“And Mickey presented a nice target,” Grijpstra said. “Wearing one of those orange jail suits, running toward them. All they had to do was point and squeeze the trigger.”
De Gier agreed. A pity in a way. According to Captain Noah, Mickey was a good sort, intelligent, witty, creative. But what can you expect from a drunk? Once alcohol is involved.… De Gier shrugged sadly.
Grijpstra took offense. Was this another message paid for by Caring Mothers? What was so great about the sober life? Ah, the days, one wife having left, the next wife not having arrived yet, that Grijpstra painted in an empty apartment. The nights in cafés where he played billiards, drums, told jokes, drank jenever. A time of insights.
“You could be boring,” de Gier remembered. “Repetitive. Sentimental. Querulous. Hard to put up with.”
“Not to me,” Grijpstra said gruffly.
What the hell? De Gier, admiring the dancing schoolgirls on the Statia beach below, said that since his abstaining, he missed those days too. He told Grijpstra about possible plans for a life in Key West. Face doom and damnation, cigar in mouth, double bourbon in hand. Recreate The Perfidious Parrot again, play the trumpet, consort with wild women.
Grijpstra shifted moods abruptly. “None of that.” He reminded the wayward dreamer of Sayukta, back home, watering de Gier’s plantation of weeds. He scanned his friend’s cozy future. “A couch, a screen, a four-door Honda.” And as for now, dammit, there was work to do. How were they to find a cargo equalling the lost Sibylle cargo? How could they hijack same? How to sell the loot to a fence? He pointed at the oil tanks ahead, describing the buyer of stolen crude. The fence, Grijpstra surmised, would be a sleazy type.
De Gier said “Sure. A fat guy in a pin stripe suit. Big jowls. Watery blue eyes. Bad disposition. Gets sick a lot.”
The fence could look like the commissaris for all Grijpstra cared. Ever since he and de Gier had kept the drug dealers’s stash, ever since the commissaris had invested the money, all three of them had become bad guys.
De Gier walked about the hotel’s courtyard, arguing excitedly that Grijpstra was taking a petty view of liberty indeed. By holding onto their prize he and Grijpstra had placed themselves beyond good and evil. They were supermen now, working in Nietzsche-esque spheres of freedom. They were Bodhisatvas helping to wake up mankind. Had Grijpstra ever seen Tibetan drawings of free spirits? Often the arhats, gnanis, gurus, etc., wore necklaces of skulls, had mouths filled with fangs, were shown as skeletons moving about fires of ego-destruction. They just looked evil, but were not. He and Grijpstra were out of the good/evil confusion, but still functioning to assist the slow and stupid.
Grijpstra thought he and de Gier were just being bad. Besides, de Gier shouldn’t think he was clever on the lower level either. This amazing insight, that the Sibylle pirates were American soldiers? The commissaris had found out on Aruba, when visiting Sister Meshti’s clinic, who the pirates were. Captain Souza thought he had seen giant black frogs during a delirium. “Frogmen,” Grijpstra said. “U.S. Military types. As soon as I told the commissaris about our sail on the Berrydore we put it together. Me and the commissaris. Frogmen—frogs.” He smiled sarcastically. “Simple.…”
De Gier suggested a walk around the island. If Grijpstra, because of weight/age, became exhausted they could rent a car. Statia might be a wasteland ravaged by goats but there had to be something good to see somewhere. Something to tell Nellie about.
“Please,” Grijpstra said, observing the mature schoolgirls cavorting in the ocean below him.
25
LOOKING FOR LITTLE ABNER
They walked.
“Did the entire island go bust?” Grijpstra asked, pointing at deserted cabins that leaned against each other or had crumbled into themselves. Weeds grew wild in empty rooms, vines covered cars discarded at street corners, changing them into bizarre and dusty flower baskets. Statians walked along in silence.
“Handsome people,” Grijpstra said. “Well dressed too. Where do they get the money?”
Not by working, de Gier thought. This seemed to be a nonworking island. During the two days before the Rodney arrived the only people de Gier had
seen who were active were children. Adults rocked in chairs on balconies, nodding greetings at passers-by. The island’s religion still seemed active, for de Gier had walked by a church filled with singing voices. There were parties: he saw women in semi-transparent dresses waving fans on a lawn. He noticed a garage where dying cars resisted repairs, a bakery offering one kind of bread, used clothes sold out of a shack, a government building where silent officials sat quietly behind empty tables. A restaurant was, according to a handwritten note taped to its window, “Closed for Season.” Another shack offered picture postcards of scenes on neighboring islands. De Gier told Grijpstra about a fish market he had discovered, open from 8 to 9 A.M.
“A lot of fish?” Grijpstra asked.
“Very few fish.”
“So what do they eat here?”
Roadkill, de Gier thought.
Grijpstra tried to ignore the plaintive wail of unmilked goats, skin-and-bone cows breathing hoarsely, donkeys with open wounds, madly scratching dogs, starved cats coughing. De Gier, to cheer Grijpstra up, pointed at curiosities. They passed a cistern built out of huge rocks, dragged up a hill by slaves, later decorated with the sculpted heads of slave masters, chalked a deadly white. A rusted moped, ridden by a boy in a jockey outfit, raced by. Water leaked from casks on an overloaded donkey cart. An otherwise bare field displayed a heap of garbage around a lopsided sign saying NO LITTER. A deserted factory had lost its roof.
To divert themselves the sweating detectives discussed clients. “You believe there are evil assholes?” Grijpstra asked.
“Only ignorant assholes,” de Gier answered.
They discussed Ketchup and Karate’s possible future. “So Nasty Nick did manage to hurt them,” Grijpstra said gratefully. “Serves them right. Shooting a rifle near a helpless old man.”
The Perfidious Parrot Page 20