Just a Corpse at Twilight

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

Being instructed not to shun force while exercising a warrant to search the cannery for illegal warehousing of controlled substances, the posse smashed most of Ishmaers collection ofWhat. There was also some prodding with nightsticks and name-calling in gruff voices. "Tongue and Groovers" referred to Beth and Aki, "Short Retards" covered the skippers, "Aliens in the Mist," "Hippy-Yippy," and "New-Born Nihilist" took care of the others.

  Most of Ishmaers arrangements were no longer intact after half a dozen deputies, flown in from remote corners of the Twilight Zone, in storm-trooper boots and Boy Scout hats, ran out of breath.

  Nothing much found, nothing much left.

  The posse departed as it had come. All-terrain vehicles roared and drove off with squealing tires.

  There were no wounded, only bruised: Beth on the buttock, Bad George on the shoulder.

  "Oh dear, oh dear," Grijpstra sympathized, surveying what was left of a flying dinosaur's twenty-foot leathery wingspan, kicking broken owls aside, keeping Kathy Two away from smashed jars.

  De Gier held up a bear mask, found under rubble the marauding deputies had thrown out of windows. He checked the mask's labels. One said REFUSE IMPORTS; the Other, MADE IN CHINA.

  Aki put it on. "Can I have this, Ishmael?"

  "Sure," Ishmael said. He mentioned his "joyful destruction theory." "Dinosaurs had it good for millions of years. Then the thing got old and they were happy to leave." He spread his arms. "We can't have too much destruction."

  Beth agreed. The collection ofWhat had indeed gotten old. She had noticed cobwebs.

  "Haven't been looking at this stuff much lately," Ish-mael said, shoving remnants aside. Ishmael's living quarters and guest rooms, carefully arranged showcases of furniture from the forties and the fifties, complete with period books, drapes, carpets, and appliances, had been smashed and ripped by the diligent deputies, then kicked into corners.

  De Gier invited all homeless persons to sleep in the pagoda.

  Lorraine paddled home to Bar Island holding de Gel's pen-size but ultra-strong flashlight in her teeth. She didn't really want to as—Beth pointed out—there might be associations, but she didn't want to leave her kayak either and she was night-blind. Beth and Aki drove back to Jameson. Grijpstra and Ishmael rowed dinghies from the Point to Squid Island. Ishmael took de Gier and Bad George, talking about the challenge of space. For once he'd clean up the cannery and have a bonfire in the yard. He'd have four stories of space, to fill at will. Ishmael felt excited. He developed his theory of pre-creation, which had to do with serenity, from which creation would start herself up again.

  "We're friends now?" Grijpstra asked Flash in the other rowboat. "Remember Mr. Bear eating the dead lady in the tunnel? Care to tell me who dug the dead lady's grave?"

  "Never dug no grave in no tunnel," Flash Farnsworth said. He admitted to seeing Hairy Harry and Billy Boy carrying in the corpse. But the idea ofdigging her up to fool de Gier was Flash's. "What with your pal drunk as a skunk, didn't know what or nuthin' . . ."

  "Never knows what or nuthin", Grijpstra said.

  "Didn't work out too good," Flash said. "Worse now, right, Krip? No boat. No airplane. Cannery all stoved in. Hairy Harry gettin' stronger. Damn tootin' right I'm a rebel. We'll make it work again. Remember Pearl Harbor, Krip? But now I'm tired."

  "Europe to the rescue," Grijpstra said, pulling the oars. One oar slipped, he fell over backward.

  Flash tittered.

  De Gier was waiting on Squid Island's dock. "You bed them all down for the night," Grijpstra said, "and give me the key to the Ford product, please."

  "Phone the netherworld," de Gier asked. "Cross the final frontier. Call on the ogres. Release revenge."

  Chapter 22

  "Maybe we should do this," the commissaris said, tapping the table where he had spread his maps.

  Katrien wasn't sure.

  The commissaris rested his finger on Rogue Island. "But, Katrien . . ."

  "But they're dealing with the sheriff of Woodcock County," Katrien said, "with an elected official. Please, Jan, this is a civilized world now, there must be better ways. Tell them to have the villain arrested. . . ."

  "How?"

  "The DEA," Katrien said.

  "Ineffective," the commissaris said. "Remember that marijuana shipment?" His finger prodded the map. "Right here, onBar Island. Akihadthatallplannedoutfor them, there were agents behind every bush. The bad guys still won."

  "America is a democracy, Jan."

  "So is Holland," the commissaris said, "and little Jimmy next door got AIDS while prostituting himself to get cash to buy crack."

  "You said there were no bad guys," Katrien said. "That things just happen."

  "Let's happen along too." The commissaris rubbed his hands together. "Let's be sly, Katrien."

  Katrien made a face.

  "If only you could be a little bit more negative," the commissaris said gleefully. "You know what we have here, Katrien? Tribal warfare." He pointed. "Check that encyclopedia. Read up on Native American East Coast tribes. You'll find that the Iroquois were fierce and the Algonquins were sly. They had fun together."

  "Scalping," Katrien said. "Torture. We're beyond that now."

  "We're never beyond violence," the commissaris said. "This kind could be fun. Know your enemy, Katrien. Hairy Harry is a paranoid Iroquois. He firmly believes Grijpstra and de Gier will interfere with his drug operation, and all this stealing of yachts, hiding of corpses, shooting of airplanes, willful destruction of a little dog's obstacle course is his brand of defense. Fear makes him twist facts. He never knew about Lorraine's disappearance, never cared either. He sees Grijpstra the Algonquin telephone overseas, reporting to someone. To the Big Guy Back Home."

  Katrien kissed his cheek. "Chiefjan of the Algonquin."

  "De Gier was in Maine before," the commissaris said. "The state police flew him into Jameson. Maybe a legend started up then. Ishmael knew Jeremy. Jeremy the hermit knew me. I was chief of detectives."

  The commissaris found his cane, limped to the porch, descended to the garden.

  Katrien, by watching his lips, caught most of what the commissaris said to Turtle.

  "Tribal warfare," the commissaris told Turtle. "Katrien is still an idealist. I'm not saying she isn't right, but we act on lower levels here, within desire and fear. Fierce warriors threaten us peaceful people.

  "Rationalizing our interference, Turtle? Certainly. We need an excuse. The war on drugs? Well, maybe yes, although I'm all for pot myself. The weed of procrastination slowing down pollution. How about Sheriff Shoots Eagle?

  "Okay? Okay.

  "Turtle?

  "No ordinary violence, Chieftain Katrien advises? Make use of the magic way, you say? Do I remember the shaman under the banyan tree, Milne Bay, New Guinea?

  "Sure, sure, Turtle, we didn't send de Gier to the end of the world for nothing, did we now?

  "Yes, Turtle, I do remember de Gier's report on the method of Pointing the Bone, oh yes, I do.

  "How that works? Piece ofcake. Get a bone. Get some powerful minds to help. Point the bone at the paranoid Iroquois. Visualize effects. That sheriff dies.

  "Yes?

  "Have a tribal powwow first? Get a tribal mandate?

  "Yes. Must follow proper protocol, Turtle. You're a good counselor. I thank you kindly."

  "Oh dear," Katrien said, watching the commissaris climb the garden steps.

  "Katrien?"

  "Now what, Jan?"

  "I wonder," the commissaris said. "That leg of lamb I saw in the freezer? How about cooking that up sometime, say tomorrow?"

  "With Brussels endive, Jan?"

  "Delicious," the commissaris said. "Isn't Nellie very fond ofBelgian endive? Why don't I ask her over? And while I'm at it, I'll put a call in to Beth's Diner too. Get things going again, my dear."

  He limped to the phone, leaning on his cane, swinging his free arm martially.

  Chapter 23

  "Look what I made in therapy, folks," Lorraine s
aid.

  Lorraine had kayaked over from Bar Island and brought her war pipe, an artifact she had made herself, copied from a museum piece on view in Jameson's town hall.

  Lorraine believed in using local materials to evoke local power. The pipe's stem was "moose wood," a type ofwillow, hollowed out with a stone awl dating back to a Penobscot village that preceded Jameson. She had found it on the beach. The pipe's bowl was birch she had cut herself. The raccoon-skin thong wrapped round the stem was part of a worn-out Seminole sandal, bought at an Indian road stall in the Florida Everglades. Five long feathers shed by Jameson Bay eagles, later dyed blood red with the juice of cranberries, had been found on the shore by Lorraine and Aki.

  Bad George set the kitchen table in the pagoda. Flash baked biscuits and passed them out. Ishmael created a study in apple slices and grapefruit. Bad George had fried bacon dripping on paper napkins and an omelette puffing up on the stove.

  They ate first, while the war pipe, a sinister presence in spite of their tribal banter, dangled from fishing thread attached to the kitchen lamp by de Gier.

  Lorraine had brought tobacco too, Drum, in a plastic bag.

  "Made in Holland," de Gier said, reading the plastic bag's print.

  There was no shortage of omens.

  "Beth?" Ishmael said into the CB radio's microphone. "Would you and Aki join us for coffee? I'll be picking you up at the dock at the Point."

  Beth, being boss, got to untie the war pipe from the kitchen lamp. Lorraine stuffed the pipe's bowl with Drum shag tobacco. Aki lit the match.

  The warriors puffed on the war pipe in turns.

  "We condemn the accused?" Beth asked when the pipe passed back to her.

  Bad George raised his hand. "For trying to kill Krip here by not picking him up when he was sucked east by the ocean in Little Max's dory."

  "Humph," said the congregation.

  "For sinking the Kathy Three by cutting her free and tapping her rotten bottom with a hammer."

  "Humph."

  "For willful destruction of Ishmael's Tailorcraft and of his collection of What."

  "Humph."

  "But that's okay," Ishmael said. "I'm going to do this new depth thing in the cannery now, with the colors. I still have those cans of yellow and orange paint and those sheets of old plywood. What I'm trying to achieve is some experiments with depth. You see . . ."

  The group applied peer pressure by staring.

  "I'll just humph on the Tailorcraft," Ishmael said. "Okay?"

  "Killing loons?" Flash asked. "Mallards? That dolphin? Bears?"

  "Humph."

  Beth raised her hand. "For not taking the lady from the Macho Bandido to the hospital."

  The group reflected.

  "You think the lady might have been saved?" Bad George asked.

  Beth had overheard Billy Boy talking to Hairy Harry in her diner, saying that he thought "she'd looked dead enough for burial."

  "Humph."

  "Humph what?" Beth asked.

  Grijpstra thought that there didn't have to be action. Not on this side, he thought. Smoking the war pipe and humphing along might just do it.

  "Do what?" Lorraine asked.

  "Activate Shaman Otium Cum Dignitate."

  "Out ofoffice with honor," former exchange-student-in-Viareggio-Italy Lorraine translated.

  "They're more dangerous that way," Grijpstra said. "You know how it goes. Doesn't he have a pretty name? So we're all agreed now?"

  "Yes," Beth said.

  Why Beth was boss was explained differently by different parties later. Bad George and Flash Famsworth attributed Beth's power to her great weight. Ishmael mentioned Beth's spirit: Beth had inspired him to start the collection of What, to help cleanse his spirit after his release from Eastern Maine Mental. Beth was in charge of laundry at Maine Mental at the time. As she wore a white coat, some inmates thought Beth was with the psychiatric department. Beth, after hearing Ishmael out, had pronounced him normal.

  "Can you imagine that?" Ishmael asked. "Me? Normal, to fly free? I tell you that was helpful."

  Aki said Beth was lovable, and Lorraine said Beth was decent. Grijpstra said Beth was great. De Gier revealed a New Guinea dream he'd had during earlier training, after participating in Papuan rites. "Earth," the dream voice said, "will be saved by Big Woman."

  "That's it?" Flash asked, checking the tribe's fcces.

  That was it.

  Chapter 24

  Grijpstxa and de Gier watched the sea from the pagoda's porch while discussing treasure.

  "Correct me if I am wrong," de Gier said, "but salt melts in water, cocaine is a more profitable product than marijuana, and Hairy Harry already has a cash-flow problem." He spread his arms. "Where does it all go? How can we put it to use?"

  "First explain the salt bags," Grijpstxa said.

  De Gier had figured the salt out while puffing on the Algonquin war pipe. Flash had mentioned salt bags being dropped by an airplane ofTRogue Island. Rogue Island was the island on Jeremy Island's far side. De Gier had seen a plane flying near Rogue Island and had noticed the sheriffs patrol boat in the area, but never at the same time as the plane. After the plane flew off, the patrol boat would arrive some six hours later. Evidently, Kathy Three witnessed the plane dropping bags, got wise to their procedure, got sunk for her troubles.

  "The bags sank too," Grijpstra said.

  De Giers lecture continued. What happens if a bag filled with salt drops into the sea? That bag sinks. What happens once the salt melts? That bag pops up, provided contents are lighter than water. Cocaine, packed in airtight cans, is much lighter than water. If the weight ofsalt per bag and the speed of such weight dissolving into the ocean are given—and they are, de Gier assured the nonmathematical Grijpstra—the time that the bags, without salt, but still loaded with cocaine in airtight cans, require to surface can be figured out. Being around at that time ensures master smuggler Hairy Harry of being able to fish up the valuable cargo without being seen with the cargo-dropping plane.

  "It always gets worse," Grijpstra said. "You start with a small thing, like allowing your pals to grow a little pot. . . and before you know it, you're into the big figures."

  "How true," de Gier said. "Next you're destroying other people's property. Next you're destroying other people. Next you've destroyed yourself—the old Mafia merry-go-round."

  "Better row me across to the diner," Grijpstra said.

  "To make things enter a final stage?"

  "All I ever make," Grijpstra said, "is phone calls. Maybe you know what comes next?"

  "You don't want to know," de Gier said.

  "Some bullshit again?" Grijpstra asked. "Some Papuan nonsense like what you reported on while you were out in New Guinea? The tribe gathers its strong spirits together and gets them to point a bone at some subject that endangers the tribe's social health, and no matter where the subject may be, once said strong spirits are done with sitting around their campfire while chanting a ditty . . ."

  "Yep," de Gier said.

  Grijpstra never believed that Nellie and Katrien—please, Nellie and Katrien—humming over a leftover lamb's bone, "pointing the bone," with the commissaris leading the chant—What the hell did he chant? The Dutch national anthem?—had anything to do with subsequent mishaps that happened to kill off some parties.

  Mishaps happen on the coast ofMaine, especially in the Twilight Zone. Fishermen sail into the fog and stay there. Divers step into waterholes, lose their sense of direction, swim down instead of up. Hikers get eaten by blackflies in the woods. Boats burn. Seaplanes flip over. Hunters shoot each other.

  Hairy Harry was shot because of Ishmael's bear mask. The foreseeable, hermit Jeremy used to say, usually doesn't occur but the unpredictable invariably happens. Aki had given the mask to Little Max. Little Max clowned around in the diner, caught the sheriff's attention, sold the mask to Hairy Harry for ten big ones. Hairy Harry andBilly Boy had a thousand-dollar bet (wagers held by Bildah Farnsworth) on who would sh
oot Mr. Bear. The sheriff, off duty, in his private speedboat, and Billy Boy, on duty, using the Sheriff's Office patrol boat, unbeknownst to each other, happened to choose Jeremy Island as common ground the same Sunday morning. Hairy Harry, wearing the mask and some expensive female bear scent that he had sent away for, showed his head above a rock to fool Mr. Bear and fooled Billy Boy instead. A .308 bullet, fired from Billy Boy's scoped deer rifle, pierced the mask, then messed about in the head behind it.

  Billy Boy, after checking out his kill, panicked. He died later that day, pushing the patrol boat's twin engines as he raced her home to Jameson Harbor. State police officers, alerted by Billy Boy's garbled radio call that mentioned a hunting accident with one man down, waited in vain on the Jameson town dock for the sheriff's patrol to return. While Mr. Bear humped the sheriff's body, Billy Boy's boat struck rocks.

  When the patrol boat didn't show, the state police chartered Big Max's lobster boat. State police detectives working with Coast Guard experts, reconstructing the accident, eventually came up with an acceptable explanation: Freak winds—Maine's infamous "cat's paws" that suddenly reach down, create havoc, and are gone again—must have shifted channel markers. The patrol boat, driven by Billy Boy, upset by accidentally shooting the sheriff, hit a shoal. The boat's hull flew over the shoal but the twin Johnson outboards were held back by solid rock. The boat could only tip over backward, had no choice but to crush her driver's body.

  Grijpstra and de Gier, after one last lobster dinner, said goodbye to their fellow Algonquins and drove the Ford product to Boston's Logan Airport. Nellie met the plane in Amsterdam.

  "Rinus is moving in with us, Nellie, to help with the agency. Isn't that nice?"

  "Isn't it," Nellie said.

  De Gier stayed in Nellie's house at Straight Tree Canal, using the gable house's loft, which he furnished with an old bath tub on a platform, a Navy hammock, and a large Oriental carpet that he found at the flea market and that Grijpstra helped him clean. Tabriz moved up with his former companion, mostly because the Grijpstra household was joined by an overactive minimongrel, soon to be named Deneuve, who followed Grijpstra home one night and declared eternal love to Nellie.