The Rattle-Rat

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Cardozo had to take a leak. The foaming ray of liquid that connected him to a tiled wall in the toilet made him think of water. His lighter's flame reminded him of fire. The combination of the two associations evoked the file photographs of the remnants of Douwe Scherjoen. Where were the remnants found? In a dory. The dory had been confiscated and should be somewhere in the building.

  He found it, stored in a basement corner. The brand name was still visible. LOWE. Cardozo deciphered the serial number pressed into a small copper plate, welded inside the bow. The dory looked old. Would he find out who sold that brand of boat, in a remote past, to some forgotten client? How many times would the dory have changed owners in between? Stolen? Given away? Lost and found? Where had it been found last? In the Inner Harbor. He checked the large wall map near the main entrance of the building. The Inner Harbor ends at Prince Henry Quay. Cardozo's roaming finger rubbed pink quays, extended into blue water. Boats are moored to quays.

  He caught a streetcar. He walked up and down all quays, and boarded all vessels attached to the quays. Had anyone lost a dory?

  "Not me," a skipper said, "but over there, in the corner where the garbage floats, there used to be a dory, and it isn't there now. Filched by the boys who come here to annoy us. Useless dory, damaged, no good to anyone. It was tied up with a bit of red wire."

  So far, so good. The dory in Headquarters' basement had some red wire attached to the bow. He thanked the skipper. "Righto," the skipper said.

  Cardozo sat on a rotten post. He was the killer. He absolutely loathed Douwe Scherjoen. He closed his eyes to darken his view, so that it might be night, cloudy, pitch black all around. He had shot Douwe a few minutes ago, but he wasn't quite done. Douwe's corpse was in the way. Had he committed murder in a frenzy of hatred? Probably not. Angry amateurs will shoot a man in the chest. He had shot Douwe intelligently, according to a premeditated plan, from the rear, of course. Was the dory so that he wouldn't have to drag the corpse a great distance?

  Or had fate played tricks on him and complicated the scheme? Fate's often unreasonable chaos may upset the best of plans. Very well, the dory was here, but he hadn't brought a sufficient quantity of gasoline. No, he hadn't thought of bringing any gasoline at all, and would have to find it now, but where? Suck it from a car's tank through a tube? Where would he get the tube? Nobody ever carries a tube. Had he ripped it off a cookstove somewhere? Cookstoves are found in kitchens. Was his kitchen close by, in his home?

  Close by. Cardozo opened his eyes. His gaze wandered over the long row of houses on Prince Henry Quay. There would be a number of side streets too. If the suspect lived in the neighborhood, Cardozo was now faced with a multitude of suspects. Add to that all the skippers of the vessels moored nearby.

  Was he getting anywhere? He was getting hungry.

  At this stage of an investigation, any point is a starting point, Cardozo thought as he tripped over the high threshold of a small Chinese restaurant called Wo Hop. Mister Hop caught his prospective client and guided him to a table. Cardozo read the specials on the menu. Fried noodles. Fried rice.

  "Fried noodles," Cardozo said. "Beer."

  The restaurant consisted of a bare room furnished with plastic chairs and tables. Neon light reflected from Hop's shaven skull. The other customers were longhaired louts with skin diseases, silently picking scabs when they weren't coughing or sneezing. In the back of the room, young Chinese men in loud shirts conducted a conversation in which nouns were musically stretched, and then abruptly swallowed. Car-dozo noticed their crewcuts and staccato movements. Karate types, he thought.

  So I can start anywhere, Cardozo thought. What would a sheep dealer be doing near the harbor? Delivering sheep for transport to the Near East?

  The noodles arrived in a bowl. Hop dropped off a pair of chopsticks and a glass of beer. The bottle's label was Chinese. Would Chinese buy Frisian sheep? From Dingjum? From New Zealand more likely, thought Cardozo. There should be no food shortage in China now. They probably wouldn't need any foreign sheep at all.

  He ate and drank, without tasting much. When Hop presented the bill, Cardozo noticed the man's cold eyes, like slivers of ice. Even the glow of Hop's golden canines was cold. Scherjoen had also been equipped with golden dentures. Could that line connect? Why should it? Cardozo thought.

  He wandered through the neighborhood. The memory of Wo Hop's presence wandered with him, bathed in neon light. Cardozo couldn't understand why he couldn't lose Hop's image. What more could the Chinese be than a bit player in gray clothes, vertically adorned by old-fashioned suspenders like those worn by laborers in antique pictures? The owner of a small-time eating place, a retreat of footsore junkies and Chinese sailors, a hardly exotic migrant like so many, chained to their marginal establishments, saving hard-earned guilders that might, one faraway day, buy them a return ticket to Hong Kong or Singapore, home cities that their spirits had never left. Cardozo walked a little faster and managed to leave Hop behind. He stopped a few minutes later to stare at a car. Why? Perhaps he was tired and had to rest his eyes on an interesting object. Why interesting? Because it was a new Citroen, of a model that the commissaris had been talking about. Because Cardozo had seen Grypstra and de Gier leaving Headquarters' courtyard in the commissaris's new car, waving airly, ordering him to "do something" from an electronically dropped window. Was this the same car? There wouldn't be too many new silver super-Citroens about. Cardozo walked around the car. No, this had to be a different vehicle; it bore a white oval sticker marked FR. Dutch cars were marked NL. What would FR mean? Friesland. The sticker was unofficial, marking fervent national feeling, claiming independence for a province absorbed by the country. FR, meaning "free." All nonsense. Frisians also had their own money that not even Frisian stores would accept, and their own postage stamps, equally without any value. Amazing, that unquenchable desire to be cut off. His brother Samuel had read him a newspaper article on the problem. "Pathetic," Samuel had said. "We don't go about wearing an embroidered / on our chests." Samuel did wear a golden star of David on a chain around his neck, and collected Israeli stamps.

  Free? Cardozo thought. Who is free? I'm not free. I jump when others pull my strings. "Do something, Cardozo."

  The Citroen, parked half on the sidewalk, fronted a health-food store. Cardozo went in. "Has that car been here long?"

  "What of it?" snarled the woman behind the counter. She had been constructed of large bones, covered by a square cloth slit by a blunt knife to leave a hole for her thin neck. She had to push matted hair away to squint at this party who offended her by his presence. "A poison sprayer," the woman screamed. "Oh, I know the type. A juggler of genes. An injector of hormones. Ha! Our greedy farmers. They wear their little caps and pretend to bring us the gifts of the earth, but they swindle us out of our money and buy capitalist cars and obstruct the sidewalk and I can't even park my bike, does anybody ever think of me?"

  "May I use your phone?"

  Cardozo burped. The food displayed in the dim store made him unwell. Cracked plastic pots were half-filled with moldy grains. A bowl had been filled with a jelly crusted on top. Sickly-looking mice scurried about on a shelf.

  The store had no phone.

  Cardozo walked back to Wo Hop's restaurant, where more junkies leered at each other in noisy despair. Cardozo sneezed with them. The young fighting Chinese were still nervously conversing; their singsong was louder now, even less in har- mony with the trumpeting of the addicted. "Phone?" Cardozo asked. "Go grab," Wo Hop said, translating freely from Cantonese. He pointed. Cardozo walked through the cold light. He dialed Headquarters and passed along the Citroen's license plate number.

  "Can't check that for you right now," a girlish voice said. "The computer hasn't come up yet."

  "Up from where?"

  "From being down."

  Cardozo caught a streetcar back to Headquarters. The computer room's young ladies were politely unhelpful. "I've got to know," Cardozo said, wandering away. In the Traffic Depart
ment, another screen showed another little green square, trembling quietly. It was on view again in the Road Tax Department, and he found it once more in the Department That Hauls Wrecks. Cardozo knocked on the commissaris's door. He rattled the handle.

  "Maybe the chief isn't in," a bass voice said, rumbling from a large chest covered by a tight T-shirt. "Would you do me a small favor? Won't take a minute. In the sports room. Do come along."

  "No," Cardozo said.

  The sports instructor's long, hairy arm clasped Cardozo's shoulders. "Colleague, break your restraining ego and serve others for a change. Here we are, would you mind taking off your shoes?"

  Other large and strong men waited, kneeling around the judo mat. "This, colleague," said the sports instructor to Cardozo, "is an Arrest Team. They learn from me. Today we demonstrate Sudden Unexpected Attack. Mind joining us for a moment?"

  The sports instructor put on a duck-billed cap.

  Cardozo smiled shyly. He scratched his ear. The instructor addressed the team. "Please pay attention. This colleague will now suddenly and unexpectedly attack me."

  The hand that scratched Cardozo's ear attached itself to the bill of the instructor's cap. The headgear dipped over the instructor's eyes. Cardozo's other hand clenched and hit the instructor's belly, twisting as it thumped. The instructor bent forward. Cardozo's fist slid up and slammed against the instructor's chin. The instructor bent backward. He kept bending backward because Cardozo's ankle hooked around the enemy's shin and pulled it forward. The instructor fell on his back. Cardozo fell too, twisted free, and yanked on the instructor's wrist so that his whole heavy body turned over. The instructor rested on his belly, with arms stretched out. Cardozo lifted the arms, joined the wrists, and attached them with handcuffs.

  "Like this?" Cardozo asked.

  The instructor groaned.

  'Til free you," Cardozo said, "as soon as I can locate my key." Cardozo was emptying out his pockets. "Now where did I put it? In my hankie, perhaps? No. In my wallet?"

  "Does anyone happen to have a handcuff key?" Cardozo asked the kneeling, attentively watching Arrest Team members.

  The team shook their heads.

  "Here it is," Cardozo said. "In my new belt. Nifty belt, eh? See this zipper? Hides a secret slit to keep things in. You never thought of that, did you now?"

  The team nodded their heads in amazement.

  "Anything else I can do for you gents today?" Cardozo asked.

  "You, get out of here," the instructor said.

  The commissaris had arrived in the meantime. "There have been complaints about you," the commissaris said. "You've been causing some trouble. What trouble were you causing?"

  "I'm sorry," Cardozo said. "I was only trying to be of help, and I did come up with something useful. I found the dead man's car, or so it seems for the moment."

  The commissaris's small fist bounced on his desk. "I want confirmed facts."

  "Our confirmation device is down, sir, but the car was parked asocially, half on the pavement and under a *no parking' sign. Would you have a photograph of Mr. Scherjoen? I would like to show it around in the area where I found the car."

  "No," the commissaris said.

  "Where can I obtain a photo?"

  "Grijpstra?" the commissaris asked. "He stays in Fries-land now. I just had a call to that effect, from the chief constable of Leeuwarden, Lasius of Burmania, a nobleman from up north. Grypstra has been given the use of a house at the Spanish Lane in Friesland's capital. I'm not sure why. There isn't much I'm sure of these days. I'm an old man."

  "Not at all," Cardozo said. "How do I get to Friesland?"

  "My car is gone," the commissaris said. "De Gier will bring it back, but that'll be tomorrow. I don't want de Gier driving my new car, he's a reckless speeder. Not that it matters. Nothing matters much these days."

  "Does your leg hurt?" Cardozo asked.

  "Should it?" the commissaris asked. "I'm on a diet of Belgian endives. My wife says I'm very fond of Belgian endives. I would rather be driving on the Great Dike, but I'm short of a car."

  "What are Grypstra and de Gier doing in Friesland, sir?"

  "Grijpstra," the commissaris said, "is in Friesland because he's a Frisian. His parents were born in Harlingen, just north of the dike. I should be there because I'm a Frisian too. I was bora in Joure, a little farther inland. De Gier is in Fries-land because he drifted after Grypstra."

  "Wasn't Scherjoen murdered here?"

  "That's an effect," the commissaris said. "We're looking for causes, Cardozo. The present hardly matters. Think with me now. Scherjoen has been described to us as an inferior being of a devilish nature. He even parks his car asocially. A ne'er-do-well, this Douwe. It's a first attempt at constructing a theory, but we have to begin in the past."

  "But you've only just heard that Scherjoen is an asocial parker."

  The commissaris sighed.

  "Is your leg hurting badly?"

  "You want to hear the truth?"

  "Why not?" Cardozo asked.

  "I was trying to construct a theory that would take me to Friesland, because I've a new car. I wanted to race it on the dike. Fate got in my way again. My theory was designed to satisfy my selfish longings. But I could still be right. If Douwe is no good, he started by being no good in Friesland. Suppose Frisians wanted to be rid of Douwe and did that here. Couldn't that be possible?"

  "Why not in Friesland?"

  "It's pure out there," the commissaris said. "And messy here. Another misdeed here might attract little attention."

  Cardozo rolled a cigarette.

  "And if the misdeed is Frisian-related," the commissaris said, "the inquiry should be Frisian too, for only we Frisians know the depth of our own soul. Grijpstra and I will be the most suitable sleuths."

  Cardozo lit his cigarette.

  "Grijpstra hunts out there," the commissaris said, "and I drive up and down the dike, to keep contact at over a hundred miles an hour, that's what I had in mind."

  "And I would be hunting here?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said. His phone rang. "I'm on my way, dear," he said, and replaced the phone on its cradle. "Have to go home now, to eat Belgian endives."

  Cardozo coughed and sneezed.

  "You should go home too," the commissaris said.

  They waited at the elevator together.

  "The elevator broke down," a passing constable said. "Everything is down these days, but the elevator got stuck upstairs."

  The commissaris and Cardozo walked down the stairs together. Cardozo limped a little. "Are you imitating me?" the commissaris asked.

  "I fought the Arrest Team, sir."

  "You lost? So why did they complain to me?"

  "I sort of not-lost, sir."

  "I'm in a bad mood," the commissaris said. "You must excuse me."

  "Tomorrow you'll have your car again, sir."

  'True," the commissaris said. "Visit me again tomorrow, my spirits should be up."

  Waiting at the streetcar stop together, they felt better together. "Bald Ary," the commissaris said, "and Fritz with the Tuft, in Friesland too. Yes, things may be looking up."

  His streetcar came first. Cardozo waved good-bye.

  \\ 6 /////

  THE COMMISSARIS, WHO HAD ONLY JUST GOT OUT INTO THE new day, looked fresh in the early sunlight. His light gray three-piece summer suit contrasted pleasantly with the luscious colors of the begonia flowers in the windows. His small head, under the last few hairs neatly combed across his gleaming skull, rose energetically from the collar of a starched white shirt that held a bright blue tie clasped with a large pearl set in silver. He related his adventure with the barkeep Troelstra and the possibility of future charges against the criminal Bald Ary and his mate, Fritz with the Tuft.

  Cardozo listened.

  De Gier came in. "Moarn" he said.

  The commissaris and Cardozo questioned the sergeant soundlessly, from under raised eyebrows.

  "Moarn?" de Gier asked. "Have
n't I fattened the vowels sufficiently? Is my accent blurring my meaning?"

  The commissaris's and Cardozo's eyebrows were still up.

  "Can I sit down?"

  "We are accustomed here," the commissaris said, "to wishing each other a good morning first. After that we can sit down."

  "But I did wish you a good morning," de Gier said. "In the Frisian language. You're Frisian, I believe?" He held up a small black book. "My dictionary, the word is listed." He held up a multicolored book. "And this is a novel, or rather a bundle of Frisian stories, called"—he read the title— "We're Out of Condiments at Home, and Other Stories, in Frisian, that is."

  "Sit down," the commissaris said.

  De Gier sat down. "Excellent stories, sir, and all connected. About a lady. A Frisian lady, about the suffering she gets herself into out there. In her stories she calls herself Martha. Literature is interesting, don't you think? Truthful and schizophrenic. We split ourselves, allow the split part to grow and change its name."

  "Goinga?" Cardozo asked, taking the book away from de Gier. "Is that her real name? Sounds like Hungarian-Finnish to me."

  "Frisian is very foreign," de Gier said, "but understandable to me. Even more, because the novel is female. I've been studying the female mind for a while, and she won't escape me, not even in a foreign language. Most of the words I can guess, and the few exceptions I've looked up. There's some confusion about the negative, which they express as positive, but once you've turned it around again, there's nothing to miss."

  "Our linguistic wonderboy," the commissaris said, "and the eternal victim of his fantasies about the miracle of Woman. Did you return my car?"

  "But sir," de Gier said, "there may be a female suspect. This book is filled with clues."

  "My car? Is it here?"

  "Yes sir. It was too late last night, and this morning I overslept a little. I didn't cause you any inconvenience, I hope?"

  "You did," the commissaris said. "I'm not used to the streetcars anymore. They sell tickets in the cigar stores now, not on the cars. Without a ticket, I was caught twice and paid two fines. Twice a lady offered me her seat. I've been robbed and insulted."