The Maine Massacre ac-7

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Sir?"

  "Look at that, sergeant. Cotton wool, dirty cotton wool, just what I have in my brain now. We are moving, but it doesn't seem we have reached any definite point in our investigation so far."

  "The sheriff should be with that boat in the ice now, sir. If there's no plastic foam in it we know we are dealing with murder."

  The commissaris smiled tiredly. "Yes, our one and only possible clue, the probable absence of plastic foam. I suppose that any mathematician can accuse me of wild guessing. Just because the sun rises on four consecutive days I say it rises forever. The gang chased the Nazi captain away and saw to it that old Mr. Ranee drank himself to death. I have ignored those facts because they are in my way, and they are in my way because I don't want to suspect that fox boy and your friend Madelin. But I really enjoy suspecting Suzanne, just because I don't like her cooking. What do you think, sergeant? Am I being subjective because I am always like that, or is the change of scenery a possible cause?"

  "The sun, sir. You said the sun rose four times. Four people died of accidents and we assume murder, but so far we only see the possibility of proving one murder."

  "True, sergeant." The commissaris sighed. "If there is no plastic foam in the boat the sun has risen once. I cannot deduce that the other three deaths are due to murder because the fourth is." He sat up. "You did check on the dates of the deaths, didn't you, sergeant?"

  De Gier produced his notebook. "Jones died first, then Mary Brewer, then Schwartz left, then Davidson died, then Paul Ranee, then Opdijk. The intervals are irregular. All deaths occurred within a span of three years."

  The airplane drilled through the cloud cover and the sun shone into the windows on the commissaris' side.

  "Light! At last. Light is objective. It shines on us all. And how subjective am I, or how illogical? You know, sergeant, I don't really think I have been reasoning illogically. My thinking may be hazy, but I have been in criminal situations so often that I am sure my subconscious reacts correctly. I somehow don't want to suspect the BMF gang. Every time I think about them my mind blocks."

  "The fox was serious when he suggested that Madelin spend some time in a porno studio in New York, sir. Just because the gang was out of money."

  "And you have no sympathy with pimps, I know. I've seen you react to them before. Remember the doorman of that elegant brothel when we were trying to trap the Arab? The man was just teasing you and you frothed at the mouth. He-he."

  De Gier was standing next to the commissaris' seat. He scratched his bottom.

  "And Madelin never did work in that porno studio. Did you ever see any porno movies, sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Were you pushed into the cinema? Was your visit part of an investigation?"

  "No, sir."

  "He-he."

  "Yes, sir. Did you ever see any porno movies, sir?"

  The commissaris sat up and fished around in his pockets for his cigars. "No, sergeant. I don't want to admit it, but the truth is that I felt shy. Old men always sneak into porno cinemas and I didn't want to join the doddering crowd. I may also have been frightened of being disappointed. I don't think that type of art attracts the right producers. I didn't want to see good material badly used. But I have seen some good scenes in regular movies. I remember seeing a girl, or a full-grown woman rather, a really beautiful woman, undress herself on one of those enormous revolving discs in a window of a store selling motorcars. There was only one spotlight in the window, and the disc turned slowly so you could see her in the shadows. Then there was a flash of direct light but too quick for you to take it all in, and then she moved into the half light again, darker and darker, almost completely dark, and then mere was a pale light again, growing stronger. Now that was done by a good producer. Splendid, sergeant. I often revive that scene, especially when I am in pain. I can see the woman go around, sometimes for as much as several minutes, and as I have the type of mind that can only concentrate on one subject at a time the pain is completely absent."

  De Gier grinned. The commissaris looked out the window. The plane seemed to be resting on the clouds and the clouds stretched endlessly in all directions. "I hope the pilot knows how to go through that mess again. As you were saying, if the sheriff finds no plastic foam we have murder. Murder of Mary Brewer. But we still don't know who. Our suspects are having their games with us. We haven't rattled the BMF gang. On the contrary, Madelin has been going out of her way to help. And Jeremy… ha! He gave us the tip about the boat and then sat back on bis island and smirked. Do you know why I think he gave us that tip? Not to be of help at all but to see what we would do. Like he watches his seals in the surf around his island. He didn't want us to give up, for then the show would be over. The BMF gang may be doing the same. And Suzanne just mumbles through her house and wraps her porcelain dollies in tissue paper. She has unwrapped them all again now because she can't bear to be without them. The crates won't arrive for a few days. And Janet Wash plays lady in the castle and Reggie plays… what does he play, sergeant?"

  "I think he plays son, sir. If we go into his past we'll probably find that his mother left him when he was quite small. Or perhaps she died early."

  "Right, perhaps he plays son. I see, yes, that's not a bad assumption, sergeant. We might ask the sheriff to check."

  One of the pilots came into the cabin. "We have almost arrived, gentlemen. You can fasten your seat belts."

  "But still, we must have rattled them somewhat, sergeant," the commissaris said as they walked through the hall of Boston's airport. "We arrived like two pebbles thrown into a very calm pond. I wonder if the sheriff would have done anything if we hadn't arrived. But I may be underestimating the man. On the other hand, what could he have done? Sheriffs are elected and have to watch their popularity. Fishing in murky waters has never made anybody popular. I know that from experience. I was threatened with a transfer once because I reopened a file. What a file that was. Corruption, bah. This should be more interesting."

  He stopped and poked about in the thick hall carpet. "I like this case in a way, perhaps because the setting is so good. Do you like the case, sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir, I like the case. There's no crowd around us this time. In Amsterdam I get tired of the jostling and the traffic. I liked the chase last night when the sheriff raced out to an accident. They have good sirens on the cruisers here."

  The commissaris began to walk again, slowly, then stopped and pushed a door marked NI. The door wouldn't give way. "You are subjective too. That chase wasn't even connected with Cape Orca. What's the matter with this door, sergeant?"

  "It says IN, sir, but the lettering is on the other side."

  "That's right. I want to go in, into the city."

  "You want to go out of the airport, sir."

  The commissaris stepped back and looked at the two letters again. "Out? Ah yes."

  A taxi arrived, as they stepped into the cold wind, and a window opened. They looked into the gray face of a young man. The face was narrow, half hidden in long dirty hair. The driver's eyes sat in the face as if two blobs of pink paint had been thrown into a lump of decaying plastic. De Gier stepped back.

  "To the city?"

  The commissaris was getting into the cab. "Come, sergeant. Yes, driver. Fosterhouse Hotel."

  The cab moved before de Gier had closed the door. It dived into a long tunnel and became part of a row of speeding vehicles, glued together, almost colorless, in the tunnel's pale light. The driver turned his face. "What hotel you say?"

  "Fosterhouse."

  De Gier shuddered. There had been no life at all in the pink eyes. A junkie, in charge of a car speeding in a tunnel. This would be death proper. He thought of Adjutant Grijpstra, who often compared death to a tunnel. A long dark tunnel, endless, and a phantom to show the way. What way? There was only one way. He looked over his shoulder. They were followed by a dented limousine caked with mud and wet dirty snow. An old woman steered the car. Behind the limousine loomed the high c
abin of a truck. De Gier couldn't see the driver's face, just the fingers holding the wheel. The tunnel rumbled. Perhaps it would cave in. He forced himself to listen to the commissaris.

  "What were you doing in the hangar when the sheriff and I were waiting for you, sergeant?"

  "The girl wanted me to kiss her, sir."

  "Did you kiss her?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "So why did she almost run you over when she left?"

  "I don't know, sir. I did my best."

  "She is an attractive girl, sergeant."

  De Gier heard himself tell the commissaris about the full-page advertisement. The old man listened. "Yes. I think I know that feeling. I have it too here. We play roles in these people's minds and it makes us mechanical. We are not used to being manipulated, sergeant. It never dawned on the gang that you could have refused to go to the Astrinsky house. You couldn't have, they were right. A, the girl is attractive, and, B, the enemy was opening up. So you ran along and got shot at and seduced. Perhaps you would have liked to seduce the girl, but they turned the tables on you, the way Jeremy did with me. It's a one-sided game. They know the country, the undercurrents." He poked the sergeant's chest. The tunnel was still stretching away.

  "But there is more to it, sergeant. Where did I hear the word 'experiment'?"

  The sergeant was staring into the tunnel. No light ahead at all.

  "Sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir. I said that. Madelin told me that the gang experiments."

  "Quite. On us, but also on themselves. That trip to New York, for instance. I'll have to talk to that fox-listen to him rather. Talking won't do any good. Ah, finally. I thought that tunnel would never end. Have you noticed the driver's face?"

  "Yes, sir. Drugs."

  "He has been sneezing and wheezing. Needs his next shot. Let's hope the hotel isn't far."

  It wasn't far. The taxi honked its way through the traffic, ruthlessly pushing other cars out of the way, even scratching a compact's fender. The compact beeped, but the cabdriver didn't look around. They had got to a park, surrounded by tall buildings, some of them half alight so that they appeared to be tottering crazily. The cab turned abruptly and the commissaris fell against de Gier. The driver braked hard.

  "Fosterhouse Hotel."

  De Gier paid. The driver didn't check the amount and dropped the folded bills into an open tin at his side. The hotel was black and shiny. A costumed, unsmiling doorman took the two overnight bags from de Gier's hands. The man's chin had sunk away in a frilled collar, and his high boots were spattered with mud. An impeccable clerk waited behind a plastic-topped desk.

  "Credit card?"

  "No."

  "How will you pay?"

  "In cash."

  "Please pay now." The clerk's mouth was a slit in his perfectly shaved face. His eyes were cold.

  De Gier wandered away. The costumes seemed part of the hotel's trademark. Bellboys and waitresses moved about in caps and bonnets and riding breeches and long skirts. He supposed the clothes would fit in with the city's history. Amsterdam had also dressed its servants up when the city celebrated its seven-hundredth birthday. He remembered arresting a waiter dressed in a black corduroy fisherman's suit, with bulging trousers and a short jacket sparkling with silver buttons. The charge was rape. The suspect had gone free. The victim hadn't impressed the public prosecutor. She had gone to his office in hot pants, bikini top, a scarf. No witnesses, since the event had taken place in the privacy of the lady's own room.

  "Right, sergeant. The clerk was good enough to take my money. Coming up? Our room is on the top floor, with a view of the park."

  De Gier played with the television set while the commissaris checked the room's bath and shower. He turned the switch. A lady with a distressing overbite smiling over a bar of soap. Two young men in shiny jackets pulling the strings of their guitars while a tape-recorded audience applauded at set intervals. An actor whom he remembered having seen as a tough cop in a movie in Amsterdam advertising a new brand of popcorn, smiling from the comer of his mouth, exactly as he had done in the film. An old man playing the violin. A puppet dancing.

  He was about to switch the machine off when the commissaris came out of the bathroom. "Hold it, sergeant." They watched the puppet together. It was very good. It never showed his feet. The dance was all in the hands. But then German troops suddenly appeared, in black and white, marching and singing. An advertisement for a book about World War II.

  "Switch it off, sergeant. We have seen that in color. This room is fine and there is an abundance of hot water. I can have a long bath later on. According to that helpful clerk downstairs the good restaurants are all on the other side of the park. Be my guest, sergeant."

  It wasn't six o'clock yet, and the park was crowded in spite of the cold. Old men sat on benches, peering at newspapers under streetlights, well-dressed office employees walked briskly, eager to get home, a group of children raced about laughing and yelling. Their shrill voices brightened the winding paths under the protective silence of dark trees.

  The commissaris stopped. A Christmas carol, sung by a pure female voice, was piped through hidden loudspeakers. De Gier put out a hand and nudged the old man into motion again.

  "Beautiful," the commissaris said, but the song was torn apart by police sirens and the sudden growl of traffic released by a changing stoplight. The park ended, and they found themselves in dark streets, which funneled the icy wind. Store windows displayed girlie magazines, thrown about haphazardly between dust and grains of mouse poison. Young men in padded coats and woolen hats pulled over their ears shouted from open doors, "It's hootchy-cootchy time, gentlemen. It comes off, all of it comes off, on the inside. The new show is beginning right now College girls only, gentlemen. A dollar and a half for any drink." The commissaris limped on, small and helpless in his hooded army coat. A patrol car raced past, stopped halfway on the sidewalk, and two policemen ran into an alley. They came back dragging a man by the hands. The man was pushed into the cruiser and the car roared away.

  A girl clicked past on high heels. She stopped and smiled. "Combat Zone all right tonight?"

  "Pardon miss?" de Gier asked.

  "You're not from here, are you? That's what we call this district. The Combat Zone. Anything I can do for you, gentlemen? I work in a good bar, just around the comer. It's still happy hour. Drinks are half price now."

  "No, miss. We're looking for a Chinese restaurant."

  "Another block. Have a good time now."

  "Pleasant girl," the commissaris said.

  "She would have taken our last penny, sir. That sort of bar sucks you in and throws you out the moment you're broke."

  "I know, sergeant, but she wasn't rough when we refused. That's something."

  The stores had changed. They were Chinese now and displayed food, mostly red carcasses of birds hanging side by side above constellations of 'cans that looked as if they could fall over any moment. They came to an intersection where policemen, dressed in long orange plastic coats, were attempting to sort out the traffic. A woman on their side of the street suddenly yelled, turning away from her escort, a big, well-dressed man.

  "Bitch!" the man shouted and slapped the woman's face. She staggered and began to fall, but the man grabbed her by the collar of her coat and yanked her upright again. He swore at her in a guttural language with four-letter English words thrown in. He raised his arm again and de Gier stepped forward, but the commissaris held on to the sergeant's sleeve. Two of the orange-coated policemen walked up to the man.

  "Mister!"

  "You know what she just told me, officer?"

  The commissaris pushed de Gier toward the nearest restaurant. The sergeant looked over his shoulder. He could only see the coats of the policemen. The woman was whimpering.

  "Not our business, sergeant."

  "What would that woman have said to the man, sir?"

  The commissaris' long teeth reflected the street's garish light. "That she prefers the man's be
st friend to the man. Love, sergeant, the case of much violence. Let's go in."

  When they walked through the park again their mood had improved. Fortified by a six-course meal, they hardly noticed the looming trees, reaching down threateningly, and they almost casually avoided staggering drunks and shuffling junkies. It was dark now and the young lady singing Christmas carols was coming to the end of her program. The police sirens hadn't. They tore at the chanting voice and blotted out most of the twittering of a flock of starlings shifting from tree to tree. The commissaris plodded on with the sergeant striding at his side.

  "Coffee," the commissaris said, "and then to bed, but we should make an effort to waylay Astrinsky, although I don't really feel like work."

  De Gier spotted Astrinsky a few minutes later in the hotel's coffee shop and pointed him out to the commissaris. The commissaris sat down at the next table and smiled at his suspect.

  "Good evening, Mr. Astrinsky. How are you tonight?"

  Astrinsky lowered his magazine. It took a few seconds before he recognized the man who greeted him. He dropped the magazine and got up. When his elbow hit his coffee cup it fell off the table.

  "You!" The word was both an exclamation and an acknowledgment.

  "Yes, you remember? Suzanne Opdijk's brother. You remember Sergeant de Gier too?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you been in touch with Jameson at all lately, Mr. Astrinsky?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Perhaps you should go back. All sorts of things have been happening. Mary Brewer's boat was found, and the sheriff is very active. You knew Mary Brewer, didn't you?"

  "Yes." Astrinsky's eyes stared. His half glasses had slid to the end of his fleshy nose, and his hands were crumpling the magazine.

  "Of course you remember her. You bought her house. Ah!" The commissaris' little fist hit the table. "That's right. I knew there was something I wanted to discuss with you. Suzanne's house! You offered me thirty thousand, but after you left so suddenly I asked another realtor, a friend of the sheriff's, wasn't he, sergeant?"

  The sergeant nodded helpfully.