Hard Rain

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Spastic?" de Gier asked.

  "Met subject in the boat," Ketchup said, "when we took Jimmy home and searched the vessel. There was almost nothing there. A mess, sad to see. The black fellow suffered from cramps, the lady from The Hague was starved, Jimmy spat blood, but the spastic looked fine. We didn't notice straight off that he had some physical trouble, but then subject tried to say something."

  "Never saw him again?"

  "No, Adjutant. We did go back once to help pick up the bodies, but the fourth fellow must have missed the onslaught."

  De Gier smiled. "Keep it up. I like this fluent conversation. Do you know that I can see the space between the sounds?" He flapped his arms. "What is said here is like swans, floating high in the sky, suspended in eternal and liquid silver."

  Karate pulled the joint from de Gier's mouth and squashed it in the ashtray. "Those three died of an overdose of pure heroin. I find that hard to believe, somehow. Pure heroin is never sold. Each body had a brand-new needle in an arm. The substance was checked in the laboratory. It was so strong that one injection could take a tribe of gorillas one way to heaven."

  De Gier stirred coffee, plonked down by old Bert. "You see this? See how the milk turns? I read answers in the pattern. I'm understanding more and more."

  "Smoke some more," Grijpstra said. "It'll increase your insight. Brand-new needles, Karate? How come? The boat people are known for their dirty equipment."

  "And we found this uncut heroin," Ketchup said. "Something very wrong there, Adjutant. I say their deaths were planned by some outside agent. Subjects could never have afforded what killed them. Their place was a shambles."

  "Not quite," Karate said. "Remember the rhino's head? The spastic subject had created the structure, from floating garbage picked up in the canal. That's hard to do, when you can't control your hands too well. I watched him move. He seemed to keep going where he didn't want to go."

  "I've got the artwork at home," Grijpstra said, "and some framed Chinese letters. Very nice, I thought."

  "The colors," de Gier said, still stirring his coffee. "I mean, colors are everywhere, they exist here too, in the coffee, but just try to take them out, and to fit them in."

  "I said that just now," Grijpstra said and pushed de Gier's shoulder. "On the bridge, and I never got through to you. The greens in the canal ..."

  "Right," Karate said. "Chinese letters, I almost forgot. Listen here, Adjutant. We had handcuffed Jimmy and I didn't have my key and Ketchup had gone back to the station to look for it and then I saw the Chinese stuff. So I ask, 'What's that?' And Jimmy says he studies Chinese philosophy. I didn't believe him. Subject is dirty, has no teeth, is a bicycle thief and a pimp. He was living off what that lady brought m.

  "So he studies Chinese too," Grijpstra said. "I paint."

  De Gier looked up and spoke slowly, adding appropriate and expressive gestures to his words. "I play the flute. The more miserable our regular lives are, the deeper are our emotions. Beauty, whirling up from cesspools, takes on wondrous shapes, subtle shades, there is a melody that only the unhappy can hear ..."

  "Sergeant?" Grijpstra asked. "If you please? Yes, Karate?"

  "So Jimmy says he made those letters himself—an impossibility; the fellow is quite gone. And the letters were beautiful. So I tell him not to bullshit so much, and what do you think? The lady from The Hague fetches some paper and a jar of ink, and he's got a brush and schnatz whyatzh, Jimmy throws down a Chinese phrase."

  "With handcuffed hands?"

  "Right," Karate said. "Swoosh. Down on the paper. No thought. Just one stroke. There it was."

  "MM," Ketchup said.

  "Moo," repeated de Gier. "The lowing of a cow. Cows have it too. They can say it all in their one eternal sound."

  "No, this is Chinese," Ketchup said. "Meaning emptiness, not-there, you know? That's Zen again. So there is nothing. And subject drew that for us, in half a second or so. He explained all and everything. By denying, you know? There's nothing going on."

  "Ach," Grijpstra grunted angrily.

  "Right!" Ketchup shouted, slapping the table. "I mean, he's right, the asshole, even I can see that at times, but does that mean you have to go down that far? Poison yourself in a garbage boat? Can't he arrange it a little nicer?"

  Silence surrounded the table, filled with disdainful lack of acceptance.

  "Nothing fits too well," Ketchup said. "I was back on the boat by then and got Jimmy's cuffs off, and we were on our way. So how about the banker? We did try to get into that, too, but your adjutant kept us out of the house. Practically kicked us down the stairs, and it was a death in our district. Chief Inspector Halba had his ratty snout into that hole too."

  "Bah," Grijpstra said.

  "Something wrong, right?" Karate asked. "And on the same canal we have the old woman with her eternal drumming complaint who never gets a chance to speak to our sergeant. Another matter we're not supposed to meddle with."

  "Our sergeant says he'll fix it himself," Ketchup said, "but he can't find the time, because he has to sail a lot on the Vinker Lakes, with his flat-bottomed imitation antique yacht, handcrafted, worth a bagful of gold. Your Halba goes along at times, with female company hired from the motel out there."

  "But our sergeant does find the time to tell us what not to do." Karate rolled a joint too. "We can't just bring in any junk. There's junk and junk. If we find it in the street we do a good job, but we can't touch anything that can be connected to the Society for Help Abroad. The Society makes our sergeant nervous."

  "And the State Detection cops in their Corvette don't do anything useful, either, although they cruise in the area a lot, seeing what goes on. They're too busy investigating the commissaris."

  "Aha," Grijpstra said. "You hear that, de Gier?"

  De Gier smiled kindly. "I'm going to challenge the black knight, Adjutant." He punched the air with his fist. "The final day is close. Evil finally shows itself in its darkest form. There will be a black knight out there worthy of my dazzling splendor. We'll have a duel forthwith. Now that restrictions are being lifted, I can at last show my true nature. I'll battle the fiend. We'll gallop at each other, visors down, in a field at dawn."

  "Yep," Karate said, "the sergeant is right. That's just what Ketchup and I are planning. Corruption frees us. The core of the enemy is the Society for Help Abroad, and their headquarters is in our district, on Gelder Quay. We propose to attack their club, you and us. Cardozo can join. He's around already, we saw him today."

  "A duel," de Gier said. "Maybe I'll help you fellows a bit at first, but then I'll dash out alone, no longer on the commissaris's leash, not befuddled by Grijpstra, unhindered by Cardozo."

  "You come along with me," Grnpstra said, pulling de Gier off his chair and supporting him with one arm. "I'll take you home for your nap." He looked at Karate. "Cardozo is around?"

  "Working," Karate said. "He came out of the Banque du Credit, with a clerkish type. We saw them having coffee together later on, looking sneaky."

  " 'Bye, Bert," de Gier said.

  The old man waved feebly from behind his counter, grinning with withered gums. "Catch 'em, Sergeant."

  \\ 8 /////

  THE COMMISSARIS'S SILVER CITROEN SLOWLY FOLlowed a narrow road on a dike separating low fields from a river. "Ah," the commissaris said, seeing a turn-off ahead. He parked the car and looked again at the map that lay on the passenger seat, grunting as his finger found a wavy red line, marked by Miss Antoinette's neat arrows. The river showed up on the map too. He had to be on the right track, close to his goal —too close, maybe. It was still early in the day, and Adjutant Guldemeester, cashing in on the recently instituted system that encouraged policemen to take time off rather than demand extra pay for working overtime, might be disgruntled if he was bothered before ten in the morning. The commissaris grimaced as he switched the engine off. This was not a pleasant call. He suspected an official of negligence, to frame the charge lightly. There might be more. Guldemeester's
track record, never brilliant, had dipped sharply lately. The man worked sloppily, if he worked at all. The adjutant's life-style invited suspicion too. It was a pity that the police department no longer welcomed inquiries into the daily conduct of its members. The commissaris, as he left the car, briefly rethought his general opinion of the country's overall direction. Although he never admitted his socialist sympathies, he was ultimately in favor of a society that spread its wealth, giving to each citizen according to his needs, but the danger was idealization of the state of mind of the average person. "We are," the commissaris had said to his wife, "still egotists, forever looking out for number one. We shouldn't be, of course, but we may as well admit our ignorance. If we're not aware of our petty greed, we'll drag the whole thing down." She'd kissed him, for she thought he was cute when he held forth. Katrien is very practical, the commissaris reflected. I've got to think things out that she has known all along.

  As he crossed the road, a low-slung sports car growled toward him at excessive speed. The Corvette squealed its tires as it suddenly slowed down. The driver waved him on. The commissaris dragged his painful leg to the strip of lush grass bordering the river. The car was menacing. He felt cold sweat inside the collar of his shirt, and a thin icy trickle running down his back. More proof to support his theory that socialism had taken a dangerous turn. Rob the energetic and intelligent citizens through high taxes in order to support stumbling efforts of the weaker sector of the population. All very well, but overtaxing interferes with people's sense of justice. Extreme taxation will be dodged. Hoodlums follow the example of their betters. The system corrupts, because of undeclared taxable income that has to be furtively spent. The criminal potential of the mind provides expensive and illegal pleasure. The two young men in the sports car would probably be pimps, exploiting a pleasure club, taking a break after a dark night of preying on their illegally rich clientele. Or they could be providers of unregistered labor, hiring officially unemployed energy, renting it out at a sizable profit, in cash transactions. The commissaris wondered why the Fraud Department hadn't managed yet to apprehend the two subjects. A mere check of the car's registration would lead to a house search revealing suspicious wealth. Both men were likely to declare no income. Their club, or company, would most certainly be unable to show necessary permits. A nest of vice could be immediately ripped apart. But the Fraud Department employed men who were like Guldemeester, untidy dodderers easily persuaded to take a bribe. And who was he criticizing, anyway? the commissaris thought. He himself was in charge of Guldemeester, allowing the adjutant to get away with petty condoning of irregularities. Was there anything the commissaris could do to clean up Homicide, if a chief constable presented him with a chief inspector like Halba, a much worse example of the self-serving public servant?

  Well, the commissaris thought, so much for negative thinking. There was always something he could still do. He would do it a little later.

  A little honesty, the commissaris thought, might be in order. He didn't care two hoots for Guldemeester's comfort. He wanted to spend some pleasurable time at the river now.

  A fisherman on a folding chair, flanked by a lanky blue heron, waiting for any small catch the man might not care to take home, nodded a greeting. The commissaris raised a hand. The graceful bird, perched on one leg, had turned sideways to make sure that there wasn't any threat to its peace of mind, and disdainfully directed its plumed head back to contemplate the river's clear water.

  The commissaris, not wanting to disturb the two friends, strolled the other way until he found a small pier jutting into the river. He sat on its low flat railing and admired the clouds, fluffy and white, floating lazily above the wide landscape. He grinned. The fisherman, sitting next to an expensive and what looked like a brand-new motorcycle, of a Japanese brand, of course (bless Japanese diligence, the commissaris thought), was probably unemployed too, making use of some imagined disability (a mysterious back complaint, perhaps) so that he could spend his time on what he really cared to do. Who wants to be the slave of a smelly machine in a foul workshop, to manufacture luxuries for others? If conditions can't be changed, their possibilities can be used. Maybe, the commissaris mused, he should accept the pleasant prospect of early retirement and move to some tax-exempt island in a tropical sea, with a climate sympathetic to his rheumatic complaint, and hang out on the beach thinking sly old man's thoughts.

  Suck them if you can't join them. Who said that? Halba said that. Halba was always saying things like that, in private, during brief encounters in a corridor or an elevator, never at a meeting where methods of improving the city's welfare were solemnly discussed.

  The commissaris admired the river's rippling surface until sharp pangs of conscience prodded him into activity again. He ordered his unwilling legs to carry his restless mind back to the car.

  He drove on slowly, trying to read numbers on fences that shielded small cottages, each surrounded by its acre of garden. He turned the wheel when he recognized Guldemeester's late-model Mercedes, parked with its front bumper pushed into a row of cedars that might have been clipped into decorative shapes once, but hadn't been bothered with for a good while. The Citroen nosed along the narrow drive leading to the house, past wavy weeds rising from flowerbeds where individual tulips and daffodils still struggled bravely. A stone gnome pushed a toy wooden wheelbarrow along, from which sprouted more weeds. The gnome, grinning inanely, didn't seem to mind.

  The commissaris rang the doorbell, then knocked and shouted. Guldemeester appeared at the side of the house, holding a beer can in a dangling hand. His shoes weren't laced. Bloodshot eyes gleamed above his unshaven cheeks. "Morning."

  "How are you doing, Adjutant?"

  "Just taking the day off," Guldemeester said, trying to push up his slipping eyeglasses but pressing his nose instead. "I had a hard night."

  "Got a minute?" the commissaris asked. "Can we sit down somewhere?"

  "In the back." Guldemeester turned and walked unsteadily ahead. Behind the house, a hammock had been strung between two thin poplars rising from clusters of dying rhododendrons. Empty cans were strewn about in the tall grass. The remains of two bicycles leaned against the house.

  "A beer?" Guldemeester asked.

  The commissaris looked around for somewhere to sit. "No, thank you."

  "I'll get a chair from the house," Guldemeester said. The commissaris followed his host into the kitchen, where a stack of dirty plates, most of them still holding remnants of food, tottered in the sink. Guldemeester dropped his can on the floor and yanked a fresh one from a carton. "Sure you don't want a beer?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "Why don't you go back to your hammock? I'll find a chair."

  He walked into a room where furniture had fallen over, newspapers and empty cigarette packs littered the floor, and the TV set was partly covered by dirty clothes. Guldemeester came in too. "Why didn't you phone? I could have tidied up."

  "Your line was busy."

  "Right," Guldemeester said. He stepped aside as the commissaris carried out a chair.

  Back in the garden, Guldemeester raised a leg and aimed it at the hammock. His heel caught in the hammock's ropes and he toppled over backward into a bush. "Are you all right now?" the commissaris asked, untangling the adjutant's leg. "Maybe you'd better sit on the ground. Here, lean against the tree."

  Guldemeester groped about for his spectacles in the grass. He poked them at his face. "Drunk, you know."

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "I do get the impression that you're a bit under the weather."

  Guldemeester sat up. "You ever get drunk?"

  "Not so much these days," the commissaris said. "Your wife isn't with you?"

  "Celine is a whore!" Guldemeester yelled. He dropped his voice after he had smiled forgivingly. "That's okay. It's her vocation. Other women become nuns. More money in prostitution." He pointed at the house. "Helped with the payment. Freelansh work, but she's professional now. Livesh with her shishter in Amshterdam."
>
  "I see," the commissaris said.

  Guldemeester shook his head. "It didn't work out."

  "No?"

  The adjutant's head kept shaking. "No. She'll get her money back. I'm selling the place. Don't want the money. Maybe she needs it. Yesh?" He flailed both arms about and the beer can shot off into the bushes, trailing foam.

  The commissaris retrieved the can. Guldemeester peered into its little hole. "Empty." The can fell and rolled down his leg.

  "You'll be leaving this pleasant place, then?" the commissaris asked.

  "Leaving the country," Guldemeester said, slumping against the poplar's trunk. "Haven't told you yet. Damn the job. Never liked it."

  The commissaris nodded helpfully. "I understand."

  "Going to Spain. Better out there. Nice job." The adjutant smiled craftily. "You came about the dead banker, eh?"

  "Yes, Adjutant."

  Guldemeester wagged a finger. "Naughty, naughty. The case ish closed."

  He swept his hand edgewise through the air, cutting the top off all possible explanations.

  "You didn't have too much to do with the case?" the commissaris asked.

  "No." Guldemeester closed one eye. His head dropped and he raised it with some trouble, trying to focus the other eye on his visitor's face. "I'm sorry, but I'd razzer not discush the matter."

  "Is that what the chief inspector told you to say?"

  Guldemeester nodded solemnly. "Yesh." His head dropped on his chest. "I'd razzer not discush the chief inshpector eizzer."

  "Did Halba get you the job?"

  Guldemeester's eyes crossed.

  "Did Halba get you that nice job in Spain?"

  "I'd razzer not discush . . ."

  "You should be in bed." The commissaris stepped foward. "On your feet, friend. I'll help you into the house."

  "Not in the bed." Guldemeester said in a suddenly clear voice. "I sleep on the couch downstairs. The bed reminds me of Celine." He attempted to push aside dead leaves dangling in front of his face.