The Hollow-Eyed Angel

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Antonio agreed. "You're thinking of Massachusetts. Massachusetts was setded by hypocrites in hats. You guys, the Dutch, settled Manhattan. Flamboyant folks. 'New Amsterdam,' remember? And then, after you guys, it was the British. The Brits were merchants and aristocrats. They're not after dicks, they're after money." He laughed. "Money buys the good life, eh, Fred?"

  Freddie told de Gier that he specialized in trading furniture and art objects from those early days. Through his dealings he had absorbed some of the distinctive atmosphere of that historical period. Neither the Dutch not the British had been concerned about prescribing restrictive behavior in order to impress a forbidding Father.

  "Show him that picture of the cross-dressing governor, Freddie."

  Freddie knew of a portrait of one of the Tory governors, a well-known transvestite. He went inside and came back with an art book. There was a full-page reproduction of an oil painting showing a powerful figure in an extravagant satin dress. "Here," Freddie said. "Mark the shaven jowls. His ladyship. An early J. Edgar Hoover."

  "And the governor held court here" Antonio said, "in New York City. Nobody minded much."

  De Gier's theory crumbled while Freddie and Antonio, taking turns, being careful not to interrupt each other, like TV anchormen, lectured him on the history of New York City. The sergeant was told that the city had been on the British side during the American Revolution and had spent the Civil War sympathizing with the southern slavery states.

  "Bah!" Freddie concluded.

  "Sin and corruption," Antonio said. "We have a bad name here; the rest of the country hates us. We like that. You think you guys are way-out in Holland? Go to Central Park, watch out-of-state wannabe-shockers try to be naughty in spandex shorts, in bare-bottom thongs, even..." Antonio grinned. "There was a bare-top guy on the Promontory in a kind of lampshade that he wore as a skirt. The shade folded up if he pulled a string, and then he'd pull another string and erect something that could be a Day-Glo-velvet-upholstered cucumber and waggle that"—Antonio looked at de Gier triumphantly—"and still nobody looked."

  Freddie smiled. "We all know what Amsterdam is like today, but New York has long been there."

  "More apricot juice?" Antonio asked.

  "Some hazelnut latte with fat-free topping?" Freddie asked.

  De Gier had both.

  "Sorry to disappoint you," Antonio said. "But you've got to get real."

  "You can't shock a New York policewoman," Freddie said. "That's Real for you." He cleared his throat. "Eh, Rainus? That how you pronounce your name? Just one question. I should have asked you before. We don't tolerate smoking in this building. You don't use nicotine, do you? If you do we can easily find you other lodging."

  De Gier claimed to have given up smoking some months before.

  "And you didn't gain weight?" Antonio asked, looking down at his own protruding belly. "I gained forty pounds. It's two years now and I still haven't lost it."

  "What's your secret, pal?" Freddie asked.

  De Gier said he mostly ate sliced radishes on toast for breakfast and was spending more time on unarmed combat police training and repeated a mantra whenever he tended to think about chocolate.

  "What mantra?"

  De Gier blushed. "Nothing special."

  "No slips?"

  "Some slips."

  "Doesn't that prolong the agony?"

  "It does."

  "How do you cope with agony?"

  De Gier demonstrated. He got up, stretched, put his hands in his pockets and leaned his forehead against a doorpost.

  "That helps?"

  "After a few minutes."

  While de Gier drank his coffee concoction Antonio frowned and concentrated.

  "You know," Antonio said, "I kind of liked your guy. I called him 'the frozen jumper.' He would stand at crossings, ready to leap, and then not move until you'd given up on him, and then he would make a giant jump and run up a path, waving and hollering. The bearded philosopher type. What did you say his name was?"

  "Termeer."

  Antonio' strong fingers dug about in his beard. "Termeer reminded me of the Sadguru. Are you into Hinduism at all? You've heard about the Sadguru, the Inner Teacher, He Who Won't Be Denied Ever? Your true inner self ? You can keep being stupid, fucking up and so on, but the Sadguru is getting ready."

  De Gier said he was more into Buddhism.

  "Okay," Antonio said. "Same thing. Call it Buddha Nature. The Relentless Force that won't put up with Ego Bullshit. That'll make you move one day in the right direction."

  "I think it's called Emptiness in Buddhism," de Gier said. "I like that. The Void. You could fall into it forever."

  "The Void where all the Buddhas live." Antonio nodded. He spoke solemnly. "You can't grasp Nothing. But it grasps you all right if you keep messing up. Termeer was kind of ungraspable, I thought. The other park crazies are just sick guys. Schizophrenics. Your guy looked like maybe he had it together."

  "Antonio is a hopeful seeker," Freddie said. "He goes to New Age weekends." Freddie put on a stage voice. "On the mountaintop where soul-seeking men drum while growing and sharing. A hundred bucks for enlightenment; throw in another fifty and you get a semitransparent rock that holds insight."

  Antonio smiled. "I get discounts." He looked serious again. "I liked Termeer's dog too. He sometimes had a dog with him, an Alsatian, a huge animal, but you know..." Antonio shook his head. "I'm confused now. That dog was with another guy. Nice guy. An older man. Well dressed. With a funny way of walking. He dragged a leg. Quite a muscular fellow otherwise."

  "Two dogs?" Freddie suggested.

  Antonio was thinking again.

  It was pleasant in the little garden. De Gier, six hours ahead of his usual bedtime, felt the increased perception that often hit him just before falling asleep. Time seemed to slow down and Antonio's words reached him separately, clearly, floating slowly under the canopy of a Japanese maple tree.

  "Same dog," Antonio said. "I know. A seeing-eye dog. Maybe the St. Nick guy and the other man shared it. But neither of those guys was blind."

  "Were you in Central Park," de Gier asked, "when there was a balloon dinosaur, some gigantic beast, that kind of bobbed about, and when there was a contest of look-alike movie characters? Do you remember?"

  "Yes," Antonio said.

  "Did you see that man and his dog?"

  Antonio thought he might have.

  Chapter 12

  Antonio, in his hospital whites, due to go to work at eleven, served a late breakfast in the garden. He told de Gier he was in his after-meditation "quiet mode," programmed for practical matters only. "Capers and a little chopped onion with your smoked salmon?"

  "Please."

  "Another poppyseed bagel?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  De Gier asked for a telephone. Antonio brought him a cordless model. The Japanese female clerk at the Cavendish desk said there was a problem, then connected him to the bellhop.

  "This is Ignacio," the bellhop said. "Huevones, remember? We talked yesterday. Your friend isn't feeling good. You better come over quick. The old man was mugged. He broke his glasses."

  Antonio, advising against using a taxi for such a long trip, drove de Gier to the Astor Place subway station in his gleaming restored MG sportscar. He also gave de Gier a subway token. The train was quick. De Gier, after sidestepping a woman, well dressed except for a battered straw hat, who said she had AIDS, that her name was Lisa, that she was being evicted and that she needed a hundred dollars to consult her lawyer, ran the blocks from the Eighty-sixth Street station on Lexington Avenue over to the Cavendish. He found the commissaris in his suite, sipping tea.

  "Ah," the commissaris said. "They're exaggerating downstairs. Looks like I am mostly blind, though. I had multifocals, but I've lost the prescription. Katrien is express-mailing my spare pair. They'll take a few days to get here."

  "Were you hurt, sir?"

  The commissaris had been rattled, he reluctantly reported. The pl
an that day had been that, after a leisurely breakfast at Le Chat Complet, he would spend his free morning checking out Central Park, especially the area where Bert Turmeer had died. As the commissaris was approaching a cluster of bushes just east of the Sheep Meadow a jogger slowed down and fell into step with him. There was no one else in sight. The jogger was quiet.

  "I am Dutch," the commissaris said, to break the silence.

  "I am black," the jogger said.

  The jogger suddenly hugged the commissaris, as if he were a long-lost friend. As the jogger applied pressure the commissaris's glasses slipped, fell and were stepped on. "Oh man oh man," the jogger kept shouting, "good to see you, man. How are you doing?"

  "When did this happen, sir?" de Gier asked.

  "An hour and a half ago," the commissaris said. "Maybe a little longer?"

  "Can you describe your attacker?"

  The commissaris did.

  De Gier checked the maps Antoinette had loaned him. The Sheep Meadow was to the south; it wouldn't take him long to get there.

  "But he could be anywhere now," the commissaris said. "It doesn't matter, Rinus." He raised a shoulder sadly. "It looks like I'm pretty vulnerable here, a lost cause. I'm just trouble." He looked up. "Hey? Where are you going? Rinus! Wait!"

  De Gier jogged down paths south of the Great Lawn, then cruised the area around the lake. After a twenty-minute search he noted a six-foot-three-inch-tall black young adult in a sky blue sweatsuit, carrying a new white plastic shoulder bag with Adidas imprint, new ankle-high suede boots with laces, dark sunglasses in bright red frames, a pink baseball hat, wearing several big rings on the fingers of both hands, who came jogging toward him.

  De Gier ran on, made a full turn, and ran after the robber.

  "I am Dutch," de Gier shouted.

  The jogger was quiet.

  "Oh man oh man," de Gier shouted when he was abreast of his quarry, "good to see you, man. How are you doing?"

  The robber ran faster.

  De Gier ran faster too.

  The robber stopped, backed away, took a switchblade from his bag and pressed its button. De Gier stopped too and carefully approached his opponent. The robber pointed the knife at de Gier's belly. "Fuck off, okay?"

  De Gier smiled, made a pass to the right, then kicked the man's arm. He jumped the robber while the knife was still flying, got hold of a wrist, twisted it behind the man's back. He exerted some pressure.

  The robber screamed.

  "The money," de Gier said.

  "In my back pocket, man," the robber said. "I only took sixty bucks. I left the funny money. It's still in the wallet."

  De Gier pocketed the money. "What did you do with the wallet?"

  "Tossed it in the garbage, man."

  "Jog ahead," de Gier ordered. "Stop at the can you dumped the billfold in."

  The garbage can was on Cherry Hill. The robber, after some rummaging among newspapers and empty soda cans, found the commissaris's wallet. He handed it over. De Gier thanked him.

  The robber sneezed. "Give me my own money back, man. I'm sick. I got to buy some shit, man. I only took sixty."

  De Gier nodded. "Fuck you, okay?"

  "I'm sorry, sir," de Gier said when he returned to the Cavendish suite. "I should have checked the wallet." He grimaced. "Too hasty again. The credit card inside is made out to someone unpronounceable who lives in Trinidad and Tobago. But there's Dutch money inside. That fooled me."

  "A coincidence?" the commissaris asked.

  De Gier, recognizing the glint in his chiefs eye, nodded. "How silly of me," de Gier said. "Where do you keep your real billfold?"

  The commissaris carried his papers, valid credit card and a good deal of cash in a small armpit holster.

  "The other credit card is fake," the commissaris said. "It was taken from a phony tourist. It's out of date too. Katrien told me to always let muggers have some cash, so that they won't be angry."

  De Gier handed the commissaris the money he had taken from the robber.

  "Two hundred dollars?" the commissaris asked. "My decoy wallet only contained sixty."

  While the commissaris rested, de Gier took the surplus money to the Central Park Precinct. The desk-sergeant, who reminded de Gier of a hero out of an old war movie, a tall man in a neatly ironed blue shirt, asked, "You found a hundred and forty dollars?"

  De Gier described how he happened to be following a jogger in the park. It seemed to him that the jogger was really a mugger. He had seen the jogger accost a little old gentleman, but at some distance. He couldn't be sure.

  "Amazing," the desk-sergeant said.

  And then later the jogger happened to drop some money.

  "That belonged to the little old man?"

  Yes, but that was only sixty dollars, and the sixty had been returned.

  The sergeant considered. "So this money here may belong to some other victims, but nobody has filed a complaint."

  "Somebody may sometime," de Gier said. "Then you can hand it over."

  "Can you describe this jogger?"

  De Gier did, adding that suspect, a junkie feeling sick, would undoubtedly try another mugging soon. The sergeant repeated the information into a microphone, directing the call to all park patrols. He clipped the microphone back into its holder. "What do you do, sir?"

  De Gier told the sergeant he was a policeman from Amsterdam, here to assist his boss, who was unwell at the moment. His boss was the chief of detectives, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, interested in the death of a certain Bert Termeer.

  "You too," the sergeant said. "I keep hearing about that case. The autopsy proved death was from natural causes. The case is being closed now. Do you want to see Sergeant Hurrell?"

  De Gier wanted to see a certain mounted policewoman, just for the record, so that he could write his report. The complainant was a nephew of the deceased, a colleague in the Amsterdam Police Department.

  The sergeant said, "That'll be Maggie McLaughlin. 'Mounted Maggie.'" The sergeant smiled. "She is on duty now, she'll be off for lunch. You might check here in an hour."

  De Gier asked if the sergeant patrolled the park himself.

  The sergeant did. Did the sergeant know of a seeing-eye dog, a large Alsatian? "What you call a German shepherd, I think."

  "Kali," the sergeant said.

  "Beg pardon?"

  "Dog called 'Kali.'" The sergeant grinned. "Clever beast. We used to chase her—can't have unaccompanied dogs in the park—but then she adopted Charlie."

  "Charlie?"

  "Guy who works out in the park," the sergeant said. "A regular. We talk to each other. Fit-looking guy, muscular. Some sixty years old. Sharp dresser. Seems to have money. Pleasant disposition. Takes good care of the dog." The sergeant grinned again. "Or the other way around."

  "Same dog that used to accompany our guy Termeer?"

  The sergeant wasn't sure. He didn't recall Termeer. There were a lot of white-bearded men in tweeds around. Maybe he had seen him, maybe the dog had been around, maybe not. De Gier would be better off asking Policewoman Maggie.

  Chapter 13

  While de Gier, killing time as he waiting for his meeting with the policewoman, watched polar bears swim in rhythmic circles in their transparent quarters in the Central Park Zoo, Adjutant Grijpstra picked up his telephone in his office at Moose Canal Headquarters, Amsterdam.

  "Henk?" The commissaris coughed. "That you, Adjutant?"

  Grijpstra, respectfully, took his feet off his dented metal desk. "Sir? Are you all right? Has de Gier arrived? How is he doing?"

  The commissaris said he himself had felt better and that de Gier had robbed a jogger and was now turning in part of the loot to the Central Park Precinct.

  Grijpstra slumped back until his head rested against the wall. "You are ill and de Gier is crazy?"

  "We're both fine," the commissaris said. "I am sorry about sending you on that Mad Hatter's golf errand, Henk. De Gier told me you saw the chief-constable afterward. No unpleasantness, I hope
?"

  Grijpstra reported.

  "I wish I could say that it was my diabolical cleverness that made me nudge you into the Crailo Golf Club Alleged Murder Case," the commissaris said, "but that would only be partly true. Mostly I got my facts wrong here. No golf in Central Park, or in any public park anywhere on earth for that matter. I should have known."

  Grijpstra grunted.

  "You forgive me, Adjutant?" The commissaris was coughing again. He covered the telephone's mouthpiece.

  "That's okay, sir."

  There was a pause.

  "Grijpstra?" the commissaris said, painfully shifting his aching body on his four-poster bed in the Cavendish suite. "Just to satisfy my never-ceasing curiosity, what conclusion did you reach?"

  "About Baldert and his baron, sir?"

  "Yes. Tell me."

  "I think Baldert feels cheated out of his just punishment, sir."

  "But did Baldert plan murder?"

  "Probably," Grijpstra said. "And then he changed his mind at the last moment. Or he hesitated, causing some confusion, enough to make him miss the target. Then the baron died anyway and now Baldert is a madman."

  "De Gier was telling me about the case," the commissaris said. "Yesterday, while eating sushi. He was getting ill again, an association with stewed eel."

  Grijpstra laughed.

  "De Gier thinks," the commissaris said, "that this is one of those cases where the alleged culprit seems unclear about his own guilt. To have sinned or not to have sinned, that is the question." He laughed. "How can we help?"

  "How can we help ourselves to become ridiculous?" Grijpstra asked. "Baldert needs our help so that he can have his day in court. The defense asks the judge what the prosecution is talking about. The judge asks us. We don't know either. Baldert goes free, clears his conscience at the law's expense. Once again we look foolish."

  "Well put," the commissaris said. "You have time to talk, Adjutant? Nellie isn't waiting with supper?"

  "Nellie and I argued," Grijpstra said. "As I was wrong, again, I'm punishing myself by staying in empty cold rooms partly illuminated by a dim bulb dangling from a peeling ceiling."

  "I thought you and de Gier," the commissaris said, "recendy painted that ceiling."