The Hollow-Eyed Angel

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "He is an avenger, sir."

  "Tell me the movie." The commissaris smiled. "You're good at that. Remember the movies you told me when I was ill for a month? Every Tuesday and Thursday evenings. And when I saw them myself later they weren't anywhere near as good as you told them."

  Chief O'Neill was on his way so there was no time for much detail. De Gier sketched the plot. Civilization, after a catastrophic global war, has come to an end. Homo sapiens is an endangered species. Somehow the Australian desert has escaped devastation in the atomic mayhem. Two small bands of desperados roam endless sand- and rockscapes in leftover automobiles.

  One band is good. One band is bad.

  In a conflict over the last supply of gasoline the good guys are losing to the bad guys.

  Mel Gibson plays a lone warrior, detached, independent, driving a battered racing car, manned by himself and a feral dog, and revenging the atrocities committed by the bad guys on the good guys.

  Jo Termeer had told de Gier that he liked "Australian futuristic bizarre action movies."

  "But he didn't specify this particular Road Warrior movie, did he?"

  De Gier made another note on his napkin.

  "What are you writing, Sergeant?"

  "Reminding myself to tell Grijpstra to investigate Termeer's interest in The Road Warrior, sir."

  "Is this independent, detached Road Warrior character gay?" the commissaris asked.

  Maggie had told de Gier about a previous Road Warrior movie entided Mad Max, in which the same character appears as a heterosexual male whose wife and child are killed by bad gay guys. In the second episode of the saga, the one de Gier had seen, Road Warrior is too detached to show any interest in sex whatsoever. He does, however, get the eye from a woman dressed in white, but she dies.

  "Bad gay guys figure in both movies, sir," de Gier said, "and Road Warrior manages to kill most of the fuckers. Sorry, sir."

  The commissaris, tearing the skin of a mandarin, said "Aha, aha."

  "It all fits," de Gier said triumphantly.

  "If," the commissaris said, "Jo was in Central Park, and dressed up as this Road Warrior. This actor Mel Gibson is handsome?"

  "Yes," de Gier said.

  "Well, so is Jo Termeer. Black leather, I suppose? Boots? That sort of thing? Outfit all roughed up? Some dangerous-looking weaponry?"

  "A riot gun."

  The commissaris drank his coffee. "I could think of another more likely suspect, Sergeant. I think you could too."

  De Gier, after many years of practicing the art of criminal detection, had no trouble changing leads. He dropped Jo Termeer without effort.

  "Charlie," de Gier said brightly. "Termeer's neighbor. Charlie is often in Central Park. The man is very visible. I have three reliable informants who describe subject as an older muscular type of male, who drags a leg. He allegedly looks kind and prosperous. Subject is suntanned. He works out near the Natural History Museum. He is often accompanied by a seeing-eye dog, a large female Alsatian.

  "One informant tells me Kali was also seen with Bert Termeer."

  "Aha," the commissaris said. "Termeer didn't have bad vision, did he? Does Charlie have bad vision?"

  "We'll know tonight, sir."

  "Tell me about your informants."

  De Gier specified:

  1) Antonio, a recovered alcoholic gay male nurse, an intelligent man living a disciplined life with a well-organized friend in a Horatio Street bed and breakfast, who visits Central Park regularly to sail his model boat. Antonio has often noticed Charlie. He also noticed the dog, Kali.

  "Aha," the commissaris said. "I like recovering alcoholics. Antonio knows the pair by name? There is friendship?"

  "No, sir, I put in the names."

  "Antonio saw Charlie in the park on the day old Termeer died?"

  "He thinks he may have."

  "Ah," the commissaris said. "Ah. The good Antonio again. Didn't you say that Antonio knew Termeer too? Called him 'a prophet'?"

  "Yessir, the two met. Termeer told Antonio 'to watch it.' There would be a philosophical implication."

  "Please continue," the commissaris said. "Maybe have some coffee first? Let me pour it for you. Here you go. No sugar, a little milk. I'll stir it."

  De Gier sipped gratefully, then continued.

  2) The Central Park Precinct's efficient and intelligent-looking uniformed desk-sergeant knows both Charlie and Kali by name. He didn't see them on the day Bert Termeer died.

  3) Mounted Policewoman Maggie McLaughlin, a levelheaded and intelligent person, knew both Charlie and Kali by name. She had told Charlie to keep the dog leashed, which he didn't. She was fairly sure she saw Charlie and Kali in the park on the day Termeer died.

  "Now it's the other way around," the commissaris said. "We have opportunity, but do we have motive?"

  Chapter 18

  The commissaris, in earlier, more positive and therefore more restricted times, used to say that "good luck comes to those who keep trying." He was lately heard to say that "good luck comes to those who are lucky."

  Two events happened that afternoon. While the commissaris attended his lecture at One Police Plaza, where he viewed slides showing deadly weapons made from junk by handy criminals who, the burly captain lecturing said, "were out of cash but used these to get it," and while de Gier wandered about the magnificent display of Papuan art in the Metropolitan Museum, admiring wooden demons who sprouted other wooden demons out of the tops of their heads, Maggotmaid killer Trevor was shot dead in Central Park by Detective Tom Tierney.

  Events that led up to Trevor's killing began when Detective Jerry Curran, dressed as a hobo, overheard Trevor talking into a public telephone. Trevor, when repeating the other party's information, used the words "Zabar's" "NYNEX" and "Alice" and the code figure/ letter combinations "IK," "2P" and "4P." Detective-Sergeant Hurrell cracked Trevor's code. He correctly surmised that Trevor was to meet his party at the bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park at 2 P.M.

  Both parties would be carrying shopping bags from the famous New York deli Zabar's. Each bag would contain a NYNEX phonebook. They would not greet each other but would sit down on the same bench. They would leave carrying each other's shopping bags.

  If no police activity occurred, the parties would meet again at the Alice statue at 4 P.M. This time Trevor's bag would contain cash in the amount of the going wholesale price for one kilo of heroin and the other party's bag would contain the product.

  When Hurrell and his two assistants attempted to arrest Trevor, who was carrying the heroin-filled shopping bag, Trevor pulled a pistol from under his jacket. Trevor's gun turned out to be unloaded.

  Detective Tom Tierney's gun was loaded.

  Sergeant Hurrell, later that same afternoon, walking contentedly through the park, noticed a derelict slumped on a bench. The man was wearing a dark brown tweed suit, complete with waistcoat, a quality shirt that had once been white, a plaid necktie, cream woolen stockings and leather boots that showed traces of polish.

  The derelict, taken in by a patrol car summoned by Hurrell, admitted, at the Central Park Precinct, that he had robbed a body he'd stumbled upon. The man, drunk and stoned, couldn't remember when or where. "A while back." The derelict did say the body was dead "and bleeding."

  Perhaps remembering that he had been on a higher level of existence once, he then rose laboriously, tried to strike an orator's pose and said "in theatrical tones," as Hurrell's report had it, that the body "had been urinating" and that he had found it "in the early morning hours."

  Chief O'Neill, taking the commissaris home after the homemade firearms lecture, heard the news on his police radio. He stopped at the Central Park Precinct on the Eighty-fifth Street transverse and Hurrell showed him the confiscated clothes.

  "No wallet?"

  "No," Sergeant Hurrell said, "but check the trousers." O'Neill noted that there were bloodstains around the fly area. The chief instantly created a theory. "So Bert Termeer had been peeing,
had he? Poor fucker fell down, felt the need, opened his fly, peed, had his heart attack, thrashed about, flung his head this way and that, then— dentures flying every which way—he dies."

  O'Neill wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Next thing, a raccoon locates his dinner. Tears off what Termeer had exposed. Hurrell's bum finds the corpse, strips it of its clothes, puts them on. Leaves his own clothes and his dirty blanket. The raccoon comes back, brings his family. The commotion attracts the park's carrion birds. Hawks peck the head, raccoons eat the lower torso.

  "Right, Yan?"

  "Why not, Hugh?" The commissaris looked at the blood on the tweed trousers that Sergeant Hurrell was holding up for his inspection. "Oh yes, Hugh, that could easily have happened."

  Hugh patted Hurrell's shoulder. He smiled. "I think our case is definitely closed now. Nice work, Earl."

  Chapter 19

  The bellhop Ignacio, after he saw de Gier coming in to pick up the commissaris and observed the two men checking de Gier's map to find the location of Watts Street, Tribeca, insisted that they make use of the Cavendish's free limousine service.

  The limo, exceedingly long and cumbersome even for that class of vehicle, got stuck in Canal Street traffic. The commissaris told the driver not to worry. He and de Gier could walk the short distance. After they got out traffic loosened up somewhat and the limo disappeared, taking with it de Gier's map, which the commissaris had left on the back seat.

  "Watts Street," the commissaris said. "Should be easy. Lots of people about. They'll all know it."

  De Gier, still focused on the Papuan ghost masks and soul boats that he had been looking at all afternoon, walked along dreamily.

  Since they were now at Canal Street's eastern end, they would need, the commissaris explained, to walk all the way west, from the East River to the Hudson, and then, on Watts, they'd go south, aiming for the towers of the World Trade Center that no one could miss.

  "Watts Street, Tribeca," the commissaris said, "short for Triangle Below Canal."

  "Okay," de Gier said.

  "Charles Gilbert Perrin," the commissaris read from his notebook.

  "Nice name," de Gier said.

  "Charlie'll be there," the commissaris said. "At number two. I phoned. He sounded very pleasant."

  "Good," de Gier said.

  "You know," the commissaris said, "why, according to chief O'Neill, Hurrell didn't visit Charlie at home but just briefly interviewed him at the precinct? Because Tribeca is known for transvestite hookers. Because Hurrell's child died in Tribeca." The commissaris tsked.

  De Gier tsked too.

  Canal Street displays a seemingly endless array of market stalls on both sides. Food odors float on diesel fumes. Large buses and trucks thunder between overflowing sidewalks when they're not gridlocked between traffic lights. Policemen whistle at honking vehicles willing but unable to get going again.

  "Watts Street?" the commissaris asked people of different colors, each dressed differently from the others.

  "Vots Strijet?" "Trots Strit?" "Zljotz Striet?" responded the different people.

  A new flow of eager buyers pushed the commissaris and de Gier into a corner where they found themselves staring at a display of Chinese-made windup toys. Beetles, mounting other beetles, whirred furiously. Clowns tumbled. Flame-spitting monstrosities danced about. Rabbits tried to climb carton walls, fell back, wagged their tails, seemed to have digestive problems.

  A little black girl with bright ornaments in her felted hair strings picked up toys that had stopped and passed them to a boy who turned the toys' keys and handed them back.

  At the next stall a soup vendor tended a charcoal fire under large aluminum containers. Brown children dropped wilted vegetables, bloodied bones and fish heads into the containers' bubbling contents.

  "Sopa?" the vendor asked, offering a bowl and spoon.

  "No thank you, sir. Watts Street?"

  De Gier listened to the voices holding forth all around him. The sergeant's linguistic interests were aroused. Hardly anybody spoke English. All these people might be recently arrived. Amsterdam is an international city too and de Gier had learned to distinguish sounds and phrasing to determine origins. He heard Chinese voices, both Cantonese and Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish. Tall women in robes might be Tibetan. Other tall women in robes might be Zulu. Two white shoppers coming by could be Finnish.

  "Vot street you vont?" the soup vendor asked.

  "Watts."

  A woman directed them to a little folding table set up in a doorway where a beautifully bearded man in a turban and flowing robes sold light bulbs. There was the fragrance of quality marijuana mixing with that of incense burning under the oil-painted picture of a guru sitting in the lotus position.

  "Watts Street?"

  "What street?"

  They left Canal, turning south at the next side street, followed an alley without a street sign, then kept turning until they saw the river.

  "Maybe here?"

  "I'll ask." De Gier strode over to a tall white prostitute in a miniskirt and a silk blouse under an imitation lynx fur coat. "Watts Street, please?"

  "Right here." The prostitute's voice was a baritone. "All the way down to the Hudson River, but there's nothing here but warehouses and me. My minivan is around the corner. I work in the car. I could oblige you?"

  "No thank you." De Gier looked for numbers. "Number two?"

  "Bert and Charlie?" the prostitute asked.

  The commissaris stepped closer, looking pleased. "Yes, do you know them?"

  The prostitute looked suspicious. "You can't be cops, not with those accents."

  "Cops from Holland," the commissaris said. "We're just inquiring. Does Bert Termeer live near here?"

  The prostitute shook a cigarette out of a Marlboro pack. "Got a match?"

  "We stopped smoking," de Gier said.

  The prostitute coughed painfully. "Good for you. I smoke because of the weather but the weather gets worse." He found his own match after digging about in a shiny handbag. He sucked smoke hungrily, coughed, sucked smoke again. "Termeer is dead."

  "We know," the commissaris said. "That's why we're here." He put out his hand and said his name.

  The prostitute laughed, then excused himself. "What sort of a name is that?" He shook the commissaris's hand. "My name is Teddy."

  De Gier shook hands too.

  Teddy walked them to a three-story warehouse with a crumbling cement-over-concrete front. Between rows of boarded-up windows apostolic faces, white skinned, black bearded, smiled appealingly. Birds held up banners.

  The banners bore a text:

  give your time

  do things for God

  give your money "Give your money to me," Teddy said. "I can use it. I badly need cough drops."

  De Gier handed over a twenty-dollar bill.

  Teddy thanked him. "Like to see my place on the Bowery? Best whips and chains collection downtown."

  "Thank you," de Gier said. "We don't have the time." He pointed at the beseeching smilers, the text-carrying bluebirds.

  "Termeer and Charlie put that up?"

  Teddy laughed. "No, that was the Good Lord Club. The club didn't survive. The bank foreclosed and Charlie bought the building. There's nothing much here for Goodlorders." He waved at forbidding warehouses up and down Watts Street. "No conversions."

  There were two sets of stone steps, each leading to a metal door. The commissaris tried to read a small hand-painted sign next to the left door. His outdated glasses failed him.

  Teddy helped out. Bert the Bookseller.

  "You knew Bert Termeer?" the commissaris asked Teddy.

  Teddy grimaced. "Sure did."

  "Did you like him?"

  "I like Charlie," Teddy said. "Charlie asks me in when it rains. We eat noodles in the restaurant sometimes." He raised a shoulder. "Just friends, you know? Separate checks. Regular conversation. 'Pass the soy sauce.' I like that. You know? Friendly-like?" He pointed at his pick-up spot on the corner
of Watts Street. "The lamppost gets lonely. I take off for lunch. When Charlie wants to eat noodles and he happens to come by we go eat together."

  "Termeer didn't ask you in when it rained?"

  "Sure," Teddy said. "Oftentimes. Any kind of weather." He looked over his shoulder. A man was waiting at the end of the street. "Uh-oh. Duty calls, gents."

  Teddy walked away, on long silken legs, swinging tight hips.

  The commissaris and de Gier contemplated the door on the right side of the forbidding building. Charlie's nameplate was a strip of yellowing paper covered by cracked plastic. The writing was in black ballpoint.

  diaries gilbert perrin

  The commissaris pressed an oxidized brass button. A loudspeaker spoke near his ear, uncannily clear of static, transmitting a calm deep voice.

  "Nothing needed," Charlie said, "I thank you. Take care now. Okay."

  The commissaris said his name.

  "Mr. Dutch Police and Co.?" Charlie asked. "Stay right there, folks, I'm coming."

  The commissaris looked down Watts Street, wondering how Grijpstra would like this view. Grijpstra might paint it on a Sunday morning, as a change from dead ducks. The commissaris thought that the narrow empty alley—not even cars were attracted to Watts Street— would inspire an artist searching for unusual settings. Watts Street's emptiness seemed intensified, perhaps because of the ghostly light reflected by the shimmering Hudson.

  De Gier picked up on the atmosphere too. "An end-of-time street. Nobody here but the dead, sir. But they might be returning."

  In the alley's massive gray and brown buildings nothing seemed to go on. Warehouses for stolen goods? Sweatshops where illegal aliens worked for low wages? The structures' formidable steel doors locked curiosity out.

  Bolts were turning on the inside of number two.

  The man who faced the detectives appeared to be a well-cared-for, friendly, healthy gentleman in his mid-fifties. The muscularity of Charlie's body, mentioned by Mounted Maggie and the desk-sergeant at the Central Park Precinct, hardly showed under a blue turtleneck sweater. Charlie's dark blond hair looked old-fashioned, cut short, shaved around the ears, slicked down, combed neatly. The face was naturally tanned and Charlie had recently shaved meticulously. Brown eyes sparkled behind metal framed spectacles. Charlie's large nose curved slightly. The teeth were strong and clean, with a single gold filling. Charlie's wristwatch might have been bought on Canal Street: a twenty-dollar digital item with a simple metal strap.