The Hollow-Eyed Angel

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Cardozo looked nervous.

  Grijpstra let Cardozo pick their table. The adjutant remembered Cardozo liked lentil soup, veal croquettes on French bread, applesauce on the side, a Hero brand fruit drink with the meal, a double espresso afterwards. Grijp-stra ordered all the items. He complimented Cardozo on his recently dry-cleaned corduroy suit and his haircut of that morning.

  "Looking good, Simon, looking good."

  Grijpstra grabbed the check. He paid. He tipped.

  "You're all right?" Cardozo asked.

  "I'm teaching you something." Grijpstra laid a protective hand on Cardozo's shoulder. "You figure out what."

  Cardozo knew what. "Not to rely on..."

  "Shsshshsh, my dear Simon."

  Grijpstra and Cardozo strolled into the hair salon and confronted Peter.

  Peter, who met de Gier's description of being "a slender, active, intelligent forty-year-old black male, fashionably dressed," was busy. He had two clients in chairs, more waiting. Peter came over, scissors in one hand, comb in the other. "Can I help you, gentlemen?"

  Grijpstra showed his ID. "We would like to see Jo Termeer." Cardozo said hello.

  "My partner?" Peter looked at Cardozo. "You were on the phone just now, yes? I told you already. Jo isn't here." He pointed at the waiting clients. "He should be. What can I do?"

  "Sick leave?" Grijpstra asked.

  Peter sighed. "More like personal leave, I would say."

  "Problems?" Grijpstra asked.

  Peter nodded. "It's your investigation, I think. About that American uncle. The delay is driving Jo crazy. He wants to know what's going on but he knows he should be patient. I've told him to do his police job, the reserve thing, but I think he prefers cruising." Peter laughed.

  "Being naughty."

  Clients clamored loudly.

  "Anything else I can do for you?" Peter asked, glancing over his shoulder. "I'm coming, dears."

  "The Road Warrior," Cardozo said. "Would you have that movie? We would like to see it."

  The request didn't seem to surprise Peter. He gave them his keys to the upstairs apartment that he and Jo shared and told them to help themselves. Videos were on the shelf, alphabetically arranged. Coffee and cookies were in the kitchen. The remote was on the TV. "I'll be up in about an hour."

  The detectives watched the movie in the apartment's living room, furnished mostly with glass and leather. A large painting above the fake fireplace showed slim cowboys in tight jeans and leather vests leaning across a counter. The videotape was worn out in parts. Halfway through the movie a young man let himself into the apartment. "Hello?"

  Grijpstra put the VCR on pause. "Hello. Who are you?

  "Eugene," the long-haired semi-Oriental-looking young man said. He showed Grijpstra his perfect profile as he turned towards Cardozo. "And who, may I ask, the fuck are you two?"

  The detectives got up and showed their IDs.

  "Peter let us in," Cardozo said. "He'll be up in a minute. You live here too?"

  Eugene lived elsewhere but he was a friend of the family, "so to speak." He waved at the TV. "Couldn't you find something else to watch? Every time I come here Jo has The Road Warrior going. I know every scene backwards."

  Grijpstra pressed the remote's power button. "You don't like Australian futuristic bizarre action films?" He muted the sound of roaring engines as Mel Gibson, by suddenly accelerating his racing car, tricked the skinheads on their powerful motorcycles. The bad guys attacking the lone avenger from either side now shot little arrows into each other. Or so it seemed. Wide wavy bands cut through the images and made events hard to follow.

  "It's okay," Eugene said, pouring himself coffee, "but after a dozen times or so you kind of know how Good conquers Evil and after two dozen times or so you sort of start wondering what's so good about Good."

  "Jo's favorite movie, right?" Cardozo asked.

  Eugene sighed. "Isn't it ever."

  The movie had ended when Peter came in. Eugene and Peter embraced tenderly, then kissed.

  "Busy day," Peter said, still hugging his friend. "How did you like Jo's alter ego? Do you know Jo had made himself a Road Warrior outfit? And that he has a car just like that thing in the movie? A hot-rod horror?"

  Grijpstra and Cardozo got up, thanking Peter for his hospitality. "It was nothing," Peter said. "You're welcome. Anything else perhaps?"

  Now that Peter mentioned it, Grijpstra said, there were just two more things. Could Peter tell him where Jo was on June the fourth and could he perhaps show them Jo Termeer's passport?

  "Really...," Eugene said. "What are you guys after? Isn't a passport personal? Is this The Return of the Gestapo? Why..."

  Cardozo moved forward. "We can come back with a warrant. Now if-—"

  Peter stepped between the belligerent parties. His voice was soothing. His gestures were mild. "Now, now...now, now...sit down, my dears. Listen. Hear the thrush singing in the park?"

  Everyone listened. A thrush, indeed, was singing.

  "Adjutant," Peter asked, "would you care to pour more coffee? A slice of cake, anyone? Baked this myself. Won't take no for an answer." He presented the tray. "Okay? Can I get the passport from between Jo's clean shirts without you two starting another war here? I can? That's nice."

  Jo Termeer's passport showed two sets of entry and departure stamps applied at Kennedy Airport. One entry dated two years back. The other was recent. June 7 through 10.

  "So," Grijpstra said, "Peter, tell me, was Jo here June fourth? Working with you downstairs in the salon, living here in the apartment?"

  "Sure," Peter said.

  "Did you see those perverts kiss?" Cardozo asked when he and Grijpstra were waiting at the bus stop. "Aren't Jo and Peter supposed to be a couple?" He snorted. "I would call that adultery, those guys are no good."

  "Well now," Grijpstra said, "adultery, adultery...I'm afraid that idea is extinct now, Simon."

  Cardozo disagreed vehemently. He referred to acceptable social mores, to behavioral limits, to love being related to trust, to there being such a thing as decency "even in sick relationships, I'll have you know."

  The bus arrived. Grijpstra pushed Cardozo ahead of him. "You're a dear boy," Grijpstra said after they were seated. "Old-fashioned, behind the times, limited, I'm not saying 'retarded,' mind you, restricted perhaps, well meaning in a kind of useless way "

  Chapter 21

  The commissaris, that evening, unable to sleep after the long-legged tram-driving demon once again tried to get him to do something he didn't understand, and that, he felt sure, he wouldn't want to do if he did understand, used his ivory bedside phone to wake Katrien.

  Katrien, blinking at early sunlight pouring into the bedroom's windows on Queens Avenue, Amsterdam, said she would make coffee and return the call, once she was washed up somewhat and settled on the veranda.

  It took her twenty minutes. The commissaris had dozed off. The Number Two streetcar was pushing through traffic, clanging its bells which became the telephone on the night table, ringing.

  It took him a while to accept the change from streetcar to phone.

  Katrien was unhappy. "Jan, what kept you?"

  "I couldn't pick up a streetcar, dear."

  "Your dream again? You feel better now?"

  He did now that he heard his wife's mothering voice. He sketched, briefly, succinctly, the reasoning that had made him and de Gier decide there was another suspect and how he had devised and applied a trick to try and shock Charles Gilbert Perrin into opening up.

  "A ripped-off penis," Katrien said. "Isn't that the worst that can happen to those who have one? Doesn't that make ripping it off a heinous crime? How did the suspect take your sudden outburst?" She watched a row of tulips that hadn't been pushed over by Turtle yet. "Tell me everything, Jan."

  Charlie, the commissaris reported, had taken the outburst calmly. But there had been a change of atmosphere that he set about to repair.

  He guided—his bad leg dragging more noticeably
— his guests to the dining table, where, with the dedication of a priest serving mass, he served iced tea and seaweed biscuits.

  Kali sat on a chair too, lapping water from her bowl after gently pushing the glazed biscuits away with her nose. Charlie said that he regretted what had happened to his tenant, acquaintance, friend if you like.

  He had known Bert Termeer for some years. Nobody likes to lose a friend. But, Charlie said, what happened had to happen.

  How so?

  Because Bert Termeer thought of himself as bad.

  How so?

  Because Bert Termeer knew that Bert Termeer was sneaky.

  Charlie said that "externalization is the beginning of liberation." He also said, "We have to be open about what we are. That is, if we want to solve the problem."

  "The personal problem?"

  Why not? But Charlie also, more particularly, meant the overall problem. He had been attracted to Termeer by the man's sincere quest for—Charlie smiled at Kali, who had pricked up her ears, as if she were going to hear something worthwhile—Termeer's quest for what? For seeing through the human condition? "All that activity in book trading, in playing the fool—'God's fool,' that kind of role is called in religion...."

  They had come to the end of the iced tea ceremony by then and were being taken on a tour of the building.

  Charlie unlocked and pushed and pulled huge doors, walked the detectives through hollow-sounding corridors that led to Termeer's part of the building, in and out of another elevator (a bare cage this time), even made them climb a ladder to inspect the building's attic.

  Charlie led the way, Kali guarded the expedition's rear end.

  Kali even wanted to climb the ladder. The ladder was deemed too steep by Charlie but Kali nudged de Gier, got him to pick her up, turn his back to the ladder and climb its rungs with his heels.

  De Gier cradled the dog, who kept perfectly still, resting her long snout on his shoulder. The attic was filled with piles of unsorted books and pamphlets.

  The commissaris inspected Bert Termeer's private quarters, bare as a monk's cell, uncomfortable but for the huge water bed. Termeer's printing shop contained outmoded equipment, used to manufacture his monthly catalogue. Empty cartons and rolls of packing paper were stacked.

  Then there were, in the basement, props for Termeer's former acts.

  "You think that was worth the trouble?" the commissaris asked, picking up and putting down a trumpet, holding up a monkey-size robe and hat.

  "Producing, directing, acting out a show that might liberate people from dead-end routines?" Charlie became enthusiastic. "Sure." He nodded. "That's why I let Termeer live here. I thought we might have fun together. Test some theories. Do some philosophizing. Get weightless together. There was a time I thought I might join in his performance."

  The commissaris was grinning. Charlie grinned back. "You would like to do that yourself, wouldn't you? An adult version of throwing water balloons at folks?

  "And," Charlie said, "Bert wasn't a do-gooder, like the outfit that I bought this building from. The give-l time-give-money-do-things-for-God crowd. Not that," Charlie said, pulling a face. "No. Never."

  "You don't care for do-gooding?" de Gier asked.

  "Please," Charlie said. "After my Polish Experience?" He shrugged. "Yes, sure, maybe for a little while.

  Set the needy up till they can take care of themselves again. I wouldn't help anyone to prolong his misery, though. Encourage depression?" He made a fist and pounded his palm. "Set them free, let them go. Don't shackle them with welfare."

  "You set up Bert Termeer here?" the commissaris asked.

  Charlie held his head to one side. "Yes. Sure. When I met Bert in Central Park, years ago, we had this conversation. I had some apples. I asked him if he wanted one. He said he would take the apple if I would give it to him without using my hands. I told him he could have the apple if he took it without using his hands."

  "Zen," de Gier said.

  Charlie nodded. "We had both read the same book on Zen koans."

  "Same level of insight," the commissaris said.

  "Right. But it didn't mean much. Exchanging book knowledge doesn't, you know. I thought we had a beginning. Bert wanted to get into New York, he was living in some flophouse, and I had all this space here—I got the building cheap from the do-things-for-God-folks— and Bert might have explored avenues I hadn't even thought of yet so I loaned him money and charged minimal rent."

  "Did he pay you back?" the commissaris asked.

  "Some," Charlie said. "Yes. Little by little."

  "And Bert impressed you?"

  "Look at this," Charlie said, sweeping his hand toward a long row of figures lined up against the room's wall, representing a single person's (Bert Termeer's own) physical lifetime changes. "That plate on the left—can you see it?—holds a microscopic object, a fertilized human egg. The plate on the right—can you see it?—shows remnants of a human bone."

  Dust to dust.

  "Of course," Charlie said, '"dust to dust' is still something.

  "One should really look left of the embryo, where there is nothing, and right of the bone crumbs, where there is nothing again."

  "Nothing to nothing."

  And, Charlie said, what Termeer had wanted to show Sunday morning crowds in the public parks of Boston, Massachusetts, and Bangor, Maine (the Central Park authorities had thrown the exhibit out), after he had put up his line of figures, a tiring exercise since some of them were heavy, was that there was nothing in between the two nothings either.

  Termeer's show—nothing, to rapidly changing embryos, to baby, to toddler, to little kid, to kid, to young adult, to grown person, to middle-aged man, to codger in C 246 1 increasingly debilitated and demented stages, to corpse, to skeleton, to crumbling bone, to nothing—highlighted a common denominator: lack of substance.

  No substance to the body. No substance to the mind.

  "Would you," Charlie asked the commissaris, "accept as your essence your aches and pains?

  "Would you," Charlie asked de Gier, "accept as your essence your guilts and depressions?

  "So what are we?" Charlie laughed. "I liked Termeer's implied line of questioning. It was in all of his shows. Even here in New York. A dignified gendeman ruminating in an exaggerated pose. A dignified gentleman frolicking in childlike joy."

  They all looked at all the Bert Termeer's again, standing at the far side of the room, with porcelain faces, each showing the aging process, the right clothes, thickening, then thinning hair, giving way to baldness, all different shapes, only sharing a name.

  The commissaris said that. "They're all Bert Termeer."

  "My name," Charlie said, "was once Paulie Potock. Would you say I am that frightened little boy in Poland? Would you say I am the frightened old man who is told by the doctor he has Alzheimer's disease?"

  "You think you might have that?"

  Charlie waved indifferently. "Brain tumor, colon cancer, whatever we die of these days, irreparable blocked arteries..."

  "But," the commissaris asked, "your friend. Bert Termeer. Wasn't he just another faker?"

  Charlie patted Kali's head. "No. Not altogether. I think Bert did have true insights. Eh?" he asked the dog. "You liked Bert, didn't you? When you were with him in the park? You would bounce about and play?"

  "A prophet?" the commissaris asked.

  "Oh yes."

  "What didn't you show us?" the commissaris asked, after twisting his painful hips so that he could face his suspect.

  "What didn't he show you?" Katrien asked on the phone.

  "But he did show me," the commissaris said, "in that very building's dank dungeons."

  What Charlie showed the detectives in the badly lit basement was Bert Termeer's second activity, another mail-order business, also complete with all it needed: an antique press, an obsolete but functional labeling machine, shelving, boxes, packing paper, rolls of packing tape, stocks of product.

  The piles of imported magazine
s Charlie kicked around in the basement—while Kali crouched, growled, even howled with fury—the imported videotapes Charlie roughly pushed off their shelving, the posters and pictures he picked up and tore in half mostly showed small children being tortured.

  Chapter 22

  De Gier, agreeing with the commissaris that the job was done, spent the night at Horatio Street after losing at playing darts with Antonio and Freddie. He also telephoned Maggie, apologized for making a mess of a potentially beautiful experience and invited her to dinner the next day at the Italian restaurant. She said she didn't think so but to phone her in the morning. He slept well, phoned Maggie again, was told by her answering machine that if it was he it was okay, walked to Bleecker Street and took the subway. The commissaris invited him to breakfast at Le Chat Complet, where no cats walked past the high windows and where nobody sang.

  Grijpstra's report on Termeer's alibi, faxed to the Cavendish and brought along for de Gier to read—the commissaris had trouble with the fax's faint lettering— confirmed that Jo Termeer was no longer a suspect.

  De Gier said that he knew Charlie was involved when Charlie, the suspect, asked de Gier, the investigating officer, to translate Daumal's poetry, which said, "I go toward a future that doesn't exist, leaving behind me, at every instant, a corpse."

  "A corpse, sir." De Gier cut his French toast. "Why bring up a corpse, for Christ sake, and he left it behind, and at every instant, like he couldn't get rid of it, like he kept dragging Termeer's body with him?"

  The commissaris nodded although he could think of quite a different interpretation. The quotation could refer to another level. The poet Daumal could have referred to man's continuous change, leaving behind him used thoughts, used actions. The commissaris was going to tell de Gier that when Mamere came by to pour more coffee.

  "You dream better now?" Mamere asked. She rushed off before he could answer. The commissaris sighed. He dreamed worse. The tram driver had been back that night like every night, and the hellish presence was more persistent than ever. Although he felt better physically— the coughing and sneezing attacks had stopped, even his hipbones smouldered less—he dreaded falling asleep, knowing the tram driver would be waiting, talking infantile gibberish while she showed her long legs and pursed her luscious lips. The gibberish was more high-pitched now. The phantom was getting impatient, the sacrifice she needed was long overdue.