Death of a Hawker (16 page)

The detectives were shaking their host's scaly right hand in turns, mumbling their first names. "Henk," Grijpstra said. "Rinus," de Gier said. "Isaac," Cardozo said. They had arrived a little late and the house was full, filled with sweating street sellers and liquor fumes and the harsh acrid smoke of black shag tobacco rolled into handmade cigarettes. The house was close to the wide IJ River, right in the center of Amsterdam. A huge oil tanker was coming past, filling each window with its rusty bulk, honking its high-powered hooter moodily, like a lonely male whale complaining about its solitude.

"Beautiful house you've got here, Bert," Grijpstra said. "There won't be too many people in the city who've got such a clear view of the river as you have here."

"Not bad, hey? The house has been in the family since my great-grandfather built it. Could get a good price for it now, but why sell if you don't have to? The vegetable business is bringing in the daily penny and the wife and I've got a bit in the bank and no mortgage to worry about and the children all gone and settled. What ho! Like a beer?"

"Yes," Grijpstra said.

"Or a shot from the big gun? I've got some jenever that will make your ears wave and it's nice and cold too. You won't be able to drink it all night but a snort to set you off maybe?"

"I'll have a snort," Grijpstra said,
"and
a beer."

Bert slapped his thigh. "That's what I like. You're like me. I always want everything. If they give me a choice, that is."

"If I may," Grijpstra said, remembering the manners which his mother had once tried to hammer into him.

"You may, you may," Bert said, and steered his guest to a large trestle table loaded with bottles and plates heaped with large green gherkins, shining white onions, fat hot sausages and small dishes filled with at least ten varieties of nuts.

"Nuts," Grijpstra shouted. "Nice."

"You like nuts?"

"Favorite food. I am always buying them but they never reach my house. I eat them from the bag on the way."

"Eat them all," Bert said. "I've got more in the kitchen. Heaps of them."

Grijpstra ate, and drank, and was grateful he had been too late for his dinner and had refused Mrs.

Grijpstra's grumpy offer to warm up the cheap dried beef and glassy potatoes she had fed her family that night. The jenever burned in his throat and the nuts filled his round cheeks as he studied the room where de Gier, immaculate in a freshly laundered denim suit and a pale blue shirt, smoking a long thin cigar which accentuated his aristocratic nose and full upswept mustache, was listening to a middle-aged woman, flapping her artificial eyelashes. Cardozo was studying a TV set which showed a dainty little girl being pursued by a tall thin black-haired man through an endless and overgrown garden.

The room was as full of furniture as it was of people and it was only after his third glass of jenever that Grijpstra could accept its wallpaper, gold foil printed with roses the size of cauliflowers. There was no doubt about it, Uncle Bert was well off. It was also clear that he wasn't paying his taxes. Grijpstra turned and flattened his left hand and picked half a dozen nuts each from the ten small dishes with his right. The job took some time, and as the time passed Grijpstra thought and when Grijpstra had finished thinking he had decided that he didn't care about Uncle Bert's tax paying. His left hand was full now and he swept its contents into his mouth and chewed.

"You like music?"

Grijpstra nodded.

"I bought a record player the other day," Uncle Bert said, and pointed at a corner of the room. The corner was filled with a collection of electronic boxes, each one with its own set of knobs and dials, and connected to loudspeakers, which were pointed out one by one.

"I'll put on a record," Uncle Bert said. "The sound is magnificent. You can hear the conductor scratch his arse."

"Is that all he does?" Grijpstra asked.

"That's what he does before the music starts.

Scratch, scratch and then 'tick' (that's his baton, his little stick you know) and then VRRAMMM, that's the tuba. It's nice music, Russian. Lots of brass and then voices. They sing fighting songs. I like the Russians. They'll come one day and do away with the capitalists here. I've been a member of the party all my life. I've been to Moscow too, six times."

"What's Moscow like?" Grijpstra asked.

"Beautiful, beautiful," Uncle Bert said, and spread his large hands. "The metro stations are like palaces, and all for the people, like you and me, and they play good football down there, and the market is better."

"But you can't make a profit."

Uncle Bert's eyes clouded as he refused to let the thought in. "Yes, yes."

"No," Grijpstra said. "They won't let you make a profit. They all get the same wage. No private initiative."

"It's a good street market, and the vegetables are better. Here. I'll play that record for you."

The record started. There was too much noise around for them to hear the conductor's scratching but when the tuba broke loose the room was drowned in sound and the guests were looking at each other, still moving their mouths, dazed by the unexpected clamor and wondering what was hitting them.

"KAROOMPF KAROOMPF," the tuba grumped, and the tall thin man was still chasing the dainty girl through the endless overgrown garden, in glaring color, on a screen the size of a small tablecloth. Grijpstra put his glass down and shook his head. His spine seemed suddenly disconnected, each vertebra rattled free by the combined attack of raw alcohol and brass explosions. A choir of heavy voices had come in now, chanting a bloodcurdling song in words which seemed to consist of vowels linked by soft zylee's and
zylaa's.
Uncle Bert was dancing by himself in the middle of the room, his eyes closed and his mouth stretched in a smile of pure ecstatic bliss.

"What..." Grijpstra began, but he let the question go. He would have a beer, he thought, and drink it slowly.

Cardozo thumped de Gier's back. He thumped too hard and the whisky which de Gier had been holding spilled down the dress of the middle-aged woman, who was still trying to talk to him. There had been ice cubes in the whisky and the woman shrieked merrily, trying to dislodge the ice cubes between her large breasts and mouthing some inviting words which nobody could hear.

De Gier spun around, drawing back his fist, but Cardozo smiled and pointed to the window, beckoning to de Gier to follow him. They passed the TV on their way. The tall thin man had caught the girl and had his hands around her slim lovely neck. The man and the girl were still in the overgrown endless garden, close to a stone outhouse, greenish white and lit up by the moon. The girl struggled and the man leered. The warrior's chant was swelling into a gigantic crescendo and tubas, trumpets, bassoons and clarinets honked and wailed shrilly in turn, framing the voices which were coming closer and closer as the girl's lace collar was being slowly torn away.

They had arrived at the window and de Gier saw two large parrots, one gray and one red, each in its own cage.

"Listen," Cardozo shouted.

De Gier went closer to the cages. Both parrots were jumping on their narrow wooden swings. The gray parrot seemed to be singing but the other was throwing up.

"He is puking," de Gier shouted.

"Nope. He is only making the sound. Uncle Bert told me. Uncle Bert was sick some days ago and the red parrot has been imitating him ever since. He does it very well, I think. Listen."

But de Gier had escaped. He didn't want to hear a parrot vomit. He was in the corridor, away from the noise, wiping his face with his handkerchief.

"I am getting drunk," de Gier thought. "I don't want to get drunk. Must drink water from now on. Lemonade. Cola. Anything."

There was a telephone in the corridor and he dialed his own number, steadying himself against the wall with his other hand.

"This is the house of Mr. de Gier," the telephone said.

"Esther?"

"Rinus."

"I am glad you came. I am at a mad party but I'll try to get home as quick as I can. How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Esther's low voice said. "I am waiting for you. Oliver has vomited all over the house. He must have been eating the geranium leaves, but I have cleared it all up now. He was asleep on my lap when you phoned."

"He always eats the geranium leaves. I am sorry he made a mess."

"I don't mind, Rinus. Will you be very long? Are you drunk?"

"I will be if I go on drinking but I won't. I'll be as quick as I can. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't work."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes. I love you. I love you more than I have ever loved anything or anybody. I love you more than I love Oliver. I'll marry you if you want me to."

He was still wiping his face with his handkerchief.

"You say that to all the girls."

"I've never said it before in my life."

"You say that to all the girls too."

"No, no. I have never said it. I've always explained that I don't want to marry, before I got too close. And I didn't want to marry. Now I do."

"You are crazy."

"Yes."

"Come home quickly."

"Yes, dear," de Gier said and hung up.

"Talking business?" Louis Zilver asked. He had just come into the corridor. Zilver was shaking his head, vainly trying to get rid of the noise in the room.

"Some party," de Gier said. "They are driving me mad in there. Are their parties always like that?"

"First time I have been to a party outside Abe Rogge's house for a long time. Abe's parties were always well organized, and he would have live music. A few jazz musicians who followed the mood of the evening, not like this canned stuff they are pouring out now. And the drinking was slower. They fill up your glass in here when the last drop is still on your lips. I haven't been going for more than an hour and I am sloshed already."

"They scare me in there," de Gier said. "I had to get away for a minute and speak to some sane person."

"I am sane," Zilver said. "Talk to me. You said they scare you. Do you really get scared sometimes?"

"Often."

"Anything in particular that scares you?"

"Blood," de Gier said, "and rats. Rats I can stand now. I saw one the other night when we were chasing someone near the river and I didn't mind so much. A big brown brute, he jumped into the water as I was almost on top of him. I wasn't really afraid then, but blood always gets me, I don't know why."

"You'll grow out of it," Zilver said and smiled at a girl who passed them to go to the toilet. "I am scared of things I can't define. I dream of them but I can't remember them when I wake up. I think I'll go back in there and chase a few girls."

"Switch the TV off," de Gier said. "They have some horror movie on. I would switch it off myself but I don't want to be rude. You know Uncle Bert better than I do."

"I will. I'll change the record too. We want some rock music if we are going to chase the girls. Some pretty ones came in just now. You want me to introduce you?"

"No, thanks. I am here to work."

"Good luck. Got any ideas yet?"

"Lots of ideas," de Gier said, "but I want more than ideas."

Zilver smiled and closed the door behind him.

The girl had come out of the toilet and de Gier nipped in, locking the door with exaggerated care. He washed his hands carefully and combed his hair. He adjusted the silk scarf which was just the right color to go with his shirt. He sat down on the toilet seat and took out his pistol from its shoulder holster. He pulled out the clip and checked the cartridges. Six. He put the clip back and loaded, checking the breech. He could see the cartridge gleaming inside the steel of the barrel. He pulled the breech back and made the cartridge jump free. What am I doing this for? he thought. I never do this. He put the cartridge into the clip, replaced the clip and stuck the pistol back into its holster, washed his face, sat down again and lit a cigarette. Two corpses in two days. Three, counting the lawyer. But the lawyer had died because he had died. The others had been robbed of their lives. Robbery is a crime. Theft of the greatest good. The greatest good is life. And here he was in a house filled with people thumping the floor with their great ungainly feet to the beat of doped long-haired young men, tearing at the atmosphere with their electric sound boxes and magnified drums. The killer might be in the room, thumping the floor too, drinking high-powered jenever and sucking a fat cigar, with his red hand on some woman's eagerly trembling bottom. Or would he be somewhere else in town, grinning to himself? Or herself? He hadn't seen the two women whom Grijpstra and the commissaris had interviewed. He had asked Grijpstra about them but he had only been given the gist of the conversation and a description of the women. He had a feeling that Grijpstra was following some other line of thinking and getting nowhere, for he was saying even less than usual. De Gier got back into his own line of thought. A ball, attached to a string. And the string attached to what? How could the ball have found its mark with such deadly precision?