Just a Corpse at Twilight

Chapter 9

De Gier had gone ashore later in his own dinghy, a hand-crafted nutshell made out of thin cedar strips that sat high on the water. He joined Beth and Aki, plus Ishmael and Grijpstra, at the restaurant, where he arranged the journey to Boston. "Aki's car is a rustbucket, the doors are full of rainwater. They slosh when you bang them shut. You'd better take my car."

The rental, a shiny new four-door "Ford product," as Beth and Aki called it, impressed Grijpstra. Grijpstra remembered, from "World War Two days in Holland, the time when there were no cars except German army vehicles. He also recalled the first American cars coming in after liberation: large shiny chariots that zoomed quietly on Holland's deserted highways, superior inventions from an advanced planet, benevolent robots symbolizing a luxurious beauty that had been beyond a child's imagination.

"Wow!" Grijpstra said when he first saw de Gier's rental. "Nice wheels."

"All yours," de Gier said.

"You guys must be rich," Aki said as she drove the car, cruise-controlled at sixty-five miles an hour, on Interstate 95, a highway that appeared like an endless park to Grijpstra. "Rinus just keeps that car sitting at the Point? At what? At forty bucks a day?"

"He had an inheritance," Grijpstra said, sitting back, fingers intertwined on his stomach, undergoing the pleasant repetition ofa million trees, similar but never identical, with rock arrangements sloping down to the multilaned highway.

He remembered a letter from De Gier that referred to the rocks along Interstate 95. De Gier, combining his interests in gardening and the surreal, wrote that the rocks might have been placed by Chinese monks. Grijpstra visualized that image: a thousand monks, in straw sandals, robes tucked into belts, practicing the art of shifting overweight rocks along a thousand miles of foreign roadway, in the hope of pleasing the deity within by abusing their emaciated bodies. But this was America, pleasing a different facet of that very same deity, and there were machines alongside the interstate, mechanical dinosaurs with long necks, daintily moving rocks about with their muzzles.

"See that?" Aki asked. "That dragline we just passed? Made in Japan?"

"Rains," Aki said a little later, looking sexy in a short leather skirt and a T-shirt printed with a design of bare-breasted Hawaiian dancers under palm trees. "Frost must have dislodged the granite. They're always working on this road. Rinus had an inheritance? Are you kidding? Isn't he lucky? So he can do all that traveling and gadding about."

"Yes," Grijpstra said.

"Watching nature out of his dinghy," Aki said. "You know what he paid for that dinghy? Over two thousand, and that's secondhand. It took two men a month to build it." She shook her head. "He says I can have it when he leaves."

"Lucky with investments too," Grijpstra said. "Rinus just keeps making money. A golden thumb."

"You're kidding."

I'm kidding, Grijpstra thought.

There were more miles sliding by. Grijpstra liked the well-behaved traffic controlled by an occasional gleaming cop car. He told Aki this was the way it should be, just a few people in a million square miles, just a few rules, the minimum of good-looking law enforcement, nice food in road restaurants, attractive wildlife grazing along the highways' shoulders and well beyond in bordering fields. He pointed at long-tailed magpies fluttering between white pines, at a large dark shape cantering lightly across a glade. "What the hell was that?"

"Moose," Aki said. "There are lots of moose in Maine, more now that we've killed off the wolf. Moose are bigger than camels, you know. Moose are next on the list. You can get a license to shoot them now. One of the state's new attractions. Five hundred bucks a pop. They're easy: they'll wait for you, you can walk up to them, say hello, blast them between the eyes."

"Will there be any left?"

"Maybe," Aki said. "Hairy Harry and Billy Boy will stuff the last one for target practice." She touched Grijpstra's knee. "Or it'll be like the nature movies. See these moose?" She deepened her voice. "Behold the broad flattened antlers. North America's largest deer. This is rare footage, folks, taken of the last-known herd some ten years ago." Aki snarled. "And then you hear shots and you see the final moose crumple and fall, breathe blood."

"No," Grijpstra said. He raised his hands in defense. "Please, Aki."

"I'm sorry." She pulled her hand back to the wheel. "It's my name, it makes me ghoulish. You know my full name?"

Grijpstra closed his eyes, frowning as he searched his memory. "Akiapola'au?"

She laughed. "That's awesome, Krip. They can't even remember it in Hawaii. You know what it means?"

"Vulture finch?"

"Who told you that?" She shook her head in disbelief. "You have a special interest in me?"

"You told me," Grijpstra said. "First time we met. I'm a detective. I'm trained to recall data."

"I'm data to you?"

Grijpstra shrugged. "Just a habit. Tell me about the Hawaiian vulture finch."

"It's a lie," Aki said. "I tell it to make myself interesting. Nobody knows about Hawaiian birds here but there is such a thing at home as a vulture finch."

"There are no regular vultures in Hawaii?"

"No big land birds at all," Aki said. "Hawaii is nowhere. Nowhere is too fir for big birds to fly to, but little birds were blown over by hurricanes. There's this little cute-looking bird that you'd swear is a finch that feeds on dead bodies. That's how I found out life isn't Walt Disney. I was out as a kid playing and there was a dead man in a field, a drunk who got hurt and who dragged himselfout there, and the body was crawling with gorgeous little birds, gorging themselves."

"Yecch…"

"But why? It's not really revolting." Aki asked. "There's no biological reason for vultures to be big."

"You know about biology?" Grijpstra asked as the car slowed down. There was a commotion further along the interstate.

"My major subject," Aki said, "at the University of Honolulu, and now I serve eggs over easy to the wild men of Jameson, Maine. It's not a pretty story, Krip."

Traffic had stopped. A car had left the road ahead, at a high speed probably, for it had rolled over a few times. And it had been a while ago because an ambulance was now back- l ing up to the wreck, policemen were directing traffic, and a helicopter hovered above.

Eventually traffic moved again. "Makes me think of Beth's father," Aki said. "It was last winter. Big Daddyti been to the grave of Beth's sister. The man was eighty years old and almost blind but every few days he made himself take flowers to the cemetery, to alleviate some guilt. Apparently he had maltreated the girl. Then Big Daddy disappeared. Nobody could figure it out. He'd bought the flowers at Gary's Greenhouse behind Main Street, and Gary had seen him drive ofFtoward the cemetery, which is along a straight road through the forest west oftown. The flowers were found on the grave but Big Daddy never came back."

"Maybe a good way to go," Grijpstra said.

"You figured it out?" Aki asked. Grijpstra sat quietly while the Ford product sped along.

"Getting hungry, Krip?"

He was but he didn't want to eat at any of the fast food places that they passed once in a while: slabs of concrete behind plastic signs. Beth had known of an inn with gourmet food and Grijpstra read the map that she had marked with arrows, giving Aki clear directions.

"Aren't we a deadly combination?" Aki said when they sat on the inn's terrace, facing a pond with a collection of exotic ducks and geese.

"And how do you like these gorgeous fowl, Krip?" Grijpstra knew the birds' names.

"You took biology too, Krip?"

He told her he painted birds, in the Dutch Golden Age tradition, a time when Dutch merchants liked to keep exotic fowl on their country estates and had them portrayed for extra glory.

"And now you see them in America. More Belgian steamed mussels? More French bread? This is America, Krip, we indulge every desire. You don't have to go anywhere to get anything, it's all right here. You solved the puzzle yet, Krip?"

Grijpstra thought so. Beth's father, when he disappeared, was eighty years old and nearly blind so he wouldn't have been able to drive on unfamiliar roads. He had driven home after leaving the cemetery, where else would he have gone? But he hadn't gotten home. On the way home he had become sick or had fallen asleep, like the driver of the overturned car on the interstate just now. A stroke or a cardiac arrest made him slump over the wheel and stamp on the gas at the same time. Being an old man he was driving an old car, a tank of the gas-guzzling type. The car had left the road and barreled into the forest, which, like most in northern Maine, grew up to both sides of the rural road. The car flattened saplings and brushes until stopped by a tree trunk. There the car sat. The saplings behind it bent back.

"What about that big old Packard's massive tracks?" Aki asked.

"This happened in winter?"

"Yes."

"So there might have been snow," Grijpstra said. "Snow covered the car's tracks after the car entered the forest."

"You're good," Aki said.

Grijpstra looked pleased. "That's what happened?"

"Exactly."

"The sheriff sent out search parties?" Grijpstra asked.

"He saw ravens circling the next morning," Aki said, "and an eagle. Eagles are scavengers too. And the big sea gulls. They have cruel eyes. They go for your eyes first, they don't wait for you to die."

"Was Beth's father dead before the birds found him?" Grijpstra asked.

"Oh yes," Aki said, "there was an autopsy. The heart attack must have killed Big Daddy straight off."

Grijpstra enjoyed the cream pie Aki ordered, a Florida pie made from limes, foreign to Maine. He dozed in the car until, close to Boston, the traffic became noisy.

"Motel out of town?" Aki asked. "Hotel in town? Hotels will be expensive. Any preference, Krip?"

He waved his credit card. "Nothing but the best."

Aki had heard about the Parker House being good. "But very expensive. You really don't mind?"

He didn't. He liked the skyscrapers lining the parkway and the way Aki handled the car, driving close to cabs so that she could ask their drivers for directions.

"Hold it Krip." The car shot across a sidewalk and dived into a garage. "This is it. Out you go."

Bellboys took over, parking the car, carrying luggage, driving the elevator, ushering them through the lobby.

Grijpstra ordered separate suites. Aki canceled that. "One suite will do." He protested. Til get lonely, Krip. The big city reminds me."

He worried. There was Nellie, there was disease, but then there was safe sex, but he didn't want safe sex either. Besides, why not separate suites? What could a thirtyish extraordinarily attractive homosexual Polynesian female want with a sixty-year-old slightly obese white heterosexual male? Information? Information about what?

He missed de Gier. De Gier, while roaming the alleys of good old Amsterdam, would have had something smart to say about the situation. Now de Gier, auto-induced schizophrenic meddler with fourth-dimensional reality, was a goddamn suspect himself.

Aki and Grijpstra talked over dinner, at an age-old oyster bar in Boston's harbor district, eating quahogs stuffed in their shells, root beer for Grijpstra, tonic and lime for Akiapola'au, served by old, ugly, rough but not uncaring waitresses.

"No alcohol, Krip?"

"I can't smoke anymore," Grijpstra said, tapping his chest.

"Can't drink without smoking?"

"True," Grijpstra said. "Yourself?"

"I'm alcoholic.

He left it at that, watching Boston women. He thought Bostonian women looked like women from The Hague- quiet, dressed with a kind of in-between taste that wouldn't commit them one way or another.

"Want to know when I stopped?" Aki asked.

"Being alcoholic?"

She laughed. "I will always be that. Stopped drinking, I mean."

"Tell me."

"When I came to Maine two years ago," Aki said. "You want to know why?"

"Tell me."

"You sure?"

Grijpstra was sure.

"Because of hopping backwards up to a urinal in an army barracks restroom with my clothes off and shy soldiers staring."

"I see."

"Do you?" She laughed. "Ofcourse. You're a detective. I had to pee so bad and I had no idea where I was and I was so pleased I found that toilet and then it was too high and the soldiers came in and they didn't get it either." She laughed again. "Itfs the sort of tale you hear at AA meetings. They keep being told in the hope that they'll go away in the telling but they don't, and then you want to drink again."

"Or not," Grijpstra said, smiling.

"Never," Aki said, "never, Krip." She reached across the table and patted his hand. "You're such a nice man. Isn't this fun? You and I together away from everything. Are you taking me anywhere good afterward?"

"Music?" Grijpstra asked.

"There's good music in Boston, Krip."

"We'll do that," Grijpstra said. "Now tell me about how you got to that army barracks."

"Begin at the beginning? You'll still take me out even if I depress you?"

"I'll still take you out."

The beginning was at a Kona Coast coffee plantation on the big island of Hawaii, idyllic still: barefoot brown children playing in the surf and singing-"I can hold high notes, Krip"-and the volcano lighting up the beach at night and Aki's parents the nicest ever and good marks at school. There was the cat, Poopy, and the dog, Snoopy, and papayas and avocados on the garden trees and dancing in the shopping mall with Aunt Emma beating her gourds and shuffling her big soft feet, coaching all the little kids ofthe neighborhood, any kind of little kids, some of them so white you could hardly see them in the light, some black as midnight, all the native kids golden all over.

Grijpstra laughed.

"You like that, Krip?" She sighed. She wasn't going to tell him the rest of it, then she did. Her father started up with an older ugly woman, nobody knew why, he didn't know why, and he lost his job. And they were in a trailer that had been on fire and was still blistered outside. Her father was drinking and beating up people, his car got dented, he wasn't even proud that Aki got a full scholarship in Honolulu and then she started drinking too. Dope, too, everything. Honolulu is the Far East and marijuana is a cash crop in Hawaii.

"Heroin?"

Not too much, she didn't like the needle but it liked her, like the boyfriend did. He with the different faces, who took herto the mainland to keep himin a style he wasn't accustomed to at all, by taking weird men in and out of motel rooms, for years, all the way across the continent, to Maine in the end, where the boyfriend (she kept getting away from him and he kept coming back in different guises, colors, ages) assumed a military face and she was in the barrackswith her clothes off, jumping up, trying to reach that china bowl screwed against the wall out of reach, with all the jocks watching. They weren't even laughing, they were too embarrassed.

"Alcohol?"

"What else?" Aki asked. "It got me arrested then, but I was out of it. The cops might have released me into my family's custody but there wasn't any family left so I finished up with some nuns."

"That's when you became lesbian?"

"I always preferred my own side. With Hawaiians the gay have their own place." Her hand was on his again. "You mind?"

Grijpstra said he was from Amsterdam, which was like…

"Key West?"

He didn't know where that was.

"Provincetown?"

Never heard of Provincetown.

"San Francisco?"

Grijpstra remembered watching TV pictures ofmostly beautiful men and women waving protest banners down steep streets and thinking at that moment that the New World was behind the times. In Amsterdam it was getting to be the other way around, with a heterosexual majority trying to move out from the shade of guilty regularity. "Yes," he said happily, "San Francisco."

They were both smiling, having a wonderful time.

"Akiapola'au," Grijpstra asked, "are you and Beth watching the coast for drug trafficking?"

"Daddy-O," she said, her face hardly cooling, "you don't have to be so clever." She leaned over to peck his cheek. "I was about to tell you all about it."