Blond Baboon

\\\\\ 17 /////

Sergeant De Gier looked at the square electric wall clock that had been hanging, for as long as he could remember, on an improbably thin and bent nail stuck loosely into the soft plaster of his office wall. The clock had said five to eight and had just moved, with an ominous faint click, to four to eight.

“It’s morning,” he said, and his voice reverberated through the empty room. The hollow, artificial sound sent a shiver through the base of his neck. “It’s very early in the morning,” he whispered. There had been no coffee in the machine in the washroom and he was out of cigarettes. The cigarette machine in the hall was out of order. The tobacconist’s wouldn’t open up until after nine. Cardozo and his plastic pouch filled with crumbly, cheap, shag tobacco were nowhere to be seen. Grijpstra and his flat tin of cigars hadn’t come in yet. The commissaris’s office was securely locked. There was nothing to do but to stare at the clock and at his desk calendar, which showed no entries at all.

“First things first,” de Gier said and jumped up. He had heard a sound in the corridor. He pulled the door open and jumped out and collided with a uniformed secretary from the traffic department. Her blue jacket showed the stripes of a constable.

“Darling,” de Gier murmured, and he clasped the dumpy girl in his arms and breathed against her thick spectacles. “You smoke, don’t you? Tell me you do.”

The constable had dropped her shoulderbag; her spectacles were sliding down her short broad nose.

“Yes,” she said into de Gier’s shoulder. “Yes, I do, sergeant.”

“Half a pack,” he whispered. “Give me half a pack and maybe I can do some work today. Catch the horrible killer, grab the pernicious poisoner, trap the blond baboon. Please? Beloved?”

Her glasses dropped, but he extended his chest, and they caught on the top button of his jacket. He plucked them away, released the girl, whipped out his handkerchief, and polished them before replacing them gently onto her nose and sliding the stems over her ears.

“You shouldn’t do that,” the girl said. “You are a pig, sergeant.” Her breathing was still irregular but her tight little smile had a hard twist to it. “So you’re out of cigarettes?”

“Yes, darling,” de Gier said, “and I caught your spectacles. They would have broken if I hadn’t caught them and you would have been blind as a bat, they would have smashed to smithereens on the nasty floor.”

“I won’t give you any cigarettes,” she said firmly, “unless…”

“I’ll kiss you,” de Gier said. “How’s that?”

“On your knees!”

“What?”

“On your knees!”

De Gier looked around. There was nobody in sight in the long corridor. He dropped onto his knees.

“Repeat after me: ‘I am a male chauvinist!’”

“I am a male chauvinist.”

She opened her bag and took out a pack of cigarettes. De Gier looked at the brand. It was the wrong brand. Long and thin and low on tar and tasteless and with noted filters that would let the smoke drift away before it could reach his mouth. His lips curled down, but she was watching his face, so he smiled pleasingly.

“I’ll give you four, that’s all you’re worth.” She counted mem out on his palm.

“Well, well, well,” Grijpstra said.

The girl was on her way, her heels tapping firmly on the thick linoleum of the corridor. De Gier had got up.

“Well what, adjutant? I was out of cigarettes.”

Grijpstra’s grin was still spreading. “Ha!”

“Ha what, adjutant?”

“Pity Cardozo wasn’t here. There he is! Late again, always late.”

Cardozo looked at his watch. “Five to nine, adjutant.”

“Nevermind.”

They went in together. Cardozo was sent out to buy coffee and to pay for it out of his own pocket. De Gier puffed on his cigarette, threw it on the floor, and stamped on it. Cardozo came back.

“Give me your pouch, Cardozo, and some cigarette paper and a light.”

Cardozo put the coffee mugs down and fished a crumpled plastic pouch of shag tobacco from his pocket. “Do you want me to smoke it for you too, sergeant?”

De Gier reached out and took the pouch. The three men smoked and drank coffee and stared at each other. Grijpstra sighed. “Well…”

“Yes?”

“It seems the case is solved. I saw the commissaris’s secretary just now. The old man has gone to Milano, he’s due back tomorrow. He telephoned her last night and wanted Papa Pullini’s number in Sesta San Giovanni, a little town close to Milano. The round-trip ticket to Milano must cost a bit of money and he wouldn’t be wasting it, would he now?”

De Gier stretched and began to cough. He glared at Cardozo. “Terrible tobacco, you should change your brand.” Cardozo tried to say something but winced instead.

“Right,” de Gier said. “So Francesco is our man, as we nought, but there’s still a chance that we’re wrong, for the commissaris could be wrong too.”

Grijpstra yawned.

“Small chance, but still… Let’s go through it again: Why did we pick Francesco?”

“We picked Francesco,” Grijpstra said patiently, “for a number of reasons, all of them flimsy and none of them good enough to stand up in court.”

“Let’s have the reasons.”

“O.K. We agreed that whoever smokes long thin cigars with plastic mouthpieces made to resemble ivory must be a vain man. We had three suspects, apart from Gabrielle. All the suspects were vain. Bergen is a nicely dressed gentleman if he isn’t going to pieces in the privacy of his own home. The baboon is a strange-looking man, but he takes great care about the way he looks, and Francesco dries and sets his lovely hair with a dryer and sports a silk dressing gown. All three suspects are vain, but Francesco wins the race. A very faint hint, but something to go on if we can bring up supporting hints.

“A man who pushes a lady down the stairs is violent We couldn’t picture Bergen pushing Elaine and we had trouble imagining the baboon in that position. The baboon is violent, for he got you in the river, but you are a man, not a nicely dressed lady in her own house. Francesco could be an excitable young fellow and he had some sort of motive. He thought the Carnet firm owed him eighty thousand guilders and we knew that Elaine Carnet took out eighty thousand in cash from her company’s bank account.

The figures tally, she had the money the evening of her death, and Francesco could have visited her. Suppose she showed him the money but wouldn’t give it to him so he jumps her, right?”

“Hmm.”

“It was your idea,” Grijpstra said, “and I agreed with it. Eighty thousand guilders form a motive. What motives could Bergen and the baboon have?”

“The wedding ring.”

“Yes, sergeant, a powerful indication. A wedding ring on the floor and the lady was never married. Yet she wore a ring. And she threw it on the floor that evening; it didn’t just drop off her finger. Marriage, love or the lack of love.”

“Humiliation,” de Gier said.

“Exactly. Women like to humiliate men these days. You were on the corridor’s floor a little while ago, groveling. You wanted a cigarette, I believe, and the girl was using her power.”

“What?” Cardozo had jumped up. “The sergeant on the floor? What happened?”

“If you had been on time you would have seen what was happening. A female constable had our sergeant on the floor, on his knees, whining.”

“Really?”

“Let it go,” de Gier said, 1 was only play-acting. You’re right about the humiliation. So you’re saying mat Elaine Carnet had her future killer in a position where he felt silly and his pathetic predicament had something to do with her wedding ring. But Francesco is a young man, he couldn’t have made Elaine Carnet pregnant way back in nineteen forty-five or forty-six.”

“Papa Pullini could have. Papa Pullini is a businessman and he was a businessman in nineteen forty-five too. He must have traveled. We know he speaks French, Bergen told us so. Maybe he went to Paris, strayed into a nightclub, saw the beautiful singer, bought her a bunch of roses, started a romance.”

“So she waits thirty years and revenges herself on Papa Pullini’s son, is that what you’re saying?”

Grijpstra got up and walked over to the window.

“Very weak,” de Gier said softly. “Now what if Bergen was the wicked father? Or the baboon? They’re the right age.”

Grijpstra turned around. “I know. But the commissaris went to Milano. I thought of Bergen too, but why would she pick him as a business partner? And the same goes for the baboon. She worked with both men for many years. Why would she work with a man, and allow him to share her profits, if she had every reason to despise that man? And where do the eighty thousand guilders fit in? And the twenty thousand that the baboon borrowed and returned? That money does exist. Did you count the money Gabrielle showed to you, Cardozo?”

“Yes, adjutant. There were one hundred thousand guilder notes, eighty new, twenty slightly used.”

Grijpstra’s index finger came up. “See, sergeant? The money was there. Francesco took the lot and rushed out of the house. He counted the money in his hotel and found more than he expected. He phoned Gabrielle. She told him that she had removed his fingerprints and that he was safe but that he should return the money to her. She probably promised to pay him the eighty later, officially, out of the firm’s account-she could make that promise for she inherits the firm, Bergen only owns a quarter of it, she could override all his decisions. I am sure Francesco would have given the twenty back anyway. I don’t think he’s a robber, he just wanted what was due him.”

“And he killed Elaine in anger,” de Gier said slowly. That’ll help him in court, if he confesses. He should come and see us and give himself up, mat’s why the commissaris didn’t want us to make an arrest while he was away.”

“Exactly.”

“Adjutant?”

“Yes, Caidozo?”

“But Elaine was a bit of a bitch, wasn’t she? She knew that her daughter was having an affair with Francesco and that Francesco was Gabrielle’s half-brother. She could have stopped the affair, couldn’t she?”

Grijpstra shrugged. “Perhaps, but Gabrielle might not have cared. I would say that Gabrielle’s real feeling is for the baboon and that Francesco was something on the side, strong enough to protect him against us but still… She jumped at you at the drop of a hat, didn’t she? She probably has lots of sex, here, there, and everywhere.”

Cardozo blushed.

De Gier got up too and joined Grijpstra at the window. “I don’t know, Grijpstra. Elaine had an affair with the baboon and he got himself out of it, even at the expense of losing his job. Next thing we know is that Gabrielle dives into bis bed. Elaine may have known. There may have been a terrific scene between mother and daughter, which would explain the wedding ring on the floor too. Gabrielle kills her mother. That way she has the business and the baboon and is free forever after.”

“And who was smoking the cigars that evening?”

De Gier walked back to his desk. “True. It would be nice if we could prove that angle, wouldn’t it?”

“Here,” Grijpstra said.

They all looked at the long narrow tin of cigars the adjutant had placed on de Gier’s desk. “Signorinas, made in Brazil. I found this tin late last night, had to wake up my cousin who owns a tobacco store. Expensive cigars for successful businessmen, my cousin doesn’t sell too many of them. He says they are really excellent cigars. Maybe he is right, I tried one and they taste rather perfumed. Cardozo can take the tin and check the cigar counter in the Pulitzer Hotel and all the tobacconists around it. He should be able to come up with a statement that says that a man of Francesco’s description bought the cigars on the evening of Mrs. Carnet’s death. The statement won’t mean too much in court, but it’ll mean something. At least we’ll be able to prove that Francesco was lying when he said that he didn’t visit Elaine Carnet on the evening of her death.”

Cardozo took the tin and left.

“Anything else we can do while the commissaris is away?”

Grijpstra grinned. “Sure. We can go to the snack bar around the corner and drink some real coffee and enjoy a quiet twenty minutes. And then we might go and visit the baboon again.”

“Why?”

“Why not? He’s an interesting man, isn’t he?”

“O.K. And Bergen?”

“He’s having more tests this morning, but I mink we should contact him later in the day. They’ve all been lying, of course, hiding facts. Everybody has been hoping that we’ll give up and consider the easiest way out.”

De Gier nodded. “Write it off as an accident. Good, we’ll go and shake them, but I don’t think it’s necessary. The commissaris is bound to come up with something conclusive.”

“I think I’ll become a mercenary,” de Gier said a little later in the snack bar. He held up the paper and showed Grijpstra a photograph of a fat, jolly black man in a general’s uniform. “This guy has killed a few hundred thousand people in his country, why don’t we go and get him? Why must we go after a tiny little Italian who doesn’t really mean any harm?”

Grijpstra choked on a meat roll. De Gier waited.

“The Italian is here,” Grijpstra said finally, when he had finished coughing.

“We could go there, couldn’t we?”

I am here too.”

“And if you were there?”

Grijpstra took the paper and looked at the photograph. The fat general was still smiling. Grijpstra stuffed the rest of the meat roll into his mouth. He chewed for another minute.

“Well”

“I would kill him,” Grijpstra said and wiped his mouth. “It would be fun. We could think it out carefully, make it look like an accident, set up some sort of a trap. The commissaris would like that too. He could sit in his bath and build a trap out of subtleties, do it step by step, each step a little more slithery than the one before, create a safety system for the general’s protection, for instance, but the system suddenly malfunctions and poof!”

Grijpstra’s fingertip tapped the general’s forehead. They walked to the counter together. Grijpstra stepped back so that de Gier could pay.

“Yes,” de Gier said, “the commissaris would like that.”