Hard Rain

\\\\\ 7 /////

In the detectives' office the phone rang, jingling on and on, cutting off now and then, and starting up again. De Gier, coming back from the canteen, where he'd listened to dismal conversation on the subject of State Detection's threatened investigation- nobody thought it would do more than cause further useless trouble-picked up the phone. "Homicide," he said pleasantly.

"Sergeant de Gier?" a muffled voice whispered.

"Yes?"

"Prince's Island," the voice said. "The Ancient's Cafe in an hour." The voice was replaced by a mechanical hum.

"Yes?" Grijpstra asked from the door, seeing de Gier shaking the phone.

"Karate," de Gier said. "He and his co-demon are onto something. Now what? I only want to work on that dead banker. Do we allow ourselves to be sidetracked again? Karate and Ketchup have messed us up before."

Grijpstra sat on his desk, carefully peeling the plastic off a cigar. "In interesting ways. I could do with a laugh."

"What's with you?" de Gier asked. "You like the ordinary. You're a stodgy, slow, unimaginative member of the petrified old guard. Let's stick to our parts. I'm the one who's out for adventure. I wouldn't mind adventure now, but there were the corpses at the Binnenkant, and we should do some work. Have you seen IJsbreker's body yet?"

"Sure." Grijpstra licked his cigar. "I thought you were on your way down too. Did you chicken out again? I've seen worse bodies. A somewhat seedy but well-dressed gent, rather bald on top, a bit pudgy all over, due to soft living, of course. Remember the ladies' underwear we found in the leather couch at his house? And the traces of cocaine on the glass coffee table? According to Mr. Jacobs, there was a faint smell of perfume when they put IJsbreker in the fridge. The pathologist came down and had another look too."

"The one who talks?" de Gier asked. "Or his disgruntled chief?"

Grijpstra nodded. "The one who talks. There were powder burns on the corpse's face. The pathologist mentioned advanced cirrhosis of the liver. A hard-drinking man in his late forties, our banker was. Did drugs too-cocaine; his nose is a mess. No heroin- we found no needle marks anywhere. He could have smoked it, of course."

"So you want the case closed again?"

Grijpstra grinned at the sergeant's suddenly stooped shoulders. "Why? Because of the powder burns? So someone fired a blank in his face. It's been done before. Subject is shot from a distance and then the scene is changed so it appears he has been shot from close by." The adjutant raised a lecturing finger. "We're now assuming murder, and therefore premeditation. Why was IJsbreker shot during a thunder^ storm with hard rain? That storm was predicted, very handy for covering up the sound of a shot. If I had paid attention in that campground, I could have saved Nellie's tent."

De Gier smiled.

"Good," Grijpstra said. "That's my boy. I might have despaired too, if there hadn't been two bullets."

De Gier looked grim again. "Only one, Adjutant. The other one is hearsay."

"Hearsay from a disinterested party." Grijpstra lit his cigar and sucked contentedly. "The pathologist who talks has no motive for hampering our job."

"Except getting his boss in trouble," de Gier said. "Our two doctors are rivals who like to trip each other up. The one underneath wants to climb on top. He imagines a nonexistent bullet and spreads the rumor all over the building. The authorities will begin to question the integrity of the top doctor. The top doctor has always been a hard man to work with. Uncooperative, right? Now he loses a bullet and he won't sign a report."

Grijpstra studied the tip of his cigar. "Too farfetched. There must have been two bullets. Everybody expected just one. One suicide, one gun, one bullet. The second bullet is almost surreal. There's nothing special about the assistant pathologist; he's your regular pseudo-intellectual, badly qualified, sniveling, backbiting corporate slave." Grijpstra took a deep breath, but forgot to take the cigar out of his mouth. He coughed through the cloud of smoke billowing from his cigar. "The fool is quite incapable of imagining the surreal."

"You don't like the man?" de Gier asked. "Okay. Two bullets. Want to come to Prince's Island with me? Dally with demons?"

"Why do you always drive on the tramway tracks?" Grijpstra yelled in the car. "Quicker," de Gier yelled back.

"Slippery," Grijpstra protested.

The car, obeying de Gier's pressure on the accelerator, screamed out of a bad swerve. "You know," de Gier yelled, ignoring the traffic lights of a busy crossing and forcing the aging Volkswagen through a crack between a bus and a truck, "we could be lucky. I sent out that message to all stations. James T. Floyd? Student of Chinese? Remember? The guy who fell off his chair?"

Grijpstra tried to stub out his cigar, but the car's jerky movements kept making him miss the ashtray. He threw the butt out the window, but a sudden change of direction make the car catch the cigar again. Grijpstra grabbed it and burned his hand. "Aaaah!" There was a bicycle ahead now, very much in the way. De Gier missed it.

De Gier slowed down, looking for a parking place. "That cyclist shouldn't have been on the tracks. Tracks are for trams."

"We aren't a tram."

"And for emergencies," de Gier said.

"We aren't an emergency."

"We're a continuous emergency," de Gier said pleasantly, after he'd parked the car and was strolling next to Grnpstra through narrow alleys. "That's why I joined the police. We're supposed to break rules so that others may learn to obey them. We drive faster in superb vehicles, we apply violence with our super-guns, we think more freely with our superior cerebral equipment, we violate restrictive taboos with our boundless insight into the limitations of morality, we…"

De Gier's strident tenor passed Grijpstra by. The adjutant had absorbed the timeless peace of the antiquity of his surroundings, expressed in the polished cobblestones underfoot, the rows of delicate little houses, each with slight variations in gable design, and the harmonious way the tall windows flanked inset doors. Ahead, a small white bridge curved gracefully upward, and a cluster of floating, bright-feathered ducks, quacking conversationally, produced pleasant reflections in the water of the moat under the bridge.

"Yes," the adjutant said.

"You agree?" De Gier looked down at his peaceful companion, plodding at his side.

"I could give it up," Grijpstra said. "You heard all that muttering in the building this morning? Our colleagues are worried about their job security again. Stupid jobs prop them up. They think the coming investigation may kick them out. I think I would welcome a good kick. I would fly forever-around here, for instance. Why be part of a repetitive rigamarole that keeps you going around in circles? I know"- Grijpstra gestured forgivingly-"that I'm not really an artist yet. Take that painting I'm working on now. I haven't found the right green, but here"-his hand swept toward the moat underneath, its water reflecting the delicate green shades of mossy waterwalls- "given my freedom… and I think I would take up some drumming again." The bridge's chains creaked, and Grijpstra put a hand behind his ear. "Hear that? I could re-create that sound on a cymbal, work it into a composition of my own…"

"Yes," de Gier said.

Grijpstra looked up. "I'm glad you hear it too. Now listen to the seagulls. There's something in their cry that you could play on your flute."'

"Not a bad move, eh?" de Gier asked, resting his hand on the adjutant's shoulder. "Sending that general message out? We need information on those dead junkies. So far we have nothing but their proximity to another corpse, but if we can trace this Jimmy and find out how his routine could have crossed the banker's path… Here's the cafe"

A vague shape stirred behind the worn counter as de Gier held the door open to facilitate the adjutant's ponderous entry. Two other shapes straightened up in the semidarkness of the room. The barman shuffled close.

"Morning," Grijpstra said benevolently. "Still this side of death, Bert?"

"Oh, yes." The old man grinned, showing his toothless gums. "Looking on, you know. Jenever, gents?"

"Good idea," Grijpstra said. "I prefer an early start. A good beginning may last until deep in the night." Grijpstra and de Gier carried their glasses to the far table. Two young men in jeans and leather jackets got up and shook hands.

"Ketchup," Grijpstra said.

"Karate," said de Gier. "It was you on the phone?"

"Hello," the detectives whispered, looking over their shoulders.

"Cloak-and-dagger again?" de Gier asked. "That's all right. Want us to whisper too? Let's have the reason for your call, colleagues."

"Jimmy the junkie," Karate said. "We know everything, but you shouldn't send out inquiries like that on the open circuit. We're under surveillance. The charge is innocence. We're the last innocents in our entire district."

"And phones are out altogether now," Ketchup said. "All phones are tapped by State Detection."

"And State Detection isn't innocent, either," Karate said. "They're the other side too." His polished fingernails shone in the sparse light of the pub. His made-up eyes gleamed.

"Gay?" de Gier asked.

Ketchup's hennaed hair gleamed too. "We're promoted now. Our rules prescribe the gay disguise. If one doesn't want to draw attention to oneself, one looks like this."

"My dear," Grijpstra said, "gays don't look like that anymore. Haven't you been told?"

Ketchup offered his tobacco pouch. De Gier rolled a cigarette, having trouble with hard green particles that broke through the paper. "Dope," Karate said. "Here, let me do it. Part of our new I.D. If we aren't stoned, the bad guys aren't supposed to believe in us. We're doped all the time. So are the State Detection cops. We caught two the other night. They were gliding around in their convertible Corvette. We drive an old Camaro, wax polished of course, but not quite the same thing. State Detection is special. So we arrested them on a charge of dealing and they had to tell us all. We're buddies now. They told us about your phones."

"You're first," Ketchup said. "An honor, in a way. The Corvette is supposed to follow your commissaris, but since your chief hardly moves, the state cops hang out in this part of town. More amusing."

"Not good," Grijpstra said. "This jenever is excellent, however. Your health, Sergeant." He looked at Karate. "Did you tell them that what they are doing is not good? They should go after Halba, and the chief constable himself. They're our worst. Gambling debts and blonde dollies. And after Adjutant Guldemeester. And most of Narcotics. The Gambling Department. The Aliens Branch. We're okay."

"No," Karate said. "Let's not be retarded, Adjutant. It's the other way round. The bad guys are winning. State Detection has gone over too. That's what the dicks said. They're okay, to balance things again, but they're up in the air."

"I can smoke this?" de Gier asked, studying his joint.

Ketchup lit a match. "Don't inhale too deeply or you'll fall over. This is dope provided by the state; we spread it around and make lots of friends. Rather strong. Pure pure."

"I like that," Grijpstra said. "The simile of the seesaw. Us good guys are up, the very few of us. The view is better from up here. Now what about Jimmy?"

"Zen," Karate said. "Jimmy was into Zen. We got to start with Buddhism here, or you won't follow our lead so well. Do you understand Zen?"

Grijpstra kept up one hand. Karate nodded. "You're the one. And all. And that's the sound."

"Hello?" de Gier said. "Am I still in this, too? Modern mysticism isn't quite my field. Am I missing something? Did Grijpstra give the secret sign?"

"The adjutant disposes of insight," Ketchup said. "That's what matters now, it's important."

Grijpstra put his tulip-shaped glass down. "The sound of one hand. Two hands can clap, right? They make a sound. Now one hand, simply raised, presents the sound of total stillness. I read that in the paper."

"For shit's sake," Karate said. "Now why do you spoil it? Once you start explaining, it's all gone."

"Advanced students can explain," Ketchup said, "because when it's gone it pops up again. You're not advanced yet."

"Grijpstra is advanced?" de Gier asked, sucking in dense smoke. "Then Zen can't be right. Once Grijpstra understands it, there's nothing to understand."

"You must be advanced too," Ketchup said. "Are you, Sergeant? There is nothing to understand."

"I've been understanding that particular aspect of the hidden creed for years," de Gier said. "I have this bed, you see, an old hospital bed, with rails on each side, that I painted gold on a rainy afternoon off. I got white sheets and blankets. There's something insightful about white and gold."

"If I hear 'insight' just once again…" Grijpstra said.

"Insight," de Gier said. "I get it by lying down on my very special bed, which is a gate to the forever, to the unlimited afterward, to the eternal underneath. I lie down and I sort of nap-and this is important, you can't do it with your shoes on, or even in socks-I get my toes around the bars, the bars at the foot of the bed, and then, after a while, I sort of get to be half awake, and then I know these things, like what one hand expresses." He held up one hand. "Yes?"

"Jimmy?" Grijpstra asked.

"All this insight," Karate said. "I didn't think it could be catching. That you have some of it, Sergeant, I get that in a way, but the adjutant too? I always thought the adjutant was rather a heavy type. Limited, you know?"

De Gier smoked and coughed by turns. "So he is, but there's a lot of tension on Grijpstra, and every now and then something may break through. Call it insight. You can't compare it to the commissaris's knowledge. Or it could be imitation. Maybe the adjutant repeats remarks the commissaris is good enough to make at times. If you have a master around you…" De Gier peered with one eye at the glowing joint. He folded his lips around it and extracted a large quantity of smoke. "A master. Someone who sees that there's nothing at all and he expresses that and you mumble after him. That isn't true insight. I do have some insight, because of that trick with the bed and my toes."

"Jimmy?" Grijpstra asked.

"Okay," Ketchup said. "Jimmy. We arrested suspect on a splendid day. The fellow was a dealer, he met the description. We took him to our station, but we were disappointed."

"Very small," Karate said. "Crumbs. Half-grams. Half-grams don't add up. He existed on that junkboat on the Binnenkant canal, with an expensive ladybird from exclusive The Hague-past tense, of course, they lose their veneer once the needle gets in. We met the lady too-her father is a psychiatrist, with two Volvos parked up front, and a garden with magnolia trees-she still had the highfalutin accent of The Hague. Good to lure clients in the alleys up here. Makes a bit of a change. A street hooker, no choice. The medicine is high-priced."

"The lady is dead too," de Gier said.

Karate swiped at smoke floating by. "Sergeant, that joint is too strong for you. Put it away. Yes, dead, and the black fellow too, but there were four junkies on that boat and you only have three bodies under ice. What happened to the fourth?"

"We do have four bodies," Grijpstra said. "Counting the banker. You guys know the fourth junkie?"

"Yes," Ketchup said.

"Description?"

Ketchup stood up, hunched his shoulders, crossed his arms closely on his chest, and turned his hands in. He pressed his head down on a raised shoulder. One side of his mouth sucked inward. He shuffled around the table with one knee pushed out, mumbling and stuttering.

"Spastic?" de Gier asked.

"Met subject in the boat," Ketchup said, "when we took Jimmy home and searched the vessel. There was almost nothing there. A mess, sad to see. The black fellow suffered from cramps, the lady from The Hague was starved, Jimmy spat blood, but the spastic looked fine. We didn't notice straight off that he had some physical trouble, but then subject tried to say something."

"Never saw him again?"

"No, Adjutant. We did go back once to help pick up the bodies, but the fourth fellow must have missed the onslaught."

De Gier smiled. "Keep it up. I like this fluent conversation. Do you know that I can see the space between the sounds?" He flapped his arms. "What is said here is like swans, floating high in the sky, suspended in eternal and liquid silver."

Karate pulled the joint from de Gier's mouth and squashed it in the ashtray. "Those three died of an overdose of pure heroin. I find that hard to believe, somehow. Pure heroin is never sold. Each body had a brand-new needle in an arm. The substance was checked in the laboratory. It was so strong that one injection could take a tribe of gorillas one way to heaven."

De Gier stirred coffee, plonked down by old Bert. "You see this? See how the milk turns? I read answers in the pattern. I'm understanding more and more."

"Smoke some more," Grijpstra said. "It'll increase your insight. Brand-new needles, Karate? How come? The boat people are known for their dirty equipment."

"And we found this uncut heroin," Ketchup said. "Something very wrong there, Adjutant. I say their deaths were planned by some outside agent. Subjects could never have afforded what killed them. Their place was a shambles."

"Not quite," Karate said. "Remember the rhino's head? The spastic subject had created the structure, from floating garbage picked up in the canal. That's hard to do, when you can't control your hands too well. I watched him move. He seemed to keep going where he didn't want to go."

"I've got the artwork at home," Grijpstra said, "and some framed Chinese letters. Very nice, I thought."

"The colors," de Gier said, still stirring his coffee. "I mean, colors are everywhere, they exist here too, in the coffee, but just try to take them out, and to fit them in."

"I said that just now," Grijpstra said and pushed de Gier's shoulder. "On the bridge, and I never got through to you. The greens in the canal…"

"Right," Karate said. "Chinese letters, I almost forgot. Listen here, Adjutant. We had handcuffed Jimmy and I didn't have my key and Ketchup had gone back to the station to look for it and then I saw the Chinese stuff. So I ask, 'What's that?' And Jimmy says he studies Chinese philosophy. I didn't believe him. Subject is dirty, has no teeth, is a bicycle thief and a pimp. He was living off what that lady brought m.

"So he studies Chinese too," Grijpstra said. "I paint."

De Gier looked up and spoke slowly, adding appropriate and expressive gestures to his words. "I play the flute. The more miserable our regular lives are, the deeper are our emotions. Beauty, whirling up from cesspools, takes on wondrous shapes, subtle shades, there is a melody that only the unhappy can hear…"

"Sergeant?" Grijpstra asked. "If you please? Yes, Karate?"

"So Jimmy says he made those letters himself-an impossibility; the fellow is quite gone. And the letters were beautiful. So I tell him not to bullshit so much, and what do you think? The lady from The Hague fetches some paper and a jar of ink, and he's got a brush and schnatz whyatzh, Jimmy throws down a Chinese phrase."

"With handcuffed hands?"

"Right," Karate said. "Swoosh. Down on the paper. No thought. Just one stroke. There it was."

"MM," Ketchup said.

"Moo," repeated de Gier. "The lowing of a cow. Cows have it too. They can say it all in their one eternal sound."

"No, this is Chinese," Ketchup said. "Meaning emptiness, not-there, you know? That's Zen again. So there is nothing. And subject drew that for us, in half a second or so. He explained all and everything. By denying, you know? There's nothing going on."

"Ach," Grijpstra grunted angrily.

"Right!" Ketchup shouted, slapping the table. "I mean, he's right, the asshole, even I can see that at times, but does that mean you have to go down that far? Poison yourself in a garbage boat? Can't he arrange it a little nicer?"

Silence surrounded the table, filled with disdainful lack of acceptance.

"Nothing fits too well," Ketchup said. "I was back on the boat by then and got Jimmy's cuffs off, and we were on our way. So how about the banker? We did try to get into that, too, but your adjutant kept us out of the house. Practically kicked us down the stairs, and it was a death in our district. Chief Inspector Halba had his ratty snout into that hole too."

"Bah," Grijpstra said.

"Something wrong, right?" Karate asked. "And on the same canal we have the old woman with her eternal drumming complaint who never gets a chance to speak to our sergeant. Another matter we're not supposed to meddle with."

"Our sergeant says he'll fix it himself," Ketchup said, "but he can't find the time, because he has to sail a lot on the Vinker Lakes, with his flat-bottomed imitation antique yacht, handcrafted, worth a bagful of gold. Your Halba goes along at times, with female company hired from the motel out there."

"But our sergeant does find the time to tell us what not to do." Karate rolled a joint too. "We can't just bring in any junk. There's junk and junk. If we find it in the street we do a good job, but we can't touch anything that can be connected to the Society for Help Abroad. The Society makes our sergeant nervous."

"And the State Detection cops in their Corvette don't do anything useful, either, although they cruise in the area a lot, seeing what goes on. They're too busy investigating the commissaris."

"Aha," Grijpstra said. "You hear that, de Gier?"

De Gier smiled kindly. "I'm going to challenge the black knight, Adjutant." He punched the air with his fist. "The final day is close. Evil finally shows itself in its darkest form. There will be a black knight out there worthy of my dazzling splendor. We'll have a duel forthwith. Now that restrictions are being lifted, I can at last show my true nature. I'll battle the fiend. We'll gallop at each other, visors down, in a field at dawn."

"Yep," Karate said, "the sergeant is right. That's just what Ketchup and I are planning. Corruption frees us. The core of the enemy is the Society for Help Abroad, and their headquarters is in our district, on Gelder Quay. We propose to attack their club, you and us. Cardozo can join. He's around already, we saw him today."

"A duel," de Gier said. "Maybe I'll help you fellows a bit at first, but then I'll dash out alone, no longer on the commissaris's leash, not befuddled by Grijpstra, unhindered by Cardozo."

"You come along with me," Grnpstra said, pulling de Gier off his chair and supporting him with one arm. "I'll take you home for your nap." He looked at Karate. "Cardozo is around?"

"Working," Karate said. "He came out of the Banque du Credit, with a clerkish type. We saw them having coffee together later on, looking sneaky."

" 'Bye, Bert," de Gier said.

The old man waved feebly from behind his counter, grinning with withered gums. "Catch 'em, Sergeant."