Just a Corpse at Twilight

Chapter 3

The commissaris, old, wrinkled, small, thin, reflected on his status ofotium cum dignitate, while watching his knees emerging like twin islands out of the foam ofhis bubble bath. Out of office with honor, so it said, in Latin and gold lettering, on a little mahogany shield handed over by Amsterdam's chief constable when the commissaris, chiefofdetectives, retired after forty years of representing the queen to serve the people. Katrien, wrapped in a towel, sat on a stool next to the bath and observed her lover.

Katrien had her hair in curlers. The commissaris had lost his last hair, except a little fluff on a narrow chest. Katrien frowned. "So what are you saying? That de Gier doesn't kick women off cliffs? So what do you know? You don't even know the story about the boots and the laces."

The commissariss head disappeared at one end of the bath, his foot appeared at the other. The foot moved closer to the faucets. The big toe on the foot adjusted the hot faucet. Toe and foot disappeared. Head reappeared.

"Don't do that," Katrien said. "My father did that. He died. He was having a heart attack. My mother thought he was joking."

The commissaris washed his spectacles and handed them over to Katrien.

"Yes?"

"Please dry them," the commissaris said.

She dried the glasses, leaned over, carefully adjusted the frame across his nose and ears. "Yes?"

"Thank you for drying my glasses," the commissaris said. "I wish you wouldn't wear those curlers, dear."

"Who says you have to look at me? Nellie is right, you know. De Gier shows his true colors now that he's on his own. You could have seen it earlier on but you never wanted to, of course. Just think of the sort oflife Rinus was leading."

"Ah." The commissaris smiled.

"Yes," Katrien said. "Too late now, Jan. If I had practiced law, as I wanted to, we could have had an affair. We could have been living apart together. You could have had cats like Oliver and Tabriz and women like what's her name."

"Esther?"

"Can't think of her name now," Katrien said. "Rinus had so many. That motorcycle cop from Friesland, the one who could ride off on one wheel. The long-legged woman."

"Hylkje?"

"Stop licking your chops," Katrien said.

"What sort of law would you have practiced?" the commissaris asked. "Real estate transactions? I think you would have liked that, Katrien. Property attorneys always buy bargains for their own account."

"Yes," she said. "You would have been happier, living alone. Being free, like Rinus. Reading books you don't quite understand. Having me out of the way. Playing that silly mini-trumpet."

"Don't you prefer it to his flute?"

"Yes," Katrien said. "De Gier sounds better on the trumpet. But where does that surrealism get him? Eh? To killing a poor woman?"

"What's with the boots and the laces?" the commissaris asked. "And why be so hard on the boy? You love Rinus, Katrien. You sent him chocolate for Christmas. You make him Indonesian noodles with shrimp crackers when he shows up and I've got to eat it too. You make him stay here so he can mess up my bathroom. You won't leave him alone. You make me jealous. He writes you letters."

"You know what he wrote?" Katrien asked. "That Native Americans call that part of the coast the 'Twilight Zone.' That it's very strange there. That it's the right place to slip away. Away from what, Jan?"

"Away from being a rheumatic in a cold bath," the commissaris said. He struggled to his feet, reaching out to his wife. She caught him as he stepped out of the tub, wrapped him in a towel, rubbed him dry.

"You feel better?"

"Hot water always soaks away some of it," the commissaris said. "The boots and the laces?"

She told him the tale that she had heard from Nellie. Nellie had heard it from Grijpstra ("Nellie Blabbermouth," the commissaris said. "No wonder." "No wonder what, Jan?" "Never mind what, Katrien."), Grijpstra had heard it from de Gier.

Grijpstra and de Gier, both still with the police but about to break free, were spending another evening in their favorite bar, where they could sit in with the house musicians, mostly piano and percussion. They'd been playing "Endless Blues," a composition by de Gier with some interesting dynamics that built carefully from chorus to chorus, and even from section to section within a chorus ("You should write liner notes, Katrien." "You want to hear the rest of this, Jan?" "Yes, Katrien, I'm sorry.") and with some hot scat singing by Grijpstra ("Grijpstra plays drums," the commissaris said. "That means using four limbs already. Now he sings, too?").

Katrien sighed.

They were in the bedroom by now. The commissaris flopped down on the bed, got up, kissed Katrien, lay down again. "Carry on."

"Don't order me around. So Grijpstra sang, and he also did his rising press roll, and the flutter on the side of the snare drum, and the mallet work on bells. He did everything."

"You were there?"

"Of course."

"You never told me."

"I never tell you lots of things," Katrien said. "I was there with Nellie. You were in New York, at the police convention."

"I never go to police conventions."

"Yes," she said. "Please, don't talk rubbish, Jan. Remember that reserve policeman whose uncle immigrated to America and who maybe was murdered in Central Park, and nobody paid attention, and it was his favorite uncle, for the poor fellow had no parents, and he was all upset, being alone in the world now, and asked you to do something. And you said New York was outside your jurisdiction but then that convention came up and you went anyway and found out who did it? With the seeing-eye dog? The dog with the gland trouble? And you had to take care of her too? And the pathologist and the dead girl in the car? With the maggots on her mouth?"

"Yes," the commissaris said. "We all thought it was spittle at first but car trunks get hot. So you were running around town with Nellie?"

"But de Gier was on his own," Katrien said. "He played strangely that night. Like Don Cherry. You know Don Cherry?"

"Yes," the commissaris said. "De Gier likes Don Cherry, that's why he got the mini-trumpet. But de Gier doesn't play that shrilly."

"He's got a softer tone," Katrien said, "but not that night He was loud but not bombastic, more like he was in pain. There was a black woman in the bar who picked up on that and she kept singing back to him. They had this dialogue-he was asking and she was giving."

"Words?"

"Just sounds," Katrien said. "She had a beautiful voice, like a bell, like a cymbal too sometimes, you could almost see the sound. Nellie said she could touch it."

"Were you drinking?"

"Nellie brought some pot," Katrien said. "She used to grow it, you know? Out in that courtyard of hers? Nether-weed. The strongest?

"I would smoke pot," the commissaris said, "just to hear more music from the inside, but I don't want to run around looking for chocolate when all the stores are closed."

"Yes," Katrien said.

"You smoke a lot of pot with Nellie?"

"We decided against it," Katrien said. "Nellie is too easily addicted."

"You're not easily addicted?"

"Remember those codeine pills I got hooked on?" Katrien asked. "Remember the trouble you had to stop smoking?"

"Boots and laces," the commissaris said again. "Let's hear it, Katrien."

"So," Katrien said. "The bar closed, they always do close in the end, and the woman with the bell voice had left, she had someone with her, and Nellie took Grijpstra home and I took a cab and de Gier was alone again, so he went to another bar and another, and to some all-night liquor place and then he got lost."

"Lost?" the commissaris asked.

"In the Red Light District." Katrien pursed her lips. "Your star detective, dead drunk, at four A.M., the light starting up already, birds singing. Your Rinus de Gier tried to have a good time with a prostitute and he had to take his nice new laced boots off, he insisted. And then afterward, after having rolled across the poor woman a few times and been satisfied by artificial means…"

"He told you that?" The commissaris gaped.

"He told Grijpstra," Katrien said, "who told Nellie…"

"No wonder," the commissaris said.

She snuggled next to him on the bed. "Why do you keep saying 'no wonder,' Jan?"

"What artificial means, Katrien?"

"Some electrical gadget."

The commissaris hissed his surprise. "They have them for men too?"

"Yes, dear. Artificial vaginas. They squeeze and throb.

You switch them off afterward and they never argue. You want to hear the rest of this?"

The commissaris grimaced.

"So," Katrien said, "de Gier gets impressed easily, that's why he bought those lace-up boots. He'd seen a movie. The boots were stylish. Wearing them made him think he was out in the desert fighting Nazis. After he had been relieved he wanted not only to put his boots on again but to lace them up too so that he could shoot Field Marshal Rommel in the Sahara. The woman helped him with one boot but he got mouthy with her so she put him outside, and then he walked home, one boot on, one boot off."

"To his apartment?"

"Right."

"From the whore's quarter?"

"Yes, Jan."

"No cabs?"

"He was swaying so badly no cabdriver would risk it."

"Yes," the commissaris said. "They don't like passengers throwing up on their back seats. Poor de Gier. Totally out of control. Oh dear."

The commissaris slept badly that night, tossing, turning, mumbling to himself.

"Who is DArtagnan?" Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder.

The commissaris had been a musketeer, one ofthe three in the French novel; de Gier was D'Artagnan, his pal, but de Gier had got shot.

"Why are you speaking German?" Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder again.

The commissaris was replaying a talk show where elderly German middle-class people, on TV, were asked to review their lives. They kept saying that, looking back, they saw nothing but mistakes and calamities; looking ahead they saw only death.

"Please," Katrien said, "stop rubbing your feet. Now what are you doing?"

He mumbled that he was cleaning off dog poop. He'd been walking through the city, barefoot, the last citizen left. All others had fled because Holland's dikes were about to break behind them, due to global warming that melted the polar ice caps. On his way out he kept getting stuck in dog poop. Katrien made hot milk and honey and sprinkled cinnamon on top. She watched him sip.

"Calms the nerves." She patted his cheek. "Feel better now?"

A little later he was mumbling again. "Rinus? I'm coining. Hold on, my boy."

"Go for it, mon Capitaine," Katrien whispered.

The commissaris slept well after that, and woke up with a plan. He unfolded his plan.

"Maritime maps of the Maine coast? A tape recorder that connects to a phone?" Katrien asked. "Where do I get those? Connect the gadget to Nellie's phone? Help her to tape her conversations with Grijpstra? Tell her what to ask him? Please… where do you think you are? At your ofHce?"