The Hollow-Eyed Angel ac-13

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Bodies definitely don't last."

  He had said so aloud and an Oriental man sitting next to him, an official from Seattle, nodded agreement. "We had the same thing in a wooded area right next to a suburb. Just one night and pffftt… hardly enough for identification."

  "Heart attack in Central Park," Dr. Russo said brighdy. "A crowd of a thousand people probably within shouting distance. This man must have fallen down and crawled about for a bit, ending up under flowering azalea bushes. There is some evidence that he was hit in the chest, possibly by a rotten branch. He was under a maple that had been struck by lightning a long time ago. A branch was torn off by strong winds that night. Subsequent research and inquiries reveal that subject was well dressed and nicely groomed when the heart attack occurred. At some time he was found and robbed, probably by homeless people, judging from the clothes swap. Maybe his feet stuck out of the bushes then. We found some signs that the body had been dragged further into the underbrush."

  The pathologist clicked a dozen slides through his machine. Some slides showed the body remains from different angles. One slide focused on Termeer's beard. The dentures were shown. "Classy," Dr. Russo said. "There is gold in those dentures. They were found at some distance from the other remains."

  The commissaris raised his hand. "How far away from the corpse, Doctor, please?"

  Russo checked his notes. "Four feet from the body."

  "Do you have prints from the robbers' feet?"

  "No," Russo said. "I was hoping for that but there was too much disturbance. The animal tracks blotted out all human prints. The feeding frenzy must have made the varmints hyperactive. Pity. Human footprints can be conclusively identified." He shook his head. "But we could get no clear impressions." He looked at the commissaris. "You have a special interest, sir?"

  The commissaris said he was looking into a complaint.

  "I remember," Dr. Russo said. "Chief O'Neill mentioned you. You're from Amsterdam, right? Call my office anytime, we'll be happy to be of assistance. I think we can reassure your complainant that the unfortunate incident was an act of God or rather"-Dr. Russo smiled-"an unfortunate combination of a number of divine doings."

  The audience laughed, like a taped background on a sitcom, the commissaris thought, as he found himself smiling assent politely.

  The Seattle policeman spoke up. "Couldn't it be that whoever took the subject's clothes and possessions murdered him first?"

  "Aggravated or even caused the heart attack by pushing the victim around, you suggest?" Russo said. "But there would have been no need. I can't show you all the scars of the bypass operation, because part of the chest area is missing, but the marks are there. We also have testimony from a neighbor that the subject was operated on within the last two years and told to take it easy. It seem that he did not do so. We have reports of the man running about the park."

  "Thank you," the Seattle chief said.

  "A subtle point," Russo said. "Morally, of course, we can argue that manhandling a dying person is a criminal act, especially when the activity involves robbing that person, but in such an instance it's hard to come up with a charge of murder."

  "Suspect will say that he thought the victim was drunk," a voice said.

  "Criminal negligence or recklessness," another voice said, "very hard to make that stand up in court."

  "We have no suspects," a voice, which the commistsaris recognized as O'Neill's, said clearly. "Whoever robbed the victim is now hidden somewhere in a shelter. We tried but it would take too many hours to check all the homeless people in Manhattan."

  "More questions?" Dr. Russo asked. "No? Then let me tell you about Maggotmaid."

  "The commissaris's leg pains had come back in full strength but he forced himself to listen to Dr. Russo's lecture, knowing that the pain would be reduced to an inconsequential throb for as long as he could keep his mind focused on another subject.

  The slide shown was the cover picture of the leaflet that had announced this police convention in New York. It showed the still, dead face of a young attractive woman. The slide was in full color. A white substance showed in the corners of the mouth. Spitde? No. Maggots. Russo seemed to take professional pleasure in clicking on other slides, magnifications of the whiteness. Each slide's higher magnification made clearer that the audience was looking at living matter: crawling maggots.

  "The gal was found in the trunk of a brand-new Cadillac, parked in the hot sun in front of a deli."

  The police chiefs listened as the pathologist enthusiastically described the smell of rotten flesh wafting steadily from the luxury automobile. The deli's owners, concerned about their business-their store window showed a display of choice meats-alerted the police. Uniformed officers forced the trunk with a crowbar.

  People gasped when they saw a dead female human body, soon to be known as "Maggotmaid," stretched out in the car's ample trunk. There were no signs of violence but small pieces of broken glass and wood splinters were found in the dead woman's clothing during a painstaking investigation by forensic criminologists. Meanwhile, detectives traced the owner of the Cadillac, a vehicle with Texas license plates, to a nearby Upper West Side apartment. The subject, described by Russo as a Texan named Trevor, claimed ignorance. Yes, he vaguely knew the woman, a prostitute who could be picked up in Central Park, but he hadn't invited her to that weekend's party.

  "But," the detectives said, "she was there." Splinters and glass matched a broken door inside the apartment. Trevor proposed that if Maggotmaid had been at the apartment rented in his name, a guest, friend or associate- a gate-crasher maybe?-might have brought her in. Any of Trevor's friends had access to his car keys. The keys hung in the apartment's hall. Several of his associates took turns changing the vehicle's parking spot, in obedience to alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules in the neighborhood. These associates also fed the parking meters, which would explain why the vehicle hadn't been towed away by traffic policemen. None of these associates happened to be around right then, but they did show up later. They confirmed having moved the Cadillac around and fed parking meters with coins. Nobody remembered having put Maggotmaid in the Caddy's trunk. Nobody had smelled the body. Which could be true, Dr. Russo said. Tests indicated that Maggotmaid had died during a Saturday night. She was found Wednesday afternoon, when the weather suddenly changed from fairly cool to hot. The Cadillac had been baking in the sun all that day.

  "Maggotmaid died of an overdose of heroin," Russo said. "We ascertained that much. We also found that her body had penetrated a glass door in Trevor's apartment. Did she fall? Was she pushed?" He wobbled his eyebrows. "A small quantity of heroin was found in the main sitting room. There were a few grams of cannabis products here and there, and many empty bottles. Trevor claimed to have no knowledge of any drug use. Nobody came forward to admit ownership of the heroin and cannabis products."

  There were questions.

  No, no arrests had been made, Dr. Russo said, but the investigation was still ongoing. He checked his notes. "Under the guidance of Detective-Sergeant Earl Hurrell, assisted by Detectives-First-Class Tom Tierney and Jerry Curran."

  Yes, Trevor was a suspected dealer of note, allegedly in charge of several retail salesmen who worked the park.

  Had investigators come up with a theory so far? Well, it was quite simple. Maggotmaid had been brought in to entertain Trevor's guests. She overdosed and died. A dead body does little to improve a party. Trevor, or an associate, probably stoned and/or drunk, had carried the body down and dumped it in the Cadillac's trunk for the meantime. There must have been a plan to get rid of the body later, which wouldn't have been a big deal-there are the rivers, there is Central Park-but, as the partying went on, Maggotmaid was forgotten.

  After the lecture the commissaris attended a luncheon offered by the NYPD to its distinguished guests and colleagues. He kept shivering through the speeches and toasts. He was reasonably sure he was running a high temperature. He felt faint. It seemed his glasses had fogged u
p again, which was strange for he had just blown and spat on them and rubbed them clean with his necktie.

  "You look tired," O'Neill's voice said. "I'll drive you to the Cavendish. Tomorrow's lecture is by a bigwig from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Crime Laboratory on physical evidence relating to hit and run cases." O'Neill's elbow nudged the commissaris's arm. "I hear you have more cars in Holland now than there are in all of Africa. Five million cars in such a small country." O'Neill whistled admiringly. "Hit and run must be a common occurrence there. I'm sure your comments will be worth hearing tomorrow."

  Chapter 7

  The query the commissaris faxed off late that afternoon from the Cavendish desk, before consuming the hotel's nouvelle cuisine dinner specials, caused surprise in Amsterdam Police Headquarters.

  Detective-Constable Simon Cardozo, a curly-haired young man in a rumpled corduroy suit, brought the fax in and, when he was unable to attract attention, jumped up and down while he read its text loudly.

  He shouted the word "GOLF."

  Grijpstra had been practicing on a set of drums, which, for years, had been kept in his office, as Lost amp;Found was desperately short of space and had no idea where the set had come from. De Gier provided background on his dented mini trumpet. They were trying out a composition by the Dutch group Chazz called Water- straat Blue, with a young black student detective pecking out the melody on a small Yamaha keyboard, confiscated by Cardozo from an unmusical street musician using too powerful amplification. Cardozo, it turned out soon enough, could not learn to play the instrument either.

  "Golf?" Adjutant Grijpstra asked after he had studied the commissaris's note. "Are we to believe that Termeer was knocked down, maybe even killed by a golf ball, in a public park, for God's sake?" He studied the commissaris's note again. "And what, please, is lacrosse?"

  Cardozo knew. He had seen the game played on TV. Early Native Americans-using long-handled racketlike implements, "crosses," to hit a hard little deerskin ball- considered lacrosse as combat training. "A rough sport," Cardozo said, "with thousands of players on each side, with goals miles apart." Players got wounded, even killed. The white man changed the rules, making the game soft, with only twelve players on each side and penalties for "unnecessary roughness." But it was still a bruising sport.

  "The ball," Cardozo said, "is now hard rubber."

  "And it could have knocked down our man," Grijpstra said. "Oh dear."

  "And what are we to do?" de Gier asked.

  The commissaris's note said that they were to ask the chief-constable, who played golf, to locate an expert, and to consult with same.

  Grijpstra and de Gier were received by the owner of the Crailo Golf Club, some thirty miles out of Amsterdam. Balder Gudde, former golf champion, dressed in a sky blue suit, could have modeled for a semitransparent figure in a Magritte painting.

  "A good day to you," Grijpstra said, pocketing his police identification, which Baldert tried to study while he held the plastic-laminated card upside down. "Just a few questions if you please. Merely routine. My colleague and I are interested in a possible deadly impact caused by a golf ball."

  "At this golf club?" Baldert asked nervously.

  "Anywhere," Grijpstra said.

  "Not specifically here?" Baldert asked. "No. Could have been here, though. Right? In fact, you do mean here." He stepped back, sideways, forward, sideways. "Out with it, Detective, are you treating me as a suspect?"

  "As an expert," Grijpstra said. "This isn't our jurisdiction, sir."

  From Baldert's babbling the detectives gradually understood that they were accused of looking into the death of Baron Hilger van Hopper at the Crailo Golf Club. The baron had been a star member of Baldert's establishment. He 'wasn't anymore because he had passed away, just a few weeks ago. Baldert winked, reminding the detectives jokingly-as if they didn't know all about the dead baron-that the baron had died at his own so-called wedding party.

  "You don't say," Grijpstra said.

  Baldert kept winking.

  De Gier thought he would humor the golfer, who might suffer from a disorder. "What did the baron die of, sir?"

  Baldert shrugged. Then he mimed swinging a golf club.

  "Overextended himself?" Baldert asked Grijpstra. "Physical shock? A golf ball whizzing by too close for comfort?" He patted Grijpstra's arm. "But you know all that, Detective. I told the lieutenant. Want to go through all that again?"

  Grijpstra checked his watch. Nellie was cooking mussel soup that evening. He liked mussel soup, especially when it was made Nellie's way, with mustard and shallots. De Gier checked his watch too. A musical group from Papua New Guinea was to perform that night at Amsterdam's Tropical Museum. Spectacular cassowary-bone-rattle percussion was their forte. The leaflet said that listeners had been known to enjoy remarkable insights.

  "As you know," Baldert said in his unlikely falsetto, while waddling ahead, flapping his arms as he led the way across a field, "as you must have been told by the Rijkspolitie lieutenant, Detectives, the baron died in the pavilion over there."

  "What we wanted to ask you…," Grijpstra said.

  "I was practicing at the time," Baldert said. "I was a bit bored. We had over two hundred guests but they were watching plastic ducks. Way over around the pond there. A race by windup ducks. The guests were betting money. I was over there, out of sight of the guests. I may have to arrange them, but duck races bore me. The baron was too drunk and too stoned to leave the pavilion. He usually was. Maybe I had been drinking some. So I could have directed my drive toward the pavilion. Even if I did, the ball missed the baron."

  Grijpstra put a heavy hand on Baldert's shoulder. "Could a golf ball driven by an expert golf player have killed this baron?"

  "It didn't." Baldert's eyes bulged. "The autopsy proved that."

  De Gier strolled along, his tall body at ease, but the tips of his huge mustache quivered. He kept his voice down. "But the ball you hit could have killed your friend?"

  "Extreme wear and tear killed the baron," Baldert said. "Isn't that what the autopsy came up with? Heart? A seventy-year-old man who indulged continuously? The baron liked to dip his Cubans into a double jenever and suck the alcohol through the tobacco. His liver was bad. He was coked up too. He had sinus trouble. He had been overeating at the party. And the twins, those active fellows, his 'Javanese princes,' as he called them…"

  "Twins?"

  "Double gay mock marriage," Baldert said. "That's why we had the party."

  De Gier nodded as if it all made perfect sense. "And you hit that tee shot. Did anyone see you?"

  Baldert, leading the way back to his office, insisted, "It didn't strike the baron."

  "But if it had hit him," de Gier asked, "in the chest, for instance?"

  Baldert sweated.

  "Yes, Baldert?"

  "Yes." The club manager was almost crying.

  "That's what we are here for," Grijpstra said. "We are investigating whether a golf ball can kill a human being. So a drive would do it." He pointed. "The baron was in the pavilion. You said you were over there-at what, a hundred yards' distance? Your ball would have had enough force, you think?"

  Baldert nodded. "But it missed him. Maybe it was close, whizzed by the baron, so to speak. Maybe it missed him by just a few inches."

  "So much for a drive," Grijpstra said. "How about another type of shot? Like up"-the adjutant pointed at a cloud-"then down."

  "Like with a mortar," de Gier said. "A howitzer."

  "You mean a chip," Baldert said, "or an approach shot."

  Grijpstra nodded good-humoredly. "The names don't much matter."

  "No velocity that way," Baldert said. "It would have to be a drive."

  "And what kind of distance would you need for a killing shot?" de Gier asked.

  "Would! need?"

  "Would one need," de Gier said, swinging an imaginary golf club himself.

  Baldert was getting nervous again. "You just said it. Within a hundred yards maybe. But I was
only taking a practice swing. I didn't know there was a ball on the ground. No idea how it got there."

  They had reached Baldert's office. Baldert kept stretching out his hands towards de Gier, while he talked about the dead baron, who, he claimed, wasn't merely a financial backer. Baron Hilger van Hopper was Baldert Gudde's good friend. He showed them a large photograph, silver framed. The baron, an aristocratic figure in a gold-braided uniform, wearing a tell bearskin hat, was on a horse, held by young Baldert. Baldert was a hussar too, with a corporal's double chevron on the sleeve of his tunic.

  Baldert displayed two more photographs, in a double silver frame, dominating another sideboard. The baron, now a cadaverous-looking old man, smiled down on a dark young man in a spotless white tuxedo. The young man smiled up at him. In the second photograph the scene was mirrored. The baron was the same, smiling the other way down now. The dark young man was different.

  "These guys are princes?" Grijpstra asked.

  Baldert guffawed.

  "They are not princes?"

  "Who knows?" Baldert asked. "It was a joke. The baron wanted a party."

  "I wouldn't display photos of a man I tried to kill with a golf ball in my private office," Baldert said. "You can ask around. I'm a nice guy. Check my horoscope. Aquarius stands for brotherly love. I have some Capricorn aspects, too. Capricorns are loyal." He stretched his arms again, wiggled his fingers at de Gier. "But if you wish to arrest me, please go ahead." Baldert was making funny faces now, like a clown might, Grijpstra thought, even when he knows that his final and hopeless grimace will fail to lift the audience's indifference.

  The detectives tried to forget Baldert's performance as they left the town of Crailo.

  Grijpstra visualized mussel soup, simmering in the immediate future. De Gier composed images of a Chinese take-out meal before going to his Papuan concert. The motorway traffic headed to Amsterdam moved slowly, then came to a stop. Cars honked, and drivers got out and leaned against their vehicles. An all-terrain patrol car nosed along the emergency lane and stopped next to the detectives' Fiat. The Rijkspolitie constable at the wheel stared at de Gier, then motioned to him to lower the window.