Blond Baboon

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  De Gier steered the commissaris’s black Citroen through the narrow alleys near the center of the old city. They got stuck a few times and had to wait for trucks and motorized tricycles unloading, and every now and then they would run into a detour caused by municipal workmen clearing fallen trees. Most of the glass of broken windows had already been swept up. The city still looked desolate, however, and the commissaris’s mood fitted in with the general devastation.

  “Bah,” he said as the car turned into its reserved space on the courtyard of police headquarters. “We’ll have to push ourselves, sergeant. I want this case to be over in a few days, in a week at the most. There’s still some time before lunch to find Francesco Pullini. I hope Grijpstra and Cardozo will be back soon with something tangible. With four men on the job we should be able to cut through their nonsense quickly. There are other projects I’d like to be working on.”

  De Gier had switched the Citroen’s engine off and was waiting for the car to give its customary sigh before starting to sink down to its lowest point. The vehicle’s fluid suspension system always gave him a sensuous sensation, he was grinning in the split second of anticipation.

  “You noticed that Mr. Bergen didn’t smoke?”

  “Yes, sir. He didn’t smoke while we were with him but I saw a nicotine stain on his index finger. He smokes cigarettes, I saw a packet of Gauloises on his desk. He’s probably trying to give it up.”

  “Giving it up,” the commissaris repeated slowly. “I have been watching the inspector lately. He is also trying to give up smoking but he isn’t making much headway. He told me that he is now smoking a brand he doesn’t like. Maybe Mr. Bergen doesn’t like cigars with plastic mouthpieces, or would that be too far-fetched, sergeant?”

  The Citroen had finished its sigh and the sergeant was alert again. He hadn’t understood everything the commissaris said, but the sound of his superior’s words was still in his ears and he could reconstruct the question.

  “He could have been at the Carnet house last night, sir, and he might have a reason for wanting to have Mrs. Carnet out of the way. Maybe she doesn’t come to the company often, but she does control it, legally anyway—she had three-quarters of the shares.”

  “So we’ll have to find out if there was any tension between them, some recent disagreement, something to do with the company’s policy perhaps. Yes.” The commissaris had been talking briskly and he opened the door and almost jumped out, but he had to hold on to the car as a fresh flow of pain burned through his legs.

  “I’ll find this Pullini man and the baboon, Mr. Vleuten, sir. I’ll phone you as soon as I know their addresses.”

  The commissaris was limping ahead as the building’s alarm system came on. Short hysterical bursts of a two-toned horn split the quiet of the yard and a glass door burst open, pushed by a young man in torn jeans and a dirty jacket. He was running toward the gate, where two uniformed constables had lowered the beam and were protecting it, their guns out.

  De Gier was running too. He cut the young man off and dived for his legs, bringing him down with such force mat the dust of the yard came up in a small cloud. The commissaris had frozen in his tracks and watched the commotion. The constables pulled the prisoner to his feet and handcuffed him. De Gier was sadly inspecting a tear in his jacket. Plainclothes detectives and more constables surrounded the prisoner and half marched, half carried him back to the building. The commissaris stopped a detective.

  “What are the charges against your man?”

  “Robbery, sir, attempted manslaughter, drug dealing. We may come up with a pimping charge too, a girl brought in a complaint this morning.”

  “Bad case eh?”

  “Yes, sir, a hopeless case. It might have been better if he had got himself shot, he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail or the nuthouse. The psychiatrists have been looking at him but they don’t seem to be able to classify the trouble. As far as we’re concerned he’s dangerous. He keeps on attacking the guards, he bit the chief guard just now.”

  The detective ran after his colleagues: the commissaris turned around. De Gier was still looking at his jacket.

  “Are you all right, sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have to get another jacket, I’ll do it now. I have a suit at the dry-cleaning place around the corner. This jacket has had it, I think. Even if I have it repaired the tear will still show.”

  “The police will pay. I am going to my office, de Gier.”

  The commissaris’s mood didn’t improve until he was back behind his desk and looking at his fern, which was catching the sun and showing its leaves in an almost unnatural glitter of sparkling green.

  “Very nice,” the commissaris said. “But you are one aspect of nature. I am dealing with another, and it’s rotten, brown, dog-eared, moldy, smelly with disease.”

  He made the moves that had never failed to restore his equanimity. He lit a small cigar, telephoned for coffee, and began to walk around his office. He fed his plants after having mixed the right quantity of fertilizer into a plastic watering can. He sprayed the fern with slow bursts of a small glass atomizer. His telephone rang.

  “I have the hotel, sir, the Pulitzer. Francesco Pullini is in his room now, according to the desk clerk. I also have the baboon’s address, he lives on the Amsteldijk. According to the number he lives on the best part of the dike, where it overlooks the river close to the Thin Bridge.”

  “You haven’t spoke to either of the suspects?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ll go and surprise them. I’ll meet you in the courtyard in a minute. We might tackle young Pullini first.”

  The commissaris finished his coffee and rested his eyes on the fern again, the central ornament of the bright room.

  The sergeant was waiting for him in the Citroen and got out when he saw his chief cross the yard.

  “How did the gale treat your balcony last night, de Gier?”

  The sergeant smiled ruefully. “Badly, sir. I’ve lost almost everything. The lobelia bush survived, but it sat on the floor in a concrete box Public Works let me have some time ago. The rest have gone. The geraniums and the begonias are torn to shreds. Some of mem were blown away, pots and all, and the window of my bedroom is cracked.”

  “So?” There was some poignancy to the single word, and the sergeant’s expressive eyes stared gently at the commissaris.

  “I’ve ordered new plants, sir, but the greenhouse won’t deliver them. The garage sergeant said he could let me have one of his pickups for a few hours, maybe I’ll get the plants later in the day. I also ordered a new window but it may take weeks to arrive, the glass merchants are having the time of their lives right now. What about your house, sir?”

  “Some damage. My wife is taking care of it.”

  “And the turtle, sir?”

  The commissaris grinned. “The turtle is fine. I saw him trying to plow through the rubbish in the garden this morning. The ground is covered with broken branches and glass and the garden chairs of the neighbors, but the turtle just plows on. He looked quite cheerful, I thought.”

  “Maybe he’ll be reincarnated as a police detective.”

  The commissaris touched de Gier’s sleeve. “He has the right character. Let’s go, sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Citroën moved to the gate, where the constables were raising the barrier. De Gier braked to give way to a police truck loaded with a platoon of constables dressed in riot uniforms and armed with carbines. The truck had all its lights on and was sounding its siren.

  “What’s up?” he asked the constables at the barrier.

  “Turks, they are having a gunfight somewhere, or Moroccans, I forget now, I heard it on the intercom just now. This is the second truck already. A big fight, automatics and everything.”

  De Gier sighed. He thought of Gabrielle’s bowed legs. There wouldn’t be a gunfight in this case. But as he followed in the wake of the screaming riot truck his feeling changed. Something might happen to make the
case worth-while, something usually happened. He looked at the small neat body of the commissaris and had to restrain himself not to pat the old man’s shoulder affectionately.

  \\ 6 /////

  CARDOZO SIPPED HIS TEA AND SMILED POLITELY. HE HAD been listening to the old lady for quite a while now. She was telling him about her recent hospitalization. The old lady’s sister was waiting for a chance to say something too. A related subject, no doubt, something to do with varicose veins or the cartilage between the spine’s vertebrae that wears away in old age and causes pains. Cardozo put his cup down and picked up a cookie and nibbled on it.

  “Yes.” he said. He arranged a proper expression of commiseration. It sat on his face like a thin plastic mask. Underneath there was nothing but raw impatience, but the mask fitted well. The ladies’ birdlike voices prattled on. He had to go through all of it. He even knew their ages now. Seventy-eight, eighty-two. That’s old. They wouldn’t live much longer, but they were alive now and they had seen something and their statements would be acceptable to a judge, and Constable First Class Cardozo meant to get those statements.

  He felt his pocket. The pen was there, so was his notebook. He would write out two statements and have them signed individually—the judge wouldn’t like a joint statement. Whatever the two ladies had seen they had seen on their own, and the judge would want to know what they had seen in their own words. They had said they had seen something. They had seen Mr. de Bree, that nasty, ill-mannered man with the fat face. Men shouldn’t have fat faces, didn’t the detective think so? Sure, he thought so. As nasty as his cat. Mr. de Bree’s cat also had a fat face. And he was always catching the nice little birds; he had even caught the thrush that sang so beautifully, and chomped on the poor little thing and spread its feathers all over Mr. de Bree’s garden. The old ladies had watched the onslaught through their binoculars. Weren’t they nice binoculars? Alice had specially fetched them to show them to the detective. Beautiful copper binoculars, they don’t make them like that anymore these days. She and her sister used to take them to the theater and to the opera. But that was a long time ago.

  “Yes,” Cardozo said. He wasn’t going to ask more questions. He had asked them already, they knew exactly what he wanted, and they would tell him, in their own time. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes gone, and another two hours on the rest of his search. He had been everywhere, in any house that had a view of the Carnet garden. Nobody had seen anything, but everybody knew Mr. de Bree. A nasty man, he knew that by now, he knew it by his own experience. He hadn’t forgotten the red scowling face glaring at him before the door banged with such force that a particle of plaster from the porch’s ceiling had dropped at his feet.

  He had been given several descriptions of the de Bree cat, a pampered monstrosity with a half-orange, half-black face, which gave the beast two appearances, depending on which side he was approached, but they were both bad. The cat was the terror of the gardens and the main source of the torn ears and bad wounds of other cats. He had also heard reports on Paul, the Carnet clog. Paul was nice. An intelligent, jolly dog who had successfully defended his domain against the de Bree cat, until he was poisoned.

  “There he is,” the old lady called Alice said and tugged at Cardozo’s sleeve. He saw the cat, jumping leisurely across the liguster hedge dividing the de Bree and Carnet properties. “Big, isn’t he? Twenty pounds of bad cat.”

  And then they told him, whispering, hissing, glancing over their shoulders to see if some mysterious shadow in the room were listening in. They had seen de Bree feeding Paul. Chopped steak, they were sure of it. They had trained their binoculars on him, they had seen every detail of the murderous attempt. Two days ago now, in the afternoon. The Carnet ladies weren’t in and Paul was playing by himself in the garden, snapping at flies and dancing about, throwing his little pink rubber ball. And de Bree had come out with the meat and Paul had eaten it.

  “But why didn’t you tell the Carnet ladies?” Cardozo asked pleasantly, holding a respectful expression that belied the accusation in his question. He was the favorite nephew visiting his two old aunties and he wanted to know why they did things.

  “Oh, but that would have been terrible. We did think about it but we didn’t, you see, because they would have been so unhappy.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But you could have told us, the police.”

  Yes, they could have, but they didn’t have a telephone and it was such a long walk to the nearest station and they weren’t so young anymore.

  “I am seventy-eight,” Alice said.

  “And I am eighty-two,” Alice’s sister said.

  Cardozo brought out his notebook and prepared two statements. They didn’t want to sign them. They didn’t want any trouble.

  “But Paul is still alive, he’ll be playing in the garden soon. You don’t want Mr. de Bree to poison him again, do you?”

  “No.”

  But they still didn’t want to sign the statement. Mr. de Bree wouldn’t like it. He had bumped Alice’s leg once with his car and he hadn’t even got out to help her up. He was a nasty man, maybe next time he wouldn’t just bump Alice, maybe the next time he would kill her.

  “Never,” Cardozo said. “Not with us around. We are the police, you see, we protect you, but we can only protect you if you help us.” He waved the ball-point encouragingly. “Just a little signature, right here.”

  Alice signed, and then the sister signed too. They didn’t want to read the statements, they didn’t have their spectacles on.

  “Where are my spectacles, Alice?” the sister asked. “You always mislay them.”

  “What?” Alice asked in a suddenly shrill voice.

  “Thank you very much, ladies, thank you very much.”

  The argument went on as he ran down the stairs. He had come up with something, something positive, concrete, undeniable. He whistled as he banged the front door, and turned the corner. He waved at the de Bree door as he ran past it.

  He remembered that there was a telephone booth at the end of the street. Grijpstra wasn’t in but he was put through to the commissaris’s secretary. “You are not to go and see Miss Carnet just now but to report to the commissaris later. He has gone away with the sergeant and the adjutant isn’t back yet.”

  “So what am I to do?” Cardozo’s voice shot up in indignation.

  “Well, I don’t know,” the secretary’s voice said coolly. “Surely you can find some work? The detectives’ city patrols are always short of men, Sergeant Sietsema was asking for you. He’s on duty this afternoon and he needs company.”

  “Oh, very well, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Good boy.” She hung up.

  “Aren’t I?” Cardozo asked the street. The telephone booth’s door slammed behind him. “Aren’t I? I got what they wanted me to get and I want to tell them about it and they aren’t there. They’re drinking coffee and smoking cigars and passing the time of day.” He glared at the peaceful street.

  But Amsterdam is a helpful city, it provides comfort in subtle ways. A woman came past, pushing a perambulator containing identical twins facing each other solemnly from their pink wraps, vaguely resembling Grijpstra in his better moments. An old man with long hair strode on the opposite pavement whistling a Bach cantata. A girl on a red bicycle came around the corner. She wore a sleeveless blouse, un-buttoned, and nothing underneath. A well-shaped girl. Cardozo winked at the girl and she winked back and he began to walk to his car. Not such a bad day after all.

  But he felt a little uptight again when he started the Volkswagen. A constable at the next intersection raised his hand. The Volkswagen drove on slowly. The constable whipped out a whistle and blew it. Cardozo’s foot stayed on the accelerator. He crossed the intersection and stopped, watching the constable in his rearview mirror. The constable was running.

  “Didn’t you see me?”

  “Sure. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I saw you,
I saw you giving the stop sign, but I kept on driving. I must be going crazy.”

  The constable bent down and peered into Cardozo’s face. “It sometimes happens,” he whispered confidentially. “I see it every now and then. I’ve thought of several explanations. Some subconscious protest, perhaps, or a hidden aggression, something like that. Have you done this before “No.”

  “First time, eh? Well, maybe it means nothing. Maybe you’re just tired. But if it happens again you might see a psychiatrist. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a police detective.”

  The constable’s eyebrows shot up and he stepped back to study the car. He jumped forward and pushed his head into the window. Cardozo pointed at the police radio under the dashboard and fished out his plastic identification.

  “Get away,” the constable said.

  “But…”

  “Come on, get off. Off!” The constable walked back to the intersection. He was looking at the pavement and dragging his feet.

  \\ 7 /////

  WERTHEYM, THE PLATE ON THE DOOR READ, PORTRAIT painter.

  There was nothing particular about the door and there was nothing to prevent Adjutant Grijpstra from pressing the hell but he didn’t. He stood with his hands folded and waited. He had been enjoying himself so far and he didn’t want to interrupt the steady flow of well-being that had begun to soak into him from the moment he had left his little house that morning. There was a small black cloud at the end of the flow and he meant to keep it away for as long as he could, a process that would be possible if he consciously experienced the small moments that his working day would present The black cloud was his return home. He definitely didn’t want to go home.

  His wife, the blob of semi-solid fats, dirty and bad-tempered, that had grown slowly out of the girl he had once married, was gradually filling the two floors of their home, pushing him to the wall, seeping into his peace, the peace he built up during the day. One day he wouldn’t go home anymore. He didn’t want to see her leaning on the kitchen table that squeaked under her weight, leaning on the creaking railing on the stair landing, leaning on the cracked windowsill. It was hard for her to stand now. It was also hard for her to sit down, for the effort of getting up again might break the few chairs that were still in one piece.