The Rattle-Rat ac-10

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  Cardozo slept peacefully. Six Chinese grumbled in their shallow slumbers, exhausted after having stolen six bicycles, three near the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam and three near the railway station of Bolsward, a Frisian town.

  \\ 11 /////

  Leeuwarden, the Frisian capital, was Amsterdam in miniature and perfect in detail, as the architects of the Golden Age, over three hundred years ago, had planned their creation. That I'm allowed to partake of that well-meaning and artistic dream, de Gier thought as he strolled along empty quaysides and silent gables, reaching for the expanse of the night, which sparkled with clean stars. No people, but who needs them? Humanity never fails to disturb abstract beauty. The Frisians created this work of art and now they rest, allowing me to admire the beauty of their realization. Tomorrow they'll be about again, each house releasing a fresh female worker who'll immediately drop to her knees and scrub pavement and gable. No crumpled cigarette packs, no dog droppings, not even in the gutter. Too clean, maybe? De Gier felt uncomfortable. Once contrasts are pushed aside, once everything becomes the way it should be, what do you do? And why was he here? Why didn't he find the shortest way to his temporary quarters and extinguish himself in bed? Where would his Spanish Lane be? Could he ask anybody? Was anybody left? At two in the morning?

  A gent in a deeply dented, broad-brimmed felt hat emerged from an alley and walked ahead of the sergeant. The gent slowed his pace. He looked around. "Jun."

  It sounded like a greeting. De Gier said " Jun " too.

  The gent looked expectant. De Gier explained himself. Out for a walk.

  The gent spoke at length. It seemed he was describing undressed women. "Sure," de Gier said. Why not? There are women, and they do undress. Their image is a powerful motivation for lone gents walking through the night. Maybe the gent had been saying that.

  The gent got hold of de Gier's arm and they were now walking together. "Mata Hari," the gent said, and giggled and tittered. He pointed at a bronze statue in charge of a little bridge spanning a miniature canal. They stopped to admire the metal female form. Mata Hari was undressed. The gent again spoke at length, and the sergeant, catching a word here and there, remembered that Miss Hari had once, several wars ago, danced her way into Paris and into the hearts of Prussian spies and that her hosts, French noblemen and officers of rank, became jealous and did away with her.

  "Whore!" the gent shouted. De Gier caught more words. Miss Hari's statue was alone now, immobile, a reminder, but once upon a better time this bridge and all the alleys around had been populated by live prostitutes. The gent pointed here and there and suddenly stiffened his arm. The arm, horizontal now, pushed and pulled rhythmically while the gent whistled. De Gier grasped that the movement was symbolic of an activity the gent used to delight in, in earlier days, and lower in his body.

  "So that's all over now?"

  De Gier didn't quite follow, but according to the gent, the general sexual decline was somehow connected with the cattle market and the development of modern machines. Many years ago, when there were no spacious trucks, the farmers would walk their animals to market. They were stabled somewhere and sold the next day. The night in between was filled with push-of-the-arm-whistle, pull-of-the-arm-whistle.

  He would never have guessed, de Gier said politely.

  But now, the gent was saying, the big trucks- vrrrum. vrrrum-they throw open their rear doors-whop- the cows charge into the street-kuttubum, kuttubum-where they are chased into the market hall and sold.

  "Why would that prevent their owners' later pleasure?"

  The gent wobbled his eyebrows. De Gier pushed and pulled his arm, whistling shrilly.

  Again, de Gier wasn't quite following the gent's explanation, but the fact that the pleasure had gone would have to do with modern business routine. Cows sold, cash collected, in the middle of the day, rather spoils pleasurable possibilities. Did he mean that again? Sure, push-whistle-pull-whistle. Even so, there might still be a way. He grabbed de Gier's arm again and pushed him along. "Where?" de Gier asked.

  "Hjir" the gent said, and was gone.

  De Gier recognized the square building straddling two canals that Hylkje had pointed out before. A sex club? Members only? He read the sign above the door. Mata Hari. He rang the bell. The doors swung open, and Ali Baba bowed deeply. The doorman was dressed in billowing silk trousers, a brocade waistcoat, a shirt embroidered with flowering palms; he stood on curly-toed slippers, a curved sword stuck into his broad belt. A large turban crowned the beard that almost reached around his made-up eyes. His belly rose majestically toward his chin.

  "Hi, Ali Baba," de Gier whispered, impressed.

  "You were brought here?" Ali asked, first in Frisian, then in Dutch.

  'Try Arabic," de Gier said. "You must be trilingual. An Arab in Friesland. What brought you here?"

  "I speak German too," Ali said. "And the other languages of the tourists. Did the runner bring you here? Our advertiser?"

  "Gent in a felt hat?" de Gier asked, pushing and pulling and whistling.

  "That's him," Ali said. "Brings in the customers, but he shouldn't tonight. Couldn't reach him in time. We're closing early. Hardly any customers showed up. Would you be desiring a full show? There's only one artiste left, Trutske Goatema, not quite the first choice, but if you insist. Do you favor fat women?"

  "Joe!" de Gier shouted.

  Ali's sliding slippers brought him forward. "What do you know! Would it be you, the Amsterdam sergeant?"

  "Good memory," de Gier said, "which we share. Black Joe, isn't that right? I don't recall your surname."

  "Do come in," Black Joe said. "What a surprise. Is Amsterdam still doing as well as I remember? What are you after? A little pleasure on the side?"

  "Not sure," de Gier said. "Forget the fat lady."

  "An angel at heart," Joe said. 'The good lookers were all crafted by the devil. I sent them home already, couldn't stand them tonight. I'll be gone myself next week. The joint is too much for me; let the owners find out what it's like to be Ali Baba." Joe flipped off his turban and showed de Gier the way to the bar. "A beer for the guest of honor?"

  "So good to see you," Black Joe said. "Your health, Sergeant. I've thought of you often. You did that nicely, a classy trick. No, I won't forget that. I always underestimated the likes of you. That was quite subtle."

  "Musn't exaggerate," de Gier said, halfway through his beer.

  "Don't be modest now," Joe said. "Credit where credit is due. A difference of six months' jail for me." Trutske stepped out from the back door of the bar, illuminated by pink neon tubes speckled by uncounted generations of Frisian flies and hanging from warped ceiling tiles. "Client?" She eyed de Gier greedily.

  "Friend," Black Joe said. "From the merry past. You're off now, dear, have a good rest."

  "Listen," Trutske said. "I could do my number, a short* ened version, but I'll do it good."

  "That'll be fine," de Gier said. "Thanks anyway. Don't bother, really."

  Trutske waddled off.

  "What would she have done?" de Gier asked, twitching as the front door slammed.

  "Frustrated self-love," Black Joe said. "Specialty of the house. She's an expert at evoking self-centered passion. Groans, wriggles all over, uses all the furniture of the stage, the walls tremble, the clients go wild, pink flesh up to the ceiling, screams of lustful agony, that sort of show, mostly."

  "All that in Frisian?"

  "Crazy language," Black Joe said. "I'll never master it, although it's easy to pick up. I have a Frisian girlfriend. We're to be married soon. I bought myself a house in a rustic village nearby. I'll be fixing bicycles there. No, I'm not kidding. This side of life is driving me whoppo. You don't believe me? But it's true. I'm qualified. I went back to school during the day. I got the tools, a barn, I'm all set up. Everything you want."

  "Everything you want," de Gier said modestly.

  "No," Black Joe said. 'That's what you wanted me to do. Beer?"

  "Your healt
h," de Gier said.

  Black Joe dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. "You remember how you got me to turn myself in?"

  "Wasn't that your own idea?"

  "Never," Joe said. "You led me to the station. If you hadn't, I would have been watching bars for half a year longer. The judge changed his mind when he heard I'd gone to the station by myself. He didn't like that scene in the Red Quarter. Ha!" Joe bellowed. "Another lush who wanted to fight the doorman of a reputable brothel. One tittle push of this…" His hairy fist trembled in front of de Gier's nose. "Just one little touch and there the lush goes. Ended up all in a broken heap."

  De Gier nodded. "Ran backward across the street and mashed himself against a wall. You can be thankful that he was still alive. You should be aware of your strength, a little."

  "And then you showed up," Black Joe said. "The very next day. I had retired to that posh terrace across from Central Station, the last place where you'd be looking for me, but you found me anyway and I was going to push you too. You didn't want that. You asked me to buy you coffee."

  "I never fight in the mornings," de Gier said.

  "Ha!" shouted Joe. "That's what you said then. And that I should turn myself in. Tell them I was sorry. Inquire about the lush's condition. Express my hopes that he'd soon feel better. Smile and stutter. Scratch my beard."

  "Always the best way," de Gier said.

  "Much better," Joe shouted. "That lawyer was ready to kiss me. He talked good, too. The judge had tears in his eyes. Just one month and some time suspended."

  "You don't push clients anymore?"

  "None of that now," Joe said. "None of anything, soon. One more week and I'll be taking bikes apart. I've been planning for a while, but I still had to do this for the money."

  "Why here?"

  All part of the new way, Joe told him. Not the good way, he wasn't going to go as far as that. It wasn't that he had been bad before. He wasn't sorry, if that was what the sergeant meant. Not a choice, either; you do something for a while and then you come to the end of it. If you don't accept the end and go on, the routine becomes boring. If you don't feel good about it anymore, you got to quit.

  De Gier listened and meanwhile studied a painting on the bar's wall. A chubby lady had spread herself out on the canvas, under a hairdo that reminded him of antique maids. Her rounded belly line turned in and popped up on her other side again, as cute raised buttocks.

  "That's Mata Hari," Black Joe said. "Genuine, done in Paris. And I'm Ali Baba, as you saw just now. That's okay for a while. If you die young, you can keep it up all your life, but if you survive, you begin to see through it. Take Mata Hari, for instance. You know her real name?"

  De Gier's ignorance surprised Black Joe.

  "Margaretha G. Zelle," Joe said. "Born in this city in 1876, around the corner from here, on the Gardens-you must have passed the house. Beer?"

  De Gier declined. Joe emptied a can into his beard. "Right. Thirty-one years old, she got shot by soldiers in parade uniforms. She wore a fur coat and nothing else, opened it just at the fatal moment. Very romantic. Like her life out there. Did some fancy musical stripping on expensive stages. Got herself pawed by the powers on both sides. Never knew or passed too many secrets, but got shot anyway, for Commande was Commanded Joe sighed. "Silly. Right?"

  "Didn't she have a good time?" de Gier asked.

  "For as long as it lasted." Joe sighed more deeply. "You know how long it lasts?"

  "Let's see," de Gier said. "Some constructive fantasizing and positive thinking, it could last a good while."

  "I'm forty-one," Joe said. "I've seen it all a hundred times. My dad was a bicycle repairman too; I thought that was real stupid at the time." Joe stared at a horizon receding toward the infinite. "I used to drive a Ferrari. You ever drive a Ferrari?"

  "No," de Gier said.

  "You ever live in Casablanca, overlooking the Casbah? In Tunis? In Morocco?" Joe sang in Arabic. "You know what I just sang?"

  "No," de Gier said.

  "I don't either," Joe said, "but that's what they would sing outside my window. 'Jacques Ferrouche,' I called myself. I rode a racing camel. I sailed a yacht on the Mediterranean with braid on my cap and a girl who was built like this." Joe indicated the dimensions. "And it still wasn't enough, I still wanted to go somewhere to do something, but then I had to go. And now I want to repair bikes and take the dog for a walk. You think that'll be okay?"

  "I think so," de Gier said.

  "You got a dog?"

  "A cat," de Gier said. "Nothing special. Ugly, too.*

  Beer foamed out of Joe's beard. "Nothing special!" His fists hit the counter.

  "That's funny?" de Gier asked.

  "Nothing special can be fun," Joe said. "You know that? Take my girlfriend, she teaches embroidery at school. You should see what she gets together at home. Regular landscapes, but if you look they go on forever. There's a difference, but I can't place it. You wanted me to be there, you told me to try something else, nothing special. You remember that you said that?"

  "Joe," de Gier said, "would anyone be selling heroin here?"

  "Didn't you want me to do nothing special?"

  "Heroin," de Gier said. "Is it dealt here?"

  "Two assholes," Joe said. "They come in once in a while. Junkies. Half a gram or so. Crumbles."

  "And where do they buy the crumbles?"

  "From the Chinese."

  "The Frisian Chinese?"

  "Never," Joe said. "The Amsterdam Chinese. Amsterdam is close enough. The dike goes down. Put one foot on the dike and you slide easily enough. Takes a long time to get back here sometimes. Have you noticed?"

  "Not yet," de Gier said.

  "I have," Joe said. "Homesickness, maybe? Or the power of seduction? That sometimes bothers me."

  "Does the name Douwe Scherjoen mean anything?"

  "Saw it in the paper," Joe said. "Dead in Amsterdam's Inner Harbor, and none too soon." Joe smiled.

  "No-good shithead?"

  "Absolutely," Joe said. "Good friend of mine worked for Douwe for a bit. Had to collect the payments. Douwe was a shark."

  "Tell me," de Gier said.

  "You didn't know that? Scherjoen would advertise in the paper here. "Need money? You'll have it today.'' Used to keep an office here in town, my friend worked there. You could borrow up to three thousand, at thirty percent. The interest was deducted straightaway, and then you paid three hundred a month for ten months. My friend picked up the payments. He was supposed to lean on the victims if they were a little slow."

  "Didn't work out well?"

  "No," Joe said. "Frisians don't like to be leaned on so much. My friend fell into a canal and was in the hospital for a while, and Douwe wouldn't pay for the stitches."

  "So it came to an end?"

  "Douwe closed up."

  "I have a home here," de Gier said, "but it's hard to find. I'd better go look for it."

  Joe drove him home, in an old-model Mercedes. "You see how neat I've become?"

  "Where do I see it?" de Gier asked.

  "Check the mileage."

  De Gier read the numbers. "Four hundred eighty thousand?"

  "Old taxi," Joe said. "Found it at an auction for six months of my savings. In the old days I would earn the price of a junker in a week. Here's your street. Any particular number?"

  "Here," de Gier said.

  "I've been here before," Joe said. "A colleague? He's putting you up for free?"

  "The police arranged it. Don't know the man."

  "I do," Joe said. "Collected a Mata Had bill here once. He'd left it on the bar. A while back. Cheng was our barman then, and your colleague would have a cognac with us every now and then."

  "While visiting Cheng?"

  "That's it."

  "And the adjutant didn't have to pay?"

  "Maybe five or six cognacs," Joe said. "We didn't mind so much, for Cheng never had any proper papers, but one night our boss came in and he didn't like Cheng, or maybe he wa
s just teasing him. Saying Mao never knew nothing either. So Cheng threw a bottle at the boss, and then he was all done. Your colleague had been around that night and left his bill again, so the boss thought he should pay."

  "Could you describe my colleague?"

  "Feels cheeks a lot," Joe said.

  "The ladies' cheeks?"

  "His own," Joe said.

  "You're still up?" de Gier asked.

  "That rat," Grypstra said, "rattled about in his terrarium so I got him out and now he's around somewhere."

  "Over there," de Gier said. "Why don't you pick him up?"

  "You pick him up. He tickles with his little hands."

  "Eddy?" De Gier squatted next to the rat. He put his hand out. Eddy rolled into the hand. The rat picked up his tail and wove it between his legs. The long snout rested tragically against de Gier's thumb.

  "That rattling drives me crazy," Grijpstra said.

  "Animals make all sorts of weird noises."

  "Rats don't rattle," Grypstra said angrily.

  "This one does. You're oversensitive. Get any work done tonight?"

  "I thought," Grijpstra said. "Tomorrow I'll be getting hold of Pyr, Tyark, and Yelte."

  "I'll be on the island of Ameland," de Gier said. "On foodsearching business."

  "Out of it for a day?"

  De Gier shrugged. "I thought you wanted me out of this altogether."

  "Correct," Grijpstra said. "Try and keep it that way. You're too outlandish here, you'll be upsetting suspects."

  De Gier climbed the stairs, cradling Eddy in his hands, murmuring endearments.

  \\ 12 /////

  I'm a minority, the Commissaris thought, looking down the long conference table headed by the lofty figure of Chief Constable Lasius of Burmania, flanked by the equally tall Colonel Kopinie of the State Police and the even taller Lieutenant Colonel Singelsma of the Military Police. He ignored the other participants, but they were tall too, upright and all in complete agreement. It isn't that their combined forces are against me, the commissaris thought. Maybe it looks that way, but that can't be the case at all.