The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  De Gier said he was.

  “And before that you were a Murder Brigade detective?”

  He was.

  “Many years?”

  Many years.

  Amsterdam, Sergeant Symonds said, was a lovely city, she had spent a week there, as a Police Academy student, during an exchange program. She had stayed in the youth hostel near Vondel Park. Low priced. Nice people. Free beer at the Heineken brewery and a harpsichord and two flutes concert at the cathedral, the Wester Church it was called, she believed. Beautiful music. Raw herring at a street stall, with onions, hold the capers.

  De Gier said he was glad she had liked his city.

  “But there was quite a bit of trash floating in your canals.”

  The trash problem had been handled since then, de Gier said. Dogs had been trained to use the streets’s gutters. Car theft was down somewhat and street crooks playing the shell game were now being detained and lectured on human values. The problem of stolen bicycles would be next. Mugging was an exclusive now, done only by foreigners who could not obtain free heroin at city clinics. When caught these unfortunates were promptly deported.

  “You retired early?” Sergeant Symonds asked. “How come? Col-league?”

  De Gier thought that the sergeant pronounced the syllables in an irritating manner.

  “No pension?”

  De Gier admitted to not having waited for his pension.

  She poured from a green metal thermos. De Gier tasted. “Delicious.” She said that she had bought the coffee at the Fleming Street supermarket. She wheeled her chair back, half-opened the lower drawers of her desk and used them as foot rests. She looked innocent, friendly, across the rim of her coffee mug. She asked if de Gier, an experienced criminal investigator, would care to think along with her. Now wasn’t this an interesting case? Where to start though? At the presence of three foreign ranking for-mer po-lice-men? Okay?

  “Okay,” de Gier said, disturbed somewhat by the way she cut up the words “former” and “policemen.”

  Okay, Symonds said. She was pleased he was thinking along with her so nicely. And these three pension-ignoring former policeman, sorry, the commissaris was collecting his pension, yes? Good. But the other two disdained a monthly income for the rest of their possibly long lives? How come? Did the new born private eyes enjoy private resources? And another thing, the trio arrived in Key West, drug-town of the Florida Keys, straight from Amsterdam, drug-capital of Western Europe, and these three in-di-vi-du-als …

  De Gier didn’t like the way she said that.

  … were driving a new rented Cadillac in the sergeant’s jurisdiction, aiming the expensive vehicle at the most elegant restaurant in sight, Lobster Lateta—jeez, just a little ball of dark chocolate with a bit of whipped cream on the side would be around nineteen dollars at LL—and there said trio met, in the most violent way imaginable, even for Key West (where a Cuban shot his friend last week for refusing to share his bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich), a British gentleman dressed up in a thousand dollars’ worth of Lone Ranger clothing—now, wasn’t all this somewhat extraordinary, yes?

  “Maybe goddam crazy?” The sergeant looked neither innocent or friendly now. “Right? Colleague?”

  “Not crazier than anything else.” De Gier declared that, after having reflected and studied the miracle of existence, anything—and he meant more than a gentleman/cowboy dying, a rental jeep racing between a trombone-playing Navajo and a rickshaw-riding mummy, more than the Milky Way galaxy, more than the occurrence of a universe, or even the phenomenon of space—de Gier declared that anything at all came about by happenstance, was just there, for no reason.

  The sergeant stared at him.

  “Chance occurrences,” de Gier said, “explain you and me too.” He smiled reassuringly. “And there is no guilt.”

  Sergeant Symonds smiled widely. She liked that. A perfect construction. Philosophically correct. And didn’t de Gier speak nice English. Weren’t Dutchmen true internationalists? She herself had taken Spanish as second language. In Key West one simply had to.

  De Gier appreciated the compliment. He returned it too. Spanish was indeed a beautiful, but difficult language. He himself could barely read it.

  “Is that so?” asked the sergeant politely.

  De Gier saw her in a straw hat (he was wearing one himself) and he and she were walking on a clean raked beach, as their hands touched and they stopped for a moment to kiss, while she pressed her bosom against his chest, and violins behind the mangroves—never mind the violins, just a double bass and a guitar and maybe some piano, a young Ella Fitzgerald singing a ballad in scat—while de Gier imagined these pleasantries the actual scene was changing.

  Ramona jumped up, leaned on her desk, spoke raucously as if coffee beans were being ground in her throat. She said they weren’t here together to sweet-talk each other. Nothing accidental had occurred. The offed Brit was no tourist in a cowboy hat but a fucking bank inspector out of London. He was here on duty. His fucking inspection had been broken off by violent unnatural fucking MURDER. By deliberate fucking with his fucking rented car. Okay?

  “You’re sure?” de Gier asked, no longer just erotically but also criminally interested. “How so?”

  Symonds stared again. She sighed. She had sat down. Her voice became veiled and jazzy again. “Now, col-league. I am only supposing. I construct a hypothesis based on observed facts. I personally visited Stewart-Wynne’s hotel room which is in the same hotel where you happen to be staying.”

  “Eggemoggin Hotel?”

  “Couldn’t you find anything more expensive?”

  De Gier smiled expectantly. He noted the coffee grinder was starting up again. “So?” the sergeant asked hoarsely, “is that why you left the police? You prefer the luxury of corruption?”

  De Gier kept smiling while spreading his hands in innocent defense.

  She showed him a visiting card retrieved from the Englishman’s hotel room. THOMAS STEWART-WYNNE, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, QUADRANT BANK, MAYFAIR, LONDON.

  “You think the victim was on the trail of some financial trickery?” de Gier asked.

  Symonds nodded.

  “A big loan gone bad? So the other party wanted to get rid of the inspector? Hence the death ride on Duval Street?”

  Ramona used her phone. “Harry? Mind coming up here a moment? You and Bert?”

  A white-coated technician and Harry the bicycle policeman brought in three Polaroids. De Gier was allowed to look too. The technician used a pencil as pointer. “Here is the hinge of the accelerator, cut through, but not quite. See that spring here and the hook? Shouldn’t be there. Kick the accelerator and this breaks and that hooks on, and your vehicle is out of control at full speed. Now for the brake, same thing other way round, ram the pedal but nothing works. So here we go, subject drives along Duval revving his engine a bit to make an impression, the thingamajig catches and he is going at full speed, so now he hits the brake but he just keeps going. The technician laughed sadly. “On Duval, when the cruiseships are in, at the height of the season!”

  “Couldn’t he have switched into neutral?” de Gier asked.

  Policeman Harry didn’t think Stewart-Wynne had time to consider that option, “not in a car with everything just a bit different, plus he is a Brit used to driving on the left side. Not a young man either. Slow reactions.”

  Sergeant Symonds looked at de Gier kindly. “Some nightmare, huh? So did you mess with that jeep, Rai-nus?” She said his name carefully, after glancing at her notebook where she had written it down in large square letters.

  Good work. The sergeant had kept her voice flat. Friendly information, shared with a pal, changed imperceptibly into accusation. De Gier knew the trick. He had performed it himself often enough. The relaxed suspect confesses. As soon as he does, handcuffs click. The suspect is a prisoner and the detectives have a beer around the corner.

  Stupid suspect.

  “No,” de Gier said flatly.

  Bert the
technician and Harry the policeman left the room.

  Symonds sighed. “You know what is interesting, Rai-nus?”

  De Gier found the whole thing interesting, that he was interrogated here at an air-conditioned American police station for instance, by a beautiful uniformed woman. Politely. Correctly. That the lady had caught him, could lock him up if she felt like it. He didn’t know any black women, not intimately. He would like to. Perhaps he could get her to help him spend his treasure, here in out-of-the-way Key West, in the lawless Bahamas, even in sinister Mexico. Swimming deep under the surface, between colorful coral reefs, his legs between hers.

  “Hello?” the interrogating officer asked.

  “I have no idea what is interesting, Ramona.”

  Sergeant Ramona Symonds turned a framed photograph on her desk. De Gier was faced by a starling-like bird with a black face, a reddish brown crest and glittering orange eyes. “My companion bird,” Symonds said. “Mynah and I live together. My human companion took off, she accused Mynah of being too noisy and me of being too quiet.” The sergeant looked across the golden frame. “You live alone?”

  “With plants,” de Gier said.

  “Gay?”

  “The plants?”

  “You.”

  “No,” de Gier said.

  “But you live alone.”

  “Plants are company,” de Gier said, “I don’t quite harmonize yet but the barrier is dented.”

  “You can’t get it up with women?”

  It wasn’t that so much.

  “Should I mind my own business?”

  De Gier explained, adjusting the ends of his mustache, holding on to his chin, trying to ignore the accusation in the bird’s eyes in the frame, that he couldn’t offer women commitment. Besides, he didn’t want kids. There were enough kids around already, crack smokers and destroyers of streetcars.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  A brown lady from Surinam, de Gier said, a Hindu woman. Hindus believe in not expecting anything, in uncomplicating life, in finding fulfillment in nothingness.

  The sergeant frowned. “A Surinam seaplane crashed here last week. It was overloaded. The pilot had bags stacked on his dashboard.”

  De Gier shrugged. “Not that Surinam.”

  The sergeant pointed at a filing cabinet. “A robbers’s nest. I have piles of documentation in there. The Colombians use the location as a warehouse.”

  De Gier waved the filing cabinet away. “My friend is a nurse.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “I met her in the hospital.”

  “You were ill?”

  “I was mugged,” de Gier said.

  “In Amsterdam?” Symonds asked. “In Heroin Heaven? Or was the violence connected to your present project?”

  De Gier shrugged wearily.

  “You understand,” the sergeant said, barely audible above the humming of the air-conditioning, “that I am going to investigate this case fully. If there is the slightest reason to suspect that your pals on the Admiraal Rodney are engaged in the drug trade I will grab you too.” She bent toward him. “I am personally interested. My brother in Detroit used to be a dear little fellow. Clever too. Got A’s in math and science. He fed my goldfish. You should see him now.”

  “Ambagt & Son tell me they deal in crude oil,” de Gier said.

  “Hashish oil?” Symonds asked.

  “Stuff you make gasoline out of,” de Gier said.

  Symonds turned the photo toward her. “Hi, Mynah.”

  De Gier predicted a retreat into niceties.

  “So your Hindu princess expects nothing from you,” Symonds asked nicely.

  “Hindus belive in Nirvana,” de Gier said. “Nirvana is empty. There is nothing there. How can you expect something from nothing?”

  “Her ancestors came from India?”

  “They must have,” de Gier said.

  “India is a dungheap,” Ramona said. “Believers in nothing create nothing but misery. Any religious faith is a silly assumption that there are gods and that the gods are interested in our welfare.”

  “Sayukta came to see me on Earth,” de Gier said.

  “To do what?”

  “To guide me.”

  Sergeant Symonds looked at de Gier’s fly.

  De Gier followed up on his symbolism. “She is a tunnel, the Hindu goddess Kali is sometimes represented as a hole in a stone.”

  “Sayukta is a tunnel?” Symonds asked. “A hole you can enter?”

  “A hole to let me through.”

  “And she’ll come along?”

  “She is there already.”

  “Vagina-priestess Sayukta-Kali,” Symonds said. “Interesting how we keep mixing up sex with mysticism. My hole in a stone was called Mary-Margaret. Biblical names. I found them attractive. I saw all sorts of far-reaching potential in our connection.”

  “Didn’t work out?”

  “The more you expect,” said the sergeant, “the less comes of your expectations.”

  De Gier got up and looked out of the window. The window faced a yard where a large black man in a cream colored gown danced around parked police cars, motorcycles and bicycles. The man had braided hair, each braid ended in a decoration. The decorations looked like small animal skulls. The dancer’s necklace was made from large orange glass beads. He wore open sandals cut from car tires and was shaking a rattle made from two coconuts, adorned with pink seashells.

  “Rat skulls.” Symonds was standing next to de Gier. “Priest Ratty of the First Voodoo Church of Key West blesses our transport.” She waved. Priest Ratty waved too. “He is returning a favor. We’re patrolling the black district more regularly now.”

  “Apartheid?” de Gier asked.

  “In America?” Sergeant Symonds gaped at him. “Apartheid in free America? Tell me you are kidding.”

  “So why is there a black neighborhood that wasn’t patrolled regularly before?”

  “Little kids are being bothered there.”

  “Why are you bothering me?” de Gier asked. “I have nothing whatever to do with your dead banker.”

  “You do,” the sergeant said. She raised a long tapered finger. “You were the only observer in the restaurant who saw something was seriously amiss with that jeep.” She raised another finger. “You tell me you are about to cruise on the Admiraal Rodney which is expected here within a few days.” She raised a third finger. “You and the fat guy and the old gentleman who directs you and the murdered man, Stewart-Wynne, stay in the same super-expensive hotel.” She raised her little finger. “I checked around today. The hotel has its own yacht harbor. The harbor master tells me that Stewart-Wynne asked him where boats of the FEADship type would go for repairs here.”

  “Ach,” de Gier said.

  “The Admiraal Rodney,” Symonds said. “The vessel you are about to board was mentioned by name by a bank inspector who was about to be murdered. Doesn’t the yacht belong to Ambagt & Son? Your very own client?”

  De Gier shook his head. “Why would I mess up a jeep belonging to an unknown person in such a way that the victim will direct the deadly vehicle at me while I’m having dinner?”

  Symonds gazed at the portrait of her bird. “Does the Dutchman really think we believe him, Mynah?’

  “Can I go now?” de Gier asked.

  Symonds walked him out of the building. Priest Ratty hadn’t finished his ceremony yet. Sergeant and detective waited for the dancer to finish his song.

  De Gier was taken to the hotel in a voodoo-blessed motorcycle and sidecar.

  “Please tell me why you are here,” Symonds said while they waited at a crossing.

  “Piracy,” de Gier said. “Well outside your territory, Sergeant. Near the Eastern Antilles. The cargo of a supertanker. The Sibylle.”

  She saluted. De Gier watched the Harley drive off, gurgling powerfully down the hotel’s driveway between palm trees waving huge leaves. Ibises, white and pink, on stilt-like legs, marched across a lawn, looking conc
eited behind their long curved bills. Palm rats moved about noisily in the crotches of their trees. A waiter, smoking secretly on a balcony, coughed, his cigarette glowing brightly. An acoustic guitar sounded the theme of a Miles Davis composition from behind the screened windows of the dimly lit bar. An electric organ pecked fiercely under the long flowing guitar notes. A drummer caressed a cymbal. A large-breasted slim thirty-year-old in a bikini, striding along slowly holding hands with an old man, smiled at de Gier. He nodded a friendly greeting at the couple while crickets spread a silver sheet of sound reaching out to moonlit sea waves.

  “Nice place,” de Gier thought.

  12

  AIRBORNE SEALS

  Breakfast was served by young waiters. Carefully braided ponytails, adorned by orange ribbons, hung down red tunics above short white pants. The waiters wore rope sandals. They cooked little steaks, large mushrooms, sliced potatoes and tomatoes in cast-iron black pots above charcoal fires. They flip-flopped pancakes and folded omelets with a flick of the wrist in long stemmed pans. They served choice foods circled by arrangements of herbs and edible nasturtium flowers on large white plates. They peeled mangos, kiwis and other tropical fruits that were new to the Dutchmen, or, if requested, squeezed them in hand-held electronic devices. A baking machine, displayed prominently on the terrace, produced fluffy rolls, another machine spat out sliced honeycakes. A baker in striped trousers caught rolls and cakes in little baskets that the waiters plucked from his hands and distributed freely.

  Grijpstra, dressed in a green beach suit that he had bought earlier that morning, looked, from under the long visor of his purple sun hat, at his fellow guests.

  Breakfasting men flirted with the waiters, female escorts buttered toast for their older companions. Jewels glittered on the fingers of the women, gold watches gleamed on the hairy wrists of the men.

  “The commissaris would like all this,” Grijpstra said.

  “Don’t you?” de Gier asked.

  “Sure,” bragged Grijpstra although he secretly thought the performance pitiable for some of the women were mere girls and some of the men were decrepit graybeards and what the hell did they think they were doing together?