The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  “Fact 1: Victim T. Stewart-Wynne drives his jeep into a restaurant where Suspect de Gier is having dinner with two associates.

  “Hypothesis: Victim was to meet Suspect in that very restaurant. Victim was attempting to park close by when he lost control of the vehicle.

  “Defense: There is no proof that Victim and Suspect knew each other. The jeep’s malfunction just happened to occur in that particular location.

  “Fact 2: A bicycle-policeman investigates the jeep after it has stalled inside the restaurant. Of all people present only Suspect is interested in Victim’s corpse.

  “Hypothesis: Suspect is the killer, he is checking whether his attempt succeeded.

  “Defense: Suspect is a former police officer, he is interested in the deadly accident out of habit.

  “Fact 3: Both Victim, an employee of the British financial company Quadrant, and Suspect, a former policeman, are connected to Ambagt & Son, a shipping company working out of the Liberian-registered FEADship Admiraal Rodney. Ambagt & Son claims it deals in crude oil. Victim stayed in the luxury hotel Eggemoggin. So does Suspect. Key West is a strategic location for the drug trade.

  “Hypothesis: Quadrant financed Ambagt & Son’s dealings but wasn’t paid back. Victim looks for possible wrongdoing and obtains proof of drug dealing. Victim threatens to call the cops. Ambagt & Son hires Suspect to get rid of Victim.

  “Defense: Suspect says he doesn’t know Victim and denies being a hit man.

  “Fact 4: The rented jeep’s brake and acceleration systems have been tampered with, changing a means of transportation into a deadly weapon.

  “Hypothesis: Suspect did the tampering with the object of murdering Victim.

  “Defense: Suspect says he did not.

  “Yes?” de Gier asked.

  “Perfect,” Ramona said. “You’ve hit all the nails on the head. All you have to do is keep denying everything. But now …” she bent across her desk, smilingly aggressive, as if she was going to grab his crotch—a uniformed guard and her helpless slave—“… what new fact showed up which allows me to arrest you?”

  “Somebody saw something?” de Gier asked. “But there was nothing to see. I am innocent. You are misinterpreting something.”

  “Two somethings?” Sergeant Ramona Symonds of the KWPD asked triumphantly. She reported, staring over de Gier’s head as if she was addressing a godhead throned behind him. “Victim,” Ramona said, using a professionally modulated voice, “stayed for five days in the Eggemoggin Hotel. He was very busy during the first four days. He dressed in regular clothes and drove a regular rental.” Symonds looked at her notes. “A two-door beige Geo compact. He didn’t bother the chamber boy, wasn’t interested in Cocaine Annie’s services—Annie, an expensive prostitute, works the Eggemoggin, officially, as a masseuse. A very classy lady.… But on the fifth day Victim suddenly changed his persona.” She glanced at de Gier briefly. “Do you follow me?”

  “I am with you, Sergeant,” de Gier said brightly.

  Symonds smiled triumphantly. “On the fifth day, Victim dresses up as an expensive cowboy, pinches the chamber boy in the buttocks, orders Cocaine Annie into his room and demands special sexual acts, changes the Geo for a rental jeep, complains about the food—beefsteak too well done, wants it rare—laughs loudly while drinking champagne by himself.”

  “Manic?” de Gier asked. “Abnormal excited behavior after a period of colorless depression? Can Victim be diagnosed as bi-polar?”

  Ramona ignored the interjection. “Hypothesis: Victim successfully closed his investigation. Victim parties and Suspect …,” (Ramona was staring de Gier in the eyes) “which is you, Rai-nus … gets him.” Sergeant Symonds leaned back in her chair. “Defense: Suspect denies having gotten Victim at this crucial point of proceedings?”

  De Gier laughed. “He does, Sergeant. And what you have there is old. I mentioned it already. No proof, you know. Nothing doing.”

  Symonds was smiling too. “I have enough here to make a jury listen to what the prosecutor has to say, but there is more.” Her smile widened. “So much more. You want to hear?”

  De Gier was shaking his head. It all sounded ominous. Perhaps he should have stayed in the police force, on the power side of the table. “Tell me,” he said quietly.

  “The Key West Post Office,” the sergeant told him, “is on the edge of our black district. Someone has been bothering kids there. We patrol the area more frequently now. A woman cop out of uniform was watching the parking lot on the day Stewart-Wynne died. She saw a long haired white male subject sliding under a blue jeep, holding tools. She thought he was making repairs. The man looked disheveled, the jeep looked new. The contrast was of note, of course. You know the police are always looking for contrast?”

  “Yes,” de Gier said. “What else did your lady constable see, Sergeant?”

  “A white gentleman in a cowboy outfit drove the jeep away, after the disheveled pseudo-mechanic had done what he did.”

  “It wasn’t me,” de Gier said. “I don’t have long hair and I don’t look disheveled.”

  “Wig? Different clothes?” Sergeant Symonds read from her notes: “Tall white male subject, military posture, huge mustache, six feet tall, wide shoulders.

  “Hypothesis: Suspect had somewhat changed his appearance while changing the jeep into a lethal weapon.”

  De Gier grinned. “It still wasn’t me.”

  Sergeant Symonds looked serious. “Policewoman Susan G. Wilson begs to differ. I took her to Hotel Eggemoggin last night. She saw you in the bar, listening to jazz. I didn’t point you out to her. It wasn’t necessary. She recognized you at once. She’ll swear to it too. That’s why you’re under arrest now.”

  De Gier dropped his hands to his knees.

  “Defense?” Symonds asked.

  De Gier shrugged. “My name is Janneman Jackrabbit and I know nothing.”

  “Who Jackrabbit?”

  “A Dutch children’s song,” de Gier explained. “Little kids chant it when they’re accused of getting into the cookie jar.” He sang the line for her, beating time with his hands.

  “This is no joking matter.” The sergeant got up and looked out of the window.

  “You don’t really wish to hold me on these trumped up charges,” de Gier said.

  “Policewoman Susan G. Wilson has a good reputation,” Ramona said icily without turning around. “I can hold you until you rot.”

  “Please,” de Gier said. “Did I mess with a jeep in a post office parking lot while I was eating key lime pie in Lobster Lateta in the company of two witnesses?”

  “Your accomplices?” Sergeant Symonds turned sharply. “Hired by Ambagt & Son, alleged macro-drug dealers operating from a tax-free floating palace that keeps visiting Mexican ports for no obvious reasons. Are you aware that Mexico supplies half of all cocaine, heroin and cannabis products consumed in this country? How do you think you can wiggle out of that, tell me!”

  “Release me on bail,” de Gier said. “I will find you the real killer, who I now know to be a former military man who looks just like me.”

  “Former? How so?”

  “Men in the U.S. military service do not look disheveled nor do they have long hair. I will be looking for a renegade, dishonorably discharged.” De Gier jumped up. “It shouldn’t take me long. Let me do this for you.”

  Ramona Symonds approached the prisoner. Her pouting lips touched his cheek. She whispered. “I thought you would never ask, my dearest.”

  16

  HELL ON THE HIGH SEAS

  The FEADship Admiraal Rodney left Key West for St. Maarten the next late afternoon. De Gier was not on board. Grijpstra had tried to take over the pursuit of Stewart-Wynne’s killer, citing his exchangeability with de Gier. Hadn’t he been in Lobster Lateta when the British Quadrant bank inspector died there? Wasn’t he de Gier’s partner and fellow private eye? Wasn’t he also working for the owners of the suspect Rodney? Wasn’t he, like Stewart-Wynne, associated with the Ambagt people
?

  Why not let go of poor de Gier and take the much superior Grijpstra, who, besides, did not like to sail on small boats.

  Sergeant Symonds said she would just love to but she couldn’t, really. De Gier had already been arrested and to change paperwork via Monroe County’s bureaucracy was just too much work. “I truly like you better,” Sergeant Symonds said. She liked the commissaris even better but the commissaris wasn’t interested in taking over de Gier’s precarious position. Besides, the commissaris did like to sail on small boats.

  The commissaris accompanied Grijpstra to pay de Gier’s bail: fifty thousand dollars in five hundred bills of one hundred dollars each. Quite a sizable package. The commissaris got the cash after G&G’s Luxembourg bank guaranteed payment by fax through an American correspondent. While Ramona counted the cash the commissaris studied the portrait of Mynah. “I keep a portrait of Turtle on my desk.”

  Ramona looked at his wedding ring. “Not your wife’s?”

  “Katrien,” the commissaris said, “keeps changing. Turtle is more eternal.”

  Ramona looked serious. “You’re looking for eternity, sir?”

  “Who isn’t?” the commissaris asked. The unchangeable, symbolized somewhat by Turtle’s timeless face, fascinated him. “The wisdom of an ancient reptile, beyond fear and desire.”

  “You’re neither?” Ramona asked.

  “I am free in essence,” the commissaris said, “I think. But then, who isn’t?”

  “Mynah is noisy,” Sergeant Symonds said, “especially when he imitates the sound of my cappuccino machine.”

  Grijpstra would not believe that a bird could do that.

  Ramona imitated the bird’s imitation of her cappuccino machine.

  Grijpstra applauded.

  “But you do love your wife,” Ramona said to the commissaris, “even if she does keep changing.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” the commissaris said, “and you love your …” he checked the rest of her desktop. “Of who you do not keep a photo here?”

  Ramona said that it was all over with Mary-Margaret and that she couldn’t believe that it had ever not been all over for what, after all the arguments and disappointments, does a human relationship amount to? Isn’t it just a battle between opposite egos? Domestic violence. Cause for most calls for police assistance. “Is it the same in Europe?” Sergeant Symonds asked. Grijpstra said domestic violence had always upset him. It was nice to be away from that now. Also at home. Although his second wife did sometimes resemble his first, she didn’t throw things.

  The commissaris studied the bird’s photo. “Except for Mynah you have no close relationships?”

  “What is it to you?”

  The commissaris smiled. He said in an avuncular tone, “Ramona, my dear …”

  Ramona, mollified by the commissaris’s act, said that an older man was her friend now. She sometimes felt bad about that, she had drawn some satisfaction from being gay, but some older men were okay, perhaps. She smiled at the commissaris. “You could be okay, but my old man looks more athletic.” Prompted by the commissaris she said that her friend lived in a lane behind Petrona Street, in one of the ships-carpenter–designed little rectangular houses, overshadowed by flame trees. During spring and early summer the trees seemed to be on fire due to their exuberantly orange and red flowers. Ramona’s friend was a retired psychiatrist who had come to the conclusion that all human personalities are irreparably unpleasant. Unmarried and childless, he led a scholarly life among inherited antiques, brought in long ago by Key West wreckers. Behind his oleander hedge her friend mildly disliked people, although he sometimes tolerated Ramona’s company and was fond of her bird who liked to come with her.

  “Gabriel likes to cook for us.”

  “Do you and Gabriel do it?” Grijpstra asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Grijpstra scratched his chins. “I sometimes wonder if happy couples do it.”

  “Do you and your wife do it?” Ramona asked.

  Grijpstra admitted to gradually preferring to think about it.

  “With your wife?”

  “Sure,” Grijpstra said.

  “Does Gabriel make you feel safe?” the commissaris asked, using his grandfatherly mode again.

  “I comfort him,” Ramona said. “Gabriel, even if he dislikes it maybe, still lives in the universe. The universe is essentially female. The female sometimes comforts.”

  “Mutual safety?” the commissaris asked hopefully.

  Yes, perhaps. Ramona said that she liked spending time behind Gabriel’s protective hedge and the sign that hung from a flame tree’s branch, nicely written in the old man’s precise hand, carmine on white. THE LION IS OKAY, it said. If one touched the gate the lion, well inside the house, growled; if one opened the gate the lion would roar just behind the front door. The growling and roaring were randomly programmed by a Sony-made device, or was it Philips Electronics?

  “De Gier did not murder our Englishman,” the commissaris said as he left the sergeant’s office.

  “Of course he didn’t,” Sergeant Symonds said.

  “Do return him some time,” Grijpstra said. “We need him for routine jobs.”

  “So do I,” said Sergeant Symonds.

  17

  THE DEVOUT ART OF WRECKING

  “You’re looking all disgruntled,” the boatswain on the Rodney’s gangway said, “but the weather forecast is good. Good weather all the way to Puerto Rico.” Grijpstra wasn’t reassured. He had studied the commissaris’s maps again. Puerto Rico to St. Maarten still seemed some distance. “And after that?” Grijpstra asked, worried.

  “Winds higher than thirty-four knots not expected.” The boatswain did expect a bit of a breeze around the Virgin Islands.

  Grijpstra, a few minutes later, replaced the snacks he had taken from the refrigerator in the luxurious cabin he and the commissaris were sharing. The ship was moving. “De Gier was right,” Grijpstra said. “This is going to be bad.”

  The gold telephone on a night table between the beds played a little song which the commissaris remembered from his student days, a ribald chorus sung by a strident male voice accompanied by tuba honking and drum thumping. The commissaris picked up the phone.

  Carl Ambagt informed his passengers that the Admiraal Rodney was about to leave port. He invited his guests to the bridge, to enjoy their farewell to Key West. Carl mentioned sun-kissed beaches, Victorian houses with bizarre towers, pagoda-shaped pine trees, a crumbling brick fortress, rare tropical birds riding the thermals.

  “Our client is being a poet,” the commissaris said in the ship’s corridor. “He is actually quite funny sometimes. That’s annoying, Grijpstra. I don’t like it when the enemy tries to twist himself out of my characterization. Carl is a despicable bounder. Bluffing scoundrels should have no eye for beauty. Atypical and therefore unacceptable misbehavior, Grijpstra. Hitler pets his loving dog. My half-witted brother-in-law reads Cormac McCarthy. You are a sensitive and creative percussionist. None of that fits.”

  “De Gier?” asked Grijpstra.

  The commissaris scowled. “My star pupil? He who makes no progress? He who is getting worse maybe?”

  “Your wife?”

  The commissaris sighed. “Only Turtle.”

  The ship, hitting a wave, shuddered.

  Grijpstra belched defensively.

  The Ambagts waited for their guests on the Rodney’s bridge where the first mate studied his monitors and auxiliary screens and a sailor moved the wheel with a single finger. A servant brought deck chairs to the teak aft deck and placed them in the shadow of the helicopter parked there. A coffee table, a marble black woman, nude, lying on her back, holding up a plate-glass sheet with her hands and feet, bore an artful array of nuts and cheeses, and colored alcoholic beverages in decanters.

  “Welcome,” Skipper Peter said, “to our priceless yacht, Mister Detectives.”

  Key West’s south coast slid past the slowly moving vessel.


  Skipper Peter pointed at the Martello Tower rising above a tourist beach. “That’s where Key West’s wreckers used to keep watch.”

  Grijpstra wanted the shore to stop sliding.

  The commissaris was mystified by the term “wreckers.”

  De Ambagts explained while the servant poured bourbon for Peter, a cola drink for Carl, iced tea for the commissaris and “please, nothing” for Grijpstra.

  Key West’s first wreckers, said Peter and Carl, were Calusa Indians. After their extermination Europeans took over. “Key West” is an English adaptation of the Spanish “Cayo Hueso.” Cayo = boil. Hueso = bone. Key West started out as a skeleton covered sea-blemish. The bones were of murdered shipwrecked sailors.

  The island might look peaceful, Carl said, pointing at trees, beaches and buildings and calling attention to flowering vines, orange trees, the cloud-shaped gum trees, the green velvet lawns, a cute couple of old gay gents on their tandem bicycle riding down a gravel path, and equally cute heterosexual combinations, walking along slowly, wearing identical straw hats and holding hands, the terraces of restaurants with yellow and blue parasols and—Peter interrupted his son gruffly—stores selling stuff nobody needs, T-shirts with funny texts, pre-torn jeans, fishnet underwear, plastic turds glued to the visors of pink hats, day-glow hats stuck through with tin foil fish. “But in the old days, hey?” shouted Skipper Peter, “when there were still some real folks around?”

  “Real folks?” the commissaris asked.

  Carl said that his father was referring to pirates and wreckers. The real-motivated.

  The explanation continued. The Calusas, the Florida Indians, used to be peaceful, Carl said. They caught broilable fish and deer. They grew tossable salads. They were happy and healthy and lived in palm-leaf beach houses, pleasant even at the height of summer, because movable screens could direct cooling breezes. Calusas paddled hollowed-out canoes, visiting families on other islands.