The Perfidious Parrot

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The commissaris seemed shocked. “You allow that?”

  “I am the slave of slaves,” Carl said sadly.

  “Your life must be complicated.”

  Carl, touched by his interrogator’s kind voice, admitted to a longing for simplicity. Like it used to be in Rotterdam. Without Ma’s coziness of course. A simple Rotterdam upstairs flat, without a view. If he wanted a view he could read Carlos Fuentes or Mario Vargas Llosa—literature provided views no window could ever offer. In a simple two-room apartment Carl would have time to read again. On this damned ship there was never any. Not that he didn’t appreciate his high-quality yacht, the envy of all other users of the high seas, but there was always some little thing or other. Carl gestured widely. Jeezz. But then, what could one expect for thirty million, eh? And then there was the staff. Good people, his sailors knew their jobs, not lazy either but always at you for this or that.

  Carl imitated the servant’s voice. “What would you require for dinner tonight, Master Carl?” All Carl ever wanted was simple soup, always simmering. Give it a stir once in a while maybe. Make it out of anything in season—carrots, potatoes—what did he care? Serve with noodles. Suck and gulp. Store-bought ice cream afterward. Catch a movie once a week. In a regular cinema, big screen. Who needs a mini screen at home, like they had on the Rodney here, with wraparound sound and whatnot? An ordinary ticket to look at a simple big screen. Who wants to fuss with expensive home equipment that breaks down once a month?

  “Is there,” the commissaris asked, “room for a simple companion in your simple fantasy?”

  Carl shrugged. “Nah.”

  “No intimacy?” the commissaris asked.

  “Please,” Carl said. He thought. “Well, maybe. If she spoke Spanish. On a rainy afternoon. I could do that.”

  “You would work?”

  “What is this?” Carl shouted. “You’re Dr. Jan Freud?”

  The commissaris said he liked to know who he was dealing with.

  “Not who,” Carl said in his normal voice. “What you are dealing with.” He grimaced. “We’re dealing with oil here.”

  The commissaris looked serious. “But what are we really dealing with here? You want your oil back and you will get your oil back, and I want a million for getting you your oil back and I will get that million, just to show some legal income for G&G, but what do you think we’re really after, Mr. Ambagt?”

  “What?” Carl asked tonelessly.

  The commissaris looked expectant.

  “Profit,” Carl said. “Got to make profits. Got to make damn profits forever.”

  The silence grew. The wind had died down. The Rodney’s engines murmured quietly. “Something to do with Spanish.” Carl said, “I could work in something to do with Spanish.”

  The commissaris didn’t react.

  “When I’m back in Rotterdam?” Carl asked. “You ever read Manuel Vazquez Montalban? Or Pablo Ignacio Taibo Dos?” He shook his head in wonder. “What those fellows can do with the language. That is beau-ti-ful, sir.”

  “Will you have a pet?” the commissaris asked.

  “A crow,” Carl answered promptly. “I’ll find it in the Harbor Park.”

  The commissaris laughed. “What makes you long for a crow, Carl?”

  Carl had a connection with crows. They pointed the way. He dreamed about them.

  “The way to where, Mr. Ambagt?”

  Carl described the path the dream crows showed him. The path was in a forest, sun-dappled, pine needles glowing. It led to a glade, with silver moss on weathered rocks, and golden lichens.

  “Do you reach that goal?”

  Carl sighed. He had only seen it. From afar. He would like to reach it.

  The commissaris pointed at the helicopter that was clamped to the deck, at the solid golden ashtray, the aft deck’s teak floor, the spotless white uniforms of the sailors on the Rodney’s bridge, the marble nude woman holding up the glass tabletop, the Liberian flag flying about the azure sea. “You could do without this?”

  “This was mostly Dad’s idea,” Carl said.

  “Wealth doesn’t really concern you?”

  “Sure it does,” Carl gestured. “If only to show off.” He wiggled a convincing finger. “Do you have any idea of how many people live like me and Dad? How many can actually make use of the vicissitudes of life? Do you know the ratio of those who do to and those who are done to?”

  A sailor reported that something was wrong with the plumbing. “Meaning what?” Carl asked.

  “Meaning no drinking water for awhile, Master Carl.” The sailor, already on his way back, turned around and smiled.

  The water problem brought another problem to mind. Carl asked the commissaris how the enquiry was going. “Any progress?”

  The ship changed direction and was hit sideways by swell. A wave broke and water splashed on the commissaris’s glasses. He rubbed them dry. “Which enquiry, Mr. Ambagt?”

  Carl pushed his face close to that of the commissaris. “What was that?”

  They both got splashed now. The commissaris dried his glasses again.

  “We are expecting to be recompensed for our lost cargo,” Carl shouted. “You were in Aruba. You said so. You must have talked to Captain Guzberto Souza.

  The commissaris shook his head.

  Carl seemed outraged. “No? So what were you doing there? And what does your fat friend do except puke all the time?” Carl almost wrung his hands. “You have two experienced detectives on the job. I want you to catch the pirates, force them to repay us. Why did you leave de Gier in Key West? What has he come up with?”

  “Nobody plans to come up with anything,” the commissaris said. “As you haven’t paid us we’re in our vacation mode now. We’re waiting, Mr. Ambagt.”

  Carl, holding on to the helicopter’s side, faced the commissaris. “What about the hundred thousand we paid up front?”

  The commissaris spread his hands. “We haven’t seen your money, Mr. Ambagt.”

  Carl let go of the helicopter, slid across the deck, disappeared down the stairs, was back in his chair within minutes, ballpoint and notebook at the ready. “Could I have the number of your bank account please?” The commissaris checked a card in his wallet, recited the figures. Carl disappeared again, returned promptly. “Dad is transmitting your hundred thou as we speak, sir.”

  “He forgot?” the commissaris asked.

  Carl said that Skipper Peter tended to be slow in paying out moneys.

  “Aha.” The commissaris studied the Liberian flag fluttering just beyond his outstretched legs.

  “So what are you staring at?” Carl asked. “Phone your bank. The money should be there by now.”

  The commissaris checked the date and time on his watch. “The weekend is about to start in Europe. Tomorrow is Saturday. I won’t know until next week whether your father has paid us.” He looked at the clearing sky and asked what the green lines were on the horizon. “The last of the Bahamas,” Carl said. “The beginning of Haiti.” It would be better to steer somewhat north now. Cuba was still close. Although you had armed activity between drug runners there, the sea near the Bahamas was considerably safer than Cuban waters. Cuba liked to confiscate luxury yachts straying within her territorial waters. You could buy yourself out of course but there would be delays, jail time, extra fines just before leaving, all kinds of trouble.

  “The Cuban Navy is the enemy here?”

  “Right.” Carl laughed. “Castro went broke, Castro became a pirate.”

  The commissaris enquired as to why that was funny.

  “The more chaos the better,” Carl said happily. “That’s what me and Dad like about the Caribbean. No safety. Once things are safe we can forget our profits. More trouble, more money.”

  “Muddy water?”

  “Good fishing,” Carl agreed. “Piracy. Wreckery. Do-as-you-pleasery. Going back to true motives. Taking care of Number One.”

  “Egotism,” the commissaris agreed.

  Carl
grinned. “Serving the needs of the One and Only.”

  “But,” the commissaris asked, “given your self-serving natures, how do you obtain cooperation from others?”

  “We dangle money in front of them.”

  The commissaris spread a hand and looked at nothing lying on its palm.

  “One hundred thousand has just been electronically conveyed into your account,” Carl pleaded. “True. I swear by all that is holy.”

  “By your own greediness?” the commissaris asked.

  The commissaris and Carl looked out from the ship’s stern. The FEADship followed calm seas along a long reef. Dolphins gamboled. The setting sun illuminated their gleaming grey-green bodies. An albatross planed on a parallel course, effortlessly aloft on its seven-feet wingspan. Islands showed as emerald lines on the horizon.

  Grijpstra appeared and lowered his heavy body painfully into a deckchair. “Are you going to do something now?” Carl asked the commissaris.

  “You didn’t stick to your side of the bargain,” the commissaris said sternly. “The deal is off. We’ll negotiate afresh. Another hundred thousand up front if you please.”

  “Never.” Carl snarled. “You’ll have to deliver.”

  “De Gier phoned,” Grijpstra said. “The Key West sergeant let him go and he is on his way to St. Eustatius. He’ll stay at Old Rum House. There were some problems but it worked out in the end.”

  Carl, mumbling furiously, walked out of earshot.

  “Bad problems?” the commissaris asked.

  “Ant bites, sir. He needed injections.”

  “Oh dear.” The commissaris looked worried.

  “Mosquitoes too, flies, anything,” Grijpstra said. “He woke up naked in the Key West Cemetery.”

  “Drinking?” the commissaris asked.

  “Papaya juice,” Grijpstra said.

  Carl waved at bikini-clad girls on a sailboat. “Helllooooh.” The girls ignored the towering yacht.

  “And de Gier found out something,” Grijpstra said. “He has a plan.”

  “Stupid bitches.” Carl had come back. “Rattling about on that plastic shoe box.” He turned his back to the railing. “What plan would that be?”

  “If de Gier’s plan fits in with mine, as I’m sure it will, and you will pay that second hundred thousand, as I am sure you will,” the commissaris said, “you will recoup your loss.”

  “I did pay,” Carl said.

  “Half.” The commissaris smiled, “Or so you say.”

  “Toast,” Grijpstra told the servant. “No butter. Tea without sugar. Tepid. Nothing special.”

  The servant noted the order. Grijpstra said that a slice of smoked salmon, thinly cut, just a sliver, might be added. Maybe a pickled pepper.

  “Okay,” Carl said after the servant had left. “You’re right. The money will go via Veracruz in Mexico and Mexico is slow.” He looked sad. “Petty bank clerks have to prove their power at the expense of us real people.”

  “You have any cash on board?” the commissaris asked.

  “Do I have cash on board?” Carl asked. “With these retard islands around us? Say something goes wrong. You think they have ever heard of credit cards here?”

  “Pay us that second hundred thousand in cash.” The commissaris pointed at an approaching green line. “That must be Haiti.” He unfolded his map. “Maybe not such a good place for cash transactions, but here, next stop, that would be the Dominican Republic. How about this Puerto Plata? That means “money harbor,” does it not? There should be a bank there. Suppose you give me the cash here and drop me off in Puerto Plata tomorrow. I can have your cash transferred to our Amsterdam account.”

  Carl complained. Why should they pay double? The commissaris comforted him, it all came out of the same million due to them later, did it not?

  Yes, if the stolen cargo was recovered.

  It would be, the commissaris assured him, but not if the cash wasn’t provided right now.

  “It hasn’t been earned,” Carl wailed.

  “Nobody gets what is earned,” the commissaris said. “You get what you have negotiated for.” He had read that in a magazine in the airplane flying to Miami.

  The next morning the ship’s drinking water problem hadn’t yet been solved. The cook used bottled water to cook breakfast. The ship was out of milk and eggs Benedict had to be made with nondairy creamer. After brushing his teeth again, the commissaris was helicoptered ashore by Carl.

  “And?” Carl asked when they left the Dominican bank, “What do I get now for my two hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Once we get down to work,” the commissaris said, “we tend to work quickly. More or less have to, you know. It’s like the murder cases we used to solve. Delays wipe out tracks.”

  The commissaris hummed and grinned after the helicopter had landed on the Rodney’s rear deck once again.

  “Glad to see that you feel better now.” Carl switched off the chopper’s engine. “I bet you can see some tracks now, right?”

  “The world is an open book,” the commissaris said.

  “But you have to able to read it,” Grijpstra said after Carl returned from a briefing with his father. “We all have our special skills. You slip up with yours …”

  “… we repair the damage,” the commissaris concluded. He looked concerned. “How is your father?”

  His father was worried, Carl said. Skipper Peter was watching his online computer’s monitors suspended from his cabin’s ceiling. The monitors showed the world’s fluctuating markets. Ambagt Senior had been speculating of late, while concentrating on so-called “turn-around” stocks, buying at what he hoped were lows. “Bad for his heart. Too much tension.”

  Speaking of tension, the commissaris said, it was about time for him to take a nap.

  Grijpstra joined him.

  “What does de Gier know now?” Grijpstra asked when they were back in their cabin.

  “What we know, Henk.”

  “What do we know, sir?”

  The commissaris indicated the bathroom. Grijpstra opened the taps. The commissaris whispered into Grijpstra’s ear.

  “Frogs?” Grijpstra asked.

  “Shshsh,” the commissaris said. “Souza was frightened by frogs, remember? And the other thing de Gier will have found out about is that Quadrant Bank is also an insurer.”

  “Thomas Stewart-Wynne’s employer? That sent him out here?”

  “Since you couldn’t get through to Quadrant from here,” the commissaris whispered, “I tried in Puerto Plata. I spoke to Stewart-Wynne’s chief. Our dead man in the Key West jeep specialized in checking cargo claims.”

  “So the Sibylle was insured after all?” Grijpstra winked slyly. “So what do you think happened?”

  “The piracy happened,” the commissaris said.

  Grijpstra’s smile widened.

  22

  A PLUCKED PARROT

  De Gier met Karate at Key West Airport. De Gier didn’t ask but Karate told him anyway, he wasn’t doing too well. Karate had been squeezed by a fat man who overflowed his seat in the Amsterdam-Miami airplane. “A giant condom filled with yogurt.” The stewardess had been old and ugly. Karate did not demand fawning servility but just a little common pleasant behavior, when a passenger asks for another mini-bag of stale peanuts and another can of lukewarm juice from concentrate, was that too much? Karate indicated his moist crotch. “Happened when the mummy flight-attendant poured coffee. The plane fell into an air pocket. She was in league with the pilot. The pilot had aimed for the air pocket. Coffee time? Into the air pocket, hoho.” The plane’s movie was bad. Ketchup would be on the next flight. He had finked out, offering excuses: his passport had to be renewed, his tropical costume was still at the cleaners. Ketchup had found a new pal to sleep over with. Fine. Okay. It wasn’t that Karate insisted on faithfulness, no sir, he knew full well that loyalty to a pal wasn’t “being in with the crowd anymore,” but, hear here, when you’re working on a project you make time to be together—or
was he being old-fashioned now?

  And what was all this wetness in Florida? “Since when does it pour in this tropical super swamp?”

  And why did Karate have to sit on the luggage carrier of a rental bicycle? What was wrong with hiring a Mercedes or a Ferrari? “Damn it all, I got mud on my pants now.” If de Gier wouldn’t mind could he perhaps avoid the next puddle? “Oh, please! Again!”

  And what kind of birds were flying above them? Not vultures, were they?

  And why were de Gier’s face and hands all puffy? Bug bites? Woke up in the cemetery? This very cemetery they were passing? Woke up in the nude? Had been lucky that he hadn’t been eaten by the cemetery’s crocodiles slithering from the swampy area over there? Crocodiles dig up graves to get at the corpses? But what was a nude de Gier waking in the Key West cemetery for?

  Papaya juice in a lap dance bar? Been taken out to the cemetery by pernicious parrots? Hahaha.

  No, no, Karate wasn’t laughing, he was just clearing his throat. Karate had caught a bad cold in the airplane, been infected by a circulating virus. “Same air keeps coming by. Same virus gets you good each time.” Karate was still coughing when de Gier, in a suite in the Eggemoggin Hotel, explained what Karate, and Ketchup who was about to arrive, had to do that night. All the main points were repeated clearly.

  Subject is Mickey Donegan. William Street trailer camp. A degenerate de Gier look-alike, complete with ridiculous mustache. The Perfidious Parrot. Old convertible Chevy in bad shape. No alcohol for him and Ketchup while the project was on. No papaya juice either. Bottled sodas only, to be opened in their presence. A map of Key West. Yes, Karate would study same with attention. The black cross was William Street, the red cross, The Perfidious Parrot.

  “Got it?” de Gier asked.

  Karate had gotten most if it. He didn’t get why de Gier wasn’t doing this himself, why he, Karate, and Ketchup, the treacherous fink, had to come all the way from Amsterdam at their own expense—okay, they did have that free pass on Royal Dutch Airlines—all the way to sopping-wet swampy Florida to arrange a “situation.” Surely this wasn’t because of the fee Ambagt & Son was paying Karate and Ketchup for finding Grijpstra and de Gier a million dollar job, was it? Surely not. This couldn’t be some type of revenge, could it? Really. Petty. Did de Gier have any idea how tired Karate was? Ever heard of jet lag? Plus lack of sleep because of some stupid movie that just missed being bad enough to make him switch off the earphones?