Just a Corpse at Twilight

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Your friend's trouble?"

  "Psychological, ma'am." Grijpstra smiled. "Not to worry. Besides, his grandmother was Jewish."

  She smiled too. "What's this Jewish?"

  "Because you're concerned," Grijpstra said. "You don't want your plane to be blown up, you want to know I'm okay."

  "Are you okay?" the clerk asked.

  "Oh yes," Grijpstra said.

  "So what's your friend's trouble?"

  Grijpstra sighed. "Money maybe?"

  "He doesn't have money?"

  "He has lots and lots of money," Grijpstra said. "He's free of needs. It's hard to be free of needs."

  "Your friend is religious?"

  "No," Grijpstra said.

  "It sometimes helps to keep busy."

  "Are you religious?" Grijpstra asked.

  "No," the clerk said. "My husband is. He says he's got to be to face the riddle. Do you face the riddle?"

  "I'd rather look the other way."

  "What if it won't let you?"

  "Then it makes me crazy, ma'am."

  "Do you have lots and lots of money?"

  "Some," Grijpstra said.

  "So you're free of needs?"

  "Some," Grijpstra said, "but the vacuum doesn't worry me that much. It's beauty that makes me crazy. I try to get it by painting upside-down ducks on canals. I also try to play it on drums."

  "Do you ever get it?"

  "No," Grijpstra said. He also said that he wasn't carrying any arms or explosives and hadn't accepted any parcels from strangers. She didn't check his luggage.

  "You believe me?" Grijpstra asked.

  "Some," the clerk said. She smiled.

  She looked Egyptian. He thought he'd seen her as a sculpture between hieroglyphics in a museum in Leyden. She had long black hair, an olive skin, very large eyes, and softly carved lips. He asked her. She said her folks had come from Egypt.

  The Boeing, rumbling up to the runway, was accompanied by two armored trucks with machine-gun turrets sticking out of their backs. Inside the plane a movie was starting up: Robert Redford in Cuba. Grijpstra watched, listening to music on another channel: Bill Evans on piano, Eddy Gomez on bass. The piano right hand was strong, like a solo horn almost, and the bass—Grijpstra thought that the instrument's bridge had to be moved up to provide such cello-like sounds—answered the piano's questions a little, coming up with questions ofits own too, so that the harmo- nious dialogue might deepen. Robert Redford's tropical landscape setting was both romantic and fearful, depending on whether the camera focused on beautiful people on unpolluted beaches or on propeller warplanes strafing beautiful people on unpolluted beaches. Grijpstra liked the architecture of the Cuban mansions and the sultry actress who duetted, as Mr. Gomez's bass became her voice here and there, with Robert Redford, whose pleasing profile took on sound in the sensitive jazz piano's notes. The attractive actress could be proud of her country, and she was being very hospitable, very ready to share.

  Grijpstra slept, seeing a sultry Lorraine sharing the magic of the Maine coast with de Gier, then woke gasping as she got kicked down a cliff for her troubles.

  Chapter 3

  The commissaris, old, wrinkled, small, thin, reflected on his status ofotium cum dignitate, while watching his knees emerging like twin islands out of the foam ofhis bubble bath. Out of office with honor, so it said, in Latin and gold lettering, on a little mahogany shield handed over by Amsterdam's chief constable when the commissaris, chiefofdetectives, retired after forty years of representing the queen to serve the people. Katrien, wrapped in a towel, sat on a stool next to the bath and observed her lover.

  Katrien had her hair in curlers. The commissaris had lost his last hair, except a little fluff on a narrow chest. Katrien frowned. "So what are you saying? That de Gier doesn't kick women off cliffs? So what do you know? You don't even know the story about the boots and the laces."

  The commissariss head disappeared at one end of the bath, his foot appeared at the other. The foot moved closer to the faucets. The big toe on the foot adjusted the hot faucet. Toe and foot disappeared. Head reappeared.

  "Don't do that," Katrien said. "My father did that. He died. He was having a heart attack. My mother thought he was joking."

  The commissaris washed his spectacles and handed them over to Katrien.

  "Yes?"

  "Please dry them," the commissaris said.

  She dried the glasses, leaned over, carefully adjusted the frame across his nose and ears. "Yes?"

  "Thank you for drying my glasses," the commissaris said. "I wish you wouldn't wear those curlers, dear."

  "Who says you have to look at me? Nellie is right, you know. De Gier shows his true colors now that he's on his own. You could have seen it earlier on but you never wanted to, of course. Just think of the sort oflife Rinus was leading."

  "Ah." The commissaris smiled.

  "Yes," Katrien said. "Too late now, Jan. If I had practiced law, as I wanted to, we could have had an affair. We could have been living apart together. You could have had cats like Oliver and Tabriz and women like what's her name."

  "Esther?"

  "Can't think of her name now," Katrien said. "Rinus had so many. That motorcycle cop from Friesland, the one who could ride off on one wheel. The long-legged woman."

  "Hylkje?"

  "Stop licking your chops," Katrien said.

  "What sort of law would you have practiced?" the commissaris asked. "Real estate transactions? I think you would have liked that, Katrien. Property attorneys always buy bargains for their own account."

  "Yes," she said. "You would have been happier, living alone. Being free, like Rinus. Reading books you don't quite understand. Having me out of the way. Playing that silly mini-trumpet."

  "Don't you prefer it to his flute?"

  "Yes," Katrien said. "De Gier sounds better on the trumpet. But where does that surrealism get him? Eh? To killing a poor woman?"

  "What's with the boots and the laces?" the commissaris asked. "And why be so hard on the boy? You love Rinus, Katrien. You sent him chocolate for Christmas. You make him Indonesian noodles with shrimp crackers when he shows up and I've got to eat it too. You make him stay here so he can mess up my bathroom. You won't leave him alone. You make me jealous. He writes you letters."

  "You know what he wrote?" Katrien asked. "That Native Americans call that part of the coast the 'Twilight Zone.' That it's very strange there. That it's the right place to slip away. Away from what, Jan?"

  "Away from being a rheumatic in a cold bath," the commissaris said. He struggled to his feet, reaching out to his wife. She caught him as he stepped out of the tub, wrapped him in a towel, rubbed him dry.

  "You feel better?"

  "Hot water always soaks away some of it," the commissaris said. "The boots and the laces?"

  She told him the tale that she had heard from Nellie. Nellie had heard it from Grijpstra ("Nellie Blabbermouth," the commissaris said. "No wonder." "No wonder what, Jan?" "Never mind what, Katrien."), Grijpstra had heard it from de Gier.

  Grijpstra and de Gier, both still with the police but about to break free, were spending another evening in their favorite bar, where they could sit in with the house musicians, mostly piano and percussion. They'd been playing "Endless Blues," a composition by de Gier with some interesting dynamics that built carefully from chorus to chorus, and even from section to section within a chorus ("You should write liner notes, Katrien." "You want to hear the rest of this, Jan?" "Yes, Katrien, I'm sorry.") and with some hot scat singing by Grijpstra ("Grijpstra plays drums," the commissaris said. "That means using four limbs already. Now he sings, too?").

  Katrien sighed.

  They were in the bedroom by now. The commissaris flopped down on the bed, got up, kissed Katrien, lay down again. "Carry on."

  "Don't order me around. So Grijpstra sang, and he also did his rising press roll, and the flutter on the side of the snare drum, and the mallet work on bells. He did everything."

  "
You were there?"

  "Of course."

  "You never told me."

  "I never tell you lots of things," Katrien said. "I was there with Nellie. You were in New York, at the police convention."

  "I never go to police conventions."

  "Yes," she said. "Please, don't talk rubbish, Jan. Remember that reserve policeman whose uncle immigrated to America and who maybe was murdered in Central Park, and nobody paid attention, and it was his favorite uncle, for the poor fellow had no parents, and he was all upset, being alone in the world now, and asked you to do something. And you said New York was outside your jurisdiction but then that convention came up and you went anyway and found out who did it? With the seeing-eye dog? The dog with the gland trouble? And you had to take care of her too? And the pathologist and the dead girl in the car? With the maggots on her mouth?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "We all thought it was spittle at first but car trunks get hot. So you were running around town with Nellie?"

  "But de Gier was on his own," Katrien said. "He played strangely that night. Like Don Cherry. You know Don Cherry?"

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "De Gier likes Don Cherry, that's why he got the mini-trumpet. But de Gier doesn't play that shrilly."

  "He's got a softer tone," Katrien said, "but not that night He was loud but not bombastic, more like he was in pain. There was a black woman in the bar who picked up on that and she kept singing back to him. They had this dialogue—he was asking and she was giving."

  "Words?"

  "Just sounds," Katrien said. "She had a beautiful voice, like a bell, like a cymbal too sometimes, you could almost see the sound. Nellie said she could touch it."

  "Were you drinking?"

  "Nellie brought some pot," Katrien said. "She used to grow it, you know? Out in that courtyard of hers? Nether-weed. The strongest?

  "I would smoke pot," the commissaris said, "just to hear more music from the inside, but I don't want to run around looking for chocolate when all the stores are closed."

  "Yes," Katrien said.

  "You smoke a lot of pot with Nellie?"

  "We decided against it," Katrien said. "Nellie is too easily addicted."

  "You're not easily addicted?"

  "Remember those codeine pills I got hooked on?" Katrien asked. "Remember the trouble you had to stop smoking?"

  "Boots and laces," the commissaris said again. "Let's hear it, Katrien."

  "So," Katrien said. "The bar closed, they always do close in the end, and the woman with the bell voice had left, she had someone with her, and Nellie took Grijpstra home and I took a cab and de Gier was alone again, so he went to another bar and another, and to some all-night liquor place and then he got lost."

  "Lost?" the commissaris asked.

  "In the Red Light District." Katrien pursed her lips. "Your star detective, dead drunk, at four A.M., the light starting up already, birds singing. Your Rinus de Gier tried to have a good time with a prostitute and he had to take his nice new laced boots off, he insisted. And then afterward, after having rolled across the poor woman a few times and been satisfied by artificial means . . ."

  "He told you that?" The commissaris gaped.

  "He told Grijpstra," Katrien said, "who told Nellie . . ."

  "No wonder," the commissaris said.

  She snuggled next to him on the bed. "Why do you keep saying 'no wonder,' Jan?"

  "What artificial means, Katrien?"

  "Some electrical gadget."

  The commissaris hissed his surprise. "They have them for men too?"

  "Yes, dear. Artificial vaginas. They squeeze and throb.

  You switch them off afterward and they never argue. You want to hear the rest of this?"

  The commissaris grimaced.

  "So," Katrien said, "de Gier gets impressed easily, that's why he bought those lace-up boots. He'd seen a movie. The boots were stylish. Wearing them made him think he was out in the desert fighting Nazis. After he had been relieved he wanted not only to put his boots on again but to lace them up too so that he could shoot Field Marshal Rommel in the Sahara. The woman helped him with one boot but he got mouthy with her so she put him outside, and then he walked home, one boot on, one boot off."

  "To his apartment?"

  "Right."

  "From the whore's quarter?"

  "Yes, Jan."

  "No cabs?"

  "He was swaying so badly no cabdriver would risk it."

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "They don't like passengers throwing up on their back seats. Poor de Gier. Totally out of control. Oh dear."

  The commissaris slept badly that night, tossing, turning, mumbling to himself.

  "Who is DArtagnan?" Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder.

  The commissaris had been a musketeer, one ofthe three in the French novel; de Gier was D'Artagnan, his pal, but de Gier had got shot.

  "Why are you speaking German?" Katrien asked, shaking his shoulder again.

  The commissaris was replaying a talk show where elderly German middle-class people, on TV, were asked to review their lives. They kept saying that, looking back, they saw nothing but mistakes and calamities; looking ahead they saw only death.

  "Please," Katrien said, "stop rubbing your feet. Now what are you doing?"

  He mumbled that he was cleaning off dog poop. He'd been walking through the city, barefoot, the last citizen left. All others had fled because Holland's dikes were about to break behind them, due to global warming that melted the polar ice caps. On his way out he kept getting stuck in dog poop. Katrien made hot milk and honey and sprinkled cinnamon on top. She watched him sip.

  "Calms the nerves." She patted his cheek. "Feel better now?"

  A little later he was mumbling again. "Rinus? I'm coining. Hold on, my boy."

  "Go for it, mon Capitaine," Katrien whispered.

  The commissaris slept well after that, and woke up with a plan. He unfolded his plan.

  "Maritime maps of the Maine coast? A tape recorder that connects to a phone?" Katrien asked. "Where do I get those? Connect the gadget to Nellie's phone? Help her to tape her conversations with Grijpstra? Tell her what to ask him? Please . . . where do you think you are? At your ofHce?"

  Chapter 4

  "Bright and early," Grijpstra said.

  El Al had left Amsterdam's Schiphol at 2:00 A.M., flown quietly for five and a half hours, a nice tail wind pushing, and touched down at Boston's Logan at 1:30 A.M.

  "Wow," Grijpstra said. He had traveled back in time, he was half an hour younger, he could start part of his life again. If he kept doing this he'd be a baby, still remembering everything, ofcourse. Then what would he do? Be an artist? Stay away from de Gier? Make quite sure he'd never arrive at Boston's Logan at 1:30 A.M. again, with no one to take him nowhere?

  There was an agent still on duty but she wanted to go home. "I'm sorry, sir, there's no connection to Maine." She checked her screen. "Flights begin at eleven A.M. but they're all booked up for today and tomorrow." She smiled sadly.

  "It's the season, sir."

  "Bus?" Grijpstra asked. "Please?"

  She thought there might be one at 8:30 A.M. but it might be full and he'd have to connect to at least one other bus and the total trip might take twelve hours, stop-over time not included.

  "Air taxi?" Grijpstra asked. "Please?"

  All the numbers the agent dialed played recorded messages that suggested waiting for beeps.

  The agent went home.

  Grijpstra went to the restroom.

  There was another man there, within the vast emptiness of tiled walls and ceilings. The other man did what Grijpstra did—unzip, let go, wait, drip, shake, zip, push faucet, wash hands, push soap button, wash hands, pull towel, rip towel, rub, drop towel into bin.

  "Mannequins," the man said. "That's what we are, doing the routine. Like on earth, so in heaven." He looked at Grijpstra. "Don't you think? That this is what heaven's going to be? All this clean space?" He gestured toward the restroom's tiled w
alls and ceiling. "Sinless?"

  Grijpstra was cursing, both his fate and this fellow man, maybe a moron.

  "You sick?" the man asked. He looked into Grijpstra's eyes. "You don't look sick. Got something in your throat?" He clapped his hands. "Go on. Cough. Clear it."

  "I was swearing," Grijpstra said, "in Dutch."

  "You're from Pennsylvania?"

  "From where?"

  The man and Grijpstra shook clean hands. The man's name was Ishmael. He said he was from the Point in Maine. That'd be in Woodcock County. Grijpstra said he was from Amsterdam. Thafd be in Holland. Ishmael said his sister had married a man from there, that'd be in Copenhagen. Where the breakfast buns came from.

  "What?" Grijpstra asked.

  "The sticky buns," Ishmael said. He knew more, about Danish cheese called Gouda, about Saab cars you could win as prizes that go with magazine subscriptions, about Hans Brinker sticking his finger in the dike.

  "Who is Hans Brinker?"

  Ishmael said Hans was the Dutch boy you saw on paint labels, and that Hans was also known from textbooks. Finger in hole in dike. Grijpstra thought of Oedipus, desiring his mother, frustrated by his father, therefore, symbolically, sticking his finger in any hole at all. Hans Oedipus?

  The name was definitely Brinker, Ishmael said, and Brinker specifically filled holes in Dutch dikes. Ishmael was surprised Grijpstra didn't know his own national hero.

  Grijpstra, although willing to please, couldn't place the boy's name.

  Ishmael also knew about Holland being a part of Germany. There was World War Two, but he wasn't one to bear grudges, even if a cousin didn't return from the Battle of the Bulge. Too long ago, from the black-and-white days—all that old anger . . . even so, Japan was coming on strong again.

  "Holland fought Germany, too," Grijpstra said. "For all of five days."

  "Defeat?"

  Grijpstra admitted defeat.

  "Germany still got you?"

  "They gave us back."

  "Didn't want to keep you, eh?"

  It was all joined into a kind of Europe now, Grijpstra said. They were in it together. That might be better. "Wipe out some borders."

  "Like the Canadian border," Ishmael said, "and the Mexican while we're at it. They aren't there anyway. I never see them when I fly across."