Just a Corpse at Twilight

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "Daddy-O," she said, her face hardly cooling, "you don't have to be so clever." She leaned over to peck his cheek. "I was about to tell you all about it."

  Chapter 10

  "So what eke is new?" de Gier asked Grijpstra across a table at Beth's Diner, where he was positioning the table's honey bear within a circle of sauce bottles. "I could have told you that. Isn't that the way law enforcement works? After Aki was treated at the Hospital of the Loving Little Lamb in Lordsville, the cops must have jumped her, with a shitload of charges to back them up. She had been running around all over the country, being bad..."

  "Did she tell you how bad?"

  De Gier waved vaguely. "Overdrawn checks, theft of rental cars, stealing from Johns, drug charges, and"—he dropped his eyelids halfway—"I think she said this. . . mail fraud? Anyway, there she was, in the hollow of the law's hand, so to speak. Rather than being squeezed, she became an informer. She works for the DEA, watching the coast."

  "What's mail fraud?"

  "Forgot to ask," de Gier said. "I think the post office here has its own inspection." He waved around him. "Free democracies are tricky places."

  "This one has good roads," Grijpstra said. "I like that interstate. I tell you, if I ever get really distraught back home, I'll take that El Al plane out here again and rent one of these Ford products of yours and just drive."

  "You'll fill asleep."

  "I'll hire a beautiful lesbian lady driver."

  "Aki won't duplicate." De Gier smiled. "So we're doing good." The smile thinned out. "Both you and I, being experienced interrogators, get through to subject. She tells all, in-cludingand up to how the DE A directs her tojameson, Maine. She needs a job for a front and there's Beth looking for a compatible live-in waitress." De Gier tried a new configuration, Honey Bear dominated by the combined forces ofWorcester-shire and horseradish sauce. "The princess and her princess buy a CD player and listen to jazz trumpets for ever after."

  They studied their menus.

  Grijpstra looked over his. "So what?"

  De Gier nodded. "We should play that. I've got it all on paper. I've been trying to learn but it's hard to transcribe Miles, he sounds incomprehensible at half time, you ever noticed that? The man is just too subtle. At half time that probably doubles. Now if you play Clifford Brown at half time nothing much changes. But all-enlightened practitioner Davis.. ."

  "Yes. Yes."

  "You listening?"

  "Sure," Grijpstra said. "But I meant 'So what?'—not the tune, the question. So what if Aki tells us she's spying on us and that she loves us and won't tell so we tell her what we're doing here and she tells on us anyway? The foreigners she has nothing to do with anyway thrown out? The tricksters tricked?"

  De Gier laughed.

  Grijpstra shook a heavy head. "Not funny, Rinus."

  "But we didn't tell her. . . No!" De Gier put his hand over his mouth. "You did tell her? About me and Lorraine? You didn't. Did you? Of course you did. She seduced you. Alone, shy, lonesome . . . oh, shit. . ."

  Grijpstra grinned. "Scared you?"

  "So you didn't tell her anything," de Gier said. "Okay, this is what I know. Aki and Lorraine were friendly. Sister biologists. They've been out kayaking on occasion, to hear the loons chant at daybreak. Has Aki missed Lorraine yet?"

  "She didn't say so."

  "So she may still think we're here for drugs." De Gier moved more bottles around. "I was smoking pot the night I pushed Lorraine. She gave it to me too. It came from Jeremy Island, it's all over the place there, hidden under trees mostly. The fishermen grow it."

  "With the sheriff's blessing?"

  "Of course," de Gier said. "Give and take. Yankees are like the Dutch—why fight ifyou can split the dollar mostly your way? But the homegrown stuff is hard work and doesn't compare in quality to what Hairy Harry is bringing in."

  "Or doesn't bring in."

  "What?"

  Aki came to take their order. De Gier ordered crab rolls for both. "Aren't you lucky?" Aki said to Grijpstra. "You get to eat again and I rush straight back to work. Aren't we busy?" More fishermen were coming in, she had to hurry off.

  "Didn't Aki tell you about the arrests near the Point?" Grijpstra asked.

  "I heard," de Gier said. "You mean the DEA missing out on the truckers who came to pick up a ship's load of Jamaican or Guatemalan or some other top-quality pot, hidden here near the Point? I read about it. So what happened really?"

  "Aki didn't tell you?" Grijpstra looked surprised. "I thought she told all."

  "Not all." De Gier looked modest. "I'm not the fatherly type."

  "I'm not sure about the details," Grijpstra said. "She said someone spotted the shipment from the air, so that was probably Ishmael. Her contact told her he saw stacks ofbales, in camouflage-colored covers hidden on the shore somewhere near here. So Aki tells her secret employer, and the DEA tells Hairy Harry, as it's his turf. Hairy Harry and Billy Boy hide in the woods waiting for someone to pick up the consignment. The DEA is there too, eager pimply youths according to Aki, lots of them, hands on guns, but Hairy Harry, being the local warlord, is in charge."

  "Oh dear," de Gier said.

  "Right. An eighteen-wheeler backs up slowly into the glade, the driver and his mates jump out of the truck's cabin ..."

  ". . . and before they can put their hands on the merchandise Hairy Harry is out there snapping on handcufts." De Gier nodded wisely. "That's how it goes."

  "Need to hear the rest of it?"

  "If you please."

  "So the truckers tell the judge they were parking the truck for lunch, and just as they were going to break out the hamburgers there's Bald Baby and they don't know why. How could they know there were bales of marijuana hidden in the bushes? 'Jeez, Judge . . . what kind of a place is this Maine anyway?'"

  "And the judge says he regrets the inconvenience caused to these nice out-of-state truck drivers trying to have lunch at the wayside."

  "Never underestimate local authority's expertise at exploiting its area."

  "Hairy Harry did lose his shipment, though," de Gier said. "He must have been saddened. But what the hell, you lose ten percent, ninety percent is still millions."

  Aki brought the crab rolls, a foot long, well filled.

  Grijpstra ate. "You know the biggest-size crab roll in Holland now?" He held his thumb and index finger two inches apart. "Costs a day's wage too." He leaned over. "About this case of yours. Know your enemy. Remember the stratagem? Say I used that on Aki, flipped into her mind. Say we can use the trick on the others too. Aki told me that Flash and Bad George are musical, Flash on the tuba, Bad George on the fiddle. School-band days. A musical get-together?"

  De Gier thought that was funny. He choked on his crab roll.

  Grijpstra waited. "Okay? Aki said Ishmael plays piano."

  "A faulty upright," de Gier said, still smiling in spite of his pains. "We tried 'St. Louis Blues' together. I wailed. He pecked. But Flash Farnsworth on the tuba?" De Gier choked again. Grijpstra, eyes closed, chewing and smiling, ignored the disturbance.

  "I'm okay now," de Gier said.

  Grijpstra swallowed. "Here is what we do. I want you to tell Flash and Bad George that you're not going through with this extortion nonsense, you want to get that bullshit out of the way. That you like them, and that dumb dog is okay too, that you don't want them to think they have something on you. You can pay them something for expenses, hold out a little more for later."

  De Gier nodded. "Fine."

  "You offer a get-together party."

  "Do some bonding?" de Gier asked.

  "Force a bit of a showdown," Grijpstra said. "We're running out oftime. Aki was over at Lorraine's quite a lot?"

  "Yes." De Gier nodded.

  "And she could go again any time soon," Grijpstra said, "and then raise the alarm." He ruefully contemplated his empty plate.

  "Look," de Gier said, shifting about on his chair a bit, "I know what you're getting at—create some easy atmosphe
re, get somebody to talk so that we can find out where the body is. I don't care, of course, and you're in charge, but what do you think those jokers, Flash and Bad George, would do if they got irritable, or downright angry?"

  "Let's see now," Grijpstra said. "They might dig up the body and show it around."

  "Which makes them accessories," de Gier said. "Whatever way they present their case, either they buried Lorraine themselves or they watched me do it. So why haven't they told? Because they mean to suck me dry? That's another charge."

  "So they won't do that," Grijpstra said. "They would rather drop a hint. Sherifffinds Lorraine's remains. After that the finger points. At who? At you."

  "Because of the autopsy," de Gier said, "coroner concludes that body was abused, causing miscarriage . . ."

  "No evidence for Harry to link killer and corpse," Grijpstra said. "Flash and Bad George know that too. Nothing but vague conjecture . . . slippery stuff." He pushed his chair back. He held his head to the side. He dropped his voice. "But rattling little guys with loving kindness may be a good way to find Snow White."

  De Gier looked nervous. "You sure that's the way to play this?"

  "I don't want to play at all," Grijpstra said, "but I'm in this now. They have nothing on you. Nobody saw you kick the woman. I don't want you paying off hoodlums."

  De Gier smiled. "Hoodlums—Flash and Bad George? I don't really mind giving them money. They can fix up their tub."

  "They won't get greedy and keep hounding you for more?"

  "Yes," de Gier nodded. "There's that too."

  "For sure there's that too," Grijpstra said. "And maybe that's still not the point. You want to find out ifyou did what it seems you did. You can't accept that in yourself. You don't really believe it. Without the body you'll never know."

  "I can't live with this," de Gier said. "You know that, don't you?"

  "What if you have to?"

  De Gier shook his head. "Maybe I could accept it in you. My best friend turns out to be a killer, so? Man has to use whatever happens to be around." He sucked in his cheeks, raised his upper lip, and imitated the commissaris's slightly shrill voice. "Gentlemen, please remember: You can only use people the way they come, not the way you'd like them to come."

  "So you're a user now too?" Grijpstra laughed, then looked serious. "You would still want me for a friend even if I kicked Nellie down her new oak stairs?"

  "You'd be sorry, wouldn't you?" de Gier asked.

  "Are you sorry?"

  "Yes," de Gier said. "I'll never drink or do dope again."

  "Try a year."

  "Ever," de Gier said. "It releases the wrong demons."

  "Maybe you have to accept them in yourself."

  "And keep calling you to put them back in their cages?"

  "Do what you have to do," Grijpstra said. "See if I care. I don't drink either now. We can be boring together."

  "This may be another possible aspect of the human predicament in all its horrifying glory," de Gier said. "A problem you become aware of when it is too late. I could be programmed not to be able to handle liquor, genetically burdened with the chronic and incurable disease alcoholism, unaware of evil powers that control me."

  "We'd have to go by the symptoms first," Grijpstra said. "We haven't even determined whether you pushed or kicked the missing person. We haven't got anywhere. You're no help either. You didn't even tell me what you knew about Aki working for the DEA here." He gestured. "I know, I know, that would lead to Hairy Harry and you claim the sheriffhas nothing to do with this, all I have to find is the body. But that sheriff decided to kill me the minute he set eyes on me."

  By then they were out of the restaurant. De Gier opened the car door for Grijpstra, gently pushed him inside.

  Grijpstra sat, watching trees flash by. "I don't need this, Rinus. Hairy Harry's business interferes with what you got me out here for. There's more going on here than your personality disorder. Its like everything I ever try to do: In order to fix Nellie's faucet you have to clean out the shed to find the clamp."

  De Gier parked the car, opened Grijpstra's door, pulled Grijpstra out, held him by the shoulders, aimed him at the Point's dock.

  "Sheriff Hairy Harry complicates my life," Grijpstra said.

  De Gier shoved gently.

  Grijpstra walked slowly down the path, between junipers and a picket fence covered with flowering vines.

  "Nothing changes," Grijpstra said. "You're still Mr. Hot Shit. I can't stand you as a client. You should be helping out. You're another complication."

  "Me?" de Gier asked. "I'm the loser here. I'm underfoot? How can I possibly ever get in your way?"

  Grijpstra nodded energetically. "I keep tripping over you. Like over the sheriff. Hairy Harry's heavy hand is all over these islands. I'll have to fix you fuckers."

  De Gier rowed. Grijpstra sat on the dinghy's back seat. There was no wind and the little boat skimmed along quietly, driven by de Gier"s long strokes. A loon floated by, chuckling dreamily, its long head pointed down. Late sunlight lit up white polka dots on the bird's wings. The loon lifted its wings briefly, showing its startling white chest.

  "Aki calls it the magic bird of Maine," Grijpstra said.

  De Gier leaned on his oars for a moment. "You did like Aki, you got that much . .."

  Grijpstra nodded. "When fate throws strangers together, briefly ..."

  De Gier grunted agreement.

  Grijpstra put out his hands in enthusiasm. "You know, I often think, that must be heaven: brief relationships between sympathetic strangers, no hassle, no sex. Who needs sex? I'm too old." He patted his belly. "You don't want to inflict ugliness on a partner. No, just drive up and down that interstate and eat mussels, or what we had at that oyster restaurant in Boston, quahogs? Stuffed . . ."

  "That's nice "

  "Know what we did afterward? In the Parker House suite? Aki sat in her huge bed, and I sat in my huge bed, and the waiters rolled in all that room service. Pirouetting, graceful chaps, lifting huge silver lids off huge silver dishes. ..."

  "But you just had those quahogs," de Gier said. "What is this? The final feast? You eat instead of. . ."

  "No, no. We did this right. We went to another hotel in between, with a bar and a turning platform, big black man on piano, same hair as your friend Flash but more tufted up, they did that Don Cherry thing you like, a Thelonious theme with percussion, no trumpet, a cello instead, doing both rhythm and solo. What is it called now?" Grijpstra touched his knee with a knuckle. "'Bemsha Swing!'"

  ". . . cello didn't get squeaky?"

  ". . . sleeping apart together. That's the way to really partake oftrue intimacy." Grijpstra pointed a finger. "Some think they always have to go the whole way... no... the cello was fine. . . ."

  "Why did you take a suite in that hotel?" de Gier asked. "Weren't there any rooms?"

  "Why did you buy this two-thousand-dollar dinghy?" Grijpstra asked. "Aki and I passed a marina. Used dories on sale. Good solid fiberglass. Cheap enough too."

  "A handcrafted cedar dinghy weighing under sixty pounds is more fun."

  "True," Grijpstra said.

  "I was just curious, Henk. I'm happy for you. I don't care what you spend, the more the better." De Gier frowned. "It's hard to think of things sometimes, expensive things, I mean. Mostly you don't need them."

  "You could be sailing the Macho Bandido" Grijpstra said. "But you don't want the hassle. I've mostly run out of things to spend money on too. Nellie didn't even have a mortgage. Her house is just perfect now. I had to break out a wall to fit the new TV in but that was the last luxury she wanted."

  "Spending is easier when you travel," de Gier said, "but I think I'm about done with that now. If you can clear this up I might go back with you."

  "Help me out with the agency?"

  "I'm open to offers."

  "What if we don't clear this up?"

  De Gier pulled on the oars again. He was shaking his head.

  Chapter 11

&nbs
p; Grijpstra's nap lasted till late evening. He walked along the island's little beaches after that, and set off a bear alarm, a nylon line strung between large boulders, that brought out de Gier.

  "Nice here," de Gier said, putting his camera away. So it was, Grijpstra thought. Moonlight on a calm sea, the never-figure-out-able zillion stars everywhere, seals assuming their tail-up, head-up banana postures on rocks being bared by low tide, a quiet ripple further along, cut, de Gier claimed, by a curious dolphin's dorsal fin.

  "Very nice," Grijpstra agreed. "Proves things are okay maybe. Here, for instance."

  "But there are lots of Heres. Most Heres are bad"

  "Bad enough to row away from forever?"

  "But ifI row out ofHere altogether," de Gier said, "no bad Here is anywhere."

  Grijpstra frowned.

  "It goes further than that," de Gier said. "It includes you too. The world needs me to be. You need me to be."

  "If you're not here, none of any possible Heres are here?" Grijpstra asked. "You know that's all bullshit, don't you? I'll still be here. Eating hundred-dollar crab rolls in Amsterdam and watching people starve in the Here-Too places that the news is always checking out for dying babies."

  "Switch off your TV," de Gier said, "then use your unlimited Diners Club credit card and spend the night harmonizing your spirit with the likes of Aki."

  "Just one night," Grijpstra said. "One night ofFdoesn't mean that I don't suffer the human problem. Don't get so smart, Rinus."

  "Now that we're on the subject again"—de Gier raised an eyebrow—"did anything between you and Aki, eh . . ."

  "No," Grijpstra said.

  "Look," de Gier said. "Maybe we don't agree philosophically but we can still be friends. Tell me. I've got this reputation but I don't really ever know how to be with women. It's very complicated. There's this theory that homosexuality is linked to being immature, and you must have done your fatherly/friendly thing again. You're sure nothing happened?"

  They were back in the pagoda, drinking Louisiana coffee and chicory on the second floor's gallery. "This coffee is good and strong," Grijpstra said. "Most coffee here is weak."

  "Regular American coffee is weak so that the citizens can drink it all day," de Gier lectured. "Because the country is worked by robots now. There's nothing more to do. Humans pour coffee into the great gap offree time. Drinking thirty cups a day is something to do."