The Hollow-Eyed Angel

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  The commissaris remembered that, in the dream, the tram driver's voice was deep and husky. He wondered what this could mean. Was he feeding a demon or a goddess? The sharing of his cheese sandwiches and apple with the long-legged creature had been erotically interesting, despite the fact — or maybe because — his dream companion stared at him with empty eye sockets. The commissaris remembered that, as a young boy, adult women, when they displayed their legs, often drove him mad with desire.

  What could the symbol of the blond tram driver's legs have to do with his present quest?

  Cats were passing the restaurant's windows and the three musicians behind the counter were harmonizing their song, much encouraged by the cafe's clients.

  The commissaris concentrated on the painting of the youthful and naked Mamere and her tongue-lolling dog under the palm tree of her native Haiti.

  "You like?" the real Mamere asked when she finally served the eggs. He nodded. She pointed at the huge painting. "That was dreamtime when I got my sons." She named the men behind the cafe's counter. "Dieudonne, Zazeu and FilsTrois," Mamere said proudly. "I very fertile then."

  "Beautiful voices Dieudonne, Zazeu and FilsTrois have," the commissaris said.

  "You better accent in French than in English,"

  Mamere said. "What you do for profession?"

  The commissaris said that he was a policeman from Amsterdam, investigating the recent death of a countryman, another Hollandais, near Central Park West.

  "Ah," Mamere said noncommittally, then rushed off to pour more coffee.

  Back in his suite the commissaris still had a few minutes before he was to be picked up. He looked down at the park. There were benches there where people kept sitting down and getting up. Young men on roller skates whizzed around at high speed. The commissaris noticed a system in the complicated movements, a well-organized activity. He concluded that, possibly, drugs were being dealt. He watched a young woman, dressed in a neat suit with a tailored blouse: an office worker, a secretary maybe. She made signs at one of the roller skaters. She raised her left hand, made a fist, then made her thumb pop up. Then she got up and sat down on another bench. The roller skater sped by the vacated bench and scooped up a green piece of paper. Another roller skater passed the waiting woman and dropped something in her lap.

  There was a knock at the door. Chief O'Neill came in. "How're you doing, Yan?"

  Yan was doing fine. He showed O'Neill 'what was going on below.

  O'Neill nodded. "The roller skaters are members of Trevor's gang. Small stuff. Dime bags. Retail bullshit. We're after Trevor for the murder of Maggotmaid. Or, rather, Hurrell is after Trevor." The chief smiled. "We all have our hang-ups."

  O'Neill talked about Trevor while he drove the commissaris to the lecture. Traffic was congested, but they had ample time. The commissaris learned why Hurrell was particularly interested in Trevor E. Lee, an oil heir from Houston who had wasted his fortune and was now going all out to make up for his losses.

  "It's kind of personal," O'Neill said. "Hurrell has just got to get Trevor. I don't like that much but I think we better give in a bit, for the sergeant's peace of mind." O'Neill grinned. "If there is such a thing. A contradiction in terms. How can something as essentially restless as a mind be peaceful?"

  "Just before falling asleep," the commissaris said.

  O'Neill laughed. "Or when it isn't working." He tapped the commissaris's arm. "Here is the deal with Trevor. Trevor killed Maggotmaid, we're sure of that. He got her up for the party, plied her with heroin, got her on a table for a sex show and discovered she was male. Or had been male. She'd had the operation. Russo didn't mention that at the lecture."

  "Oh dear," the commissaris said. "And you can't arrest the suspect?"

  "Not with the kind of prosecutors I have to deal with," O'Neill said. He looked grim as he raced the car to beat traffic lights. "And not with the kinds of mistakes our detectives are making. Tom and Jerry—again—somehow managed to mess up the glass. The glass on Maggotmaid's clothes and the glass in the broken door in Trevor's apartment matched, but the evidence got mixed up. You ever have shit like that happen?"

  "Oh yes," the commissaris said, "but we're short of cells, so arrests aren't welcome."

  O'Neill frowned furiously. "We have the same problems. Quality-of-life offenses? Pickpocketing? Forget it. Overcrowded jails, overcrowded dockets. So Trevor walks. But Hurrell will find a way to kick him into the slammer sometime soon."

  The commissaris muttered as the big Chevrolet hurled itself between two buses.

  "How?" O'Neill asked, touching his horn playfully. "It's more like why. You see, Hurrell's only child went bad. Young Henry Hurrell became Henriette. But there was no operation. The parents weren't too thrilled and I guess they made the kid miserable. So did the other kids. A nail that sticks out gets hammered sometimes. So Henriette comforted herself with drugs. Mrs. Hurrell left the scene. She divorced Earl and the custody of the youngster went to the father. Mother transferred to a quiet sunny town in Arizona where everybody is so old that the worst they can do is sue each other. The former Mrs. Hurrell couldn't cope with a fourteen-year-old prostituting herself for heroin."

  "Himself," the commissaris said.

  "Nah." O'Neill shook his head. "I sort of knew the kid, ran into her a few times, and she was definitely female, never mind what her sexual organs looked like. She had a female personality, soft and gende, but that must have changed because she looked like a scarecrow when they found her with the garbage."

  "Garbage," the commissaris said. "Right. Sergeant Hurrell seemed bitter about 'garbage.' 'Human garbage,' he said."

  "A cold night." O'Neill shook a friendly fist at a yellow taxi closing in, trying to cut him off, but not quite managing it. "Bet you that cabbie is from Ghana. Probably had his driver's license printed up special." He shook his head. "You know, we laugh at those guys, and curse them, but can you imagine what it is like to get thrown into this city and nothing makes sense and you're supposed to drive a goddamn taxi?"

  "A cold night," the commissaris said. "You were talking about Hurrell's transvestite child."

  "Right. Human garbage. The kid doesn't go home anymore, is living on the street. Hustles like crazy to keep the opium monkey fed. Picks up the disease from a dirty needle, gets pneumonia. God knows what assortment of deadly diseases those junkie whores collect during the course of one day." O'Neill looked sideways at the commissaris. "But the body persists. Think of the German death camps—bodies lived through that for quite a while sometimes. Abuse, starvation, it looks like we humans like to suffer. One early winter morning the kid faints. Next thing she freezes solid. We don't have too many real cold nights in New York but we do have a few killers. Gets rid of a lot of the homeless." O'Neill raised his voice. "Goddamn homeless, I hate them. You know why? They scare me shitless. Here we are, the most powerful country on the globe and we have human wrecks messing up our recreation areas, crapping around statues, pissing up public transport, dragging their sodden bodies about everywhere. If we can't cure their insane uselessness why don't we just warehouse those wrecks in some nice warm camp somewhere, with lots of TV and junk food and innocuous games to play? But no, sir, we need more aircraft carriers, for we've got to bomb holes in brown people's countries."

  "I like America," the commissaris said.

  O'Neill grumbled. "So do I. This is the place. I want to drive cross-country again, or hang out in the Keys. I used to work summers there, crew on sailboats. Or go to Hawaii again, hard to be unhappy in Hawaii, right? They've got it all there." He gestured. "We've got it all everywhere, and if it ain't, UPS will deliver it tomorrow morning. Coast to coast. And anywhere in between."

  "And the UPS driver will speak English," the commissaris said. "And the currency will be dollars."

  "Efficiency, right?" O'Neill laughed. "I've been to Europe and you have to change language every two hours, but you can't, so you're in trouble. And the backdrops seem so small there." He gestured toward the
World Trade Center's twin towers. "Big stuff here." He raised an eyebrow at the commissaris. "You've traveled around in this country?"

  The commissaris had been to Maine once. He talked about coves, bays, hills that looked like mountains to a Dutchman. "Few people around. Amazing wildlife. Holland now imports its wildlife from Poland and then has to buy more because it starves or gets poached. Ravens, wild boars, deer—it's hard to share a square mile with nine hundred Dutchmen."

  "Lots of lobsters in Maine." O'Neill was frowning again. "But you freeze your ass off in winter." He touched the commissaris's bare wrist. "Know what some jokers did with frozen Henriette? Stuck her in a fifty-five-gallon trash can, upside down. You've seen the signs? DON'T LITTER."

  The commissaris had seen the signs.

  "Those jokers tried to burn the corpse too, but they ran out of lighter fuel."

  The commissaris mumbled disapproval.

  "Hurrell caught them," O'Neill said. "A neat piece of detection. Lot of work. This happened early in the morning, when there are only bakers around, paperboys, cheap whores, maybe some sleepless old person looking out of a window."

  "He found witnesses like that?" The commissaris sounded surprised.

  O'Neill nodded. "Sure did. Hurrell's name isn't in the report because he couldn't take the credit. The defense would claim that he, as the kid's father, was biased."

  "Suspects convicted?"

  "Yeah," O'Neill said. "The D.A. charged the jokers with intentional and unlawful mutilation of a corpse. That's a felony. One to three years in the clinker."

  "And now Sergeant Hurrell won't pay attention to the death of Bert Termeer," the commissaris said, "because he sees Maggotmaid as Henriette, his own child."

  "He'll get Trevor," O'Neill said. "You saw what is going on in Central Park, right under your window. Central Park is Hurrell's turf. He'll work the park, get the right statements and hit Trevor with a heavy drug charge."

  The commissaris could think of other charges. He tried to translate them from the Netherlandic Penal Code. "Attempted manslaughter — Trevor pushed Maggotmaid through a glass door, causing death by negligence twice, first by administering an overdose of a controlled substance, second by locking, and leaving, a body in the hot and unventilated trunk of a parked car."

  O'Neill concentrated on his driving.

  "What do you think, Chief?"

  O'Neill growled. "None of that will stick." He sighed. "Hurrell is using the right tactics. He pretends he's finished with Trevor, lulling him to sleep, so to speak. He wants to catch Trevor carrying at least a kilo."

  O'Neill parked the car. They got out and began to walk. "But you have no case anyway. Bert Termeer died of disease, and maybe exposure." He grinned at the commissaris. "There is no doubt in my mind that the Termeer death was from natural causes. I want to close the case."

  The commissaris agreed. He had studied the reports the previous night, seen the photographs. Now he had an expert opinion as formulated by an experienced colleague. The commissaris was about to tell Chief O'Neill that he agreed that Termeer's death was due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances beyond the control of any human agency.

  It was just a coincidence, he told himself, that a touring bus appeared. The bus displayed a big number 2 up front. The driver was a blond young woman with heavily made-up eyes. She stopped her huge vehicle soundlessly so that the little old gentleman, walking with some difficulty and the help of a gold-tipped cane, could cross the street at his ease. The commissaris raised his cane in thanks.

  The driver waved.

  "Strange-looking woman," O'Neill said, walking next to the commissaris. "Macabre makeup. Did you see those eyes?"

  Chapter 9

  Amsterdam's chief-constable wasn't ready to sign the document that Grijpstra had brought along and placed on his superior's desk. The CC was talking about playing golf at Crailo and the sudden death of his friend the baron.

  Grijpstra's comments had been conversational. "Beautiful course, sir," and "Yes, that was unfortunate, wasn't it?"

  The chief-constable smiled.

  Grijpstra felt encouraged. He moved the request for funding further across the desk. "Could you please sign this, sir?"

  The CC looked away.

  Grijpstra sighed. "You are concerned about the possibility of foul play, sir?"

  The chief-constable talked at some length. He said that, in spite of what he was doing at his present elevated position, which, as most insiders were aware of, was mostly decorative these days, he was still a cop at heart and therefore curious about human erring. A man had died at the Crailo Golf Club of which the CC was an active member.

  Grijpstra's rugged face plied itself into an expression of interest. "You and the baron were friends, sir?"

  Friends...friends...the chief-constable said he didn't known about "friends." "Friends are like clouds in the sky, Adjutant. They float around, they disappear, they come back in different shapes, you reach out and they're gone again."

  Grijpstra said he liked clouds himself. He often tried to paint them.

  "Really?" the CC asked. "I thought you mostly portrayed dead ducks."

  "With clouds above them," Grijpstra said. "For contrast, maybe. The dead ducks are upside down in the canals, with bright orange feet which make them sail along." The adjutant's gestures showed how this was done. "And the white clouds bring out the bright orange."

  The chief-constable smiled again. He hadn't listened. He was talking in a barely audible voice when he admitted to a personal interest in what he referred to as the "Crailo murder." He had known Hilger van Hopper fairly well, had been following the ups and downs of the baron's life at close quarters. "But it seemed the poor fellow was going mostly down, Adjutant. Which amazed me." The chief-constable spoke with more enthusiasm now. "Hilger was a smart fellow, educated, insightful, one might say. A cynic. You know what a cynic is, Adjutant?"

  Grijpstra thought a cynic was one who mocked generally accepted human values.

  The CC explained that there was no mockery here, but a sincere disbelief, based on observation. A cynic, he said, has found reasons to believe that all human activity is based on selfishness. "Do you believe that, Adjutant?" The CC's smile was sad. "I rather do so myself."

  Grijpstra nodded convincingly while he pushed his documents a little further across the vast emptiness of the desk between them.

  "Yes," the chief-constable said. "Hilger, therefore, was out for himself. In a pleasant way. He was a baron, of course."

  "A nobleman," Grijpstra said pleasantly. "Noble."

  "Noble selfishness," the CC said. He held his long elegant hands back above the polished top of his desk. His fingertips played the scherzo of Chopin's Klaviersonate Nr. 2 b-moll op. 35. Grijpstra knew the sonata because he had been made to play it himself, as a boy, after his teachers determined that he had musical talent. Grijpstra had wanted to try Billy Strayhorn compositions. He still did.

  "So," the CC said, "here we have a superior sort of chap who has figured out that we are in it for ourselves, and who has the means to indulge himself, and who is all out to make one good time flow into another."

  Grijpstra looked surprised. "He did not succeed?"

  The CC shook his head. He tried to share a congenial grin with Grijpstra. "No, he just kept losing. But then he was suddenly in the money again, with a loving wife and a handsome lover, and then he managed to suddenly lose his life."

  Grijpstra contemplated his ultimate chiefs appearance. Amsterdam's police commander in chief was a decorative man: tall, slim, silver haired, with an aquiline nose. He was reputed to suffer from depression. After his wife died, crashing her airplane into a peat bog, the CC engaged in brief relationships, often with women he knew through his work. The grapevine reported that they all had the same comment: that the CC wasn't part of the activities he engaged in. Although he performed the correct movements, his behavior was mechanical, all while being polite and charming. The CC took his lovers out to plays and concert
s, and paid for good dinners. He listened, laughed at jokes and tipped the waiters. "But he is mostly dead," the women reported.

  Grijpstra wondered whether he could interact with a man who was mostly dead.

  "Baldert's projectile, the golf ball, did miss the baron."

  "Maybe that was just part of what caused my friend's loss of life," the CC said. "What if Baldert, after narrowly missing his easy target, and after noticing that the baron was experiencing some sort of attack, stroke or what have you, had called an ambulance?"

  "According to the rural lieutenant," Grijpstra said, "it seems your golf companion was dangling from the last strand of the end of his tether."

  "A stretched metaphor." The CC laughed. "The commissaris is right, you are a card."

  Grijpstra apologized. "Wasn't meaning to be funny, sir."

  The chief-constable leaned back in his executive's revolving chair. His voice was sad. "Causing death by omission of some activity, an interesting construction, Adjutant. I wrote my thesis on that."

  Grijpstra moved the document another millimeter. "Sir?"

  The CC's fingers now played the sonata's next movement, the "Marche funebre." To be played, Grijpstra remembered, "lento-attaaa."

  "Missed on purpose?" Grijpstra asked. "But the ball passed close by the victim's head. The baron now realizes that Baldert, whom he considered to be his friend, is trying to kill him. The shock sets off a heart attack. And then Baldert, still as part of the plan, pretends to panic and doesn't call an ambulance until the crowd returns from watching plastic windup ducks?"