Driving about town, he and de Gier had been called to Leyden Square Police Station, where a Japanese man had showed up in distress, demanding that the desk sergeant perform an urgent, but until then incomprehensible, action.
“Moshi moshi,” the Japanese complainant kept wailing.
“Just one doggone minute here, sir,” the desk sergeant had said, picking up his phone to call the communications office.
The dispatcher put out a general call. “Anyone speak Japanese?”
The fourteen-six responded. “My sergeant speaks Japanese.”
“Hey!” de Gier protested. “What are you getting us into? Nobody speaks Japanese. It’s an impossible language.”
“Japanese speak it, don’t they?” Grijpstra asked. “You spent time in Kyoto, didn’t you? You had girlfriends and all. You must remember some of the lingo.”
The complainant turned out to be an older, well-dressed male who was very upset.
“I thought all Japanese were Buddhists,” the Leyden Square Police Station’s desk sergeant said. The desk sergeant had attended a police academy evening class entitled Behavior and Attitudes of Asian Tourists. “Aren’t Buddhists supposed to cultivate a relaxed attitude? Don’t Buddhists know how to step back from what appears to be the general fuck-up?” The desk sergeant’s grimace showed his disappointment. “Just look at Moshi Moshisan here. Can’t we get him to calm down?”
“Moshi moshi,” the Japanese man cried.
“That means ‘hello,’” de Gier said. “He’s trying to make contact.”
Grijpstra had calmed the complainant by putting a protective arm around the gentleman’s frail shoulders, guiding him to a chair, setting him down, addressing the man in a sympathetic low rumble. “There, there, there,” Grijpstra said in English, “you’re safe, my dear sir. You’ve come to the right place.” He patted the complainant’s shoulder. “Just tell my colleague here what you want us to do.” He lowered his voice to a confidential level. “Feel free to speak your own language, sir.”
De Gier bowed. “In Japanese, dear sir. In Nihongo. Nihongo okay. Japanese yoroshii desu.”
The Japanese man was still distressed. “Watashi no okusan wa. Doko desu ka? Huh?”
“Your wife?” de Gier translated. “Lost her way?”
The man tried to pantomime what had happened. He made circular movements and imitated the sound of a train. He bent forward as if peering into a window. He tried to explain what he saw.
“You were looking at toy trains,” de Gier said. “At the Beehive Department Store? I’ve seen the new electrical models in their toy window on Dam Street. You were admiring the product, right? With okusan? With your wife?”
“So desu.” The Japanese gentleman’s effort to get through to ‘outside people’ made his eyes bulge and his nostrils flare. “So desu ne. Nah?”
De Gier translated so that Grijpstra and the desk sergeant could follow the conversation. “Means ‘That’s right, isn’t it’?”
“I am right?” de Gier asked the Japanese man cheerfully. “Good for us, Mister Tourist. Turistu-san. Then what happened?”
The man opened his mouth widely. He inhaled. He exhaled, closing his eyes, stretching his arms. “Okusan wa.”
“Yawning, was she? Your wife got bored? Because you kept watching those goddamn toy trains?”
“Goddammu.” The Japanese man’s mood improved. “Ha! So desu ne. Nah?”
His mime continued. He was looking into the store window again, where the little trains entered and exited, forever passing little buildings set in a plastic landscape.
“As you kept watching goddammu trains,” de Gier asked. “Your wife, okusan, went pfffftttt?”
“Sooo desu, ne? Nah!” Complainant relived the awful moment. The Japanese tourist’s features now showed sudden insight into a serious situation. His gestures projected horrified sensations of bewilderment, of feeling lost and alone forever. Here, his gesticulating limbs and feverishly working features told the sergeant, was the last intelligent being surrounded by the void of a meaningless universe.
Turistu-san flapped his hands. He wailed.
“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” The desk sergeant sympathized with the agony of another conscious being.
The desk sergeant addressed Grijpstra. “Such a neat-looking gent, too. Can’t Buddhism help out? Weren’t you taking that class, too, Adjutant? What was that shit about koans the professor kept raving about? Illogical riddles that break the bubble? How about The Sound of One Hand?”
The desk sergeant held up his right hand. “Sir? You get this?”
The Japanese man looked unhappy.
“You stay right here. Not to worry.” De Gier bowed. “Shimpai ga nai yo. Not to worry now. Tomodachi? Friends?” He pointed at his colleagues. “Tomodachi here. They’ll take care of you. Friends. Okay?” He caressed the old gendeman’s cheek. “I’ll be back in just one minute.”
The desk sergeant had a constable serve coffee and butter cookies. Grijpstra sat next to the tourist.
“Your okusan will be just fine,” Grijpstra reassured the Japanese gentleman.
“That’s what you get when you depend on a woman,” the desk sergeant said. “Find yourself a wife and she gets herself lost and causes pain. The trick is to avoid pain in the first place. Don’t have a wife. Take me, now. I live with a bunch of red-beak finches. They all look the same. Easy to replace, you know? I keep them in a big cage, feed them well, and they hoot their little thank-you’s. They all have those cute little beaks, you know.” The sergeant squeezed his nose shut with thumb and finger. “Thank you. Peh-PEH!”
The Japanese looked up. “Soooo desu, ne? Nah!”
“Peh PEH?” Grijpstra asked.
De Gier, having made use of the Fiat’s siren and flashing blue light, was back within twenty minutes. His assumption had been right. The lost wife—upper class, aristocratic, an intelligent lady—knew enough not to start wandering through the inner city’s alleys. She had gone back to the Beehive Department Store, where she was now waiting with her back to the toy train showcase window.
De Gier wished her good evening. “Komban wa.”
She returned the greeting haughtily.
De Gier smiled. He showed her his police badge. He pointed at the blue light flashing above his car. He escorted Okusan to the passenger side. He stood at attention while she daintily folded her small shape into the Fiat.
Okusan spoke some English. “Police-san?”
“Hai hai,” de Gier said. “Yes, ma’am.”
“My husband . . .” she paused, she took a deep breath, she exhaled sharply, “like all men, is i-di-ot.”
De Gier agreed. “So desu ne? Nah!”
“Police-san? Men are stu-pid.”
De Gier bowed his head deeply. “So desu ne? Nah!” His response didn’t defuse Okusan’s anger. Okusan screamed in fury when she saw her husband, who yelled back in defense.
The desk sergeant stepped between the warring couple. “None of that in my station, folks.”
“Now, now, now,” Grijpstra said. “It can’t be that bad.”
“VERY BAD,” husband and wife screamed back at him.
Adjutant Grijpstra wouldn’t let the couple call for a taxi until they resolved their problem. The adjutant explained, using de Gier as his translator and his own acting as illustration, that it is the task of the Amsterdam Municipal Police to protect its clients from themselves. Extreme stress during a holiday, the adjutant ventured to make clear, in a mindscape where normal defenses are absent, can lead to lasting trouble in a relationship. He wouldn’t want these nice folks to initiate trouble, not in Amsterdam, the magic city.
“Kiss and dance,” the adjutant ordered.
The Japanese couple did not wish to understand.
It was de Gier’s turn. He said that holidays a
re fun. Holidays aren’t designed to split up happy and harmonious couples.
“Kiss and dance?” Okusan asked sternly. “Wakarimasen. No understanding. Please. Show me?”
Grijpstra and de Gier danced and hugged.
“No kissing?” Okusan asked.
“Not in my station,” the desk sergeant said.
The Japanese woman resisted but Grijpstra and de Gier urged, her husband bowed, and the uniformed desk sergeant kept saluting. She finally had to laugh.
The Japanese couple danced and kissed before going back to the Hilton in a taxi. They bowed. “Thank you, arigato, goodbye, sayonara.”
Miss Tango’s case might turn out okay, too, Grijpstra was hoping. Not to worry. He asked complainant for her name.
“Eira-Liisa.”
“Take over, Sergeant,” Grijpstra ordered.
De Gier interrogated the complainant. Grijpstra, watching the woman, noted details to be mentioned in a report that might not have to be written. He noted that complainant was an elegant forty-year-old, five feet six inches, with a lithe body, weighing some one hundred and forty pounds. Eira-Liisa’s hair was a natural white-blond. Her face was triangular. Grijpstra noted that the subject’s eyes were large and blue, slightly slanted.
“Eira-Liisa?” de Gier asked meanwhile. “What happened?”
The woman was dancing slowly again, moving around the detectives. “He rapes.” Her voice became anxious. “Me AIDS perhaps now?”
“No condom?” de Gier asked.
She looked embarrassed. “He, no. Me, diaphragm. Woman alone. Better have protection.” She insisted. “Me raped. He, Mr. English, points at me with cannon.” She made a fluid move, sweeping up both arms to beg the heavens for instant justice.
“A weapon?” de Gier asked.
“Penis?” Grijpstra asked.
“Both,” Eira-Liisa said.
She looked away.
“Eira-Liisa,” de Gier asked pleasantly. “Please?”
She refused to make eye contact. She shrugged. “Penis.”
“You and Mister English, you shared a rented apartment?” de Gier asked.
But it wasn’t that simple. Few things are. In her excitement the woman was using another language now, more foreign than German, confounding even the linguistic sergeant.
“Come again, please?” de Gier asked.
A police siren, approaching rapidly, complicated things further. A minibus raced down Brewer’s Canal’s southern quayside, its brakes squealing, and slid toward the Fiat Panda. Two uniformed constables tumbled out of the dented and blood-spattered Volkswagen. Both men were small-sized, both had their right hands close to their fast-draw holsters.
The two little constables, both shouting, took turns delivering clipped sentences.
“Hello,” Karate yelled.
“What’s up?” Ketchup yelled.
“There was a bar fight on the way that we couldn’t pass up.”
“We lost some time beating up drunken sailors.”
“Kicking them into Realen Canal.”
“Hahahaha.” They both laughed.
“Sorry, Adjutant.”
“Sorry, Sergeant.”
“We came as soon as we could, though,” Ketchup said.
“Here we are.”
“At your orders,” Karate said.
Both men stood to attention, saluted, stood at rest.
“Hello, Ketchup,” Grijpstra said.
“Hello, Karate,” de Gier said.
“Finnish,” the woman was saying. “I am Finnish. I rented room here. I came to listen to Bach on organ, in Church of Saint Nicolas. Mr. English hired own room. Own front door. Not me and Mr. English together. Just same house.”
“Mr. English has name?” de Gier asked.
“Mr. English is Michael.”
“How do you know his name, Eira-Liisa?”
“First we dance.” She slid into another long step, humming a tango tune. “In stairwell. On landing?”
“Adjutant?” Karate asked. “Did we get that radio call correctly? This lady says she was raped? A gun was used to threaten her? There is an armed perpetrator in a house nearby?” Both constables smiled eagerly. “Can we get him for you? He’s a drug dealer, right? We’ll get both stash and cash while you interrogate . . .”
“Hahahaha,” Ketchup said.
Karate laughed, too. “. . .this attractive addict in the privacy of her own apartment.”
“He threatens with cannon,” the woman said. She indicated the weapon’s size by keeping her hands two feet apart. She pointed at her head. “Cannon points my head.”
“Some kind of Uzi,” Grijpstra said.
“We’ll get the weapon,” Ketchup said.
“We could get in through the roof,” Karate said.
“Or climb the gable.”
“Can we do that, Adjutant?”
“We’ll all go together and use the stairs,” Grijpstra said.
Eira-Liisa used her key to open the gabled house’s front door.
The party walked up a steep and narrow staircase, de Gier first, complainant next. All the policemen held their guns at the ready. De Gier looked pensive. He visualized a crazed British killer waiting for them upstairs, perhaps akin to another killer he had recently chased, a London-based bank robber who, resisting arrest, had shot an Amsterdam constable after a chase over rooftops.
De Gier shushed Ketchup and Karate, who were chuckling again. Grijpstra plodded behind.
“I go first, yes?” Eira-Liisa asked.
De Gier stepped aside, then tiptoed ahead again, aiming his pistol well above the woman’s right shoulder.
“You’re the champion,” Ketchup whispered. “Aim for the head, Sarge.”
“Sarge?” Karate whispered. “Fire the warning shot last.”
“Shoot the gun out of his hand, Sergeant,” Grijpstra growled.
“Violence,” the Finnish woman whispered. She gently stretched a leg, then slid toward the bed.
Grijpstra found a wall switch. Lights glared down from the ceiling. The Englishman’s body, wrapped in sheets, didn’t move. A snore changed into a rattle, which gurgled away slowly. Then the body snored again.
Karate and Ketchup arranged themselves at opposite sides of the bed, their pistols pointed at the body.
Grijpstra and de Gier put away their weapons.
The company found themselves in a small apartment’s bed/sitting room. “Mr. English rents from agency,” the woman whispered. “Me, me rents, too. My room other side. We often meet, on stairwell, yes?”
“Fucketyfucketyfuck,” Ketchup and Karate chanted under their breath. Grijpstra growled at them. De Gier smiled at Eira-Liisa. “Tell us more? Please?”
“Nothink fuckink,” the woman hissed at Ketchup and Karate. “Just meetink, I says. Yes?” She shook Ketchup’s shoulder. “You. Blockhead. You speak Finnish? Yes? No perhaps? I poetess in Finnish. Published poetess. Not published by self, no! By publisher published. You speak Hungarish? No? I speak fluent Hungarish. You speak Estonic? No? Komi language? No? Karelian language? Ludic? I speak everythink.”
Grijpstra pushed Karate. “Say you’re sorry.”
Karate mumbled.
“I can’t hear you, Constable.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Karate said clearly.
The woman pushed Ketchup. “You, too.”
Ketchup apologized loudly.
“Better.” She smiled at de Gier. “Mr. Michael and I meet on staircase. He says: ‘I don’t dare to talk to you, you always so quiet. I curious what you think.’”
De Gier nodded attentively.
“I say, ‘Why you not ask?’”
Grijpstra grunted encouragingly.
“He say,” Eira-Liisa continued, “ ‘No, then I wou
ld know what you thinkink. No fun. The mystery would be endink.’”
She paused dramatically. “I say, ‘Maybe the mystery’s beginnink?’”
De Gier raised an eyebrow. “You encouraged Mr. Michael?”
Eira-Liisa laughed sadly, shaking her head. “Me blockhead, yes? Beginnink of what? Beginnink of end, yes? He ask me to come eat. We eat in café. I come to his room after eatink. He drinkink. I dancink.’”
The policemen studied the shape of the accused, still asleep, head hidden in rumpled sheets.
“Hello?” de Gier asked loudly.
A head appeared, with one bloodshot eye staring under tousled hair. “Never mind,” the mouth said quickly, “I am dreaming. Must be that jenever I drank.” The head disappeared. Lips smacked while the body, safely tucked away into its dark void, rearranged itself for maximum comfort. “Neo-Nazis,” the voice mumbled. “Next episode in the nightmare.”
The Englishman snored.
“HELLO?” de Gier bellowed.
“Cannon,” the lady said. “In bed, perhaps. You look. Better, yes? So he no shoot?”
“Yank the blanket?” Karate asked.
De Gier nodded.
The constables’ guns now aimed at a naked Englishman.
“Sir?” De Gier said, showing his identification. “Police. Could we have your gun, please?”
The Englishman covered his crotch with his hands while he awkwardly tried to sit up. “Gun?” He sounded puzzled.
“Cannon,” the woman said. “You threaten. I call cops. You now give them cannon?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the Englishman said. He smiled. “This is a dream, right?”
De Gier spoke softly but clearly. “It’s a serious charge, sir. Apparently you raped this woman and then threatened her life by pointing a large gun at her. If we could have that gun, sir?”
The Englishman looked at the woman. “Eira-Liisa, we only danced.”
“Only?” she asked.
“We would like to have the weapon,” Grijpstra said. “Where did you put the gun, sir?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Michael said. “We danced the tango. She told me Finnish women do that. Because they’re shy or something. Doing the tango is their pre-mating ritual.”
He sang the tune, waving one hand while screening his genitals with the other. “Ta TA ta-taahh, teeteeteetee TAAAH-ta-TA-tata . . .”
The Sergeant's Cat Page 17
