Hard Rain (8 page)

Grijpstra sat on his desk, carefully peeling the plastic off a cigar. "In interesting ways. I could do with a laugh."

"What's with you?" de Gier asked. "You like the ordinary. You're a stodgy, slow, unimaginative member of the petrified old guard. Let's stick to our parts. I'm the one who's out for adventure. I wouldn't mind adventure now, but there were the corpses at the Binnenkant, and we should do some work. Have you seen IJsbreker's body yet?"

"Sure." Grijpstra licked his cigar. "I thought you were on your way down too. Did you chicken out again? I've seen worse bodies. A somewhat seedy but well-dressed gent, rather bald on top, a bit pudgy all over, due to soft living, of course. Remember the ladies' underwear we found in the leather couch at his house? And the traces of cocaine on the glass coffee table? According to Mr. Jacobs, there was a faint smell of perfume when they put IJsbreker in the fridge. The pathologist came down and had another look too."

"The one who talks?" de Gier asked. "Or his disgruntled chief?"

Grijpstra nodded. "The one who talks. There were powder burns on the corpse's face. The pathologist mentioned advanced cirrhosis of the liver. A hard-drinking man in his late forties, our banker was. Did drugs too—cocaine; his nose is a mess. No heroin— we found no needle marks anywhere. He could have smoked it, of course."

"So you want the case closed again?"

Grijpstra grinned at the sergeant's suddenly stooped shoulders. "Why? Because of the powder burns? So someone fired a blank in his face. It's been done before. Subject is shot from a distance and then the scene is changed so it appears he has been shot from close by." The adjutant raised a lecturing finger. "We're now assuming murder, and therefore premeditation. Why was IJsbreker shot during a thunder^ storm with hard rain? That storm was predicted, very handy for covering up the sound of a shot. If I had paid attention in that campground, I could have saved Nellie's tent."

De Gier smiled.

"Good," Grijpstra said. "That's my boy. I might have despaired too, if there hadn't been two bullets."

De Gier looked grim again. "Only one, Adjutant. The other one is hearsay."

"Hearsay from a disinterested party." Grijpstra lit his cigar and sucked contentedly. "The pathologist who talks has no motive for hampering our job."

"Except getting his boss in trouble," de Gier said. "Our two doctors are rivals who like to trip each other up. The one underneath wants to climb on top. He imagines a nonexistent bullet and spreads the rumor all over the building. The authorities will begin to question the integrity of the top doctor. The top doctor has always been a hard man to work with. Uncooperative, right? Now he loses a bullet and he won't sign a report."

Grijpstra studied the tip of his cigar. "Too farfetched. There must have been two bullets. Everybody expected just one. One suicide, one gun, one bullet. The second bullet is almost surreal. There's nothing special about the assistant pathologist; he's your regular pseudo-intellectual, badly qualified, sniveling, backbiting corporate slave." Grijpstra took a deep breath, but forgot to take the cigar out of his mouth. He coughed through the cloud of smoke billowing from his cigar. "The fool is quite incapable of imagining the surreal."

"You don't like the man?" de Gier asked. "Okay. Two bullets. Want to come to Prince's Island with me? Dally with demons?"

"Why do you always drive on the tramway tracks?" Grijpstra yelled in the car. "Quicker," de Gier yelled back.

"Slippery," Grijpstra protested.

The car, obeying de Gier's pressure on the accelerator, screamed out of a bad swerve. "You know," de Gier yelled, ignoring the traffic lights of a busy crossing and forcing the aging Volkswagen through a crack between a bus and a truck, "we could be lucky. I sent out that message to all stations. James T. Floyd? Student of Chinese? Remember? The guy who fell off his chair?"

Grijpstra tried to stub out his cigar, but the car's jerky movements kept making him miss the ashtray. He threw the butt out the window, but a sudden change of direction make the car catch the cigar again. Grijpstra grabbed it and burned his hand. "Aaaah!" There was a bicycle ahead now, very much in the way. De Gier missed it.

De Gier slowed down, looking for a parking place. "That cyclist shouldn't have been on the tracks. Tracks are for trams."

"We aren't a tram."

"And for emergencies," de Gier said.

"We aren't an emergency."

"We're a continuous emergency," de Gier said pleasantly, after he'd parked the car and was strolling next to Grnpstra through narrow alleys. "That's why I joined the police. We're supposed to break rules so that others may learn to obey them. We drive faster in superb vehicles, we apply violence with our super-guns, we think more freely with our superior cerebral equipment, we violate restrictive taboos with our boundless insight into the limitations of morality, we . . ."

De Gier's strident tenor passed Grijpstra by. The adjutant had absorbed the timeless peace of the antiquity of his surroundings, expressed in the polished cobblestones underfoot, the rows of delicate little houses, each with slight variations in gable design, and the harmonious way the tall windows flanked inset doors. Ahead, a small white bridge curved gracefully upward, and a cluster of floating, bright-feathered ducks, quacking conversationally, produced pleasant reflections in the water of the moat under the bridge.

"Yes," the adjutant said.

"You agree?" De Gier looked down at his peaceful companion, plodding at his side.

"I could give it up," Grijpstra said. "You heard all that muttering in the building this morning? Our colleagues are worried about their job security again. Stupid jobs prop them up. They think the coming investigation may kick them out. I think I would welcome a good kick. I would fly forever—around here, for instance. Why be part of a repetitive rigamarole that keeps you going around in circles? I know"— Grijpstra gestured forgivingly—"that I'm not really an artist yet. Take that painting I'm working on now. I haven't found the right green, but here"—his hand swept toward the moat underneath, its water reflecting the delicate green shades of mossy waterwalls— "given my freedom . . . and I think I would take up some drumming again." The bridge's chains creaked, and Grijpstra put a hand behind his ear. "Hear that? I could re-create that sound on a cymbal, work it into a composition of my own ..."

"Yes," de Gier said.

Grijpstra looked up. "I'm glad you hear it too. Now listen to the seagulls. There's something in their cry that you could play on your flute."'

"Not a bad move, eh?" de Gier asked, resting his hand on the adjutant's shoulder. "Sending that general message out? We need information on those dead junkies. So far we have nothing but their proximity to another corpse, but if we can trace this Jimmy and find out how his routine could have crossed the banker's path . . . Here's the café"

A vague shape stirred behind the worn counter as de Gier held the door open to facilitate the adjutant's ponderous entry. Two other shapes straightened up in the semidarkness of the room. The barman shuffled close.

"Morning," Grijpstra said benevolently. "Still this side of death, Bert?"

"Oh, yes." The old man grinned, showing his toothless gums. "Looking on, you know. Jenever, gents?"

"Good idea," Grijpstra said. "I prefer an early start. A good beginning may last until deep in the night." Grijpstra and de Gier carried their glasses to the far table. Two young men in jeans and leather jackets got up and shook hands.

"Ketchup," Grijpstra said.

"Karate," said de Gier. "It was you on the phone?"

"Hello," the detectives whispered, looking over their shoulders.

"Cloak-and-dagger again?" de Gier asked. "That's all right. Want us to whisper too? Let's have the reason for your call, colleagues."

"Jimmy the junkie," Karate said. "We know everything, but you shouldn't send out inquiries like that on the open circuit. We're under surveillance. The charge is innocence. We're the last innocents in our entire district."

"And phones are out altogether now," Ketchup said. "All phones are tapped by State Detection."

"And State Detection isn't innocent, either," Karate said. "They're the other side too." His polished fingernails shone in the sparse light of the pub. His made-up eyes gleamed.

"Gay?" de Gier asked.

Ketchup's hennaed hair gleamed too. "We're promoted now. Our rules prescribe the gay disguise. If one doesn't want to draw attention to oneself, one looks like this."

"My dear," Grijpstra said, "gays don't look like that anymore. Haven't you been told?"

Ketchup offered his tobacco pouch. De Gier rolled a cigarette, having trouble with hard green particles that broke through the paper. "Dope," Karate said. "Here, let me do it. Part of our new I.D. If we aren't stoned, the bad guys aren't supposed to believe in us. We're doped all the time. So are the State Detection cops. We caught two the other night. They were gliding around in their convertible Corvette. We drive an old Camaro, wax polished of course, but not quite the same thing. State Detection is special. So we arrested them on a charge of dealing and they had to tell us all. We're buddies now. They told us about your phones."

"You're first," Ketchup said. "An honor, in a way. The Corvette is supposed to follow your commissaris, but since your chief hardly moves, the state cops hang out in this part of town. More amusing."

"Not good," Grijpstra said. "This jenever is excellent, however. Your health, Sergeant." He looked at Karate. "Did you tell them that what they are doing is not good? They should go after Halba, and the chief constable himself. They're our worst. Gambling debts and blonde dollies. And after Adjutant Guldemeester. And most of Narcotics. The Gambling Department. The Aliens Branch. We're okay."

"No," Karate said. "Let's not be retarded, Adjutant. It's the other way round. The bad guys are winning. State Detection has gone over too. That's what the dicks said. They're okay, to balance things again, but they're up in the air."

"I can smoke this?" de Gier asked, studying his joint.

Ketchup lit a match. "Don't inhale too deeply or you'll fall over. This is dope provided by the state; we spread it around and make lots of friends. Rather strong. Pure pure."

"I like that," Grijpstra said. "The simile of the seesaw. Us good guys are up, the very few of us. The view is better from up here. Now what about Jimmy?"

"Zen," Karate said. "Jimmy was into Zen. We got to start with Buddhism here, or you won't follow our lead so well. Do you understand Zen?"

Grijpstra kept up one hand. Karate nodded. "You're the one. And all. And that's the sound."

"Hello?" de Gier said. "Am I still in this, too? Modern mysticism isn't quite my field. Am I missing something? Did Grijpstra give the secret sign?"

"The adjutant disposes of insight," Ketchup said. "That's what matters now, it's important."

Grijpstra put his tulip-shaped glass down. "The sound of one hand. Two hands can clap, right? They make a sound. Now one hand, simply raised, presents the sound of total stillness. I read that in the paper."

"For shit's sake," Karate said. "Now why do you spoil it? Once you start explaining, it's all gone."

"Advanced students can explain," Ketchup said, "because when it's gone it pops up again. You're not advanced yet."

"Grijpstra is advanced?" de Gier asked, sucking in dense smoke. "Then Zen can't be right. Once Grijpstra understands it, there's nothing to understand."

"You must be advanced too," Ketchup said. "Are you, Sergeant? There is nothing to understand."

"I've been understanding that particular aspect of the hidden creed for years," de Gier said. "I have this bed, you see, an old hospital bed, with rails on each side, that I painted gold on a rainy afternoon off. I got white sheets and blankets. There's something insightful about white and gold."

"If I hear 'insight' just once again . . ." Grijpstra said.

"Insight," de Gier said. "I get it by lying down on my very special bed, which is a gate to the forever, to the unlimited afterward, to the eternal underneath. I lie down and I sort of nap—and this is important, you can't do it with your shoes on, or even in socks—I get my toes around the bars, the bars at the foot of the bed, and then, after a while, I sort of get to be half awake, and then I know these things, like what one hand expresses." He held up one hand. "Yes?"

"Jimmy?" Grijpstra asked.

"All this insight," Karate said. "I didn't think it could be catching. That you have some of it, Sergeant, I get that in a way, but the adjutant too? I always thought the adjutant was rather a heavy type. Limited, you know?"

De Gier smoked and coughed by turns. "So he is, but there's a lot of tension on Grijpstra, and every now and then something may break through. Call it insight. You can't compare it to the commissaris's knowledge. Or it could be imitation. Maybe the adjutant repeats remarks the commissaris is good enough to make at times. If you have a master around you . . ." De Gier peered with one eye at the glowing joint. He folded his lips around it and extracted a large quantity of smoke. "A master. Someone who sees that there's nothing at all and he expresses that and you mumble after him. That isn't true insight. I do have some insight, because of that trick with the bed and my toes."

"Jimmy?" Grijpstra asked.

"Okay," Ketchup said. "Jimmy. We arrested suspect on a splendid day. The fellow was a dealer, he met the description. We took him to our station, but we were disappointed."

"Very small," Karate said. "Crumbs. Half-grams. Half-grams don't add up. He existed on that junkboat on the Binnenkant canal, with an expensive ladybird from exclusive The Hague—past tense, of course, they lose their veneer once the needle gets in. We met the lady too—her father is a psychiatrist, with two Volvos parked up front, and a garden with magnolia trees—she still had the highfalutin accent of The Hague. Good to lure clients in the alleys up here. Makes a bit of a change. A street hooker, no choice. The medicine is high-priced."

"The lady is dead too," de Gier said.