"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?