"Can I guess?" Karate asked. "You've got the corpse. A gun doesn't float. A gas can, maybe?"
"I know the report on the Frisian corpse by heart," Ketchup said. "I read everything that's around. Nothing else to do anyway. We can't bring in muggers for a while, all the cells are filled, in the city and all municipalities of this province. At the station we read, and out here we pass the time."
"Like now," Karate said "No can in sight," Ketchup said.
"No can in sight," Ketchup said. "Here, a piece of mattress. Here, a cleaning product jar."
"You really do not work now?" Cardozo asked.
"There are always the Chinese," Karate said brightly.
"You've got cells for them, then?"
"There's the large cage at Headquarters," Ketchup said. "Every time it fills up, the Military Police fly a load to the Far East. Chinese without proper papers, we can catch some if we insist, provided we take them straight to the cage and don't bother our own station."
"It's fun," Karate said, "because they keep coming back so that our work may never end. Our sergeant likes us to keep active. Take Ping Hop, I've had him three times already. I even remember his face. 'Hi, Ping,' I say. Does that fellow put in a lot of flying hours! There…"
"… and back," sang Ketchup.
"How about a break?" Karate said. "Dinnertime. We can have it close by. Fried noodles and shrimp?"
Wo Hop was about to close, but because the police came in and inquired about the present address of his nephew Ping Hop, he would be still open for a short while. "No know," Wo Hop said kindly.
'This Wo Hop has papers?" Cardozo asked.
"He has a restaurant," Karate said. "Good grub and reasonable prices. We do have to eat."
"Papers?" Cardozo asked.
"Papers, who cares?" Karate and Ketchup were reading the menu.
A gent came in, with a red round face above a well-worn but clean tweed suit. "Evening," the gent said.
"Adjutant," Karate and Ketchup said.
"He's learning the language," said Karate. "Doing pretty well. You can hardly hear his Frisian accent."
"What," Cardozo asked, "would a Frisian police officer be doing in our city?"
"Adjutant Oppenhuyzen, Alien Department, trying to block the route to the north," Karate said. "He doesn't want them there, he wants to keep them here."
"You tolerate Frisian interference?"
Wo Hop brought bowls heaped with fried noodles, and a glass of cognac for Cardozo. Cardozo refused. "On the house," Wo Hop said.
"We tolerate just about anything," Karate said. "We can't be helpful to the illegal Chinese, for if we are, the newspapers will accuse us of taking bribes. We still assume that some of the Chinese visitors are okay people. Not too clever, maybe, for they don't understand Dutch red tape. It would be nice if someone could help them fill in their forms. If the Frisian adjutant wants to help, we'll wish him well."
"And he doesn't take bribes?"
Ketchup and Karate ate.
"Hello?" asked Cardozo.
"You don't know what goes on here," Ketchup said. "When we overhunt the Chinese, they slide up the dike and hang out in Friesland. We recognize two types of suspects, from Singapore and from Hong Kong. They also hunt each other. Let's call it sport. They practice a little karate, some sharpshooting, stick-swinging, artistry with rope. Adjutant Oppenhuyzen is against all sport. He wants them to train here, where there's so much sport already."
"Take last year," Karate said. 'Ten dead Chinese in the city. Who notices ten corpses in a town the size of Amsterdam? The reports have been filed away a long time ago."
In the back of the restaurant, nervous young Chinese men had been arguing loudly. The presence of the burly adjutant seemed to restore their ruffled tempers. "Laid back, isn't he?" Cardozo asked. "Same type as our very own Grijpstra. Would the rank of adjutant be a common denominator?"
"Hysterics, both of them," Ketchup said. "But they're older than we are, and more used to the affliction."
Wo Hop brought the bill. The cognac wasn't added in. Cardozo checked the price in the menu and put down more money. "It all starts with accepting cognac…"
"Right," Karate said. "He doesn't bring us any. We always refuse, but he doesn't know you yet. You could accept, of course, but the next thing will be that you're picking up parcels."
"Parcels?" Cardozo asked.
Karate related how a nameless colleague had been following a nameless Chinese. The Chinese carried a parcel. As he found it hard to carry a parcel and be followed at the same time, the nameless Chinese dropped the parcel. The nameless colleague picked it up.
Cardozo watched Adjutant Oppenhuyzen. The adjutant smoothed Chinese questions away, mostly with gestures that were received with grateful guffaws.
"Well?" Karate asked.
"Ask what was in the parcel," Ketchup said. "Go on, be a good fellow."
"Heroin," Cardozo said.
"And now you should ask," Karate said, "what happened to the parcel."
'The Chinese got it back," Cardozo said. "The nameless colleague got money. He still had some holidays due to him that he could add to his sick days, and he went to a Spanish island."
"And he's still out in the sun," Karate said. "The lucky devil. Our sergeant would never let us get away with such a harmless exchange. Narrow-minded, don't you think?"
"You don't want me to be practical now," Cardozo said, "but suppose you're shortsighted enough not to see that the nameless colleague will end up nowhere, then why should I tell you?"
"Nowhere in the sun? Served by naked maidens? Surfing between naps?"
"I went to that Spanish island," Cardozo said, "and shit for two weeks. Tainted mussels. I'm better off up here. Playing my favorite game."
"Looking for a gas can," Ketchup said. "Let's say you find it. What will it tell you? Esso or Shell? You're nowhere here, and in the wrong climate. The summer is half rained away. We'll never see the sun."
"Colleague?"
Cardozo looked up. Adjutant Oppenhuyzen smiled down kindly. He introduced himself and grabbed a chair. The Chinese in the back were also smiling, having rediscovered the joy of detachment. "Good boys," the adjutant said, "but they keep losing their damned papers. I help them a little with their everlasting forms. You can imagine what it's like. They have spent years in the country, making their bowl of rice by working their asses off manufacturing fried chili paste or shrimp crackers, but as they don't know the language and customs, they're always running afoul of our potato-picking authorities. Don't arrest any of them now, you hear? I can vouch for their integrity."
"That's understood, Adjutant," Karate said. "If, by mis- take, I happen to get one in cuffs, it's because he looks like another."
"And in the event," Ketchup said, "that I, through sheer silliness-because I can't remember their names, let's say- happen to catch one, it'll be an error that I'll blame on myself. We'll back you up."
The adjutant wanted to know if he could buy them a glass of this or that.
"We were just on our way out," Cardozo said.
"The adjutant is absolutely right," Karate said outside, "but I have this bad habit. I just love catching drug dealers without proper papers. I think I'll catch some now. Why don't you assist us, Cardozo?"
Cardozo glanced at his watch.
"Don't leave us when we need you, Symie. We helped you look for the can. You're just what we want. You're looking more civilian than ever. If I didn't know you, and the sergeant wanted suspects again, I would run you in on a charge of vagrancy. We are hindered by our uniforms, and it's hard to get the patrol car through these alleys. Give us a hand. Won't take an hour."
"Doing what?" Cardozo asked.
"We give you a portophone from the car, and you walk about in the quarter. Slip into the narrowest passages and look a little at what you see. There are two secret societies about that tend to get on each other's nerves-Hong Kong versus Singapore, it seems. They're always on the verge of becoming violent, and when that happens, we like to be in there too. Right now they're more short-tempered than ever, because we've been kicking their members out of the country and arresting recent arrivals, so their supply lines are all mixed up. They both want all the drugs that are left. If you do notice something, breathe into the portophone and we'll be with you in half a minute."