Wo Hop's mate was trailing them, but neither Karate nor Ketchup nor Cardozo paid attention, for they were now off duty. "Bicycle?" Karate asked.
"I'll go up the dike," Cardozo said.
"Why?"
"I don't really care to discuss that now," Cardozo said. "It's late and I'm tired."
"You'll bike up there?" Ketchup asked. "That dike is thirty kilometers long. All the way to Friesland? It'll take you a day. Whatever for? You want to lose weight?"
"I'll be leaving at 6:00 A.M." Cardozo said.
Troelstra was closed, but he opened up.
Wo Hop's mate waited outside.
Cardozo explained, once settled behind a small glass of jenever, that he needed Douwe Scherjoen's's portrait because the photographs of the corpse were useless; they showed only bits of skull and a semi-burned spine.
"But bicycleT Karate and Ketchup shouted. Jelle saw no reason to get upset. He remembered times when almost no one owned a car, and a trip along the dike could be quite an adventure. A bicycle is slow enough to afford the rider a view. And, besides, the trip was supposed to be useful. Yes, sure, they too were prepared to exert themselves when on duty, Karate and Ketchup said-certainly, no question about it-but to be exploited was something else again. If the State would not pay for elementary expenses, criminals could go free. Criminals were driving about in silver cars. The commissaris had just been issued a silver car too, Cardozo admitted. Yes, for the higher-ups no cost was too little either, Ketchup and Karate said, while common folk could be abused, their comforts ignored, their well-being unconsidered.
"Can't we rise above the common folk?" Karate asked.
"This eternal complaining, does it get us anywhere? Suppose we surpassed ourselves, made use of all that's given to us, conquered our weaknesses, would there be no reward?"
"Sell our souls for silver Citroens?" Ketchup asked. "I wouldn't mind doing that. Citroens are good cars."
Cardozo sipped his drink, frowning and growling that mere materialism never got anyone anywhere. The trick was to step aside and still do your very best. Who cares for results?
Had he thought of that himself? Ketchup and Karate wanted to know. Sergeant de Gier had been known to come up with bullshit like that. Now look at the sergeant-wasn't he just another sucker, by accident provided with impermanent good looks and the ability occasionally to win a fight? Where had that got him? The saintly sinner, adored by Car-dozo?
Troelstra kept filling up their glasses. "Would you know a certain Adjutant Oppenhuyzen?" Cardozo asked. "Aren't you Frisian too?"
Troelstra nodded benignly. "Not a bad fellow, comes in for a beer every now and then."
"He is a bad fellow," Cardozo said. "Pushed over by evil. Trying to squeeze personal good out of a bad situation."
Shouldn't accuse so easily, Karate and Ketchup said. Never guess the worst about the character of a colleague.
Cardozo stated that he would guess what he liked, and voice his theories without making exceptions for possible traitors. Colleagues? Ha! Weren't there colleagues who weren't on the portophone when they should be? Weren't there colleagues who had left him in danger, who had made him hold a heavy pistol for an hour or so, while he was surrounded by gangsters?
They were sorry, Ketchup and Karate said, but they had been busy; drunk and belligerent German tourists had to be wrestled to the ground, and before you know where you are, an hour is gone.
And why, Cardozo wanted to know, was Turkish heroin found on Chinese dealers?
Ketchup and Karate said that they really had to be leaving now, and that any situation is built up out of a large number of unknowable details. You can never get to the bottom of anything. They elbowed Cardozo. "But isn't it fun?"
"Not right now," Cardozo said.
He walked home, fuming jenever vapors.
Close to his home, a suspect mounted a bicycle. Cardozo, breaking into a sudden trot, managed to grab hold of the suspect's sleeve. "Where are you off to? That bike should be in the corridor by now."
"Since when," asked the Hider of Bicycles, "can't I be riding my very own bike?"
"Bring it into the house," Cardozo said. "At once. Give me the key to the lock."
The suspect dismounted. He struck while he turned. Wo Hop's mate watched from a doorway. It had been a long night for him-caught and bound, liberated and arrested, temporarily released and still up and about, in the early hours.
The suspect's fist was caught by Cardozo, who had passed only a few days ago, the examinations of the Unarmed Combat class. Cardozo twisted and pulled the suspect's fist across his shoulder, and turned. The suspect was forced to follow the compelling movements, and lost his footing, fell, got up again, and attacked with a kick. His foot was hooked away by Cardozo's ankle. The suspect again fell.
"Ouch," the suspect said. "You don't fight fair.'*
"You shouldn't be fighting me," Cardozo said. "Would your name happen to be Cain? Am I, perchance, called Abel?"
"You're so right," Cain said. "Will we never learn? The Age of Aquarius is already upon us, and it'll be raining in a minute. From now on we'll practice true brotherly love and fight only to defend ourselves against the enemy from outside."
Arms linked, Samuel and Simon walked home; Samuel pushed the bicycle along. Simon helped him to carry the bicycle up the stairs. He was given the key. A thunderclap confirmed their mutual decision to cherish their mutual benefit, forever after.
Wo Hop's mate returned to his cheap lodging in the Red Quarter, but first he checked with the boss of bis triad, the venerable Wo Hop.
"So Mophead fought with another Mophead?" Wo Hop asked. "Amazing. And the first Mophead will be cycling to Friesland tomorrow, by way of the dike? Suprising."
"And your decision?" Wo Hop's mate asked humbly.
Wo Hop closed his eyes and mumbled, no longer in fluent Cantonese, but in the ancient language of forgotten lore. He lit incense sticks, bowed, threw coins, and was instructed by the book from the past.
"You," Wo Hop said, "and the two others of your selection will be bicycling on the dike too, tomorrow at six, which is in just a few hours, tomorrow being today and all time being illusion."
The mate found the two others and passed the order. The maid of the lodging house brought in tea, and her ears. A little later she telephoned another cheap lodging house, on the other end of the dike.
Cardozo slept peacefully. Six Chinese grumbled in their shallow slumbers, exhausted after having stolen six bicycles, three near the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam and three near the railway station of Bolsward, a Frisian town.
\\\\\ 11 /////
Leeuwarden, the Frisian capital, was Amsterdam in miniature and perfect in detail, as the architects of the Golden Age, over three hundred years ago, had planned their creation. That I'm allowed to partake of that well-meaning and artistic dream, de Gier thought as he strolled along empty quaysides and silent gables, reaching for the expanse of the night, which sparkled with clean stars. No people, but who needs them? Humanity never fails to disturb abstract beauty. The Frisians created this work of art and now they rest, allowing me to admire the beauty of their realization. Tomorrow they'll be about again, each house releasing a fresh female worker who'll immediately drop to her knees and scrub pavement and gable. No crumpled cigarette packs, no dog droppings, not even in the gutter. Too clean, maybe? De Gier felt uncomfortable. Once contrasts are pushed aside, once everything becomes the way it should be, what do you do? And why was he here? Why didn't he find the shortest way to his temporary quarters and extinguish himself in bed? Where would his Spanish Lane be? Could he ask anybody? Was anybody left? At two in the morning?
A gent in a deeply dented, broad-brimmed felt hat emerged from an alley and walked ahead of the sergeant. The gent slowed his pace. He looked around. "Jun."