"Sergeant?" Grijpstra asked. "If you please? Yes, Karate?"
"So Jimmy says he made those letters himself-an impossibility; the fellow is quite gone. And the letters were beautiful. So I tell him not to bullshit so much, and what do you think? The lady from The Hague fetches some paper and a jar of ink, and he's got a brush and schnatz whyatzh, Jimmy throws down a Chinese phrase."
"With handcuffed hands?"
"Right," Karate said. "Swoosh. Down on the paper. No thought. Just one stroke. There it was."
"MM," Ketchup said.
"Moo," repeated de Gier. "The lowing of a cow. Cows have it too. They can say it all in their one eternal sound."
"No, this is Chinese," Ketchup said. "Meaning emptiness, not-there, you know? That's Zen again. So there is nothing. And subject drew that for us, in half a second or so. He explained all and everything. By denying, you know? There's nothing going on."
"Ach," Grijpstra grunted angrily.
"Right!" Ketchup shouted, slapping the table. "I mean, he's right, the asshole, even I can see that at times, but does that mean you have to go down that far? Poison yourself in a garbage boat? Can't he arrange it a little nicer?"
Silence surrounded the table, filled with disdainful lack of acceptance.
"Nothing fits too well," Ketchup said. "I was back on the boat by then and got Jimmy's cuffs off, and we were on our way. So how about the banker? We did try to get into that, too, but your adjutant kept us out of the house. Practically kicked us down the stairs, and it was a death in our district. Chief Inspector Halba had his ratty snout into that hole too."
"Bah," Grijpstra said.
"Something wrong, right?" Karate asked. "And on the same canal we have the old woman with her eternal drumming complaint who never gets a chance to speak to our sergeant. Another matter we're not supposed to meddle with."
"Our sergeant says he'll fix it himself," Ketchup said, "but he can't find the time, because he has to sail a lot on the Vinker Lakes, with his flat-bottomed imitation antique yacht, handcrafted, worth a bagful of gold. Your Halba goes along at times, with female company hired from the motel out there."
"But our sergeant does find the time to tell us what not to do." Karate rolled a joint too. "We can't just bring in any junk. There's junk and junk. If we find it in the street we do a good job, but we can't touch anything that can be connected to the Society for Help Abroad. The Society makes our sergeant nervous."
"And the State Detection cops in their Corvette don't do anything useful, either, although they cruise in the area a lot, seeing what goes on. They're too busy investigating the commissaris."
"Aha," Grijpstra said. "You hear that, de Gier?"
De Gier smiled kindly. "I'm going to challenge the black knight, Adjutant." He punched the air with his fist. "The final day is close. Evil finally shows itself in its darkest form. There will be a black knight out there worthy of my dazzling splendor. We'll have a duel forthwith. Now that restrictions are being lifted, I can at last show my true nature. I'll battle the fiend. We'll gallop at each other, visors down, in a field at dawn."
"Yep," Karate said, "the sergeant is right. That's just what Ketchup and I are planning. Corruption frees us. The core of the enemy is the Society for Help Abroad, and their headquarters is in our district, on Gelder Quay. We propose to attack their club, you and us. Cardozo can join. He's around already, we saw him today."
"A duel," de Gier said. "Maybe I'll help you fellows a bit at first, but then I'll dash out alone, no longer on the commissaris's leash, not befuddled by Grijpstra, unhindered by Cardozo."
"You come along with me," Grnpstra said, pulling de Gier off his chair and supporting him with one arm. "I'll take you home for your nap." He looked at Karate. "Cardozo is around?"
"Working," Karate said. "He came out of the Banque du Credit, with a clerkish type. We saw them having coffee together later on, looking sneaky."
" 'Bye, Bert," de Gier said.
The old man waved feebly from behind his counter, grinning with withered gums. "Catch 'em, Sergeant."
\\\\\ 8 /////
The Commissaris's silver Citroen slowly followed a narrow road on a dike separating low fields from a river. "Ah," the commissaris said, seeing a turn-off ahead. He parked the car and looked again at the map that lay on the passenger seat, grunting as his finger found a wavy red line, marked by Miss Antoinette's neat arrows. The river showed up on the map too. He had to be on the right track, close to his goal -too close, maybe. It was still early in the day, and Adjutant Guldemeester, cashing in on the recently instituted system that encouraged policemen to take time off rather than demand extra pay for working overtime, might be disgruntled if he was bothered before ten in the morning. The commissaris grimaced as he switched the engine off. This was not a pleasant call. He suspected an official of negligence, to frame the charge lightly. There might be more. Guldemeester's track record, never brilliant, had dipped sharply lately. The man worked sloppily, if he worked at all. The adjutant's life-style invited suspicion too. It was a pity that the police department no longer welcomed inquiries into the daily conduct of its members. The commissaris, as he left the car, briefly rethought his general opinion of the country's overall direction. Although he never admitted his socialist sympathies, he was ultimately in favor of a society that spread its wealth, giving to each citizen according to his needs, but the danger was idealization of the state of mind of the average person. "We are," the commissaris had said to his wife, "still egotists, forever looking out for number one. We shouldn't be, of course, but we may as well admit our ignorance. If we're not aware of our petty greed, we'll drag the whole thing down." She'd kissed him, for she thought he was cute when he held forth. Katrien is very practical, the commissaris reflected. I've got to think things out that she has known all along.
As he crossed the road, a low-slung sports car growled toward him at excessive speed. The Corvette squealed its tires as it suddenly slowed down. The driver waved him on. The commissaris dragged his painful leg to the strip of lush grass bordering the river. The car was menacing. He felt cold sweat inside the collar of his shirt, and a thin icy trickle running down his back. More proof to support his theory that socialism had taken a dangerous turn. Rob the energetic and intelligent citizens through high taxes in order to support stumbling efforts of the weaker sector of the population. All very well, but overtaxing interferes with people's sense of justice. Extreme taxation will be dodged. Hoodlums follow the example of their betters. The system corrupts, because of undeclared taxable income that has to be furtively spent. The criminal potential of the mind provides expensive and illegal pleasure. The two young men in the sports car would probably be pimps, exploiting a pleasure club, taking a break after a dark night of preying on their illegally rich clientele. Or they could be providers of unregistered labor, hiring officially unemployed energy, renting it out at a sizable profit, in cash transactions. The commissaris wondered why the Fraud Department hadn't managed yet to apprehend the two subjects. A mere check of the car's registration would lead to a house search revealing suspicious wealth. Both men were likely to declare no income. Their club, or company, would most certainly be unable to show necessary permits. A nest of vice could be immediately ripped apart. But the Fraud Department employed men who were like Guldemeester, untidy dodderers easily persuaded to take a bribe. And who was he criticizing, anyway? the commissaris thought. He himself was in charge of Guldemeester, allowing the adjutant to get away with petty condoning of irregularities. Was there anything the commissaris could do to clean up Homicide, if a chief constable presented him with a chief inspector like Halba, a much worse example of the self-serving public servant?