"My husband dies of the shakes. Bob sees lizards. They crawls so, he says. First they are snakes but then they got handsies and footsies. Bob tells me all about them lizards. And he is shaking and trembling and moaning and groaning. 'Get the lizards, Annie,' but I never sees them so much."
"You see them a little?" de Gier asked.
"No. Just to please Bob. I ain't really seeing nothing. They's big." Mrs. Jongs held her hand about a foot from the ground. "With tongues. They sticks their tongues in Bob's mouth."
Grijpstra's foot felt nails sticking up out of the floorboards. He stamped them down with his heel. "It's them noises what does that," Mrs. Jongs said. "I got a hammer, but the handle breaks."
"The noises come every night?" Grijpstra asked.
Mrs. Jongs's permanent wave danced across bare patches of skull as she nodded eagerly. "Them noises."
"Tonight again?" de Gier asked.
"For sure." Mrs. Jongs peered around a curtain. "There's Heul, on the bridge, see? Boy with the paper shopping bags? When they eats here, they makes them noises later."
Grijpstra sidled up to the window. "Male subject. Tall. Thin. Punk hairstyle, dyed orange. In his early twenties. Something on his T-shirt. Can't see what from here."
De Gier, hiding behind the curtain in the other window, looked too. "Picture of whale under an atomic cloud. I've seen those shirts before. The slogan says, 'Nuke the Baby Whales.' "
"That's in foreign?" Mrs. Jongs asked.
"American," de Gier said.
The folds in Mrs. Jongs's face crinkled. Her false teeth clacked excitedly. "Americans are good guys. Yanks. Remember?" She looked away from de Gier. "You don't." Her claw pushed Grijpstra's shoulder. "You do. When they rides into town? On them shiny tanks? Chasing the bad Jerries? Ain't that a sight?" She pointed at the shawl knotted around her waist. "I has a little Yank later. Wants him to ride out of me, all glorious-like, but he drops. Can't hold him no more. The Jerries gives me the sickies." Her dentures clicked even faster. "Then Bob gets me, me and the other girlies, but Bob marries me. Have to work for the favor. And then them lizards come… and then the old-age cash every month… but it ain't much, the old-age cash. And now them noises."
"We'll get the noises," Grijpstra said.
"Can't pay you nohow," Mrs. Jongs said. "I always pays, but then I gets so old so they laughs at me, can't work them when they laughs."
"In a little while we leave," Grijpstra said. "Then we slip back again. We'll catch the noises."
"Don't leave." Mrs. Jongs tried to put her cup on the table, but it slipped from her hand. De Gier caught the cup. "I'm afeared of the noises. Nobody comes now. Cahcarl would come but now the boat is gone. The water fuzz takes the boat this morning. The junkies are dead, I sees the other fuzz carry them out. And there"-she pointed across the street-"Himself's dead too. Himself was my TV. Got no TV myself. I has one but they takes it. Leaves the door open and Jimmy gets it. Or the black one. Not the lady, the lady she don't steal from me."
"You knew the junkies well?" de Gier asked.
Mrs. Jongs nodded. "But they need cash when they get sick. Oh, do they ever get so sick. They get shakes too, but the lizards don't get to them. Them junks sneeze too much."
"Cahcarl didn't take the TV?" Grijpstra asked.
"No. He don't get sick."
"And the other cops didn't carry Cahcarl from the boat?"
"No."
"Mrs. Jongs?" de Gier asked. He got up and twisted his arms while he walked slowly through the room, dragging a leg. His head rested on his shoulder. "Mmmmissusss Johngsss?"
"Yep," Mrs. Jongs said. "That's Cahcarl. He's called Carl, really, but he stutters so. When you ask for his name he says 'Cahcarl,' so we call him that. That ain't nice."
"And he didn't live on the boat?" de Gier asked. "This Cahcarl?"
"He lives at the Overtoom," Mrs. Jongs said. "Don't know no number." She opened a cupboard. "See? Cahcarl makes that. That's Mouse."
"Looks more like a dog," Grijpstra said.
"Yes." Mrs. Jongs shivered in her shawl. "My dog. Mouse, I calls him. A truck squashes Mouse. He's getting old, he can't see no more. Don't hear so good either. So Cahcarl makes Mouse again for me. I keeps him in the cupboard, away from them noises."
The image was put together from scraps of trash wood, connected with cotterpins and screws. It had a rope tail, and bottlecaps for eyes.
"You like Mouse?" Mrs. Jongs asked.
De Gier smiled. "Yes. A chihuahua, was he?"
"Oh yes." Mrs. Jongs put Mouse back into the cupboard. "Dear little doggie. Cahcarl likes Mouse too. Takes him for walks, but that day I takes him and Mouse goes away. Cahcarl cries. Then he makes him again. Looks just right."
"We better go," Grijpstra said.
"Don't go." Mrs. Jongs took the adjutant's arm. "I got them fears."
"But if we don't go, the boys downstairs won't make the noises. We've got to hear them first. Look here, Mrs. Jongs," Grijpstra said, stroking Mrs. Jongs's hunched shoulder, "we'll be right back."
"We'll only be gone a minute," de Gier said. "I'll go down with the adjutant. We'll get into the van, and I'll slip right back into the house. The adjutant will come back later. Don't worry, Mrs. Jongs."
"Stay here. Them noises…"
"Don't worry." De Gier followed Grijpstra downstairs. The van started up and pulled away from the sidewalk. De Gier leaped out of the cab and into Mrs. Jongs's street door, and pulled it shut behind him. He sneaked up the stairs. "Here I am."
"Good," Mrs. Jongs whispered.
"They never saw me come back," de Gier said. "We'll just sit here awhile. They can't hear us if we don't move."
Mrs. Jongs held her finger in front of her lips. "Right," de Gier whispered. He pulled a portophone from the trouser pocket of his overalls. "You hear me?"
The portophone crackled.
"Hello?" de Gier said.
"Give me a minute," the portophone replied. "Got to park this thing. It's big, can't find a space."
"Done," the portophone said two minutes later. "I'm walking on Prince Hendrik Quay now, turning into an alley north, ready to come into the Binnenkant. Okay?"
De Gier peeped around the curtain. "Okay, they must be inside. Stay close to the wall. You're coming in from the east?"
"Never know where's east," the portophone grumbled. "I'm coming from the right side. I won't pass their windows. Open the door."
De Gier slipped into the corridor and pulled the rope that followed the stair railing down to the door's lock.
"More coffee?" Mrs. Jongs whispered when Grijpstra, no longer in his overalls, tiptoed into the room.
They raised their cups. Mrs. Jongs sat on a straight chair, Grijpstra and de Gier on a sagging couch.
"Tell us about Himself across the road," de Gier said, "who replaced your TV. Can you see that far?"
Mrs. Jongs opened the cupboard again and showed him a pair of dented brass binoculars. "Bob looks through them at me and the other girls, when we work down in the street. They're sharp."
"Nice guy?" Grijpstra asked. "Your Bob?"
"No," Mrs. Jongs said. Her dentures snapped shut.
"But the lizards got him," de Gier said.
Mrs. Jongs passed him the binoculars. "I always tries to shoo them out."
De Gier trained the binoculars on IJsbreker's house. "What did you see there, Mrs. Jongs?"
She cackled and clapped her claws.
"Nice?"
"Oh yes," Mrs. Jongs said. "Nice underwears. I never have none. Just regular blue cotton pants I has. Bob saves on clothes." She pointed across quays and canal. "Them stockings and them panties, bras and all, and they takes that off, and Himself with the champagne, and the sniffles."
"Sniffles?" Grijpstra asked.
"Off the table," Mrs. Jongs said. "All of them on their knees."
"Good times, Mrs. Jongs?"
"Oh yes, the sniffles makes it last. On and on and on. For hours. Three of them sometimes, and Himself, busy with everything, he has two hands."