"Yes?" the commissaris asked. "Who is this?"
"Hugh O'Neill. We're down in the lobby. Can we come up and talk about your Central Park case? I have Sergeant Hurrell with me."
The commissaris said he wasn't dressed, bit if his colleagues didn't mind…
They didn't, the hearty American voice said. But if the commissaris preferred to rest first, they could come back later.
"No, please come up."
The New York policemen seemed impressed by the luxury of the commissaris's quarters. The commissaris tried to explain. His wife was paying. He hadn't been feeling well. A present.
"But doesn't the convention take care of hotel expenses for all invitees?" Hurrell asked.
"They wouldn't pay for this," O'Neill said, noting crystal chandeliers, satin drapes, an Oriental rug on the floor, large-screen TVs and VCRs in both rooms. "Nice present. Your wife must love you." He harrumphed. "How do you want to be addressed? By rank? As Mister?" He smiled. "I'm afraid I won't be able to do your last name justice."
"Use my first name," the commissaris said. "J-a-n."
"You pronounce that as 'Yan'?"
"Any way you like. May I call you Hugh?"
"Please," O'Neill said. "First names are easy. Hurrell here is…" He seemed puzzled. "Is what?"
"Earl," Hurrell said. "Funny name. Hardly ever use it."
"Hurrell has brought his reports with him," O'Neill said.
Hurrell was a nondescript man, except for blotched cheeks and a heavily veined nose. A skin condition, the commissaris thought, or alcoholism. O'Neill was boisterous, handsome, with a full head of cropped curly auburn hair. The chief looked athletic. An American football player, the commissaris thought. Better give him the ball when he wants it before he tears you to pieces.
Both visitors were in their forties. Hurrell seemed quiet, moody, unhappy. He needed a shave. He wore a khaki windbreaker over baggy pants, with a faded red T-shirt under his jacket. O'Neill wore a good-quality suit, with the jacket unbuttoned. As the chief moved about, a holstered pistol under his armpit showed. O'Neill seemed efficient and powerful, in charge of himself, ready to take control of whatever was going on around him.
"We won't be long, Yan," O'Neill said. "You need to rest up, but the convention starts tomorrow so you might want to get your problem out of the way now. I believe the dead man is an uncle to one of your people?" He looked at his sergeant and put out a hand. Hurrell handed over a large manila envelope. O'Neill broke the seal.
The contents were shaken out on to the large coffee table. There were photographs that O'Neill sorted quickly. A map and reports were clipped together inside a plastic file.
The commissaris invited his guests to sit down. The effect of the codeine seemed to have worn off already. He felt dizzy again, O'Neill's words waving around him.
"Our dead man-Termeer, Bert-was known as a kind of an exhibitionist, maybe suffering from some compulsive disorder. Tourette's, perhaps? But he didn't expose himself, no nakedness or any such extreme behavior.
"Here is a photo of the corpse. Looks bad, doesn't he? The midsection was damaged by raccoons, we think. Oh yes, there are some living in the middle of Manhattan, in Central Park. And goddamn rats, too, the size of cats. The autopsy mentions that the eyes were pecked out by birds. Hawks will do that, and at least three species live in the park: red-tailed, sharp-shins and Cooper's hawks.
"There was also damage by seagulls, it says, but the raccoons did the big job. Dug out most of the chest and belly, tore the body in two…
"Just one night in the open. Our beastly brethren show little respect.
"Our confusion, Yan, was caused by the clothes. Termeer's body was dressed in rags when it was found. The corpse was robbed, and there must have been a clothes switch. We figured this out later. But at first we had him down as just another homeless "The body must have been robbed by a derelict. He would have been delighted to encounter such rich pickings: wallet, money, watch and so on
"Little chance to trace the unknown perpetrator or perpetrators.
"We found Termeer's dentures. Quite a bit of gold in them, seems surprising the bums didn't take them…may not have seen them-azalea bushes, you know-the dentures were covered with leaves.
"Apart from the robbery, of course, no crime seems to have been committed and that was after.
The commissaris must have asked something, although he didn't heard himself speak.
"Yes, Yan," O'Neill said. "Sure, that's where we went wrong at first. The corpse was found the next morning, you see, by kids, oh dear oh dear. And their father was with them, a medical man. The corpse was torn up, chewed by animals and pecked at-that doesn't look good in a public playground like our magnificent Central Park." O'Neill scowled at Hurrell, who was looking out of the window. "What do you have to add, Earl?"
"Right," Hurrell said. "Right, Chief. Tom and Jerry investigated. It was my day off. They might have taken note of the body's clean fingernails, the nicely cut hair, the trimmed beard and so forth. They didn't. Tom and Jerry had him zipped into a bag. They did take photographs, however."
"Tom and Jerry" sounded vaguely familiar to the commissaris. Cheery New Age faces on ice-cream lids? Cartoon characters? He smiled.
O'Neill laughed. "Hurrell's assistants. Happens to be their names. A good team, but they were sloppy here." He scowled again.
Hurrell, feeling guilty perhaps, was talking now. "Right. Eh…Yan. The mistake was that Tom and Jerry were fooled by the blanket Termeer seemed to be sleeping under." He showed the commissaris a photograph. "Filthy. See? Lots of bums sleep in the park. They're not healthy. They die. But that's no reason not to search the area. Tom and Jerry should have found the dentures but they didn't, not straight off. Maybe because they considered the subject was just another piece of garbage."
In spite of his physical misery the commissaris became aware of a silence in the room, in which Detective Hurrell's labored breathing seemed unnaturally loud and painful.
"Okay?" O'Neill asked. "Earl? You okay?"
"Garbage…," Hurrell continued. "To be thrown out. Tom and Jerry think that way. Don't care much about fellow human beings."
There was the labored breathing again.
"Now then," Chief O'Neill said cheerfully, cutting through what was about to become more silence. "Okay.
So the NYPD kinda fucked up. Happens at your end too, I'm sure. But we did get it in the end, after Charlie showed up. This Charlie was Termeer's neighbor. It's all in the report. You might care to call on him. We had the Dutch nephew by then, inquiring at the Park Precinct house. And there was that angry foreign couple, the tourists, complaining-that wasn't handled to well either." O'Neill rubbed his hair with a fist. "Things kind of piled up. But we figured it out in the end. The autopsy report was clear enough. Bizarre, though. Sergeant?"
"Yeah," Hurrell said. "The corpse was Dutch. And so was the couple who complained. But there was no connection. There must be a lot of Dutchmen around town these days."
The commissaris struggled against letting his body sag back on the couch. He thought he might be fainting. If he let on how he felt, the visitors would probably call a doctor, or, worse, an ambulance. He forced himself to appear interested. "Dutch? Dutch tourists?"
"But Termeer was alive then when the couple saw him in some sort of physical trouble," O'Neill said. "Just not feeling well, which fits in with the autopsy's findings. At that time the subject was wearing his own clothes, of course. Tweed suit. Tie. Hat. He had been gesticulating oddly and frolicking about, after standing still for a long time, finally collapsing. Older man…open-heart surgery…"
The commissaris caught on to words here and there, which came close, wafted away, turned back, floated around. He wasn't quite sure what "frolicking" meant.