Ignacio, out of the Cavendish Hotel uniform, wearing a black silk suit, an open white shirt and high-heeled boots, seemed a different being.
The commissaris tried to smile between coughs. "Ignacio? From the hotel?"
"Happened to see you sitting here at the window," Ignacio said. "I often stop in here. I know one of the cooks. He gives me discount dinners."
"Care to join us?" the commissaris asked approvingly.
Ignacio declined with thanks. He pointed at the sushi. "Don't care for the Cavendish nouvelle cuisine undefinables, do you? Grind up and color, serve with a leaf of purple cabbage at fifty bucks a plate."
"It's all right," the commissaris said.
"Our breakfast is all right," Ignacio said, "but you like to eat that out too, don't you? With Mamere, the naked doggie lady?"
The commissaris looked surprised. "How do you know?"
"Bellhops," Ignacio said solemnly, "know everything." "There is always an explanation," de Gier said.
"For the thinker and the seer." Ignacio looked at the commissaris. "Le Chat Complet is across the street. I saw you there yesterday. I know Mamere. After you left, Mamere said you'd had bad dreams lately. That's why I gave you the voodoo spiel earlier. She thinks you should see her."
The bell hop wished them a pleasant evening, then walked to the sushi bar to talk to the cook.
Chapter 11
De Gier, using the subway map Antoinette had lent him, figured out a quick way to get to Bleecker Street. After the ride he walked down Christopher and up Hudson and got to his bed and breakfast on Horatio by 8:00P.M. After the loud bars and New Age display windows of the neighborhood's main streets Horatio looked neat. There were trees, the quaint houses were in excellent repair, cool fresh air wafted down from the Hudson River. The house he wanted had an imposing front door of varnished oak, decorated with a brass knocker. The establishment's owner, a small balding man in his fifties who introduced himself as Freddie, was happy to show his guest a well-equipped and tastefully furnished apartment. The bedroom viewed treetops. Freddie and his live-in friend, Antonio, a hospital nurse, a heavyset man with a big black beard, remembered Antoinette and her husband, Karel.
"Lovely couple," Freddie said. "I showed Karel around some of the galleries in SoHo. Admirable fellow, a spastic stutterer and yet in such good command of himself. Good artist. Showed me photos of his sculptures. So Karel and his wife recommended you? That's nice. And you are a policeman? You're here on business? Antoinette telephoned. She told us to be of use. Care to tell us about your mission?"
Antonio was enthusiastic too. He liked to read true crime stories and occasionally indulged in mystery fiction.
"We both like puzzles," Freddie said. "You have pieces we can fit together?"
The drinks, served on the tiny lawn, between hedges of wild roses, were all juices. Freddie and Antonio admitted to being recovering alcoholics.
"You mind?" Freddie asked.
De Gier said he had been thinking of cutting his own habit.
"Cutting down?"
"Cutting out."
"The only way," Antonio said. "And your case?"
De Gier explained.
Antonio was interested. He knew Central Park well. He sailed his model sailboat on the Model Boat Pond, kept it there in Kerb's Model Boat House. Being around Central Park on weekends he had seen most of what he called 'the crazies.' "An exhibitionist, you say? Could you let us have some details?"
De Gier provided the details he remembered from Reserve Constable Jo Termeer's description and the Lakmakers' report.
"I think I know the guy," Antonio said. "He stopped me once. Very nicely. Told me to 'watch it.'"
"Watch what?"
Antonio shrugged. "Just 'it,' I guess. To be aware, you know? To pay attention?"
"Like in the Boy Scouts," Freddie said. "Awareness is the key. Lord Baden Powell thought of that. Noble-looking old codger. What ever happened to the Boy Scouts?"
"Watch the bullshit going on," Antonio said. "I think your guy was telling me to watch all the bullshit."
"Like your own?" Freddie asked, winking at de Gier.
"Right." Antonio, ignoring Freddie's wink, nodded pleasantly. "Watch my own bullshit. Might save me some trouble. Think for myself."
De Gier, after restating his facts briefly again, proffered a theory that might interest his hosts. The theory aimed at explaining why Termeer might have been murdered. De Gier's hypothesis proposed that there were sexual overtones here. Even though Chief O'Neill claimed Termeer wasn't into nudity the man was obviously a performer. Also possibly demented. Standing still for hours, in some contorted attitude, and then dashing off, frolicking."
Freddie and Antonio laughed. "Like Snoopy…Snoopy likes to frolic in parks."
Right, de Gier said, but there could be more to the need to frolic. There were many cases in Amsterdam's Vondel Park where women danced around and, once they had attracted an audience, slipped out of their fur coats or cloaks and pranced about naked, and there were men who pretended to amuse little girls, by means of games or dolls, and then suddenly exposed themselves.
"So what do you cops do?" Antonio asked.
Nothing much, de Gier said. Take the foolish folks home maybe. Be kind and forgiving. Keep tensions down. Amsterdam is known for permissiveness, the city welcomes alternative lifestyles, but the American East Coast is known for more Puritan values. De Gier became enthusiastic. Now what if old Termeer had dared to point his pecker at a female cop, a mounted female cop, a dominatrix on a high horse? Wouldn't that get him in trouble? Get him kicked in the chest by the officer's horse? The perpetrator gallops off. Doesn't tell anyone what happened. Victim dies in the bushes. The NYPD covers up. Perhaps there was repressed anger in the policewoman's subconscious. Maybe she was of Puritan stock?
De Gier got up and walked excitedly around the small Horatio Street garden, acting out the scene. Imagine this extreme case of a supposedly neat old gent, in tweeds, with a lovely white beard, a St. Nick figure, dropping his mask by opening his fly, being utterly disgusting, provoking an impeccably uniformed law enforcement officer by waving his dick at the goddamn woman?
De Gier's audience was amused but not impressed. "No Puritans in New York," Freddie said.
Antonio agreed. "You're thinking of Massachusetts. Massachusetts was setded by hypocrites in hats. You guys, the Dutch, settled Manhattan. Flamboyant folks. 'New Amsterdam,' remember? And then, after you guys, it was the British. The Brits were merchants and aristocrats. They're not after dicks, they're after money." He laughed. "Money buys the good life, eh, Fred?"
Freddie told de Gier that he specialized in trading furniture and art objects from those early days. Through his dealings he had absorbed some of the distinctive atmosphere of that historical period. Neither the Dutch not the British had been concerned about prescribing restrictive behavior in order to impress a forbidding Father.
"Show him that picture of the cross-dressing governor, Freddie."
Freddie knew of a portrait of one of the Tory governors, a well-known transvestite. He went inside and came back with an art book. There was a full-page reproduction of an oil painting showing a powerful figure in an extravagant satin dress. "Here," Freddie said. "Mark the shaven jowls. His ladyship. An early J. Edgar Hoover."
"And the governor held court here" Antonio said, "in New York City. Nobody minded much."
De Gier's theory crumbled while Freddie and Antonio, taking turns, being careful not to interrupt each other, like TV anchormen, lectured him on the history of New York City. The sergeant was told that the city had been on the British side during the American Revolution and had spent the Civil War sympathizing with the southern slavery states.