"Tell me about your uncle's business."
"He sold books," Termeer said. "Via a catalogue. Spiritual books mostly. Used. He bought the product in secondhand stores, catalogued it in his mail-order publication and sent it out widely."
"A good business?" the commissaris asked.
Termeer held his head to the side. "A sizable list, and he sold at about three times cost, but he also had expenses." Termeer's head dipped. "Bad debts maybe. Dud checks."
The commissaris thought of his dead brother, Therus. Therus operated a mail-order business once, distributing a catalogue of automotive products and gadgets. A profitable line. Brother Therus died in his early sixties, in gridlocked traffic near the fashionable suburb of Laren, hooting and hollering, in his new silver-gray Mercedes Sport, behind a shaking fist. Therus had spent his profits on Swiss mountaintops, with young escorts.
"Your uncle was profit-motivated?"
Jo Termeer didn't think so.
"Uncle Bert was childless?"
"Never married," said Termeer.
"Gay?"
"Uncle used to be friendly with his landlady, Caro-lien, when he lived in Amsterdam."
"And he rented space in a New York building?"
"On Watts Street," Termeer said. "That's in Tribeca, in Manhattan, near the river. Used to be a warehouse, where women filled jars with Russian caviar. Charlie lived on top, Uncle had the basement and the first two stories. Huge spaces, huge. The basement is where the books are kept."
Charlie, Jo said, sometimes helped out in the book business, updating the computer, packing up orders. The Watts Street building looked dilapidated on the outside and the elevators resembled the big predator's cages in the zoo, but inside, in the living and work areas, everything was kept up nicely.
"You visited your uncle in New York City?"
"I went on a tour once," Termeer said. "A supervised outing, like the Japanese here in Amsterdam: guide up front, guide in the back and everybody waves colored plastic tulips. Hard to get lost that way. We saw bridges and museums. There was a day off and I called on Uncle Bert. And just now I went again, because he was dead." Termeer nodded and sighed. He said the word in his own English. "Det."
The commissaris flicked the lid off the Verkade assorted cookie tin. The tin had been rifled by Grijpstra and his assistant, Detective-Sergeant de Gier. The mocha-glazed biscuits and sugared ladyfingers, his favorites, were gone.
He offered the tin. "A nonpareil?"
Termeer thanked him and took the offered cookie.
"Grijpstra arranged this meeting," the commissaris said. "Do you know the adjutant well?"
"Everybody in the Reserve knows the adjutant well," Termeer said. "Master Steelbrush taught me at police school. How to write reports. What crimes are arrestable. He's a good teacher, funny but firm, won't accept slackness. And idealistic." Termeer looked serious, possibly moved. "He taught us to respect the civilians as well as how to serve the suckers."
"You're quoting Grijpstra?"
"The civilian suckers tend to get themselves in trouble," Termeer said in a fair imitation of the adjutant's gruff voice. "They hire us to get themselves out of that trouble."
Yes, the commissaris thought. What about Grijpstra himself? Father of too many children, now mostly on welfare. Husband of estranged wife. Presendy engaged to a former prostitute with considerable ambition.
The commissaris coughed. To business. This Termeer seemed to be a decent fellow, responsible, not without a sense of humor.
Appearances are deceptive.
Time to inquire into his background.
Be a little more familiar now. "Tell me, dear boy…"
Replying to the commissaris's questions complainant claimed to have been born in Squire-Hugo-Town, deep in the provinces. Son of small farmers, but not for long, for Jo's mother had left on the rear of a powerful motorcycle, a new BMW 1000 cc Twin, driven by a German she'd met during the World War II occupation. Jo's tone of voice implied, the commissaris felt, three serious charges. First, adultery, for Jo's parents were married during the war. The German being the enemy added treason. Jo, born well after war's end, couldn't be the German's son, but his mother's leaving constituted the abandonment of a small child.
Whoring and national-interest-betraying mother abandoned child to the care of an overworked husband. Jo's father went bankrupt. Then he hung himself in his barn, above his tubercular cows.
A country tragedy with not too bad an ending for the blond orphan…
("Your age at the time, Jo?")
("Eight, commissaris.")
…who was adopted by Uncle Bert in Amsterdam. Uncle Bert was then a street vendor at the book market at Old Man's Gate in the inner city. Uncle took good care of nephew, who graduated from high school and became a hairdresser. Then, when Jo was doing well, uncle emigrated to the USA.
"Any particular reason?"
Jo shrugged. Uncle was restless. Holland is a small country. He had specialized in English-language books on spiritual subjects. The American mail-order market was huge. He had always been American-oriented. There had been maps of America on the walls of the Amsterdam apartment. Uncle had done some traveling in America and had lived in Bangor, Maine, and in Boston. He preferred New York, where he had been living for some five years now, maybe.
"Quite a leap from the Old Man's Gate," the commissaris said.
"Yes, commissaris, an adventurous man, my uncle."
"Did Carolien join him?"
"She didn't want to," Termeer said. "She was ten years older than Uncle. Carolien looked young for her age and Uncle Bert old, but the difference was increasing. Besides, she had become ill."
"Is she still alive?"
Termeer shook his head. "It was MS, multiple sclerosis. She was becoming paralyzed. Her eyesight was going. I called on her at times, in a home at the Leyden Canal."
"A pitiful situation?"
"Not at all." Termeer seemed more relaxed now, talking easily. When Jo was still a little kid, Aunt Carolien would come to fetch Uncle, tease him on the stairs with her French lace underwear and high boots. She would wear a hat decorated with bird of paradise feathers. A most unusual woman.
"Not a, eh…?"
"For money?" Termeer asked. He didn't think so. He had seen Aunt Carolien with the milkman, and under a mailman who was pulling back before pushing in, but those were surely chance couplings, engaged in for sport. Aunt Carolien owned the tall gable house and lived on her rents. She also had investments.
"The home where she stayed while crippled was paid for by Uncle?"
No, there was no need. She was a self-supporting woman, self-ended too, without the now so acceptable euthanasia agreement with the city doctors: comfortably in her bath, after several double and cold jenevers, a plastic bag tucked over her head.
Jo Termeer smiled.
The commissaris waited.
"Aunt Carolien," Termeer said. "I really liked her."
Termeer told the commissaris that the two, uncle and landlady, would travel together. He was taken along a few times. Once the three of them were in Paris, in a flea market, searching for old books. Uncle Bert saw an antique wheelchair but the merchant was an arrogant fellow, like so many Frenchmen, unwilling to deal with foreigners who maltreated his language. Later that afternoon they passed the wheelchair again. Carolien said, "I will be needing that soon." A premonition. The street merchant wasn't paying attention. Off went Aunt Caro-lien in the wheelchair, sagging to one side, drooling, spastic, her cheeks trembling, Uncle pushing the bizarre contraption, which was beautifully upholstered with fancy art needlework. One two three, gone!
"You too?"
Termeer grinned. "My job was to distract the merchant, pretend I was shoplifting, get myself caught and patted down. But there was nothing on me."
The commissaris nodded as he visualized the scene.