The detectives watched the movie in the apartment's living room, furnished mostly with glass and leather. A large painting above the fake fireplace showed slim cowboys in tight jeans and leather vests leaning across a counter. The videotape was worn out in parts. Halfway through the movie a young man let himself into the apartment. "Hello?"
Grijpstra put the VCR on pause. "Hello. Who are you?
"Eugene," the long-haired semi-Oriental-looking young man said. He showed Grijpstra his perfect profile as he turned towards Cardozo. "And who, may I ask, the fuck are you two?"
The detectives got up and showed their IDs.
"Peter let us in," Cardozo said. "He'll be up in a minute. You live here too?"
Eugene lived elsewhere but he was a friend of the family, "so to speak." He waved at the TV. "Couldn't you find something else to watch? Every time I come here Jo has The Road Warrior going. I know every scene backwards."
Grijpstra pressed the remote's power button. "You don't like Australian futuristic bizarre action films?" He muted the sound of roaring engines as Mel Gibson, by suddenly accelerating his racing car, tricked the skinheads on their powerful motorcycles. The bad guys attacking the lone avenger from either side now shot little arrows into each other. Or so it seemed. Wide wavy bands cut through the images and made events hard to follow.
"It's okay," Eugene said, pouring himself coffee, "but after a dozen times or so you kind of know how Good conquers Evil and after two dozen times or so you sort of start wondering what's so good about Good."
"Jo's favorite movie, right?" Cardozo asked.
Eugene sighed. "Isn't it ever."
The movie had ended when Peter came in. Eugene and Peter embraced tenderly, then kissed.
"Busy day," Peter said, still hugging his friend. "How did you like Jo's alter ego? Do you know Jo had made himself a Road Warrior outfit? And that he has a car just like that thing in the movie? A hot-rod horror?"
Grijpstra and Cardozo got up, thanking Peter for his hospitality. "It was nothing," Peter said. "You're welcome. Anything else perhaps?"
Now that Peter mentioned it, Grijpstra said, there were just two more things. Could Peter tell him where Jo was on June the fourth and could he perhaps show them Jo Termeer's passport?
"Really…," Eugene said. "What are you guys after? Isn't a passport personal? Is this The Return of the Gestapo? Why…"
Cardozo moved forward. "We can come back with a warrant. Now if-"
Peter stepped between the belligerent parties. His voice was soothing. His gestures were mild. "Now, now…now, now…sit down, my dears. Listen. Hear the thrush singing in the park?"
Everyone listened. A thrush, indeed, was singing.
"Adjutant," Peter asked, "would you care to pour more coffee? A slice of cake, anyone? Baked this myself. Won't take no for an answer." He presented the tray. "Okay? Can I get the passport from between Jo's clean shirts without you two starting another war here? I can? That's nice."
Jo Termeer's passport showed two sets of entry and departure stamps applied at Kennedy Airport. One entry dated two years back. The other was recent. June 7 through 10.
"So," Grijpstra said, "Peter, tell me, was Jo here June fourth? Working with you downstairs in the salon, living here in the apartment?"
"Sure," Peter said.
"Did you see those perverts kiss?" Cardozo asked when he and Grijpstra were waiting at the bus stop. "Aren't Jo and Peter supposed to be a couple?" He snorted. "I would call that adultery, those guys are no good."
"Well now," Grijpstra said, "adultery, adultery…I'm afraid that idea is extinct now, Simon."
Cardozo disagreed vehemently. He referred to acceptable social mores, to behavioral limits, to love being related to trust, to there being such a thing as decency "even in sick relationships, I'll have you know."
The bus arrived. Grijpstra pushed Cardozo ahead of him. "You're a dear boy," Grijpstra said after they were seated. "Old-fashioned, behind the times, limited, I'm not saying 'retarded,' mind you, restricted perhaps, well meaning in a kind of useless way "
Chapter 21
The commissaris, that evening, unable to sleep after the long-legged tram-driving demon once again tried to get him to do something he didn't understand, and that, he felt sure, he wouldn't want to do if he did understand, used his ivory bedside phone to wake Katrien.
Katrien, blinking at early sunlight pouring into the bedroom's windows on Queens Avenue, Amsterdam, said she would make coffee and return the call, once she was washed up somewhat and settled on the veranda.
It took her twenty minutes. The commissaris had dozed off. The Number Two streetcar was pushing through traffic, clanging its bells which became the telephone on the night table, ringing.
It took him a while to accept the change from streetcar to phone.
Katrien was unhappy. "Jan, what kept you?"
"I couldn't pick up a streetcar, dear."
"Your dream again? You feel better now?"
He did now that he heard his wife's mothering voice. He sketched, briefly, succinctly, the reasoning that had made him and de Gier decide there was another suspect and how he had devised and applied a trick to try and shock Charles Gilbert Perrin into opening up.
"A ripped-off penis," Katrien said. "Isn't that the worst that can happen to those who have one? Doesn't that make ripping it off a heinous crime? How did the suspect take your sudden outburst?" She watched a row of tulips that hadn't been pushed over by Turtle yet. "Tell me everything, Jan."
Charlie, the commissaris reported, had taken the outburst calmly. But there had been a change of atmosphere that he set about to repair.
He guided-his bad leg dragging more noticeably- his guests to the dining table, where, with the dedication of a priest serving mass, he served iced tea and seaweed biscuits.
Kali sat on a chair too, lapping water from her bowl after gently pushing the glazed biscuits away with her nose. Charlie said that he regretted what had happened to his tenant, acquaintance, friend if you like.
He had known Bert Termeer for some years. Nobody likes to lose a friend. But, Charlie said, what happened had to happen.
How so?
Because Bert Termeer thought of himself as bad.
How so?
Because Bert Termeer knew that Bert Termeer was sneaky.
Charlie said that "externalization is the beginning of liberation." He also said, "We have to be open about what we are. That is, if we want to solve the problem."
"The personal problem?"
Why not? But Charlie also, more particularly, meant the overall problem. He had been attracted to Termeer by the man's sincere quest for-Charlie smiled at Kali, who had pricked up her ears, as if she were going to hear something worthwhile-Termeer's quest for what? For seeing through the human condition? "All that activity in book trading, in playing the fool-'God's fool,' that kind of role is called in religion…"
They had come to the end of the iced tea ceremony by then and were being taken on a tour of the building.
Charlie unlocked and pushed and pulled huge doors, walked the detectives through hollow-sounding corridors that led to Termeer's part of the building, in and out of another elevator (a bare cage this time), even made them climb a ladder to inspect the building's attic.
Charlie led the way, Kali guarded the expedition's rear end.
Kali even wanted to climb the ladder. The ladder was deemed too steep by Charlie but Kali nudged de Gier, got him to pick her up, turn his back to the ladder and climb its rungs with his heels.
De Gier cradled the dog, who kept perfectly still, resting her long snout on his shoulder. The attic was filled with piles of unsorted books and pamphlets.