Just a Corpse at Twilight (6 page)

Grijpstra said there had to be a slump on for houses to sell at half their value, and Ishmael said that would be so, but then there was always a recession in Maine. But Hairy Harry's house was custom-built, complete—turn the key and step into Hairy Harry Land, the sheriffs individually adjusted theme park. Country music on compact disc in an electronic jukebox loudspeaker-extended to all rooms, full-size snooker tables in the basement, inside golf carpet wall to wall in the loft, bar with foreign beers on tap, a gun room, a video room.

Ishmael looked sly. Now he wasn't sure but just for the sake of argument, of pure cussedness, there might even be a supply of skinflicks there, no kidding around for Hairy Harry, the old in-and-out perhaps. Imported, most likely. Probably quite a collection. Ishmael liked to collect things himself and there was something to be said for naked women, okay? Grijpstra didn't mind his bringing up the subject? But they, the women, might make the viewer, Ishmael in this case, kind of nervous, especially if they moved and talked, and had company and so forth. "You happen to care for that sort of thing yourself, eh . . ."

"Grijpstra."

"Kripstra," Ishmael said.

"In Holland we get too much of that now," Grijpstra said. "Like masturbation classes on prime-time TV. Holland used to be Calvinistic all over but it's the other way around now. The Dutch are compulsive in any direction. Prescribed group sex and all that." Grijpstra didn't care for the activity himself.

"What if they're good?"

Grijpstra said he always preferred them to be out of sight, behind drawn curtains. "And quiet," Grijpstra said. "They better be quiet."

"You could switch them off."

Grijpstra said his girlfriend liked to watch sometimes.

"You really don't like looking in?"

"Makes me shy," Grijpstra said.

"That's like Flash Farnsworth," Ishmael said. "Flash closes his eyes at the good parts."

"Porno?"

"No, regular," Ishmael said. "But regular shows it too. Flash says he can see it better in his head."

"Flash with the bird's nest on top?"

"Right." Ishmael made the Tailorcraft skim waves, nip between islands here and there, while he told Grijpstra about Flash, and while summer people, lounging on verandas of island summer houses, looked down on the antique airplane putt-putting bravely below.

Flash Farnsworth, Ishmael remembered, was with the Coast Guard once, and a drinking lad at the time, until divine justice sent the big woman bouncing down the boulevard in Boston. So now Flash limped. "You see, Krip, that's what Flash finally figured out the big woman to be— heaven-sent. Get me?"

Amsterdam police officers, in view of the city's partly alien population, are required to take English spoken-language exams. Grijpstra also watched American rental movies, with Tabriz, de Gier^ left-behind fat furry cat, bunched up on his lap, blocking the subtitles. On the other hand there were Ishmael's Maine accent and Grijpstra's fear offlying low in a small aircraft above turbulent seas. Nevertheless Grijpstra got the general drift of Flash's trial, which, Ishmael said, had to do with faith and reason, and the simplicity of Flash, who wanted God in heaven. One who accepts nothing at all, Ishmael said, has to look for reasons to hang his soul from.

"Always for a reason," Ishmael was saying. "Got to be the Lord who sent this woman. So here is Flash, marching along on the Boston boulevard, with a flask in his back pocket, in his Sunday whites, and there's Bigga, bouncing along, and divine design says they gotta meet, right, Krip?"

Grijpstra nodded, wondering about the splashing against the windscreen. What was it, sea spray? Had to be spray, with the plane flying that low.

"So Bigga wants the flask and Flash wants Bigga and divine design provides the side street and the alley off the side street and a garbage can in the alley, and Bigga puts Flash on the lid and sets herself down on him and . . ."

Ishmael's two-tone whistle and the flat of his hand hitting his thigh rhythmically indicated their having sex.

"Flash is a quiet man, but at that particular time and place Flash was yelling, and Bigga thought that it was she who caused this joyful agony, but it was the broken flask up Flash's ass." Ishmael sang:

And all the Coast Guard's surgeons
and all the Navy's men
couldn't put Flash's rear end
together again.

Grijpstra wished he had never taken the English courses, never watched the American rentals. Full comprehension of Flash's anal problem turned his testicles to glass.

He concentrated on the windscreen, with moisture splashing up, dribbling back to the hood. Ishmael had made the plane fly high again, at some five hundred feet, veering back to the coast. The weather was good: clear sky with thin cloud lines parallel to the horizon.

"What's that fluid on the windscreen?" Grijpstra finally asked.

Ishmael, still discussing the human necessity to make sense of things, even ofBigga on Boston Common, and the human refusal to allow for random occurrence, switched his window wipers on.

"It isn't raining," Grijpstra said.

The fluid was gasoline. Ishmael wasn't surprised. This had happened before. "You see, Kripstra, there's an old gas tank in the port wing and another in the starboard wing and the gas pump sucks in rust that clogs the tube to the engine and the pump keeps pumping so the tube bursts a bit."

"So now the gas runs on top ofthe engine and not into the engine?" Grijpstra asked.

The engine spluttered.

Grijpstra reflected on whether ending equals beginning. Is death birth?

"The engine's still trying." Ishmael checked the dashboard. "For a while." He patted his passenger's hand. "You're right, we don't want high-octane gasoline, the world's most popular explosive, run on top of a hot engine, do we, Krip?"

"We do not," Grijpstra said.

The hills ofJameson were in sight. So was the town itself, a crescent of pastel-colored Victorian mansions, with a second tier of more modest frame houses, mostly plain white, rectangular, for more regular folks. A few ofthe larger frame houses carried cupolas, little watchtowers, offering sea views. There were thin-spired churches. The bigger church showed the creator's giant eye on its front wall, sea blue, with long lashes, looking benevolently at the approaching airplane.

Grijpstra only saw the hills with granite slopes, thinly overgrown by spruces, or just bare, glaring, harsh, waiting for the little plane to smash into them.

"Jameson airstrip is on the other side ofthe hills there," Ishmael said, cutting the engine. "Can't make that, I think, not unless we want to catch fire. Let's aim for the critters, shall we?"

The critters were sheep, running about nervously as the Tailorcraft, aimed at their meadow, lost height rapidly.

The little plane was gliding quietly down, taking its time, giving Grijpstra a chance to check out the harbor, where Jameson's small fleet of lobster vessels had attached themselves to moorings, between ledges dotted with sea gulls and cormorants. Grijpstra saw a string of islands, one squidshaped, with a short body and numerous tentacles of dotted rock lines fanning outward. A peninsula reached into the sea from Jameson, bending toward the islands, of which the first, semi-attached with a bar of glistening wet sand and ledge, was clearly visible through what could be some ten feet of pale green water. He saw shoals of shiny fish, and cormorants, wings stretched, twisting and diving in pursuit.

Grijpstra took in the beauty of the scene below, in spite of, or perhaps because of, being scared, the fear that sharpens perception.

The plane landed, hopping about on clumps of grass, following the galloping sheep, twisting and turning.

"It'll be your foot on the brake again," Ishmael said.

Grijpstra pulled back his legs. The Tailorcraft, about to fall over, righted itself neatly.

A large four-wheel drive came trundling up a dirt road, blue lights quietly flashing, then stopped at the fence. The vehicle was marked SHERIFF. Hairy Harry jumped out nimbly. The sheep's leader, a mighty ram with curled horns, left his flock to confront the intruder. The sheriff, turning back from replacing the field's wooden gate, put his hand on his gun.

Ishmael came running. "Now, now," Ishmael said, maneuvering between beast and man, "none ofthat, Harry."

The sheriff put the revolver away. "Rams scare me, Ishy." He spoke in a high childlike voice that matched his hairless head. A naked head, Grijpstra thought. Hairy Harry was still explaining. "We had a ram on the farm. I'd have to take a jug ofcold coffee out to my dad and the ram would run me down. I'd spill the coffee, my dad would beat on me." Hairy Harry smiled widely, showing good teeth, which he shouldn't have, Grijpstra thought, being that hairless and babylike. "You hear what I'm trying to tell you, Ishy?"

"I hear you," Ishmael said, scratching the ram between his horns. "It's okay now, Harry."

The sheriffkept his smile. "Saw you both come tootlin' down, thought I'd check you out, Ishy." Harry pushed up the rim ofa new-looking straw hat. "Was expecting you two in a way. Tad of trouble?"

Ishmael mentioned rusty gas tubes and a persistent fuel pump. He walked the ram back to his sheep. "Sorry about using the common. This here is Kripstra, Sheriff."

"Let's see what we have here," the sheriff said after shaking hands. "Wouldn't be bringing in anything from away, would we? Anything we wouldn't need here? Mind if I frisk you? Could you turn around, sir?"

Grijpstra was patted down and asked to produce the contents of his pockets. The sheriff checked the wallet, studying an ID card with a photograph and the red, white, and blue colors of the Dutch flag. "Detective?"

"Private," Grijpstra said.

"Mr. Marlowe," Hairy Harry said, "Mr. Foreign Mar-lowe. You read Chandler, Krip? I'm a Charles Willeford man myself but Willeford's guy is a cop. Always wanted to meet with a private eye, though. Not too many of your kind around here, Krip." He pulled a thousand-guilder note from Grijpstra's wallet. "How much in dollars?"

"Five hundred," Grijpstra said, "maybe a little over now."

The sheriff counted the wad. "Twenty-two thousand guilders makes eleven thousand dollars?"

"Right," Grijpstra said.

"You carrying that much cash for a reason?"

"For the trip," Grijpstra said. "It came up in a hurry. I thought I might need some."

Hairy Harry returned the wallet. "That'll be all for now, sir. You'd have a purpose for your visit? Business? Pleasure?"

Ishmael frowned. "You'd know that, Harry, from listening in on the open CB channel. You knew Rinus asked me to pick up a friend at Logan Airport. This is a free country, Harry."

"Oh yes." Harry held his smile, keeping his message serious in its wording only. "Free not to bother well-meaning local folks going about their customary business, is that what you mean?"

A jeep pulled up at the other side of the sheep fence and a uniformed deputy got out—a younger man, tall, military looking. The deputy saluted the sheriff and nodded at Ishmael.

"This is Kripstra, Deputy Billy Boy," Ishmael said.

"How're you doing, Kripstra." There was no question mark.

Grijpstra said he was doing good anyway. Nice place, this Jameson.

While Billy helped the sheriffto check the airplane and Ishmael's and Grijpstra's bags, Grijpstra walked over to the Bronco. He was admiring the car's steel running boards when the sheriffjoined him.

"Like 'em, Kripstra?"

Grijpstra said he certainly did, he would like to equip his own Ford with running boards like that.

"You drive an American vehicle, Kripstra?"

Grijpstra said he did.

"They still have American vehicles over in Europe? Between them Toyotas and such?"

They sure had.

Grijpstra became enthusiastic. He told Hairy Harry that Holland had been liberated by Americans and Canadians and the British. Poles too, a Polish regiment came from England. But it was the Americans who impressed young Grijpstra, standing on Dam Square in Amsterdam, clutching his mother's hand.

"Those are Yanks, HenkieLuwie."

The Yanks were in a tank looking down, chewing gum, grinning at little Grijpstra, who was waving his piece of orange cloth attached to a dowel—orange stood for the House of Orange, for the queen, for goodness, for the loving mother who'd come back to her country to rule it in peace, thanks to Yanks chewing gum in tank turrets.

"So you're all still white Protestants out there in liberated Holland," said Billy, "and now you're joining your pal Rinus on Squid Island. What would that be for?"

"To watch nature," Grijpstra said.

"No kidding?"

"Holland's getting too full," Grijpstra said. He told the sheriff and deputy what Katrien had been telling him, last time he called on the ailing commissaris to pay his respects. Katrien quoted recently published statistics. "Nine hundred Dutchmen to the square mile, nine hundred pigs to the same square mile, twenty-three cows to the same square mile, twenty-three cars to the same square mile."

"How big a country are we talking about, Kripstra?"

Grijpstra was still working on how much three hundred kilometers times a hundred kilometers, less allowing for a skinny waist and one southern leg reaching down, would come to in United States measurements when Ish-mael helped out. Holland, said Ishmael, which he hadn't believed was there—who could believe Squid Island's Rinus?—had turned up in Ishmael's encyclopaedia and was half the size of Maine. The sixteen million Dutchmen were also likely to exist. Ishmael's old
Encyclopaedia Britannica
only listed five million of the creatures, but that was in 1890 and didn't the human affliction keep multiplying all the time thanks to medical science? And sixteen million Dutchmen spread out in half the state of Maine, why, that would equal out at around nine hundred a square mile, as the man was saying. "That's a lot of crawling around in a space the size of Jameson, don't you reckon?"

The sheriff said he liked people fine but people tended to exaggerate at times. He said Billy Boy was a great man for numbers. Hairy Harry asked Billy Boy to confirm Ishmael's statement.