The Hollow-Eyed Angel (15 page)

Chapter 18

                                        The commissaris, in earlier, more positive and therefore more restricted times, used to say that "good luck comes to those who keep trying." He was lately heard to say that "good luck comes to those who are lucky."

Two events happened that afternoon. While the commissaris attended his lecture at One Police Plaza, where he viewed slides showing deadly weapons made from junk by handy criminals who, the burly captain lecturing said, "were out of cash but used these to get it," and while de Gier wandered about the magnificent display of Papuan art in the Metropolitan Museum, admiring wooden demons who sprouted other wooden demons out of the tops of their heads, Maggotmaid killer Trevor was shot dead in Central Park by Detective Tom Tierney.

Events that led up to Trevor's killing began when Detective Jerry Curran, dressed as a hobo, overheard Trevor talking into a public telephone. Trevor, when repeating the other party's information, used the words "Zabar's" "NYNEX" and "Alice" and the code figure/ letter combinations "IK," "2P" and "4P." Detective-Sergeant Hurrell cracked Trevor's code. He correctly surmised that Trevor was to meet his party at the bronze statue of Alice in Wonderland in Central Park at 2 P.M.

Both parties would be carrying shopping bags from the famous New York deli Zabar's. Each bag would contain a NYNEX phonebook. They would not greet each other but would sit down on the same bench. They would leave carrying each other's shopping bags.

If no police activity occurred, the parties would meet again at the Alice statue at 4 P.M. This time Trevor's bag would contain cash in the amount of the going wholesale price for one kilo of heroin and the other party's bag would contain the product.

When Hurrell and his two assistants attempted to arrest Trevor, who was carrying the heroin-filled shopping bag, Trevor pulled a pistol from under his jacket. Trevor's gun turned out to be unloaded.

Detective Tom Tierney's gun was loaded.

Sergeant Hurrell, later that same afternoon, walking contentedly through the park, noticed a derelict slumped on a bench. The man was wearing a dark brown tweed suit, complete with waistcoat, a quality shirt that had once been white, a plaid necktie, cream woolen stockings and leather boots that showed traces of polish.

The derelict, taken in by a patrol car summoned by Hurrell, admitted, at the Central Park Precinct, that he had robbed a body he'd stumbled upon. The man, drunk and stoned, couldn't remember when or where. "A while back." The derelict did say the body was dead "and bleeding."

Perhaps remembering that he had been on a higher level of existence once, he then rose laboriously, tried to strike an orator's pose and said "in theatrical tones," as Hurrell's report had it, that the body "had been urinating" and that he had found it "in the early morning hours."

Chief O'Neill, taking the commissaris home after the homemade firearms lecture, heard the news on his police radio. He stopped at the Central Park Precinct on the Eighty-fifth Street transverse and Hurrell showed him the confiscated clothes.

"No wallet?"

"No," Sergeant Hurrell said, "but check the trousers." O'Neill noted that there were bloodstains around the fly area. The chief instantly created a theory. "So Bert Termeer had been peeing, had he? Poor fucker fell down, felt the need, opened his fly, peed, had his heart attack, thrashed about, flung his head this way and that, then— dentures flying every which way—he dies."

O'Neill wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Next thing, a raccoon locates his dinner. Tears off what Termeer had exposed. Hurrell's bum finds the corpse, strips it of its clothes, puts them on. Leaves his own clothes and his dirty blanket. The raccoon comes back, brings his family. The commotion attracts the park's carrion birds. Hawks peck the head, raccoons eat the lower torso.

"Right, Yan?"

"Why not, Hugh?" The commissaris looked at the blood on the tweed trousers that Sergeant Hurrell was holding up for his inspection. "Oh yes, Hugh, that could easily have happened."

Hugh patted Hurrell's shoulder. He smiled. "I think our case is definitely closed now. Nice work, Earl."

Chapter 19

                                        The bellhop Ignacio, after he saw de Gier coming in to pick up the commissaris and observed the two men checking de Gier's map to find the location of Watts Street, Tribeca, insisted that they make use of the Cavendish's free limousine service.

The limo, exceedingly long and cumbersome even for that class of vehicle, got stuck in Canal Street traffic. The commissaris told the driver not to worry. He and de Gier could walk the short distance. After they got out traffic loosened up somewhat and the limo disappeared, taking with it de Gier's map, which the commissaris had left on the back seat.

"Watts Street," the commissaris said. "Should be easy. Lots of people about. They'll all know it."

De Gier, still focused on the Papuan ghost masks and soul boats that he had been looking at all afternoon, walked along dreamily.

Since they were now at Canal Street's eastern end, they would need, the commissaris explained, to walk all the way west, from the East River to the Hudson, and then, on Watts, they'd go south, aiming for the towers of the World Trade Center that no one could miss.

"Watts Street, Tribeca," the commissaris said, "short for
Triangle Below Canal."

"Okay," de Gier said.

"Charles Gilbert Perrin," the commissaris read from his notebook.

"Nice name," de Gier said.

"Charlie'll be there," the commissaris said. "At number two. I phoned. He sounded very pleasant."

"Good," de Gier said.

"You know," the commissaris said, "why, according to chief O'Neill, Hurrell didn't visit Charlie at home but just briefly interviewed him at the precinct? Because Tribeca is known for transvestite hookers. Because Hurrell's child died in Tribeca." The commissaris tsked.

De Gier tsked too.

Canal Street displays a seemingly endless array of market stalls on both sides. Food odors float on diesel fumes. Large buses and trucks thunder between overflowing sidewalks when they're not gridlocked between traffic lights. Policemen whistle at honking vehicles willing but unable to get going again.

"Watts Street?" the commissaris asked people of different colors, each dressed differently from the others.

"Vots Strijet?" "Trots Strit?" "Zljotz Striet?" responded the different people.

A new flow of eager buyers pushed the commissaris and de Gier into a corner where they found themselves staring at a display of Chinese-made windup toys. Beetles, mounting other beetles, whirred furiously. Clowns tumbled. Flame-spitting monstrosities danced about. Rabbits tried to climb carton walls, fell back, wagged their tails, seemed to have digestive problems.

A little black girl with bright ornaments in her felted hair strings picked up toys that had stopped and passed them to a boy who turned the toys' keys and handed them back.

At the next stall a soup vendor tended a charcoal fire under large aluminum containers. Brown children dropped wilted vegetables, bloodied bones and fish heads into the containers' bubbling contents.

"Sopa?"
the vendor asked, offering a bowl and spoon.

"No thank you, sir. Watts Street?"

De Gier listened to the voices holding forth all around him. The sergeant's linguistic interests were aroused. Hardly anybody spoke English. All these people might be recently arrived. Amsterdam is an international city too and de Gier had learned to distinguish sounds and phrasing to determine origins. He heard Chinese voices, both Cantonese and Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish. Tall women in robes might be Tibetan. Other tall women in robes might be Zulu. Two white shoppers coming by could be Finnish.

"Vot street you vont?" the soup vendor asked.

"Watts."

A woman directed them to a little folding table set up in a doorway where a beautifully bearded man in a turban and flowing robes sold light bulbs. There was the fragrance of quality marijuana mixing with that of incense burning under the oil-painted picture of a guru sitting in the lotus position.

"Watts Street?"

"What street?"

They left Canal, turning south at the next side street, followed an alley without a street sign, then kept turning until they saw the river.

"Maybe here?"

"I'll ask." De Gier strode over to a tall white prostitute in a miniskirt and a silk blouse under an imitation lynx fur coat. "Watts Street, please?"

"Right here." The prostitute's voice was a baritone. "All the way down to the Hudson River, but there's nothing here but warehouses and me. My minivan is around the corner. I work in the car. I could oblige you?"

"No thank you." De Gier looked for numbers. "Number two?"

"Bert and Charlie?" the prostitute asked.

The commissaris stepped closer, looking pleased. "Yes, do you know them?"

The prostitute looked suspicious. "You can't be cops, not with those accents."

"Cops from Holland," the commissaris said. "We're just inquiring. Does Bert Termeer live near here?"

The prostitute shook a cigarette out of a Marlboro pack. "Got a match?"

"We stopped smoking," de Gier said.

The prostitute coughed painfully. "Good for you. I smoke because of the weather but the weather gets worse." He found his own match after digging about in a shiny handbag. He sucked smoke hungrily, coughed, sucked smoke again. "Termeer is dead."

"We know," the commissaris said. "That's why we're here." He put out his hand and said his name.

The prostitute laughed, then excused himself. "What sort of a name is that?" He shook the commissaris's hand. "My name is Teddy."

De Gier shook hands too.

Teddy walked them to a three-story warehouse with a crumbling cement-over-concrete front. Between rows of boarded-up windows apostolic faces, white skinned, black bearded, smiled appealingly. Birds held up banners.

The banners bore a text:

give your time

do things for God

give your money "Give your money to me," Teddy said. "I can use it. I badly need cough drops."

De Gier handed over a twenty-dollar bill.

Teddy thanked him. "Like to see my place on the Bowery? Best whips and chains collection downtown."

"Thank you," de Gier said. "We don't have the time." He pointed at the beseeching smilers, the text-carrying bluebirds.

"Termeer and Charlie put that up?"

Teddy laughed. "No, that was the Good Lord Club. The club didn't survive. The bank foreclosed and Charlie bought the building. There's nothing much here for Goodlorders." He waved at forbidding warehouses up and down Watts Street. "No conversions."

There were two sets of stone steps, each leading to a metal door. The commissaris tried to read a small hand-painted sign next to the left door. His outdated glasses failed him.

Teddy helped out.
Bert the Bookseller.

"You knew Bert Termeer?" the commissaris asked Teddy.

Teddy grimaced. "Sure did."

"Did you like him?"

"I like Charlie," Teddy said. "Charlie asks me in when it rains. We eat noodles in the restaurant sometimes." He raised a shoulder. "Just friends, you know? Separate checks. Regular conversation. 'Pass the soy sauce.' I like that. You know? Friendly-like?" He pointed at his pick-up spot on the corner of Watts Street. "The lamppost gets lonely. I take off for lunch. When Charlie wants to eat noodles and he happens to come by we go eat together."

"Termeer didn't ask you in when it rained?"

"Sure," Teddy said. "Oftentimes. Any kind of weather." He looked over his shoulder. A man was waiting at the end of the street. "Uh-oh. Duty calls, gents."

Teddy walked away, on long silken legs, swinging tight hips.

The commissaris and de Gier contemplated the door on the right side of the forbidding building. Charlie's nameplate was a strip of yellowing paper covered by cracked plastic. The writing was in black ballpoint.

diaries gilbert perrin

The commissaris pressed an oxidized brass button. A loudspeaker spoke near his ear, uncannily clear of static, transmitting a calm deep voice.

"Nothing needed," Charlie said, "I thank you. Take care now. Okay."

The commissaris said his name.

"Mr. Dutch Police and Co.?" Charlie asked. "Stay right there, folks, I'm coming."

The commissaris looked down Watts Street, wondering how Grijpstra would like this view. Grijpstra might paint it on a Sunday morning, as a change from dead ducks. The commissaris thought that the narrow empty alley—not even cars were attracted to Watts Street— would inspire an artist searching for unusual settings. Watts Street's emptiness seemed intensified, perhaps because of the ghostly light reflected by the shimmering Hudson.

De Gier picked up on the atmosphere too. "An end-of-time street. Nobody here but the dead, sir. But they might be returning."

In the alley's massive gray and brown buildings nothing seemed to go on. Warehouses for stolen goods? Sweatshops where illegal aliens worked for low wages? The structures' formidable steel doors locked curiosity out.

Bolts were turning on the inside of number two.

The man who faced the detectives appeared to be a well-cared-for, friendly, healthy gentleman in his mid-fifties. The muscularity of Charlie's body, mentioned by Mounted Maggie and the desk-sergeant at the Central Park Precinct, hardly showed under a blue turtleneck sweater. Charlie's dark blond hair looked old-fashioned, cut short, shaved around the ears, slicked down, combed neatly. The face was naturally tanned and Charlie had recently shaved meticulously. Brown eyes sparkled behind metal framed spectacles. Charlie's large nose curved slightly. The teeth were strong and clean, with a single gold filling. Charlie's wristwatch might have been bought on Canal Street: a twenty-dollar digital item with a simple metal strap.

The commissaris handed over his card. De Gier said his name. Charlie read the commissaris's last name easily, without any accent.

Charlie smiled. "Step right up."

"You speak Dutch?" the commissaris asked, surprised at Charlie's faultless pronunciation of the many consonants in his long name.

"I lived in Aachen for a while," Charlie said, "just over the border. I sometimes went across and so I learned how to pronounce the sounds on your side."

"You speak many languages?" de Gier asked.

"Anyone," Charlie said, "who has to try to grow up the way I did better learn languages, my friend. Mine are, in chronological order, Yiddish, Polish, German, French and, last but not least, English. English"—Charlie smiled— "is easy to pick up, impossible to master." He beckoned his guests into a clean and empty red-brick hallway. "Always good to be fluent in communication when you're passing through hostile lands."

"Is Perrin a Polish name?" the commissaris asked.

"I was once called by another name, long ago, before World War II," Charlie said, "but there was too much blood on it. After I finally reached America I chose my own label. 'Charles' refers to my favorite author, Charles Willeford, a cheerful nihilist. 'Gilbert' is in homage to a schoolteacher I loved prematurely. 'Perrin' is a town in Maine I dream about when the wind goes the wrong way and Watts Street stinks. I sometimes go to Perrin to listen to loons."

"Loons sometimes chant with coyotes," the commissaris said. "Listening to the chant makes one replace wornout ideas."

Charlie laughed. "Exactly." He looked into the commissaris's eyes. "That's exactly right. You have obviously been there."

They followed Charlie, whose bad leg slowed him
I 222
1 down somewhat, into an old-fashioned industrial elevator. The cage-like cubicle was furnished like a room. The detectives sat on straight-back chairs while Charlie manipulated two long handles. On a card table a long-stemmed rose drooped gracefully from a slim vase. An Oriental carpet covered the floor.

"Why not?" Charlie asked. "Nobody likes cages. This lift has been everything. I like to go to auctions or find things in the street, use them, replace them. Last month this was a cabinet for albums of West African colonial stamps that I sold the other day." He waved. "A nonprofit hobby. I liked being able to live with those stamps, for a while. Wonderful colors. Nice little pictures. A chance to experience those colonial times. The lift also exhibited photos of Laurel and Hardy. I collected those for years, then gave them to a museum. Before that I tried to recreate a Maori temple with painted bamboo and a rattan floor. Before that, let me see...right, the complete works of Rene Daumal. Here, on that table." He faced his guests. "Rene Daumal? The name is familiar? No? It is not?"

The elevator stopped but Charlie didn't open the accordion door yet. "Daumal appeared as a French essayist and poet who wouldn't stay with us. Thirty-six years old in 1943." Charlie clicked his fingers. "Daumal's complete denial cheered me up completely. You really haven't read him?"

He looked at the commissaris.
"A Night of Serious
Drinking,
or
La Grande Beuverie?
No?"

He looked at de Gier.
"Mount Analogue?
Unfinished. Because Daumal died halfway through the last, but not least, chapter. Of tuberculosis, like the parents of Wille-ford. Such a useful disease. Suddenly sets us up on our own. No?"

De Gier brought out his notebook and wrote down the poet's name and the titles.

"You're interested," Charlie said, sliding open the elevator's door soundlessly. Apparently it was well oiled.

The commissaris said that de Gier understood French and was always looking for nothing, "...and as you said that Daumal denies.

Charlie concentrated on de Gier. "You know what I liked that Daumal said? No? Then I will tell you."

He help up a hand until he was sure he had de Gier's attention. "This is beautiful I think.
Je vais,'
Daumal said,
'vers un avenir qui n'existe pas, laissant derriere moi a chaque
instant un nouve.au cadavre.'
Would you translate that?"

De Gier asked Charlie to repeat the phrase.

Charlie obliged.

"I go," de Gier translated, "toward a future that doesn't exist, leaving behind me, at every instant, a new corpse."

"Beautiful," Charlie said. He pointed at the elevator decorated as a Victoria boudoir. "I had all eight of Daumal's published books there. In various editions. I don't have them now. I only kept
he Mont Analogue,
the one Daumal didn't finish."