The Rattle-Rat (13 page)

Just another show. Cardozo walked on.

When She offered herself again, She was Thai, from the golden country far beyond bis reach. The ocher-tinted skin of the small, lithe body that writhed toward him was covered only in one spot, by a small square orange silk attached to a cord, moving all the time, covering nothing, really. Will you join me, Cardozo?

And now She was dark, dancing to a rhythm that penetrated
through the glass, stretching her long arms, begging him—him, the lover named Cardozo.

An Egyptian slid past in profile, moving out of tapestry,
a temple maiden who had cut her white cotton dress so that the priest could ceremonially possess Her. The priest's name was Cardozo.

An icy German ordered him in, dressed in jackboots and an army hat, the whip ready in her small but strong hand.
She accepted applications from slaves to work themselves to death in her camp, so that the last feelings of guilt might be dissolved in pain. At this moment She was interested in Simon Cardozo.

Good day to you, Cardozo thought.

Where could the Chinese be?

He found a crescent connecting two lesser alleys, where a surrealist had plied his trade. A toilet bowl, mortared into a crumbling wall, housed a sturdy and healthy goldfish. A baby doll with pointed teeth and long eyelashes, with live worms crawling out of dear little nostrils, was being smothered slowly by ivy. In a burned-out shop window a sign was displayed with a neatly lettered text.
Balthazar does not
bark, but bites when provoked.

The surrealist himself was available, a trim elderly man in an impeccable three-piece suit, who addressed the passersby. "Please, dear people, can you tell me where the Bardo Todol is? I've been silly enough to lose my way. I'm dead, you see. Should I turn right or left here? Could you direct me, if you please?"

"Any Chinese around here?" Cardozo asked.

"Oh yes," the surrealist said. "Next alley. A barber's salon, go right at the fork, can't miss."

The indicated passage was overgrown with smelly weeds
rustling with vermin. A sign in Chinese dangled from a rusty bar. Under the sign a rotten door was hung in a partly broken frame. The cracked window in the door was covered by a dirty cloth. Rough voices shouted inside. The cloth was torn and Cardozo could peek.

The portophone jumped into his clawing fingers. "Karate? Ketchup?"

That there was no immediate answer could only mean that the colleagues had been properly trained. They heard him but didn't acknowledge so that their suddenly ringing voices would not disturb the already delicate situation. Cardozo whispered his position and became active at once. Kicking in the door and jumping ahead, he found himself in a low whitewashed room. Cardozo's pistol pointed at four Chinese in turn. Two sat, two stood. The Chinese tied down in barber's chairs couldn't turn around, but the two who were standing did, following Cardozo's crisp order. They clasped their hands to their necks when he barked at them again.

"Hello?" Cardozo said. "Ketchup? Karate? Come quickly.
I've got them."

The portophone crackled emptily.

One of the sitting Chinese was Wo Hop. "Untie me?" Hop asked.

"Me help you?"

"That'll be all right," Cardozo said. "Karate? Ketchup?"

He grabbed a stool with his foot and moved it closer. He sat down. There was a clock on the wall. The minute hand moved once in a long while, creaking loudly. "Hello?" Car-dozo asked after every creak.

"Hello? Hello? Hello?"

Cardozo got a little tired. The pistol's weight increased. Flies moved about sleepily. The Chinese facing the wall moved now and then. "Keep still," Cardozo shouted. "Hello? Hello? Hello?"

His arm began to hurt.

"Friends no come?" Wo Hop asked. "Untie me now?"

"Hello?"

"Symie?" Karate asked. "You there? Over."

Cardozo cleared his throat.

"Nothing doing, right, Symie? We're signing off and will return to the station. Join us there. We're off now. Buy you a drink?"

"HELLO!" Cardozo yelled.

"You're there," Karate said. "See you in a minute. Over and out."

"COME HERE!" Cardozo yelled.

The portophone creaked.

"YOU HEAR ME?"

"Quiet," Karate said. "Mind my eardrums. Where are you?"

"Here." Cardozo gave his position. "Hurry up. Bring any assistance you can find. Every cop in the station. Do hurry.
Emergency."

"Understood," Karate said.

Cheerful sirens tore the air near the Inner Harbor. Jolly running footsteps cut the silence in the passage outside.

"Hurrah!" Karate shouted.

"Victory at last!" Ketchup shouted. "Four fried noodles.
Two double fortune cookies. Step right up. Take your pick."

The assistance, eight officers in uniform and four in jeans and leather jackets, untied the prisoners and handcuffed all four suspects. A minibus transported the catch to the station.
An inspector, raised from his bed, patted Cardozo's shoulder. "Two counts of deprivation of liberty, two counts of illegal firearms, one plastic bag containing a hundred grams of high-grade heroin. Nobody seems to have the proper papers. Good work, detective."

"Sir?" an officer in a leather jacket said.

"Let's have it, old chap."

"I'm Drugs, sir. Something about this heroin."

"Not the real thing? Don't disappoint me."

"Good quality, but not Chinese."

"And how do we know?"

"Packing, sir."

"And what do we notice when we study the packing?"

"Chinese heroin, sir, is never supplied in this type of thick
yellow plastic wrap."

"No disturbing details now," the inspector said. 'Tomorrow,
maybe. I'll be reading the reports. Have a good night, the lot of you." The inspector went home.

"Turkish heroin," the expert explained. "Coarse grains, see?"

Cardozo was invited to type out his report. Wo Hop was sent home. There was no need to detain his mate, either. The two other Chinese were lodged in a small cell.

Karate and Ketchup changed clothes. "A drink, Car-dozo?"

Why not? In Jelle Troelstra's bar, a stone's throw away.
"I can't stay long," Cardozo said in the street, "for tomorrow I bicycle to Friesland."

Wo Hop's mate was trailing them, but neither Karate nor Ketchup nor Cardozo paid attention, for they were now off duty. "Bicycle?" Karate asked.

"I'll go up the dike," Cardozo said.

"Why?"

"I don't really care to discuss that now," Cardozo said.
"It's late and I'm tired."

"You'll
bike
up there?" Ketchup asked. "That dike is thirty kilometers long. All the way to Friesland? It'll take you a day. Whatever for? You want to lose weight?"

"I'll be leaving at 6:00 A.M." Cardozo said.

Troelstra was closed, but he opened up.

Wo Hop's mate waited outside.

Cardozo explained, once settled behind a small glass of jenever, that he needed Douwe Scherjoen's's portrait because the photographs of the corpse were useless; they showed only bits of skull and a semi-burned spine.

"But
bicycleT
Karate and Ketchup shouted. Jelle saw no reason to get upset. He remembered times when almost no one owned a car, and a trip along the dike could be quite an adventure. A bicycle is slow enough to afford the rider a view. And, besides, the trip was supposed to be useful.
Yes, sure, they too were prepared to exert themselves when on duty, Karate and Ketchup said—certainly, no question about it—but to be exploited was something else again. If the State would not pay for elementary expenses, criminals could go free. Criminals were driving about in silver cars.
The commissaris had just been issued a silver car too, Cardozo admitted. Yes, for the higher-ups no cost was too little either, Ketchup and Karate said, while common folk could be abused, their comforts ignored, their well-being unconsidered.

"Can't we rise above the common folk?" Karate asked.

"This eternal complaining, does it get us anywhere? Suppose we surpassed ourselves, made use of all that's given to us, conquered our weaknesses, would there be no reward?"

"Sell our souls for silver Citroens?" Ketchup asked. "I wouldn't mind doing that. Citroens are good cars."

Cardozo sipped his drink, frowning and growling that mere materialism never got anyone anywhere. The trick was to step aside and still do your very best. Who cares for results?

Had he thought of that himself? Ketchup and Karate wanted to know. Sergeant de Gier had been known to come up with bullshit like that. Now look at the sergeant—wasn't he just another sucker, by accident provided with impermanent good looks and the ability occasionally to win a fight? Where had that got him? The saintly sinner, adored by Car-dozo?

Troelstra kept filling up their glasses. "Would you know
a certain Adjutant Oppenhuyzen?" Cardozo asked. "Aren't you Frisian too?"

Troelstra nodded benignly. "Not a bad fellow, comes in for a beer every now and then."

"He
is
a bad fellow," Cardozo said. "Pushed over by evil.
Trying to squeeze personal good out of a bad situation."

Shouldn't accuse so easily, Karate and Ketchup said.
Never guess the worst about the character of a colleague.

Cardozo stated that he would guess what he liked, and voice his theories without making exceptions for possible traitors. Colleagues? Ha! Weren't there colleagues who weren't on the portophone when they should be? Weren't there colleagues who had left him in danger, who had made him hold a heavy pistol for an hour or so, while he was surrounded by gangsters?

They were sorry, Ketchup and Karate said, but they had been busy; drunk and belligerent German tourists had to be wrestled to the ground, and before you know where you are, an hour is gone.

And why, Cardozo wanted to know, was Turkish heroin found on Chinese dealers?

Ketchup and Karate said that they really had to be leaving now, and that any situation is built up out of a large number of unknowable details. You can never get to the bottom of anything. They elbowed Cardozo. "But isn't it fun?"

"Not right now," Cardozo said.

He walked home, fuming jenever vapors.

Close to his home, a suspect mounted a bicycle. Cardozo,
breaking into a sudden trot, managed to grab hold of the suspect's sleeve. "Where are you off to? That bike should be in the corridor by now."

"Since when," asked the Hider of Bicycles, "can't I be riding my very own bike?"

"Bring it into the house," Cardozo said. "At once. Give me the key to the lock."

The suspect dismounted. He struck while he turned. Wo Hop's mate watched from a doorway. It had been a long night for him—caught and bound, liberated and arrested, temporarily released and still up and about, in the early hours.

The suspect's fist was caught by Cardozo, who had passed only a few days ago, the examinations of the Unarmed Combat class. Cardozo twisted and pulled the suspect's fist across his shoulder, and turned. The suspect was forced to follow the compelling movements, and lost his footing, fell, got up again, and attacked with a kick. His foot was hooked away by Cardozo's ankle. The suspect again fell.

"Ouch," the suspect said. "You don't fight fair.'*

"You shouldn't be fighting me," Cardozo said. "Would
your name happen to be Cain? Am I, perchance, called Abel?"

"You're so right," Cain said. "Will we never learn? The Age of Aquarius is already upon us, and it'll be raining in a minute. From now on we'll practice true brotherly love and fight only to defend ourselves against the enemy from outside."

Arms linked, Samuel and Simon walked home; Samuel pushed the bicycle along. Simon helped him to carry the bicycle up the stairs. He was given the key. A thunderclap confirmed their mutual decision to cherish their mutual benefit, forever after.

Wo Hop's mate returned to his cheap lodging in the Red Quarter, but first he checked with the boss of bis triad, the venerable Wo Hop.

"So Mophead fought with another Mophead?" Wo Hop asked. "Amazing. And the first Mophead will be cycling to Friesland tomorrow, by way of the dike? Suprising."

"And your decision?" Wo Hop's mate asked humbly.

Wo Hop closed his eyes and mumbled, no longer in fluent Cantonese, but in the ancient language of forgotten lore. He lit incense sticks, bowed, threw coins, and was instructed by the book from the past.

"You," Wo Hop said, "and the two others of your selection will be bicycling on the dike too, tomorrow at six, which is in just a few hours, tomorrow being today and all time being illusion."

The mate found the two others and passed the order. The maid of the lodging house brought in tea, and her ears. A little later she telephoned another cheap lodging house, on the other end of the dike.

Cardozo slept peacefully. Six Chinese grumbled in their shallow slumbers, exhausted after having stolen six bicycles, three near the Central Railway Station in Amsterdam and three near the railway station of Bolsward, a Frisian town.

\\\\\ 11 /////

L
EEUWARDEN, THE FRISIAN CAPITAL, WAS AMSTERDAM IN miniature and perfect in detail, as the architects of the Golden Age, over three hundred years ago, had planned their creation. That I'm allowed to partake of that well-meaning and artistic dream, de Gier thought as he strolled along empty quaysides and silent gables, reaching for the expanse of the night, which sparkled with clean stars. No people, but who needs them? Humanity never fails to disturb abstract beauty.
The Frisians created this work of art and now they rest, allowing me to admire the beauty of their realization. Tomorrow they'll be about again, each house releasing a fresh female worker who'll immediately drop to her knees and scrub pavement and gable. No crumpled cigarette packs, no dog droppings, not even in the gutter. Too clean, maybe?
De Gier felt uncomfortable. Once contrasts are pushed aside, once everything becomes the way it should be, what do you do? And why was he here? Why didn't he find the shortest way to his temporary quarters and extinguish himself in bed?
Where would his Spanish Lane be? Could he ask anybody?
Was anybody left? At two in the morning?

A gent in a deeply dented, broad-brimmed felt hat emerged
from an alley and walked ahead of the sergeant. The gent slowed his pace. He looked around.
"Jûn."

It sounded like a greeting. De Gier said
"
Jûn
"
too.

The gent looked expectant. De Gier explained himself.
Out for a walk.

The gent spoke at length. It seemed he was describing undressed women. "Sure," de Gier said. Why not? There are women, and they do undress. Their image is a powerful motivation for lone gents walking through the night. Maybe the gent had been saying that.

The gent got hold of de Gier's arm and they were now walking together. "Mata Hari," the gent said, and giggled and tittered. He pointed at a bronze statue in charge of a little bridge spanning a miniature canal. They stopped to admire the metal female form. Mata Hari was undressed.
The gent again spoke at length, and the sergeant, catching a word here and there, remembered that Miss Hari had once, several wars ago, danced her way into Paris and into the hearts of Prussian spies and that her hosts, French noblemen and officers of rank, became jealous and did away with her.

"Whore!" the gent shouted. De Gier caught more words.
Miss Hari's statue was alone now, immobile, a reminder, but once upon a better time this bridge and all the alleys around had been populated by live prostitutes. The gent pointed here and there and suddenly stiffened his arm. The arm, horizontal now, pushed and pulled rhythmically while the gent whistled. De Gier grasped that the movement was symbolic of an activity the gent used to delight in, in earlier days, and lower in his body.

"So that's all over now?"

De Gier didn't quite follow, but according to the gent, the general sexual decline was somehow connected with the cattle market and the development of modern machines.
Many years ago, when there were no spacious trucks, the farmers would walk their animals to market. They were stabled somewhere and sold the next day. The night in between was filled with push-of-the-arm-whistle, pull-of-the-arm-whistle.

He would never have guessed, de Gier said politely.

But now, the gent was saying, the big trucks—
vrrrum.vrrrum
—they throw open their rear doors—
whop
— the cows charge into the street—
kuttubum, kuttubum
—where they are chased into the market hall and sold.

"Why would that prevent their owners' later pleasure?"

The gent wobbled his eyebrows. De Gier pushed and pulled his arm, whistling shrilly.

Again, de Gier wasn't quite following the gent's explanation, but the fact that the pleasure had gone would have to do with modern business routine. Cows sold, cash collected, in the middle of the day, rather spoils pleasurable possibilities. Did he mean
that
again? Sure, push-whistle-pull-whistle. Even so, there might still be a way. He grabbed de Gier's arm again and pushed him along. "Where?" de Gier asked.

"Hjir"
the gent said, and was gone.

De Gier recognized the square building straddling two canals that Hylkje had pointed out before. A sex club? Members only? He read the sign above the door.
Mata Hari.
He rang the bell. The doors swung open, and Ali Baba bowed deeply. The doorman was dressed in billowing silk trousers, a brocade waistcoat, a shirt embroidered with flowering palms; he stood on curly-toed slippers, a curved sword stuck into his broad belt. A large turban crowned the beard that almost reached around his made-up eyes. His belly rose majestically toward his chin.

"Hi, Ali Baba," de Gier whispered, impressed.

"You were brought here?" Ali asked, first in Frisian, then in Dutch.

'Try Arabic," de Gier said. "You must be trilingual. An Arab in Friesland. What brought you here?"

"I speak German too," Ali said. "And the other languages of the tourists. Did the runner bring you here? Our advertiser?"

"Gent in a felt hat?" de Gier asked, pushing and pulling and whistling.

"That's him," Ali said. "Brings in the customers, but he shouldn't tonight. Couldn't reach him in time. We're closing early. Hardly any customers showed up. Would you be desiring a full show? There's only one artiste left, Trutske Goatema, not quite the first choice, but if you insist. Do you favor fat women?"

"Joe!" de Gier shouted.

Ali's sliding slippers brought him forward. "What do you know! Would it be
you,
the Amsterdam sergeant?"

"Good memory," de Gier said, "which we share. Black Joe, isn't that right? I don't recall your surname."

"Do come in," Black Joe said. "What a surprise. Is Amsterdam still doing as well as I remember? What are you after? A little pleasure on the side?"

"Not sure," de Gier said. "Forget the fat lady."

"An angel at heart," Joe said. 'The good lookers were all
crafted by the devil. I sent them home already, couldn't stand them tonight. I'll be gone myself next week. The joint is too much for me; let the owners find out what it's like to be Ali Baba." Joe flipped off his turban and showed de Gier the way to the bar. "A beer for the guest of honor?"

"So good to see you," Black Joe said. "Your health, Sergeant. I've thought of you often. You did that nicely, a classy trick. No, I won't forget that. I always underestimated the likes of you. That was quite subtle."

"Musn't exaggerate," de Gier said, halfway through his beer.

"Don't be modest now," Joe said. "Credit where credit is due. A difference of six months' jail for me." Trutske stepped out from the back door of the bar, illuminated by pink neon tubes speckled by uncounted generations of Frisian flies and hanging from warped ceiling tiles. "Client?" She eyed de Gier greedily.

"Friend," Black Joe said. "From the merry past. You're off now, dear, have a good rest."

"Listen," Trutske said. "I could do my number, a short* ened version, but I'll do it good."

"That'll be fine," de Gier said. "Thanks anyway. Don't bother, really."

Trutske waddled off.

"What would she have done?" de Gier asked, twitching as the front door slammed.

"Frustrated self-love," Black Joe said. "Specialty of the house. She's an expert at evoking self-centered passion.
Groans, wriggles all over, uses all the furniture of the stage, the walls tremble, the clients go wild, pink flesh up to the ceiling, screams of lustful agony, that sort of show, mostly."

"All that in Frisian?"

"Crazy language," Black Joe said. "I'll never master it, although it's easy to pick up. I have a Frisian girlfriend.
We're to be married soon. I bought myself a house in a rustic village nearby. I'll be fixing bicycles there. No, I'm not kidding. This side of life is driving me whoppo. You don't believe me? But it's true. I'm qualified. I went back to school during the day. I got the tools, a barn, I'm all set up. Everything you want."

"Everything
you
want," de Gier said modestly.

"No," Black Joe said. 'That's what
you
wanted me to do.
Beer?"

"Your health," de Gier said.

Black Joe dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.
"You remember how you got me to turn myself in?"

"Wasn't that your own idea?"

"Never," Joe said. "You led me to the station. If you
hadn't, I would have been watching bars for half a year longer. The judge changed his mind when he heard I'd gone to the station by myself. He didn't like that scene in the Red Quarter. Ha!" Joe bellowed. "Another lush who wanted to fight the doorman of a reputable brothel. One tittle push of this..." His hairy fist trembled in front of de Gier's nose.
"Just one little touch and there the lush goes. Ended up all in a broken heap."

De Gier nodded. "Ran backward across the street and mashed himself against a wall. You can be thankful that he was still alive. You should be aware of your strength, a little."

"And then you showed up," Black Joe said. "The very next day. I had retired to that posh terrace across from Central Station, the last place where you'd be looking for me, but you found me anyway and I was going to push you too. You didn't want that. You asked me to buy you coffee."

"I never fight in the mornings," de Gier said.

"Ha!" shouted Joe. "That's what you said then. And that I should turn myself in. Tell them I was sorry. Inquire about the lush's condition. Express my hopes that he'd soon feel better. Smile and stutter. Scratch my beard."

"Always the best way," de Gier said.

"Much better," Joe shouted. "That lawyer was ready to kiss me. He talked good, too. The judge had tears in his eyes. Just one month and some time suspended."

"You don't push clients anymore?"

"None of that now," Joe said. "None of anything, soon. One more week and I'll be taking bikes apart. I've been planning for a while, but I still had to do this for the money."

"Why here?"

All part of the new way, Joe told him. Not the good way, he wasn't going to go as far as that. It wasn't that he had been bad before. He wasn't sorry, if that was what the sergeant meant. Not a choice, either; you do something for a while and then you come to the end of it. If you don't accept the end and go on, the routine becomes boring. If you don't feel good about it anymore, you got to quit.

De Gier listened and meanwhile studied a painting on the bar's wall. A chubby lady had spread herself out on the canvas, under a hairdo that reminded him of antique maids. Her rounded belly line turned in and popped up on her other side again, as cute raised buttocks.

"That's Mata Hari," Black Joe said. "Genuine, done in Paris. And I'm Ali Baba, as you saw just now. That's okay for a while. If you die young, you can keep it up all your
life, but if you survive, you begin to see through it. Take Mata Hari, for instance. You know her real name?"

De Gier's ignorance surprised Black Joe.

"Margaretha G. Zelle," Joe said. "Born in this city in 1876, around the corner from here, on the Gardens—you must have passed the house. Beer?"

De Gier declined. Joe emptied a can into his beard. "Right. Thirty-one years old, she got shot by soldiers in parade uniforms. She wore a fur coat and nothing else, opened it just at the fatal moment. Very romantic. Like her life out there. Did some fancy musical stripping on expensive stages. Got herself pawed by the powers on both sides. Never knew or passed too many secrets, but got shot anyway, for
Commande
was
Commanded
Joe sighed. "Silly. Right?"

"Didn't she have a good time?" de Gier asked.

"For as long as it lasted." Joe sighed more deeply. "You know how long it lasts?"

"Let's see," de Gier said. "Some constructive fantasizing and positive thinking, it could last a good while."

"I'm forty-one," Joe said. "I've seen it all a hundred times. My dad was a bicycle repairman too; I thought that was real stupid at the time." Joe stared at a horizon receding toward the infinite. "I used to drive a Ferrari. You ever drive a Ferrari?"

"No," de Gier said.

"You ever live in Casablanca, overlooking the Casbah? In Tunis? In Morocco?" Joe sang in Arabic. "You know what I just sang?"

"No," de Gier said.

"I don't either," Joe said, "but that's what they would sing outside my window. 'Jacques Ferrouche,' I called myself. I rode a racing camel. I sailed a yacht on the Mediterranean with braid on my cap and a girl who was built like this." Joe indicated the dimensions. "And it still wasn't enough, I still wanted to go somewhere to do something, but then I had to go. And now I want to repair bikes and take the dog for a walk. You think that'll be okay?"

"I think so," de Gier said.

"You got a dog?"

"A cat," de Gier said. "Nothing special. Ugly, too.*

Beer foamed out of Joe's beard. "Nothing special!" His fists hit the counter.

"That's funny?" de Gier asked.

"Nothing special can be fun," Joe said. "You know that?
Take my girlfriend, she teaches embroidery at school. You should see what she gets together at home. Regular landscapes, but if you look they go on forever. There's a difference, but I can't place it. You wanted me to be there, you told me to try something else, nothing special. You remember that you said that?"

"Joe," de Gier said, "would anyone be selling heroin here?"

"Didn't you want me to do nothing special?"

"Heroin," de Gier said. "Is it dealt here?"

"Two assholes," Joe said. "They come in once in a while.
Junkies. Half a gram or so. Crumbles."