Janwillem De Wetering - The Hollow-Eyed Angel

De Gier pocketed the money. "What did you do with the wallet?"

"Tossed it in the garbage, man."

"Jog ahead," de Gier ordered. "Stop at the can you dumped the billfold in."

The garbage can was on Cherry Hill. The robber, after some rummaging among newspapers and empty soda cans, found the commissaris's wallet. He handed it over. De Gier thanked him.

The robber sneezed. "Give me my own money back, man. I'm sick. I got to buy some shit, man. I only took sixty."

De Gier nodded. "Fuck you, okay?"

"I'm sorry, sir," de Gier said when he returned to the Cavendish suite. "I should have checked the wallet." He grimaced. "Too hasty again. The credit card inside is made out to someone unpronounceable who lives in Trinidad and Tobago. But there's Dutch money inside. That fooled me."

"A coincidence?" the commissaris asked.

De Gier, recognizing the glint in his chiefs eye, nodded. "How silly of me," de Gier said. "Where do you keep your real billfold?"

The commissaris carried his papers, valid credit card and a good deal of cash in a small armpit holster.

"The other credit card is fake," the commissaris said. "It was taken from a phony tourist. It's out of date too. Katrien told me to always let muggers have some cash, so that they won't be angry."

De Gier handed the commissaris the money he had taken from the robber.

"Two hundred dollars?" the commissaris asked. "My decoy wallet only contained sixty."

While the commissaris rested, de Gier took the surplus money to the Central Park Precinct. The desk-sergeant, who reminded de Gier of a hero out of an old war movie, a tall man in a neatly ironed blue shirt, asked, "You found a hundred and forty dollars?"

De Gier described how he happened to be following a jogger in the park. It seemed to him that the jogger was really a mugger. He had seen the jogger accost a little old gentleman, but at some distance. He couldn't be sure.

"Amazing," the desk-sergeant said.

And then later the jogger happened to drop some money.

"That belonged to the little old man?"

Yes, but that was only sixty dollars, and the sixty had been returned.

The sergeant considered. "So this money here may belong to some other victims, but nobody has filed a complaint."

"Somebody may sometime," de Gier said. "Then you can hand it over."

"Can you describe this jogger?"

De Gier did, adding that suspect, a junkie feeling sick, would undoubtedly try another mugging soon. The sergeant repeated the information into a microphone, directing the call to all park patrols. He clipped the microphone back into its holder. "What do you do, sir?"

De Gier told the sergeant he was a policeman from Amsterdam, here to assist his boss, who was unwell at the moment. His boss was the chief of detectives, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, interested in the death of a certain Bert Termeer.

"You too," the sergeant said. "I keep hearing about that case. The autopsy proved death was from natural causes. The case is being closed now. Do you want to see Sergeant Hurrell?"

De Gier wanted to see a certain mounted policewoman, just for the record, so that he could write his report. The complainant was a nephew of the deceased, a colleague in the Amsterdam Police Department.

The sergeant said, "That'll be Maggie McLaughlin. 'Mounted Maggie.'" The sergeant smiled. "She is on duty now, she'll be off for lunch. You might check here in an hour."

De Gier asked if the sergeant patrolled the park himself.

The sergeant did. Did the sergeant know of a seeing-eye dog, a large Alsatian? "What you call a German shepherd, I think."

"Kali," the sergeant said.

"Beg pardon?"

"Dog called 'Kali.'" The sergeant grinned. "Clever beast. We used to chase her-can't have unaccompanied dogs in the park-but then she adopted Charlie."

"Charlie?"

"Guy who works out in the park," the sergeant said. "A regular. We talk to each other. Fit-looking guy, muscular. Some sixty years old. Sharp dresser. Seems to have money. Pleasant disposition. Takes good care of the dog." The sergeant grinned again. "Or the other way around."

"Same dog that used to accompany our guy Termeer?"

The sergeant wasn't sure. He didn't recall Termeer. There were a lot of white-bearded men in tweeds around. Maybe he had seen him, maybe the dog had been around, maybe not. De Gier would be better off asking Policewoman Maggie.

While de Gier, killing time as he waiting for his meeting with the policewoman, watched polar bears swim in rhythmic circles in their transparent quarters in the Central Park Zoo, Adjutant Grijpstra picked up his telephone in his office at Moose Canal Headquarters, Amsterdam.

"Henk?" The commissaris coughed. "That you, Adjutant?"

Grijpstra, respectfully, took his feet off his dented metal desk. "Sir? Are you all right? Has de Gier arrived? How is he doing?"

The commissaris said he himself had felt better and that de Gier had robbed a jogger and was now turning in part of the loot to the Central Park Precinct.

Grijpstra slumped back until his head rested against the wall. "You are ill and de Gier is crazy?"

"We're both fine," the commissaris said. "I am sorry about sending you on that Mad Hatter's golf errand, Henk. De Gier told me you saw the chief-constable afterward. No unpleasantness, I hope?"

Grijpstra reported.

"I wish I could say that it was my diabolical cleverness that made me nudge you into the Crailo Golf Club Alleged Murder Case," the commissaris said, "but that would only be partly true. Mostly I got my facts wrong here. No golf in Central Park, or in any public park anywhere on earth for that matter. I should have known."

Grijpstra grunted.

"You forgive me, Adjutant?" The commissaris was coughing again. He covered the telephone's mouthpiece.

"That's okay, sir."

There was a pause.

"Grijpstra?" the commissaris said, painfully shifting his aching body on his four-poster bed in the Cavendish suite. "Just to satisfy my never-ceasing curiosity, what conclusion did you reach?"

"About Baldert and his baron, sir?"

"Yes. Tell me."

"I think Baldert feels cheated out of his just punishment, sir."

"But did Baldert plan murder?"

"Probably," Grijpstra said. "And then he changed his mind at the last moment. Or he hesitated, causing some confusion, enough to make him miss the target. Then the baron died anyway and now Baldert is a madman."

"De Gier was telling me about the case," the commissaris said. "Yesterday, while eating sushi. He was getting ill again, an association with stewed eel."

Grijpstra laughed.

"De Gier thinks," the commissaris said, "that this is one of those cases where the alleged culprit seems unclear about his own guilt. To have sinned or not to have sinned, that is the question." He laughed. "How can we help?"

"How can we help ourselves to become ridiculous?" Grijpstra asked. "Baldert needs our help so that he can have his day in court. The defense asks the judge what the prosecution is talking about. The judge asks us. We don't know either. Baldert goes free, clears his conscience at the law's expense. Once again we look foolish."

"Well put," the commissaris said. "You have time to talk, Adjutant? Nellie isn't waiting with supper?"

"Nellie and I argued," Grijpstra said. "As I was wrong, again, I'm punishing myself by staying in empty cold rooms partly illuminated by a dim bulb dangling from a peeling ceiling."

"I thought you and de Gier," the commissaris said, "recendy painted that ceiling."

"It's part of a poem, sir, that a Turk and I made up at a tram stop."

The commissaris was sorry to hear that Grijpstra and the Turk were depressed. He came to the point. While Grijpstra put in hmm's and ha's the commissaris argued that point. The point was that Baldert's confusion was more likely to happen in regal territories, like, for instance, The Kingdom of the Netherlands, than in an unroyal democracy like the one that the commissaris happened to be in right now. Baldert felt he had more hope if he could find royalty to judge him. What is a queen, the commis-saris asked rhetorically. The queen, if not divine herself, is God's representative in the Low Countries. The mystique of the crown, Grijpstra," the commissaris declaimed. "Forefathers like our statesman Thorbecke deliberately built this bridge to beyond into our judicial system."