Janwillem De Wetering - The Hollow-Eyed Angel

Jo was busy.

"This won't take a minute. It's about your uncle."

Jo said that he had told de Gier everything he knew. He suggested Cardozo replay the tape.

"Your uncle was a member of the bookdealers' society?"

Jo didn't know.

"Hobbies?" Cardozo asked. "No? Affiliation with a church or an investment society? No? He dealt in spiritual books, right? Any Buddhist or Hindu contacts? No? Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Rotarians, theosophical, anthroposophical, astrological interests, associations, friends? No?

"Liked to visit a specific cafe?

"Relatives anywhere, except you, of course?"

"Not that I know of," Jo said. "Goodbye." He hung up.

Cardozo entered the sandwich shop to tell the adjutant that, in his opinion, Jo Termeer was an asshole.

Grijpstra and Cardozo ate the last shrimp the owner said he would ever serve. Now that the North Sea was being fished out, the shop's customers could no longer afford the price. A minimal wholesale order was a bushel. Freezer shelf life was limited. Invest a fortune to eventually feed rats and sea gulls?

The owner wrote the bill and pushed it across his marble counter. "I'm sorry, gents. Order beef tongue next time."

"You still live with your parents, Cardozo," Grijpstra said after reading the total. "You pay."

Cardozo peeled off large brightly colored banknotes.

"And /should have phoned young Termeer," Grijpstra said. "You probably used your high-pitched phone voice again. It irritates the other party."

"Adjutant," Cardozo pleaded, "we're trying to help the fellow."

"Poor fellow had a bad day," Grijpstra said. "Young Termeer's client burned his pompadour in the dryer. Or it was dyed the wrong color maybe. Bastard wouldn't pay, raised a ruckus. Wanted Termeer to pay him maybe. Charged negligence or whatnot. And in the midst of all that misery you squeak in his ear."

"Here we go all out," Cardozo said, "trying to solve the asshole's problem, and he won't answer simple questions?"

Grijpstra pleaded. "I know him. I taught the man. One year at police school. Three evenings a week. I tell you, Simon, subject is attentive, correct, has a pleasant attitude, is willing to cooperate "

"Please." Cardozo shrugged. "As a student he was motivated to show his better side. He wanted to be a policeman. You were the instructor. You would be grading his papers."

"You're right." Grijpstra pushed Cardozo into the street. "Everybody is right. Nellie is right." He was raising his voice.

They walked around a large squatting dog. Grijpstra growled at the dog. "Don't do that, it's illegal, where is your boss? Does he have his prescribed shovel and plastic bags? Do you know what the fine is for doing what you're doing?"

The dog growled back.

Cardozo waved at a member of the municipal brigade of Mechanized On-the-Spot Cleaners, which patrols Amsterdam's inner city. The smartly uniformed man rode his gleaming white motorcycle over. He maneuvered it between the penis-shaped cast-iron posts that are set into the edges of sidewalks to prevent illegal parking. "What do we have here?" The cleaner saluted the dog. "Aha." The man pointed the shiny nozzle of his vacuum tube at the squatting dog's backside. He held his finger on the handgrip's trigger.

"Switch it on," Grijpstra said, but the dog wasn't done yet. It looked over its shoulder, baring large sharp canines.

"This thing is powerful," the cleaner shouted over the Kawasaki's steady reverberations. "It could rip out the dog's ass."

The dog, done now, barked happily and loped off. "There we go," the cleaner said. He pulled the trigger behind the tube's nozzle. The vacuum's tube sucked loudly. There was a rumble in the cylinder welded to his luggage carrier.

The sidewalk was clean again, its cobblestones shining mysteriously in late sunlight.

"Big fellows like that scare me," the cleaner said, "although the work is more rewarding. Little dogs are okay. If they're real little I don't wait till they're done." He laughed. "If they fit into the tube…upsadaisy!"

The Kawasaki roared off.

"He was kidding, right?" Cardozo asked.

Grijpstra marched on. "We know that Bert Termeer once operated a street stall in Old Man's Gate on Old Side Canal. Let's ask around. Maybe some oldtimer will remember." He showed his electronic watch to Cardozo. "Can't read this without glasses. It is Thursday?"

Amsterdam retail outlets stay open on Thursday evenings.

The detectives caught a streetcar to Dam Square and walked via Dam Street and Old Side Canal to Old Man's Gate book market, a long corridor between ancient gray buildings at the beginning of the Red Light District crescenting St. Nicholas Church.

Tourists and students crowded between the corridor's ornate iron gates, around trestle tables bending under stacks of reading matter. Cardozo leafed through a British Victorian art book. It showed etchings of lesbian positions. Grijpstra talked to a seller operating under a large sign that said "Bieber Birds." The old stooped dealer resembled a bird himself: a great crested blue heron on long thin legs, with a sharp beaklike nose.

Mr. Bieber remembered his colleague Bert Termeer well.

Grijpstra explained his interest after showing his police card. "An inquiry on behalf of the family. Mr. Termeer died in Central Park in New York under not really suspicious circumstances. Heart trouble probably. This is merely routine."

Oh yes, bookseller Bieber knew all about bad health. On your feet in a drafty passage all day-it was amazing he himself hadn't succumbed as yet. Of course he himself lived as restful a life as circumstances permitted. Termeer's lifestyle was always exhausting. The man had spent long hours buying and selling his so-called spiritual books, and then, evenings, during the weekend and so forth, holidays, what have you, hot summer evenings when most people relax, Termeer would be out there in the city, performing his act in front of cafes.

"Act?"

Bieber nodded. "Bone diving, he called it."

Cardozo, at the next table, studying voluptuous female bodies united by dildos, looked up. "A sexual connotation?"

Bieber tittered. "Bone, not boner."

Grijpstra was bewildered. "Termeer dived for bones?"

Bieber said he hadn't understood the term either at first. Termeer's signboard above his table in the Gate said "Bone Diver." It had worried Bieber when Termeer started out. "Divers" are birds, and Bieber wanted no competition, certainly not from a table that adjoined his own.

But it was okay. Termeer dealt in so-called spiritual books, with a sideline of erotica.

"Erotica?"

Bieber gestured appeasingly. "Young acrobats and wrestlers running about. Greek stuff. Pastoral scenes. Little kids cavorting. Girls in the bathtub. All playful-like. Invigorating." Bieber rubbed his hands. "Kept him going, he said."

"Porno?"

"Nah." Bieber waved the accusation away. "You mean the hard stuff? You won't find that in the Gate. Termeer sold so-called spiritual stuff mostly."

Grijpstra raised his heavy steel-wool eyebrows. "So what's the bone-diving bullshit?"

Bieber shrugged. "Something mystical maybe?"

"A koan," Cardozo said. "Like in Zen. Some strangely phrased riddle. There's lots of allegory here." He pointed at the corridor's gates. "Pass through the gates of learning, dive for bones of wisdom."

"My erudite assistant was selected for intelligence," Grijpstra said to Bieber. "To me this sounds farfetched."

Bieber said farfetched terms attract the curious. People would come over to ask Termeer about his giant carved-in-oak sign, hanging from squeaky chains above the table loaded with Eastern wisdom. Yoga and so forth. Buddhism. The Tao. The meaning of Sufi dances.

"No Christian material?"

Bieber said, "Maybe early Christian. Nothing simple." He scowled. "But Termeer never explained anything." He cheered up again. "Termeer's acting aimed at making you guess what he was up to. So people would look at me, behind the next table, paying attention to what Termeer was going to pull, and ask me about this 'diver' thing and I'd get a chance to show my waterfowl pictures. "Like this, see?" Bieber opened a picture book and turned pages. "Here. Know what these are?"