Janwillem De Wetering - Blond Baboon

“Who?” De Gier’s voice hadn’t changed. He felt very patient.

“Bergen, of course. He came running into the apartment waving a gun and holding his face. He was such a mess.”

“But why the aggression? What does Mr. Bergen have against the baboon?”

“Gabrielle being with me didn’t help much,” the baboon said and felt his bandage. “This scratch hurts, you know. Do you know that the cow’s skeleton saved me?” The baboon began to laugh, a pleasant nimbly laugh. “You should have been there. Gabrielle didn’t have any clothes on and all I had was a towel, and Bergen kept standing there, shouting away. I pressed the button and the cow came out of the cupboard, directly in his path, so he had to jump aside and he couldn’t aim, but the bullet did make contact and I fell, so he probably thought he had got me and ran. And meanwhile die cow had made its full circle and gone back into the cupboard. And Gabrielle was holding her breasts and screaming.” The baboon was wiping his eyes.

“Yes,” Gabrielle said, “very funny. And I am to blame, of course. Francesco phoned last night and foulmouthed me too. As if it’s my fault that I’m his half-sister. He has forgotten that I have been helping him, but I won’t help anybody anymore.”

“So will you make a statement now, Miss Carnet?”

“About what?”

“That Mr. Pullini pushed your mother down the stairs. We do have some sort of a witness’s statement but it isn’t

“Anything,” Gabrielle said, “anything you like. I’m tired of this tangle. That idiot Bergen thinks he can be jealous too, and that he can use me. Nobody can use me.” Her voice no longer purred and her eyes seemed to have shrunk and were glittering with fury. De Gier took his chance.

“There was something between you and Mr. Bergen, Miss Camel?”

“Something? What is something? We have been on business trips together and maybe we had a little too much to drink and maybe I let him get away with being such a powerful male. That was a long time ago, a year maybe. But he fussed. He fussed so much that his wife heard about it and finally left him.”

“He thought he loved you?”

“Love.” Her eyes narrowed and her lips pouted.

“You didn’t love him?”

“Of course not.”

The baboon had gotten up and was walking to die door.

“Are you leaving, Mr. Vleuten?”

“I may as well. I was waiting for the nurse to come back but it seems she won’t. I have things to do. So have you, I imagine.”

“We’ll have to find Mr. Bergen.”

The baboon stopped near the door. “Where?”

“Exactly. Where could he be?”

The baboon turned and leaned against the wall. “A good question. Have you seen him recently? I was wondering what brought on this sudden attack? He was shouting a lot but I didn’t understand him.”

Grijpstra explained.

“Cancer?”

“He thinks he has cancer, that he has a week to live.”

The baboon fingered his bandage. “I see. So I became die enemy. I’ve been the enemy before, when he thought I would marry Elaine and take the business away from him. But I didn’t and I thought that obstacle was removed. Maybe it wasn’t, maybe he kept on blaming me.”

Grijpstra leant his bulk against the wall of the sterile little room and smoked peacefully. “For taking Miss Carnet away?”

“Possibly. But there were other reasons. He was manufacturing them, ever since we met, I think. Perhaps it started when I was bringing in a lot of orders.”

“Jealousy?”

The baboon was still stroking the bandage. “More than that, I think. Bergen never felt very secure. He didn’t want to blame himself so he found me. The fact that he took a shot at me just now may prove that theory.”

Grijpstra looked at die smoke crinkling out of his cigar. “You won, he lost. Quite.”

“Not quite. Unless you can define what constitutes die ideas ‘to win* and ‘to lose.'” The baboon’s eyes were twinkling.

“Yes, Mr. Vleuten?”

“You should have seen that damned cow. Zooming at him and then turning and disappearing again. I would never have thought that the thing would protect me. I had constructed it for die absolute opposite. It was supposed to frighten me.”

“Oh, you’re so crazy.” Gabrielle had snuggled into the baboon’s arm. She was looking into his face, touching his cheek gendy with her pointed nails.

“I’m not so crazy,” die baboon said. “I’m just trying to do things from a different angle. Only trying. It’s hard to go against the flow, maybe it’s impossible. What happened this morning rather underlines that, doesn’t it? I create an object of fear, maybe ridiculous to others but really fearsome to me, and it saves my life. But I won’t give in.”

“Mr. Bergen,” de Gier said firmly, “we’ve got to find him. Do you have any idea where he is, baboon?”

“Bergen is under great stress. He is wandering around,” Grijpstra added. “You must have gotten to know the man fairly well. Can you think of any place Bergen would go if he thought he was in real trouble?”

The baboon was looking out the window. “Yes,” he said slowly, “yes, perhaps I know.”

“Where?”

“He surprised me once. I always thought the man had no soul, you know, that he was only concerned with selling furniture. But we came back from a trip once, in his car, and we were late, we had been speeding, for he wanted to be home in time for dinner. When we got near the city it was after seven o’clock and he said his wife wouldn’t have waited for him and he turned die car off die highway. We went to a little village on the river and had dinner there and some brandy afterward, and later we went for a walk.”

“He went to that village on purpose? You didn’t just happen to find it on your way?”

“No, he knew the place, he had been there before. He told me mat his father used to take him to the village sometimes and that they would always have dinner in mat pub and then go for a walk. We ended up in a small cemetery, very old, with moss-covered stones, and we walked about He seemed very peaceful mat evening. I had never seen him like that before.”

“What’s the name of the village?”

“Nes. I can take you there. Nes on the Amstel. Only a few houses and a church and the pub. We had to cross the river in a little ferry to get to it.”

De Gier had opened the door. “Shall I get the water police?” he asked Grijpstra.

“No. Why don’t you go with the baboon and Miss Carnet can come with me. I’ll follow the Rolls. Nes is only about a quarter of an hour from here. Perhaps we’ll still be in time. If we get assistance we’ll delay ourselves unnecessarily. What sort of handgun did Bergen use, baboon?”

“A revolver.”

“He only took one shot at you?”

“Yes.”

“So he has five bullets left.” Grijpstra groaned and sighed simultaneously.

“A nice little job. Shall we go?”

It took awhile before Grupstra had timb to talk to Gabrielle. He was busy with his radio while the Volkswagen, gray and inconspicuous, followed the regal backside of the Rolls along the road clinging to the river. The radio room had connected him with the commissaris, and their conversation was linking their separate adventures.

“Very well, sir, so Papa Pullini is now at the hotel talking to his son?” Grijpstra looked at the microphone. He hadn’t released the button yet, so the commissaris couldn’t reply. “And you expect Francesco to come in sometime today to make his peace with us?”

The button sprang back and the commissaris’s soft voice mixed with the high-pitched sound of the car’s engine and the squeak of its battered shock absorbers.