Janwillem De Wetering - The Rattle-Rat

"May I use your phone?"

Cardozo burped. The food displayed in the dim store made him unwell. Cracked plastic pots were half-filled with moldy grains. A bowl had been filled with a jelly crusted on top. Sickly-looking mice scurried about on a shelf.

The store had no phone.

Cardozo walked back to Wo Hop's restaurant, where more junkies leered at each other in noisy despair. Cardozo sneezed with them. The young fighting Chinese were still nervously conversing; their singsong was louder now, even less in har- mony with the trumpeting of the addicted. "Phone?" Cardozo asked. "Go grab," Wo Hop said, translating freely from Cantonese. He pointed. Cardozo walked through the cold light. He dialed Headquarters and passed along the Citroen's license plate number.

"Can't check that for you right now," a girlish voice said. "The computer hasn't come up yet."

"Up from where?"

"From being down."

Cardozo caught a streetcar back to Headquarters. The computer room's young ladies were politely unhelpful. "I've got to know," Cardozo said, wandering away. In the Traffic Department, another screen showed another little green square, trembling quietly. It was on view again in the Road Tax Department, and he found it once more in the Department That Hauls Wrecks. Cardozo knocked on the commissaris's door. He rattled the handle.

"Maybe the chief isn't in," a bass voice said, rumbling from a large chest covered by a tight T-shirt. "Would you do me a small favor? Won't take a minute. In the sports room. Do come along."

"No," Cardozo said.

The sports instructor's long, hairy arm clasped Cardozo's shoulders. "Colleague, break your restraining ego and serve others for a change. Here we are, would you mind taking off your shoes?"

Other large and strong men waited, kneeling around the judo mat. "This, colleague," said the sports instructor to Cardozo, "is an Arrest Team. They learn from me. Today we demonstrate Sudden Unexpected Attack. Mind joining us for a moment?"

The sports instructor put on a duck-billed cap.

Cardozo smiled shyly. He scratched his ear. The instructor addressed the team. "Please pay attention. This colleague will now suddenly and unexpectedly attack me."

The hand that scratched Cardozo's ear attached itself to the bill of the instructor's cap. The headgear dipped over the instructor's eyes. Cardozo's other hand clenched and hit the instructor's belly, twisting as it thumped. The instructor bent forward. Cardozo's fist slid up and slammed against the instructor's chin. The instructor bent backward. He kept bending backward because Cardozo's ankle hooked around the enemy's shin and pulled it forward. The instructor fell on his back. Cardozo fell too, twisted free, and yanked on the instructor's wrist so that his whole heavy body turned over. The instructor rested on his belly, with arms stretched out. Cardozo lifted the arms, joined the wrists, and attached them with handcuffs.

"Like this?" Cardozo asked.

The instructor groaned.

'Til free you," Cardozo said, "as soon as I can locate my key." Cardozo was emptying out his pockets. "Now where did I put it? In my hankie, perhaps? No. In my wallet?"

"Does anyone happen to have a handcuff key?" Cardozo asked the kneeling, attentively watching Arrest Team members.

The team shook their heads.

"Here it is," Cardozo said. "In my new belt. Nifty belt, eh? See this zipper? Hides a secret slit to keep things in. You never thought of that, did you now?"

The team nodded their heads in amazement.

"Anything else I can do for you gents today?" Cardozo asked.

"You, get out of here," the instructor said.

The commissaris had arrived in the meantime. "There have been complaints about you," the commissaris said. "You've been causing some trouble. What trouble were you causing?"

"I'm sorry," Cardozo said. "I was only trying to be of help, and I did come up with something useful. I found the dead man's car, or so it seems for the moment."

The commissaris's small fist bounced on his desk. "I want confirmed facts."

"Our confirmation device is down, sir, but the car was parked asocially, half on the pavement and under a*no parking' sign. Would you have a photograph of Mr. Scherjoen? I would like to show it around in the area where I found the car."

"No," the commissaris said.

"Where can I obtain a photo?"

"Grijpstra?" the commissaris asked. "He stays in Fries-land now. I just had a call to that effect, from the chief constable of Leeuwarden, Lasius of Burmania, a nobleman from up north. Grypstra has been given the use of a house at the Spanish Lane in Friesland's capital. I'm not sure why. There isn't much I'm sure of these days. I'm an old man."

"Not at all," Cardozo said. "How do I get to Friesland?"

"My car is gone," the commissaris said. "De Gier will bring it back, but that'll be tomorrow. I don't want de Gier driving my new car, he's a reckless speeder. Not that it matters. Nothing matters much these days."

"Does your leg hurt?" Cardozo asked.

"Should it?" the commissaris asked. "I'm on a diet of Belgian endives. My wife says I'm very fond of Belgian endives. I would rather be driving on the Great Dike, but I'm short of a car."

"What are Grypstra and de Gier doing in Friesland, sir?"

"Grijpstra," the commissaris said, "is in Friesland because he's a Frisian. His parents were born in Harlingen, just north of the dike. I should be there because I'm a Frisian too. I was bora in Joure, a little farther inland. De Gier is in Fries-land because he drifted after Grypstra."

"Wasn't Scherjoen murdered here?"

"That's an effect," the commissaris said. "We're looking for causes, Cardozo. The present hardly matters. Think with me now. Scherjoen has been described to us as an inferior being of a devilish nature. He even parks his car asocially. A ne'er-do-well, this Douwe. It's a first attempt at constructing a theory, but we have to begin in the past."

"But you've only just heard that Scherjoen is an asocial parker."

The commissaris sighed.

"Is your leg hurting badly?"

"You want to hear the truth?"

"Why not?" Cardozo asked.

"I was trying to construct a theory that would take me to Friesland, because I've a new car. I wanted to race it on the dike. Fate got in my way again. My theory was designed to satisfy my selfish longings. But I could still be right. If Douwe is no good, he started by being no good in Friesland. Suppose Frisians wanted to be rid of Douwe and did that here. Couldn't that be possible?"

"Why not in Friesland?"

"It's pure out there," the commissaris said. "And messy here. Another misdeed here might attract little attention."

Cardozo rolled a cigarette.

"And if the misdeed is Frisian-related," the commissaris said, "the inquiry should be Frisian too, for only we Frisians know the depth of our own soul. Grijpstra and I will be the most suitable sleuths."

Cardozo lit his cigarette.

"Grijpstra hunts out there," the commissaris said, "and I drive up and down the dike, to keep contact at over a hundred miles an hour, that's what I had in mind."

"And I would be hunting here?"

"Yes," the commissaris said. His phone rang. "I'm on my way, dear," he said, and replaced the phone on its cradle. "Have to go home now, to eat Belgian endives."

Cardozo coughed and sneezed.

"You should go home too," the commissaris said.

They waited at the elevator together.

"The elevator broke down," a passing constable said. "Everything is down these days, but the elevator got stuck upstairs."

The commissaris and Cardozo walked down the stairs together. Cardozo limped a little. "Are you imitating me?" the commissaris asked.

"I fought the Arrest Team, sir."

"You lost? So why did they complain to me?"

"I sort of not-lost, sir."