'Not really, right?' Grijpstra asked across the Atlantic.
'Yes, really, wrong.'
De Gier's reality was a jetty on the coast of Maine, where he screened his eyes from a cloudless sky above an energetically foaming Bay of Fundy. The turbulent water reflected harsh daylight because, given the earth's restless rotations, the East Coast of the United States is still going strong six hours after Western Europe's day is over.
De Gier was telephoning from the fishing village of Jameson, Maine. The battered pay phone, center of a random design of scratched and written numbers, was attached to a weathered board on the outside wall of Jameson's only restaurant, Beth's Diner. The diner was housed in a ramshackle building, still elegant in its old age, surrounded by a gallery of chiseled slender posts under a moss-and-lichen-covered shingled roof. The restaurant's overall color had become silver-gray within peeling baby blue framing. Rotted-out gingerbread decorations and cornerposts sculpted long ago to resemble Greek pillars witnessed past glory, dating back to Jameson's days as a real port, when it had wharfs where clipper ships were built for the China trade, when the town was the hub of a worldwide lumber business, when it exported granite cut out of the islands, the building blocks of America's big cities. Now there was only lobstering, with crabbing on the side (as long as they were in the lobster traps anyway), and just a touch of tourism, accidental mostly, for Jameson was well away from any beaten track. There were some old folks too, in RVs or trailers hiding behind cedar fences, snowbirds who were gone before the autumn colors faded. Then there were oddballs 'from away,' like Rinus de Gier, who, since his resignation from the Amsterdam police force two years back, had been without a fixed address or a known source of income.
'De Gier is playing Indians on his own,' Grijpstra once told Nellie during a leisurely Sunday breakfast beneath the flowering vines in her backyard. Grijpstra had hypothesteed a possible midlife crisis, arguing that de Gier lived a solitary life, refusing to accept responsibility for wife and kiddies, and therefore had not grown up, so he'd been hit by his midlife crisis later. Nellie had smiled. 'Clever Henkie-Luwie.'
'So will you come?' de Gier now asked across the Atlantic. 'To help out your old buddy? If you please?'
'That nature woman on the island next door,' Gri-jpstra, his hand on the mouthpiece again, told Nellie. 'Her name was Lorraine. He mentioned her to Katrien. Katrien showed you the letter.'
There was a couple kissing on-screen. Nellie switched the TV to mute, she never liked to listen to kissing.
'I thought… weren't those two happy?' Nellie asked. She wanted love to last, for herself and for everyone she knew. She was with Henk now, sharing what used to be Nellie's hotel, now formally closed down after she finally popped her reluctant lover-couldn't His Loveship be stubborn?-from his old apartment at the Tanning Canal. Grijpstra had suffered in overstuffed rooms at the Tanning Canal with his wife, and been happy, without his wife, in empty rooms, visiting Nellie from time to time. He had still been in the police then, paying alimony and rent. Money still counted then. Nellie had offered a free room; Grijpstra, reluctant at the time, agreed. Now that there was Grijpstra's Private Agency, and a lot of money all of a sudden, Nellie no longer took in guests. Things were getting better and better.
'Rinus really murdered her?' Nellie asked.
The TV station slipped into a commercial. Nellie re-moted beautiful actors who were shoving a rhinoceros aside with their imported pickup to wherever it was remoted beautiful actors go when their screen gets switched off. So this was real trouble? Nellie didn't think Rinus would joke about killing off Nature Woman.
'You're not really going anywhere?' Nellie asked.
'I'm not really going anywhere?' Grijpstra echoed.
De Gier, an ocean away, studied his handful of American quarters, three times the size of their Dutch counterparts. He inserted more quarters. The magnitude of the coins reminded him of the magnitude of his problem.
'Henk? You better come and help out here. I don't even remember what happened. Was Lorraine bothering me? Flash and Bad George say I kicked her. Apparently Lorraine fell, here on Squid Island, and hurt herself on the rocks, badly-she was bleeding. I did see blood on the cliff. I was about to perform this thing, this ceremony I was planning. All I remember is that Lorraine came to visit and that she was in the way.'
'You don't remember hurting her?'
'I was drunk,' de Gier offered, 'as I said, and stoned. I've been experimenting with mixtures. I was about to play some music, a CD, jazz, Miles Davis, just got it in the mail. This was a ceremony, if you will, all set up. Well prepared in advance. Lorraine wasn't part of that. She kayaked in unannounced. She was bothering me.'
'Ah,' Grijpstra said.
'Lorraine messed with my ceremony, Henk.'
'So you kicked her off the cliff and left her to bleed to death? Jesus! Ri«Ms/'
'Jesus Rinus is right,' de Gier said. 'So will you come over, old buddy? This just happened. Nobody knows yet, except Flash and Bad George. They took away Lorraine's body late last night and presented a bill this morning. Got it, old buddy? You and me got a problem; we settle the problem. Okay? Okay.'
'Blackmail?' Grijpstra asked, remembering the case he had just dealt with. His own bill wasn't as high as the charge his petty merchant had been feeing. There had to be an incentive for all parties concerned.
He saw little incentive now. What if he carefully replaced the phone, loosened his waistcoat and necktie, laid down a newspaper on Nellie's new coffee table, put his feet on the paper, lit a Cuban cigar-pity he had quit smoking- sipped iced jenever-pity he had quit drinking. What if he said, 'Fuck you, Rinus, fuck your little voice whining across a large ocean, we're happy here.''
'Henk? Hello?' the little voice whined.
'Right here,' Grijpstra said. 'Tell me about Flash and Bad George, the parties who witnessed this murder.'
'They didn't,' de Gier said.
'So how did they know you were kicking Victim?'
'Victim told them. She was still alive when they found her.'
'Describe your accusers.'
'Flash is Flash Farnsworth, Bad George is just Bad George. They're skippers of the Kathy Three, ajunkboat that runs errands between Jameson and the islands. The boat is named after a dog. All I have is a dinghy so I call them by radio if I need anything big. If I don't call they show up anyway; they're kind offriendly, cute, two small- sized guys. They usually come by once a day and if I need them I wave. Last night they were late.'
'Flash is bad too?'
'Flash and Bad George aren't too bad,' de Gier said. 'They're more like silly. Flash has felted hair, like a bird's nest. Bad George had a car accident, his face got stitched up by a cheap doctor who changed it into a doll's face. They're simpletons who live on their vessel with their smart dog, Kathy Two. They came back this morning, after getting rid of Lorraine's body, to get paid off.'
'Don't tell me you paid.'
'I said I was light on change,' de Gier said, 'but that you'd help out. Okay?'
'So the law doesn't know yet?'
'No.'
'You have choices,' Grijpstra said. 'You know that, don't you?'
'I pay?' de Gier asked. 'I choose to kick Flash and Bad George down the clifis too? I choose to go to jail? Jail isn't pretty here, Henk. Inmates watch a dead screen all afternoon, until the guard comes to push the button for the evening news.'
'You could run,' Grijpstra said pleasantly. 'Just ease yourself away.' His sweeping hand illustrated the image.
'It'll ease after me,' de Gier said. 'Besides, I have to know what happened here.'
'Remember what we used to tell suspects?' Grijpstra asked. 'When we were out of cells again?'
' 'Run, asshole, run'?' de Gier asked. 'No. Listen. This isJameson, Woodcock County, state of Maine. You can find it. Fly in via Boston. Take El Al. I just phoned, they've got a flight leaving Schiphol Airport at two A.M. your time. Out of Boston there should be a commuter flight to Portland. Rent a car from there. It'll take just a few hours.'
'You pick me up.'
'I can't,' de Gier said. 'There's too much going on here. I'm very visible. The sheriff might put out an all-
