to return. While Mr. Bear humped the sheriff's body, Billy Boy's boat struck rocks.
When the patrol boat didn't show, the state police chartered Big Max's lobster boat. State police detectives working with Coast Guard experts, reconstructing the accident, eventually came up with an acceptable explanation: Freak winds-Maine's infamous 'cat's paws' that suddenly reach down, create havoc, and are gone again-must have shifted channel markers. The patrol boat, driven by Billy Boy, upset by accidentally shooting the sheriff, hit a shoal. The boat's hull flew over the shoal but the twin Johnson outboards were held back by solid rock. The boat could only tip over backward, had no choice but to crush her driver's body.
Grijpstra and de Gier, after one last lobster dinner, said goodbye to their fellow Algonquins and drove the Ford product to Boston's Logan Airport. Nellie met the plane in Amsterdam.
'Rinus is moving in with us, Nellie, to help with the agency. Isn't that nice?'
'Isn't it,' Nellie said.
De Gier stayed in Nellie's house at Straight Tree Canal, using the gable house's loft, which he furnished with an old bath tub on a platform, a Navy hammock, and a large Oriental carpet that he found at the flea market and that Grijpstra helped him clean. Tabriz moved up with his former companion, mostly because the Grijpstra household was joined by an overactive minimongrel, soon to be named Deneuve, who followed Grijpstra home one night and declared eternal love to Nellie.
De Gier, well above all this in his loft, liked to sit in his tub and practice jazz trumpet to amuse Tabriz. Instead of reading French literature, he now borrowed South American books from the university library, which he found fascinating as, again refusing to own a dictionary, he had to guess what the Spanish or Portuguese words meant. Nellie hardly saw her unwelcome tenant as de Gier, using professional skills, managed to avoid her awesome presence. He rigged up a kitchenette, and started off each day with a ceremonial meal, enjoyed while sitting down on the carpet or, weather permitting, squatting on his small balcony in the shadow of Nellie's rooftop stone angel, bravely and forever blowing the trumpet of eternal blessings. He had his other meals out, mostly in the Chinese restaurants of Amsterdam's inner city. Massive weeds, grown from seedlings found in city alleys and on speedway shoulders, tended carefully, grew from large pots in the loft and on the balcony, where they attracted songbirds.
Chapter 25
'When we pointed the bone,' Katrien had asked the commissaris the evening before Grijpstra and de Gier returned, 'the party the bone points at was supposed to die?'
'I'm afraid that's correct, Katrien.'
'We weren't playing?'
'No, Katrien.'
'The party the bone points at dies straightaway?'
'Soon,' the commissaris said.
'You really believe that?'
'Katrien,' the commissaris said. 'Of course I really believe that. Pointing the bone, if done properly, according to rules that de Gier left with me, is terminal magic. And we did it right. All conditions were met. We were serious. You and Nellie, in spite of what you two pretend to be sometimes, are evolved and powerful spirits. You assisted me voluntarily. The tribe requested our help and empowered our action by appropriate ritual. Of course Hairy Harry and Billy Boy terminated their temporal projections.'
'How, Jan?'
'Quickly,' the commissaris said.
'You sure?'
'That's what I asked for when I pointed the bone.'
Katrien was knitting. The needles ticked peacefully. Sparrows chirpedin the garden. An ice cream truckplayedits chimes in the Queen'sBoulevard at the other side of the house.
'Why do you think I sent de Gier to New Guinea?' the commissaris asked.
Katrien put her knitting down. 'You're arrogant, Jan. De Gier wanted to live with warriors, Papuans engaged in tribal warfare. He talked about it for years. Palm trees and jungle glades and naked women and tom-toms and hallucinogenic plants…'
'I nurtured de Gel's desire on my own behalf,' the commissaris said. 'I couldn't go myself I am getting too feeble.'
'So de Gier is your extension?'
The commissaris sat quietly.
'I asked you a question. You're being rude.'
'No,' the commissaris said. 'I'm too old to be rude. I want to tell you this, Katrien. I've often wondered whether there was anything we could do to make things happen a little bit better, and how far we should go once we learned how to use real power. For mutual benefit, of course.'
'As defined by who?'
The commissaris sat straight in his chair, hands on his knees, eyes wide open.
'Jan?'
'Yes, Katrien.'
Katrien was knitting again. Her voice was casual. 'Tell me, where did Grijpstra and de Gier get all that money?'
'I think they found it, Katrien.'
'Where?'
'I could tell you,' the commissaris said.
'Tell me.'
'I don't think it would be a good idea if you told Nellie.'
'I thought Nellie was advanced and all that.'
'Grijpstra should tell her himself,' the commissaris said.
'I won't tell Nellie. Now tell me, Jan.'
The commissaris told Katrien that he was reasonably sure the money had been found in an antique townhouse, in Amsterdam's Blood Alley, in the inner city, a little over two years ago. Grijpstra and Sergeant de Gier, who had investigated a bar in Blood Alley at that time, announced their resignation a few days later.
'An investigation to do with a body?' Katrien asked.
With a missing body, a Japanese tourist, who later turned up safe and sound. The found Japanese missing person liked to drink in a Blood Alley bar.
'You followed up?'
The commissaris shrugged. Of course he followed up. Didn't hejust love mysteries? His very own trusted assistants, suddenly resigning, citing that as he, the commissaris, was about to be pensioned off, they couldn't stay on. 'A likely story, Katrien.'
'I thought it was touching, Jan.'
'Grijpstra retiring on his savings? A couple of hundreds? And de Gier on his inheritance from his mother? A couple of thousands? Next thing Grijpstra is remodeling Nellie's house and de Gier is off to New Guinea.'
'I remember,' Katrien said. 'You were running about in your father's broad-brimmed felt hat and Uncle Pier's little round glasses and that oversize overcoat you found in the garbage and you smelled ofjenever when you came home late.' Katrien sniffed. 'Retired, ha! Otium cum dignitate indeed.' She found her smile again. 'So what happened in Blood Alley that made millionaires out of our musketeers?'
Information is found in bars. The commissaris told her that while illegally investigating his former associates' sudden wealth, he had visited the bar in Blood Alley, assuming the persona of a retired city clerk, a drinking man, sitting quietly at the counter, hearing the alley's seasoned drinkers discussing a house further along the alley, about to be impounded for nonpayment of taxes, where three middle-aged black males used to live, citizens of Suriname, a former Dutch colony on the South American East Coast. The three men drove Maseratis that were traded for new Maseratis as soon as ashtrays filled up or tape decks malfunctioned. A Maserati is a very expensive Italian brand
