ofsports car. Those citizens of the republic of Suriname, a very poor country, just loved driving their ever-new Maseratis.
'Subjects left their station, Jan?'
Nobody had answered the door of the Blood Alley house. The telephone had been disconnected. The cars, abandoned and vandalized, were still in the alley. Grijpstra and de Gier had had the vehicles towed to Headquarters. A search turned up unpaid traffic tickets. The Maseratis were auctioned off by the city.
'The owners didn't show?'
No. The commissaris, at that time, recalled a narcotics case that mentioned the Maserati owners as suspects.
'Suspected of what, Jan?'
Of importing frozen fruit juice that wasn't. The product hidden in the fruit juice cans was cocaine. Strangely enough, the alleged smugglers were heroin users. Suspects had been brought in on charges a few times but released for lack of police cells, a common Amsterdam problem, but they were still being harassed by detectives, asked to visit Headquarters to answer questions, waylaid in the street, telephoned at odd times.
'Aha,' Katrien said.
'You see possibilities?' the commissaris asked.
'Panic?' Katrien asked. 'The addicted Suriname suspects, driven crazy by being constantly under surveillance, ran home? Leaving their treasure?'
The commissaris confirmed that addicts often react erratically because of the narcotics side effect, paranoia. Having come that far, the commissaris had asked a former Murder Brigade assistant, Sergeant-Detective Simon Car-dozo, to check with Suriname, where the Dutch Ministry of Justice pays off informers. There was a rumor in Suriname's capital that the three suspects were arrested by the military police on their return to Paramaribo. The rumor said that the military police, who handled the 'frozen fruit juice' flow from Suriname to Amsterdam, wanted their share of the profits. The three suspects hadn't brought any money with them. They were tortured inefficiently and died before they could tell the MPs where the Amsterdam treasure, the proceeds of sales of narcotics, was hidden.
'Ach,' Katrien said. 'And Grijpstra and de Gier found the lost millions? Hidden in that Blood Alley house? Oh dear.'
The commissaris said fortunes in cash left by drug dealers had been found by his department before and had been turned over to the administration.
'Aha,' Katrien said. 'Yes, I remember. You thought the money either disappeared outright or got squandered somehow.'
The commissaris sighed as he held her hand. The old couple thought about the declining police reputation, unreported serious crimes, killer psychopaths released for bureaucratic reasons, unemployed youth gangs robbing the weak and elderly. Katrien was shaking her head. 'So Grijpstra and de Gier just kept the cash? And you approve?'
'Not really, dear.'
'You'll make them hand in the treasure somehow? But they're spending the money, Jan. There won't be much left.'
The commissaris shook his head. 'The treasure has been growing, dear.'
'So it's you again,' Katrien said. 'How come you're always behind every mystery I run into? So that's what you've been advising Grijpstra about. All that talk about investments. I couldn't figure it out, why you were discussing shares and foreign exchange and interest and whatnot with Grijpstra of all people. Oh dear, oh dear.'
'I was always good with numbers,' the commissaris said. 'I almost doubled the original value of Grijpstra's haul.'
Katrien gaped.
The commissaris smiled proudly. 'That's after what they were both spending is deducted, ofcourse. We did well with the dollar's fluctuation. I bought and sold Deutsche Marks then, and buying Philips at nineteen and selling at over thirty helped too, of course. Then there was Gillette. We went short on gold for a bit. We also bet that the British Labor Party would lose, so that the British Stock Index would go up, and, Katrien, didn't it ever?' He shook his head. 'It's all in bonds now. I'm out ofinspiration, but there's twice as much as there was.'
'What if those two start spending again?' Katrien asked. 'Nellie says de Gier is buying a car.'
The commissaris shrugged. 'An old Citroen Deux Chevaux. Something he can leave in the street without its getting stolen. The agency makes good money, I hear. By now they're eager to get rid of their burden.'
'You have something in mind?'
'Don't know yet, dear. Support the buccaneers who shoot up whalers? Give away anticonception devices in starving nations? Advertise euthanasia and sterilization? Help NASA to transport Homo sapiens to far away places, one way? You know of something better?'
'Hospitals for crippled kids,' Katrien said. 'I'll do some research, find us an organization where the staff isn't off on donation-supported cruises.'
'Katrien?' the commissaris asked later that day. 'I have this leaflet here, about this cruise. It's a small vessel belonging to some biological society, quite luxurious, with staterooms, leaving next month. Bird watching. On the coast of Maine. And as I've been feeling much better lately… all we have to do is catch a Concorde.'
Chapter 26
Some weeks later a rubber boat was lowered down the side of the biological cruise ship Lazy Loon, out of New York, now anchored in Jameson Bay, Maine. Autumn was almost over, and the boat's passenger wore a sheepskin coat. He wasn't Katrien's favorite person that day but she could still stand at the Lazy Loon's railing and wave down at him.
The rubber boat's operator, a marine biology student, insisted on showing his passenger harbor seals, a gray seal, the dorsal fins of dolphins, an immature bald eagle, ajellyfish, and two loons, before dropping him off at Beth's Diner.
'Akiapola'au?' the commissaris asked as she brought him a menu. He mentioned his last name.
'That's Algonquin?' Aki asked. 'But you have a Dutch accent. You must be the chief from Amsterdam. How are Rinus and Krip? Beth! Look who we have here.'
Beth brought blueberry muffins on the house.
Aki and Beth sat at his table. 'We are going to Hawaii soon.'
'For good?' the commissaris asked.
'Just to winter a while,' Aki said, 'We can afford to now. Are you going to see what Ishmael has done with his canning factory? All those colors and corridors and depth and 'perspectives.' Something about emptiness and space. If you get it, will you tell us?'
'Bad George?' the commissaris asked. 'Flash Farnsworth?'
Beth brought more muffins and filtered Kona coffee.
'The Kathy Four is sailing down Eggemoggin Reach just now, Flash radioed in. They're going mackerel fishing. Ishmael flew down yesterday. His new Cessna has sea floats. There'll be the three of them there, sharing good times.'
'The four of them,' the commissaris said.
The women laughed. 'You've been told about Kathy Two?'
Kathy Two was doing just fine.
'Lorraine?' the commissaris asked.
Lorraine was back in New York, lecturing on her loon research. She was seeing her former husband, who was telling her about his wife. She was seeing his wife too.
'Bildah Farnsworth?'
Beth drove the commissaris to Bildah Farnsworth's hilltop residence, formerly the property of Hairy Harry.
