'So they said.'
'Did you believe them?'
'According to Grijpstra there were six empty champagne bottles lying about in Bezuur's bungalow, and there were cigarette burns on the furniture and stains on the walls. An orgy. Who remembers what happens during an orgy? Maybe they were out on the floor half the night.'
'Did they look as if they had been?'
'They looked O.K.' de Gier said. 'One of them even looked pretty nice. But they had had time for their beauty sleep and they knew I was coming. I didn't know the address so I couldn't jump them.'
'Couldn't you have checked with the telephone company?'
'I could have but it would have been difficult. It was Sunday, remember? And maybe I was too lazy to try and jump them.'
'So what did you do afterward?'
'I went home and I went to bed. And in between I was weeding the flower boxes on my balcony. And I had a late supper with my cat.'
Cardozo smiled. 'You are a lucky man, sergeant.'
'Don't call me sergeant. Why am I lucky?'
Cardozo shrugged. 'I don't know. You are older than I am but you are like a child sometimes. You enjoy yourself, don't you? You and that silly cat.'
'He isn't a silly cat. And he loves me.'
'There we go again,' Cardozo said and began to tug at another bale. 'Love. I saw a poster in a bookshop last week. A love poster. Half-naked girls with frizzy hair sitting under a beautiful tree chanting away while birds fly around and angels gaze down. It's a craze. When I was still in uniform we had one of these love places a block away from the station. We had complaints every night. The girls would have their bags stolen and the boys had their wallets rolled and they were buying hash which turned out to be caked rubbish and they had knives pulled on them and they got the clap and crabs and the itch. I've been in there dozens of times and it was the same thing every night, dirty and smoky and silly and hazy. Some of them would catch on and drift away, but there were always others who hadn't learned yet and who were begging to get in.'
'The wrong place,' de Gier said. 'Brothels are the wrong place too. And Nellie's bar unless your name is Grijpstra and Nellie falls for you. But love exists.' He patted his pockets.
'Cigarette?' Cardozo asked, and offered his tobacco pouch and packet of cigarette papers.
'Thanks,' de Gier said. 'You see, you are giving me something I haven't asked for. So you care for my well- being.'
'So I love you,' Cardozo said. De Gier felt embarrassed and Cardozo grinned.
'I only offered you a cigarette because I know that I won't have any cigarettes sometime and I will want you to give me one. It's an investment for the future.'
'And if I was dying?' de Gier asked. 'Say I was going to be shot in five minutes time and I asked you for a cigarette. Would you give me one? I would never be in a position to return the gift, would I?'
Cardozo thought.
'Well?'
'Yes, I would give you a cigarette, but I am sure I would have some selfish reason, although I can't think of the reason now.'
'How much?' a voice asked. An old lady had come to the stall and was fingering a piece of cloth.
'Twelve guilders a meter, darling,' Cardozo said, 'and ten percent off if you buy five meters. That's lovely curtain material. It'll brighten up your room and it's guaranteed not to fade.'
'Expensive,' the old lady said.
'What do you mean, dear? It's two meters wide. They'll charge you three times as much in any store, and it won't be as nice as this. This came from Sweden and the Swedish designers are the best in the world. Look at those flowers. Fuchsias. You'll be sitting in your room and you'll draw the curtains and the light will filter through the material and you'll be able to see the nice red flowers. Aren't they pretty? See, every petal is printed beautifully.'
'Yes,' the old lady said dreamily.
'Take five yards, dear, ten guilders a yard.'
'I haven't got fifty guilders on me.'
'How much have you got?'
'Thirty, and I only need three yards.''
'For you I will do everything, darling. Give me the scissors, mate.'
But he didn't start cutting until the lady had counted out her thirty guilders.
'I thought you said we should get eight guilders for that cloth,' de Gier said.
'Start high, you can always come down. And she's got a bargain anyway.'
'I wouldn't have that material in my flat if you paid me.'
'Stop fussing,' Cardozo said. 'She selected the cloth herself, didn't she? And it's first-class material, confiscated from a first-class smuggler who tried to bring it in without paying duty and sales tax.'
Other customers came and bought. Cardozo was yelling and waving and de Gier handled the scissors. After a while de Gier was selling too, joking and flirting with an odd assortment of females.
'Maybe we should do this for a living,' he said during a short pause. A juggler on a collection of soap boxes was attracting everybody's attention and they had time to breathe.
'We have made more than we would normally make in a week working as policemen,' Cardozo admitted, 'but we have the right goods. It takes time and money to find this type of merchandise.'
'I am sure we could do it.'
'Yes, we'll find the right goods and we might get rich. A lot of these hawkers are rich. Abe Rogge was rich, or so you told me anyway. You want to get ricn, de Gier?'
'Perhaps.'
'You would have to leave the police.'
'I wouldn't mind.'
'Right,' Cardozo said, trying to smooth down a piece of machine-made lace. 'I'll join you if you want to become a merchant, but I don't think you ever will. I think you were born to become a policeman, like me. Maybe it's a vocation.'
The juggler came to collect. He had drawn a lot of people to their corner of the market. Cardozo gave him some coins.
'Thanks,' de Gier said. Hie juggler, an old man with a sun-tanned bald head smiled, showing a messy array of broken brown teeth.
'Thanks for nothing, buddy,' the juggler said. 'I'll be performing a hundred yards down now and drawing the crowd away from you again, but maybe I'll put them in a good mood and they'll be free with their money. You'd better hurry up though; we'll have rain in a minute and they'll melt away like whores who have seen the patrol car.'
'Did you hear that?' de Gier asked. 'He mentioned the police. Do you think he knows about us?'
'Maybe.'
'Maybe not,' de Gier said, and looked at the sky. It had become very hot and sweat prickled under his shirt. The clouds were lead-colored and low. The street sellers were putting up sheets of transparent plastic and pulling in their goods.
The clouds burst suddenly and cold heavy rain drowned the market, catching women and small children in midstreet, forcing them to scatter for cover. Sheets of water blocked de Gier's view and roared down, splashing up again from the pavement over his feet and trouser legs, dribbling down from the canvas roof and hitting him in the neck. Cardozo was shouting something and pointing at the stall next to them, but de Gier couldn't make out the words. He vaguely saw the old hawker and his wife scrambling about, but couldn't work out what was expected of him until Cardozo pulled him over and handed him a carton of vegetables and pointed at a VW bus parked on the sidewalk. Together they filled the small bus with their neighbor's merchandise, which the old man had stored under his stall and which was now in danger of being swept down the street by the torrent. De Gier was wet through and cursing but there seemed no end to the potatoes, cucumbers, baby squashes, bananas and cab-
