Curacao, the place you’re always talking about. That’s in the tropics, isn’t it? Your legs won’t hurt over there.”
He came down the stairs and took the cane from her hand and leaned on it, embracing her with his free arm.
“I love you, but you would be very unhappy if you had to leave Amsterdam now. All your relatives and friends are here. Later, maybe, we’ll discuss it. This will be a lot of help.”
They stood for a while, leaning against each other, until he slipped away and began to climb the stairs again.
“The bath,” he said softly, “it’ll get cold. And I would love some tea. Let’s have tea together. I’ll soak and you’ll sit and watch me soak.”
\\ 16 /////
Amsterdam dropped away as the plane banked, and the commissaris admired the pale greens and faded blues of fields and ponds set apart by geometrical patterns of expressways spreading out from the city. He had observed the tall suburban apartment buildings rising from parks as they swept away under the roaring jet engines. Their disappearance evoked some satisfaction. He was traveling, getting away, even if it was only for a moment. His forehead rested against the window as the plane flew above a large swamp. He knew the swamp well. It had been a mysterious world once, an endless maze of lagoons and reed-lined twisted ditches filled with murky water. He remembered the freshwater kelp that waved and intertwined in the depth, moved by hidden currents or the undulating sleek bodies of pikes and eels. The swamp had provided his first real discovery, a first indication that mere was more to life man school and trying to find ways to fit in with what grownups wanted him to do in the boring grayness of the small provincial town where he was raised.
He craned his neck but the swamp had gone while the plane gained more height and broke through the clouds and reached die great transparency of the sky. It occurred to him that the sky is an emptiness that sits on a layer of cotton wool and has no limit, an ungraspable manifestation of the mystery that he had also felt as a ten- year-old boy, exploring swamp backwaters in a canoe. The swamp had revealed some of its wonders then, die sky might do the same. And he was in it now, reclining in a first-class seat, reaching the top of a curve that would soon begin to dip down again and take him back to the twisted failings of humanity. Afloat in the universe and free while it lasted. Not a bad thought.
A stewardess bent down and smiled professionally. Did the gentleman want a drink? But surely, a nice cold old Dutch gin. He felt supremely happy as he sipped the icy, syrupy liquid and he grinned, for he had remembered what the blond baboon had said the day before. Happiness is a silly word because it has to do with security and security does not exist. True, of course. There is no absolute security and happiness is silly. How very clever of the baboon to have seen that. But there is temporary security and therefore temporary happiness does exist. Right now he was temporarily happy, and temporarily free of everything mat annoyed or threatened him. Afloat in the universe. He mumbled the words, swallowed the gin, smacked his lips, and closed his eyes. He was asleep when the stewardess touched his shoulder.
“Yes?”
“We have arrived, sir.”
“Ah.”
He followed her, carrying his small overnight bag and the bamboo cane with the silver handle.
Giovanni Pullini’s foot kicked an empty matchbox rather viciously. He had been waiting for a while near die airport’s security barrier, guarded by two carabinieri. The carabinieri clutched short-barreled machine guns, and their dark eyes, in which passion and ferocity were equally mixed, scanned the crowd of incoming passengers. One of the passengers would be the commissaris de la police municipale d’Amsterdam, whom Giovanni Pullini had been talking to two hours before. He had no idea what the man looked like but knew that the foreign policeman would be carrying a cane. Pullini didn’t know what the commissaris wanted although he could guess. Pullini didn’t like guessing. A vague but sensuous smile lifted his mouth as a bevy of stewardesses pranced past in high heels, bosoms raised, eyelashes flapping rhythmically.
The smirk faded as his predicament flashed through his mind again. His wide shoulders bulged under his custom-made sharkskin jacket and his short squat body moved a little closer to the barrier. His long eyebrows frowned above the deep-set eyes in a round red face. He felt his balding head. His head wasn’t of much use to him now. It was only telling him that he might be in trouble, real trouble, and he hadn’t been in real trouble for a long time. The opposite was true, he had been doing very well. And he shouldn’t be at the airport now, it was lunchtime, he should be in the country restaurant he owned. He should be listening to Renata, the charming lady who ran the restaurant and who lived in the beautifully furnished apartment on its second floor, an apartment he was getting to know better than his own house. A commissaris with a cane. He saw an old man, a thin little old man, limping toward the barrier. The devil himself, the devil in paradise.
Pullini’s smile was soft and charming when he shook hands and took the commissaris’s overnight bag.
“You had a good flight, commissaire?”
“Yes, thank you. I slept.”
A few minutes later they sat on the rear seat of a large car, a new car of a make the commissaris didn’t recognize. The limousine was chauffeured by a dreamy young man in a turtleneck sweater of exactly the same tender blue shade as the car.
Pullini pulled down the armrest and his strong, suntanned hand, adorned with two rings, each holding a large diamond, dug into its soft upholstery. The commissaris’s eyes flitted up and observed Pullini’s face. Pullini’s heavy thoughts were filling the car. The commissaris was thinking too. He had planned his attack early that morning, in the garden with the turtle rummaging around his feet and his wife fussing in the kitchen, coming out every ten minutes to refill his coffee cup. He had looked forward to meeting Papa Pullini, but now that his prey was next to him, breathing heavily through nostrils bristling with long dark hairs, he didn’t feel like upsetting the man. Perhaps some rapport had been established between the two, for Pullini’s face turned slowly and his lips formed a single word.
“Non?”
“Non.”
Pullini’s grip on the armrest loosened.
“We go to hotel now. In Sesto San Giovanni. Saint Giovanni. Same name as me, but me no saint.” He laughed and the commissaris laughed too. A joke.
“Small hotel. Comfortable. One night, yes?”
“One night.”
“You have bath, sleep a little, go for a walk maybe, and then I come and we drink some wine. Good wine. Later we eat, we talk.”
Pullini’s smile was innocent, childlike, and hurt the commissaris. He was sure that Pullini had tried to contact his son immediately after their conversation of that morning. But there hadn’t been much time. Chances were that Pullini still knew very little. He would know about Mrs. Camet’s death, for Francesco would have reported such an important event in the connection between the Pullini and Gurnet firms.
“Did you speak to your son this morning, Mr. Pullini?”
“I try. I phone hotel. I phone Camet and Company. Francesco, he not there. I want to ask Francesco what happened that is so important mat Amsterdam police commissaire comes to see me in Milano. Police, they do not like to spend money, yes?”
“Yes.”
Pullini was holding his smile. The smile displayed a glitter of gold and very white artificial teeth, well made and suitably irregular. He raised his hands. “Commissaire, I know nothing.”
“Do you know what happened to Mrs. Carnet?”
The red face froze. “Yes. She dead. Francesco, he tell me. An accident, yes? Or maybe no? You do not travel to Italy for accident.”
An enormous truck pulling an equally enormous trailer zoomed past blasting its horn. The limousine’s chauffeur flicked his wheel. His employee’s equanimity seemed to calm Pullini.
