Thompson, too crafty for me. But the game wardens don't want to know. They speak to me every other day.'
'Yes,' de Gier said. 'What do you think about these murders of ours, Bernie?'
The deputy crumpled the plastic from his sandwich into a little ball, opened the window, and threw the ball out. He pressed the window's button and the glass zoomed up. 'Littering, a one-hundred-dollar fine. Everybody does it all the time. You tell them it's unlawful and they laugh. You write a ticket and they slash your tires. Murders? What murders? Seems to me you've got to prove them. Just one would be enough. Then you can call in the state cops. Homicide is not the sheriff's business. He can spot it, but he can't work on it too much.'
The sheriff seemed bored. His small, narrow hand moved over the controls of the cruiser's dashboard and touched a button. The siren barked once, tearing at the silence outside. 'You heard what the sergeant said, Bernie. Mary Brewer's corpse was found, not her boat. Maybe we can find the boat.'
Bernie pointed at the bay. 'That boat is out there, Jim. The bay is freezing up. We can't look under the ice.'
'The boat is orange. Orange is a good color. If it hasn't sunk, it'll show up from the sky.'
'We don't have an airplane, Jim.'
'We don't have many things, but others do. I have a friend in the Coast Guard, an officer. The Coast Guard has dozens of choppers. Maybe they need exercise. I can ask for a favor; they've asked us for favors. I don't need an official investigation to make a few choppers fly around.'
Bernie belched.
'You don't think I should ask the Coast Guard?'
'Sure, Jim, go ahead. Maybe the boat will turn up. Maybe we can connect the boat with the gang. The gang is bad, Jim. Look what they did to my cruiser. Look what they did to poor Captain Schwartz. Sure the guy is a Nazi and sure Nazis are bad, but Schwartz was nuts, just nuts, harmless. He would walk around in that crazy uniform and he would foul-mouth niggers and Jews, but it was all talk. He didn't do no harm. He was a quiet old guy, but the fox visits him and the next thing we see is Schwartz hotfooting it out of town. His son or nephew or somebody comes out and sells the house and has a yard sale and all die captain's goodies go for a nickel and a dime.'
'The fox,' de Gier said. 'Does he have any particular reason to dislike the Nazis?'
Bernie shrugged. 'Don't we all? Old Fox died in the war, got shot in France. A few hundred thousand other G.I.'s got shot too. Why hold that against Schwartz? I tell you, the fox is bad. All of them are bad. They hang around and smile and get their college degrees and cut boards out of stolen timber, but when they get a chance to be real bad they take it. Look at what happened to you tonight. Okay, so they didn't make it with you, but they scared the shit out of many another. They've kept people for hours in that store, locked behind an unlocked door.'
'True,' the sheriff said. 'Maybe you better go, sergeant. You've a pleasant appointment waiting for you, but take care. Madelin is a bit of a vampire. She may suck your blood when you nod off. I'll open the door for you.'
He winked when de Gier got out of the cruiser. 'Have a good time, sergeant. Take your chance, although 1 suppose you get enough opportunities in Amsterdam. Do you?'
'It comes and it goes,' De Gier said. He felt too tired to respond to the wink. The raccoon hat had turned around again and the fluffy tail was getting into his mouth.
9
De Gierdropped, rolled away, and kept on rolling until he was covered by a large rock. He knew he was OH its safe side. The rifle's crack had come from the woods, and the woods were on the other side of the rock. Not a bad shot at all. The bullet had been close to his neck. He took off his hat and peered over the rock. He could see a dark spot under the trees, moving away. The rifleman seemed hampered in his movements. There was something strange about his feet. That's right, snowshoes. He sat back and thought. The rifleman was perfectly safe. There was no point in following the man. He wasn't armed.
He got up and looked at the driveway of the Astrinsky house. Something lay near the spot where he had stood when the bullet whistled past. He found a stick and poked at the object. The raccoon tail. He looked at his hat. The tail was missing. He tried to grin, but his teeth chattered instead. A slight case of shock. He had been shot at before and had experienced the same reaction. Chattering teeth. Most annoying, but they would stop after a while.
The light on the porch was on. He had been in the light when the rifleman pulled the trigger. Set up again, just as in Robert's Market. They created their situations. He fought the little wave of self-pity that threatened to overflow his brain; so all right, he was here, in their territory, and they were playing their game. He would have to adjust to their tactics. He looked at the Dodge parked a little further down the driveway. He could walk to the car, get in, drive back to the jailhouse, have a bath and some coffee, and go to bed. Or he could visit the girl who had invited him.
The door opened and Madelin's voice reached out to the rock.
'Sergeant?'
'Here '
'Did I hear a shot?'
'You did.'
'Why don't you come in?'
He sprinted across the driveway, picking up the tail on the way. She stepped back to let him jump through the doorway and closed the door. He showed her the tail.
'Came off my hat.'
Her lips pouted. 'That was close, sergeant.'
He took off his coat, and she made him step out of his boots and slip into sheepskin moccasins. She stood very close, and he felt the curve of her breast and the pressure of her thigh. She was making him welcome, or perhaps she just happened to be standing close by. It was still a little too early to judge.
She led him into a room with a fireplace. He sat down on a settee and reached out to the burning logs.
'Have you had dinner, sergeant?'
'No, but I am not too hungry.'
'Don't they feed you at the jailhouse?'
'Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place
'Certainly, but I wasn't in the right place at the right time.'
'Aren't you hungry at all?'
'A little.'
'I'll fix you a drink and make you a sandwich. Would you like a sandwich? A steak sandwich?'
'Yes, please.'
She poured him a drink from a large brown bottle with an orange label and raised her own half-full glass. 'Your health, sergeant.' They drank. 'I'll be right back.'
He studied the flames and tried to recollect what he knew about Americans. He had arrested the vague young men, bearded, in rags, and their female counterparts, in long dirty dresses, often barefoot. They hung around in the center of Amsterdam during the summer. Sad innocents, dropouts, usually on the verge of starvation, often close to death. They would be jailed, go to court, be convicted and flown back to the States, under escort of the Dutch military police. He had also dealt with other Americans, the middle-aged tourists who came in groups, flown in daily by humpbacked jets. The tourists often lost their way or their possessions, and sometimes they were robbed.
He had also been in contact with deserters from the American occupation army in Germany. And he had read books and seen movies. But the actual encounters and the fantasies of stories and the screen hadn't prepared him for meeting Americans on their home ground. A U.S. bullet had missed him a few minutes ago. The next one might not miss.
He shook his head and looked around the room without taking in any details. 'Straight, No Chaser.' The BMF gang. A rifleman on snowshoes, plodding quietly away into the dark woods.
He sipped his drink, put it down, stretched, and began to amble through the room, his hands in his pockets. The same elegance as the Wash mansion but on a smaller scale. A bare room in a way, but each piece of furniture
