The commissaris stepped back and looked at the two letters again. 'Out? Ah yes.'
A taxi arrived, as they stepped into the cold wind, and a window opened. They looked into the gray face of a young man. The face was narrow, half hidden in long dirty hair. The driver's eyes sat in the face as if two blobs of pink paint had been thrown into a lump of decaying plastic. De Gier stepped back.
'To the city?'
The commissaris was getting into the cab. 'Come, sergeant. Yes, driver. Fosterhouse Hotel.'
The cab moved before de Gier had closed the door. It dived into a long tunnel and became part of a row of speeding vehicles, glued together, almost colorless, in the tunnel's pale light. The driver turned his face. 'What hotel you say?'
'Fosterhouse.'
De Gier shuddered. There had been no life at all in the pink eyes. A junkie, in charge of a car speeding in a tunnel. This would be death proper. He thought of Adjutant Grijpstra, who often compared death to a tunnel. A long dark tunnel, endless, and a phantom to show the way. What way? There was only one way. He looked over his shoulder. They were followed by a dented limousine caked with mud and wet dirty snow. An old woman steered the car. Behind the limousine loomed the high cabin of a truck. De Gier couldn't see the driver's face, just the fingers holding the wheel. The tunnel rumbled. Perhaps it would cave in. He forced himself to listen to the commissaris.
'What were you doing in the hangar when the sheriff and I were waiting for you, sergeant?'
'The girl wanted me to kiss her, sir.'
'Did you kiss her?'
'Yes, sir.'
'So why did she almost run you over when she left?'
'I don't know, sir. I did my best.'
'She is an attractive girl, sergeant.'
De Gier heard himself tell the commissaris about the full-page advertisement. The old man listened. 'Yes. I think I know that feeling. I have it too here. We play roles in these people's minds and it makes us mechanical. We are not used to being manipulated, sergeant. It never dawned on the gang that you could have refused to go to the Astrinsky house. You couldn't have, they were right. A, the girl is attractive, and, B, the enemy was opening up. So you ran along and got shot at and seduced. Perhaps you would have liked to seduce the girl, but they turned the tables on you, the way Jeremy did with me. It's a one-sided game. They know the country, the undercurrents.' He poked the sergeant's chest. The tunnel was still stretching away.
'But there is more to it, sergeant. Where did I hear the word 'experiment'?'
The sergeant was staring into the tunnel. No light ahead at all.
'Sergeant?'
'Yes, sir. I said that. Madelin told me that the gang experiments.'
'Quite. On us, but also on themselves. That trip to New York, for instance. I'll have to talk to that fox-listen to him rather. Talking won't do any good. Ah, finally. I thought that tunnel would never end. Have you noticed the driver's face?'
'Yes, sir. Drugs.'
'He has been sneezing and wheezing. Needs his next shot. Let's hope the hotel isn't far.'
It wasn't far. The taxi honked its way through the traffic, ruthlessly pushing other cars out of the way, even scratching a compact's fender. The compact beeped, but the cabdriver didn't look around. They had got to a park, surrounded by tall buildings, some of them half alight so that they appeared to be tottering crazily. The cab turned abruptly and the commissaris fell against de Gier. The driver braked hard.
'Fosterhouse Hotel.'
De Gier paid. The driver didn't check the amount and dropped the folded bills into an open tin at his side. The hotel was black and shiny. A costumed, unsmiling doorman took the two overnight bags from de Gier's hands. The man's chin had sunk away in a frilled collar, and his high boots were spattered with mud. An impeccable clerk waited behind a plastic-topped desk.
'Credit card?'
'No.'
'How will you pay?'
'In cash.'
'Please pay now.' The clerk's mouth was a slit in his perfectly shaved face. His eyes were cold.
De Gier wandered away. The costumes seemed part of the hotel's trademark. Bellboys and waitresses moved about in caps and bonnets and riding breeches and long skirts. He supposed the clothes would fit in with the city's history. Amsterdam had also dressed its servants up when the city celebrated its seven-hundredth birthday. He remembered arresting a waiter dressed in a black corduroy fisherman's suit, with bulging trousers and a short jacket sparkling with silver buttons. The charge was rape. The suspect had gone free. The victim hadn't impressed the public prosecutor. She had gone to his office in hot pants, bikini top, a scarf. No witnesses, since the event had taken place in the privacy of the lady's own room.
'Right, sergeant. The clerk was good enough to take my money. Coming up? Our room is on the top floor, with a view of the park.'
De Gier played with the television set while the commissaris checked the room's bath and shower. He turned the switch. A lady with a distressing overbite smiling over a bar of soap. Two young men in shiny jackets pulling the strings of their guitars while a tape-recorded audience applauded at set intervals. An actor whom he remembered having seen as a tough cop in a movie in Amsterdam advertising a new brand of popcorn, smiling from the comer of his mouth, exactly as he had done in the film. An old man playing the violin. A puppet dancing.
He was about to switch the machine off when the commissaris came out of the bathroom. 'Hold it, sergeant.' They watched the puppet together. It was very good. It never showed his feet. The dance was all in the hands. But then German troops suddenly appeared, in black and white, marching and singing. An advertisement for a book about World War II.
'Switch it off, sergeant. We have seen that in color. This room is fine and there is an abundance of hot water. I can have a long bath later on. According to that helpful clerk downstairs the good restaurants are all on the other side of the park. Be my guest, sergeant.'
It wasn't six o'clock yet, and the park was crowded in spite of the cold. Old men sat on benches, peering at newspapers under streetlights, well-dressed office employees walked briskly, eager to get home, a group of children raced about laughing and yelling. Their shrill voices brightened the winding paths under the protective silence of dark trees.
The commissaris stopped. A Christmas carol, sung by a pure female voice, was piped through hidden loudspeakers. De Gier put out a hand and nudged the old man into motion again.
'Beautiful,' the commissaris said, but the song was torn apart by police sirens and the sudden growl of traffic released by a changing stoplight. The park ended, and they found themselves in dark streets, which funneled the icy wind. Store windows displayed girlie magazines, thrown about haphazardly between dust and grains of mouse poison. Young men in padded coats and woolen hats pulled over their ears shouted from open doors, 'It's hootchy- cootchy time, gentlemen. It comes off, all of it comes off, on the inside. The new show is beginning right now College girls only, gentlemen. A dollar and a half for any drink.' The commissaris limped on, small and helpless in his hooded army coat. A patrol car raced past, stopped halfway on the sidewalk, and two policemen ran into an alley. They came back dragging a man by the hands. The man was pushed into the cruiser and the car roared away.
A girl clicked past on high heels. She stopped and smiled. 'Combat Zone all right tonight?'
'Pardon miss?' de Gier asked.
'You're not from here, are you? That's what we call this district. The Combat Zone. Anything I can do for you, gentlemen? I work in a good bar, just around the comer. It's still happy hour. Drinks are half price now.'
'No, miss. We're looking for a Chinese restaurant.'
'Another block. Have a good time now.'
'Pleasant girl,' the commissaris said.
'She would have taken our last penny, sir. That sort of bar sucks you in and throws you out the moment you're broke.'
