weren't coughing or sneezing. In the back of the room, young Chinese men in loud shirts conducted a conversation in which nouns were musically stretched, and then abruptly swallowed. Car-dozo noticed their crewcuts and staccato movements. Karate types, he thought.
So I can start anywhere, Cardozo thought. What would a sheep dealer be doing near the harbor? Delivering sheep for transport to the Near East?
The noodles arrived in a bowl. Hop dropped off a pair of chopsticks and a glass of beer. The bottle's label was Chinese. Would Chinese buy Frisian sheep? From Dingjum? From New Zealand more likely, thought Cardozo. There should be no food shortage in China now. They probably wouldn't need any foreign sheep at all.
He ate and drank, without tasting much. When Hop presented the bill, Cardozo noticed the man's cold eyes, like slivers of ice. Even the glow of Hop's golden canines was cold. Scherjoen had also been equipped with golden dentures. Could that line connect? Why should it? Cardozo thought.
He wandered through the neighborhood. The memory of Wo Hop's presence wandered with him, bathed in neon light. Cardozo couldn't understand why he couldn't lose Hop's image. What more could the Chinese be than a bit player in gray clothes, vertically adorned by old-fashioned suspenders like those worn by laborers in antique pictures? The owner of a small-time eating place, a retreat of footsore junkies and Chinese sailors, a hardly exotic migrant like so many, chained to their marginal establishments, saving hard-earned guilders that might, one faraway day, buy them a return ticket to Hong Kong or Singapore, home cities that their spirits had never left. Cardozo walked a little faster and managed to leave Hop behind. He stopped a few minutes later to stare at a car. Why? Perhaps he was tired and had to rest his eyes on an interesting object. Why interesting? Because it was a new Citroen, of a model that the commissaris had been talking about. Because Cardozo had seen Grypstra and de Gier leaving Headquarters' courtyard in the commissaris's new car, waving airly, ordering him to 'do something' from an electronically dropped window. Was this the same car? There wouldn't be too many new silver super- Citroens about. Cardozo walked around the car. No, this had to be a different vehicle; it bore a white oval sticker marked FR. Dutch cars were marked NL. What would FR mean? Friesland. The sticker was unofficial, marking fervent national feeling, claiming independence for a province absorbed by the country. FR, meaning 'free.' All nonsense. Frisians also had their own money that not even Frisian stores would accept, and their own postage stamps, equally without any value. Amazing, that unquenchable desire to be cut off. His brother Samuel had read him a newspaper article on the problem. 'Pathetic,' Samuel had said. 'We don't go about wearing an embroidered / on our chests.' Samuel did wear a golden star of David on a chain around his neck, and collected Israeli stamps.
Free? Cardozo thought. Who is free? I'm not free. I jump when others pull my strings. 'Do something, Cardozo.'
The Citroen, parked half on the sidewalk, fronted a health-food store. Cardozo went in. 'Has that car been here long?'
'What of it?' snarled the woman behind the counter. She had been constructed of large bones, covered by a square cloth slit by a blunt knife to leave a hole for her thin neck. She had to push matted hair away to squint at this party who offended her by his presence. 'A poison sprayer,' the woman screamed. 'Oh, I know the type. A juggler of genes. An injector of hormones. Ha! Our greedy farmers. They wear their little caps and pretend to bring us the gifts of the earth, but they swindle us out of our money and buy capitalist cars and obstruct the sidewalk and I can't even park my bike, does anybody ever think of me?'
'May I use your phone?'
Cardozo burped. The food displayed in the dim store made him unwell. Cracked plastic pots were half-filled with moldy grains. A bowl had been filled with a jelly crusted on top. Sickly-looking mice scurried about on a shelf.
The store had no phone.
Cardozo walked back to Wo Hop's restaurant, where more junkies leered at each other in noisy despair. Cardozo sneezed with them. The young fighting Chinese were still nervously conversing; their singsong was louder now, even less in har- mony with the trumpeting of the addicted. 'Phone?' Cardozo asked. 'Go grab,' Wo Hop said, translating freely from Cantonese. He pointed. Cardozo walked through the cold light. He dialed Headquarters and passed along the Citroen's license plate number.
'Can't check that for you right now,' a girlish voice said. 'The computer hasn't come up yet.'
'Up from where?'
'From being down.'
Cardozo caught a streetcar back to Headquarters. The computer room's young ladies were politely unhelpful. 'I've got to know,' Cardozo said, wandering away. In the Traffic Department, another screen showed another little green square, trembling quietly. It was on view again in the Road Tax Department, and he found it once more in the Department That Hauls Wrecks. Cardozo knocked on the commissaris's door. He rattled the handle.
'Maybe the chief isn't in,' a bass voice said, rumbling from a large chest covered by a tight T-shirt. 'Would you do me a small favor? Won't take a minute. In the sports room. Do come along.'
'No,' Cardozo said.
The sports instructor's long, hairy arm clasped Cardozo's shoulders. 'Colleague, break your restraining ego and serve others for a change. Here we are, would you mind taking off your shoes?'
Other large and strong men waited, kneeling around the judo mat. 'This, colleague,' said the sports instructor to Cardozo, 'is an Arrest Team. They learn from me. Today we demonstrate Sudden Unexpected Attack. Mind joining us for a moment?'
The sports instructor put on a duck-billed cap.
Cardozo smiled shyly. He scratched his ear. The instructor addressed the team. 'Please pay attention. This colleague will now suddenly and unexpectedly attack me.'
The hand that scratched Cardozo's ear attached itself to the bill of the instructor's cap. The headgear dipped over the instructor's eyes. Cardozo's other hand clenched and hit the instructor's belly, twisting as it thumped. The instructor bent forward. Cardozo's fist slid up and slammed against the instructor's chin. The instructor bent backward. He kept bending backward because Cardozo's ankle hooked around the enemy's shin and pulled it forward. The instructor fell on his back. Cardozo fell too, twisted free, and yanked on the instructor's wrist so that his whole heavy body turned over. The instructor rested on his belly, with arms stretched out. Cardozo lifted the arms, joined the wrists, and attached them with handcuffs.
'Like this?' Cardozo asked.
The instructor groaned.
'Til free you,' Cardozo said, 'as soon as I can locate my key.' Cardozo was emptying out his pockets. 'Now where did I put it? In my hankie, perhaps? No. In my wallet?'
'Does anyone happen to have a handcuff key?' Cardozo asked the kneeling, attentively watching Arrest Team members.
The team shook their heads.
'Here it is,' Cardozo said. 'In my new belt. Nifty belt, eh? See this zipper? Hides a secret slit to keep things in. You never thought of that, did you now?'
The team nodded their heads in amazement.
'Anything else I can do for you gents today?' Cardozo asked.
'You, get out of here,' the instructor said.
The commissaris had arrived in the meantime. 'There have been complaints about you,' the commissaris said. 'You've been causing some trouble. What trouble were you causing?'
'I'm sorry,' Cardozo said. 'I was only trying to be of help, and I did come up with something useful. I found the dead man's car, or so it seems for the moment.'
The commissaris's small fist bounced on his desk. 'I want confirmed facts.'
'Our confirmation device is down, sir, but the car was parked asocially, half on the pavement and under a*no parking' sign. Would you have a photograph of Mr. Scherjoen? I would like to show it around in the area where I found the car.'
'No,' the commissaris said.
'Where can I obtain a photo?'
'Grijpstra?' the commissaris asked. 'He stays in Fries-land now. I just had a call to that effect, from the chief constable of Leeuwarden, Lasius of Burmania, a nobleman from up north. Grypstra has been given the use of a
