'Any Chinese around here?' Cardozo asked.
'Oh yes,' the surrealist said. 'Next alley. A barber's salon, go right at the fork, can't miss.'
The indicated passage was overgrown with smelly weeds rustling with vermin. A sign in Chinese dangled from a rusty bar. Under the sign a rotten door was hung in a partly broken frame. The cracked window in the door was covered by a dirty cloth. Rough voices shouted inside. The cloth was torn and Cardozo could peek.
The portophone jumped into his clawing fingers. 'Karate? Ketchup?'
That there was no immediate answer could only mean that the colleagues had been properly trained. They heard him but didn't acknowledge so that their suddenly ringing voices would not disturb the already delicate situation. Cardozo whispered his position and became active at once. Kicking in the door and jumping ahead, he found himself in a low whitewashed room. Cardozo's pistol pointed at four Chinese in turn. Two sat, two stood. The Chinese tied down in barber's chairs couldn't turn around, but the two who were standing did, following Cardozo's crisp order. They clasped their hands to their necks when he barked at them again.
'Hello?' Cardozo said. 'Ketchup? Karate? Come quickly. I've got them.'
The portophone crackled emptily.
One of the sitting Chinese was Wo Hop. 'Untie me?' Hop asked.
'Me help you?'
'That'll be all right,' Cardozo said. 'Karate? Ketchup?'
He grabbed a stool with his foot and moved it closer. He sat down. There was a clock on the wall. The minute hand moved once in a long while, creaking loudly. 'Hello?' Car-dozo asked after every creak.
'Hello? Hello? Hello?'
Cardozo got a little tired. The pistol's weight increased. Flies moved about sleepily. The Chinese facing the wall moved now and then. 'Keep still,' Cardozo shouted. 'Hello? Hello? Hello?'
His arm began to hurt.
'Friends no come?' Wo Hop asked. 'Untie me now?'
'Hello?'
'Symie?' Karate asked. 'You there? Over.'
Cardozo cleared his throat.
'Nothing doing, right, Symie? We're signing off and will return to the station. Join us there. We're off now. Buy you a drink?'
'Hello!' Cardozo yelled.
'You're there,' Karate said. 'See you in a minute. Over and out.'
'Come here!' Cardozo yelled.
The portophone creaked.
'You hear me?'
'Quiet,' Karate said. 'Mind my eardrums. Where are you?'
'Here.' Cardozo gave his position. 'Hurry up. Bring any assistance you can find. Every cop in the station. Do hurry. Emergency.'
'Understood,' Karate said.
Cheerful sirens tore the air near the Inner Harbor. Jolly running footsteps cut the silence in the passage outside.
'Hurrah!' Karate shouted.
'Victory at last!' Ketchup shouted. 'Four fried noodles. Two double fortune cookies. Step right up. Take your pick.'
The assistance, eight officers in uniform and four in jeans and leather jackets, untied the prisoners and handcuffed all four suspects. A minibus transported the catch to the station. An inspector, raised from his bed, patted Cardozo's shoulder. 'Two counts of deprivation of liberty, two counts of illegal firearms, one plastic bag containing a hundred grams of high-grade heroin. Nobody seems to have the proper papers. Good work, detective.'
'Sir?' an officer in a leather jacket said.
'Let's have it, old chap.'
'I'm Drugs, sir. Something about this heroin.'
'Not the real thing? Don't disappoint me.'
'Good quality, but not Chinese.'
'And how do we know?'
'Packing, sir.'
'And what do we notice when we study the packing?'
'Chinese heroin, sir, is never supplied in this type of thick yellow plastic wrap.'
'No disturbing details now,' the inspector said. 'Tomorrow, maybe. I'll be reading the reports. Have a good night, the lot of you.' The inspector went home.
'Turkish heroin,' the expert explained. 'Coarse grains, see?'
Cardozo was invited to type out his report. Wo Hop was sent home. There was no need to detain his mate, either. The two other Chinese were lodged in a small cell.
Karate and Ketchup changed clothes. 'A drink, Car-dozo?'
Why not? In Jelle Troelstra's bar, a stone's throw away. 'I can't stay long,' Cardozo said in the street, 'for tomorrow I bicycle to Friesland.'
Wo Hop's mate was trailing them, but neither Karate nor Ketchup nor Cardozo paid attention, for they were now off duty. 'Bicycle?' Karate asked.
'I'll go up the dike,' Cardozo said.
'Why?'
'I don't really care to discuss that now,' Cardozo said. 'It's late and I'm tired.'
'You'll bike up there?' Ketchup asked. 'That dike is thirty kilometers long. All the way to Friesland? It'll take you a day. Whatever for? You want to lose weight?'
'I'll be leaving at 6:00 A.M.' Cardozo said.
Troelstra was closed, but he opened up.
Wo Hop's mate waited outside.
Cardozo explained, once settled behind a small glass of jenever, that he needed Douwe Scherjoen's's portrait because the photographs of the corpse were useless; they showed only bits of skull and a semi-burned spine.
'But bicycleT Karate and Ketchup shouted. Jelle saw no reason to get upset. He remembered times when almost no one owned a car, and a trip along the dike could be quite an adventure. A bicycle is slow enough to afford the rider a view. And, besides, the trip was supposed to be useful. Yes, sure, they too were prepared to exert themselves when on duty, Karate and Ketchup said-certainly, no question about it-but to be exploited was something else again. If the State would not pay for elementary expenses, criminals could go free. Criminals were driving about in silver cars. The commissaris had just been issued a silver car too, Cardozo admitted. Yes, for the higher-ups no cost was too little either, Ketchup and Karate said, while common folk could be abused, their comforts ignored, their well-being unconsidered.
'Can't we rise above the common folk?' Karate asked.
'This eternal complaining, does it get us anywhere? Suppose we surpassed ourselves, made use of all that's given to us, conquered our weaknesses, would there be no reward?'
'Sell our souls for silver Citroens?' Ketchup asked. 'I wouldn't mind doing that. Citroens are good cars.'
Cardozo sipped his drink, frowning and growling that mere materialism never got anyone anywhere. The trick was to step aside and still do your very best. Who cares for results?
Had he thought of that himself? Ketchup and Karate wanted to know. Sergeant de Gier had been known to come up with bullshit like that. Now look at the sergeant-wasn't he just another sucker, by accident provided with impermanent good looks and the ability occasionally to win a fight? Where had that got him? The saintly sinner, adored by Car-dozo?
Troelstra kept filling up their glasses. 'Would you know a certain Adjutant Oppenhuyzen?' Cardozo asked. 'Aren't you Frisian too?'
Troelstra nodded benignly. 'Not a bad fellow, comes in for a beer every now and then.'
'He is a bad fellow,' Cardozo said. 'Pushed over by evil. Trying to squeeze personal good out of a bad
