thrashed about for a while, before getting up to stumble about the suite's bathroom, looking for more medication.
Chapter 5
'I like this little town of Nieuwegein,' Adjutant Grijpstra said, after he had switched off the car engine. 'How pleasant to get out of Amsterdam sometimes. We can even park here, Rinus. No pollution. Look at those huge trees. If those screeching magpies would shut up it would be real peaceful.'
The unmarked police car stood in a private parking lot belonging to a row of new town houses overlooking the river Rhine. The houses showed their forbidding backsides to the detectives, and further hid behind a raised row of new brick planters containing baby evergreen bushes that would grow into more protection later.
Grijpstra read the note Sergeant de Gier passed him. 'Lakmaker, Joop and Sara. They're the Central Park witnesses we are after?'
De Gier had given up trying to figure out how to fold the road map. He now flattened it with his fist. In spite of the long drive his mood was still good. He had followed Grijpstra's order: Gridlocked speedways had been avoided. The journey from Amsterdam had followed tree-lined canal quays and dikes twisting along narrow rivers. De Gier had pointed at fishermen in rowboats, sitting quietly behind their rods, at storks and herons planing on breezes, at turning windmills.
'Beautiful,' Grijpstra said each time. 'Lovely country. Nice spring we're having.'
'I don't like this,' Grijpstra said now. 'Interviewing stale witnesses. How did Lakmaker strike you when you phoned for the appointment?'
'Member of the elderly arrogant class,' de Gier said. 'Old coot with a university background. Enjoys an ample pension. Addressed me as 'policeman.''
Grijpstra grinned. 'Maybe we'll end up with a cigar each, to put beneath our caps.'
'You do the talking,' de Gier said. 'I'm allergic to their kind.'
Grijpstra didn't move yet; they had arrived early.
De Gier looked at the town houses' unfriendly backsides. 'Two hundred thousand each?'
Grijpstra thought the town houses would price at three. One hundred thousand extra for the view of the Rhine.
De Gier kept staring while he wondered how the old couple would live, while viewing Holland's widest, most splendid river. So what else do you do? Ignore the aching old body while watching boats sail through your picture windows?
Discipline yourself? One hour of viewing, ten minutes for checking TV GUIDE for nature programs later on? Nap? Dinner? De Gier asked Grijpstra.
'News!' Grijpstra shouted.
'What?'
Grijpstra pointed out that de Gier didn't have to shout in his face. Grijpstra had merely acted out how an elderly couple conducts dialogue. One sees a newscaster clearing his throat and shouts at the other to come watch the news. Or vice versa. Then, while one partner makes hurry-up movements, the other comes hobbling along so that the complete couple can share Worldly Horrors.
De Gier had trouble imagining the scene.
'Sharing of media-fodder,' Grijpstra said. He also suggested membership in a chess club or a bird-watching society: Identified species can be crossed off a list. Or visiting even older elderly persons in institutions. The couple might also invent ways to improve life on the planet.
De Gier got it now. He suggested guilt. The old couple analyzes past mistakes. They fantasize about how things could have been better. They prepare for a painless end by studying euthanasia literature supplied by their doctor.
'Read the Rotterdam Times and quote from same?' de Gier asked. He tried to vocalize the Rotterdam Times's style of reporting, hardly opening his lips, keeping his nose closed, expressing wise-ass opinions in the latest cliches.
'Okay, okay,' Grijpstra said, 'it's still my paper.
Only the Rotterdam Times dares to mention police corruption.'
'You subscribe?' de Gier asked.
Grijpstra sometimes read the paper at Cafe Keyzer, Fridays, between mocha cake and espresso.
'The photographs are okay,' de Gier said. 'Politicians all look like compulsive jerk-offs, schizoid too.'
'That one old drunk looked handsome, can't think of his name now.'
De Gier agreed that Holland's vice president was rather photogenic.
It was about time now.
De Gier looked at macrame curtains covering the glass part of the Lakmaker front door.
Grijpstra reread the commissaris's faxed note: Find out what exactly the Lakmakers saw on June 4. Grijpstra checked the day on his watch. 'Almost three weeks ago.' Ask (the note ordered) why they ignored Sergeant Hurrell's queries left on their answering machine.
'Are we going to interrogate the Lakmakers separately?' de Gier asked. 'In different rooms? Catch them later on all the discrepancies?'
Grijpstra didn't think so. 'Might annoy them too much.'
'They're annoyed already,' de Gier said.
'Angry, well-meaning fellow citizens,' Grijpstra said. 'But don't they have a nice place to live in?' He pushed his car door open. 'I attack, Sergeant. Follow me.'
Grijpstra and de Gier sat on a couch upholstered in blue velvet and drank coffee from Chinese mugs adorned with hand-painted flowers. A limping white-haired old lady pointed at cargo vessels motoring along the Rhine. Her bald husband checked a plastic file on his deck. It contained maps and leaflets, mementos of the couple's recent American journey.
'That couch you two are sitting on is original Biedermeier,' Sara Lakmaker said. 'A wreck when I found it. Joop repaired the frame and I upholstered it. It would cost a fortune if you figured in the hours.'
'The professional artistic touch,' Grijpstra said. He moved carefully, anxious not to damage the couch's ancient springs, which creaked painfully under his bulk.
'The coffee you are drinking comes from Nigeria,' Sara said. 'It's from Zabar's, in New York. That's the biggest and best deli in the world. In New York you can buy anything. Americans still have the greatest buying power.'
'A strong and interesting flavor,' Grijpstra said.
'Care to join me here?' Joop Lakmaker asked from his desk. He had unfolded a map. 'This is Central Park and this is where we saw the man you are inquiring about now. Just off this path, next to that meadow.' Lakmaker changed both his voice and his posture so that he could be a poet, speaking loudly and with a rhetorical effect. 'The grass was green,' Lakmaker declaimed, 'and the gent was dying. The balloon beast was rising'-Lakmaker covered his heart with his hand-'and the children were playing.' He looked at Grijpstra. 'How does that sound?'
'That sounds real pretty,' Grijpstra said.
Lakmaker grinned. 'I didn't even have to put in the blooming azaleas. I wanted to be a poet, wear a corduroy suit, live in a mountain cabin, but Sara wanted us to live usefully instead.'
'Joop,' Sara warned.
'And usefully we lived. A lifetime long. Do you know,' Joop asked, 'that I was instrumental in lowering the cost of Dutch soda pop?' Joop's bulging eyes looked through Grijpstra. 'Isn't that something?'
'You were much appreciated,' Sara said. 'You did a good job. You raised good kids.' Sara smiled. 'You collected art.' She pointed at three masks hung above the large TV screen. 'We already auctioned off two collections and now Joop has started collecting again. Impressive? They are Bolivian. We bought them on a trip. Mine workers make them from beer cans during their yearly holiday.'
Grijpstra and de Gier looked at the masks. 'Devils?'
'Mine demons,' Sara said. 'They live underground and come up with the workers, to share their
