come through fairly clearly. Then he folded the papers and put the photo back in his inside jacket pocket. 'I don't think you want to see this.'
Joop was quiet. Sara poured more coffee.
'Termeer wasn't having a heart attack,' Joop said while he passed around nonpareils. 'Not when we saw him. I have had two heart attacks myself. He didn't seem to have a headache, wasn't feeling his neck, there was nothing wrong with his left arm, none of the well-known symptoms. He was just dazed, but after we helped him sit down I'm sure he felt much better.'
'Were there any other people around?' Grijpstra asked.
Nobody. By then, both Lakmakers stated, events in the meadow were in full swing: The balloon dinosaur was being launched, the jazz band was playing.
''When the Saints Go Marching In,'' Joop said.
The look-alikes and wannabes were lining up for their contest. There was nobody else at the crossing where Termeer, cared for by the Lakmaker couple, was recuperating from shock.
Grijpstra seemed ready to leave the Lakmakers' residence when de Gier took over. 'Why,' he asked Joop, 'did you pay so much attention to this, this George Bernard Shaw type?'
'You don't know about George Bernard Shaw,' Joop said. 'How could you, policeman? What is your rank?'
'Yes,' Grijpstra looked at de Gier. 'George Bernard Who?'
Grijpstra looked at Joop. 'De Gier is a sergeant.'
'The sergeant reads a lot,' Grijpstra told Sara. 'Without using dictionaries. It takes him a few years to pick up a language. He likes languages, you see.'
'You graduated from a grammar school?' Joop asked de Gier. 'Wouldn't that qualify you for academic study? Shouldn't you be an inspector then, or a lieutenant or something?'
It took a while for de Gier to get the witnesses to confirm that Termeer had made an extraordinary impression. It wasn't just being good Samaritans, for they weren't, both Sara and Joop admitted. In New York they had stepped over homeless people, ignored beggars, walked away from traffic accidents. And it wasn't just New York-they would do that anywhere. At the most they would 'alert the authorities,' but the authorities, in Termeer's case, were right there. So when Bert Termeer was sent reeling by the policewoman's horse, the couple interfered for other reasons.
'Because you were upset with the authorities?' de Gier asked.
Joop was willing to go along with that, as an easy way out, but Sara said she wanted to be honest.
The interrogation continued. Honest is nice. De Gier was smiling at Sara. He liked her.
'No,' Sara confessed. Now that she was old and retired and more able to watch the human situation as is she no longer felt much pity. Her sense of duty was way down too. If a man gets hurt by the police there is little one can do. She did do that little, by complaining about the policewoman at the Central Park Precinct, but normally she wouldn't have done that either. Certainly not in America where she happened to be as a tourist.
So what was abnormal? Why did Sara Lakmaker involve herself with a man she had already called prophet- like, philosopher-like, Shaw- and/or Voltaire-like0…
'Who is Voltaire?' Grijpstra asked de Gier. 'One of your nihilists again?'
De Gier didn't think so. 'Voltaire insisted on being rich; it guaranteed his independence.'
'A benevolent atheist,' Joop said, 'who abhorred useless punishment.'
'The sergeant likes the idea of Nothing,' Grijpstra told the Lakmakers. 'He lives in an empty apartment and he doesn't have a car. He does buy clothes, though. Has them made. But he doesn't have many.'
'Are you married?' Joop asked de Gier.
'He is not,' Grijpstra said.
'Ever been married?'
'That wouldn't be consistent with his insight, would it now?' Grijpstra asked.
'You have a dog?'
'He lives with a cat,' Grijpstra said.
'You really have no car?'
'Never,' Grijpstra said.
'I did own an orange Deux Chevaux once,' de Gier said, 'but it was stolen.'
'But he doesn't have a TV,' Grijpstra said.
'And he doesn't talk much,' Joop told his wife. 'The fat policeman does that for him.'
Grijpstra looked at Joop.
'Pordy,' Joop said, patting his own protruding stomach. 'I am sorry, policeman.'
'Joop,' warned Sara.
'So you like the idea of Nothing?' Joop asked de Gier. 'You want to own Nothing or you want to be Nothing?'
De Gier was still chewing on his nonpareil.
'The sergeant wants to be Nothing,' Grijpstra said. 'But he can't tell you that because then he makes Something out of Nothing. We often discuss that apparent controversy. I always get tangled up.'
'You would,' Joop said.
'Joop,' Sara warned.
'I'm sorry,' Joop said. He smiled apologetically. 'I would like to belong to Nothing too. That's why I refused to wear a star as a kid, even in spite of my parents, who said that I should, because the German Nazis were It then, and if It tells you to wear a star then you do that. But I didn't so I was Nothing, and I was playing outside, and that's why I am still Something today.'
'So,' de Gier said, 'you felt attracted to this Bert Termeer, the man who was found in rags in Central Park, partly eaten by animals, under a filthy blanket.'
'He seemed like a kind of prophet,' Sara Lakmaker said.
'You like prophets?'
Sara did.
Perhaps, Grijpstra suggested on the way home to Amsterdam, with rain slapping against the windscreen, Sara had prolonged the interview because she felt attracted to handsome de Gier. Maybe Sara didn't want the sergeant to go as yet. De Gier shrugged that away. 'Why not allow Mrs. Lakmaker to be nice?'
Grijpstra wouldn't do that.
Chapter 6
The commissaris didn't have a good night physically, although mentally he qualified the episode as exciting. He was up a lot, with bathroom problems. He kept his headache down with the generic painkiller. He drank his cold tea, wondered whether he should disturb Room Service, emptied out the nonalcoholic contents of his small refrigerator. He did get some sleep but the long-legged streetcar driver kept appearing. In spite of what he had told Katrien, the recurring dream had definite sexual aspects, although he hardly felt aroused. The Angel of Death's hollow eye sockets might have put him off. He whimpered himself awake, tried to remember the dream's details, but they mostly slipped away. Frustrated, he found himself padding about barefoot on the thick Oriental carpet, hoping for daylight. Stopping at the suite's picture windows he could see shadowy figures moving in the park below, derelicts searching garbage cans for food. He told himself things could be worse, got back into bed and drank more soda.
He got up at nine o'clock; the 'Modes of Death' lecture wasn't till eleven. The Cavendish's breakfast room was inviting enough, with a complete buffet, the fragrance of fresh rolls, a display of smoked fish, flowers everywhere, a marble fountain sprinkling in a corner, but he went out anyway, clasping his cane. A walk would do him good. He limped along, the pain in his hipbones dulled by codeine.
Thrushes sang as he found a restaurant off Madison Avenue, Le Chat Complet. He was feeling bad again. The restaurant occupied a basement with high narrow windows. Three tall black men with shaven skulls, wearing identical red jackets and red butterfly ties on impeccable white shirts, busied themselves behind the counter. They
