'Did you see that man and his dog?'
Antonio thought he might have.
Chapter 12
Antonio, in his hospital whites, due to go to work at eleven, served a late breakfast in the garden. He told de Gier he was in his after-meditation 'quiet mode,' programmed for practical matters only. 'Capers and a little chopped onion with your smoked salmon?'
'Please.'
'Another poppyseed bagel?'
'Yes, thank you.'
De Gier asked for a telephone. Antonio brought him a cordless model. The Japanese female clerk at the Cavendish desk said there was a problem, then connected him to the bellhop.
'This is Ignacio,' the bellhop said. 'Huevones, remember? We talked yesterday. Your friend isn't feeling good. You better come over quick. The old man was mugged. He broke his glasses.'
Antonio, advising against using a taxi for such a long trip, drove de Gier to the Astor Place subway station in his gleaming restored MG sportscar. He also gave de Gier a subway token. The train was quick. De Gier, after sidestepping a woman, well dressed except for a battered straw hat, who said she had AIDS, that her name was Lisa, that she was being evicted and that she needed a hundred dollars to consult her lawyer, ran the blocks from the Eighty-sixth Street station on Lexington Avenue over to the Cavendish. He found the commissaris in his suite, sipping tea.
'Ah,' the commissaris said. 'They're exaggerating downstairs. Looks like I am mostly blind, though. I had multifocals, but I've lost the prescription. Katrien is express-mailing my spare pair. They'll take a few days to get here.'
'Were you hurt, sir?'
The commissaris had been rattled, he reluctantly reported. The plan that day had been that, after a leisurely breakfast at Le Chat Complet, he would spend his free morning checking out Central Park, especially the area where Bert Turmeer had died. As the commissaris was approaching a cluster of bushes just east of the Sheep Meadow a jogger slowed down and fell into step with him. There was no one else in sight. The jogger was quiet.
'I am Dutch,' the commissaris said, to break the silence.
'I am black,' the jogger said.
The jogger suddenly hugged the commissaris, as if he were a long-lost friend. As the jogger applied pressure the commissaris's glasses slipped, fell and were stepped on. 'Oh man oh man,' the jogger kept shouting, 'good to see you, man. How are you doing?'
'When did this happen, sir?' de Gier asked.
'An hour and a half ago,' the commissaris said. 'Maybe a little longer?'
'Can you describe your attacker?'
The commissaris did.
De Gier checked the maps Antoinette had loaned him. The Sheep Meadow was to the south; it wouldn't take him long to get there.
'But he could be anywhere now,' the commissaris said. 'It doesn't matter, Rinus.' He raised a shoulder sadly. 'It looks like I'm pretty vulnerable here, a lost cause. I'm just trouble.' He looked up. 'Hey? Where are you going? Rinus! Wait!'
De Gier jogged down paths south of the Great Lawn, then cruised the area around the lake. After a twenty- minute search he noted a six-foot-three-inch-tall black young adult in a sky blue sweatsuit, carrying a new white plastic shoulder bag with Adidas imprint, new ankle-high suede boots with laces, dark sunglasses in bright red frames, a pink baseball hat, wearing several big rings on the fingers of both hands, who came jogging toward him.
De Gier ran on, made a full turn, and ran after the robber.
'I am Dutch,' de Gier shouted.
The jogger was quiet.
'Oh man oh man,' de Gier shouted when he was abreast of his quarry, 'good to see you, man. How are you doing?'
The robber ran faster.
De Gier ran faster too.
The robber stopped, backed away, took a switchblade from his bag and pressed its button. De Gier stopped too and carefully approached his opponent. The robber pointed the knife at de Gier's belly. 'Fuck off, okay?'
De Gier smiled, made a pass to the right, then kicked the man's arm. He jumped the robber while the knife was still flying, got hold of a wrist, twisted it behind the man's back. He exerted some pressure.
The robber screamed.
'The money,' de Gier said.
'In my back pocket, man,' the robber said. 'I only took sixty bucks. I left the funny money. It's still in the wallet.'
De Gier pocketed the money. 'What did you do with the wallet?'
'Tossed it in the garbage, man.'
'Jog ahead,' de Gier ordered. 'Stop at the can you dumped the billfold in.'
The garbage can was on Cherry Hill. The robber, after some rummaging among newspapers and empty soda cans, found the commissaris's wallet. He handed it over. De Gier thanked him.
The robber sneezed. 'Give me my own money back, man. I'm sick. I got to buy some shit, man. I only took sixty.'
De Gier nodded. 'Fuck you, okay?'
'I'm sorry, sir,' de Gier said when he returned to the Cavendish suite. 'I should have checked the wallet.' He grimaced. 'Too hasty again. The credit card inside is made out to someone unpronounceable who lives in Trinidad and Tobago. But there's Dutch money inside. That fooled me.'
'A coincidence?' the commissaris asked.
De Gier, recognizing the glint in his chiefs eye, nodded. 'How silly of me,' de Gier said. 'Where do you keep your real billfold?'
The commissaris carried his papers, valid credit card and a good deal of cash in a small armpit holster.
'The other credit card is fake,' the commissaris said. 'It was taken from a phony tourist. It's out of date too. Katrien told me to always let muggers have some cash, so that they won't be angry.'
De Gier handed the commissaris the money he had taken from the robber.
'Two hundred dollars?' the commissaris asked. 'My decoy wallet only contained sixty.'
While the commissaris rested, de Gier took the surplus money to the Central Park Precinct. The desk- sergeant, who reminded de Gier of a hero out of an old war movie, a tall man in a neatly ironed blue shirt, asked, 'You found a hundred and forty dollars?'
De Gier described how he happened to be following a jogger in the park. It seemed to him that the jogger was really a mugger. He had seen the jogger accost a little old gentleman, but at some distance. He couldn't be sure.
'Amazing,' the desk-sergeant said.
And then later the jogger happened to drop some money.
'That belonged to the little old man?'
Yes, but that was only sixty dollars, and the sixty had been returned.
The sergeant considered. 'So this money here may belong to some other victims, but nobody has filed a complaint.'
'Somebody may sometime,' de Gier said. 'Then you can hand it over.'
'Can you describe this jogger?'
De Gier did, adding that suspect, a junkie feeling sick, would undoubtedly try another mugging soon. The
