sergeant repeated the information into a microphone, directing the call to all park patrols. He clipped the microphone back into its holder. 'What do you do, sir?'
De Gier told the sergeant he was a policeman from Amsterdam, here to assist his boss, who was unwell at the moment. His boss was the chief of detectives, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, interested in the death of a certain Bert Termeer.
'You too,' the sergeant said. 'I keep hearing about that case. The autopsy proved death was from natural causes. The case is being closed now. Do you want to see Sergeant Hurrell?'
De Gier wanted to see a certain mounted policewoman, just for the record, so that he could write his report. The complainant was a nephew of the deceased, a colleague in the Amsterdam Police Department.
The sergeant said, 'That'll be Maggie McLaughlin. 'Mounted Maggie.'' The sergeant smiled. 'She is on duty now, she'll be off for lunch. You might check here in an hour.'
De Gier asked if the sergeant patrolled the park himself.
The sergeant did. Did the sergeant know of a seeing-eye dog, a large Alsatian? 'What you call a German shepherd, I think.'
'Kali,' the sergeant said.
'Beg pardon?'
'Dog called 'Kali.'' The sergeant grinned. 'Clever beast. We used to chase her-can't have unaccompanied dogs in the park-but then she adopted Charlie.'
'Charlie?'
'Guy who works out in the park,' the sergeant said. 'A regular. We talk to each other. Fit-looking guy, muscular. Some sixty years old. Sharp dresser. Seems to have money. Pleasant disposition. Takes good care of the dog.' The sergeant grinned again. 'Or the other way around.'
'Same dog that used to accompany our guy Termeer?'
The sergeant wasn't sure. He didn't recall Termeer. There were a lot of white-bearded men in tweeds around. Maybe he had seen him, maybe the dog had been around, maybe not. De Gier would be better off asking Policewoman Maggie.
Chapter 13
While de Gier, killing time as he waiting for his meeting with the policewoman, watched polar bears swim in rhythmic circles in their transparent quarters in the Central Park Zoo, Adjutant Grijpstra picked up his telephone in his office at Moose Canal Headquarters, Amsterdam.
'Henk?' The commissaris coughed. 'That you, Adjutant?'
Grijpstra, respectfully, took his feet off his dented metal desk. 'Sir? Are you all right? Has de Gier arrived? How is he doing?'
The commissaris said he himself had felt better and that de Gier had robbed a jogger and was now turning in part of the loot to the Central Park Precinct.
Grijpstra slumped back until his head rested against the wall. 'You are ill and de Gier is crazy?'
'We're both fine,' the commissaris said. 'I am sorry about sending you on that Mad Hatter's golf errand, Henk. De Gier told me you saw the chief-constable afterward. No unpleasantness, I hope?'
Grijpstra reported.
'I wish I could say that it was my diabolical cleverness that made me nudge you into the Crailo Golf Club Alleged Murder Case,' the commissaris said, 'but that would only be partly true. Mostly I got my facts wrong here. No golf in Central Park, or in any public park anywhere on earth for that matter. I should have known.'
Grijpstra grunted.
'You forgive me, Adjutant?' The commissaris was coughing again. He covered the telephone's mouthpiece.
'That's okay, sir.'
There was a pause.
'Grijpstra?' the commissaris said, painfully shifting his aching body on his four-poster bed in the Cavendish suite. 'Just to satisfy my never-ceasing curiosity, what conclusion did you reach?'
'About Baldert and his baron, sir?'
'Yes. Tell me.'
'I think Baldert feels cheated out of his just punishment, sir.'
'But did Baldert plan murder?'
'Probably,' Grijpstra said. 'And then he changed his mind at the last moment. Or he hesitated, causing some confusion, enough to make him miss the target. Then the baron died anyway and now Baldert is a madman.'
'De Gier was telling me about the case,' the commissaris said. 'Yesterday, while eating sushi. He was getting ill again, an association with stewed eel.'
Grijpstra laughed.
'De Gier thinks,' the commissaris said, 'that this is one of those cases where the alleged culprit seems unclear about his own guilt. To have sinned or not to have sinned, that is the question.' He laughed. 'How can we help?'
'How can we help ourselves to become ridiculous?' Grijpstra asked. 'Baldert needs our help so that he can have his day in court. The defense asks the judge what the prosecution is talking about. The judge asks us. We don't know either. Baldert goes free, clears his conscience at the law's expense. Once again we look foolish.'
'Well put,' the commissaris said. 'You have time to talk, Adjutant? Nellie isn't waiting with supper?'
'Nellie and I argued,' Grijpstra said. 'As I was wrong, again, I'm punishing myself by staying in empty cold rooms partly illuminated by a dim bulb dangling from a peeling ceiling.'
'I thought you and de Gier,' the commissaris said, 'recendy painted that ceiling.'
'It's part of a poem, sir, that a Turk and I made up at a tram stop.'
The commissaris was sorry to hear that Grijpstra and the Turk were depressed. He came to the point. While Grijpstra put in hmm's and ha's the commissaris argued that point. The point was that Baldert's confusion was more likely to happen in regal territories, like, for instance, The Kingdom of the Netherlands, than in an unroyal democracy like the one that the commissaris happened to be in right now. Baldert felt he had more hope if he could find royalty to judge him. What is a queen, the commis-saris asked rhetorically. The queen, if not divine herself, is God's representative in the Low Countries. The mystique of the crown, Grijpstra,' the commissaris declaimed. 'Forefathers like our statesman Thorbecke deliberately built this bridge to beyond into our judicial system.'
Grijpstra's 'Hmm' showed interest.
'Our judgmental language is proof,' the commissaris said. 'Under our set of rules offenders can be judged to be criminally insane and referred to a mental institution 'at the queen's pleasure.' That sort of thing, Adjutant. 'At the queen's pleasure' sounds a whole lot better than 'for an indefinite period' or even, as I read in the paper here, 'for the duration.' Insert a royal person into your rules-a queen, a divine mother-and immediately there is a feeling of warmth, of divine love. It makes us look better too. As policemen we are the queen's servants. A man like Baldert wants us to lift him into a higher sphere where things finally make sense, where there is absolute good and bad, and a queen-appointed judge to tell him the difference. Baldert requires us to serve as angels.' The commissaris coughed. 'It would be harder to do that here.'
Grijpstra professed curiosity. 'Why?'
'Why, Adjutant? Because here The People judge the people.'
'My God,' Grijpstra said, sounding shocked.
'See?' the commissaris said. 'Even you, a cynic, are appalled by such level-mindedness. Now then, Adjutant, where I really want to get to, and am getting to, is our alleged Central Park Murder Case. This is what I want you to do now. You and Cardozo. Maybe there is no killer but there is a much-mangled dead body. I want you to look into those body parts' background.' 'I thought,' Grijpstra said, 'that we were all about to tentatively agree, based upon available facts, that we would tell complainant that there is no case, sir.'
'The NYPD is about to close the case here,' the commissaris said, 'but I still feel uneasy. This time you won't be alone chasing phantoms. I want to do some background searching too. De Gier and I plan to get a certain
