Detective Tom Tierney's gun was loaded.
Sergeant Hurrell, later that same afternoon, walking contentedly through the park, noticed a derelict slumped on a bench. The man was wearing a dark brown tweed suit, complete with waistcoat, a quality shirt that had once been white, a plaid necktie, cream woolen stockings and leather boots that showed traces of polish.
The derelict, taken in by a patrol car summoned by Hurrell, admitted, at the Central Park Precinct, that he had robbed a body he'd stumbled upon. The man, drunk and stoned, couldn't remember when or where. 'A while back.' The derelict did say the body was dead 'and bleeding.'
Perhaps remembering that he had been on a higher level of existence once, he then rose laboriously, tried to strike an orator's pose and said 'in theatrical tones,' as Hurrell's report had it, that the body 'had been urinating' and that he had found it 'in the early morning hours.'
Chief O'Neill, taking the commissaris home after the homemade firearms lecture, heard the news on his police radio. He stopped at the Central Park Precinct on the Eighty-fifth Street transverse and Hurrell showed him the confiscated clothes.
'No wallet?'
'No,' Sergeant Hurrell said, 'but check the trousers.' O'Neill noted that there were bloodstains around the fly area. The chief instantly created a theory. 'So Bert Termeer had been peeing, had he? Poor fucker fell down, felt the need, opened his fly, peed, had his heart attack, thrashed about, flung his head this way and that, then- dentures flying every which way-he dies.'
O'Neill wrinkled his nose in disgust. 'Next thing, a raccoon locates his dinner. Tears off what Termeer had exposed. Hurrell's bum finds the corpse, strips it of its clothes, puts them on. Leaves his own clothes and his dirty blanket. The raccoon comes back, brings his family. The commotion attracts the park's carrion birds. Hawks peck the head, raccoons eat the lower torso.
'Right, Yan?'
'Why not, Hugh?' The commissaris looked at the blood on the tweed trousers that Sergeant Hurrell was holding up for his inspection. 'Oh yes, Hugh, that could easily have happened.'
Hugh patted Hurrell's shoulder. He smiled. 'I think our case is definitely closed now. Nice work, Earl.'
Chapter 19
The bellhop Ignacio, after he saw de Gier coming in to pick up the commissaris and observed the two men checking de Gier's map to find the location of Watts Street, Tribeca, insisted that they make use of the Cavendish's free limousine service.
The limo, exceedingly long and cumbersome even for that class of vehicle, got stuck in Canal Street traffic. The commissaris told the driver not to worry. He and de Gier could walk the short distance. After they got out traffic loosened up somewhat and the limo disappeared, taking with it de Gier's map, which the commissaris had left on the back seat.
'Watts Street,' the commissaris said. 'Should be easy. Lots of people about. They'll all know it.'
De Gier, still focused on the Papuan ghost masks and soul boats that he had been looking at all afternoon, walked along dreamily.
Since they were now at Canal Street's eastern end, they would need, the commissaris explained, to walk all the way west, from the East River to the Hudson, and then, on Watts, they'd go south, aiming for the towers of the World Trade Center that no one could miss.
'Watts Street, Tribeca,' the commissaris said, 'short for Triangle Below Canal.'
'Okay,' de Gier said.
'Charles Gilbert Perrin,' the commissaris read from his notebook.
'Nice name,' de Gier said.
'Charlie'll be there,' the commissaris said. 'At number two. I phoned. He sounded very pleasant.'
'Good,' de Gier said.
'You know,' the commissaris said, 'why, according to chief O'Neill, Hurrell didn't visit Charlie at home but just briefly interviewed him at the precinct? Because Tribeca is known for transvestite hookers. Because Hurrell's child died in Tribeca.' The commissaris tsked.
De Gier tsked too.
Canal Street displays a seemingly endless array of market stalls on both sides. Food odors float on diesel fumes. Large buses and trucks thunder between overflowing sidewalks when they're not gridlocked between traffic lights. Policemen whistle at honking vehicles willing but unable to get going again.
'Watts Street?' the commissaris asked people of different colors, each dressed differently from the others.
'Vots Strijet?' 'Trots Strit?' 'Zljotz Striet?' responded the different people.
A new flow of eager buyers pushed the commissaris and de Gier into a corner where they found themselves staring at a display of Chinese-made windup toys. Beetles, mounting other beetles, whirred furiously. Clowns tumbled. Flame-spitting monstrosities danced about. Rabbits tried to climb carton walls, fell back, wagged their tails, seemed to have digestive problems.
A little black girl with bright ornaments in her felted hair strings picked up toys that had stopped and passed them to a boy who turned the toys' keys and handed them back.
At the next stall a soup vendor tended a charcoal fire under large aluminum containers. Brown children dropped wilted vegetables, bloodied bones and fish heads into the containers' bubbling contents.
'Sopa?' the vendor asked, offering a bowl and spoon.
'No thank you, sir. Watts Street?'
De Gier listened to the voices holding forth all around him. The sergeant's linguistic interests were aroused. Hardly anybody spoke English. All these people might be recently arrived. Amsterdam is an international city too and de Gier had learned to distinguish sounds and phrasing to determine origins. He heard Chinese voices, both Cantonese and Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish. Tall women in robes might be Tibetan. Other tall women in robes might be Zulu. Two white shoppers coming by could be Finnish.
'Vot street you vont?' the soup vendor asked.
'Watts.'
A woman directed them to a little folding table set up in a doorway where a beautifully bearded man in a turban and flowing robes sold light bulbs. There was the fragrance of quality marijuana mixing with that of incense burning under the oil-painted picture of a guru sitting in the lotus position.
'Watts Street?'
'What street?'
They left Canal, turning south at the next side street, followed an alley without a street sign, then kept turning until they saw the river.
'Maybe here?'
'I'll ask.' De Gier strode over to a tall white prostitute in a miniskirt and a silk blouse under an imitation lynx fur coat. 'Watts Street, please?'
'Right here.' The prostitute's voice was a baritone. 'All the way down to the Hudson River, but there's nothing here but warehouses and me. My minivan is around the corner. I work in the car. I could oblige you?'
'No thank you.' De Gier looked for numbers. 'Number two?'
'Bert and Charlie?' the prostitute asked.
The commissaris stepped closer, looking pleased. 'Yes, do you know them?'
The prostitute looked suspicious. 'You can't be cops, not with those accents.'
'Cops from Holland,' the commissaris said. 'We're just inquiring. Does Bert Termeer live near here?'
The prostitute shook a cigarette out of a Marlboro pack. 'Got a match?'
'We stopped smoking,' de Gier said.
The prostitute coughed painfully. 'Good for you. I smoke because of the weather but the weather gets worse.' He found his own match after digging about in a shiny handbag. He sucked smoke hungrily, coughed, sucked smoke again. 'Termeer is dead.'
