'We know,' the commissaris said. 'That's why we're here.' He put out his hand and said his name.
The prostitute laughed, then excused himself. 'What sort of a name is that?' He shook the commissaris's hand. 'My name is Teddy.'
De Gier shook hands too.
Teddy walked them to a three-story warehouse with a crumbling cement-over-concrete front. Between rows of boarded-up windows apostolic faces, white skinned, black bearded, smiled appealingly. Birds held up banners.
The banners bore a text: give your time do things for God give your money 'Give your money to me,' Teddy said. 'I can use it. I badly need cough drops.'
De Gier handed over a twenty-dollar bill.
Teddy thanked him. 'Like to see my place on the Bowery? Best whips and chains collection downtown.'
'Thank you,' de Gier said. 'We don't have the time.' He pointed at the beseeching smilers, the text-carrying bluebirds.
'Termeer and Charlie put that up?'
Teddy laughed. 'No, that was the Good Lord Club. The club didn't survive. The bank foreclosed and Charlie bought the building. There's nothing much here for Goodlorders.' He waved at forbidding warehouses up and down Watts Street. 'No conversions.'
There were two sets of stone steps, each leading to a metal door. The commissaris tried to read a small hand-painted sign next to the left door. His outdated glasses failed him.
Teddy helped out. Bert the Bookseller.
'You knew Bert Termeer?' the commissaris asked Teddy.
Teddy grimaced. 'Sure did.'
'Did you like him?'
'I like Charlie,' Teddy said. 'Charlie asks me in when it rains. We eat noodles in the restaurant sometimes.' He raised a shoulder. 'Just friends, you know? Separate checks. Regular conversation. 'Pass the soy sauce.' I like that. You know? Friendly-like?' He pointed at his pick-up spot on the corner of Watts Street. 'The lamppost gets lonely. I take off for lunch. When Charlie wants to eat noodles and he happens to come by we go eat together.'
'Termeer didn't ask you in when it rained?'
'Sure,' Teddy said. 'Oftentimes. Any kind of weather.' He looked over his shoulder. A man was waiting at the end of the street. 'Uh-oh. Duty calls, gents.'
Teddy walked away, on long silken legs, swinging tight hips.
The commissaris and de Gier contemplated the door on the right side of the forbidding building. Charlie's nameplate was a strip of yellowing paper covered by cracked plastic. The writing was in black ballpoint. diaries gilbert perrin
The commissaris pressed an oxidized brass button. A loudspeaker spoke near his ear, uncannily clear of static, transmitting a calm deep voice.
'Nothing needed,' Charlie said, 'I thank you. Take care now. Okay.'
The commissaris said his name.
'Mr. Dutch Police and Co.?' Charlie asked. 'Stay right there, folks, I'm coming.'
The commissaris looked down Watts Street, wondering how Grijpstra would like this view. Grijpstra might paint it on a Sunday morning, as a change from dead ducks. The commissaris thought that the narrow empty alley- not even cars were attracted to Watts Street- would inspire an artist searching for unusual settings. Watts Street's emptiness seemed intensified, perhaps because of the ghostly light reflected by the shimmering Hudson.
De Gier picked up on the atmosphere too. 'An end-of-time street. Nobody here but the dead, sir. But they might be returning.'
In the alley's massive gray and brown buildings nothing seemed to go on. Warehouses for stolen goods? Sweatshops where illegal aliens worked for low wages? The structures' formidable steel doors locked curiosity out.
Bolts were turning on the inside of number two.
The man who faced the detectives appeared to be a well-cared-for, friendly, healthy gentleman in his mid- fifties. The muscularity of Charlie's body, mentioned by Mounted Maggie and the desk-sergeant at the Central Park Precinct, hardly showed under a blue turtleneck sweater. Charlie's dark blond hair looked old-fashioned, cut short, shaved around the ears, slicked down, combed neatly. The face was naturally tanned and Charlie had recently shaved meticulously. Brown eyes sparkled behind metal framed spectacles. Charlie's large nose curved slightly. The teeth were strong and clean, with a single gold filling. Charlie's wristwatch might have been bought on Canal Street: a twenty-dollar digital item with a simple metal strap.
The commissaris handed over his card. De Gier said his name. Charlie read the commissaris's last name easily, without any accent.
Charlie smiled. 'Step right up.'
'You speak Dutch?' the commissaris asked, surprised at Charlie's faultless pronunciation of the many consonants in his long name.
'I lived in Aachen for a while,' Charlie said, 'just over the border. I sometimes went across and so I learned how to pronounce the sounds on your side.'
'You speak many languages?' de Gier asked.
'Anyone,' Charlie said, 'who has to try to grow up the way I did better learn languages, my friend. Mine are, in chronological order, Yiddish, Polish, German, French and, last but not least, English. English'-Charlie smiled- 'is easy to pick up, impossible to master.' He beckoned his guests into a clean and empty red-brick hallway. 'Always good to be fluent in communication when you're passing through hostile lands.'
'Is Perrin a Polish name?' the commissaris asked.
'I was once called by another name, long ago, before World War II,' Charlie said, 'but there was too much blood on it. After I finally reached America I chose my own label. 'Charles' refers to my favorite author, Charles Willeford, a cheerful nihilist. 'Gilbert' is in homage to a schoolteacher I loved prematurely. 'Perrin' is a town in Maine I dream about when the wind goes the wrong way and Watts Street stinks. I sometimes go to Perrin to listen to loons.'
'Loons sometimes chant with coyotes,' the commissaris said. 'Listening to the chant makes one replace wornout ideas.'
Charlie laughed. 'Exactly.' He looked into the commissaris's eyes. 'That's exactly right. You have obviously been there.'
They followed Charlie, whose bad leg slowed him I 222 1 down somewhat, into an old-fashioned industrial elevator. The cage-like cubicle was furnished like a room. The detectives sat on straight-back chairs while Charlie manipulated two long handles. On a card table a long-stemmed rose drooped gracefully from a slim vase. An Oriental carpet covered the floor.
'Why not?' Charlie asked. 'Nobody likes cages. This lift has been everything. I like to go to auctions or find things in the street, use them, replace them. Last month this was a cabinet for albums of West African colonial stamps that I sold the other day.' He waved. 'A nonprofit hobby. I liked being able to live with those stamps, for a while. Wonderful colors. Nice little pictures. A chance to experience those colonial times. The lift also exhibited photos of Laurel and Hardy. I collected those for years, then gave them to a museum. Before that I tried to recreate a Maori temple with painted bamboo and a rattan floor. Before that, let me see…right, the complete works of Rene Daumal. Here, on that table.' He faced his guests. 'Rene Daumal? The name is familiar? No? It is not?'
The elevator stopped but Charlie didn't open the accordion door yet. 'Daumal appeared as a French essayist and poet who wouldn't stay with us. Thirty-six years old in 1943.' Charlie clicked his fingers. 'Daumal's complete denial cheered me up completely. You really haven't read him?'
He looked at the commissaris. 'A Night of Serious Drinking, or La Grande Beuverie? No?'
He looked at de Gier. 'Mount Analogue? Unfinished. Because Daumal died halfway through the last, but not least, chapter. Of tuberculosis, like the parents of Wille-ford. Such a useful disease. Suddenly sets us up on our own. No?'
De Gier brought out his notebook and wrote down the poet's name and the titles.
'You're interested,' Charlie said, sliding open the elevator's door soundlessly. Apparently it was well
