Charlie looked dreamily at his enormous blank wall.
'Would you leave the wall empty again?' the commissaris asked.
'I should,' Charlie said, 'but I think I'll draw future life forms.' He took a sketchbook from a shelf. The pages were covered with drawings of beetles. Some insects were complete, others dissected with erect lower bodies- ready to copulate-long, gracefully bent antennae, multiple eyes, jaws with extending feelers, segments of wings.
'The future,' Charlie said. 'If I sit in the bath over there and watch the news then I know, like you know, like everybody knows, that we're coming to some endings.'
'We humans,' the commissaris said.
'We humans, sir. Can't handle our unlimited multiplication combined with destructive technology.' Charlie shrugged. 'No big deal.' Charlie smiled. 'There's always something else to follow.'
Charlie predicted that a next evolution might be beetle-based. 'Beetle-beings might do well for a while, until it all happens again: Intelligence improves, egotism remains, science doubles the life span so the population explodes, the beede race self-destructs, like the human race before it.'
'There could be changes,' de Gier objected.
Charlie's theorizing changed direction. 'What if it goes differendy the next time?' he agreed. 'What if beetle- beings get it together, learn to live in harmony? Does chaos tolerate contentments? Wouldn't another meteor hit the Beetle sapiens planet, wipe them out like the dinosaurs?'
'Ah,' the commissaris said, not unhappily.
'You believe in an end to humanity, sir?'
The commissaris would not refuse to believe in lots of little endings to lots of little things, like humanity, for instance.
'Soon?'
There were some signs, weren't there?
Charlie was surprised. 'You're not an optimist, sir? So what do you bet on? We stupidly kill each other or a meteor does it for us?'
The commissaris thought either way would be just fine, but as Charlie said just now: There's always something else to follow. Personally, he was thinking more of jellyfishlike creatures as a form of future consciousness. Considering the given fact of ice caps melting, oceans growing, lands diminishing, one might predict evolved aquatic beings.
'Looking like jellyfish?'
'Mind if I get up?' the commissaris asked the dog.
Kali stepped back.
'Why,' the commissaris asked as he walked about in Charlie's gigantic space, being careful with the tip of his cane so as not to scratch the hardwood flooring, 'why would future life forms develop along lines easily imaginable by our kind of minds? We think of insectlike creatures because insects, like us, have faces, eyes, arms, legs. The future creature may not need any of those.'
Charlie sat on the side of his bathtub. 'No?' He nodded. 'I see. Yes. Perhaps.'
'Surely,' the commissaris said. 'The jellyfish, think of it. A semifluid transparent dome. It doesn't walk, it waves. It doesn't see, it feels with tentacles. Essentially different. It functions beautifully. Why should it be like us?'
'Mhree,' Charlie said thoughtfully. 'Yes. Eerhtn.'
'Pardon?'
'That's what Bert used to say,' Charlie said. 'That reality extends well beyond imagination. The weirder, the more real.'
'The future could be something else entirely,' the commissaris said. 'Not only beyond our imagination, also beyond our memory. Our memory wouldn't be there, you see. It would have wafted away, along with ourselves.'
Charlie wasn't listening. He bent toward the commissaris, arms stretched, palms up, as if to accept some worthy present. 'And these jellyfishlike creatures? How would they go about perpetuating themselves?'
The commissaris was at the other side of Charlie's vast space and had to shout to bridge the distance. 'Jellyfish can multiply like plants if they want,' the commissaris shouted. 'The creatures grow like fruits on a tree- like structure, but they also have sexual organs, which can be joined while swimming free. The future, like the present and past, will be exciting.'
'Bert,' Charlie shouted, 'wanted you to go beyond all three of those stages.'
'Bert had his penis ripped off,' the commissaris shouted. 'Do you know why?'
Chapter 20
Adjutant Grijpstra received de Gier's fax, transmitted after breakfast at the Cavendish, at 5:00 P.M., just as the adjutant was ready to go home to his empty apartment. He beeped Cardozo.
Cardozo, who, together with a fearful Turkish/ Dutch interpreter, was listening to a taped shouting match between leaders of rival protection rackets operating in Amsterdam's Old West section, the new Turkish quarter- a cacophony of exotic swearing that provided no information-was glad to come over.
'More bullshit from our roving Sergeant Bogus,' Grijpstra said. 'What do you make of this?' He read de Gier's faxed questions: Where was Jo Termeer on June fourth? What is Jo Termeer's interest in The Road Warrior movie?
Cardozo didn't feel like trying to interview Jo Termeer again, not even with Grijpstra's hairy hands dangling above his curls. He suggested seeing the movie. 'Might give us ideas. We can see Jo later.'
Cardozo was ordered to go rent the movie. He bicycled about and checked with three different video-rental stores. The Road Warrior happened not to be in stock. He bicycled back to headquarters, quiet now but for Grijpstra's drumming.
'Right,' Grijpstra said, putting his sticks down. 'If Jo Termeer has some special interest in the movie he is likely to own it. Go find him, go find the movie. Call me. We will all watch it together.'
Jo Termeer could not be found, either at his place of work, the hair-care salon in the fashionable suburb of Outfield, or at his luxury apartment, above the hair-care salon.
'Who did you talk to?' Grijpstra asked.
'To his partner,' Cardozo said. 'A certain Peter.'
Grijpstra crushed the paper cup he had just filled with coffee from the machine in the corridor outside his office. He hadn't drunk the coffee yet. He walked about his office watching his steaming thighs.
Cardozo brought a towel.
'You're smiling,' Grijpstra said. 'Don't smile. Peter? That would be Termeer's lover, yes? Where is the printout of the original complaint? The hullabaloo that got all this started.'
Cardozo and Grijpstra read the report together. ''Nature person,'' Grijpstra said. 'That's what Termeer called Peter. 'Nature person Peter.' Black guy. De Gier liked him. Let's go see Peter, Simon.'
It was the era during which Amsterdam was beginning to tackle its traffic problem. In order to discourage vehicles from using the congested quaysides, parking-meter rates had been tripled. Offending cars were towed quickly or immobilized with steel clamps, removable upon payment of a large fine in cash. Police vehicles, unless marked as such, were no longer exempt; detectives were beginning to use public transport.
It was raining and the bus was first late, then slow. Grijpstra hummed a song at the bus stop and napped while the bus heaved its way through traffic.
'Food first,' Grijpstra said, seeing an elegant bistro next to the hair salon 'Jo and Peter.'
Cardozo looked nervous.
Grijpstra let Cardozo pick their table. The adjutant remembered Cardozo liked lentil soup, veal croquettes on French bread, applesauce on the side, a Hero brand fruit drink with the meal, a double espresso afterwards. Grijp- stra ordered all the items. He complimented Cardozo on his recently dry-cleaned corduroy suit and his haircut of that morning.
