The Perfidious Parrot (25 page)

Skipper Peter grinned. “Because Stewy phoned us daily and then he suddenly didn’t. Because we read the newspapers when we were docked in Key West. Because we watched local TV.” The skipper’s grin widened. “Okay? Mr.-Know-it-all-but-not-quite?”

The commissaris remained unperturbed. “And why did you tell me you never heard of Quadrant Bank while you were doing business with their insurance department?”

“Because it has nothing to do with why I hired you clowns.” Skipper Peter looked at the island’s denuded hills. He toasted the commissaris with his shaking glass. “Ketchup and Karate recommended you as all-out go-getters. One cargo lost,
two
cargos recovered.” He gestured for a new glass. “I hired you clowns as bounty hunters.”

The expression made the commissaris think of action films that he saw on the VCR in his study, while Katrien watched the romance channel in the bedroom. Bounty hunting was for tough guys. This was to be for real. Double Caribbean piracy. Recovered treasure. A tale to take home to Turtle.

Skipper Peter, exhausted, and the commissaris, bemused, watched schoolgirls swim between ship and beach. A puff of cloud made its leisurely way to the top of dormant Mazinga. The commissaris thought it was a pity his legs were hurting. He would like to look down into the volcano’s crater, hear finches warble amid banana leaves, hear giant lizards rustle between fern trees.

“One loss that leads to double profits,” Skipper Ambagt said,
“but so far I’m the fisherman on the bridge in front of our house in Rotterdam, in the old days, when I was a kid, and there were still canals like you guys have in Amsterdam and the Germans hadn’t bombed the city and filled in all the water with our own rubble.”

“Hmm?” the commissaris asked dreamily.

“I used to ask that fisherman,” Skipper Peter said, “whether he had caught something yet and he’d say: ‘If the one that is nibbling bites and I catch another I will have caught two fishes, sonny.’ ”

“The insurance will be paid and we will deliver,” the commissaris said. “Not to worry, sir.”

Peter Ambagt’s rubbing caused his tortured nose to bleed profusely. He kept talking while applying Band-Aids handed to him by the servile servant. “Doubling your return on investment is what makes business go round. The first principle of business, sell at double your cost.” He laughed. “The only useful thing Carl learned at school. Buy for a guilder, sell for two, so you can pay a little commission to associates who do the work. Keep everyone happy.”

“My father was a trader,” the commissaris said. “
He
said the principle of business was continuity. Keep profits modest. Don’t just go for one trade, consider the next one. Enjoy yourself quietly while the profits flow in.”

“Continuity?” Ambagt Senior asked. “But we have that too, my man. You really think I had just one tanker coming? There’s also the
Rebecca
. Another supercargo on its way from Iran, due within ten days now.” The skipper smiled. His hands
trembled and his knees shook but he looked excited. “Again bound for Havana. Cuba still won’t pay. Same thing all over.”

“All this time you’ve been scheming for a repeat?” The commissaris moved forward on his seat, clasped his hands around his cane, stared intently at the skipper’s face. “
Two
cargos lost,
four
cargos recovered?”

“Me?” Skipper Peter asked, sipping sherry.

Carl Ambagt, in a spotless off-white linen suit, wearing a white-brimmed matching hat, followed by little kids who had been playing on the pier, observed how Grijpstra and de Gier greeted each other with formal hellos. “No hugging and backslapping?” Carl asked. “Aren’t you two pals?” Carl embraced then patted air, to show how energy passes between close friends. “Or are you blaming each other for not doing your job?”

“Runt.” Grijpstra shook a hairy fist under Carl’s red face.

“Fisticuffs, Fatso?” Carl did a boxer’s dance, his hands balled into fists.

De Gier pushed Grijpstra aside so he could face the opponent. “My dear chap,” de Gier said sweetly, looking at Carl kindly, “fine friend, little buddy.” He bent an arm, as if to invite Carl to lean into it. Carl relaxed. De Gier’s hand darted forward and pulled Carl’s wide-brimmed hat down. De Gier’s foot tripped Carl’s leg. Carl fell over backward. Grijpstra caught
Carl, set him upright, spun him around. Carl, blinded by his hat, became a spinning top on the quayside. The Statia kids cheered, and Grijpstra and de Gier walked along the coastal footpath.

Grijpstra was still upset. “Pushy little scumbag, isn’t he?”

“Now,” de Gier said, “is that nice? You were Carl’s guest on that beautiful boat.”

“On that tub?” Grijpstra bellowed that nobody would ever get him to put one foot on the
Admiraal Rodney
again.

“You’re safely ashore now, Henk.”

Grijpstra stamped on flagstones. “Bah.”

“You’re on a tropical island. Every bourgeois dreams of this.” De Gier shook Grijpstra by the shoulders. “Enjoy your bourgeois dream.”

The coastal route, designed and kept up to lure cruiseships, was shadowed by palm trees. Low brick walls supported concrete planters filled with lobelia, impatiens and juanitas, mingling their prettily colored flowers. A skinny old donkey, loaded with baskets partly filled with sickly looking fish, overtook them. The donkey’s mistress, an old woman in dark clothes said Good Day in Dutch. The detectives lifted their hats. Grijpstra stopped to study the outline of de Gier’s hotel. “This joint okay?”

“Bankrupt.” De Gier pushed Grijpstra into a cobblestoned front yard. Rusted deckchairs were stacked between tree stumps. Wildflowers grew from cracks. “I’m the only guest here. The place is to be auctioned off. A maid is supposed to make beds and sweep but I haven’t seen her yet. The phone and fax work. A manager comes in later in the morning, she lets me do my own cooking.”

Grijpstra checked his watch. Time to eat? He noted that the ground didn’t sway and that he wasn’t feeling nauseous either. He suggested breakfast.

“Fried fish with a slice of lemon?” de Gier asked. “I can bake biscuits too.”

Grijpstra preferred a steak, or some sausage maybe.

De Gier had found goat meat at Oranjestad’s farmers market. “Maybe okay for stew. Fish is less hairy.”

Grijpstra chose eggs. De Gier cooked on flickering gas flames, in dented pots, using instruments that he had derusted by rubbing them on bricks. A large omelet rose slowly. He picked thyme and parsley from what was left of a kitchen garden in the yard and cut the herbs with an axe that he had sharpened on a grindstone. He toasted bread above the stove’s flames, manufactured milk from powder and tap water that he filtered through a clean handkerchief and boiled before mixing. He smashed coffee beans, using the axe’s backside after wrapping the beans in a tea cloth he had found.

He let the coffee boil briefly. “Never too long, Henk. I’m using grandmother Sarah’s formula. Watch this.” He spoke melodiously. “Twen-ty
one
twen-ty
two
twen-ty
three
, rea-
DEEE
, off the flame the pot goes-EEEE.”

De Gier served brunch outside, on cracked but clean plates, arranged on a rock wall protecting the hotel yard from a steep drop down to the beach. Grijpstra was told to pick a bouquet of poinciana flowers and find a vase in the hotel lobby. De Gier spread paper napkins and pulled up chairs.

“I don’t dislike this,” Grijpstra said, enjoying omelet and tasty trimmings, fresh coffee, cool sea breeze and view.

“We get twenty percent off,” de Gier said, “for lack of service.”

“Why pick St. Eustatius?” Grijpstra asked. “Wouldn’t the tourist haven of St. Maarten be more convenient? The
Rodney
crew claims this place is a pain.”

“Work,” de Gier said.

“?”

“You look stupid like that,” de Gier said. “Please. We have a job to do. We’re being paid. Crude oil. Supertanker. Piracy. A dead man. Two dead man, counting the cowboy driving through our Key West dinner. We’re supposed to arrange a happy ending.”

Grijpstra grunted.

De Gier patted Grijpstra’s cheek. “It’ll be all right. Now think along with me. Twelve million gallons of oil were pumped out of the pirated
Sibylle
. Where? At sea? Are you kidding? Into what? Into another supertanker? Never. Two metal whales wallowing next to each other, one spewing, one sucking. And nobody notices?” He pointed at the ocean. A yacht sailed by, her skipper alert at the rudder, his girlfriend showing herself off on the foredeck. The
Rodney
was at anchor, with crew members moving about on her decks. The ferry plane to St. Maarten had just taken off from Statia’s airstrip. The plane banked giving pilots and passengers plenty of opportunity to see the ocean below. A tanker and a cruiseship moved slowly on the horizon.

“I know,” Grijpstra said. “I have been thinking about that. A lot of traffic even further along, on the open ocean. I asked the boatswain on the
Rodney
. There are busy shipping routes all
through the Caribbean, plus random boats. American war planes keep an eye out too.”

“So don’t you think anything unusual, such as two supertankers in intimate contact, would be seen, talked about?”

Grijpstra acknowledged the possibility.

So that didn’t happen, de Gier said. “The
Sibylle
was entered from some fast small vessel that then disappeared. The tanker was hijacked and taken to a place where she could be off-loaded. There were only a handful of pirates. You don’t need an invading army to subdue a small crew.”

“Certainly not at night.” Grijpstra nodded. “The
Sibylle
crew is drunk. Asleep. Watching skin-flicks. One man on the bridge, that young fellow they did away with. The ship would have been on automatic pilot. Then what happened?”

“Tell me,” de Gier said.

Grijpstra thought.

“Where would pirates aiming to exchange crude for cash take a tanker?” de Gier asked. “To a transfer station, maybe?” De Gier pointed to the north side of St. Eustatius. “To a nice long pier with equipment that drains the oil from the holds and pumps the cargo into storage tanks?”

“Why here?” Grijpstra asked. “There may be many transfer stations around here. The map shows lots of islands.” He pointed both ways. “All the way northwest to Florida. All the way down south to Venezuela.”

De Gier shook his head. “The empty
Sibylle
was found floating in this area, near the only island that sports an oil terminal that does not belong to one of the big brand names.” He pointed at the pier again, at the far side of the island. A supertanker was moored on one side, another was maneuvering close by.

“They do seem to ripen faster in the tropics,” Grijpstra said, admiring schoolgirls running about on the beach below. “Would that be a dance class? What gracious young ladies.” He looked at de Gier sternly. “How come you know so much? And how come that beautiful Key West sergeant didn’t keep you as a pet? Did she catch Stewart-Wynne’s killer already?” He made an effort not to look at the dancing girls. “Why was the insurance cowboy killed anyway? Did he figure out what was going on down here?”

“What else?” de Gier asked. “The fool identified the pirates and then hung around so that these pirates could get themselves a hit man who arranged an accident. We watched the outcome while we were trying to crack lobster tails.”

“Pirates are professionals.” Grijpstra shook his head. “They shot up that poor sailor boy on the
Sibylle
, why not shoot up the cowboy too? Who needs a hit man?”

“Simple,” de Gier said. “You’re the senior detective. You tell me.”

Grijpstra, applying experience, identified with the criminal minds.

“Yes?” de Gier asked patiently.

“Our pirates must be American,” Grijpstra said grudgingly. “They can misbehave here in this lawless territory, but they better behave at home.”

“What American pirates live in Key West?” de Gier asked.

“No prompting.” Grijpstra held up a defensive hand. “The pirates must be members of the U.S. military who were moonlighting here. We saw them in action when you got me out on that leaky schooner. By the time they learned that the Englishman
was on to them they were back at their home base. And then he turned up there too.”

De Gier nodded.

Grijpstra thumped de Gier’s shoulder. “Special Forces couldn’t take a risk, right? Not on U.S. territory, in Key West. So who was their hitman?”

“Mickey,” de Gier said. “A former Green Beret, a specialist in assassination whom they could trust. But Mickey got himself arrested by the Key West Police. So the moonlighters had to take Mickey out.”

De Gier went to his room and came back with the cuttings Sergeant Ramona Symonds had faxed him.

Grijpstra grunted and mumbled while reading. He thumped de Gier again. “You know this is about puppets manipulating puppets? Pirates unmasked by the English inspector, who is hit by Mickey. You arrested by Sergeant Ramona because you’re in the way and she figures you’ll save her trouble. You using Ketchup and Karate so that Ramona gets Mickey. But Mickey gets hit by pirates?” Grijpstra laughed out loud, hitting his thighs. “Ketchup and Karate who tried to play
us
for puppets. On behalf of the Ambagts, our ultimate puppeteers. Nice. Were K&K hurt badly, the little rascals?”

“You bet,” de Gier said happily.

“And that nice police sergeant?” Grijpstra asked timidly. “She rewarded you?”

“Some woman,” de Gier said happily.

Grijpstra wasn’t interested in details, he proclaimed. Whether de Gier had been properly rewarded for his services made no difference to Grijpstra. What can you expect from a woman
who cohabits with a bird? “I suppose you just had coffee?” Grijpstra asked.

“No,” de Gier said.

“Is that so?” Grijpstra asked. He didn’t want to pry. But one abstract aspect interested him a little. Grijpstra, since the advent of Nellie some years ago back, hadn’t been “in practice” so to speak. Not in “playing the field.” He had heard, however, that things were rather different now. It wasn’t so much that the female, innocently falling backwards, pulled the male, by happenstance as it were, into a close relationship. Females, the true dominants in human sex, had come out in the open. Males, Grijpstra had heard, were supposed to be shy now. “Or not?”