The Hollow-Eyed Angel (17 page)

Chapter 21

                                        The commissaris, that evening, unable to sleep after the long-legged tram-driving demon once again tried to get him to do something he didn't understand, and that, he felt sure, he wouldn't want to do if he did understand, used his ivory bedside phone to wake Katrien.

Katrien, blinking at early sunlight pouring into the bedroom's windows on Queens Avenue, Amsterdam, said she would make coffee and return the call, once she was washed up somewhat and settled on the veranda.

It took her twenty minutes. The commissaris had dozed off. The Number Two streetcar was pushing through traffic, clanging its bells which became the telephone on the night table, ringing.

It took him a while to accept the change from streetcar to phone.

Katrien was unhappy. "Jan, what kept you?"

"I couldn't pick up a streetcar, dear."

"Your dream again? You feel better now?"

He did now that he heard his wife's mothering voice. He sketched, briefly, succinctly, the reasoning that had made him and de Gier decide there was another suspect and how he had devised and applied a trick to try and shock Charles Gilbert Perrin into opening up.

"A ripped-off penis," Katrien said. "Isn't that the worst that can happen to those who have one? Doesn't that make ripping it off a heinous crime? How did the suspect take your sudden outburst?" She watched a row of tulips that hadn't been pushed over by Turtle yet. "Tell me everything, Jan."

Charlie, the commissaris reported, had taken the outburst calmly. But there had been a change of atmosphere that he set about to repair.

He guided—his bad leg dragging more noticeably— his guests to the dining table, where, with the dedication of a priest serving mass, he served iced tea and seaweed biscuits.

Kali sat on a chair too, lapping water from her bowl after gently pushing the glazed biscuits away with her nose. Charlie said that he regretted what had happened to his tenant, acquaintance, friend if you like.

He had known Bert Termeer for some years. Nobody likes to lose a friend. But, Charlie said, what happened had to happen.

How so?

Because Bert Termeer thought of himself as bad.

How so?

Because Bert Termeer knew that Bert Termeer was sneaky.

Charlie said that "externalization is the beginning of liberation." He also said, "We have to be open about what we are. That is, if we want to solve the problem."

"The personal problem?"

Why not? But Charlie also, more particularly, meant the overall problem. He had been attracted to Termeer by the man's sincere quest for—Charlie smiled at Kali, who had pricked up her ears, as if she were going to hear something worthwhile—Termeer's quest for what? For seeing through the human condition? "All that activity in book trading, in playing the fool—'God's fool,' that kind of role is called in religion...."

They had come to the end of the iced tea ceremony by then and were being taken on a tour of the building.

Charlie unlocked and pushed and pulled huge doors, walked the detectives through hollow-sounding corridors that led to Termeer's part of the building, in and out of another elevator (a bare cage this time), even made them climb a ladder to inspect the building's attic.

Charlie led the way, Kali guarded the expedition's rear end.

Kali even wanted to climb the ladder. The ladder was deemed too steep by Charlie but Kali nudged de Gier, got him to pick her up, turn his back to the ladder and climb its rungs with his heels.

De Gier cradled the dog, who kept perfectly still, resting her long snout on his shoulder. The attic was filled with piles of unsorted books and pamphlets.

The commissaris inspected Bert Termeer's private quarters, bare as a monk's cell, uncomfortable but for the huge water bed. Termeer's printing shop contained outmoded equipment, used to manufacture his monthly catalogue. Empty cartons and rolls of packing paper were stacked.

Then there were, in the basement, props for Termeer's former acts.

"You think that was worth the trouble?" the commissaris asked, picking up and putting down a trumpet, holding up a monkey-size robe and hat.

"Producing, directing, acting out a show that might liberate people from dead-end routines?" Charlie became enthusiastic. "Sure." He nodded. "That's why I let Termeer live here. I thought we might have fun together. Test some theories. Do some philosophizing. Get weightless together. There was a time I thought I might join in his performance."

The commissaris was grinning. Charlie grinned back. "You would like to do that yourself, wouldn't you? An adult version of throwing water balloons at folks?

"And," Charlie said, "Bert wasn't a do-gooder, like the outfit that I bought this building from. The give-
l
time-give-money-do-things-for-God crowd. Not that," Charlie said, pulling a face. "No. Never."

"You don't care for do-gooding?" de Gier asked.

"Please," Charlie said. "After my Polish Experience?" He shrugged. "Yes, sure, maybe for a little while.

Set the needy up till they can take care of themselves again. I wouldn't help anyone to prolong his misery, though. Encourage depression?" He made a fist and pounded his palm. "Set them free, let them go. Don't shackle them with welfare."

"You set up Bert Termeer here?" the commissaris asked.

Charlie held his head to one side. "Yes. Sure. When I met Bert in Central Park, years ago, we had this conversation. I had some apples. I asked him if he wanted one. He said he would take the apple if I would give it to him without using my hands. I told him he could have the apple if he took it without using his hands."

"Zen," de Gier said.

Charlie nodded. "We had both read the same book on Zen koans."

"Same level of insight," the commissaris said.

"Right. But it didn't mean much. Exchanging book knowledge doesn't, you know. I thought we had a beginning. Bert wanted to get into New York, he was living in some flophouse, and I had all this space here—I got the building cheap from the do-things-for-God-folks— and Bert might have explored avenues I hadn't even thought of yet so I loaned him money and charged minimal rent."

"Did he pay you back?" the commissaris asked.

"Some," Charlie said. "Yes. Little by little."

"And Bert impressed you?"

"Look at this," Charlie said, sweeping his hand toward a long row of figures lined up against the room's wall, representing a single person's (Bert Termeer's own) physical lifetime changes. "That plate on the left—can you see it?—holds a microscopic object, a fertilized human egg. The plate on the right—can you see it?—shows remnants of a human bone."

Dust to dust.

"Of course," Charlie said, '"dust to dust' is still something.

"One should really look left of the embryo, where there is nothing, and right of the bone crumbs, where there is nothing again."

"Nothing to nothing."

And, Charlie said, what Termeer had wanted to show Sunday morning crowds in the public parks of Boston, Massachusetts, and Bangor, Maine (the Central Park authorities had thrown the exhibit out), after he had put up his line of figures, a tiring exercise since some of them were heavy, was that there was nothing in between the two nothings either.

Termeer's show—nothing, to rapidly changing embryos, to baby, to toddler, to little kid, to kid, to young adult, to grown person, to middle-aged man, to codger in C
246
1 increasingly debilitated and demented stages, to corpse, to skeleton, to crumbling bone, to nothing—highlighted a common denominator: lack of substance.

No substance to the body. No substance to the mind.

"Would you," Charlie asked the commissaris, "accept as your essence your aches and pains?

"Would you," Charlie asked de Gier, "accept as your essence your guilts and depressions?

"So what are we?" Charlie laughed. "I liked Termeer's implied line of questioning. It was in all of his shows. Even here in New York. A dignified gendeman ruminating in an exaggerated pose. A dignified gentleman frolicking in childlike joy."

They all looked at all the Bert Termeer's again, standing at the far side of the room, with porcelain faces, each showing the aging process, the right clothes, thickening, then thinning hair, giving way to baldness, all different shapes, only sharing a name.

The commissaris said that. "They're all Bert Termeer."

"My name," Charlie said, "was once Paulie Potock. Would you say I am that frightened little boy in Poland? Would you say I am the frightened old man who is told by the doctor he has Alzheimer's disease?"

"You think you might have that?"

Charlie waved indifferently. "Brain tumor, colon cancer, whatever we die of these days, irreparable blocked arteries..."

"But," the commissaris asked, "your friend. Bert Termeer. Wasn't he just another faker?"

Charlie patted Kali's head. "No. Not altogether. I think Bert did have true insights. Eh?" he asked the dog. "You liked Bert, didn't you? When you were with him in the park? You would bounce about and play?"

"A prophet?" the commissaris asked.

"Oh yes."

"What didn't you show us?" the commissaris asked, after twisting his painful hips so that he could face his suspect.

"What didn't he show you?" Katrien asked on the phone.

"But he did show me," the commissaris said, "in that very building's dank dungeons."

What Charlie showed the detectives in the badly lit basement was Bert Termeer's second activity, another mail-order business, also complete with all it needed: an antique press, an obsolete but functional labeling machine, shelving, boxes, packing paper, rolls of packing tape, stocks of product.

The piles of imported magazines Charlie kicked around in the basement—while Kali crouched, growled, even howled with fury—the imported videotapes Charlie roughly pushed off their shelving, the posters and pictures he picked up and tore in half mostly showed small children being tortured.

                                        De Gier, agreeing with the commissaris that the job was done, spent the night at Horatio Street after losing at playing darts with Antonio and Freddie. He also telephoned Maggie, apologized for making a mess of a potentially beautiful experience and invited her to dinner the next day at the Italian restaurant. She said she didn't think so but to phone her in the morning. He slept well, phoned Maggie again, was told by her answering machine that if it was he it was okay, walked to Bleecker Street and took the subway. The commissaris invited him to breakfast at Le Chat Complet, where no cats walked past the high windows and where nobody sang.

Grijpstra's report on Termeer's alibi, faxed to the Cavendish and brought along for de Gier to read—the commissaris had trouble with the fax's faint lettering— confirmed that Jo Termeer was no longer a suspect.

De Gier said that he knew Charlie was involved when Charlie, the suspect, asked de Gier, the investigating officer, to translate Daumal's poetry, which said, "I go toward a future that doesn't exist, leaving behind me, at every instant, a corpse."

"A corpse, sir." De Gier cut his French toast. "Why bring up a
corpse,
for Christ sake, and
he
left it behind, and
at every instant,
like he couldn't get rid of it, like he kept dragging Termeer's body with him?"

The commissaris nodded although he could think of quite a different interpretation. The quotation could refer to another level. The poet Daumal could have referred to man's continuous change, leaving behind him used thoughts, used actions. The commissaris was going to tell de Gier that when Mamere came by to pour more coffee.

"You dream better now?" Mamere asked. She rushed off before he could answer. The commissaris sighed. He dreamed worse. The tram driver had been back that night like every night, and the hellish presence was more persistent than ever. Although he felt better physically— the coughing and sneezing attacks had stopped, even his hipbones smouldered less—he dreaded falling asleep, knowing the tram driver would be waiting, talking infantile gibberish while she showed her long legs and pursed her luscious lips. The gibberish was more high-pitched now. The phantom was getting impatient, the sacrifice she needed was long overdue.

The commissaris had to attend one more lecture, and he invited de Gier to accompany him to One Police Plaza. The subject was child molestation. The lecturer was a medical doctor as well as a clinical psychologist. The black Philadelphia-based expert started off with simple cases featuring bruises and broken bones. She progressed to the more nebulous area of strange stories accompanying urinary tract infections and bed-wetting. She spoke about the inability of the victims to testify. She mentioned the customary reluctance of family and concerned parties to cooperate.

"Most of what is out there," the doctor said, "we'll never know about, unless we learn to pay attention."

After the lecture de Gier went off to spend the afternoon with his Papuan statues at the Metropolitan and to see Maggie afterward, and Chief O'Neill and Detective-Sergeant Hurrell took the commissaris out to lunch at a Korean restaurant on Columbus Avenue in the upper nineties.

O'Neill had closed the Bert Termeer case, "if there ever was one." He did regret the way the corpse had been ripped up by raccoons. O'Neill had heard that the Urban Park Rangers meant to start hunting raccoons. He raised his glass. "To the Rangers."

Central Park, Hurrell said, was known for its begging squirrels. Squirrels had learned to sit up for peanuts, and some had even mastered the art of shaking hands.

And Central Park was also known for its rats. Rats looked like squirrels; their lack of plumed tails was not noticeable when they faced little old ladies. Rats liked peanuts too, he said. Rats had learned to join squirrels when little old ladies handed out peanuts.

Rats didn't shake hands, though. Rats bit.

So many little old ladies had been bitten by rats that another admonition was to be added to the park's notice board:

DON'T SHAKE HANDS WITH RATS

The commissaris raised his glass again at the end of Hurrell's topical story.

The commissaris was taken back to the Cavendish. He thanked his hosts for their hospitality and assistance.

"Any time, Yan," O'Neill said.

"Glad to be of help," Hurrell said.

Lying back in his hot bath, the commissaris reconsidered his and de Gier's recent reasoning.

There was sufficient psychological motive to justify accusing Charlie of murder. Termeer's shadow side had disgusted Charlie. Charlie had learned that his tenant didn't just operate the catalogue business but actively participated in perversions.

After he showed them the basement, Charlie had told the detectives that Teddy had complained about Termeer's insistence on sadistic/masochistic acts that, even for good money, were too painful. "The man is a meanie," Teddy said.

Teddy had also seen boys enter by Termeer's separate entrance and had tried to warn them off, but the boys had to finance their habits. Charlie finally learned why Kali whined and growled when Termeer was entertaining company in his part of the building.

Charlie told the detectives that, after having listened to Teddy, he had checked Termeer's premises, using his duplicate keys.

"We heard that you sometimes helped Termeer with his holy book mail-order business," the commissaris said. "But you say you had no idea of what was going on in the basement?"

Charlie said that he hadn't spent much time with Termeer in the last few years, that his fantasy of working with a kindred spirit had come to an end long ago. Termeer, although maybe able to perceive further than most, had turned out to be dour, twisted into himself, hardly civil most of the time, moody, even boring.

"You were unaware of Termeer's dark side?"

Charlie had no idea until he lunched with Teddy at New Noodletown in the Bowery.

"Recendy?"

"Yes."

"How long before Termeer died?"

Charlie calculated. "A week? Ten days?"

"You confronted your tenant?"

Charlie had been considering a confrontation, but then there was no need.

"Where were you when Termeer died?"

Charlie said that he might have been in the park, or else on his way home. The park had been too busy that day.

"Did you see Termeer in the park that Sunday morning?"

"Yes."

"Did you talk to him?"

"No."

"Why did you inquire about Termeer at the Central Park Precinct the next day?"

Because, Charlie said, Kali had been restless all night, pacing and whining. Charlie himself also had a bad feeling. He had let himself into Termeer's part of the building early the next morning. There was no one there, which was unusual because Termeer enjoyed his water bed and liked to sleep late.

"Why," asked de Gier, "did you tell us Termeer's death had to happen?"

Charlie sighed. "Because he couldn't allow his personality to corrupt itself further."

"He didn't kill himself, did he?"

"No."

"He was killed?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill him?"

"No." Charlie smiled. "No, I didn't. I wouldn't kill anyone. I will not defend the world by using violence. I prefer escaping."

"Really?" the commissaris asked. "You don't say. What if you couldn't escape any further? You would jump, would you?"

Charlie smiled. "But of course."

"And you wouldn't take anyone with you? A few bad guys? To feel better?"

"Nah," Charlie said. He shrugged. "Fuck the bad guys."

De Gier was still pursuing his original line of reasoning. "Why didn't you kill Bert Termeer? There was your immense disappointment in a man you had sponsored, there was fury, there was opportunity, you're a very intelligent man, Mr. Perrin, you could have come up with some excellent plan, you..."

Charlie said he had been thinking of calling the cops, of showing them Termeer's basement.

"What if the cops took no action?"

But they would have, Charlie said.

Charlie's fatal attack on his tenant, the commissaris thought in the Cavendish bathtub, would have been planned carefully.

Charlie knew Termeer would be freezing and frolicking in the park that Sunday morning. Charlie would know about Termeer's bad heart. A performing Termeer would be vulnerable. All Charlie had to do was hover about, wait for the crowd to focus its attention elsewhere, grab Termeer, drag him into the bushes, yell accusations in his face, shake Termeer violently, terrify him until he suffered a heart attack.

There were the dentures, found at some distance from Termeer's corpse. The dentures flew out of Termeer's mouth as he was crying, begging for forgiveness...

Good luck comes to those who are lucky, the commissaris thought, letting more hot water into his tub by twisting the faucet with an extended toe. There was Maggie's big chestnut horse kicking Termeer as an unexpected preliminary.

Now came the theory's weak part.

The commissaris agreed with de Gier that Charlie could be excused for wanting to punish a child pornographer posing as a prophet. Shaking and slapping? Okay. Castrating a former friend?

And again, the commissaris thought, good luck comes to those who are lucky. The corpse was robbed by a derelict, then partly eaten by animals.

No witnesses, wounds, clothes, prints, traces.

"Let it go, sir," de Gier had said during the return trip on the subway. "We have no jurisdiction. The local police are hung up on another theory. All the evidence is long gone. Our suspect is intelligent, unwilling to confess, sympathetic. The victim was mad and bad."

"And dead anyway."

The commissaris couldn't see himself bothering Paulie Potock, one of the few Jewish children to survive the Nazi atrocities in Poland. After the basement revelation, back in Charlie's artistically pleasing environment, the commissaris had inquired into Charlie's painful past and the source of his present comforts.

Charlie talked easily, breaking out the cookies again. "Japanese," Charlie said. "Advanced food. There is a nice store in SoHo. Seaweed is the future."

"How did you get out of Poland, sir?"

The detectives saw Paulie, together with forty-eight other Jewish Polish little kids, guarded by two SS men, march, with a few surviving mothers, to Nowogrodziec Railway Station.

March 1945: The Russian Third Army was close. The Nazis were emptying out all death camps. A train waited. Boxcars closed off with barbed wire were to take the Jews to Germany to be killed, but Soviet war planes dived and set the train on fire.

It had been snowing heavily. The children and the mothers marched in singe file. Paulie was trying not to drag his bad leg. The mother up front sang out: "One, two,
three."

In order to obey the guards but to delay reaching the platform, where, because of the train not taking them to Germany, all prisoners would surely be shot, the column moved forward on "one" and "two" but stepped back on "three."

The SS men, older soldiers, tired too, stumbled along.

The German forces had long since run out of motor fuel.

The SS men disappeared into the woods when they heard a rumble of powerful engines.

The column stopped when black spots appeared on the eastern snow-covered plain.

The spots were little tanks that grew in size as they came nearer.

The huge tanks stopped close to the standing column. From the tank turrets jumped older kids, Russian tank soldiers.

The Jewish Polish kids were in the eight-to-nine-year-old age group and the Russian soldier kids were in the fourteen-to-fifteen-year-old age group.

March 1945: The Russian army had lost ten million young and middle-aged male and female soldiers. Old folks manufactured deadly equipment to be handled by kids.

Once liberated, Paulie, without relatives but knowing by now how to take care of himself, lived here and there, and finally moved to America. He worked in a bank. He received money from the new Germany government,
Wiedergutmachungs
Funding, "money to make good," a fairly large amount that he invested profitably. He also went crazy. He was institutionalized for depression. A Chinese-American psychiatric nurse suggested the patient should write a list of things he liked, and brought him a new pencil and a sheet of white paper, which Paulie destroyed.

Every day the nurse brought fresh paper and another new pencil, which Paulie tore up and broke, until, one pleasant morning, there was a sparrow on his windowsill. Charlie watched the sparrow, then wrote his list of Nice Things to Do. Watching seals off the Maine Coast would be nice. Having a dog would be nice. Starting his own growth fund would be nice. Owning lots of private space would be nice. Arranging temporarily owned objects would be nice. Laying an assorted hardwood floor— changing his name—working out in Central Park—would be nice. It would be nice to speculate as to what would happen (Charlie had read some Nietzsche by then, and tried to follow existentialism) to his state of mind if he removed the concept of selfishness from cynicism.

The commissaris wanted to leave but de Gier, who had been guided to and from the bathroom by Kali, asked how Charlie had found a seeing-eye dog.

It was the other way around, Charlie said.

The dog had approached him when he was working out in Central Park. The dog was scooting along on her bottom, trying to get the path's gravel to scratch her infected and blocked anal glands.

The dog was an Alsatian; in the death camps the SS had used Alsatians to terrorize the inmates.

Charlie walked away but the dog ran after him, sat on the path and offered her paw.

Charlie took the dog to an animal clinic. A vet squeezed the almost bursting glands empty and prescribed medication. Charlie bought a bag of food and emptied it out in the street. The dog ate everything and barked her thanks.

On the way home Kali—he had named her by then—didn't allow Charlie to cross a street against a red light. She pushed his leg when the end of a sidewalk came close, or when roller skaters got near.