Just a Corpse at Twilight Read Online Free PDF Page A

playing "Endless Blues," a composition by de Gier with some interesting dynamics that built carefully from chorus to chorus, and even from section to section within a chorus ("You should write liner notes, Katrien." "You want to hear the rest of this, Jan?" "Yes, Katrien, I'm sorry.") and with some hot scat singing by Grijpstra ("Grijpstra plays drums," the commissaris said. "That means using four limbs already. Now he sings, too?").
    Katrien sighed.
    They were in the bedroom by now. The commissaris flopped down on the bed, got up, kissed Katrien, lay down again. "Carry on."
    "Don't order me around. So Grijpstra sang, and he also did his rising press roll, and the flutter on the side of the snare drum, and the mallet work on bells. He did everything."
    "You were there?"
    "Of course."
    "You never told me."
    "I never tell you lots of things," Katrien said. "I was there with Nellie. You were in New York, at the police convention."
    "I never go to police conventions."
    "Yes," she said. "Please, don't talk rubbish, Jan. Remember that reserve policeman whose uncle immigrated to America and who maybe was murdered in Central Park, and nobody paid attention, and it was his favorite uncle, for the poor fellow had no parents, and he was all upset, being alone in the world now, and asked you to do something. And you said New York was outside your jurisdiction but then that convention came up and you went anyway and found out who did it? With the seeing-eye dog? The dog with the gland trouble? And you had to take care of her too? And the pathologist and the dead girl in the car? With the maggots on her mouth?"
    "Yes," the commissaris said. "We all thought it was spittle at first but car trunks get hot. So you were running around town with Nellie?"
    "But de Gier was on his own," Katrien said. "He played strangely that night. Like Don Cherry. You know Don Cherry?"
    "Yes," the commissaris said. "De Gier likes Don Cherry, that's why he got the mini-trumpet. But de Gier doesn't play that shrilly."
    "He's got a softer tone," Katrien said, "but not that night He was loud but not bombastic, more like he was in pain. There was a black woman in the bar who picked up on that and she kept singing back to him. They had this dialogue—he was asking and she was giving."
    "Words?"
    "Just sounds," Katrien said. "She had a beautiful voice, like a bell, like a cymbal too sometimes, you could almost see the sound. Nellie said she could touch it."
    "Were you drinking?"
    "Nellie brought some pot," Katrien said. "She used to grow it, you know? Out in that courtyard of hers? Nether-weed. The strongest?
    "I would smoke pot," the commissaris said, "just to hear more music from the inside, but I don't want to run around looking for chocolate when all the stores are closed."
    "Yes," Katrien said.
    "You smoke a lot of pot with Nellie?"
    "We decided against it," Katrien said. "Nellie is too easily addicted."
    "You're not easily addicted?"
    "Remember those codeine pills I got hooked on?" Katrien asked. "Remember the trouble you had to stop smoking?"
    "Boots and laces," the commissaris said again. "Let's hear it, Katrien."
    "So," Katrien said. "The bar closed, they always do close in the end, and the woman with the bell voice had left, she had someone with her, and Nellie took Grijpstra home and I took a cab and de Gier was alone again, so he went to another bar and another, and to some all-night liquor place and then he got lost."
    "Lost?" the commissaris asked.
    "In the Red Light District." Katrien pursed her lips. "Your star detective, dead drunk, at four A.M., the light starting up already, birds singing. Your Rinus de Gier tried to have a good time with a prostitute and he had to take his nice new laced boots off, he insisted. And then afterward, after having rolled across the poor woman a few times and been satisfied by artificial means . . ."
    "He told you that?" The commissaris gaped.
    "He told Grijpstra," Katrien said, "who told Nellie . . ."
    "No wonder," the