The Hollow-Eyed Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

will either, unless we attempt to put it there. Show me your flimsy construction of how the facts we have determined might possibly connect."
    "I don't construct in my free time," de Gier said. "It should be your free time too. Why bother me? Bother Nellie. Paint dead ducks in your empty apartment. Go home and play your drums."
    In order to placate de Gier, Grijpstra recited his newly found, improved, partly stolen and combined poetry.
    "Pure emptiness illuminated by the void's divine glow,
    or is it a cold absence of necessities
    lit meaninglessly
    by a dim bulb suspended from a peeling ceiling?
    I flee either choice and wait, in wet slashing darkness, at an alien bus stop,
    where my soul glows red in sinful flashes."
    De Gier made Tabriz do more "wah-wah-wah." After that he applauded.
    "I wasn't going to the whores," Grijpstra said.
    "You were coming to me," de Gier said. "To try and fill your void with meaningless work." He smiled forgivingly. "Okay. I will humor you."
    While making his report de Gier used the singsong of his native Rotterdam dialect which never failed to make Grijpstra crack up. "Please," sobbed Grijpstra. "Cut it out. Can't you speak like real people?"
    Tabriz got hiccups and had to be picked up, turned over and shaken gently.
    Seriousness returned.
    De Gier reported, using the proper Amsterdam dialect, that Reserve Constable-First-Class Jo Termeer, during the course of an in-depth interrogation ordered by the commissaris, had made a good impression.
    "Define good," Grijpstra told de Gier.
    De Gier explained that Termeer seemed modest, polite, reliable, concise in stating his complaint. Not a dumb fellow by any definition. Perhaps lacking in education. "Like yourself," de Gier said. "Talented, diligent, but not somebody who questions reality."
    Grijpstra recognized the type. "No quest. Energy spent on artful hobbies. Termeer is into Sunday painting? Dabbles in music perhaps?"
    De Gier found and consulted his notebook. "Critical viewing of movies."
    "Ah," Grijpstra said. "What kind of movies?"
    "Action and bizarre."
    "What kind of action?" Grijpstra asked.
    "Fighting movies."
    "What kind of bizarre?"
    "Don't know," de Gier said.
    "You didn't pursue that query?"
    De Gier shook his head. "Jo likes movies set in Australia."
    "Bizarre Australian movies?"
    De Gier nodded. "And futuristic."
    "Bizarre Australian futuristic action movies,"
    Grijp-stra summarized.
    "That's it," de Gier said.
    "Sexual preference?"
    "Movie?"
    "Termeer," Grijpstra said.
    "Right, homosexual, lives with a colleague called Peter."
    "Did you meet with Peter?"
    De Gier, after the interrogation of complainant Jo Termeer at police headquarters, had driven over to Outfield, picked up Peter at the hair-care salon and interviewed Jo's partner in a nearby cafe.
    "Direction of interview?" Grijpstra asked.
    "Straightforward," de Gier said. "I told Peter that we were analyzing a complaint and checking some background."
    "Showed your police I.D.?"
    "Sure. Of course."
    "Describe subject."
    De Gier described Peter as a slender, active, intelligent forty-year-old black male. Fashionably dressed.
    "Overdressed?"
    "No."
    "Mannerisms?"
    "Effeminate?" de Gier asked. "No."
    "How black?"
    "Midnight black."
    "Made a good impression?" Grijpstra said. "Right?
    You liked Peter."
    "Yes," de Gier said. "Sure."
    "Believable?"
    "That's right."
    "You discussed your admiration for black jazz with Peter?"
    "I did not," de Gier said.
    "And friend Peter thinks that Termeer is right to consult the Amsterdam Murder Brigade re the possible criminal nature of his uncle's death?"
    "Yes," de Gier said. "I really liked that Peter."
    "Biased," Grijpstra said. "You are biased, Rinus. You like midnight-black-skinned men because they remind you of Miles Davis, who plays trumpet the 'way you want to play trumpet but can't."
    De Gier shrugged.
    Grijpstra looked critical. "Unacceptable associations. Preconceived ideas, the wrong way round. Peter could still be unreliable. You agree,