The Perfidious Parrot Read Online Free PDF Page A

match. Grijpstra’s success was upsetting de Gier who, long ago, had stopped banging his own cue on the floor as applause.
    De Gier was quiet too. He had, after smiling coldly at hisguests, accused Ketchup and Karate of meddling. “You know we are retired. So why send us that fink?”
    “What fink, Sergeant?”
    “The little whippersnapper from St. Maarten,” de Gier said. “You two corrupt cops maintain a holiday house in the Caribbean. You met the despicable loudmouth Carl Ambagt in some bar. Blah blah and yackety-yack and then he pops up in our very own office. Trying to make us an offer we can’t refuse.”
    “Forty-year-old fink,” Grijpstra said. “Talks bullshit. Tits and ass on his necktie. Polished nails. Works out. Overwhelms in Spanish. Learned wheeling and dealing at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, of all towns. How the hell did you two dare to …”
    “Who?” Ketchup asked.
    “What?” Karate asked.
    That was when they started playing billiards. Karate, being even shorter than Ketchup, also being a guest, got the first shot. His white ball hit three sides, then nothing. Ketchup’s shot turned out badly too. De Gier, inspired by a jazz improvisation on Miles Davis’s “So What,” performed by a black pianist on the baby grand in the back of the café, slid gracefully around the billiard table. The balls clicked lightly, he overreached, he missed. Now, with Grijpstra in charge, the clicking kept on. Another point. Another point.
    The pianist paused. It was 12 A.M. , time to go home, but the café filled up with quiet men. The men bowed toward the bar before sitting down. A lady behind the bar, statuesque and firmly shaped, polished glasses. The lady was dressed in red velvet, the neck of her gown was open down to well below thenavel. Louis Armstrong blew “Basin Street Blues” out of a late model CD-playing juke box, activated by the pianist who had paused in his playing. Colored lights flashed while Louis Armstrong played complicated, yet fluent, trumpet phrases.
    “You,” Karate said, “want to know if we know a fellow. We know all kinds of fellows. This fellow wouldn’t by chance resemble the comic character, Tin Tin?”
    “Now that you mention it,” de Gier said. “Exactly. Tin Tin.”
    Grijpstra agreed. “Short-haired. Blond. Silly looking.”
    “Let me see now,” Ketchup said. “A native of Rotterdam? Lives with his aged father on an ocean going yacht, of a type known as a FEADship? With a motorized cream stirrer tied to her rear deck? We would not be discussing the
Admiraal Rodney
?”
    Grijpstra broke his self-imposed silence. He looked up. “
That
fellow.”
    “
That
fellow we don’t know,” Ketchup said.
    “But we do understand that you think that we think that
that
fellow is the one we referred to your office,” Karate said.
    “Because of our alleged state of corruption,” Ketchup said, “and because he made a criminal impression.”
    “Of the uncatchable type,” Karate said. “Because we are supposed to be hunting that type.”
    “But not catching,” Ketchup said, “because we, as new-modish law enforcers working pursuant to present police instructions, prefer to let them get away.”
    “Knowing,” Karate said, “that they will lead us to other criminal contacts.”
    “Who, once identified,” Ketchup said, “will lead us, yet again, to other criminal contacts.”
    “Who we won’t catch either,” Karate said, “knowing that, once again, they will bring us into contact with other criminals.”
    “Who we won’t …”
    Grijpstra interrupted his billiard series. “ CUT THAT OUT !” he shouted, threatening his guests with his cue.
    “This former almost over-correct adjutant-detective, now an escapee from public service,” Ketchup said, speaking slowly, softly and articulately, and addressing Karate, “this finder of illegal treasure, and his fellow-escapee, who we once knew as a heroic detective-sergeant, think that we, as an exception to the