The Perfidious Parrot Read Online Free PDF Page B

to another table. Grijpstra now saw her back. The long gown was slit. She had smooth calves and her thighs flowed up gradually, creamy-white, untouched, virgin ladylike territory. That such beauty was allowed! Grijpstra thought.
    Ten percent commission on what de Gier and Grijpstra would collect was offered by Ambagt & Son Inc. to Ketchup and Karate. The constables admitted to it, why not? But once again de Gier had been too quick, too jumpy, grabbing hold of the first motivation that happened to pop up. Did de Gier really think that greed mattered here? Did Ketchup and Karate really need a hundred thousand dollars? For what? Money makes things serious so they had named a figure, but profit was not an issue here. They already owned everything. Their cottage on St. Maarten. Their apartment facing the Amstel River in Amsterdam. The car of all cars. A flat-bottomed sailboat on Holland’s Inland Sea. Two Harley Davidsons on St. Maarten. Even the evil of the situation did not, basically, interest these corrupt cops. Sometimes evil did matter, they admitted to that too—there was a fascination in trying to figure out just how bad things could get on a rapidly worsening planet. So, yes, there was money, and violence and whatever the shadowside offers but what mattered ul-ti-ma-te-ly was, Ketchup explained, what the commissaris always called the ‘joy of living fully’. If there was a possibility of doing a really good job here, within their own expertise, a challenge to their training, Karate explained, speaking clearly and without being interrupted by Ketchup—for the couple had invested in a good relationship together, so why spoil it—what really mattered was just to do a good job.
    “You are called Ketchup because you like to see blood,” de Gier said, “and you are called Karate because you like to split the enemy into two.”
    Ketchup said that this was just the surface, little things on the side, quirks and eddies; their true characters were pure.
    An example of what they liked to achieve? Very well. Take the barlady here for instance, take this facility where they happened to meet right now, billiard balls and jazz, a space filling up right now with quiet men. Here was an example of what Ketchup and Karate had helped to bring about.
    The lady, before she bought the bar, was—in her little house with the big show window in Long Street—happy. She lived alone. She craved solitude for she was autistic. She could not bear being touched but she did like sexual togetherness abstractly, give and take, at a distance.
    What did the autistic-but-sexy lady do? She undressed every evening in her living room, street level, no curtains. She undressed slowly, dreamily, in front of a Biedermeyer couch, covered with blue velvet, between palm trees in copper pots, against a backdrop of an empty off-white wall. No decorations on that wall for she herself was the decoration. She exhibited her own nude shape to quiet men, standing quietly in the Long Street outside.
    Grijpstra nodded his appreciation. “What kind of lighting?”
    “Two candles,” Karate said, “in giant brass holders.”
    “Church candles,” Ketchup said.
    De Gier watched the barlady. The barlady, leaning toward him, watched a horizon, well beyond the wall.
    “But she does notice you,” Karate said kindly.
    The café was filling up slowly, with old-fashioned gents andartistic types and young ones, some with shaven skulls, some with hair all over. The male audience bent down slowly, lips pursed, ready to sip syrupy ice-cold jenever from high-stemmed tulip shaped glasses, filled to the rim.
    “Taking off the head.” A Dutch solemn custom.
    The pianist played again, “Around Midnight” by Thelonious Monk, but 12 P.M . was long gone.
    “Great,” Grijpstra said.
    Yes indeed, the constables said, but the way the lady did it in her house in Long Street could no longer be tolerated, of course. Long Street filled up every night, with row upon row of quiet men.