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teeth and chewed.
    "There's a bone in it," de Gier said. "I've been chewing it for a while too. Okay, Gustav. Still drives a Corvette. No alibi for last night. He doesn't like women, he only likes the money they give him. He sleeps alone, in his seventeenth-century city-funded restored gable house on the Old Mint Canal."
    "Bust him," Cardozo said with his mouth full of noodles.
    "Beg pardon?" Grijpstra asked.
    Cardozo swallowed. "Handcuffs. Drag him to the station. He's got the motivation and the opportunity, so we've got serious suspicions. I say Gustav is our man. He likes to hunt big game, in Africa with a cannon, so why shouldn't he hunt competitors here with a machine pistol? Sergeant Jurriaans is right, we're the Murder Brigade and this is the quarter. Anything goes. The local cops scare easy, but we're from outside. Bust him, I say, and—"
    "Right," de Gier whispered fiercely. "Disengage the buzzer in his cell. Nail a board over the window in his door. Forget to feed him. Fill his jug with sea water. Beat the bastard."
    "No, no," Grijpstra said.
    Cardozo stopped slurping his stew. "Why not, adjutant?"
    "Because that isn't the way."
    "And what if we do it a little bit?"
    "I've got to sleep at night."
    "Heaven is waiting for us," de Gier said. "Gustav and Lennie. How many enemies did Obrian have? Just those two? What about the prostitute on the cast-iron bridge with the lions' heads? She may have a friend, a relative, a son even. Revenge, you know. All we think of is greed and jealously. A black soul brother Obrian had kicked into the gutter? Some heroin merchant who Obrian never paid? Or plain indignation? Some good guy fired the gun?"
    Grijpstra paused in his effort to shovel the rice with the fat ends of his chopsticks. "We haven't even begun to think. We don't know the corpse either. He had a house. The house will still have his smell. I want to go and sniff. Now, maybe? After Cardozo has paid the bill?"
    "Later," de Gier said. "I went to bed late and got up early. A nap."
    Cardozo paid. "We have to go to Hotel Hadde too, tonight maybe. It's open all night and the bar is a hangout for pimps. Maybe we'll hear something."
    "A nap."
    "And the morgue," Grijpstra said. "They'll have looked into Obrian's pockets by now. Thank you, Cardozo. I didn't like the food. And because you took me here, you can spend a few hours on your own now. Look around. Do more than we can expect of you."
    "And you?"
    "I will go for a walk," Grijpstra said. "I tried earlier on but I felt disturbed then. I feel better now. When I come back, I'll wake up the sergeant."
    "That way we all do something," de Gier said.
    De Gier got through the door first, tripping over the threshold. He bumped into a little old man who shuffled along on the narrow sidewalk, leaning on his cane. The old man managed to stay on his feet.
    De Gier apologized.
    The little old man, his small head tucked away under the wide brim of his felt hat, walked on slowly. Grijpstra stood next to de Gier. "Can't he get a better coat? Social security is getting fatter every year. I thought moldy rags were out by now."
    "Old drunk," de Gier said.
    "An alien," Cardozo said. "They get no welfare. Maybe I should go after him and take him to the Salvation Army. Sir?"
    The old man had reached a mud puddle and slithered on, jabbing his stick ferociously into the tiles of the sidewalk.
    "Leave him alone," Grijpstra said. "It's not your job to save old bums."

\\\\ 5 ////
    T HE COMMISSARIS TURNED A CORNER AND SLOWED DOWN again. The good weather hardly improved the quarter's mental climate; the alley he found himself in was gray and smelly, a sewer, the commissaris thought, through which the lower lusts slide along by night and dribble by day.
    Older women pushed wet rags along grimy windows, the squealing of dirt against dirt matched the shrill voices that argued or complained. Hung-over clients left dingy one-night hotels, staring from red-rimmed eyes at the lack of possibilities that another