My mom looked at me and said, “Thomas August Moon, this is the best surprise you could’ve brought me.”
My mom was the only one who ever used my middle name, August, and she did it only for emphasis. My little sister’s middle name is June. We called her Junie for a while when she was a baby, but my dad put a stop to it. He wasn’t on board with my mom’s semi-flower-child love of odd names.
My mom walked across the room to greet the kids. To little Michele from France, she said in perfect French, “Bonjour, Michele. N’est-ce pas jolie?”
The little girl grinned like a Texan holding a gun.
My sister, Lila, leaned in to me and said, “You got lucky. How’d you know she was having a good day?”
“I didn’t. It was a calculated risk. Immigration wanted to hold these poor kids at the Krome Detention Center. I just couldn’t let that happen.” I didn’t comment on the alcohol I’d just smelled on Lila’s breath.
Lila was a vivacious twenty-four-year-old who partied a little on the hard side, but she never missed a day of work and took good care of our mom. I sometimes felt like my mother and I were stealing part of her youth.
“That’s my big brother.” She slapped me on the back. “Have you started throwing all those quotes at them? You know that’s annoying, right?”
“Maybe a couple of quotes. It’s one of the few skills I can show off.”
“I can tell the kids already trust you. Sounds like tonight will be lots of fun. Sorry I’m gonna miss it.”
“Why? Can’t you cancel whatever you’re doing?”
“Nope—I’ve got a date. You’re on your own tonight with both Mom and the kids. Are you okay with that?”
“It depends on who you’re going out with. If it’s Blake, the idiot PE teacher from your school, then no, I’m not okay with it. He has a man-bun. If it’s Melvin the accountant, I’m reasonably okay with it.”
My sister cocked her head and gave me the same look she’d been giving me since she was a kid. “Funny. But if it were either of those two, I wouldn’t have told you I was going on a date. I don’t want to hear shit about dating Blake just because you think he’s a slacker. And I don’t want to be encouraged to date Melvin just because he’s got a good job. Besides, last time Melvin was here, all you guys did was talk about the University of Miami and Florida State.”
“Our alma maters. At least we have college degrees.”
“And Melvin even uses his degree in his job.”
“Ouch. That hurt.”
Lila smiled and said, “I think having the kids around will be good for Mom. At least for one night. Where’d they come from?”
“I already told you. From all over the world.”
“You’re an ass.”
“That’s the word on the street. Hey, what did the doctor say this afternoon?”
Lila shrugged and brushed her light brown hair away from her pretty face. “Nothing new. He gave me a little notebook to keep track of when Mom loses her grip on reality. He told me to cherish the days that she’s lucid. Big help, huh?”
“He obviously didn’t go to the University of Miami’s med school. He probably went to Florida’s.” I looked over at my mother, who I loved so much and missed at the same time. She was talking with the kids, who’d gathered around her like she was giving away candy.
I saw my mother smile, and suddenly all the problems I’d had today just faded away.
Chapter 8
Amsterdam
HANNA GREETE LOOKED out the wide bay window of the apartment she’d converted into an office. She and her twelve-year-old daughter, Josie, lived in the apartment next door. She’d spent a small fortune to purchase both apartments and have a door installed between them so that she could go from one to the other easily.
She stared down at the tourists rushing around on the street below. Hanna liked living in the De Wallen District of Amsterdam, the old town quarter, because of the nice apartment buildings and safe streets. Tourists loved to tell people back home that they’d wandered through the red-light district and looked at the canal from Oudezijds Voorburgwal, just below her window. There were even organized tours of the red-light district, with guides and everything. The guides always said how great the young girls in the brothels had it. How they chose their own hours. Took only the customers they wanted. Didn’t mind showing off their bodies in the windows. The charade made Hanna sick. She knew what these girls really went through. There was no glamour in prostitution. Not unless you controlled a whole stable of prostitutes.
But the tourists ate it up. They’d take photographs around the sex shops and tell their friends back home about how they’d seen real-life prostitutes. Big deal. Amsterdam was a city that had historic sites in every form, but all the tourists wanted to talk about was legalized marijuana and prostitution.
Hanna had just finished speaking to someone in the United States. She made a quick calculation in her head and realized the six kids she’d been trying to smuggle into the U.S. had cost her about eleven thousand euros so far, and that wasn’t even factoring in Hans’s expenses and salary. She didn’t like letting him sit in jail in Miami, but she wasn’t in a position to bail him out. She hoped he’d understand.
There were other issues with the failed operation, the load. She’d borrowed money to cover expenses and then had essentially gone into business with Emile Rostoff, a local Russian gangster who had more than fifty thugs working for him in and around Amsterdam. But Hanna had heard that was a fraction of the men Emile’s older brother, Roman, employed in Miami. The two were known as the Blood Brothers for reasons Hanna preferred not to think about. She had seen what happened to people who disagreed with the Rostoffs—missing ears, severed fingers, and scars from beatings. The local criminal population was a walking advertisement for why you shouldn’t cross the Russian gang.
One of the worst punishments Hanna had seen was meted out to a young woman who hadn’t paid her “tribute” to the Rostoffs to sell heroin to tourists and who’d mocked a Rostoff lieutenant. Now she had Emile Rostoff’s initials carved in her cheeks, one letter on each side, and the end of her nose was missing. The girl was a tourist attraction all by herself.
Now Hanna had to explain to these same people why she couldn’t make a payment on her loan.
Hanna turned and saw the three young women she employed as administrative assistants staring at her. She understood the fear in their eyes. The loss of the kids was a major blunder. Someone on her staff was responsible. Someone had talked too much.
She knew it wasn’t Janine, who had been with her the longest. And it wasn’t Janine’s sister, Tasi, who was an airhead and therefore not given much responsibility. That left Lisbeth.
Hanna could tell by the way Lisbeth’s eyes darted around that she knew she was the focus of Hanna’s rage. Lisbeth had made all the flight arrangements, so this was her fault. Now she was going to learn a lesson about owning up to one’s mistakes. Hanna had rescued Lisbeth from prostitution, taught her some basic clerical skills, and given her a life without strange men accosting her every night. But Lisbeth had screwed up somehow, and Hanna couldn’t have that.
At thirty-five, Hanna was a lot older than these girls. Sometimes, she felt almost like their mother, and occasionally, parents had to punish their kids. She started slowly. She held Lisbeth’s gaze as she started walking across the hardwood floor of the enormous room to where the twenty-one-year-old sat.
Hanna said, “Lisbeth, did you hear about the cockup in Miami?”
The young woman shivered and nodded. The expression on her pixie face showed her fight against tears. “I know Hans was arrested. I don’t really know anything else.” Lisbeth brushed her blue-streaked brown hair out of her eyes.
“Don’t I pay you to know what’s going on?” Hanna kept advancing.
“I made the flight arrangements and ensured the kids had all the right paperwork.”
“And spent plenty of my money doing it. Now that’s all gone. We have nothing
to show for it. This is a business. We need cash flow. Especially now. How do you think I should handle this?”
“I…I…I mean, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Hanna reached down, snatched the girl’s long multicolored hair, and jerked her out of the seat. The rolling office chair spun from the force of it. Hanna dragged her across the floor to the balcony.
Lisbeth said over and over, “Please, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hanna released her when they were both on the balcony. She said, “Who did you tell about the trip?”
“No one, I swear.”
Hanna repeated the question slowly. “Who did you tell?”
The girl started to cry.
The tears made Hanna snap. She grabbed Lisbeth by the shoulders and shoved her so that she was dangling over the brass railing of the balcony. Hanna held on to her belt, leaving the girl suspended upside down six stories above the cobblestone sidewalk.
Hanna said again, “Who did you tell about the trip? Was it the Russians? Did you speak to the police? You’d better start talking or the last sound out of you will be a scream on your short trip to the ground.” She relaxed her grip so the girl slipped a little bit more.
Lisbeth was crying and screaming now. “I swear I didn’t tell anyone!” She begged for mercy, then mumbled several Hail Marys and another short prayer some priest had probably told her would protect her. He was wrong.
Chapter 9
HANNA LOOKED DOWN at the terrified girl dangling off her balcony. She wasn’t sure what to do with Lisbeth, but at least she was getting her message across. Her other two assistants would be much more careful in the future.
Hanna heard the chime that told her the inside door between the apartments was open. That meant her daughter, Josie, was home from school. With some effort, she pulled Lisbeth back onto the balcony. She straightened the girl up and brushed her hair out of her face. Lisbeth kept sobbing.
Hanna said, “Shut up, you stupid cow. Don’t let my daughter see you upset.”
Lisbeth nodded nervously and wiped her nose with her bare hand.
Hanna pulled the girl close and said, “I was going to drop you, but I changed my mind. Maybe you aren’t completely useless.” She kissed Lisbeth on the forehead. “You know I love you girls. Now go get cleaned up.”
Lisbeth scurried off to the powder room as Josie and Hanna’s brother, Albert, who often walked Josie home from school, came in.
Josie trotted out to the balcony. Hanna gave her a quick hug and told her to do her homework before they went out to dinner. She watched as the twelve-year-old scampered back to their apartment, high-fiving her uncle on the way.
Hanna had needed to see a little gesture like that to calm her down. Thank God her brother was such a help.
He joined her on the balcony, where she explained the disaster in Miami.
Albert shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “Just the cost of doing business.”
“I know you’re not involved in the finances of the business, but the money I was going to make from those six kids would have covered a lot of our debt to the Russians.”
“I told you not to borrow money from the Russian mob. Emile Rostoff doesn’t fool around. He and his brother are big on messages. He sent one to the guys in Aalsmeer who were making their own meth instead of buying from him. Two of them were skinned and then dumped on the sidewalk in front of the apartment where they were cooking the meth. They were still alive and screamed for five minutes until paramedics arrived. It was a mercy they died on the way to the hospital. There’s still a bloody outline of their bodies on the sidewalk. That’s a serious message.”
Hanna had heard the story but insisted that she’d had to borrow the money. “If we hadn’t gotten that money last year, we’d be living on an abandoned farm somewhere down in the south. Josie’s idea of culture would be American TV. Besides, what’s done is done. We have to pay them back soon.”
Albert ran a hand over his neatly trimmed goatee. “You always seem to have something in the works. Are you telling me you don’t have any plans now?”
Hanna gave him a faint smile. “I’ve been trying to put together a big load for a month. At least twenty people. Right now, I’m still waiting for two more to come from Germany. I have them stashed all over the city.”
“And the diamonds? How long do you intend to hold them?”
“Not much longer. I need you to buy an electronic tracker, one we can put in a backpack. I’m going to hide the diamonds in the pack, then give it to one of the people in the next load bound for Miami.”
Albert looked at his sister and said, “You’re not worried about Customs finding it when they go through the airport?”
“They won’t be going through the airport. Twenty is too many people to fly. This time we’ll send them by ship. And when it’s all over, we’ll be debt-free with cash in hand. That’s all any business owner could ask for.”
Chapter 10
HANNA AND HER brother, Albert, spent much of the rest of the afternoon visiting various contacts around Amsterdam. They hoped someone could tell them something about what had happened in Miami. There was no way Hanna was going to lose that much money without getting some kind of explanation.
But so far, they hadn’t gotten much information. The longer this went on, the more frustrated Hanna became. And if Hanna was frustrated, Albert was on the verge of fury.
They crossed into the Noord District by way of the Coentunnel and walked until they were a couple of blocks from the city office on Buikslotermeerplein. Their contact would meet them near the bronze statue of children playing.
At the edge of the park, Albert nudged his sister and pointed to a young woman and a man huddled in conversation.
Hanna said, “What about them?” Then the woman looked up and Hanna saw her clearly. It was the girl who’d had Emile Rostoff’s initials carved in her face, an E on her right cheek and an R on her left. Each scar covered almost the entire cheek.
The missing end of her nose was also jarring, but in a different way. It took a moment to recognize the blunted tip of an otherwise normal nose.
The man next to her was missing the fingers on his right hand.
The image of the two sent a shudder through Hanna, just as it was intended to. That was one of the reasons Emile Rostoff could live in a waterfront penthouse without anyone ever touching him: everyone was terrified of him.
Hanna and Albert had spent most of their lives in Amsterdam. They hadn’t heard of this kind of violence until the Russians arrived en masse and took control of much of the city’s criminal enterprises.
Hanna looked away from the Rostoff victims and spotted Heinrich, her contact from the city office, a corpulent little bald man who’d been bleeding her dry for years by claiming to have connections in law enforcement worldwide.
She saw a smile spread across the man’s face as he watched her approach the bench he sat on. She’d never really liked the way Heinrich looked at her. Hanna knew his preference was for young girls because she’d provided him with some over the years, but the grubby, forty-five-year-old civil servant didn’t impress her as being particularly discriminating when it came to women.
Hanna did like the way Heinrich’s smile faded instantly when he noticed Albert walking a few feet behind her. Her big brother had looked out for her ever since they were kids.
A light breeze blew the man’s thinning hair into odd angles. Even though temperatures were mild now in the late summer, he had sweat stains blossoming under his arms.
She wasted no time on small talk. “I’m quite bothered about losing an entire load in Miami.”
Heinrich hesitated, then said, “Is that why your brother is with you?”
Hanna said, “Don’t worry about Albert. I just need a few answers.”
“I would prefer to speak with you alone.”
Albert stepped closer; he towered above the seated man. “What’s wrong, Heinrich? You got something to hide?” He
didn’t wait for an answer. Albert plopped down on the bench right next to him. He pulled a long survival knife from under his light jacket. Then he made a show out of using it to clean his fingernails.
Hanna stayed on her feet. She looked down at Heinrich with her hands on her hips like a schoolmarm. “No games. Do you know anything about it or not?”
“The American FBI got the tip from the Dutch national police about your man with the kids,” Heinrich told her.
“You know who gave the tip?”
He shook his head, but Hanna couldn’t tell if it was a nervous gesture or if he was saying no.
Albert slammed the point of the knife into the bench’s wooden seat less than an inch from Heinrich’s leg. That made him jump. Albert said, “C’mon, Heinrich, it’s not like someone from the Dutch police will cut off a body part if you tell us who called the tip in to the Americans.”
Heinrich said, “I think you both know who it was.”
Albert said, “Tell us.”
“I thought we were business associates. I don’t appreciate being threatened,” Heinrich said.
Albert jerked the knife out of the bench and swung it like a tennis racket toward the civil servant’s face. He froze it just as the edge of the blade touched Heinrich’s throat.
Both men sat perfectly still, like statues. A thin trickle of blood dripped from the tiny cut Albert’s knife had made.
Even Hanna flinched at the suddenness of the action and the sight of blood. But she held steady as Heinrich whimpered.
Albert acted as if nothing had happened and smiled as he said, “A name?” He lowered the knife.
Heinrich hyperventilated as he lifted his left hand to feel his neck. He mumbled, “Detective Marie Meijer.”
Albert said, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Chapter 11
HANNA CALLED FOR a cab, then turned to her brother and said, “Was that really necessary?”
Albert put on an innocent look. “What? You mean the shave I gave to fat boy? People are beginning to take advantage of us. They no longer fear us. Something’s got to change.”
Lost Page 3
