An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  I began to wonder, upon realizing I had been (attempted) murdered, if Azevedo had been indiscreet and an enemy with a grudge and an overly complicated plan had found me. But that didn’t add up. Azevedo was a smart old guy and wouldn’t carelessly endanger the asset he’d sent to rescue his daughter.

  As for people who wanted me dead, they divided into two camps. First there were my victims – I prefer to call them clients – irritated that I had relocated their money to my bank account. Realistically, though, the idea that some oil man from Houston or horn-bedecked husband from Paris would actually attempt murder? Unlikely in the extreme. Even I don’t kill people, and I am (was) an actual criminal (retired).

  Then there were the bad guys I’d fallen afoul of, a list that included more gangs than I’d have preferred, but gangsters don’t go in for attention-grabbing antics involving nooses and canals, they’d shoot me at my front door or cut my throat in a dark street. Then, too, there was the fact that no smart gangster was going to spend the money and assume the risk of a hit in a very law-abiding city like Amsterdam over a mere matter of revenge. Gangsters are businessmen. Cui bono? Where was the profit in killing little me?

  ‘This is fucked up,’ I informed the small water stain on the ceiling. ‘No part of this is right.’

  There remained one possibility: that I was not the intended victim, just the dummy who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That would make it a prank rather than a hit. But what were the odds of that?

  It worried me quite a bit since I remain unalterably opposed to being killed, but I found reassurance in sheer improbability. It made no sense, none at all, and it is a persistent weakness of the rational mind to seek reasonable explanations for human behavior.

  Chante was not wrong that it might be time to grab a cab to Schiphol and fly away, but I couldn’t do that until I had rescued fair Madalena and delivered some bromides to a bookstore audience. So, first thing tomorrow, as soon as I’d had coffee and put a few hours in at the laptop, I had to get serious because if I solved Azevedo’s problem I could still always catch that cab to Schiphol. Better still, if I solved the question of who had tried to kill me, I could stay in Amsterdam, land of legal weed and tall, gorgeous women riding bikes.

  It all made perfect sense. Really it did.

  THREE

  ‘Well, I was pretty drunk, I have to admit, officer.’

  ‘First thing’ in the morning had not worked out because first thing was: cops. Or cop, singular.

  The policeman who knocked politely at my door had been informed of a possible crime involving me. Tess, undoubtedly, given that the cop had my address.

  Irritated note to self: WTF is the matter with you, David? No one should ever know where you live.

  I was on my second cup of coffee and getting ready to start working, but I was prepared. He was just a uniform taking a statement, an almost too-Dutch kid: appled of cheek, blond of hair, confident despite looking like a nine-foot-tall twelve-year-old. He glanced perfunctorily at my passport and handed it back without even noting the number. A fact which allowed me to breathe more easily.

  ‘It’s so stupid and embarrassing, but I … wait, you know what? I still have the shirt.’ I fetched a blue dress shirt from my bedroom, a shirt with a badly ripped sleeve. I’d hated to sacrifice a perfectly nice shirt – bespoke, fit like a dream – by ripping the sleeve and smearing it with grime, but I’d anticipated this moment and there’s nothing like an apparently unplanned prop.

  My story was either too ridiculous to believe or so ridiculous it had to be true. I couldn’t know what the police officer would conclude, but I felt about as good as I can ever feel upon being questioned by an LEO. This did not strike me as the opening stage of a city-wide manhunt.

  ‘We received a statement that a rope of some sort—’

  ‘A rope? Nah. Whoever said that must have even been drunker than I was.’

  ‘In truth we found no rope.’

  Didn’t you, just? Well, well, the killer had gone back to remove the rope. I had to approve of the tradecraft – even a piece of rope can be evidence if you leave skin behind.

  ‘Please inform the police if you have any further incidents,’ he said, and was gone.

  I don’t dance or high-five but I did allow myself a sly, ‘Heh heh heh,’ as the door closed.

  Then I banged out some pages of my latest opus, had lunch, did some research on Amsterdam – basic stuff, know where you are – and wasted some hours on Goodreads, alternately preening or spewing silent bile. So ‘first thing’ became eight p.m. which meant I’d be starting my search for fair Madalena in places where a drug dealer and his presumably naive love-slave Madalena might go: clubs.

  The strobes were seizure-inducing and the music was techno and loud enough to cost me an IQ point for every minute’s exposure. I held up my phone. ‘Have you seen this girl?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  I squeezed into a place at the bar between a young Dutch couple and a seriously drunk Spaniard ranting about housing costs in Barcelona, and swiped between photos of Madalena. ‘This girl. Have you seen her?’

  ‘Are you the police?’

  ‘No, I’m just looking for this girl because she’s in trouble.’

  I had placed a fifty-euro note on the bar. It could be for a drink, it could be a bribe. I slid it toward the bartender, but he was a busy man, the bar was hopping and the bartender, eyes going opaque, slipped off to make cocktails.

  At the next bar I showed the bartender my phone. ‘Have you seen this girl?’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Sure.’ I scanned the bright-lit shelves, running down my mental list of drinkable whiskies. No Talisker. No Lagavulin. No Ardbeg.

  ‘Johnny Black, please, neat. Now, about this picture …’

  That earned me a shrug, a polite if condescending smile, and, ‘I am not the missing persons bureau. You must go to the police.’

  Sometimes you know it’s not even worth flashing cash.

  In preparation for the night’s sleuthing I had stared long and hard at the three photos of Madalena that Azevedo had provided me. I was pretty sure I’d recognize her if I happened to run into her, but equally sure that I was not likely to run into her. No, I would need to ask questions and the first question when asking questions is who to question.

  My answers were doormen, bartenders, bud-tenders, bouncers and pimps, in whatever order they came. If clubs came up dry I’d head to the Red Light District for chats with pimps.

  ‘Have you seen—’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Nee. No. I see many girls. Nope. Unh-unh. Nee, meneer. Nope. There was even a genial Aussie, Feck off, mate, eh? and a less genial, nyet.

  I had no notion of the Amsterdam club scene, so I had googled, ‘hottest clubs in Amsterdam’, checked map view and decided to work north to south. I’d already been to a good, old-fashioned lap-dancing establishment, and a cramped place with bad speakers, and a place with speakers so good I thought they might liquefy my kidneys, the club names evaporating in memory as the turn-downs added up.

  ‘I’m looking for this girl …’

  ‘She’s young for you, no?’

  That stung.

  A pimp of the furtive variety approached me and offered a girl who looked just like Madalena, only she was Ukrainian and if I would just follow him …

  By midnight I was deaf, stunned, depressed, foot-sore, frustrated and approaching intoxication. I wandered into the Cave Rock Bar, which was not on my list, drawn by the music of my youth. Green Day’s Dookie and The Offspring’s Smash both dropped in 1994 and Rancid’s And Out Come the Wolves a year later, crashing onto a musical landscape then dominated by Mariah Carey and U2. Someone in the bar was playing Rancid’s ‘Olympia, WA’ and I’d had all the dance music I could stand.

  The Cave Rock Bar was not one of ‘Amsterdam’s hottest bars’ rather it was a tiny place just below street level, with a pair of blood-red vomit-resistant plastic booths, a
brace of pachinko machines glittering like a pocket Vegas, and a small, low stage at the far end of the long, rectangular room. The Cave was decorated in headbanger eclectic, with paintings of dragons on the crushingly low ceiling, a skeletal Grim Reaper standing in one corner, and various demons posted here and there to make sure no one smiled. Definitely more metal than punk, but the punks never were great ones for interior decorating.

  There was a good crowd, some locals, some Germans, some assorted Mediterranean folks, countries of origin uncertain, and a gaggle of Japanese girls in one of the booths, six of them squeezed in together producing rolling, synchronized waves of incongruous giggles. There were quite a few untrimmed beards, a lot of lank hair protruding from beneath stocking caps and denim jackets festooned with identity patches, as well as extravagant tats, body mods and all manner of things I don’t much like.

  But on the stage was a slight, bald, bearded gnome of a guy who evoked Charles Manson: Tim Armstrong. He wasn’t covering ‘Olympia WA’, it was his song, played with a pick-up band. His voice, never great, hadn’t weathered the ages any better than any other fifty-something dude who’d spent decades yelling lyrics over amps turned up to eleven, but he could still play and he could growl and his bass player and drummer laid down a tight beat.

  Yes, I fanboyed a bit. It was like walking in and seeing Mick Jagger if you were old. Or Beyoncé if you weren’t.

  The song ends on a melancholy note about not wanting to be alone. Again. I was several whiskies and a couple of friendly hits of Gorilla Glue into it at this point so I went directly to contemplation of my own solitary condition. Not lonely again so much as still.

  My closest relationship was with Chante, a woman who could barely tolerate me. I think nine out of ten mental health professionals, and a hundred percent of daytime talk show hosts, would call that unhealthy.

  The bar selection was not encouraging – way too heavy on the Jaegermeister – but they had Johnnie Black so I stuck with that and held onto it, dodging heaving denim and puffy, down-encased bodies and shouting to the bartender my by-then tedious questions.

  I almost didn’t know how to react when she nodded her head and said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen her.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Really?’

  ‘Ja, sure. I recognize this girl.’

  She went off to pour drinks but after a while came back of her own accord.

  ‘Is this girl in danger?’

  Interesting word choice, ‘danger.’ Not even ‘trouble.’ In any other country I’d suspect that a person for whom English was not the first language had simply grabbed the wrong word. But this was Amsterdam, and products of the Dutch educational system speak better English than most Americans.

  ‘May I ask your name? Mine is James. James Lee Burke.’ I extended my hand and she shook it firmly.

  ‘Ella,’ she said. She frowned. ‘Your name seems familiar.’

  Note to self: stop using mystery authors’ names as aliases, some people still read books.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Ella. Do you have reason to suspect Madalena’s in danger?’ I asked.

  Ella, a tall twenty-something with a thick brown braid and a sleeve of tattoos that upon casual inspection seemed to have a Tolkien theme, shrugged bare shoulders. ‘Is that her name? Madalena?’

  I leaned forward into confidential space. ‘Here’s the thing, mevrouw (muh-frow), I’m working with her father who knows about this Milan Smit dude she’s with and is very concerned. He’s not trying to run his daughter’s life, she’s an adult of sorts, but he would like to know whether she is entirely … free … to make her own decisions. Just that: he wants to be sure she is free.’

  Ella’s eyes glittered. Like Americans, the Dutch are big on talk of freedom, and they actually mean it. Ella nodded. She had no reason to trust me, but she’d seen something about the Madalena–Smit relationship she didn’t like, so she wanted to believe me, and that’s half the battle.

  ‘If you can tell me anything … anything at all …’

  ‘He’s a headbanger, a metal head,’ Ella said, flipping her braid back over her shoulder. ‘He will come on Saturday. Twan van Geel is performing.’

  I sensed that I should be impressed. ‘Who?’

  ‘The guitar player for Legion of the Damned.’

  ‘Ah. That Twan van Geel,’ I said. ‘How would I recognize Smit?’

  ‘He is tall, two meters, with long blond hair.’ She used a chopping motion to indicate hair down to just below shoulder level. ‘He wears a jacket that says Hells Angels Antwerp.’

  ‘There’s a Hells Angels Antwerp?’

  ‘Of course.’ Then, with a disparaging sniff, added, ‘Belgium.’

  ‘One more question and I’ll fuck off: is there something about this girl or the dude that made you think, “danger”?’

  Her eyes stared, unfocused, into the middle distance. ‘They had an aura. Sometimes when someone is in danger the normal aura – they were both predominantly orange – can show streaks of a muddy blue, the sign of fear.’

  Well, I did ask.

  Thankfully she had drinks to pour so I escaped the prana lecture that was sure to be on the way.

  I walked home from the Cave Rock Bar in a pleasantly weaving sort of way, feeling quite impressed with myself, feeling that detective work wasn’t so hard, all it had cost me was some hearing loss, a vague despair for today’s youth, and a hefty tip to Ella.

  Amsterdam’s a great walking town if you avoid the Red Light District. And remember not to be run down by the trams that sneak up on you quiet as a Tesla. And if you don’t fall in a canal. And above all, manage to avoid the tinkling menace: Dutch people on bikes. But I’m about as alert as your average squirrel, especially when I’ve recently been attempted murdered, so I was not too concerned with the various methods of silent death practiced by Amsterdamers. My focus was a block ahead and a block behind, looking for a familiar face I’d need to avoid, as one does. Fugitive Vision is the extended awareness that is rather like aerial combat in that the trick is always to see before being seen, recognize without being recognized. It’s not a good state of mind to be in if you’re stopping to smell the roses, but it comes with the fugitive lifestyle.

  I took the most direct path, straight up the Leidsestraat then hung a right on the Singel and walked along the two blocks of closed-up greenhouses of the tulip market. Past the Starbucks, past the Old Dutch Pancake House and the tourist cheese shops (really, you’re going to put a whole twenty-six-pound wheel of Gouda in your luggage?) and suddenly I felt eyes.

  I came to Vijzelstraat and instead of crossing I turned hard right into an arched gallery illuminated by the dimmed lights of closed shops. I slipped behind a pillar. I opened the camera on my phone and slid just the lens around the corner to see that yes, someone was coming.

  No professional would be caught by such a ruse as simple as ducking behind a pillar, but then no professional would tail a mark down an empty street at night, either, certainly not from just ten meters back.

  But I soon discovered that I was wrong, for the guy I thought had been tailing me turned out to be a thirty-something woman in a hoodie. I remained in the shadows and watched her walk past and almost laughed aloud at the release of stress. Not my aspiring murderer, just some woman on her way home.

  I breathed a big sigh, had a little laugh at my own expense, and toddled off home.

  FOUR

  I had a day free of obligations to my Portuguese fence. On Saturday I’d go back to the Cave and see whether I could spot Milan Smit. If Madalena was with him I’d try to get her somewhere private and ask her what she was up to. If she wasn’t with Smit I’d follow him.

  Then there was the Hangman – I’d named him now, like a Spider-Man super-villain. Beware the Hangman! And I’d spent more time than I care to admit mentally costuming and equipping my supervillain.

  Return of the Hangman!

  I imagined various clever ropes enhanced by technology, like Hawkeye with his arrows, but even du
mber.

  Hangman Be Not Proud!

  I had decided the Hangman was a buffoon, a clown, and that, along with the flaccid police response, gave me a sense of security and drew the Hangman’s sting.

  Some crazy person. Some nut.

  That said, my threat level was elevated from yellow to orange. Or Defcon 3 to Defcon 2, because Defcons count down, not up. I wasn’t going to full sphincter-tightening alarm, just turning the dial up a notch on my Fugitive Vision.

  In the morning I worked for a while with the window open, feet up on the iron railing of the faux balcony, coffee close at hand, a Romeo y Julieta double corona clamped in my teeth, laptop on my lap, and dragged my way through a tedious but unavoidable expository scene that just would not end. Joe Barton, my fictional detective in the fictional-but-Chicago-like city of New Midlands, had an info dump to manage, which is wearying work.

  I put in a solid three hours, only half of which was spent going online to see whether there really was a supervillain called Hangman. Turned out, yes, he was a minor Marvel character who started off as a guy named Harlan, evidently a rather brutal good guy like the Punisher, and later became a dude named Jason who went over to the dark side. He favored purple tights, a sleeveless black top, a blue cowl and Robin Hood calfskin boots. And a rope, because you couldn’t very well be the Hangman without a rope, but he also carried a scythe, which is impractical, in tight spaces but probably beats a rope in hand-to-hand combat with superheroes.

  From there I was of course distracted by the thought that it’d be a hell of a lot easier for law enforcement if criminals wore signature outfits and carried impractical weaponry. And that led inevitably (writers will understand how this happens) to the question of what my signature costume would be if I were still pursuing a career in crime. I’d probably look OK in spandex, but only OK as I lacked steroid thighs. I knew I couldn’t rock a cape, but maybe something like a stylized tuxedo, black, tailored to emphasize my lean tallness, with a splash of color, a collar or a crest. Turquoise? Something with some yellow or gold? Would a diamond stickpin that was also a high-tech lock pick be too on the nose?