An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  Ian was a fool, but in the past he’d proved reliable, and he had the advantage of being so obviously full of bullshit he’d probably never make a good witness. Plus, like me, he’d done honest work at times and had some skill with mechanical things.

  ‘Shall we get a drink then, eh, Jimmy? Get properly snattered?’ He did a sly look-around as if expecting to be overheard – now that he wasn’t leering, miming sex or cursing. ‘What I’ve been at lately, I haven’t had a night in a pub for some time.’

  ‘Been inside, have you?’

  ‘No, no.’ He shook his head forcefully and crossed himself. ‘Just a bit of trouble over a horse.’

  ‘A slow horse I’m guessing?’

  ‘Pitifully slow, Jimmy, and me telling some punter she was a sure winner … Ah, well, no point dwelling on it.’

  ‘How much did you bet? Wait, wait. Let me revise that. How much money that you don’t actually have did you bet?’

  He blushed. He’d never make a poker player. ‘It was nothing two grand wouldn’t cure.’

  All told I don’t think I’d spent twelve hours in Ian’s company, but he had conceived a strange, almost worshipful admiration for me. I was ‘posh’ but not a tosser; I had money and was not cheap with drinks; and he knew that I was something other than what I appeared to be. He would play it palsy with me and would gently take the piss, but he was leery of me as well, probably a good thing. He worked at impressing me.

  ‘So what’s the gig, then?’

  ‘Mostly shopping. And some DIY construction.’

  ‘Sounds dull.’

  ‘Crime is dull when you do it properly. Try to keep it that way: properly dull.’

  ‘Low profile, eh?’ He tapped his nose wisely, then hitched up his trousers and patted his front as if checking to make sure everything was buttoned up.

  ‘So low you were never here, Ian.’

  I handed him a burner phone, then texted him an encrypted shopping list. Then, with much trepidation, I slipped him two credit cards, a slip with just numbers, and an envelope of cash.

  ‘You’ll want receipts?’

  ‘Jesus, Ian, no I don’t want receipts for items that might be used in a crime. Come on, man. This is the only time we will be seen in public together. Our texts will all be encrypted and via burner phones.’

  He shook his head admiringly. ‘This is why I like working with you, Jimmy. You’re a professional.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘I learn things from you.’

  I sent him on his priestly way after he made the sign of the cross over me.

  I made as if to leave but ducked into, and a minute later out of, the men’s room so as to follow Ian at a distance. If he headed for a bar I’d buy him a ticket home and tell him to fuck off. But he went faithfully to the address I’d given him. At the same time I kept an eye out to see if he was being tailed, and was reasonably convinced he was clean.

  In the morning after a restless night spent trying to find a part of me to lie on that didn’t hurt, it was all prep work. I had two days. Two. Ian, bless him, went right to work, having caught an early train to Brussels.

  Ian: Do you want the toy because for a bit more I can get one that takes video.

  Me: Get the specific model I listed.

  I’d loaded Ian down with work, but there were things I still had to do myself. I had wondered how one summoned a flash mob but it turned out there were a number of companies who did just that and I could manage it all online. Thank you, Google.

  I checked in on a special order I’d placed with a graphic design firm that was printing a colorful corporate logo onto a box of thirty-six-inch art portfolios I’d arranged for them to receive. They were on time and on-spec, even texting me a reassuring photo.

  Ian: Where the bloody hell do I find black felt?

  Me: Craft shop. Google one.

  I spent quite a lot of bandwidth on the matter of AirBnBs. I needed units on a canal, with good Wi-Fi, and access without the presence of the owner – either keypad lock or a key left under the mat, not that I intended to enter any of the properties I was reserving: I was just after Wi-Fi logins.

  Ian: Motorized wheelchairs cost a bloody fortune.

  Me: I know. Get the model I asked for.

  Ian: And how do I get the fucking thing back to A’Dam?

  Me: You ride it onto the train, dude. You can wear your priest outfit if you like.

  I had to credit Hangwoman for the wheelchair idea. No one questions a wheelchair. Disabled people are as close to invisible as you can get without being a street beggar, and part of any good criminal’s game has to be exploiting societal weaknesses. Like the old saying goes: hate the game, don’t hate the player. It wasn’t my fault people avoided looking at people in wheelchairs.

  Ian: Did you really mean eight burners?

  Me: Yep. Eight. No more than two at any one shop.

  Ian: Jaysus wept.

  Me: So I’ve read.

  By afternoon my eyes were swimming and my head was pounding from too much time staring at a screen, and I had something more fun to do, something I could perhaps actually wrap up: Smit and Madalena. I knew where they lived, and it was daytime, so even if Smit had mounted a guard I didn’t think his skinhead buddies would be able to attack me.

  I needed to get Madalena alone somewhere and ask her father’s questions. If I got that out of the way I’d have a much clearer path to getting the hell out of Dodge just as soon as I’d done my dirty deeds.

  I stuffed some handy zip ties in my pocket, figuring that they might be useful. And I pulled a trick I’d learned from a doomed MI6 operative on Cyprus: I filled a small spray bottle halfway with hot sauce and diluted it a bit with whiskey, the better to spray. Homemade pepper gas. Tabasco works, but I had this stuff that’s made with ghost peppers and it was a Scoville-scale nuke compared to Tabasco’s conventional bomb.

  I walked a bit, grabbed a taxi, walked some more, and once I was sure I didn’t have a tail, I trolleyed to Amsterdam Centraal and hopped on the train to Rotterdam. There I went through the same tail-losing maneuvers, eventually reaching an in-town Hertz office where I rented an Audi A4, which I drove to Bijlmermeer. I parked behind Smit’s building and, using my binoculars, looked at a shaded window. And saw a shade. Seeing nothing but that ecru shade I drove around to the front side and parked near the courtyard gate. An hour. Another hour. Then a girl appeared: tall, dark hair, pretty, with a nicely confident swagger. I swiped to my photos of Madalena.

  ‘Well, hello there, Maddie.’

  Then, Smit followed. Unfortunate. Worse, they were both pushing bikes and I would not be able to follow them in a car. They rode straight toward me, intending to pass me on the driver’s side.

  Well, when opportunity knocks, you should open the door. So I did just that, opening my door just in front of Smit who took it hard. His front tire hit, he went over the handlebars, bounced off the window of the opened door, and sprawled on the pavement, feet all tangled up in spokes and chain.

  ‘Debiel!’ he yelled, which was likely a rude word, then groaned a bit as he tried to make sense of what had just happened to him.

  I don’t do the action-hero thing, but I do have a deep well of learning from horror movies, and if Pinhead, Chuckie and Mike Myers have taught me anything, it’s that when the bad guy goes down you need to make damned sure he stays down.

  So I stood up on the door sill and jumped on Milan Smit. I landed astraddle, bent my knees in and dropped my weight on the left side of his chest as he rolled onto his right.

  ‘Schijt!’ Smit cried, which was easy enough to decipher, and, ‘rotzak!’ which was less so, but which was unlikely to be a compliment.

  I fumbled for one of the zip ties. If you’ve ever seen a YouTube of a cop trying to subdue a frantically resisting man, then you know how difficult it can be to handcuff someone. And I am no cop.

  ‘Pleurislijer!’ Smit yelled. Turned out, when I googled it later, that means ‘tuberculosis sufferer’. Which is just odd. Smit
thrashed and tried to kick and punch and as he was taller than me, younger than me and stronger than me, he almost got away. I barely stayed on, riding him like a novice rodeo cowboy, but ended up facing his feet. My zip tie was not long enough to go around both ankles, and now Madalena was pedaling back, yelling, ‘Monta de merda!’ and, ‘Cabrão!’ presumably impolite words in Portuguese. And then a word that translates across so many languages. ‘Nazi!’

  ‘Fucking sit still!’ I growled at Smit who, unsurprisingly perhaps, refused to do so. I took a chance and leaned forward, which stuck my rear in Smit’s face but imprisoned his legs. He beat on my butt cheeks and tried to raise his knees to throw me off.

  I got one zip tie around one ankle. I endured the butt-beating and found a second zip tie. I threaded it through the first and took a knee to the chest, but still managed it even though Madalena was now punching my poor, bruised back and biting my ear, heaping Portuguese abuse on me all the while.

  ‘Olho do cu! Nazi porco!’

  She swung her backpack and something in it was heavy because it hit my shoulder blade like a hammer.

  ‘OK, goddammit, that’s enough!’ I used my sternest voice. But I had a more useful opportunity: there was Madalena’s leg, her foot planted between Smit’s ankles.

  I rolled away and Madalena charged after me, then stopped quite suddenly and fell to her hands and knees, zip-tied to Smit.

  I now had two people tied together by the ankles. In a Dutch street. If cops didn’t roll up in the next three minutes it would be a miracle.

  ‘Listen, assholes,’ I snarled. ‘The cops are coming and if you don’t want to talk to them you’d better talk to me.’

  Smit had managed to stand up. If he had a knife, or even a fingernail clipper, he could free himself and Madalena, but I saw a look between the two of them that said, No, we don’t want cops.

  ‘Then get in the car, I’m not here to hurt you.’ I helped bundle them into the back seat. I climbed in the front and turned to face two furious but frightened faces. ‘I’m not having one of you choke me from behind, give me a hand.’

  I grabbed an unresisting Smit’s hand and zip-tied it to the passenger seat headrest. Not exactly supermax, that, the headrest could be removed, but I’d have warning at least. I started the car and drove off. Three blocks away a police car with lights and sirens passed by going the other direction. I watched in the rearview mirror until it was clear they weren’t turning around.

  I drove without destination, came to an ‘A’ road and took it north. A few miles on I pulled off into a parking area surrounded by marsh which the Dutch were presumably turning into dry land – they do that. There was one other car in the lot but it was unoccupied. I twisted to confront my two prisoners.

  ‘All right. It’s come-to-Jesus time. We are going to talk.’

  Madalena tried to spit, but her mouth was dry from fear. She was trembling and that triggered my stunted guilt gland. I don’t frighten women, I seduce them. As for Smit, fuck him; he’d torn my left ring fingernail.

  ‘Who are you?’ Smit demanded. He seemed the more reasonable of the two, or at least the calmer.

  ‘My name is Dennis, Dennis Lehane,’ I lied. ‘Madalena’s father asked me to check up on his little girl.’

  I don’t know what I expected. Guilt? Surprise? The sullen act? I did not expect stark terror.

  ‘Have you told him?’ Madalena demanded, voice pleading.

  ‘Told who? What?’

  ‘Have you told my father that you find me?’

  I frowned, not happy about her tone. ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘You must not,’ Madalena said, leaning forward, pleading. ‘Please, you must not tell him.’

  She had lovely smooth skin and huge, dark, soulful eyes framed by absurdly long lashes, genuine as far as I could tell. I could see why Smit was attracted to her. The reverse was harder to explain.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he will get me kill because I will not give it to them! Never!’

  That stopped me. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I tell you nothing!’

  ‘You tell me nothing, I tell your father everything.’

  An exchange of sullen glances. Smit shrugged. Madalena was the one in charge I realized, the brains of the couple.

  ‘I took a thing,’ Madalena confessed as a single tear went racing down her cheek. Dammit. Women’s tears. I’d always made a point of being well away before the women I gave reason to weep started in.

  ‘Money? Jewels?’

  She looked down, ashamed now, finally, and in a low voice said, ‘I took the gold Führer.’

  Tangential Nazis.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The gold Hitler. It is a bust of Hitler, solid gold, commissioned by Goering and presented as a gift after the fall of France. It is what I beliefed you were after when you attack us.’

  I’m usually pretty good at absorbing unexpected facts. Except when the words just don’t seem to make sense. ‘A gold Hitler?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. A gold Hitler. It is very valuable for the gold. It is almost one and a half kilos.’

  ‘That’s …’ Calculating on my fingers. ‘Like, fifty-ish ounces. Sixty thousand euros, give or take.’ I had not checked gold prices for a while, but it was sure to be over a grand an ounce.

  ‘Seventy-one thousand euros.’ This came from Smit. ‘As of this morning’s price.’ He was eyeing me with more curiosity than hostility.

  ‘And with pure gold you’re keeping just about all of that, no split with some greedy fence.’ I probably should not have said that, it made me sound a bit criminal. So, I added, ‘I write about crime. I know these things.’

  The three of us fell silent for a moment and looked at each other nonplussed. We were three strangers, suddenly together. In an Audi. In a parking lot off the freeway. It was awkward.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tell me your story, Madalena.’

  ‘And you don’t tell my father?’

  ‘I’m making no promises,’ I said. ‘You tell me your side of things, and I’ll see. Why not start with why three skinheads jumped me when I followed you.’

  Smit made a puzzled face. It seemed genuine.

  ‘Dude, don’t play me,’ I said. ‘I cased your apartment and as I was leaving three assholes jumped me.’

  Still nothing. From either of them. I tried one more time.

  ‘One had a tattoo. BBET: Bloed, Bodem—’

  ‘Eer en Trouw,’ Smit finished. His pale face was paler. ‘My Gott they find us!’

  I may be a bit better than the average Joe at spotting a lie, but I’ve been fooled before and I do not believe myself to be infallible. Still, that said, if these two were lying they were doing a good job of it.

  I rummaged in my bag for a clasp knife, intending to cut one of the zip ties in an act of good faith. It wasn’t there. I reached into my pocket for my cigar torch. It, too, was absent.

  ‘Well, that’s embarrassing. I was going to cut you loose …’

  ‘Are you looking for this?’

  Smit held my knife in the palm of his hand. The hand that I had believed was zip-tied. Delia had said Smit was a pickpocket and close-up magic con artist. While we’d struggled, the son of a bitch had picked my pockets and then had cut his restraints.

  ‘Also I have your lighter. And your wallet. And your phone.’ He shrugged as if embarrassed. ‘Also, I looked at your identification and you are not Dennis Lehane.’

  How many times have I seen that exact phrase in a review of one of my books?

  I looked at Smit with new respect. I wasn’t angry, I appreciate technique. ‘You’re good.’

  ‘Thank you. I worked very hard to perfect certain techniques.’

  I nodded. ‘Me too. You know, as a writer. But we’re still left with the question of what the fuck is going on with you two.’

  Madalena took up the story. ‘After my father he came out from prison he was a change man. I have always known that he
buy and sell stolen things. Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘But in prison he became … involved! Yes, involved with bad men. They made him to sneak – that is the word? Sneak? Yes, he sneak drugs in for them. If he refuse they beat him.’

  I nodded, genuinely sympathetic. ‘Prison can be tough.’ Which is why I try so hard to avoid it.

  ‘He was broken, you understand. He was not the father I had known since a baby. They break him.’ She tapped her too-young-for-me-to-ogle chest. ‘Here. Inside.’

  She looked sad. Not a girl who hated daddy, a girl who was worried for daddy and worried what he might inadvertently do to her.

  I nodded. I knew what she was talking about. There’s tough on the outside, and then there’s tough in the joint, and that second one is a whole lot harder to pull off.

  ‘They make him to buy and sell for a gang. Those people, like you say attack you. Skinheads. Nazi pigs. They make him to steal this gold Hitler from a man in Valencia. So my father finds a man to steal it. The skinheads say OK, give it to us now, and my father says no, because I must pay the thief who got it and where is the money for that, so he does not give them the gold and they threaten and I find the statue in his office, yes?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘And I am Antifa. You know this word? It is an American word, is it not?’

  ‘You’re anti-fascist.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Smit nodded agreement. He was also opposed to tangential Nazis.

  ‘OK, you don’t want these Nazis to have the statuette. But you also don’t want them trying to take it from your father, so you took it.’

  ‘Also the thief he is angry.’

  I’ll bet he is. I’d be mad as hell if I went to the trouble of stealing seventy grand’s worth of statuette and ended up being stiffed, I did not say. Instead I said, ‘I imagine he would be.’

  ‘So I take the Hitler. Because to melt it and then sell the gold and give the money to my father for the thief.’