An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  ‘The thing is,’ I babbled on. ‘The victim – agent Delacorte here – could, if she knew enough about brain physiology, sort of aim the burning pebble to annihilate one kind of memory, or shut down some portion of her brain, which would, might, have the effect of enhancing the activity in other parts of her brain. I’m not saying superpowers would be involved, but you can’t be sure.’

  Through all this Delia was not happy. She had blood running down the side of her neck from where someone had smashed her with enough force to render her incapable of resisting as she was zip-tied to a chair. I avoided making eye contact, any expression of concern, even non-verbal, would weaken my position. And my position was plenty weak as it was. Weak to the point of being gossamer.

  ‘Very interesting,’ DeKuyper said, thinking she was clever and calling my bluff. ‘So shall we put it to the test?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘You’re going to want to move her.’ I pointed. ‘She’s awfully close to that smoke alarm. And you all know what burning hair is like.’

  Four sets of eyes went to the smoke alarm. No, they had not thought of that. They were not an imaginative bunch, they were more the direct-action kind of folks, to whit, the placing of a gun barrel against the side of my head. This was Tabasco. But I wasn’t worried, he wasn’t going to shoot me.

  ‘Go ahead, genius, pull the trigger and then toddle off and explain to Daniel Isaac that you failed to get him his Vermeer. Failed despite what I’m guessing was a healthy up-front payment and a whole lot of expenses.’

  ‘How about I just shoot the bitch, then?’

  ‘I don’t think Sergeant DeKuyper would … oh, you mean the FBI agent. Go ahead, shoot her. You still won’t get your painting, will you? Because as soon as you kill her you’re right back to threatening me. And see, here’s the thing: the four of you can’t walk away from this and leave either the Feeb or me alive, so let’s cut the bullshit and talk business.’

  I waited to see if any of them would argue that point but, sadly, no. We were all in agreement that the Ontario Crew, plus their corrupt cop, would need both Delia and me dead.

  ‘So, here’s where we are,’ I said. ‘You have empty threats, I have the Vermeer, we all know Isaac’s behind this, we all know that at least some of you have worked for the CIA, and the CIA may be fine with lots of shit, probably including the murder of an Irishman in a dark alley, but I don’t think they’re fine with either torturing or murdering an FBI agent. No, you are way off the reservation on this, which means you have to cover your tracks and Agent Delacorte and I are tracks.’

  ‘There are lots of ways to die,’ Willy said. ‘There’s quick and painless, and there’s slow and agonizing.’

  ‘Kind of a lousy choice there, Willy. May I call you Willy? See, here’s my guess. You’ve been on the phone or on a secure app, whatever, talking to the Chipster. That’s what I call Isaac, do you think he’d mind? No? Anyway, the Chipster would have been furious. What the fuck is this shit, he’d have said in his reedy, gasping old man with COPD voice, “How did you let someone else steal my Vermeer?” Right?’

  No answer necessary. That was exactly what had happened.

  ‘And you said, “Just hold on, moneybags, we’ll get you the painting. Don’t pay the ransom.” But Chip was like, “Hey, I was going to pay you fifty million. I can pay this thief off with just a tenth of that, and I won’t risk the Vermeer.” Right? Did I miss anything?’

  Willy’s silence was confirmation.

  ‘And now, the clock is ticking down. What is it now, two a.m.?’

  DeKuyper glanced at her watch and scowled.

  ‘Four hours left. Tick-tock. Four hours for you to convince me to hand over a painting which, should I actually hand it over, would mean getting a bullet to the back of the head a minute later. You see the problem. Right? Right. The cool thing is, I actually have a solution.’

  None of them wanted to ask. To ask was to concede that I was now running the meeting. DeKuyper stared daggers at Willy. The other two carefully avoided making eye contact at all, but it was clear that they wanted to hear the solution. We were in what used to be called a Mexican stand-off, though I imagine someone’s come up with a less ethnically offensive term. A stand-off which, if nothing changed radically, would leave old man Isaac Vermeerless and the Ontario Crew scrambling to repay whatever earnest money Isaac had fronted them.

  ‘Just for our amusement,’ Willy huffed, ‘tell us.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s simple. Look, you don’t give a damn about the Vermeer and neither do I. In what, a little less than four hours? Yeah, in just less than four hours a timed incendiary device goes off and the Vermeer is destroyed. Live, on YouTube. Well, none of us care about the art, but we do all care about money. Money is rather the point, isn’t it? You had your eyes on a massive haul, fifty very large. I mean, fucking hell. Fifty! But that fifty million is gone now. Poof! Not happening. So now we are down to what could happen.’

  I would like to point out that all through this I was standing in my underpants (black, three-inch boxers) and bare feet and stinking of canal water. I heard about an actor once who played all the way through Macbeth with a broken ankle. This was kind of like that.

  ‘Here’s what could happen,’ I said, and gave DeKuyper a saucy wink. ‘What could happen is that Isaac ponies up the five million. And I tell you where to find the Vermeer which you move – I assume you planned that part carefully – to Isaac’s secret museum for him to drool over as he gasps his corrupt last breath.’

  ‘You think that old bastard will pay us out if he’s already paid you five million? He’ll tell us to fuck off with whatever spare change he happens to have in his wall safe.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I admitted. ‘But that’ll be better than what you’ve got now. I mean, you’ll have the five million.’

  ‘We’ll have the … what?’

  ‘The five million. See, as soon as I have it in my account, I’ll move it to yours. Well, all but half a million. Because that half a mill is what we’re putting in the account of Agent Delia Delacorte.’

  That stunned ’em. Stunned Delia, too, judging by the furious glare.

  ‘See, the thing is, we need mutual assured destruction. Like the cold war. Mutual assured destruction. If Delacorte opens her mouth, we leak details of the half million. Now, maybe the Bureau buys her explanation, but probably not, they’re suspicious people those Feebs. In any case they won’t buy her explanation, certainly not after this catastrophic failure on her part. They’ll investigate and find, surprise! that Delacorte asked for this assignment. Asked. And then a half mill shows up in her name.’

  Four sets of eyes turned to Delia who strained angrily against her bonds, putting on quite a show. I wondered if it was genuine or whether she was acting the part I needed her to play. Either way, it was effective.

  ‘And what about you, Mitre? What do you get out of all this?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I keep whatever cash comes in that’s not from Isaac. I’m a man of simple needs. You get four and a half mill, Agent D gets half, Isaac gets his painting, and I get whatever money all the other good, art-loving citizens of the world have donated.’

  DeKuyper shook her head. ‘It will not work. The FBI will know that money sent to Delacorte’s account is an attempt at discrediting her.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I allowed. ‘But not if the money went to a private offshore account she’s never disclosed.’

  Blank astonishment in Delia’s eyes, which I hoped no one else noticed.

  ‘In fact,’ I said, ‘just to prove my bona fides, how about I make a small contribution of my own. Say ten thousand euros?’ I mutely held up my zip-tied hands. At a nod from the bemused Mr Pete, Lisp used a wickedly unpleasant-looking knife to cut the tie.

  Then, DeKuyper watched over my shoulder as I opened a bank app, tapped in passwords, and transferred ten thousand euros from an account I controlled, to another account I controlled.

  No, of course the second account wasn’t in Delia’s name,
why would I give her my money?

  ‘You boys – and lady – actually believe I’d be dealing with an FBI agent and not have a way to compromise her?’ I laughed and shook my head ruefully. It may be the oldest con in the modern world. I mean, back in caveman days I’m sure the cons involved bones and grubs and whatnot, but in the modern era it’s all about money. Money, money, money. This was a variation on what’s sometimes called the in-and-in: the conman appears to put his own money into the scheme.

  I prayed to the Great God of Grifters that these three did not know anything of the game. The ex-soldiers were not the big concern. There are exceptions, but as a rule there are few suckers quite like a man in uniform who is not in uniform. If you can’t con a soldier or sailor on leave you’re just not trying.

  DeKuyper was the more likely problem. As a cop she’d have seen grifts before. Maybe. Then again, maybe not, she wasn’t a street cop, she was part of an elite. I wondered how they’d gotten to her. You can’t just go around fronting random cops and offering them bribes. Sure, you could do that in New Orleans, but this was Amsterdam.

  But as DeKuyper watched the little animated GIF showing money flying from one account to another she seemed fascinated. The page also showed something else I wanted her to see: my balance in the first account, which was just shy of a million. People respect people with money. You’d think after decades of banks and politicians and billionaires exposed as cheats, regular folks would stop assuming that people with money don’t steal. But no, folks will still insist on confusing money, IQ and virtue – three very different things.

  ‘There you go,’ I announced and closed the app. ‘Ten grand in our trussed-up Feeb’s secret account. Agent Delacorte now has a choice.’ I walked up to Delia, swaggered a bit actually, playing my part. ‘Now you have a choice, Delacorte. Keep the ten. Keep the five hundred that will be along shortly. Your account isn’t compromised, not as far as I know, anyway. I only know it because I creeped your phone while you went to the bathroom last week.’

  She glared, but Delia is not a stupid woman, rather far from it, and she had figured out my game. Anger, defiance and then, just a bit of softening, a downward look as she considered.

  ‘Your choice is simple, Delacorte. Really very simple. On the one hand, you run to your bosses and claim you were used, which, when you consider the context of this whole fiasco, probably means your career is already a bit fucked. Or you keep a nice little nest egg and no one is the wiser. The Vermeer ends up with Isaac, I make money, the Crew here makes some money, and you make some money. You report that your effort to block the theft failed. Just that.’

  I resolutely maintained eye contact with Delia. I was hoping Willy and DeKuyper were looking at her as well, it would mean they were buying it.

  ‘So, are you in and wealthy, Delacorte, or are you going to fuck yourself?’

  Delia tried to speak, but there was the small matter of the gag.

  ‘Let her speak,’ I told Willy. And he began to unwind the tape around her head.

  When I was a kid I used to watch the old Charlie Brown specials. There was always a time when Snoopy would have a little interlude of happy dancing. That’s what I felt like doing, because as long as nothing else went wrong, I had won.

  Delia, may the blessings of a just God rain down on her, did the exactly right thing. Once the tape was loose she spit out the gag and said, ‘Half a million my ass. If I’m selling my soul it will be for the full seven figures. I want a million.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Willy shot back.

  And we were off to the races: the bargaining had begun. The consensus seemed to be that if anyone was making up the rest of Delia’s piece, it should be me. Willy’s logic was impeccable. ‘You’ve already cost me enough, Mitre. Keep pushing and I may decide to hell with it and put both of you down.’

  So DeKuyper watched again as the animated GIF flew $490,000 – five hundred minus the ten I’d already transferred – from account A to account B.

  I transcribed the number of Delia’s supposed account and gave it to Willy.

  ‘And now,’ I intoned, ‘We’re all in this together. No one says a word, now or ever. As Benjamin Franklin said, we must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly we shall all hang separately.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Throughout my masterful – if I say so myself – improvisation one question had remained pressing: where the hell was Chante? It was coming on to three a.m., and unless she was off on a one-night stand, unlikely, she should be in the apartment, somewhere.

  I had the uneasy feeling that Willy and his people might have hurt her. Perhaps fatally. It was Tabasco who escorted me into my bedroom to get trousers and I half expected to find her there. But no. So I dressed under Tabasco’s watchful eye.

  Then I told him I had something valuable to retrieve from the other bedroom. Chante’s room.

  Look, I don’t like the girl, in fact I can’t stand her most of the time. But she can cook, and well, she was in some attenuated sense my responsibility.

  Chante was on her bed, face down. The duvet under her head was red with blood. Her ankles were zip-tied as were her hands. Though at a glance it struck me that her wrists were not cinched enough to make her hands swell, so Willy must have been kind. After he or one of his people had turned her lights out with a punch to the face or a cosh against the back of her head.

  ‘She dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ Tabasco muttered. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Mmm, well, leave her to me. I hate the bitch, I’ll do her myself.’ I walked past into the bathroom.

  ‘What are you after?’ Tabasco demanded.

  ‘Something of value.’ I gave him a leer. ‘I hid it in the cistern of her toilet.’ I removed the toilet lid, a nice, heavy piece of porcelain very much like the object I’d used to kill a man in self-defense. That had worked because I’d had the advantage of surprise. Wouldn’t work now.

  I looked into the cistern, expecting to see der Führer glaring up at me. But Hitler was gone.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ I snapped. ‘Someone fucking ripped me off! Well, that’s some bullshit, that was not part of the deal, give it back!’

  I stood with my back to the toilet. Tabasco stood facing me, filling the doorway. I resolutely avoided looking past him and kept my accusatory gaze fixed on him.

  ‘We didn’t take nothing out of your toilet!’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s gone, isn’t it?’

  ‘What the fuck are you even talking about?’

  ‘Hitler,’ I said. ‘You know, funny mustache, crazy eyes? Liked to kill people? Usually in a sneak attack, coming up from behind like a sneak and—’

  And Chante swung the golden Hitler hard, old school, from above, a chopping motion. Gold is soft for a metal, but quite a bit harder than skull. I heard bone crack. Tabasco’s eyes rolled up, his knees bent, and I rushed to catch him before he could complete a noisy fall. He was no lightweight and it was all I could do to slow his collapse and let him rest his face on the toilet seat.

  And there went all my brilliant improvisational grift right down the drain.

  I motioned Chante to remain silent.

  Tabasco was down, but Lisp, Willy and the crooked cop were still muttering in the other room. I searched Tabasco quickly and found his pistol. Which would be great if I were Clint Eastwood entering through saloon doors. But I had little to no confidence in my ability to shoot Lisp, Willy and DeKuyper before they could get me. Or before a random bullet hit Delia.

  The really frustrating thing was that if I succeeded and somehow took down three trained soldiers, I’d have failed: it’s mighty hard to disappear four bodies. Even one is an unholy challenge. Besides, my remit from Delia had not been to cause a shoot-out certain to draw police and press attention and create an international incident exposing Isaac.

  Also: I really didn’t want to kill anyone. I suppose that seems almost quaint in a world where we’re used to action heroes massacring endless st
reams of minions and henchmen. But I’d killed one guy, entirely in self-defense, totally justified, but it had never become OK to me, it had never quite settled down in my brain.

  In seconds Willy would come see what happened to Tabasco. No time. My negotiations, clever as they were, had been blown up by Chante’s unexpected bravery and resourcefulness.

  Amateurs. They always think they’re doing the right thing.

  ‘Now what?’ Chante whispered.

  Now what? Now that all my beautiful bullshit was useless?

  An answer came. It always does. The answer came but it was utterly mad. Mad and stupidly risky. I would be relying on one thing to save me: the fact that Willy Pete, and the Ontario Crew were, as I had once been, professionals.

  ‘Now,’ I said, heart in my throat, ‘we change the narrative. Again,’ I said.

  I walked back out into the living room, knees locked stiff, trembling, a voice in my head screaming, It won’t work, it won’t work.

  The pistol hung at my side. Delia was still tied up but no longer gagged. Willy was turned away, pouring himself a drink. Lisp was at the window, eyeing the street, on the look-out for trouble, unaware that I was the trouble.

  I raised the pistol, saw DeKuyper’s eyes go wide, aimed and squeezed the trigger. The noise in the apartment was stunning. A wine glass on the sideboard shattered. And Sergeant DeKuyper screamed, because I had just blown a bloody hole in her calf.

  DeKuyper roared and thrashed and fell hard on her rear end, an almost comical collapse. She screamed what I have to assume is the Dutch equivalent of, ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

  Lisp spun, so did Willy, and they both had pistols coming into view.

  I dropped my gun to the floor, raised my hands high and yelled, ‘Vermeer!’

  Willy Pete froze. He had his gun out and could shoot me. Would shoot me unless he did the math quickly and correctly.

  Here was the math: if he shot me, no Vermeer and no money. He had not yet run the equation far enough ahead to realize there never was going to be a Vermeer or the money. He’d only calculated far enough ahead to hesitate.