by Lex Lander
‘You figure it out, sweetheart.’ I turned to go.
‘Bastard!’ she yelled after me.
Honouring my side of the bargain was the easy part. Petit supplied the hardware, a huge Ruger Speed Six. It made an impressive bulge under my armpit. All that was required of me was to sit in a corner, visible yet remote, exuding menace. Amazingly, it worked. The representatives of the Marseilles underworld were on their best behaviour.
‘Not a single tantrum,’ Petit remarked afterwards. ‘It’s strange, don’t you think, how the killer instinct stamps itself on a man? It forms an aura around him that is impossible to camouflage.’
That was worrying. ‘Thank God you’re not a cop, Petit.’
‘I also thank God for that.’ He tittered. ‘Well, perhaps not God.’
It was after three in the morning when he shoved his papers back in his brief case. We were overnighting in Fontainebleau, at the same hotel where the meetings had been held. The place was asleep as we rode the elevator together to the fifth floor. Our rooms were next door to each other, by chance not out of chumminess.
‘Now we’re even, Warner,’ he said, slotting the keycard in his door. ‘Don’t come looking for any more favours. In fact, don’t come at all. Even better, stay away from Paris.’
Threats, especially needless ones, bring out my mean streak.
‘Where I go is my business,’ I said pleasantly, ‘and you and your cowboys better keep out of my way.’
His mouth set in a lipless slit, and he stepped into his room.
‘Wait,’ I said, holding the door open. I removed my jacket, wriggled out of the underarm holster and handed it to Petit, complete with gun. ‘You might have a use for it. I have been known to walk in my sleep.’
I let myself in my room. To the best of my knowledge, I passed the night without sleepwalking.
Twelve hours later I was in Amsterdam.
Twenty-Nine
No. 2 Korte Hoekssteeg, off Zeedijk. A black steel door, crisscrossed with rivet studs, it might have been cut from the hull of a Cunard liner. A plaque screwed to the wall beside it declared it to be the registered office of AnnRik International. The “Rik” as in de Bruin, presumably.
No door handle, no bell, no letter flap. Just a thin slot in the steel door jamb. Casual callers not encouraged. Jean-Guy Magnol had warned me there would be difficulties, and I couldn’t accuse him of overstatement. This was not going to be a routine break-and-enter. The windows were of reflective glass and heavily barred on first and second floor levels. At the very top of the house, in the centre of a semi-circular gable-end, had once been a much smaller window, but this was bricked up.
No entry via the adjoining house either, a brothel, reputedly owned by de Bruin. I couldn’t envisage the occupants allowing me free passage for the purpose of sledgehammering a hole through into the house of a neighbour who also happened to be their landlord. Which left only the rear of the building. This was equally inaccessible without blasting materials. Although a shared passageway served the rears of 2 and 4, it was barred by yet another steel door. I was developing a rare old complex about steel doors.
I had spent the whole of Sunday morning casing the block. Down the high bank of the canal, the unpronounceable Oudezijds Achterburgwal, left into Boomsteeg, a short road running parallel to Korte Hoekssteeg, left again into Zeedijk, where I was solicited by a drug-hazed faggot in a caftan. I shook him off and he crumpled up on the sidewalk, just another piece of human wreckage.
By mid-day I had come to the conclusion that No. 2 Korte Hoekssteeg was unstormable, and that only by subterfuge was I ever going to see the inside of it. It was beginning to snow, and I was feeling thirsty, so I abandoned my research and went to seek sustenance.
In the Nieuw Markt, which is where the Zeedijk starts, I stumbled on a grubby little “brown café”, the approximate Dutch equivalent of an English pub, except that these cafés serve drugs with the Government’s blessing. The “brown” comes from the preponderance of dark wood and smoke-stained walls. This one also served coffee in lipstick-smeared cups. A specialty of the house most likely. The other customers looked healthy enough, so I drank it anyway. Incredibly, it was delicious.
Thus refreshed, I spread Magnol’s rough floor plan of No. 2 Korte Hoekssteeg on the greasy laminated table top. The first floor was unequally sectioned into four: entrance hall with stairs off, a thirty-seat viewing room, a projector cubicle, and a cutting room (the last two both defunct since the advent of video and DVD). Upstairs were a conference room, a secretary’s office, and the executive offices.
This left the top floor, which was done up as a luxury apartment, and the basement which Magnol suspected to be a staging post of some kind for girls in transit.
‘No movies are produced in Korte Hoekssteeg,’ he had gone on to explain. ‘For that they use some place in the north of the country, close to Harlingen. I never went there. I was never invited.’
‘Would that be their centre of operations?’ I had asked. But he replied with a Gallic handspread, unable or unwilling to conjecture.
My scrutiny of the increasingly dog-eared and now grease-stained floor plan brought me no nearer to gaining entry. In any case, I wasn’t yet ready. My armoury was tucked away in Spijk & Co’s Amsterdam warehouse away on the north side of the Ij, the great river that divides the city. Nothing was doing there until Monday. Even gun runners are entitled to a day of rest, I suppose.
As a change from taxis I went by tram from the Central Station back to my hotel, there to fritter away the hours hunched over a succession of vodkas, fruitlessly planning my offensive. The imponderables were too many and too great for any set piece moves. When the crunch came I would be guided by reflex and driven by instinct. Hit first, hit hard, and keep moving.
Simple. Or simplistic?
It was still snowing, and the snow trucks were out spreading grit when I went to bed with half-a-dozen measures of vodka sloshing about in my gut. And never more sober in my life.
On Monday I acquired the tools for the job. I rented a Porsche Boxster, capable, the Avis clerk assured me, of over 250 kph. I hoped I wouldn’t need all them.
I was at Spijk & Co’s warehouse by eleven o’clock to collect my package. Jannie Spijk, son of Julius, the owner, attended to me, charging an exorbitant “handling fee” of eight hundred euros in any hard currency. I paid, without protest, in pounds sterling, converted at a rate that I wasn’t in a position to dispute. Still I made no fuss. Merely stored his name and his physiognomy in my memory box as someone to avoid in future.
In the car, with the heater at full throttle, I unpacked and loaded both guns, and wriggled into the Horseshoe rig. The Ithaca shotgun I consigned to the trunk for now. When the time came I would conceal it inside my parka. Having no buttstock it was only about three feet long, and scarcely bulkier than a rolled umbrella.
The Porsche skating a little in the slush, I headed out of the dock area and crossed back into central Amsterdam by the Ij-Tunnel. Back to my hotel, to await the coming of night. Like all those who walk a lawless path, I was more at ease in darkness.
With nightfall the snow, which had petered out, began again in earnest. I drove to Korte Hoekssteeg and parked the car just around the corner, in Zeedijk itself. It was a risk. Theft, I had been told, was second nature to Zeedijk-dwellers. But I had to have transport on hand.
Opposite No. 2 was a former tenement that appeared to have been converted into offices. Came six o’clock most of the lights in the building had been extinguished, and I felt safe in taking up my vigil in its doorway. By hugging the wall of the shallow recess nearest to the street lamp, I was in shadow. Just as well. I was barely installed when a red Rolls-Royce with a snow-topped roof pulled up outside the de Bruin building and disgorged two men and a blonde woman onto the sidewalk. It was too soon, too sudden, for me to exploit the situation. While I still hesitated, the door opened, creating an oblong of white fluorescent light in the dark wall. I had an impression of white pai
ntwork, then the door swung shut and the sidewalk was empty again, the Roller heading off for pastures new. I drew the Ithaca out through the neck of my parka, pumped a round into the breech, locked the safety catch. Tucked it into my armpit where I could bring it swiftly into action. When the next opportunity came, I would be ready to act.
The snowfall thickened, descending at a slant as the wind rose, moaning softly like a ghost on the prowl. The temperature sank and mine with it. I beat a tattoo with my feet on the doorstep and imagined those unending, hot summer days in Andorra when the earth had seemed to pant for rain, and the sky was a vast parabola of sunlight.
Imagined, too, Lizzy, as she had been then, not as she was now. Lizzy who was joy and sadness, pleasure and pain. Her face, her laughter, her big heart, and most of all her love. And my love for her, whatever its true from, whether or not it be good and right and selfless, burned on as brightly as ever.
Footsteps. High-heeled and accompanied by feminine chatter. I pressed against the wall, turned my face sideways inside the hood of my parka. The heels tapped past, slightly deadened by the snow, the conversation running on without break. Even as it faded, a car, on sidelights only, edged into the street. It came alongside, moving at a walking pace. I braced myself, willing it to stop. But it accelerated and shot past on hissing tyres, leaving wet tracks. Another car entered the opposite end of the street. A taxi, unmistakably diesel powered. Korte Hoekssteeg was certainly popular.
The taxi came to a slithering standstill midway between Nos. 2 and 4. Trade for the brothel? A hatted figure emerged, fumbling money from a hip pocket.
‘Bedankt, mynheer,’ indistinctly from the cabbie.
His fare stepped back and with cautious tread – he had a stick and a limp – made for No 2. I started out of the doorway as the cab trundled forward, headlights slicing through the whirling snowflakes.
The limping man was at the door. Crossing the road at a trot, I passed through the cab’s lingering exhaust smoke. The cab itself swung into the Zeedijk, and the noise of its engine faded. The door of No. 2 was opening, and that oblong of white light fell on the limping man. He reached for the top of the plastic card protruding from the slot in the jamb, but my reach was faster than his.
‘Vat … ?’ He half-turned, then froze when I screwed the shotgun’s muzzle into his ear.
‘Keep right on going, friend.’ For good measure, in case he didn’t understand English, I threw in a healthy shove. He stumbled inside. I followed, pocketing the card.
‘If you wanting money, I give …’
‘Shut up.’
Behind us the door whispered shut. The latest in security technology, yet still subject to human fallibility, as I had just proved. The limping man sagged against the wall, his frame slack, his jowly, overstuffed face frozen in terror.
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ I told him, ‘but unless you do exactly as I say, you’ll never walk again. With or without a stick. Savvy?’
I was taking his understanding of English for granted. After all, he was presumably Dutch.
‘Ja … ja.’ He dribbled down his scarf.
‘How many people do you think there are in this building?’
‘I … I am not certain.’ I rammed the gun tight under the bottom-most of his flabby chins. He almost keeled over in fright. ‘Twelve … I don’t know … fifteen, maybe.’ His voice quavered. ‘Tonight is a private film showing.’
‘Is de Bruin here?’
‘De Bruin? I cannot say this. Normally he will be here. And Annika, of course.’
‘Annika? Who’s she?’
‘His wife,’ he said, sounding surprised that I needed to ask.
I had no quarrel with her. I had no quarrel with anyone other than Rik de Bruin. Unless they got under my feet.
‘I’m going to have to hit you.’
His chins shook. ‘No, please … I can help you.’
‘Sorry, friend.’ I manoeuvred him round until he was kissing wall, and sapped him behind the ear with the butt of the Korth revolver. As he crumpled up I dealt him a second tap, on the temple. Now he was out twice.
With the floor plan in my mind’s eye, I lugged the comatose form into what used to be the cutting room. The light switch was in the usual place. I flicked it in passing, and dumped the unconscious man next to a line of fireproof cabinets. These, a portable movie screen, and a slim steel-topped table were the only pieces of furniture. On the table was a conventional splicing machine and some obsolete VHS equipment, all covered in a healthy layer of dust. I went back out to the hall to retrieve the man’s hat and stick. As I gathered them up, I heard a metallic click from the front entrance. More visitors? I flung the hat and stick into the cutting room, and myself after them. Chest heaving, I flattened against the inside of the door while several pairs of feet filed past. A close call.
While waiting for the new arrivals to disperse I took in more detail of the cutting room. The wall to my right was external. Through the barred window I could see the street lamp and the office tenement that had sheltered me. The internal walls behind and opposite were bare, that on the left hung with full-length heavy green drapes, which immediately chimed a wrong note with me. Why conceal, embellish, or what-have-you a presumably blank wall? Answer: because it isn’t blank.
Mildly intrigued, I located the drawstring, hauled away at the cord, exposing nine-tenths of the wall which, from waist height upwards was no more than a sheet of plate glass separating the cutting room from what I knew to be the viewing room. And the room was in use, a dozen or so people being draped about the double row of seats before a wide screen set in the wall.
I reared back and ducked below the window level, clawing the Ithaca off the table top where I had left it. My heart was thudding like a bongo drum. Any second the door would burst open, and it would be all up with me.
The expected bursting-in never happened. Yet I had no doubt that I had been seen. Shit, I had looked some of them in the eye.
As the minutes crawled by and the sweat cooled on my skin, it came to me that nobody was going to come gunning for me. Inexplicably, my appearance had not prompted a hue and cry. I chanced a peek over the metal window surround. A blonde woman was pacing up and down the aisle. Apart from that, the attitude and disposition of the occupants was as before. I raised my head warily, then with confidence. No reaction.
Relief wrenched a ragged laugh from me. The “window” was one-way only: from the other side it was a mirror. Unnerving though it was to stand in apparent full view of those people, all they could see was their own reflections.
The purpose of this device wasn’t hard to figure. The rich and famous would be invited to a viewing of the latest kiddy porn release, to be filmed ogling it. It was just a clever variation on that tried and tested racket – blackmail. You had to hand it to de Bruin, he had his snout in some profitable troughs. Child porn and blackmail, two of the slimiest pots of gold imaginable. The more I learned about him, the less I grew to love him. And King Scum himself was in attendance sure enough. His back was to me, but the close-cropped woolly hair and the seam-splitting shoulders were unmistakable.
The blonde woman intrigued me. As she walked, hands mannishly on hips, she talked, her lips moving with rapid-fire speech. I had a feeling she was giving her audience a going over. Was this Annika de Bruin? She was about de Bruin’s age, and the only other woman present was a generation older. Glamorous but hard as titanium was my snap assessment of Mrs de Bruin. A wide mouth is supposed to equate with generosity, but hers had the look of a man-swallowing trap door. A flawless figure though: breasts prominent and well-defined by the clinging, high-collared dress; waist sensationally slim, hips curving away from it with just the right degree of convexity. The leg show was modest yet promised much – shapely calves that tapered to neat ankles. In different circumstances I might even have fancied her.
The lecture ended abruptly. Annika de Bruin (if that’s who she was) parked her very presentable backside across the aisle from hubby
, and shot him a grin that I can only describe as predatory. Then the screen came alive.
From behind the window I viewed the opening scenes in a trance-like state. Though the girl playing the lead wasn’t Lizzy, thank God, she was younger by several years. Scrawny, somehow shrunken, a child grown old before her time. For her energy, for her passion, be it spurious or otherwise, she deserved admiration. For the rest, only pity.
‘You’re the worst kind of scum!’ a German cop had once snarled at me.
Maybe he had had a point. Certainly I broke laws and commandments, took lives, albeit not without discrimination. But the exhibition now before me, these were the scum of the scum: the male participants, and the faceless people behind them, the cameramen, the director, the distributor, and above all the creators, the moguls who put up the money to make it happen. They deserved to die – slowly and in extreme agony.
Inside me it was as if something broke. The professional rule book that I had followed thus far was tossed away. I backed away from the mirror-window. Emotions too forceful to resist directed my finger on the trigger to put a shot though the expanse of glass. In the tiny room the blast robbed me of hearing for a few moments, so that the window seemed to shatter in absolute silence. Then my ears popped, and the ensuing uproar reached me. Faces, white faces with pink screaming mouths, made ugly by terror. People running, scrambling for safety, or simply prostrate and scrabbling at the floor as if trying to burrow into it.
The lights went out in both rooms. Cursing, I fired again, blindly, and a fang of flame momentarily illuminated the scene. A body crashed to the floor. A pistol cracked in response, the bullet flitting past overhead. In the dark my heavier firepower was no longer a real advantage. Time to leave. Skating on broken glass, I groped my way towards the door. More pot-shots from the viewing room made me twitch but it was haphazard stuff, and nothing came near me.
Into the entrance hall, blundering, hand raised to protect my face. Nobody emerged on my side of the viewing room, not even Rik de Bruin. I felt the wall and groped towards where I thought the door was. The darkness was a real handicap though, since I was unsure how to open the electronic lock from the inside. To my relief it proved to be nothing more intricate than a hand grip with an integral trigger. No cards, no codes. I was out in a beat. Still no pursuit from the denizens of no. 2 Korte Hoeksteeg. It wouldn’t be long though, before the sirens began to bray. You can’t let off guns in a city downtown, and expect no one to notice. Even if the police are paid to hear no evil.
