Amsterdam Noir

by René Appel

  Anyway, I didn’t think much about the fairy tale she told me last night until those cops showed up this morning, but since then I can’t get it out of my mind.

  And I can totally see it happening.

  Miriam waiting outside the hospital for her husband’s chippie. Inviting her for a cup of coffee so they can “talk things out.” Driving in Miriam’s mint-green MINI Cooper convertible from North Holland down to Tuindorp Oostzaan, the wind in their hair, it’s actually much too cold to be driving with the top down but Miriam wants to teach the bitch a lesson, she’s wearing a leather jacket and a cap, she’s prepared, she snuck the Mercury Snackbar’s keys out of my pants pocket the day before, when I slipped out of bed to take a dump. Miriam parking the car somewhere on the Meteorenweg, and the two of them strolling to the snack bar, Ed’s cunt grossed out when she sees the Mercury’s grimy windows, This is where you want to go for coffee? The Chink’s already long gone, Miriam knows that because I told her. Fine, so she holds the door open for the bitch, gives her a little wink, they’re in this together, they understand each other, they both know Ed’s a piece of shit and they’ll figure a way to get through this, but the second Miriam locks the door behind them the nightmare begins. Miriam’s thought of everything: the ropes, the bread knife, the chain saw, she switched on the fryer before she headed north so it would be nice and hot by the time they got back, she don’t leave nothing to chance, and meanwhile the cunt’s all shitting bricks and begging Miriam to let her go, but Miriam’s got her chained to the meat hook that’s attached to the kitchen ceiling by then, like a dead pig, like a dog—the Chinks eat dog, don’t they?—her mouth duct-taped, and while the bitch shivers from the cold and the terror, Miriam goes to town, one finger at a time, one toe at a time, the blood dripping into an old-fashioned iron bucket, the cunt turning yellow then gray then finally white and blue and she’s not dead yet, her left shoulder jerks when Miriam slices a chunk of meat from her leg and tosses it into the boiling oil in the fryer—can you imagine watching this happen to you, you know you’re gonna die and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do about it, just hope you’ll pass out soon—but Miriam goes at it for hours, big pieces, torso, thighs, arms, she trims them to size with the chain saw and one by one the hunks of meat and bone and hair and guts and everything all disappear in the boiling oil.

  You understand, I see the situation in a different light, now that the cops have come and gone.

  You’re my sweet revenge. You’re my secret weapon.

  See, Miriam’s always sort of been a mystery to me. A woman like that, a woman of the world, so . . . smart, so well spoken, and beautiful too, even though she’s just past forty, I never met nobody like her in my life. We might have come from different planets. You see where I’m going with this?

  Is it possible the detectives showed up at her door before they came to mine? Like maybe yesterday, so she already knew about the mess in the dumpster before we got together last night? She lives practically right around the corner from the Mercury, she’s a steady customer, I drop off an order of chow mein like two, three times a week. The detectives must know that if they’re halfway decent at their jobs.

  They go around the neighborhood door-to-door asking questions, don’t they?

  Meanwhile, I never once noticed my key to the Mercury was missing, so maybe Miriam made the whole thing up. I mean, maybe she’s gotta fantasize shit like that to keep her frustration from driving her nuts, what do I know? Her husband’s rich, but money don’t make nobody happy. Status, neither. I know that much by now. And her whole story could have come straight out of a bad episode of Midsomer Murders. Mom watches that show every Wednesday night.

  I get it, Miriam wanted the bitch out of her life, but even if she did decide to waste her, even then, she would have just run her down with her MINI, wouldn’t she, or gotten a gun and blew her brains out? Wouldn’t she? I mean, I just don’t see Miriam going to town with a fucking chain saw. I don’t think she’d even know how something like that works.

  I know what you’re thinking: Why don’t you just go ask her? Ask her what’s the real deal and, boom, case closed. But see, here’s the thing: we don’t have that kind of a relationship. I never ask her nothing. I just listen.

  I mean—and I’m not talking about my relationship with the Chink here, that was pretty clear-cut, no surprises—I mean, it sucks the old guy got chopped into mincemeat and all, but that’s the chance you take when you get in with the tongs, he knew the risk—but the idea that I dumped myself into this rich-people’s soap opera, what does that say about me?

  I love Miriam and all, but what about my self-respect? What about my pride?

  Maybe this whole thing’s some kind of a sign. Whatever really happened, my job at the Mercury Snackbar is gone. I am now footloose and fancy-free. I could just hang out for a while, see which way the wind blows. Nothing’s stopping me from trying something completely new, stepping out on my own. Maybe computers? Or I could take over the Mercury and run it myself. Get rid of those shitty plastic stools, put in some decent ventilation, turn it into a hip new takeout place. Snackbar Armin, something like that, everything 100 percent halal. I bet there’s a market for that in Tuindorp Oostzaan, especially if I hire a couple of kids with scooters to make deliveries all over Amsterdam-North. Why not?

  I got all that hush money from the Chink saved up. Plus the tips Miriam always gave me—not just for the chow mein, but after we screwed too, now that I think of it.

  Every cloud has a silver lining, right?

  Am I right?

  On the other hand, there’s no way I’ll ever hook up with a woman like Miriam again, that’s for sure.

  And what we have, that has to be love. I mean, the sex, the way she trusts me . . .

  We’re soul mates, aren’t we?

  I mean, aren’t we?

  This story was inspired by an actual Amsterdam murder case.

  PART III

  TOUCH OF EVIL

  DEVIL’S ISLAND

  by Mensje van Keulen

  Duivelseiland

  Amsterdam has changed so much since smoking was banned from bars, restaurants, and public spaces. Walk, bike, drive, or take the tram or bus across the city and you’ll see knots of people out on the sidewalks, clouds of smoke billowing above their heads. Cold weather, heavy wind, gloomy surroundings, the blare of traffic—nothing seems to bother them, especially not when a bunch of them are clustered together. I guess misery does love company, after all.

  I am mildly asthmatic, so not a smoker, but after Jacob—who’s one of my oldest pals—was deserted by his girlfriend for a stage director, I’ve sometimes found myself part of such a group. See, it turned out not to be such a great idea to have Jacob over to my place to unburden himself of his woes: the walls of my apartment are thin, and the later it got the louder he wailed . . . not to mention what his damn chain-smoking did to my air. Going out on the town with him wasn’t an ideal solution either, because I have to get up early for my job, but I couldn’t just tell the poor schmuck to deal with it, because, I mean, he was truly hurting.

  The last time he turned up at my door was three days ago. I was exhausted, and I’d just fished a package of soup out of the freezer—comfort food, right?—when the bell rang and there he was, unshaven, face pale as a ghost. When I asked him if he’d eaten, he told me food was the last thing on his mind, and I stashed my soup back where it had come from.

  “Let’s go,” I said, pulling on a jacket and leading him outside.

  “Thirst never sleeps,” he muttered.

  “Hey, we’re not gonna spend the whole night drinking. I’ve woken up with enough hangovers, thanks to you.”

  “Pain never sleeps either, but you’re better off with an aching head than a rat gnawing at your heart.”

  “You’ll get over it, Jake.”

  “You say that every time I see you, but the rat just keeps on gnawing.”

  I wanted to tell him that accusing me of repeating myself
was a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black, but I was afraid that’d result in more screaming about how nobody understood him, and he couldn’t live without Martha, and he was so lonely, and he wished he was dead—or, like we’d been through two weeks before, him collapsing to the ground and weeping like a little baby.

  “Come on, let’s go find something to eat,” I said, steering him by the elbow. “And a beer,” I added quickly, before he could begin to protest.

  We turned into the Pieter Baststraat and passed a storefront that had the name of our little neighborhood lettered on its plateglass window.

  “Devil’s Island,” Jacob growled. “If only. I wish the devil really existed, I’d pay him a little visit, right this second. Sure, fine, go ahead and laugh. But I mean it: I’d sell him my soul if he’d make Martha come back to me.” He scoped out the storefront a second time. “What is this place, anyway? Another barbershop? Do we really need more barbers? How often do people have to get their hair cut?”

  At that, he bent his head mournfully, but before he could start in on how Martha always used to cut his hair for him, I told him he was overdue for a hearty dinner.

  “Booze,” he said, and then, as we passed the cigar store on the corner—a prime location, right across from Café Loetje—“booze and a smoke.”

  * * *

  I pushed him through the door into Loetje, which has evolved over the years from a small café with billiards to a restaurant three times its original size—though sometimes you still have to wait an hour or more for a table. They were full that night, not even a couple of stools at the bar, but one of the servers recognized me and gestured it’d only be half an hour or so before we’d hit the top of the list.

  A minute later, we were back on the sidewalk, each with a glass of beer, surrounded by half a dozen smokers—mostly thirtysomethings and fortysomethings—who I figured for realtors or some other well-paid professionals. Two of them were women, having a girls’ night out. Jacob gulped his brewski, alternating swallows with deep drags on a cigarette. Across the street, the Old Catholic Church loomed, swathed in darkness.

  “Got a match?” came a voice from beside me.

  I turned to say I don’t smoke but realized the guy was talking to Jacob, not me. He held a cigarillo between slender fingers.

  “Sure,” said Jacob, reaching for his lighter. It took him three or four tries to produce a flame.

  “Much obliged, friend,” said the man.

  That friend seemed a little presumptuous, but Jacob smiled.

  “These things taste better when lit with a wooden match,” the man said, exhaling smoke in the direction of the church. “But who carries those old-fashioned lucifers around in their pocket these days? I love the smell of them, though, that momentary blast of sulfur. Would you like to try one of mine?”

  “Thanks,” said Jacob, and he lit the proffered cigarillo with the stub of his cigarette.

  I hadn’t heard a polite word out of Jacob in quite some time—and spoken to a stranger, no less. I took a closer look at the man. He was not unattractive, with black hair slicked back to just below the collar of his obviously expensive jacket. All things considered, I would call him a rather elegant fellow.

  “May I pose a question?” The stranger’s gaze flicked from Jacob to me to the other smokers. “Did any of you happen to know a gentleman who lived in this neighborhood, a certain Van der Meer?”

  “Van der Meer,” said a smoker who had overconfidently left his jacket inside. “You mean the professor?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Don’t waste your time looking for him: he’s dead.”

  The man nodded. “A heart attack, I know. Does his widow ever patronize this establishment?”

  “Yolande?” said one of the women. “No, I haven’t seen her since he passed. When they used to eat here, I always looked the other way, and not just because he ordered his steak so rare the blood dripped all over his chin.”

  “Gross,” said her girlfriend.

  “I took a class from him once, and he was what you call a real skirt-chaser, totally annoying. I think she was one of his students—she was at least twenty years younger than him, maybe thirty.”

  The man nodded again, and this time blew a perfect smoke ring that drifted lazily skyward.

  “When he was out here smoking,” the woman went on, “I made sure to keep my distance. But I think he finally quit. The last few times I saw them here, he stayed inside. I’ll tell you, he seemed crankier about it every time.”

  “They lived in a big house up the street, right where the Museum District begins,” said one of the men, grinding out a cigarette with his shoe. “It came on the market three days ago, and somebody bought it without even asking to see the inside. No surprise, really: this neighborhood’s red-hot.”

  Two names were called, and most of the smokers took one last puff, stubbed out their cigarettes in the standing ashtray, and headed into Loetje.

  The few who remained moved closer to the door and went on talking, which left Jacob and me alone with the stranger.

  “I bought that house,” he said calmly. “I’ve been looking for a suitable home in the city for some time. I don’t care for hotels, I’d much rather have a place of my own.”

  “Jeez,” said Jacob, and I thought I heard a note of admiration in his voice.

  “You bought a house without checking out the inside?” I said. “That seems a little risky.”

  “Oh, I know the place well—I paid a call there not long ago. It’s quite lovely, and there’s a marvelous art collection on the walls.”

  “I assume the art doesn’t go with the property. Or are you some kind of dealer or collector?”

  “Both,” he said with a smile. “Which is why I spend so much time traveling. When I finish my business here, I’ll return to my country house outside Seville. I may stop off in Paris, I have a little pied-à-terre on the Place Vendôme.”

  He exhaled a plume of smoke that came straight at me and sent me into a fit of coughing.

  “Please forgive my filthy habit,” he said. “I forget that others might not appreciate the bouquet of fine tobacco as much as I do. Van der Meer ultimately had a problem with it too, which is why he had to give up smoking. Of course, that wasn’t his only problem.”

  “You mean his wife?” Jacob guessed.

  “In a way. She was, as you heard a few moments ago, quite a bit younger than he. At first, that was precisely what attracted Van der Meer to her, but their situation changed as he got older, and for the last few years it had all become—how shall I say it?—rather disastrous.”

  “What do you mean, their situation changed?” asked Jacob. “She didn’t stop being younger than him.”

  “Yes, but that was the point, you see. He began to blame her for making him feel like an old man.”

  “Sounds like she’s better off without him.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say better off.” The man grinned, and—unlike Jacob, who had unbuttoned his jacket—I suddenly felt a chill.

  “Explain that,” I said.

  The stranger flicked the stub of his cigarillo over the bike rack and into the darkness. “Well, I was sitting in a café, she happened to be sitting alone at the next table. She accidentally spilled her drink, I handed her a napkin, and—I don’t know why, but I seem to attract people with a need to get things off their chests. Or perhaps I’m attracted to them. In any case, she told me her story. The bottom line was that her husband was a sadist who was making her life hell. There was no way he would agree to a divorce, and she couldn’t possibly leave him, because she had nowhere else to go and she couldn’t support herself on her own—she was a French tutor, and not many children seem to select that language these days. How, she asked me, could she ever get free of him? Well, a nasty old man with a weak heart, the world certainly wouldn’t be any worse off without him.”

  “Are you saying you offered to murder him?” asked Jacob eagerly.

  “That’s
a strong word, friend. I wouldn’t call it murder to send a man on his way without ever laying a finger on him. I asked her about his weaknesses, and she mentioned something I thought I could use.”

  “And that was?”

  “Religion.” The man took a fresh cigarillo from his inside pocket and waved it at the church. “Van der Meer was a devout atheist who seethed at the sight or sound of anything remotely pious. I immediately devised what seemed to me an appropriate plan, and I presented it to her. Might I trouble you again for a light, friend? And here, have another yourself.”

  The man laid a hand on Jacob’s wrist. Neither of them paid me the slightest attention.

  “That very evening, I appeared at their door. She admitted me, as prearranged. That in itself infuriated Van der Meer, the idea that she would permit a stranger to invade his sanctum. I informed him, quite humbly, that I was there to return a book. ‘A book?’ he said. ‘I never loan out my books.’ ‘I didn’t borrow it,’ I said, ‘I found it lying beside your trash can.’ I extended it to him, and he cried out in horror: ‘A Bible? What makes you think that belongs to me? I’ve never owned a Bible in my life!’ ‘That’s very strange,’ said I, ‘for your name is inscribed in it.’ His face turned bright red, and he shrieked, ‘Take it away! Remove that wretched volume from my sight!’ I said, ‘The seven plagues of Egypt will afflict you, brother, if you insult God’s word in such a detestable manner.’ He cursed at me and screamed, ‘Get out, you vile liar! Get out!’ I stood before him, opened the book, and showed him his name. And that was the coup de grâce. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, he shook uncontrollably, and he collapsed to the ground, stone dead. But let me tell you what happened next: his widow began to dance. She was now a wealthy woman, she exulted. She would sell the house, it would surely bring at least two million euros, she would travel to sunny climes, indulge herself in cruises, I can’t remember the full shopping list. I began to feel pity for the corpse. After this tasteless exhibition, she telephoned for an ambulance, her voice trembling, and—without so much as a thank you—showed me to the door.”