My name at the moment is David Mitre.
Long ago I was named Martin DeKuyper – no relation to the people who bottle Blue Curacao. Young Martin DeK went down a dark path of lies and fraud and theft and more lies. Martin got into serious trouble of the burglary-of-a-business variety, was arrested and jumped bail. I became, and I remain, nineteen, almost twenty years later, a fugitive from justice.
Once you’ve made the decision to jump bail, you’re going to need fake ID. It’s easy enough to buy excellent drivers’ licenses online and I have a few, but if you want an ID that will pass muster at Customs and Immigration, and get you past the facial recognition stuff they’re bringing online, you need to go all-in and build an identity from the ground up. I have several such ground-up identities – David Mitre being one – and other shallower identities that are just drivers’ licenses and credit cards.
Under various names I currently have four Netflix subscriptions, four Amazon accounts, two iTunes accounts, two each of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Guardian, and other bits and bobs of subscriptions, all as a way of keeping my aliases’ credit cards active. A small price to pay. And I have five quite genuine passports: three American, one Canadian and a rather less impressive though equally real passport from Peru. Peru, though; well, that’s the kind of passport that makes border patrol agents roll their eyes because it’s available to anyone with a fat enough bank account.
I am at age forty-two a (retired) thief and grifter, and currently an author. If that seems an unlikely collection of occupations, consider that a grifter is by definition a storyteller. Grifting, writing, pretty much the same thing, only there are no unkind Goodreads or Amazon comments sections for criminals. Prison, sure, but no snotty one-star reviews from people who won’t stop telling you how much better a writer Tana French is.
I’d been in Amsterdam for a few days, occupying an AirBnB at the corner of Kalverstraat and the Singel, from which I had a straight-on view of the Munttoren, the rather ordinary red-brick clock tower, and a sidelong glimpse of the flower market where tourists bought suitcases full of tulip bulbs they could buy online for half the price.
Within a few hundred feet of my apartment were a number of decent restaurants and cafés and coffee shops of the sort that serve coffee but not primarily coffee. There were also a number of bookstores including the impressive American Book Center, and a surprisingly large and well-stocked Waterstones where I was due to speak on an author panel in nine days.
The apartment was on the fourth floor (or third if you’re European) of a triangular building that had previously been a hotel. It had three bedrooms and was large by Amsterdam standards, with a beautifully updated interior that was all sleek hardwoods and stainless steel and marble. I had the master bedroom with its queen bed and mini-balcony overlooking the canal, and the upgraded but still cramped en suite bathroom. One bedroom was unoccupied. The remaining bedroom, with its own en suite, housed Chante Mokrani, my personal assistant.
Chante – no exact idea of her age, so let’s say twenty-three-ish – was an appendage I had picked up while in Cyprus where an FBI legat from the Rome embassy dragged me into a matter involving child sex trafficking, money-laundering, corrupt cops and mediocre beer. Chante – pronounced ‘shont’ – was French by way of Algeria, and in no particular order a rather good cook, a lesbian, a literary snob who sneered at my work, and a suspicious, ungenerous, demanding, insolent pain in the ass.
My personal assistant: Chante the Unhelpful.
As I battled the keys to the apartment door, she opened it. Not a large woman, Chante, quite small actually though she punches above her weight. She had vaguely punkish black hair and dark, suspicious eyes that never quite looked at me, but seemed always to be interested in something happening just behind me. She was pretty in a hostile/gamine sort of way, like a darker-complected Zooey Deschanel maybe, if Deschanel were fueled by spite and resentment and marinated in Gallic insuperability.
Chante took in my wet, disheveled, half-shoeless condition and said, ‘If you track mud on the floor I will not clean it.’
‘It never occurred to me that you would.’
‘Is it raining?’ she asked as I brushed past her, making big, wet, mismatched footprints on the hardwood floor.
‘No, someone tried to murder me,’ I said, expecting this news to throw her off-stride.
‘What did you do?’
‘What did I do? What did I do?’ I spun to face her and tried out my moral outrage using both points of emphasis, but she was unmoved. ‘Some asshole dropped a noose on me and hauled me into the Prinsengracht.’
I made a point of saying Prinsengracht (Prince-’n-chghkgraaakhght) because as bad as my Dutch pronunciation was, Chante’s was worse.
‘You will need to send your clothing to the cleaners. I have several things to go as well, I will put them in a bag and leave it by the door for you to take tomorrow.’
Me? Me? I’m doing a laundry run? Me? The guy paying your salary? The guy paying the rent? Listen here, honey, I am the semi-famous, semi-successful author, you are my assistant, not the other way around. You take the stuff to the cleaners, I don’t do your laundry, you annoying troll. I didn’t actually say any of that out loud.
What I did say was, ‘I’m getting a drink.’
‘I’ll take one as well.’
Because now I was her launderer and bartender. I was outraged, but there’s something about standing in wet clothing and a single Ferragamo loafer that makes it hard to strut around issuing pronouncements.
I kicked off my remaining shoe, retrieved my bottle of Talisker 10, poured myself two fingers if you were using gorilla fingers, and a bare, resentful shot for Chante.
‘Your date, it did not go well?’ Chante asked.
‘Nonsense, I like being dragged away by the neck and dipped like a fucking teabag in the shadow of the Anne Frank house.’
She wanted more detail, but she’d be damned if she’d show interest in me or my activities. ‘Police will come,’ she warned.
‘Let them,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I hope they catch the crazy bastard.’
I managed this with some bravado, but I pulled out my main phone – turned out the new iPhone really was waterproof – and texted Tess.
Hey, I’m fine, went home to sleep it off. Sorry to ruin the party. Seems my sleeve caught on a spike on the bottom of the bridge. It’d be funny if it weren’t so embarrassing.
I wanted to add, don’t call the police, but it was possible that she hadn’t and if I made a point of telling her not to, she just might.
I had changed out of my wet things and slipped into sweatpants and a hoodie when she texted back.
Tess: Are you all right?
Me: Sleepy, embarrassed and a little drunk.
Tess: Poor baby. Want some company?
Me: Nah, you play with your friends. Night.
And lose my number, lady, I don’t appreciate being used. I didn’t text that. Instead I did the cowardly thing and blocked her number. She was leaving town in a few days, joining a long list of women I’d disappointed and/or outraged.
I would most likely have survived the minimal scrutiny cops give a victim – and, astonishing thought: I actually was the victim, there’s a first time for everything – but a man in my position seeks to minimize conversations with people who hold arrest power.
I’ve been retired from crime these last ten years, give or take. It’s nice being able to retire in your thirties. It’s a luxury that few criminals ever achieve unless you think San Quentin is a Spanish-themed retirement home. The decision to leave the grifting life came as a result of a realization, and an event. The realization was that the game of cops and robbers was not a game of fox vs. hounds, but rather a game of tightrope walker vs. ground: sooner or later you’re going to slip, and the ground is always there. It’s a fact of life, any crook not working in banking or politics gets caught, so the only way to win is to cash in your chips, disappear and find another career.
The incident, the thing that finally pushed me out of the criminal life was, well … A guy shot himself. Because of me. I didn’t pull the trigger, but … Yes, I tend to get a bit elliptical when I think back on that.
I went back into the living room in search of more whiskey and Chante said, ‘Must we leave Amsterdam now?’
‘No! Why?’
She produced one of the many shrugs in the French shrug armory and said, ‘We had to leave Cyprus …’
‘That was different,’ I snapped. ‘I have things I have to do here. I have a panel!’
‘Pfff!’
‘That’s not the only reason,’ I said defensively, because I couldn’t stand the idea of Chante thinking I took things like author panels seriously.
That cocked her eyebrow.
‘I also have an obligation to a guy.’
Cocked eyebrow remained so.
‘It’s a bit of a story, actually.’ I hesitated going ahead, Chante’s interest in my life being roughly the same as my interest in particle physics. But she hadn’t sneered yet and if I were to pretend that my assistant might actually assist me at some point it would make sense if she knew what was going on.
‘Like twelve years ago, give or take, I was in Portugal hanging out with this woman—’
‘A rich woman?’
‘Of course a rich woman. Why would I be running a con on a woman who wasn’t rich? Unfortunately she turned out to have some issues. For one thing she was rather fond of heroin.’
‘I will pour you more alcohol while you tell me how you despise drug addicts.’
‘I don’t despise … well, I kind of did, but live and let live. It was an issue but also helpful because, man, when a junkie passes out, they pass all the way out. I could have dynamited her safe and she wouldn’t have woken up. But that was not the real issue.’
‘No?’ she asked an invisible person just behind and to my right.
‘No, the thing was she had Hollywood connections and wanted me to accompany her to a movie opening, I assume because I look good in a tux. But walking the red carpet in front of half the cameras in LA is not something the intelligent fugitive does.’
She wanted to make a crack about the insinuation that I was ‘intelligent’, I could see it in her eyes, but she held her fire, possibly because she was just waiting for a better opening.
‘So I did something a bit stupid—’
‘No!’
And there was the better opportunity.
‘Cute,’ I said. ‘I emptied her safe but I hadn’t yet found a hook-up – a fence.’ I was at the refrigerator now, suddenly ravenous. Some ham looked promising. ‘So I find this name on the Dark Web and I go see this guy who uses a rare books shop as a front. We do some business, we have some lunch at a local tasca, we get back to his shop and the fucking Polícia Judiciária have already popped Azevedo’s – that’s the guy’s name – safe. Some detective is literally holding my loot in his hand.’
‘Your loot.’
I pretended not to hear that bit of snark. ‘At which point Azevedo could have said, “Hey, boys, that stuff belongs to this American, I was just getting ready to call you.” Instead he did the honorable thing and ended up catching two years while I walked.’
‘Honor among thieves?’
‘I live by a code.’ I said that just to provoke her. She let the baited hook glide by. ‘So last week when we were in Tbilisi he reached out to me and we had a little Skype.’
We’d gone from Cyprus to Tbilisi prior to Amsterdam to confuse the trail. Lovely city, impossible language, not great food. None of which is relevant.
‘Long story short, Azevedo has a nineteen-year-old daughter named Madalena who he says is mixed up with some dude here in Amsterdam. Named Milan Smit. He wants me to check on her.’
‘So? Have you?’
‘I have to find her first. She’s gone off-grid. I wanted to settle in for a few days before—’
‘We have been here for almost a week.’
‘A few days, a week, Jesus, now you’re nagging me? What do you care?’
That ended our little tête-à-tête. Besides, I had thinking to do, so I took the Talisker and repaired to my bed and there, alone in the dark, I asked myself the big question: why was someone trying to kill me? Me? Granted I was not a candidate for sainthood, but in the great Pez dispenser of people who needed killin’ I was nowhere near the top. How did I deserve to be killed while Harvey Weinstein, Bashar Assad and Boris Johnson still lived?
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.