‘I want to be absolutely straight with the two of you.’
Madalena Azevedo, Milan Smit and I were crammed together into the bathroom of their room at the Amrath hotel.
Why the bathroom? Because it was not near a window, and I had made sure that none of us was carrying, holding or wearing any device capable of recording, and because with the shower running the water would confound any listening device.
Paranoid? My guy Ian had eaten a stiletto. The Dutch forensics people were probably still examining his body.
I leaned against one wall, uncomfortable with a towel rack in my back. Madalena sat on the (closed) toilet seat. Milan was against the closed door.
‘What is it you wish of us?’ Madalena asked. Her English improved when she wasn’t furiously cursing me.
I shook my head. ‘I’m not going to give you the big picture because then you’d be culpable.’ Puzzled looks. ‘Then you would know what was going on which would mean you could be charged with being part of something worse than simply following orders I was paying you to follow. Understand?’
Slow nods. Milan’s eyes narrowed.
‘Paying?’ Milan echoed.
I smiled. I drew an envelope from my pocket and handed it to Madalena. ‘That is five thousand euros. That’s yours. But if you do what I ask you to do, and if I am successful in executing my plan – a plan, I emphasize, that you know nothing about – the payoff won’t be five thousand. It won’t even be fifty thousand. I am putting you in some jeopardy and I don’t use people without offering a substantial incentive.’
I let the suspense build and watched the looks flitting back and forth between M&M.
‘If all goes as planned, if I succeed and you’ve done your part, I will put a quarter of a million euros in an offshore bank account in your names.’
‘A quarter of … two hundred and fifty thousand euros?’ Milan didn’t whistle appreciatively, but the whistle was implied.
‘You could live for at least five years on that. Hell, if you decided to get out of Europe that would buy you a nice apartment somewhere with white beaches and water the temperature of a bath.’
‘And what is it we must do for you?’ Madalena demanded, suspicious girl.
‘You, Madalena, must simply carry a mobile phone around to various tourist spots, starting around three p.m. The flower market, the homomonument, the A’Dam lookout. I have a list. You follow that list. At a specified time you will make phone calls to numbers I’ll give you, businesses, just stay on the phone for at least a minute. Doesn’t matter what you say, ask about their stock or whatever. Then, you’ll meet me near the Waterstones bookstore – the specifics are on the list – and you’ll give me back the phone. That’s it.’
They both shifted uncomfortably, possibly because the humidity in the bathroom with the faucets going full-on was edging into the Mississippi range. But more likely because they could tell from the context that whatever was going on here it was some serious business.
‘And the golden Führer?’ Madalena asked.
‘That object will meet with an unfortunate fate, I promise you that,’ I said, putting on the smug expression I wear when I want someone to think I’ve figured everything out, but I haven’t. Yet.
‘And me?’ Milan asked.
‘You will get into a boat I’ve arranged for. You’ll be at a spot I name and you’ll catch a package I’ll give you.’
‘Is it drugs?’
‘No. It will be a black nylon zippered art bag.’
I badly needed them to agree. I had lost Ian who was to perform Milan’s part of the exercise, and I had nowhere else to turn aside from Chante, and I resisted that idea. I might not love Chante but she had never been in the life and these two had been. In the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy had impressed – legal kidnapping – men who had at any time earned a living from the sea and forced them to serve about his majesty’s ships. In that analogy Chante had never made a living from crime. She was not in that brotherhood, Milan and Madalena were.
‘And then?’ Milan pressed.
‘Then you will follow a path I’ll lay out for you. There will be some switching of boats, some tying off in specific locations, and a bit of work with another phone.’
‘And you won’t tell us what this is about?’
‘No. I’ll only tell you that no one will be physically hurt. No one dies. It doesn’t involve drugs or human trafficking. That’s it.’
Madalena said, ‘We must talk. Without you.’
‘I’ll step out.’
I exited the bathroom and stood staring, waiting and feeling helpless, in their hotel room. I could not hear words, just tones of voice. Those muffled tones told me that the answer was not an automatic ‘no.’ They weren’t yelling. No, they were discussing the possibility of bargaining.
One of them knocked three times on the door and I went back in.
‘OK,’ Madalena said, speaking for both of them. ‘But two hundred and fifty is not enough.’
‘Oh? What would be enough?’ That they might bargain for more money was not a surprise, it was a victory. I sternly avoided any sign of relief.
Madalena shrugged.
‘OK, OK,’ I said with a rueful sigh. ‘I can go another fifty.’
In the end we settled on three hundred and fifty large. Not the kind of money Isaac was offering the Ontario Crew, but generous enough that I felt a little less bad about dragging them into this.
‘But can we trust you?’ Madalena demanded.
‘Believe it or not, you can. But if you need more reassurance just remember: you’re on the bottom of this totem pole, and when it comes to making deals with the police the bottom rolls over on the top, not the other way around. You know my name.’ Well, kind of. ‘I’m trusting you to do exactly what I ask. Exactly. I’m trusting you to take the money and never speak of me or this again. Ever.’
And that was largely true, dammit: they could burn David Mitre. But for a former prostitute and a low-rent conman they seemed sincere. And later when they realized what they’d been part of they would be quite happy to keep their mouths shut and spend the money.
Still. I didn’t like it. Not even a little bit. But there it was, and when you have no choice you do what you have to do.
We spent the rest of the morning in that bathroom with the tile walls sweating, going over my lists again and again until they’d both become tired of the repetitions and could do it all by heart.
The lists themselves were a problem, but I gave them explicit instructions as to how to handle that. As each item was performed they were to tear off that part of the list and burn it or swallow it.
I was improvising. And hoping. And not liking it at all. If I were being sensible I’d call off the whole caper. But when has an artist ever been guided by good sense? Also: Willy Pete had killed my guy, I’d be damned if he was going to get his fifty million.
I felt weird, like I was floating untethered, and I couldn’t tell whether I was flying or falling.