My first thought was, Oh my God: it worked.
My second thought was, Uh-oh: Willy Pete.
Willy, followed closely by two other guys, one with a splotchy red face sparkling with Tabasco tears, were closing in. I didn’t try to run. They were all in better shape than I was. Besides, I didn’t need to.
‘You!’ Willy Pete snarled as he and his boys hemmed me in, doing the chest-push and generally intending to terrify me.
‘Problem?’ I asked innocently, hoping my panting and my hammering heart wouldn’t turn it to soprano.
‘Problem?’ Thug number two had a lisp. It seemed like not the time to suggest a good speech therapist. ‘You stole a fucking painting!’
‘Did I?’ I theatrically patted my body as if such a thing might be concealed on my person.
I saw a metallic flash. Willy had his stiletto out, but hidden by our tight-packed bodies. ‘You have three seconds to live, asshole. Give up the Jewess.’
Words that had been spoken in this city before, albeit in German.
‘Go ahead. Stab me Willy Pete, aka Carl Willard, who moonlights for the CIA.’
I was not at all sure that would work. Willy Pete’s eyes narrowed and his compadres exchanged worried looks.
‘You could die choking on that information,’ he growled.
‘I could die of an embolism,’ I said. I was not as scared as I probably should have been. But I just didn’t see them murdering me on a busy bridge in broad daylight, especially since they were sure I was the guy with the painting they wanted. But I thought I’d best make that point explicitly, just in case.
‘Kill me and the Vermeer is gone,’ I said. ‘That’s a lot to pass up just for the pleasure of stabbing me.’
‘Listen, smart guy, if I don’t get the Vermeer, you will die. Don’t have any doubt about that. Now or later, those are your choices.’
‘Well, I’m going to have to pick, later. And as for later, Willy, here’s what I’ve got on you. You lost your wallet, didn’t you?’
If looks could kill …
‘Yeah, I have it,’ I said, getting into the whole noirishness of the back-and-forth. ‘I have pictures of your driver’s license and your credit cards, all safe in the cloud. I know about the safe house in Langley. I know you’ve been promised a hell of a lot of money to steal the Vermeer, and I know the guy who hired you is Daniel Isaac.’ I watched his face. He had the relaxed gaze of a hawk staring down a mouse. I waited for a flicker. And there it was: on the mention of money. I turned to Lisp, the henchman not weeping and wiping his eyes, and said, ‘How much of that fifty million bucks do you two clowns get?’
Ah, the information you can get from facial expressions and eye movements. They both – even my weepy friend from the stairwell – shot choreographed suspicious glances at Willy.
Willy hadn’t told them what the take would be. I barely resisted laughing.
I said, ‘Everything I know is well-dispersed to people and places you have zero chance of silencing. Fuck with me and it all comes out, and I don’t think Daniel “the Chipster” Isaac, or the CIA, would be happy about that. Do you?’ Time for me to press my advantage. ‘You boys want to call the cops? No, you don’t. Do you want to stab me on this bridge? Go for it, but you’ll never get the Vermeer or the fifty million that way, will you?’
‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with, Mitre,’ Willy snarled. But that was weak and we all knew it.
‘Nah, see your problem is that I know exactly who I’m fucking with. So you boys toddle off and tell the merchant of death he can have his Vermeer for the low, low price of five million dollars which, gee, is just a tenth of what he was willing to pay you.’
I’d have felt so much better if he had raged and cursed. He didn’t. He went blank. Expressionless. Like he was already gone. It was a cold look. Cold was bad.
But I couldn’t show weakness. I had to own the swagger. ‘So what’s happening now is that I am walking away. If you come after me I will reluctantly have to bring the cops into it. That might cost me the five mil, might even get me arrested, but there is zero chance of conviction. Whereas, if the cops find you being unpleasant to me, it would cost you prison terms. Especially you, Willy, because I was there when you murdered my buddy.’
This part was a combination of chutzpah and information seeking. If he knew who I was – who I really was – he’d know I’d never call the cops.
‘Now, you three get the fuck out of my way or I’ll start yelling for cops right here, right now.’
They didn’t move, but neither did they push back as I muscled past them, bringing me way too close to that stiletto, toward which object I affected indifference. I was not at all indifferent but I was pretty sure they’d do nothing.
And nothing is what they did.
Milan would run the boat up the Singelgracht just a thousand feet or so to the Holland Casino which, I may say parenthetically, is a sad piece of work that wouldn’t make it in Henderson, Nevada let alone Vegas. Milan would stroll through the casino, looking for tails, then go to a second pre-positioned boat and sail off down the canal and tie-off just a few feet from an AirBnB I’d reserved solely to get their Wi-Fi password. Which, perhaps oddly, was stroopwafels. All lower case.
Milan would then use a burner phone to link to the Wi-Fi and we would begin the live broadcast.
All of this would eat up a half an hour.
I used that time to walk to an actual coffee shop and have actual coffee. What I really wanted was about twelve ounces of Talisker, but I still had a panel to do. I did not concern myself overly much with being tailed by Sarip’s cops or even Delia’s contractors, in fact I welcomed it. Look at me! I’m walking along with completely empty hands. Gaze upon my innocence, ye coppers and despair!
Then it was off to intersect with Madalena’s movements in the little square near Waterstones.
I had some moments of anxiety when I couldn’t spot her there and I had to kill more minutes than I’d have liked and had to order still more coffee to explain my loitering. But then, there she was. We made eye contact. She walked down a row of parked bikes and dropped her phone into a bike basket. I sauntered by a minute later and picked it up.
And ping, ping, ping went the cell phone towers.