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He couldn’t understand a damn word.
He’d give anything to be back in the states right now.
The Amsterdam authorities spouted words that Roman couldn’t make out. Neither he nor Trevor knew a word of Dutch, and their bids of a translator had gone unnoted. They had their hands shackled behind their backs, the metal of the cuffs digging into his skin. They’d been detained at the Amsterdam-Burgwallen Police station for an hour now, and no one had bothered to scrounge up anyone who spoke a damn word of English.
“Can we get a translator?” Roman fired back at the men in dark suits, each of them having a glaring stare down competition with the pair.
The officer continued to speak in his native tongue, waving his hands around in the air in angry animation, spitting occasionally.
Roman wanted to pound his fists on the table, but they were still uncomfortably latched behind his back. “Come on!” He roared. “Speak English. English? Do you assholes know English?”
Finally, one officer nudged the other. They both stopped yelling. The younger one gave a nod of acquiescence.
“Thank you,” Trevor noted in a sarcastic tone.
Roman leaned his neck back, staring at the white fluorescent globe lights above their heads. He was impatient. He needed to get back to his grieving family and properly mourn with them. If he didn’t make it back home in time for the funeral, he would have some skulls to crack and a list of names to take out.
Both officers left the room, leaving the friends to stand there in a moment of silence.
“Jesus Christ! We need our phone call at least.” Panic fluttered in Roman’s chest. He didn’t need this added bullshit right now. The show could go on without him, but the funeral? The fucking funeral?
“You know that your family would never have the funeral without you there.” Trevor glanced at Roman with empathy blazing in his eyes. He could read the panic and the worry in Roman’s mind without him having to verbalize any of it.
Roman glanced at the faded gray linoleum table he was sitting in front of. “Yeah...I know,” he mumbled.
He appreciated Trevor’s attempt to calm his rattled thoughts, but Roman was unfortunately too far into the frenzied abyss of anger and sorrow to take heed of his best friend’s words.
A clock on the wall clicked in a steady rhythm as time passed. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Suddenly the door pushed open and a huge man wearing an Amsterdam official police uniform barreled in. His face was puffy and red, the annoyed look he wore suggesting he’d rather be doing anything but this. The man was a giant, his hands the size of Trevor’s head.
He flattened his palm and planted his sausage fingers onto the table in front of Trevor and Roman, giving them both a leering glare.
“I am detective Hans,” he pronounced in a thick accent.
Roman leaned back, muttering mostly to himself. “An English-speaking Sasquatch.”
Trevor subtly kicked Roman under the table with the tip of his shoe. Roman didn’t react; kept his eyes locked on Hans.
“I would watch it if I were you kid,” Hans warned. “You’re in a world of trouble.”
Roman narrowed his eyes and kept his gaze locked tight on the rotund man. “Please, fill me in.”
He and Trevor had been jumped first, and they’d done what they’d needed to in order to protect themselves. Maybe he’d taken his end too far, yes. His anger and grief had gone too far.
“Our officers are on the scene, reviewing surveillance camera tapes,” Hans explained. “But from eye-witness accounts, fingers point to you as the direct assailant responsible for the assault.”
“They came at us first,” Trevor protested. “They pulled knives on us. Roman had a knife to his throat.”
“It’s true,” Roman nodded solemnly. “You need to get your facts straight.” Then he smiled. “Were there cameras around when they jumped us?”
Hans jaw twitched, but he held his ground, his demeanor cool. “The man you beat in the face is in critical condition at the hospital. He has a fractured skull and is unresponsive to physicians working on him.”
Roman glanced at Trevor and then back at Hans, shifting his weight. He sniffed and cleared his throat. Fuck! It was an unfortunate incident, but the guy asked for it. He had held a knife to Roman’s throat! Roman wasn’t usually a loose cannon, but these circumstances were different. The perp had pushed his buttons too hard.
“Are you trying to guilt me into feeling some kind of sorrow or remorse for what I did to the man who attacked me?” He asked of Hans.
“I’m just doing my job,” Hans reminded him. “I’m informing you of what the witnesses have to say.”
“Well.” Roman gave a sarcastic chuckle. “Were there camera’s or not?”
“Are you wishing to make a statement at this time?” Hans retrieved a little gray tape recorder from his back pocket.
“Yes,” Roman responded levelly. “Trevor? You up for this?”
“I am.”
Hans glanced at his partner who gave a nod and shifted his weight, staying near the door.
“Tell us what happened, then.” He clicked on the recorder and placed it in the center of the gray table.
Roman leaned back in the uncomfortably hard chair. He gave his friend one more, fleeting, glance, before clearing his throat.
“Well,” he began. “We’re in a band, Infinity Prism. We are doing press here before our tour begins in Amsterdam in a few weeks.”
“What were you doing in a dark alley at night?” Hans quizzed.
Roman swallowed hard and continued. “We’d just finished up an interview at a local entertainment station. I received a private phone call that my sister had passed away earlier today.”
“How did she die?” Hans showed no emotions as he robotically asked the questions.
“That’s none of your damn business,” Roman hissed, stewing with a fresh batch of intense anger.
“She died in a car accident,” Trevor answered for him. “That’s irrelevant to the story.”
“It’s important if it leads to why you were down a dark alleyway in a city foreign to you.”
Roman bounced his right leg under the table. It was a nervous habit when he was under serious amounts of pressure.
“Our flight was still several hours away, so we decided to find a pub and have a drink, maybe get a burger or something. We were talking about Stephanie, my sister and I guess we walked farther than we thought.”
“Okay...” Hans nodded so that Roman would continue.
“We started down an alley,” Roman shrugged. “And we just kept going, looking for a pub.”
“Nothing was catching our eye,” Trevor interjected. “One turn led to another.”
“Continue,” Hans stated as he glanced at the recorder. Roman had the feeling the cop was waiting for something, anything, to come spilling out that he could use against them.
“Look, I was numb from hearing about my sister. I just wanted a drink.”
“I can imagine,” Hans yawned.
Roman was angry. His blood was boiling, and this guy was making things worse. How could he really have such a total disregard for anybody else’s feelings? It’s not like he knew Roman or his sister, but he could show even a tiny speck of sympathy.
“Anyway,” he continued through clenched teeth. “I thought I heard a noise behind us, looked around. No one was there. Then I heard it again. That’s when thugs in masks rushed up behind us, held us at knifepoint and demanded that we walk with them.”
“Do you have enemies or owe anybody any money?” Hans raised a cynical eyebrow.
“No!’ Roman and Trevor exclaimed at the same time.
“There is no reason for anyone to harm you?” Hans quizzed.
“Absolutely not.” Roman shook his head defiantly.
“We have to keep you overnight,” Hans verbalized, not even remotely apologetic about the situation.
“What?” Roman and Trevor shouted in unison. “Why?”
“We need to receive the surveillance footage from the security cameras. We have cause to detain you on assault and battery charges.”
Roman shook his head and held up a hand. “This is bullshit! Those guys were trying to rob us.”
“That may be so,” Hans shrugged. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. The law is the law.”
“We need to call our manager. Get our legal team on this. You have no right to hold us here.”
Hans rose to his full height. “We can make it two nights if you keep it up.”
Roman bit his tongue. He didn’t want to get himself in any worse trouble than he already was. These were severe charges, and if they stuck somehow, he might be facing prison time in an Amsterdam lock up.
“Come with me,” Hans waved, motioning for Roman and Trevor to get up.
They shuffled down a stark, sterile hallway lit with gray, flickering fluorescent light streaming above their heads. The lights bore into Roman’s head, pulling at his grief, punching him with a threatened migraine.
“In here,” a warden took over, shoving the pair into a tiny cell and closing it and locking it behind them.
Roman leaned his hands over the bars. “Don’t we get a phone call?”
The security guard gave him a pessimistic stare and swiftly turned around without responding.
Trevor groaned, leaning back up against the iron bars. “This place is a shit hole.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Roman agreed. “I don’t even have any way to call my parents and explain to them what happened.”
Trevor expelled a giant puff of air, glancing up at the ceiling. “I’m sure that the media will take care of that for us.”
Roman walked over to sit on the cold metal bed in the corner of the room that had a dirty stained mattress on the top and a rough looking blue blanket.
“I don’t even want to sit down on this thing,” he admitted and scratched the top of his blond head. “I’m sure there are all kinds of STD’s to catch in this room.”
“We probably won’t get much sleep tonight, that’s for sure,” Trevor chuckled at the irony.
“At least we are in a room by ourselves,” Roman mentioned, trying above all else to keep his head above water in the dire situation.
He sat on the edge of the cot and angled his body so his back rest against the frame, with one foot on the floor. He started at the dank overhead lights until his mind began a crisp replay of his sister’s smile. Of her laugh. Of her running after him when he’d stolen her cellphone and raced down the block with it. He drifted in and out of memories of her when another face wiggled its way into his mind’s eye.
Soft eyes. Flawless skin. A kind smile.
Chloe.
The lights seared in Roman’s eyes. He blinked against the shock of it, figuring he must have dozed off. With a start, he realized he was lying on the dirty, cold jail floor. With a groan, he pushed to his feet. His body stiff and sore as if he’d run a marathon the day before.
“Get up,” a male voice announced in a demanding tone.
Roman rubbed the sandpaper from his eyes and looked for Trevor, who was sitting up groggily from the edge of the cot across the room.
“What’s going on?” He croaked.
“You’re being released.” The guard didn’t look at them as he unlocked the door.
“Released?” Roman exchanged a confused glance with Trevor. Nothing was that easy. “Why released?”
“Do you want me to write a novel on it or are you going to follow me?” The guard snapped.
Roman raised his eyebrows and grinned at Trevor. “You don’t have to tell us twice.”
They followed the guard down a hallway with water dripping from the ceiling and plopping into a puddle in the corners. They ventured into a room where a woman behind a plexiglass desk gave them release papers.
“Cleared on all counts,” she stated. “Surveillance footage has determined your innocence.”
Roman gave Trevor a bear hug and a brotherly slap on the back.
“Let’s get you home,” Trevor smiled.
Roman couldn’t believe that they were free to go. The universe had cut him some slack after all. Now it was time to go home to be with his family. He knew he would probably sleep the entire plane ride home.
Trevor was listening to his cell phone messages once they retrieved their belongings. Roman couldn’t wait to get a shower, but for now, he needed to rest his weary mind.
“Just got a call from Burt,” Trevor relayed. “He said that we would have to release a press statement on the incident before we can leave.”
“Fine,” Roman said. “Whatever we need to do to clear our reputation and get me to my parent’s. It’s where I need to be.”