"What did you do," I said, "follow Big Nose?"
"Sort of. I spotted him when he come out looking around and I figured he was checking if this was a setup. So I slipped in the hallway there and hid in the shadows back under the stairwell. You know how hard we is to spot in the dark."
"Unless you smile," I said. "And if we keeps our eyes closed." We were having breakfast in the hotel. Pastry and cold cuts and b.u.t.ter and cheese buffet style. "Anyway," Hawk said, "he come slipping back in and when he open the door I come right in back of him." Hawk drank some coffee. "Who the one we lost with Kathie?" he said. "Name"s Paul, little guy, very tough. He"s a lot heavier article than we been dealing with before. He"s a real revolutionary, I think. Of one sort or another."
"Palestinian?"
"I don"t think so," I said. "Right wing. Wants to save Africa from the Communists and the Nigras."
"South African? Rhodesian?"
"I don"t think so. I mean he may be in that now, but he spoke a language more like Spanish. Maybe Portuguese."
"Angola," Hawk said. I shrugged. "I don"t know. Just said he was anticommunist and pro-white. You probably didn"t do much to change his att.i.tude." Hawk grinned. "He got a big job. I hear there"s quite some number of Nigras in Africa. He going to have to do a powerful heap of saving."
"Yeah. He may be dippy, but he"s no pancake. He"s trouble." Hawk"s face was bright and hard. He grinned again. "So are we, babe," he said. "True," I said. "What"s the program now?" Hawk said. "I don"t know. I gotta think."
"Okay, while you thinking, why don"t we stroll down to Tivoli and walk around. I heard about Tivoli all my life. I want to see it. "
"Yeah," I said. "Me too." I paid the bill and we went out. Tivoli was nice. Lots of greenery and not too much plastic. We ate lunch on the terrace of one of the restaurants. There wasn"t a great deal for adults to do but watch the kids, and quite frequently the kids" moms, as they went here and there on the pleasant walks among the attractive buildings. It was fun to be there, but it was more a matter of presence, of s.p.a.ce allotted to pleasure and thoughtfully done, that made it a pleasure. The lunch was ordinary. "Ain"t Coney Island," Hawk said. "Ain"t the Four Seasons either," I said. I was trying to chew a piece of tough veal and it made me grumpy. "You thought enough yet?" Hawk said. I nodded, still working on the veal. "Should of had fish," Hawk said. "Hate fish," I said. "Right now we are up a fjord without an oar, as we Danes say. Kathie sure as h.e.l.l isn"t going to go back to her apartment. We"ve lost her and we"ve lost Paul." I took out my pocket notebook. "What I have got is an address in Amsterdam and one in Montreal that I took off her pa.s.sports. I also have an address in Amsterdam that was the return address on a letter she got, and kept. The addresses are the same."
"Sounds like Amsterdam," Hawk said. He sipped some champagne and watched a young blond woman with very tight shorts and a halter top stroll by. "Too bad, Copenhagen looks good."
"Amsterdam"s better," I said. "You"ll like it." Hawk shrugged. I dug out some English pounds and gave them to Hawk. "You better get some new clothes. While you do that I"ll set us up to Amsterdam. You can probably change the money to kroner at the railroad station. It"s right across the street."
"I change it at the hotel, babe. Thought I might leave the shotgun home while I trying on clothes. Three folks got done in with a shotgun yesterday. I just as leave not explain to the Danish fuzz about what we doing." Hawk left. I paid the bill and headed out the front exit of Tivoli Gardens. Across the street was the huge red brick Copenhagen railroad station. I went across the street and went in. I had nothing to do there but it was everything a European railroad station ought to be and I wanted to walk around in it. It was high ceilinged and arcane with an enormous barrel-arched central waiting room full of restaurants and shops, baggage rooms, backpacker kids and a babble of foreign tongues. Trains were leaving on various tracks for Paris and Rome, for Munich and Belgrade. And the station was alive with excitement, with coming and going. I loved it. I walked around for nearly an hour by myself, soaking it up. Thinking about Europe in the nineteenth century when it had peaked. The station was thick with life. Ah Suze, I thought, you should have been here, you should have seen this. Then I went back to the hotel and had the hall porter book us a flight to Amsterdam in the morning.
17.
The KLM 727 came sweeping in low over Holland at about nine-thirty-five in the morning. I"d been there before and I liked it. It felt familiar and easy as I looked down at the flat green land patterned with ca.n.a.ls. We were drinking awful coffee handed out by a KLM stewardess with hairy armpits. "Don"t care for the armpit," Hawk murmured. "Can"t say I do myself," I said. "You know what it reminds me of?"
"Yes." Hawk laughed. "Thought you would, babe. You think old Kathie gonna be in Amsterdam?"
"h.e.l.l, I don"t know. It was the best I could do. Better bet than Montreal. It"s closer and I got the same address from two different sources. Or she could have stayed in Denmark or. gone to Pakistan. All we can do is look."
"You the boss. You keep paying me, I keep looking. Where we staying?"
"The Marriott, it"s up near the Rijksmuseum. If it"s slow I"ll take you over and show you the Rembrandts."
"Hot dawg," Hawk said. The seat belt sign went on, the plane settled another notch down and ten minutes later we were on the ground. Schiphol Airport was shiny and gla.s.sy and new like the airport in Copenhagen. We got a bus into the Amsterdam railroad station, which wasn"t bad but didn"t match up to Copenhagen, and a cab from the station to the Marriott Hotel. The Marriott was part of the American chain, a big new hotel, modern and color-coordinated and filled with the continental charm of a Mobil Station. Hawk and I shared a room on the eighth floor. No point to concealing our relationship. If we found Kathie or Paul, they"d seen Hawk and would be looking over their shoulder for him again. After we unpacked we strolled out to find the address on Kathie"s pa.s.sport. Much of Amsterdam was built in the seventeenth century, and the houses along the ca.n.a.ls looked like a Vermeer painting. The streets that separated the houses from the ca.n.a.ls were cobbled and there were trees. We followed Leidsestraat toward the Dam Square, crossing the concentric ca.n.a.ls as we went: Prinsengracht, Keisersgracht, Heerengracht. The water was dirty green, but it didn"t seem to matter much. What cars there were were small and un.o.btrusive. There were bicycles and a lot of walkers. Boats, often gla.s.s-topped tour boats, cruised by on the ca.n.a.ls. A lot of the walkers were kids with long hair and jeans and backpacks who gave no hint of nationality and very little of gender. Back when people used to speak that way, Amsterdam was said to be the hippie capital of Europe. Hawk was watching everything. Walking soundlessly, apparently self-absorbed, as if listening to some inward music. I noticed people gave way to him as he walked, instinctively, without thought. The Leidsestraat was shopping district. The shops were good-looking and the clothes contemporary. There was Delftware and imitation Delftware in some quant.i.ty. There were cheese shops, and bookstores and restaurants, and a couple of wonderful-looking delicatessens with whole hams and roast geese and baskets of currants in the windows. On the square near the Mint Tower there was a herring stand. "Try that, Hawk," I said. "You"re into fish."
"Raw?"
"Yeah. Last time I was here people raved about them."
"Why don"t you try one then?"
"I hate fish." Hawk bought a raw herring from the stand. The woman at the stand cut it up, sprinkled it with raw onions and handed it to him. Hawk tried a bite. He smiled. "Not bad," he said. "Ain"t chitlins, but it ain"t bad."
"Hawk," I said, "I bet you don"t know what a G.o.dd.a.m.ned chitlin is."
"Ah spec dat"s right, bawse. I was raised on moon pies and Kool-Aid, mostly. It"s called ghetto soul." Hawk ate the rest of the herring. We bore left past the herring stand and turned down the Kalverstraat. It was a pedestrian street, no cars, devoted to shops. "It"s like Harvard Square," Hawk said. "Yeah, a lot of stores that sell Levi"s and Frye boots and peasant blouses. What the h.e.l.l you doing in Harvard Square?"
"Used to shack up with a Harvard lady," Hawk said. "Very smart."
"Student?"
"No, man, I"m no chicken tapper. She was a professor. Told me I had a elemental power that turned her on. Haw."
"How"d you get along with her seeing-eye dog?"
"s.h.i.t, man. She could see. She thought I was gorgeous. Called me her savage, man. Said Adam musta looked like me."
"Jesus, Hawk, I"m going to puke on your shoe in a minute. "
"Yeah, I know. It was awful. We didn"t last long. She too weird for me. Surely could screw though. Strong pelvis, you know, man, strong."
"Yeah," I said, "me too. I think this is the place." We were at an open-front bookstore. There were books and periodicals in racks and on tables out front and rows of them inside. Many of the books were in English. A sign on the wall said THREE HOT s.e.x SHOWS EVERY HOUR, and an arrow pointed toward the back of the store. In back was another sign that said the same thing with an arrow pointing downstairs. "What kind of books they sell here?" Hawk said. There were all kinds, books by Faulkner and Thomas Mann, books in English and books in French, books in Dutch. There was Shakespeare and Gore Vidal and a collection of bondage magazines with nude women on the cover so enc.u.mbered in chains, ropes, gags and leather restraints that it was hard to see them. You could buy Hustler, Time, Paris Match, Punch, and Gay Love. It was one of the things about Amsterdam that I never got over. At home you found a place that sold bondage p.o.r.n sequestered in the Combat Zone and specializing. Here the bookstore with the THREE HOT s.e.x SHOWS EVERY HOUR was between a jewelry store and a bake shop. And it also sold the work of Saul Bellow and Jorge Luis Borges. Hawk said, "You figure Kathie lives here, we could look on a shelf under K."
"Maybe upstairs," I said. "This is the address."
"Yeah," Hawk said. "There"s a door." It was just to the right of the bookstore, half obscured by the awning. "Think she in there?"
"I know how we find out." Hawk grinned. "Yeah. We watch. You want to take the first shift while I make sure she not down there among the hot s.e.x films?"
"I didn"t figure you for a looker, Hawk. I figured you for a doer."
"Maybe pick up a trick or two. Man"s never too old to learn a little. n.o.body"s perfect."
"Yeah."
"We gonna go round the clock on this, babe?"
"No. Just daytime."
"That"s good. Twelve on, twelve off ain"t no fish fry."
"This time out it"ll be harder. If she"s in there she knows us both, and she"s going to be very edgy."
"Also," Hawk said, "we camp out here long enough a Dutch cop going to come along and ask us what we doing."
"If they"re any good."
"Yeah."
"We"ll circulate," I said. "I"ll stay up there by the dress shop for a half hour, then I"ll stroll down to the place that sells broodjes and you stroll up to the dress shop. And we"ll rotate that way every half hour or so."
"Yeah, okay," Hawk said, "let"s make the circulation irregular. Each time we switch we"ll decide how long before we switch again. Break up the rhythm."
"Yes. We"ll do that. Unless there"s a back way she"ll have to pa.s.s one of us if she leaves."
"Why don"t you anchor here for a while, babe, and I"ll go around and see if I find any back way. I"ll check in the store and I"ll go around the block and see what I can find." I nodded. "If she comes out and I go after her I"ll meet you back at the hotel." Hawk said, "Yowzah" and went into the bookstore. He went to the back and down the stairs. Five minutes later he was back up the stairs and out of the bookstore, his face glistening with humor. "Get any pointers?" I said. "Oh yeah, soon"s I make a move on a pony, I gonna know just what to do."
"These Europeans are so sophisticated."
18.
Hawk found no back entrance. We walked up and down a short stretch of the Kalverstraat all the rest of the day, staying close to the wall under Kathie"s windows, if they were Kathie"s windows, so she wouldn"t spot us, if she were looking out, if she were up there. The dress shop was featuring that season a fatigue green number that looked like a shelter half, long and formless, belted at the waist. It didn"t even look good on the window dummy. The broodje shop was featuring roast beef on a soft roll, topped with a fried egg. Broodje seemed to mean sandwich. There were about thirty-five different kinds of broodjes listed behind the counter, but the roast beef with the fried egg was the hot seller. The street was crowded all afternoon. There seemed to be a lot of tourists, j.a.panese and Germans with cameras, in groups. There was a fair number of Dutch sailors. More people seemed to smoke in Holland than they did at home. And there were far fewer big men. Sandals and clogs seemed more prevalent, especially for men, and occasionally a Dutch cop would stroll by in his gray-blue uniform with white trim. n.o.body bothered me and n.o.body bothered Hawk. At eight o"clock I said to Hawk, "It is time to go eat before I break into tears."
"I can dig that," Hawk said. "There"s a place just off to the side here called The Little Nun. I ate there last time I was here."
"What you doing here before, man?"
"Pleasure trip. Came with a lady."
"Suze?"
"Yeah. " The Little Nun was everything I remembered. Polished stone floor, whitewashed walls, low-beamed ceiling, some stained gla.s.s in the windows, flowers and very fine food. For dessert they brought out a great crock of red currants, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries that had been marinated in ca.s.sis. Everyone spoke English. In fact everyone in Holland spoke English as far as I could tell, and spoke it with very little accent. We went to bed in the Marriott feeling good about supper but bad about tomorrow. I had the feeling that a lot of aimless walking was in store for us tomorrow. It was. We walked up and down the Kalverstraat all day. I looked in every store window along the way until I knew the price of all the merchandise. I ate five broodjes during the day, three out of hunger and two out of boredom. The high point of the day was two trips to the public urinal near the Dutch Tourist Bureau on Rokin. At night we had an Indonesian rijsttafel at the Bali Restaurant on Leidsestraat. There were about twenty-five different courses of meat, vegetables and rice. We drank Amstel beer with the meal. Hawk too. Champagne didn"t go with a rijsttafel. Hawk drank some Amstel and said to me, "Spenser, how long we gonna walk up and down past the hot s.e.x shows?"
"I don"t know," I said. "We only been at it two days."
"Yeah, man, but we don"t even know she"s in there. I mean we may be walking up and down in front of some old Dutch granny."
"But no one has come out of that place or gone in it in two days. Isn"t that a little strange?"
"Maybe n.o.body lives there." I ate some beef with peanuts. "We"ll give it another day, then we"ll go in and see, okay?" Hawk nodded. "I like going in and seeing," he said, "a lot better than hanging around and watching."
"I knew you were a doer," I said. "I am that," he said. "And I want to do something pretty quick." We walked back to the Marriott through night life and music along the Leidsestraat. The lobby was nearly empty. There were two kids from a South American soccer team half asleep in chairs. A bellhop leaned on the counter talking to the desk clerk. Faint music from the in-house night spot drifted down toward the elevators. We rode to the eighth floor in silence. At our room the no NOT DISTURB sign was on the door. I looked at Hawk, he shook his head. The sign had not been there this morning. I put my ear hard against the door. I could hear the bedsprings creak, and what sounded like heavy breathing. I motioned Hawk to the door. He listened. We had a room near the corner, and I gestured Hawk around the corner. "Sound like one of them hot s.e.x shows," Hawk said. "You think somebody shacking up in our room?"
"That"s crazy," I said. "Maybe a maid or something, see we"re out all day, figures she"ll slip in with her old man and make it while we out."
"If you can think of it somebody will do it," I said. "But I don"t believe it."
"We could stand around out here awhile and see if they come out. If there"s somebody in there putting the boots to his old lady, they can"t stay all night."
"I been standing around in hotel corridors and on street corners since I been in Europe. I"m getting sick of it."
"Let"s do it," Hawk said. He pulled the shotgun out from under his coat. I took out the room key and we went around the corner. There was no one in the hall. Hawk sprawled on the floor in front of the door. I slipped the key in the door. Hawk leveled the shotgun on his propped elbows and nodded. I turned the key from one side of the door out of the line of fire and swung the door open. I had my gun out. Hawk said, "Jesus Christ," and gestured with his head. I slid around the door, staying flat against the wall. There were two dead men on the floor and Kathie on the bed. She wasn"t dead. She was tied. I kicked open the door to the bathroom. No one there. Hawk was in behind me. He closed the room door with his left hand. The right kept the shotgun half erect in front of him. I came out of the bathroom. "Nothing," I said, and slid my gun back in its holster. Hawk squatted beside the two men on the floor. "They dead," he said. I nodded. Kathie lay on the bed, her hands tied behind her, her feet bound. Her mouth was taped, and a rope around her waist fastened her to the bed. Hawk looked down at her and said, "That what we heard. n.o.body s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g, old Kathie here trying to get loose." Kathie made a thick m.u.f.fled sound of outrage and twisted against the ropes. "What killed the stiffs on the floor?" I said. 124 125 "Somebody shot each of them behind the left ear with a small bullet."
"Twenty-two?"
"Could be. Been a while, they pretty cold." There was an envelope stuck to Kathie"s right thigh with some of the same adhesive tape that closed her mouth. I picked it up. "Maybe we won her in a raffle," I said. "I bet that ain"t it," Hawk said. He was still holding the shotgun, but now negligently, hanging loosely at his side. I opened the note. Kathie squirmed on the bed and made her m.u.f.fled noise some more. Hawk read over my shoulder. The note said: We have much to do and you are in the way. Had we the time we would kill you. But you are obviously hard to kill, as is the Schwartze. Thus we have delivered to you what you seek. The two dead men are the last of those you sought. I shall probably be sorry that I let the woman live, but I am more sentimental than I should be. We have cared for each other and I cannot kill her. You have no reason now to bother us further. If you persist despite that we shall turn our full attention to your deaths. Paul. "Sonovab.i.t.c.h," I said. "Schwartze?" Hawk said. "That"s German for spade, I think."
"I know what it mean," Hawk said. "These two look like your sketches?"
"We"ll look," I said. I got the Identikit drawings out of the top bureau drawer. With his foot Hawk turned both bodies over on their backs. I looked at the pictures and at the phony-looking dead faces staring up at me. "I"d say so." I handed the drawings to Hawk. He nodded. "Look about right," he said. I pointed my chin at Kathie. "And that makes number nine."
"What you going to do?"
"We could untie her."
"You think we safe?"
"There"s two of us," I said. "She awful mean and mad-looking," Hawk said. He was right. Kathie"s eyes were wide and angry. Since we had entered the room she had not stopped twisting against the ropes, squirming to get free. She grunted furiously at us. "Actually, you know, we better pat her down. It could be a very elaborate fake. We untie her and she jumps up and shoots us." Hawk laughed. "You are a suspicious mamma." He put the shotgun down on the night table. "But I"ll check her." I looked out the window at the street eight floors below. Nothing looked different than it should. Across the street in the light of street lamps the ca.n.a.l flowed past. A tour boat taking a candlelight cruise glimmered by. They served wine and cheese on the candlelight cruises. If I were with Suze we could drift through the ancient graceful city and drink the wine and eat the cheese and have a nice time. But Suze wasn"t here. Hawk would probably go with me, but I didn"t think he"d care for the hand-holding. I looked back at Hawk. He was methodically patting Kathie for a hidden weapon. As he did so she began to twist and squirm, and a high locust sort of noise forced out around the tape. As he touched her thighs she arched her back and, straining against the ropes, thrust her pelvis forward. Her face was very red and her breath came in snorts through her nose. Hawk looked at me. "She ain"t armed," he said. I reached down and carefully peeled the tape from her mouth. She breathed in gasps through her open mouth, reddened from the friction of the tape. "Shall you," she gasped, "shall you rape me? Shall he?" She looked at Hawk. The locust hum in her voice had softened to a kind of hiss. A little saliva bubbled at the left corner of her mouth. Her body continued to arch against the ropes. "I"m not sure it would be rape," I said. "Shall you both take me, gag me again. Take me while I"m helpless, voiceless, bound and writhing on the bed?" Her mouth was open now and her tongue ran and fretted over her lower lip. "I can"t move," she gasped. "I"m bound and helpless, shall you tear my clothing, use me, degrade me, drive me mad?" Hawk said, "Naw." I said, "Maybe later." Hawk pulled a jackknife from his right hip pocket and cut her free. He had to roll her over to cut the rope on her hands, and when he did he gave her a slap on the backside, light and friendly, like one ballplayer to another. She sat up abruptly. "n.i.g.g.e.r," she said. "Never touch me, n.i.g.g.e.r." Hawk looked at me, his face bright. "n.i.g.g.e.r?" he said. "That"s English for spade, I think."
"I know what it mean," Hawk said. "What happened to take me, ravage me?" I said. "I"ll kill you both," she said, "as soon as I can."
"That gonna be awhile, hon," Hawk said. "Beside you gonna have to get in line." She was sitting up now on the edge of the bed. Her white linen dress was badly wrinkled from her struggle against the ropes. "I want to go to the bathroom," she said. "Go ahead," I said. "Take your time." She walked stiffly to the bathroom and closed the door. We heard the bolt slide and then the water begin to run in the sink. Hawk walked over to one of the red vinyl armchairs, stepped carefully over the two dead men on the floor. "What we going to do with the corpus delicti here?" Hawk said. "Oh," I said. "You don"t know either?"
19.
While Kathie was still in the bathroom, Hawk and I took one body each and slipped them under the twin beds. In the bathroom, the faucet still ran in the sink, masking any other sound. "What you suppose she doing?" Hawk said. "Nothing probably. She"s probably trying to think what to do when she comes out."
"Maybe she perfuming up in case we want to rape her."
"Still waters run deep," I said. "Her idea of a good time is probably to be beaten by Benito Mussolini with a copy of Mein Kampf."
"Or to be raped by you and me," Hawk said. "Especially you, big fella. I know what they say about you black folk."
"And quick," Hawk said, "we very quick and rhythmical. "
"That"s what I heard," I said. I got a can of Spot-lifter off the top closet shelf and sprayed the blood stains on the rug. "That stuff work?"
"Works on my suits," I said. "When it dries I just brush it away."
"You make a fine wife someday, babe. You cook good too.
"Yeah, but I"ve always wanted a career of my own."
Kathie shut off the running water and came out of the bathroom. She"d combed her hair and smoothed out her dress as much as possible.
I was on my hands and knees working on the blood stains. "Sit down," I said. "You want something to eat? Drink? Both?"
"I am hungry," she said.
"Hawk, get her something from room service."
"They got a late night special here," Hawk said. "House pate, cheese, bread and a carafe of wine. Want that?" Kathie nodded.
"That sounds pretty good," I said to Hawk. "Why don"t we all have some."