The Treachery of Russian Nesting Dolls

by Orest Stelmach

  “Just kidding. I had something in mind along your usual line of business. How much for half an hour? I know the standard time is fifteen minutes, but it takes me a little longer … “

  “I’m sorry, really I am …”

  “No, no. My John Thomas works. You don’t have to worry about that. All I want is a little rumpy-pumpy. Nothing kinky. Just a little ride on my motorbike will do. Look …” He fumbled with a fanny pack. “I’m minted. I can show you.”

  I bent down, put my hand on his, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “You need to find another girl.”

  “Oh. I understand.”

  His eyes turned to slits. He maneuvered a lever. The motor attached to his wheelchair whirred. The wheels rolled backward.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not that. This has nothing to do with your handicap.”

  He stopped the wheelchair mid-turn and glanced at me one last time. “Then what does it have to do with?”

  I couldn’t be honest with him and to lie would have been an even bigger insult. I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain.”

  The young man in the wheelchair considered my words and nodded. “Yeah. I like that one, too.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. “Excuse me?”

  He measured me head-to-toe once more, this time with a look of disgust appropriate for a fraud. “I Can’t Explain. It’s a song. Do you even like the Scorpions?” He shook his head. “Bloody Yanks. Can’t trust them. Can’t shag them, either.” He wheeled himself away.

  I closed the door and headed straight for the water, wishing it were wine instead. Every De Wallen window girl has the legal right to quote any price for any service and to turn away any potential customer for no reason whatsoever. That’s what gave me the audacity to set up shop in the first place. I figured I needed to open my door and appear to be congenial, lest someone start rapping on my window and create a scene. But I didn’t need to even quote a price to anyone for any kind of service if I didn’t want to. And I sure as hell didn’t want to.

  I thought posing as a window prostitute would be deceptively straightforward, but like most enterprises that came with such expectations, it was obviously going to be the opposite.

  I returned to my post five feet from the window, smiling and flashing my teeth to the occasional solitary passer-by, swaying my hips a barely perceptible amount to the beat, trying not to look as preposterous as I felt.

  If only the faithful from my childhood church could have seen me now. I pictured them gasping collectively and covering their mouths with shock and dismay. I imagined my mother shaking her head, criticizing my figure, the clothes, and the wig. The thought of my deceased father seeing me caused my face to burn. There were no circumstances under which he would have accepted my standing in this window. He would have told me I was too intelligent and educated for such a masquerade. He would have expected me to be making a living in a more elegant fashion. In fact, all enterprises that promote elegance have roots in the gutter.

  The same could have been said about my dead husband, who’d been a professor of religion at Yale. He would have called me trash and dashed off into the arms of his adoring graduate assistant. Given that assessment, you’d think my ex-husband was the one who mattered to me the least. But life is not that logical. It was, in fact, he who mattered the most. It was the image of his car wrapped around an oak tree a mile from my mother’s house and his subsequent funeral that still persecuted me.

  The next hour and forty-five minutes went by slowly. The only action came courtesy of a Spanish-looking man in his sixties. He pretended to be taking pictures of his wife but he’d positioned her so that he could zoom in on the three African girls in the windows around the bend from me.

  Taking pictures of the working girls in De Wallen is a no-no. The Turk appeared out of nowhere, barked something at him, ripped the camera from his hands and confiscated its memory card. Then he disappeared. The tourist and his wife looked around for help, but even if they’d found the police, they would have gotten little sympathy from the law on this matter.

  At first, the sight of the Turk unsettled me, his earlier promise to be my first customer still fresh in my mind. But then I took comfort in knowing that someone was manning the panic button and that he obviously took his responsibility seriously.

  I thought I was going to get to midnight without having to open the door again, but at eleven-thirty my neighborhood began to bustle with drunken activity. A group of six Welshmen on a stag party wanted the prospective groom to enjoy a final fling with the “mullato devil woman.” I guessed the combination of my tan, the dim lighting, and their drunken state had turned me into an exotic creature, and I was quite flattered by the description. They were less flattered when I turned them away on account of my alleged allergy to alcohol. One of them questioned my choice of occupation, but by then the others had spied the African girls around the bend and they continued onward without major incident.

  I turned away two more drunken men in their thirties who spoke French, and a polite Japanese salary man in his fifties. None of them gave me any trouble. I had one eye on my watch at 11:55 and butterflies were swirling in my stomach when someone knocked on the door yet again. I stepped closer to the window and glanced to my left.

  It was the Turk. He motioned for me to open-up.

  I considered ignoring him but I knew that wouldn’t work. He would step in front of my window and demand that I open the door. If he became persistent, he might scare away the mystery lover.

  A fist pounded on the door. I heard something that sounded like English but I couldn’t make out the words.

  I hit the panic button three times rapidly, took a deep breath, and ran to the door. I whipped it open and stood nose-to-chest with the Turk.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I said.

  A slight grin crossed his lips. “You’ve been wanting me from the moment you saw me—”

  “Not exactly—”

  “Relax. The Turk is going to give you satisfaction.”

  “I hit the panic button three times. Three times. And where were you?”

  He’d started to push past me but my words made him freeze. “Panic button? When?”

  “Just now, a minute ago, constantly. What does it matter? Where were you? Is anyone looking out for me? Anyone at all?”

  “I have a colleague—”

  “Who’s obviously incompetent.”

  The Turk blinked twice and looked me over again, this time with concern. “What happened?”

  “A man tried to force himself on me. We agreed on a price and took care of some business, but then he wanted something extra. When I refused, he stole his money back and said if I tried to do anything about it he’d follow me home after work some day and beat me.”

  “He said this?”

  “How can you expect me to take care of you if you don’t take care of me? Is this the Dutch way? Is this the Turkish way?”

  “I am not Turkish,” he said slowly, as though simultaneously thinking about the matter at hand. “I’m Greek.”

  I heard a ruckus behind me and then the sound of footsteps clattering toward my office. A man arrived in a huff from the inside of the building. He looked like the Turk’s younger cousin. He said something in Dutch that included the words “panic button” in English. The Turk replied sharply, his protégé gave him some lip in return, and the Turk barked what sounded like a final order at him. The younger bodyguard lowered his head and disappeared from my office the same way he’d arrived.

  I checked my watch. It was midnight. The mystery lover might be arriving any second.

  “What did this man look like?” the Turk said.

  “He was in his mid-twenties. Tall, thin, blonde hair and blue eyes. He was American. Can you believe that? From Los Angeles.”

  “Really.” The Turk sounded as though I’d just whetted his appetite for combat. “Did you see which way he went?’

  “To the right. When he first came
in he said he was making a pit stop before going to the Bulldog Café.”

  “Cannabis,” the Turk said with disgust. “But there are several Bulldog Cafes.”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  The Turk muttered something under his breath, started to leave, and then turned back and devoured me with a final look. “Don’t close before you see me tonight.” His words sounded way too much like an order for my liking, but he took off before I could say anything.

  Just as the Turk vanished out of sight, a young man stopped near my door. His eyes met mine. I knew right away this was my mark. I knew it because he was wearing a hoodie. No one in Amsterdam wore a hoodie. It was a silly disguise, the kind that made one stand out even more. I also knew he was the one because he was so gorgeous. Raised cheekbones, skin so smooth a woman might be afraid to touch it, and aquamarine eyes that mesmerized and weakened the knees.

  A sinking feeling washed over me. I’d blown it. If I’d been in the office, standing five feet back from the window in the semi-darkness, he wouldn’t have seen me clearly. He wouldn’t have realized I wasn’t his girl until he came inside and saw me in person. But I wasn’t in my office, I was in the doorway three feet away from him.

  His eyes widened, his lips parted. He took a step back—

  “Wait,” I said.

  But he didn’t wait.

  He turned and hurried away.

  CHAPTER 3

  I took off my high-heels and sunglasses and tossed them onto the chair. I grabbed the sweatshirt I’d brought, zipped it up to my neck, and slipped into my flat shoes. Then I slammed the door shut and took off after the mystery lover. All I needed was ten seconds of face-time to explain to him that I was his friend, not his enemy. That I wanted to solve the murder of his beloved, not cause him any additional despair.

  I had no time to change into pants. I knew I was about to make a spectacle of myself and I didn’t relish the prospect. I cherished stealth and anonymity. I loathed the thought of drawing attention to myself in any way, especially given I was a guest in a foreign country. My suitcase didn’t contain blue jeans when I travelled abroad. Europe was a classier place than America and I packed accordingly. Now, here I was hustling across the Oudekerkplein in a bikini bottom. I didn’t resemble the prototypical American tourist in shorts and tank top. I made that get-up look civilized.

  And yet I didn’t hesitate. The pin-prick of embarrassment was just that. I’d snuck my cousin out of Chernobyl and into New York via Siberia. I’d stared down the cops on the Trans Siberian Railway by posing as a journalist, cajoled a cemetery caretaker to unearth a grave in Ukraine, and convinced a billionaire to fly me around the world by pretending to not want his help. A woman’s will could propel her to act outside of social norms to achieve her goals. The prerequisite to harnessing that will was the willingness to risk failure.

  My flats had thin soles. As a result, the cobblestones threw off my balance. I had trouble walking a straight line. I suspected I looked drunk. A few jaws dropped. Some pedestrians moved to the side to make way for me. Men loitering near bars craned their necks for a better view. I ignored them.

  The secret lover marched purposefully but didn’t run. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself, I thought. Smart boy. All eyes were focused on me instead of him. I was determined to catch-up to him with a walking pace honed on New York City sidewalks. Running would only make me stand out even more. I’d rarely failed to catch up to anyone along Madison Avenue. I didn’t see any reason I wouldn’t do so now.

  “Wait,” I said. “I’m a friend. I want to help you. I want to help Iskra.”

  Iskra was the name of the deceased girl. I shouted at her mystery lover from behind but he either didn’t hear me or wasn’t interested in what I had to say. He simply kept walking like a robot programmed to stay ahead of me.

  I followed him right onto Warmoesstraat, still twenty paces back. I passed a corner store specializing in whips and chains, and an illuminated houseboat on the canal where two couples were enjoying dinner. A bicycle wrapped in white lights sparkled in the picture window of a luxury row house beyond them.

  We’d walked a city block and I’d gained no ground at all. The mystery lover had long legs and could move. Damned if he didn’t have longer legs and wasn’t fitter than I was. In half a block he would reach the outer border of De Wallen. There was simply no way I could leave De Wallen in my current state of dress.

  I began to jog. My feet stung and I wished I were wearing trainers. I repeated my plea for him to stop and that I was his friend.

  He didn’t respond. He reached the border of De Wallen, turned right onto a side street, and disappeared.

  I ran.

  When I reached the corner I saw him climbing into the back of a small SUV. I didn’t recognize the vehicle. From my viewpoint, I could see a short vertical post in the middle of the road directly in front of the vehicle’s bumper with a vivid red light. I could also see that the mystery lover was seated in the back of the SUV, but only the driver was seated in front. The front passenger seat was empty. The SUV’s break lights shone red. Any second the driver would switch into reverse and come barreling toward me, I thought.

  I hugged the buildings along the right sidewalk and raced toward the vehicle. I was ten strides away. Five strides . . . I read the lettering on the back of the SUV. It was a Porsche Macan Turbo . . . Three strides away . . . I caught a glimpse of the license plate—

  The brake lights dimmed. The engine whirred. The sound of God’s vacuum cleaner filled the air. The SUV surged forward, turned left, and disappeared.

  I took my final three strides and stood over the cap of the small vertical post. It had sunken into the ground. Its light was green now.

  My chest heaved as I swore to myself. A light sheen of sweat covered my forehead. I felt completely naked and embarrassed. I turned and began to jog back toward Warmoesstraat. I was technically half a block beyond De Wallen. I hoped one of the residents along the canal or in the houseboat hadn’t seen me and been offended.

  A siren wailed. It was a European police siren, a long squeeze of the horn followed by a short one. It was more measured than the frenetic American version. Under other circumstances, I might have enjoyed the sound and the moment. But these weren’t other circumstances.

  A white hatchback with diagonal blue and red stripes across the doorway pulled up to the corner in front of me. I’d never imagined my undoing in Amsterdam would come via a vehicle painted red, white and blue. Two cops dressed in fluorescent yellow vests and white uniforms stepped out of the car. A third cop pulled up on a bicycle. He wore a sidearm like the other two and a puffed-up olive bomber jacket that looked like a Gore-Tex model designed for Arctic discothèques.

  They asked me for identification. I told them I didn’t have any. They asked me who I was. I stuck to my two stories, that I was an American woman living out a fantasy and that one of my customers had robbed me. From that point on they regarded me with a mixture of suspicion and compassion. They didn’t laugh at me. They didn’t appear to judge me. I imagined a similar situation in New York City and how some of the cops might have treated me there, and felt a sudden love for the people of the Netherlands and all things Dutch. Even the bicyclists.

  The feel-good didn’t last long. They took my description of the phantom blond American who’d robbed me. I swallowed my guilt as I delivered my fictitious story. The cop on the bicycle took notes. Then all three of them drove me back to my office. They let me change into my business suit and told me to gather my things. While one of the cops stayed with me, the other two canvassed the neighborhood. They spoke with seemingly random onlookers. Then the Turk materialized, out of nowhere as usual, and they spoke with him. I assumed he was verifying I had a lease and confirming my story that I’d been robbed and had hit the panic button.

  Before they returned to my office, I thought the cops would scold me and let me go. But once they arrived I could see that their interviews had drained t
hem of their compassion for me. One of them pulled out a high-tech-looking, hinged pair of handcuffs. I looked at them with dread.

  “You’re arresting me?” I said. Dejection punctuated my voice.

  “You were heard shouting at the young man,” the cop said, “trying to solicit him on the street. That’s against the law. Prostitution is legal but only in certain places.”

  “I wasn’t trying to solicit him—”

  “You were heard shouting at him. That you wanted to ‘help him.’ Why would you want to help him if he robbed you?”

  I realized his point.

  “And your protection said that one of his colleagues told him that no such man ever entered your room. He said no one entered your room tonight. No one at all. Did you know they watch the doorways through binoculars from across the street?”

  My lies had caught up with me.

  I searched frantically for solace of some kind, and found it in my memory banks. I’d seen the getaway car and committed the license plate to memory. Still, when the police officer shackled me with his handcuffs I suppressed a tear. I was surprised at the depth of my emotions, but I’d never been arrested before and until it happens to you it’s impossible to understand the loss of self-respect. For the moment, a highly civilized country had decided its society was better off if I was denied freedom to do as I pleased. It was, much to my shock, a remarkably depressing moment.

  Yet it was not nearly as devastating as the scene that transpired when I climbed into the back of the police car. I was trying not to look embarrassed but also avoiding the eyes of the bystanders who’d gathered along the street. Curiosity got the better of me, though, and when I glanced at the crowd of thirty or so, I spotted the last person I wanted to see. I averted my eyes from his, an exercise in pathetic wishful thinking, and then looked back. No, I was not seeing a mirage. He was here. My client was here.

  Simeon Simeonovich stood twenty yards away looking like a modern-day Cossack without the horse, handsome and stoic in a turtleneck and one of the half-zip Italian sweaters he favored. Brunello Cucinelli, I guessed. I recognized one of his bodyguards beside him, but didn’t see the second one. That was strange because he was always accompanied by a pair.