Thin Men, Paper Suits

by Tin Larrick

  We went in, and the warm smell of dope hit us straight away. It was quiet, only three or four of the tables were occupied. The place was lit by an amber haze, and a carousel of spinning spotlights cruised the dark red walls. A Santana track mellowed its way out of the speakers, all crybaby guitars and laconic vocals.

  Dane made for the bar, and asked to see the smoking menu. The barman obliged nonchalantly, and he meticulously made his choice, and bought a bag full of brown. It looked like cat shite. I ordered a scotch with a Heineken chaser, and joined him at a dark corner table.

  Dane marvelled at the Rizlas and books of roaches that were there on the table, where you'd normally find the salt and pepper. After the stoner had smoked half of his peace pipe, he offered it to me. I pointedly took out my cigarettes and lit one. He shrugged and resumed normal service.

  “When are you meeting this guy?” Dane asked.

  “Mr Solitaire? Midnight.” I looked at my watch. It was ten forty-five.

  “That his real name?”

  “Of course not. His real name’s Leroy D’Abo, but not many get away with using it.”

  “You used him before?”

  “Twice. He’s cool.” Dane took a deep draw on the joint, and hacked violently. “Go easy, you fucking hippy. I don’t want you too wasted. I may need some muscle.”

  “Thought you said he was cool.”

  “He’s beer cool, but there’s a first time for everything. And I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”

  “Why do you use him, then?”

  “He’s got the best prices in town. And you don’t do yourself any favours if you suddenly defect to the competition.”

  “That’s up to us. If he puts his prices up, then we’ve every right to shop over the road.”

  “You’re a man of principles, Dane. It’ll be the death of you.” I nodded towards the pool table. “Want to shoot some?”

  “Okay, man,” he said, milking the vibe for all it was worth. He racked them up, and we sunk some frames for half an hour so. He lost.

  Unsurprisingly, he got hungry, and I needed fresh air. We walked back along the alley towards the Leidseplein, and then caught the tram into the district.

  On the tram was an old guy in a threadbare greatcoat and a bright blue ski hat. He was sitting behind Dane, making short work of a sandwich and a can of Orangina. We smelled him before we sat down.

  When he had finished eating, he took a supermarket carrier bag out of his pocket and removed a toothbrush from it. He made a loud job of cleaning his teeth, retching and coughing bile up, spitting bits of the sandwich he had just eaten onto the floor. Dane moved across the aisle and sat next to me.

  The guy got up, and staggered to the exit doors, a cloud of stale urine wafting past us. He jabbed the stop strip. He was six foot-ish, and couldn't have been more than eight stone. He began leering incomprehensibly at a middle aged woman near us. She shouted at him in Dutch and made a shooing motion with her hand.

  He continued to jabber and wail. I listened hard – he didn't sound Dutch. When he got off at the next stop, I heard him say, “Don't you want to be like me?” to some teenagers. He was British.

  I run my trade like a business – simple supply and demand. I didn’t devote too much time to thinking about the nature of the commodity – nor its effects – but junkies like that made me think twice about aiming for the Class ‘A’ league. My moral centre is a bit like the Turkish Delight in a box of Milk Tray – not to everyone’s taste – but I consoled myself with the fact that the stuff I was trading in wouldn’t lead to the kind of hopeless existence like the one we had just seen.

  Or so I told myself.

  *

  We headed into the red light district, following Dane’s growing sense of excitement.

  We walked up and down the district, watching the girls in the windows. They were like dolls in glass display cases. The more experienced, older ones winked and swayed their hips with a confidence I couldn’t comprehend. A fantastically-breasted blonde pointed a finger at me and beckoned with a painted fingernail, a wicked smile on her face. I walked on.

  The younger girls tried to smile, but they looked nervous. Closer inspection – I’m convinced they were shivering.

  A fat, chinless Chinese man, aged about sixty, loitered outside the window of a particularly young brunette. She looked straight ahead, and winked urgently at Dane, which I took as an invitation to rescue her. He missed it, otherwise I think the Chinese guy would have been trampled in the rush.

  The Chinese man blabbered loudly, and opened the door to his prize. I thought I saw her shoulders slump a little, but then she turned to him and gave him an Oscar-winning smile. Her teeth blinded in the ultra-violet light, and the Chinese man jabbered again, excitedly. He shook hands vigorously and bowed, and then the girl led him into a room behind a curtain. Inside was all red. Just red, and the UV strips along the tops and bottoms of the windows.

  There was a murmur of noise flowing over the whole street. A steady hum, broken occasionally by gangs of men roaring as they paraded down the canal. In the lulls between the guttural roars of men on stag weekends, a jazz saxophone floated along the crowd.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. My naturally wary reflexes had doubled since touching down at Schiphol, and I spun round, fists clenched and spring-loaded. The man put his hands up in the universal white-flag gesture. He offered a pacifying smile.

  “Look, man.” He pointed to the girls on the other side of the canal. “See them hookers, man? Them all chicks with dicks, man! You get good woman here, but over there, nah-nah.”

  Dane and I continued past the array of sex. We passed a window higher than the others. In it sat a black girl, with long, wavy tresses of hair. She had on a white bra and panties, and a pair of spectacles to aid her in the book she was reading. She chewed a pencil as she did so, and looked at us, expressionless, as we walked past.

  Dane slowed to a halt just past her window. He looked back at her, then at me. I lit a cigarette.

  “Christ. She’s hot,” he murmured.

  “So go on,” I said, sensing his hesitation. “What's stopping you?”

  “What's stopping me? I'm about to pay for sex. What do you think is stopping me? I've never done it before. I mean, of course I've done it before, but I've never paid for it before.”

  “Think of it as something to tell your grandchildren.”

  “I'm not waiting for you to talk me into it. I just…”

  “So why are you out here freezing your balls off? You'll need them. What are you waiting for?”

  “Stop nagging me!”

  I sighed loudly and irritably. He glared at me with an angry look in his eye. I stared him back, blank. He knew I was winding him up, but it still worked.

  “Fine. I'm going.” He didn't move.

  I turned around, giving Dane my back. I saw an elderly couple, arm in arm, grinning at a girl in one of the windows. They seemed very happy. Christ knows what they had in mind.

  I turned back. Dane had gone. I looked around quickly. Definitely gone. I looked up at the window of the black girl. She was gone also.

  I wondered how long he got. Assuming he didn't bust the groove in a couple of minutes, how long would his money last? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? I leaned against a wall and smoked, watching the greed go by. I checked my watch. Time seemed to be slowing as I got colder. I hoped he wasn’t too long. Mr Solitaire was not likely to be on time, but I wanted to be there first.

  I went for a walk to keep warm. I dug my hands into my pockets and walked around the market. The jazz seemed louder – I could make out Night Train. I tried to find the source of the music. It was sparse now, stripped of sax and guitar. Just a trio of piano, drums and goosed-up bass, echoing around the city.

  I walked past a doorway, where a girl wearing tight leathers and a policeman's cap stood smoking, leaning on the doorframe. She was double-hard, the only one braving the sub-zero temperatures. She clutched a whip in her left hand. I ca
ught her eye as I passed, and she shot me a dirty look. I toyed with the idea for a nanosecond, then walked quickly on. Er, no thanks.

  I passed a window, and stopped. I had already passed it once, but it had been empty. Now a blonde girl sat in the window, talking on a mobile phone. Eleven steps led up to her door. I tilted my head up to look at her. There were less than eight yards between us, but she looked straight ahead, over the top of my head, as she talked.

  She was beautiful. She was wearing an aquamarine bra and panties, and black leather boots. Her mouth just quivered as she talked; her body could have melted stone. I turned back to look across the canal, and saw that Dane’s girl was now back on display. I walked away from the blonde’s window and went in search of Dane.

  I saw him walking dejectedly towards me over a bridge. Dickhead nearly got run over again.

  “Well? How was it?”

  He sighed like he had been punctured. “Oh, great.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “I had a bit of, you know, trouble, at first. Then when I did, you know, stand to attention, it hurt. Then she told me I wasn't doing it properly, said I had to do it like a man.”

  “Ouch. How much did you pay for that abuse?” I said, thinking that most men would not make such honest disclosures to other men, and that it was indicative of our relationship that Dane said as much to me without thinking twice.

  “A hundred euros. Then she got up and started getting dressed before I was finished.”

  “You should have gone to the S&M girl down the street. She probably would have been kinder.”

  “Yeah, I saw her. She looked like one of the Village People. Fuck, that was horrible.”

  ‘Oh well. It was an experience, wasn't it? And now you've achieved one of your lifelong ambitions.”

  “I didn't think it would be quite like that.”

  “Jesus, you look like you're going to cry.”

  “Shut up. Where are we meeting your guy?”

  “The Amstel Café. Come on. They play jazz there. It’ll cheer you up.”

  The Amstel Café was just off the Rembrandtsplein, an inconspicuous exterior hiding behind the pulsating neon of the rest of the square. It was busy inside. We took a table by the window, and watched the band. They were good. I looked at the lights outside, the saxophone and bass a constant underpin to muted frozen-breath conversations.

  Mr Solitaire sauntered in with his entourage at twelve minutes past midnight – one of whom I recognised as the girl in the aquamarine underwear I had been admiring earlier. He also had some hired help with him; two knuckledraggers who looked like ex-SAS or something similarly hideous. They made Dane look positively dainty.

  He clocked me at the table and strolled over with the posse. He greeted me with open arms and a keyboard-cracked grin that smacked of one too many personality disorders.

  “Mr K – delightful to see you!” His bodyguards dwarfed him, but he was still a solid mass – at least two hundred pounds. He put all of it behind the handshake; gave me the standard bonecrusher.

  “How you doing, Mr Solitaire?” I nodded at the two gorillas. “Got yourself some insurance there?”

  He squinted at me for a second, then giggled. “Of course, Mr K. Business is booming, and success inspires jealousy in one’s rivals. I must not be too careful.” His English was brilliant fun – throaty thespo art-school drivelling one moment, broken playschool sentences the next.

  “Very true. Buy you and your men a drink?”

  He nodded curtly. I, in turn, nodded at Dane. It took him a second to get the message, and so I greased his wheels by palming him a hundred euros. He looked like he was going to protest as he suddenly realised his status in the conference – and, indeed, in the whole operation – but he obviously worked out that the alternative was me leaving him alone at the table, and so he went without a word.

  Mr Solitaire and I thrashed out some details while we waited for Dane to return with a tray of drinks. There wasn’t much to negotiate – we were going to do a repeat deal on the last batch. The meet was just a procedure, for each to make sure he wasn’t going to get sodomised by the other. Ordinarily, a big time dealer wouldn’t communicate directly with small time buyers without a middleman, but I had known him a little while, and I knew his ego thrived on trying to impress the small fry. I guessed the bodyguards were more for show than anything else.

  “So, Mr K, you are interested in a repeat batch. Or perhaps you would like to increase the bulkload?” He grinned and sipped something green from the glass Dane had brought him.

  I gave him my best my-hands-are-tied smile.

  “Like to, Leroy, but no can do. Don’t have the means by which to move it. Give me eight or nine months and maybe we can up the ante.”

  He frowned, big gastropod brows dancing autonomously over his eyes.

  “Mr K, you are selling yourself short. The weed is perfect for, ah...” he waved his hand while searching for the word. “...the recreational user, but you could only do well from purchasing some heavier shit.” He leaned forward and winked. His blonde escort excused herself silently and headed for the ladies room. I watched her go.

  “Thanks, Leroy, but my resources don’t stretch far enough to get smuggle that kind of shit through the airports. Too risky. Like I said, soon I’ll be able to shift it over water, then we can talk big.”

  He frowned again. “Mr K – you misunderstand. I am offering you favours by selling you shitty little loads of hash. I am a legitimate wholesaler. I sell the hash only to licensed premises. To the man without a license, it is only contraband. I am taking considerable risks by selling to feeble street vendors like yourself.”

  “Feeble? Who’s feeble?” Dane spluttered.

  “I don’t believe I said a god-damn fucking word to you,” Mr Solitaire said, his voice so menacing that it dropped by almost an octave. He didn’t look at Dane, but there was no doubt whom he was addressing.

  Dane, having clearly been sucked in by Mr Solitaire’s paternal ringmaster jollity, went white at the change of tack. Some high-rise street code about never backing down surfaced briefly and then sank without trace, and he buttoned it.

  I put a reassuring hand on his arm.

  “It’s okay, Dane. Mr Solitaire, forgive my colleague. He’s new, but he does have a point. I’m not sure I like your description.”

  “Mr K, let me be clear. I can do you this deal once more, but next time I need you to buy more. To make it worthwhile I need to set a minimum order on your account, or else,” – he stood up – “we can do no more business.”

  One of the goons cracked his knuckles while Mr Solitaire adopted a regretful look that was almost sincere. Then he smiled.

  “Mr K – Special K – it is a good investment. Think about it.”

  “I always do. Can we arrange the usual test drive?”

  “Mr K, do not be thinking I would fuck you over. I offend easily.”

  “No offence intended, Leroy. Just a formality. We can’t be too careful, like you said.”

  He beamed. The man had more faces than a dodecahedron.

  “Of course, of course. Come to my nursery, tomorrow at nine. We shall arrange some testing.”

  The girl returned from the bathroom. I watched her walk over. Mr Solitaire noticed.

  “You like her, eh?”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said, the words out before I could think of a different response.

  He leaned close with a broken smile, bursting with pride.

  “She is my own.”

  She arrived and loitered around the table, not wishing to sit, itching to get going. Mr Solitaire sensed this. He rose.

  “Tomorrow at nine, Mr K. Enjoy yourselves.” He nodded blankly, and the gang left the café. They walked outside to a Range Rover parked out front.

  Dane expelled air, like he had been holding it in since being put in his place.

  “Well,” he said, shaking his head. “That didn’t sound good. What’s his problem?”


  “He’s a greedy fucker, plain and simple.”

  “What was he on about – it’s too risky for him?”

  “That’s bullshit. That guy runs every single pharmaceutical you can think of from the street. Contraband worries are not top of his list.”

  “Fucking piece of shit, talking to me like that,” he said as his bravado returned. “And since when am I your fucking waiter?”

  I rose. “Get some rest, Dane. It’s been a long day.”

  “No thanks. I’m on holiday. I’m going to a club and get myself a good old fashioned freebie.”

  I punched him on the shoulder and left the café.

  *

  Walking back down through the district again, I wound up outside the window of Mr Solitaire’s arm glitter. She had apparently clocked in for another shift, and was back sitting in her window talking to a colleague.

  I felt a surge of something in my stomach, and walked up the steps. I tapped on the window. She turned briefly, then pressed the buzzer to let me in, still talking to the other girl.

  I stepped in. The red hallway was wonderfully warm. I felt my face glow. She opened the door and smiled at me, making no sign of having recognised me. I leaned on the doorframe, and smiled back.

  There was a moment’s silence. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there – fraternising with the enemy, perhaps?

  She broke the silence.

  “One hundred euros for fuck and suck.”

  “Huh? Oh, no, no, that’s not… I mean, I just wanted…”

  She frowned.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “My God, you have no idea.”

  “Well, come on then.” She got up and stepped into the hall, and pointed up the stairs to a red room. “Go up there and make yourself comfortable. I'll be up shortly.” Her English was superb, an accented slant of American and Dutch.

  I walked up the stairs to a tiny bedroom. It looked normal enough, except for the powerful red light and the mirror that took up the whole right-hand wall, next to a single bed. The floor was heavily varnished wood with a flat weave rug on it. A rickety chest of drawers, cheval mirror, small chair and wardrobe completed the ensemble. Glamour it was not. Except for the red, and except for the mirror.