The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1

by Brian Christopher

  Harvey Wall left his hotel on the Lairessestraat, and took the number five tram in front of the Concertgebouw to the Leidseplein, which was quickly becoming a regular starting point in getting to know the city center. His jetlag had eased off and his sleep pattern was quickly adjusting from New York to Amsterdam time, six hours earlier.

  For the last couple of days, he had tried different restaurants and drank in various pubs around the Leidseplein, but now it was time to check out a new neighborhood.

  His little trip with Bakker yesterday was interesting but did not actually show him anything new. They went to a coffee shop next to the Amstel River, and immediately after Wall took a taxi back to the hotel and crashed.

  Bakker had bought two pre-rolled joints, which cost four euros each and decided they would sit on a stool at the end of the bar. The music was not to his taste, rap, he preferred blues or soul. Not only did he feel out of place with the music, most of the people in the coffee shop were so much younger, late teens, early twenties. It was probably the first time he noticed an age gap, and the first time he really felt old.

  The joints were supposedly medium strength, but after ten minutes it hit Wall like a ton of bricks.

  At first he didn't feel anything special when he inhaled, but after three or four minutes he began to feel dizzy. Then the world around him began to change. His mouth dried up, so he got Bakker to order him a cola. After finishing the bottle, he suddenly felt abysmal and had difficulty sitting upright in the stool. After fifteen minutes, he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. When he tried to get up, he realized his legs had turned to jelly, so he remained seated. His body felt incredibly heavy. He attempted to speak but it was impossible, he grew more and more sleepy. Strangely he was aware of everything around him but felt incapacitated. Bakker talked to him, but he could not respond. Others nearly half his age, smoking hash or marijuana seemed totally unscathed. What surprised him most was that he only smoked half a joint and was more stoned than anyone else in the building. Bakker stayed next to him and drank another coffee.

  It took at least three-quarters of an hour before he could finally stand up and head for the door. Bakker seemed totally immune to the joint, he smoked right down to the butt, and bought another just before they left.

  Outside at last, he felt relieved and free, and could breathe in something else other than the marijuana and second-hand hash smoke. He remembered saying goodbye to Bakker but could not remember how he got back to the hotel, or having anything to eat. The only clue he had of food turned up the following morning. An empty pizza box lay in the rubbish bin of his hotel room.

 

  Hotel Americain was something he would like to revisit but realized he had visited the Leidseplein and most of the surrounding area since he arrived.

  Harvey unfolded a small basic map of Amsterdam he picked up at the tourist bureau - strangely called the VVV - which sounded more like a cult than anything that had to do with tourists.

  He got around the city well enough with his iPhone, but the paper map gave him the bigger picture, a sort of birds eye view of the city.

  He walked down the Leidsestraat and followed the tram lines until he arrived at the back of Dam Palace, then turned right. He went across Dam Square to the Damstraat on the opposite side, and into the red light district.

  One of the most famous districts in the world, and according to his map known to the Dutch as the Wallen. He wondered if his name had any connection to it. Everybody had heard of the red light district of Amsterdam and everybody wanted to walk down its streets. Now he was there, on the verge of exploring it himself, and it felt good.

  As he strolled into the Damstraat, it seemed to Harvey Wall that the thousands of tourists roaming the streets of Amsterdam had decided to join him. It was as busy as the busiest shopping street just a block away. The further he went into the Damstraat, the more he felt a change in atmosphere on the street itself. The smiling and inquisitive faces of the tourists were still there, but there was another mood in the air. Wall began to notice the junkies, the psychos, and people living on the edge. Nothing new about that. He had his fair share of them back in the less desirable districts of New York, but the one thing he expected he did not see. There were no prostitutes on the streets, or at least it was not obvious. As he approached a canal bridge, he turned left at the Ouderzijds Achterburgwal, and saw why further down the canal.

  The prostitutes were there all right, but behind full-length windows, showing off what they had to offer. None were naked, or even topless, but nearly all wearing a bikini. Average age he reckoned was about twenty-five. Most looked pretty ordinary, nothing really special, but there were a few who were definitely over the hill. Probably appealed to men over sixty, he thought.

  Among many girls offering their services, were a couple who looked really hot. One wore a black bikini, tall and dark skinned, slender and beautifully curved in all the right places. She smiled and beckoned him to join her. Fifty euros and fifteen minutes of your time, that's what Bakker told him. It was tempting, but he had never paid for a woman in his life and was more than certain he was not going to start now. Besides, he didn't feel the urge. Somehow it seemed too business-like, which could have been down to the fact it was not illegal. With a girl like that there was no sensation of doing something you could not be arrested for. The thrill of it all had vanished.

  Walking on, he strolled through streets lined with sex shops, sex clubs, and a mixture of tourists and lowlife. At the following bridge, he turned left again, which finally took him on to the Warmoesstraat. It was a mass of crowds mostly consisting of tourists, students, and bicycles, and lots of them. Not that there were less in other parts of Amsterdam, but here with the streets being so narrow it seemed suddenly very crowded.

  On the Leidsestraat, you had to watch out for the trams creeping up on you. Then they'd blast you with a bell, which gave you only half a second to jump out of the way before being crushed under the steel wheels. Here bicycles on the narrow street appeared more threatening and dangerous than the trams. Many of them did not have bells, which made them like stealth fighters coming at you in large numbers from the front and back. This was where you really did need eyes in the back of your head.

  The situation reminded him of the time he took a cab ride in Paris with his new bride. It started out nice and easy, but when they got caught up in busy traffic motorbikes raced past them at high speed in the overly crowded streets and motorways. It scared the hell out of them, but it did not intimidate or phase the driver. But now, here in Amsterdam, the danger level of just walking down a street had moved up a notch. Two wheeled vehicles with no engine that scarcely reached a speed of ten kilometers an hour made him feel seriously uneasy.

  As it began to get dark, few bikes had anything that could be defined as a light that could be seen from a reasonable distance. Few were actually attached to the bikes. Most were futile LED gadgets attached to arms, shoulders, or fixed to a cap or strapped around a head. Of course, he had seen all this in New York, but here it was an entirely different ball game. Back home, there were a thousand automobiles to a couple of hundred bikes - and they did not ride or drive where you were walking - here in the Warmoesstraat the amount and situation was completely reversed, and nobody wore protective bicycle helmets.

  The only likeable curiosity he saw was a student peddling a wreck of a bike with his girlfriend riding side-saddle on the rear baggage carrier - not something you would see too often in the Big Apple, or even in bike loving San Francisco, but it did make him smile.

  Strolling down the Warmoesstraat he noticed a beer sign hanging over the door of a bar curiously named the Hill Street Blues. He grew up with the Hill Street Blues television series, the first cop series on TV where he thought every series, every actor, and every scene, was crafted to perfection. It left a lasting impression on him as a boy who wanted action, fun, putting away bad people, and someone telling him to be careful out there. Maybe that was the reason why he j
oined the New York police force - he couldn't remember exactly, but it definitely had an influence.

  Seeing the sign of the bar with the same name made him smile.

  Time to buy a beer, and check it out.

  As he went through the door, the warm feeling that connected him to the Hill Street Blues name vanished into thin air. It was like walking into an uncomfortable alien world that was dark and dingy.

  Stretching long and deep into the back of the building, the walls, the bar, the tables, in fact, every exposed surface was covered in graffiti. A vast, over consuming mess of tags, names, and madness he knew would give him migraine if he stared at it too long. Halfway in, he hesitated and turned to look back at the front door and noticed the sign, no alcohol sold here. It was not a bar after all, just a marijuana smoke filled coffee shop.

  Since he arrived in the city, Wall had walked past a number of coffee shops and was always hit by the extreme pungent smell of marijuana and hash seeping through the doors and open windows. But outside this one he had not detected a whiff, possibly because it was being masked and drowned out by the other so-called coffee shops close to it. Should he turn around and leave, or would he have coffee?

  He desperately wanted to get the hell out of there, but at the same time was in need of good strong coffee. He made a decision - he would have one coffee. The overpowering fragrance reminded him of his experience in the coffee shop with Bakker. He scanned the clientele, mostly male, average age about twenty-five and up to about forty.

  The girl behind the bar was small, not a tall white blonde he now associated as the typical Dutch girl. This one was a dark, Latin type, early twenties, and less than half his size. She looked up at him with dark sleepy eyes.

  "Cappuccino," he ordered.

  "One cappuccino," she replied, in perfect English.

  The music in the coffee shop was Rap, Hip-Hop, House and Fusion all rolled into one, and reflected the chaos of the graffiti on the walls. He knew exactly why you would need a joint when you entered; it had to work as an anesthetic.

  She reappeared with the cappuccino and he gave her a two euro coin. Delving into the money purse strapped to her waist, she took out some loose change, hesitated, and then a five euro note.

  "Did you give me a five or ten?" She asked, with a slightly puzzled look.

  "I gave you a two euro coin, sweetheart."

  "Oh, I'm sorry," she replied, looking flustered.

  "I don't want to rip you off babe, but if you'll take a tip from me I think you need some fresh air." He looked down at the cappuccino which was half the size of the cup he had with Bakker. If anyone served a coffee that size in New York it would start a riot.

  The tables to the right against the wall to the right were mostly taken, and at the bar to the left was taken up by a long row of teenagers who looked as if they were on a student city trip.

  Finally he found an empty seat at the table across from the bar. Hill Street Blues took on a new meaning, here you really got the blues, and probably needed medical help to recover.

  Chapter Thirteen