A tiny kitchen nestled in a corner at the far end of the room, exposed except for a table-high countertop. Two very strange, tall barstools, that Walter thought looked like somebody’s idea of skinny, black metal flamingos, were tucked up against it. Down the hall, past the kitchen on the right, was a small toilet and shower and, at the hallway’s end, a door opened to the apartment’s only bedroom. One bed was in the room, a platform affair, little more than a thin mattress without benefit of a box spring, apparently laid on nothing more than a slab of wood. Simple, thought Walter. Probably cost a fortune. The bedroom, like the rest of the apartment, was done in stark contrast, black or white. For a while it appeared that neither Walter nor Harry wanted to take that bed for themselves. Then Walter spoke.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, taking off his jacket and tossing it on one of the ugly barstools. “Take the bedroom,” he added.
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“Out here.” Walter pointed to the living room couch.
“It looks like something you might find in a prison,” said Harry, examining the couch.
“An expensive prison,” mumbled Walter. “Anyway, wash up and we’ll eat.” They had taken the time to stop, in Central Station, at a shop selling broodjes. “It means sandwiches,” Walter told Harry as he pointed toward the sign. They bought more than they needed because Walter said they couldn’t be sure when they could go out for more food.
“If we don’t eat them, we can throw them out,” Harry said.
“We’ll eat them. Don’t worry about that. Grab a couple of drinks while you’re at it.”
They don’t sell Diet Coke in the Netherlands. What they do offer is something they call Coca Cola Light. They replace the artificial sweetener used in America with corn syrup or some other natural sweetening agent. It still has basically no calories, but it’s a little sweeter. They don’t use the word diet on foods or drinks because something about it offends Dutch sensibilities. They are a very fit people who, unlike Americans, do not live in constant fear of fat. You’d have a hard time finding a Dutchman who ever heard of the Atkins diet. So, Walter threw a few cans of Coca Cola Light into the bag, together with a container of milk Harry handed him.
Darkness fell soon after they arrived. It was evening in the heart of winter and the sun sets early in Holland. Amsterdam is a lively city-many would say the liveliest in Europe-but there’s no nightlife, no restaurants, bars or coffee shops on the Heerensgracht. The Gentleman’s Canal was called such for good reason. Walter was not surprised when Aat told him that was where they would stay. Harry went to use the toilet and when he emerged he saw Walter standing next to the first of the two huge, nearly floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the canal. He separated the sheer curtains that fell lightly from a window treatment at the top all the way to the floor, and he stood there for a long time looking down the street in both directions and straight across to the other side of the iced-over waterway. Then he did the same thing at the other window. After that he opened their front door, pretended like he was coming into the building and counted the steps, to and beyond their apartment door, all the way to the stairway leading up to the second and third floors. All the while Harry stared at him. He was sure Walter was doing something important. Thus far, Harry had not seen anything about Walter to indicate that he ever did anything without a purpose to it. But, watching this little bit of theater, Harry had no clue what Walter was up to. Finally, Walter told Harry to open the front door of the building, twice. He had him close it carefully behind him the first time, allowing it to shut almost by itself, lending just a hand at the last instant to keep it from slamming. The second time Harry was instructed to let it close on its own, unimpeded.
“Just let it slam shut,” said Walter.
As Harry did this, Walter went back inside, sat down on the living room couch and, with the apartment door closed, he listened. When Harry was done he came back inside. Walter said, “Let’s eat.”
Aat van de Steen knocked on their door at eight, sharp. “Hoe gaat het met de oude jongen?” he said, wrapping his arms around Walter in a bear hug. “I am so glad to see you again. So glad.”
“Me too,” said Walter. “Look at you. You look great.”
“Ah, ha! Like you, Walter Sherman, I too am een oude waas,”
“A what?”
“An old fool, my friend. An old fool.”
Aat van de Steen was tall and thin. He had the kind of good looks more appreciated in Europe than in America where broad features, wide shoulders and a little extra weight around the middle was expected from a successful man in his sixties. He wore an overcoat and scarf, both of which he immediately took off and hung carefully on a coat hook near the door. He was well dressed in a gray suit, light blue shirt and maroon striped tie. His hair, like his suit, was gray and perfectly cut. He ran his fingers through it twice and it fell into place. He looked like a man who was comfortable with luxury, yet he wore only a simple watch and no other jewelry. In Holland, gratuitous display of wealth is a serious faux pas. In the social democracy of the Netherlands there were, of course, many rich people, but they dutifully observed the social contract not to flaunt their material excesses in their everyday life. You would never hear a discussion of investments, real estate values or how much you paid for your car at a dinner party in Holland. No matter what your social standing, no Dutchman would be so crude as to ask how much you earned or speculate on the salary of others. Unlike the United States, people in Holland kept their finances to themselves. Walter knew, but Harry surely didn’t, that Aat van de Steen had more money than he could ever count.
“No one’s looking for you here,” said van de Steen. “Not on the Heerensgracht.”
“Heerensgracht,” Harry said somewhat absently.
“Very good,” Aat smiled. “Your Dutch will be better than Walter’s in no time.”
“I’m thinking that’s what we have,” chimed in Walter. “No time.”
“The Heerensgracht,” said Aat directly to Harry. “You would say, the Gentleman’s Canal. So, you are in the right place. I apologize for the bedroom-only one, that is.”
“Already a settled matter,” Walter replied. Harry nodded agreement.
“Before I forget, Walter,” he said, striding over to where his coat hung. “Let me give you this. You never can tell when you might need it.” He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and withdrew a. 9mm pistol, one that had a dull, silver finish. It was not a small gun. Then he reached into the other coat pocket and took out two extra clips. He put them all down on the delicate, modern glass table in front of the couch.
“Een achteloze mens kan een dode mens zijn,” he said.
Walter had heard his Dutch friend say that very thing before, the first time many years ago in the jungles of Laos. He knew he was right. In English, it meant, “A careless man can be a dead man.”
“Holy shit!” said Harry, actually jumping backward. “How did you get a gun in Holland?”
Aat van de Steen looked at Harry like he was crazy, looked at Walter in disbelief, then broke into uproarious laughter. Walter couldn’t resist. Soon he too was laughing. Poor Harry stood there wondering what was so funny.
Tucker Poesy landed at Schiphol long before Walter’s plane got in from Frankfurt. Before she left London, she read his file, the one she picked up from the Indian. The material faxed to The Standard by Devereaux included a recent photo of Walter Sherman, taken outside a restaurant in Atlanta called Il Localino. He was attractive, she thought, for an old man. She had Walter’s flight information and a dozen pages with the details of one of the more interesting lives she had read about. The pages about Vietnam contained things that might have frightened some people. It intrigued her. As she often did when studying someone else’s exploits, she imagined herself in the same circumstances and wondered what she would have done. Some of what she read about Walter Sherman had happened many years ago. He was near sixty now and not quite so imposing. Yet, something about
him stirred fear in Ms. Poesy’s belly. One thing was certain. Walter Sherman was not a man to be taken lightly. That was a mistake she would not make.
As she waited for Walter’s flight to land, she thought about her earlier fuck-up with Harry Levine. She was angry with herself. Her frustration was more than a little out of control. What a mess she had made in London. Quite rightly, she took the blame for it when she called Devereaux. But now, with ample time for self-protective rationalization, her pride was winning the battle against her sense of responsibility.
“Fuck you,” she told herself she should have said to Devereaux. “I’m not a goddamn babysitter.” Her job was killing people and most of the people she’d killed she’d never even spoken to-not a word. Now, she was being told to pick this guy up and hold on to him until she could get her hands on some document, a document Devereaux wanted so badly. “Bullshit!” she told herself. “Not my fucking job!”
She followed Walter Sherman downstairs in Schiphol, to the trains. She joined him on the train to Rotterdam, sitting two seats behind him. She changed trains, as he did, and traveled on with him to Bergen op Zoom. In Rotterdam, before getting on the train to Bergen op Zoom, she went to the restroom, removed her dark blue jacket, turned it inside out and it became a red one. She piled her hair on top of her head and pushed it under a small cap. She quickly rubbed off all her face makeup. Then she boarded the train and again sat two seats behind Walter Sherman.
She watched him walk into the Mercure de Draak. She waited across the square on which the hotel fronted. Ten minutes later she spotted him again, this time with her old friend Harry Levine. The two of them approached the front of the hotel coming from around the corner. They must have gone out through the back, she thought. When they took a cab, so did she. At the train station, she stood far enough back from them that she could be unseen. The two men bought tickets and started toward the tracks. Tucker Poesy ran up to the ticket window just after Walter and Harry walked away.
“Oh!” she said, trying very hard to make the ticket agent think she was catching her breath. “I missed them! My uncle and my cousin-they just left your window. They probably think I’m not coming. Please,” she said with her best helpless young girl smile, “give me a ticket too, just like theirs.” With her ticket in hand, she saw they were headed for Amsterdam Central Station, end of the line. She didn’t even have to ride in the same car. Not this time. They were all headed for the last stop. Not only that, she could actually close her eyes and get some sleep. When they arrived in Amsterdam, she didn’t need the sort of sweet technique she used buying her ticket in Bergen op Zoom. She trailed Harry Levine and Walter Sherman to a small food shop inside the station, watched as they bought some sandwiches and drinks and followed them outside to the cab line. When they took off, she jumped in a taxi and calmly told the driver, “Follow that cab.” The cabbie, a young man who looked distinctly Middle Eastern, glanced backward with some suspicion, but as soon as he caught the look in Tucker Poesy’s eyes, he quickly faced forward again. He never again looked in his rearview mirror after that. She frightened him.
“Keep going,” she said when they stopped behind the cab in front of them, the one letting Walter and Harry out at 310 Heerensgracht. “Go around to the other side of the canal. Now! Hurry!” They made a quick left and crossed the bridge at the next corner, turned back in the direction they had just come, and finally rolled to a stop directly across from the building Walter and Harry had gone into. She got out of the cab and sternly told the driver, “Go to the next corner and wait for me. You’ll be well taken care of.” As the cab pulled away, she stood on the narrow cobblestone street, just inside the bike lane, looking across the icy canal. She recognized Walter Sherman standing in the window. That was all she needed, for now. She walked to the corner, got back in the cab and told the driver to take her to the Hotel Estherea on the Single.
The sound woke Walter, a sound he knew he’d heard before. It was the sound of a door opening, the door at the front of the building. Someone from upstairs, he thought. Second or third floor. Coming home late. After all, it is Amsterdam. Must be alone because he heard no voices. Two or more people, they’d be talking, wouldn’t they? Laughing, maybe giggling, urging each other not to wake the neighbors. The door had opened. He waited for the sound of it closing. It never came. Someone must have grabbed the heavy wooden door just before it thundered shut and then silently slipped it into place. An act of consideration at-he glanced over at the small clock he always traveled with-2:53 am? Perhaps. He listened for footsteps. One, two, three, and they stopped. It was seven steps to the stairway leading to the upper floors. It was three to the door of their apartment. Someone was standing just outside, on the other side of the door. Someone was right there, an inch or two away. Walter lay on the couch, in the darkness. Reaching down to the floor beneath him, using only his left hand, he found the pistol Aat had given him earlier that evening. He held it aimed at the middle of the door just left of the latch. If it opened, whoever came in would walk directly into his sights. Then he sat up, moving his body slowly, trying to keep the couch from making noise while he shifted his weight. When both feet were firmly on the floor, he stood in one quick move. The. 9mm held its aim throughout, now leveled at what he figured to be chest height. Gliding on the balls of his bare feet, Walter reached the door in two long steps, flipped the latch, turned the doorknob and threw it open. Instantly, the barrel of his weapon was jammed against the forehead of the man standing in the hallway.
“Not a sound,” Walter said. “Just follow my lead.” With that he pushed the gun forcefully against the man’s head to the left as he stepped to the right. This placed the man inside the apartment with his back to the couch, the one Walter had been sleeping on. Now, closing the door, he pushed him harder, into the apartment. As he did so, he flipped the light switch. “Put your hands on top of your head,” he said, very quietly, very calmly, almost reassuringly. “Get down on your knees and lay flat on the floor, face forward.” The man did as he was told. “If you make any movement or gesture,” Walter went on, “anything at all that disturbs me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” the man said in a voice muffled by the fact that his face was flat on the floor and he was unable to raise his neck with his hands on the back of his head as they were.
“Good,” said Walter. “I’m going to search you and then ask you to remove your coat. Don’t be alarmed. I will not hurt you, unless you make me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said the man.
With the gun pushed against the back of the man’s head at the base of his skull, Walter ran his free hand down and across the man’s body, his arms and legs, looking for a weapon, including any small ordnance that might be hidden in his socks or hitched on his ankle, around his waist and belt, under his armpits and into his groin. He was unarmed. Walter removed the man’s wallet from the left breast jacket pocket, opened it and dropped it on the floor next to the man’s head.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, Sean,” he said. “When I do, do exactly as I say. Take as much time as you need. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good. Roll over on your back. Take your hands from your head and unbutton your coat. Then remove the coat, one arm at a time, without getting off the floor. Do it now.” Walter stepped back a pace and watched the man turn over and begin unbuttoning his long overcoat. “If you make a move other than with your buttons, I’ll shoot you. You understand me?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Good,” said Walter.
When his overcoat was unbuttoned and the man lay on top of it, Walter reached with his right foot and kicked the coat from under him, away in the direction of the ugly barstools near the kitchen. It slid on the hardwood floor nearly the length of the room. “Now take your pants off.”
“What?”
“Don’t speak. Just remove your pants and your underwear.” The man hesitated. This was n
ot the first time Walter had engaged in this particular piece of melodrama. He was not surprised by the man’s reluctance. He knew that any man who did not instinctively recoil from such an order was a very dangerous man indeed. Any man who could maintain his concentration and keep his cool while his balls were set free to flap on the floor was already working on a plan of escape. Such a man, Walter knew, would be devising a way to kill him. This one was not such a man.
He managed his pants without incident, but again stopped before taking his underwear off. “Do it,” said Walter, this time with an edge to his voice. The man was clearly frightened and that pleased Walter. When he lay there, his genitals fully exposed, Walter said, “Pull your shirt up over your eyes. Let it cover your head.”
“Hey, wait a…” He was stopped by the sound of Walter’s gun clicking into a ready position. “Okay, okay,” the man said and did as he had been told. Finally, he lay there, on the floor, naked below the neck, his face covered and his hands at his side.
The Lacey confession l-2 Page 22