by René Appel
Table of Contents
___________________
Introduction
PART I: OUT OF THE PAST
Welcome to Amsterdam
Michael Berg
Schiphol Airport
Spui 13
Anneloes Timmerije
Centrum
Ankle Monitor
Herman Koch
Watergraafsmeer
Salvation
A. Simon de Waal
Red-Light District
PART II: KISS ME DEADLY
The Tower
Hanna Bervoets
Van der Pekbuurt
Silent Days
Karin Amatmoekrim
Oosterpark
Soul Mates
Christine Otten
Tuindorp Oostzaan
PART III: TOUCH OF EVIL
Devil’s Island
Mensje van Keulen
Duivelseiland
The Man on the Jetty
Murat Isik
Bijlmer
Lucky Sevens
Theo Capel
De Jordaan
The Stranger Inside Me
Loes den Hollander
Central Station
PART IV: THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
Seven Bridges
Max van Olden
Grachtengordel
The Girl at the End of the Line
Abdelkader Benali
Sloten
Get Rich Quick
Walter van den Berg
Osdorp
Starry, Starry Night
René Appel & Josh Pachter
Museum District
About the Contributors
Bonus Materials
Excerpt from USA NOIR edited by Johnny Temple
Also in Akashic Noir Series
Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition
About Akashic Books
Copyrights & Credits
INTRODUCTION
Darkness on the Edge of Town
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Akashic Airlines flight 1595 to Amsterdam.”
Sometime between 1250 and 1275 AD, a small group of Dutch farmers dammed the Amstel, an unimpressive river that emptied into a nearby bay called the IJ. They built houses around the dam and the river, and so the village of Amstelredam was born. Over the years, as the village grew, its name eventually shortened to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam came into its own in the seventeenth century, the Dutch Golden Age, when it blossomed into both an important trade center and an equally important cultural center, home to many writers, such as P.C. Hooft and Joost van den Vondel, and artists like Rembrandt van Rijn and Govert Flinck.
The eighteenth century was a relatively quiet time for The Netherlands. While the country rested on its laurels, the city’s population remained relatively stable. Only in the course of the nineteenth century did a new sense of vigor arise, and the 1800s are remembered as Amsterdam’s second Golden Age.
In fits and starts, the city has continued to grow ever since—in 2017, its population reached around 850,000, including people from roughly 180 countries, making it one of the most international cities in the world.
In today’s Amsterdam, almost anything goes. Take the availability of drugs, for example. The so-called coffee shops in which marijuana and hashish are openly sold have been in business since the 1980s. Where else in the world can you, without fear of arrest, ask a cop on the street to light your hand-rolled joint?
Amsterdam has the amenities and, to a certain extent, the feel of a major world city, but one of its most attractive features is its relatively small size. It’s easy to navigate on foot, by bike, and via its excellent public transportation network, especially with the semicircular perimeter of its famous Grachtengordel, or ring of concentric canals.
Like any other metropolis, though, Amsterdam also has its dark side, its shadowy corners—in other words, there is also an Amsterdam noir. No matter how beautiful, vital, and cheery a city might be, pure human emotions such as greed, jealousy, and the thirst for revenge will rear their ugly heads . . . with all their negative consequences. Amsterdam is a multidimensional city, populated by a wide assortment of social groups, and not all of those groups agree on what constitutes normal social values and mores. This results in a lively mix . . . and, as you will see, in problems.
Amsterdam remains a trade center—and that includes illegal trade—which means there exists within its borders a criminal underclass that goes unnoticed by most citizens and visitors yet bubbles evilly beneath the surface of the city’s daily life.
Gone are the halcyon days when the most common crime in Amsterdam was bicycle theft. Although the city’s rates of murder, rape, violent crime, and total crime are significantly lower than the equivalent rates in the United States, there are murders and rapes, and there is opiate abuse and gang activity and violent crime.
It is perhaps worth noting that Willem Holleeder, the most notorious Dutch criminal in the country’s history—a member of the gang that kidnapped beer heir Freddy Heineken in 1983 and held him for a ransom of some twenty million dollars—was a born-and-bred Amsterdammer.
* * *
“Your co-captains for this flight are René Appel and Josh Pachter, and our flight crew includes fifteen of The Netherlands’ finest crime and literary authors.”
* * *
In the pages that follow, you’ll find fiction by winners of the Golden Noose, which is the award for the best Dutch-language crime novel of the year (Michael Berg won in 2013, and René Appel has won twice, in 1991 and 2001); by award-winning literary writers (Abdelkader Benali won the prestigious Libris Literature Prize in 2003; Hanna Bervoets has won both the Opzij Literature Prize and the BNG Literature Prize; Anneloes Timmerije won the Vrouw & Kultuur Debut Prize in 2006; and Mensje van Keulen’s body of work has been honored with the Annie Romein, Charlotte Köhler, and Constantijn Huygens prizes); by established crime writers (including international best seller Herman Koch, Diamond Bullet winner Simon de Waal, Loes den Hollander, and Theo Capel), and by up-and-comers (such as Karin Amatmoekrim, Murat Isik, Walter van den Berg, Max van Olden, and Christine Otten).
* * *
“Our in-flight entertainment system features four channels for your reading pleasure.”
* * *
In our opinion, each of the stories in this volume is a little film, and since one of the threads that ties them all together—along with their Amsterdam setting—is their noir-ness, we have chosen to organize them based on four of the greatest classic Hollywood noir films.
In Out of the Past (1947), directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer, a private eye tries in vain to escape from his checkered personal history. Here in Amsterdam Noir, dark deeds from the past impact the present as a Syrian torture victim encounters his tormentor, a forty-year-old murder haunts a new homeowner, a convict on a weekend pass prowls the night, and a father wrestles with the death of his daughter.
In Kiss Me Deadly (1955), directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the novel by Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer is caught up in a web of intrigue. The couples in this section of the anthology you now hold in your hands also become enmeshed in webs of intrigue, as a young mother falls in love with the wrong person, an elderly apartment dweller helps out a victimized neighbor, and a delivery boy’s affair with an older woman takes a turn for the worst.
In Touch of Evil (1958), directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, Charlton Heston, and Janet Leigh, corruption in a Mexican border town takes center stage. And corruption takes center stage in Amsterdam Noir as an innocent narrator witnesses the devil at work, a pedophile threatens innocent boys, money once again turns out to be the root of all evil, and a serial killer returns from
the dead.
In They Live by Night (1948), directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Cathy O’Donnell and Farley Granger, an escaped con falls for his nurse. In this final section, a candlelit canal cruise turns suspenseful, an innocent Muslim girl meets her end at the edge of the city, a pair of punk teens embark on a doomed get-rich-quick scheme, and, to our dismay, we learn that not only the good die young.
* * *
“Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent into Schiphol Airport, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position and your seat belts are securely fastened. All carry-on luggage should be stowed in the overhead bins or underneath the seat in front of you. We’ll be landing in about two pages, and we wish you a spine-tingling stay in the dark side of Amsterdam.”
René Appel & Josh Pachter
November 2018
PART I
OUT OF THE PAST
WELCOME TO AMSTERDAM
by Michael Berg
Schiphol Airport
A guard calls my name. I wish I could ignore him, but I know better. I get up and stagger to the cell door.
“Move it!”
The other prisoners watch me go, their faces blank.
“This way!”
The guard shoves me down the passage.
I walk. Breathe. I’m not dead yet.
The corridor is long and wide. It’s an open field compared to the cell I share with twenty-five other prisoners.
Saydnaya is hell. I’ve haven’t been here long, but long enough to have been robbed of any hope. No one gets out of this place alive. Every day is an ordeal. The interrogations, the torture, the sadism of the guards. It’s all just a delay tactic: at the far end of the tunnel, I’m well aware, death awaits me. It will be a release.
We descend into the cellar. As we pass the torture chambers, I hear cries of pain from behind their heavy doors. Or perhaps that’s just my imagination.
“In here!”
The guard kicks me into a room I haven’t yet seen. A dimly lit space that stinks of sweat and piss. A porno film is playing on a big white screen. The volume is cranked up loud. Eight prisoners are being forced to watch the movie. If any of them dares to look away, a guard smashes him in the ribs with a metal baton.
Moaning.
Screaming.
And above all else, the amplified panting of the copulating couple on the screen.
“Take your clothes off!”
The man who issues this command is big, broad, and in his midfifties. He has a bushy mustache. He approaches me, limping on one leg.
“Clothes off!”
He slaps me across the face with the back of his hand.
I take my clothes off. The guards watch, grinning. They make sarcastic comments about my body. One of them taps my butt with his baton.
“Nice ass,” he says.
The man with the mustache shows me where to stand, facing the screen, my legs pressed up against a massive oak table. Two leather restraints are nailed to its surface, and he signals me to lay my hands on the leather. The straps are buckled tight, fixing me in place.
“Spread your legs!” the mustache orders. Then he turns to the prisoners behind me. “Gentlemen,” he says—and, to judge by the scream, one of them takes another blow to the ribs—“be my guest!”
* * *
Dared al-Saeed walked into the departure hall of JFK’s Terminal 4 and looked around. Four years ago, this was where he had arrived. Since that day, he hadn’t flown again. The thought of spending hours in the enclosed cabin of a plane filled with other passengers made him break out in a cold sweat.
He had long debated whether or not to accept the invitation to present at the medical conference. The location was what finally convinced him: Amsterdam. As a young student, he and his brother Mustafa had visited the city. The Red-Light District, the pot shops, the bars, the canals, the blond girls lying on the grass in the Vondelpark with their long bare legs. Amsterdam had been a hallucinatory experience for them both.
And now Mustafa was dead.
As were four hundred thousand of their countrymen.
While he, Dared, had survived.
He felt terribly guilty.
This trip would be a testament to his brother’s memory. And at the same time, it would give him the opportunity to overcome his fear of flying.
He checked in, followed the signs to passport control. The new president had complained about leaky borders and promised that—as soon as he moved into the White House—they would be dramatically tightened. But Dared didn’t notice much of a difference. No gray-suited men with earpieces, no police, no armed soldiers.
The immigration officer was a rosy-cheeked white man. Dared handed over his passport and green card. As the man examined the documents, Dared saw him frown for just a moment. Dared al-Saeed, born December 10, 1988, in Damascus, Syria. Permanent resident since 2015.
“I hope you thanked our previous president for this,” the agent remarked, returning the passport and laminated card. “Have a good trip.”
“Thank you,” Dared smiled in return.
Not everyone in the United States had lost their minds.
He checked the departure board and found that his flight, KL 6070, would leave from gate B32. There was a long line at the La Brea Bakery. His stomach clenched, and he suddenly felt dizzy. A panic attack. No coffee, then, and no sandwich. All these people, all this hustle and bustle. He couldn’t handle it. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Leaving the crowd behind, he crossed to his gate. He found a quiet place to sit, slid his laptop from his carry-on, and settled in to go over his presentation yet again. Slowly, he felt himself relax.
A voice on the PA eventually announced his flight.
It was just after four. Dared looked up. There weren’t many people in line at the gate. Aboard the Boeing, he found his window seat. There was no one else in his row. As the aircraft taxied out to the runway and the flight attendants delivered their safety instructions, he set his watch ahead to Central European Time.
The engines fired up, and the plane gained speed. Dared felt himself pressed back in his seat. There was no way out of it now—seven hours in the air. He wondered if he should take one Ambien or two.
* * *
“Where is your brother?”
I sit on a wooden chair. My hands are cuffed behind my back, my ankles bound to the legs of the chair with plastic zip ties. Except for a filthy pair of boxers, I am naked. I don’t care. After four months in Saydnaya, I have left all shame far behind.
“Where is your brother?”
The man with the mustache punches me in the face. I hear the cartilage in my nose break.
“Answer me!”
His eagle eyes glitter dangerously.
By now, I know his name: Karim al-Zaliq. Because of his strength and temperament, everyone in the red building calls him Thur—the Bull.
“If you don’t tell me where we can find your brother, I’ll knock your teeth out.” There are brass knuckles on his clenched right fist, and, grinning, he brandishes them before me.
I’ve seen Thur knock more than one man’s teeth out. It’s one of his specialties. Eventually it will be my turn; it’s just a question of time.
“Where is your brother?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
“He’s not at his home.”
“Maybe he left Damascus.”
“For where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are his friends hiding him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who are his friends?”
“I don’t know his friends.”
“You’re lying.”
“My brother’s four years older than me. We—”
“You lie!”
When he cocks his arm, I close my eyes and wait for the blow.
Do it, I think. Kill me.
“You so-called rebels are all the same!” Thur is shouting no
w. “Cowards, all of you! You’ll never beat us!” He turns to the waiting guards. “Cut his legs free.”
Before I know what’s happening, they dump me into the bathtub that stands in a corner of the cell. I don’t weigh anything anymore. I haven’t had a real meal in weeks; I have the runs all the time. I look like the other prisoners, like a dead man.
The water in the tub is a yellowish brown and smells like piss and shit. I try to breathe through my mouth and squeeze my nostrils shut. I close my eyes.
“So.” It’s Thur’s voice. “Now tell me where your brother is.”
“I don’t know.”
“All right then.”
One of the guards holds my ankles and another shoves my head under the vile water.
I hold my breath.
Don’t think, I order myself. If I think, I’ll go mad.
The hands that hold me under release their pressure. Gasping for breath, I emerge from the filth.
“Where is your brother?”
“I don’t know. I swear—”
The hands push me down again. Longer, this time. I can’t hold my breath anymore. I swallow. The sludge runs down my throat, into my lungs. Much more of this and I’ll drown.
“Where is your brother? Who are his friends?”
I feel myself break, and I begin to speak.
* * *
The plane began its descent. Dared could feel the pressure on his eardrums. He opened his eyes.
“Are you all right, sir?”
The flight attendant, an attractive woman in her midtwenties, was leaning over him.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, checking his watch. “How much longer until we land in Amsterdam?”
Her brow furrowed. “You didn’t hear the captain’s announcement?”
He looked up at her, not understanding. He hadn’t heard an announcement. He had slept and dreamed—the usual terrible nightmare.
“Schiphol is closed,” the flight attendant told him.
“Schiphol?”
“Sorry, sir. The Amsterdam airport.” She smiled apologetically. “Heavy fog and sleet. We’ve been rerouted to Paris. There’ll be a ticket and a voucher waiting for you at the customer service desk. The ticket’s for this evening’s flight to Amsterdam, and the voucher’s for a hotel room in the city center. You can spend a few hours in Paris, get some sleep if you like, and still make it to your destination today. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sir.” She showed him her lovely smile again.