by René Appel
* * *
The kid was standing beside the school principal, waiting for me. They’d arrested his father on suspicion of money laundering, racketeering, and extortion. The trifecta. My colleagues had knocked in the front door of their house and found a lot of cash on the premises. They took the mother away too. One visit from the cops, and your whole family’s gone. I was supposed to bring the kid to child protective services, since he was a minor. I made a wrong turn at first. There was traffic, and it was raining. Springtime was working against us.
The kid didn’t speak, just looked out the window. I figured he had no idea what his parents had been up to, though you never really know. Someone had warned him to keep his mouth shut, but he suddenly seemed to realize I wasn’t just some random guy.
“You doing okay at school?” I tried.
His face twisted. I wasn’t his older brother or any other relative, I was a cop, even though I wasn’t in uniform. He turned away, but I could see he was having a hard time of it.
“I used to want to be a doctor,” I said. “Then you can help people get better. But I became a police officer instead.”
“Nobody trusts a cop. You’re all traitors.” The look in his eyes was harder than granite.
“Who killed Nadia?” he demanded when he got out of the car. As if he were interrogating me. As if I knew something about it. Why do these kids all think the police are part of the problem?
* * *
I visited the other members of the family. Everywhere I went, I was received graciously. Maybe a friendly reception makes it harder to find the solution.
Her sisters told me she loved movies, but she never went out. I kept my own opinion to myself. She never hung around with bad boys. They’d never known a purer girl. Then they cried. The conclusion I drew from these conversations was that Nadia had kept her sisters in the dark too. They knew nothing about her. No details that could send us in a useful direction. Nothing.
Maybe she was murdered because she was so present, because she was dominant, because she was different. At least that’s how her girlfriends described her: radiant, well behaved, defiant. There had to be plenty of guys in the neighborhood who were attracted to her. Everyone was absolutely convinced of the goodness of her character. She was an unusual girl, unique. That breeds jealousy. Killed because she was too good for this world. Something like that.
Her death had made Nadia a martyr. She had been promoted to sainthood. She would be held up forever as an example.
* * *
He was six years older than Nadia. They’d met at a Turkish restaurant she frequented with her girlfriends. He was there with his buddies. There was chitchat and flirting. The two of them began texting each other. They both loved Turkish comedies. He had a Turkish background. “I’m an Alevite,” he told me. She was a Moroccan Sunni.
So she couldn’t tell her parents about their relationship?
He nodded.
Was it serious between them?
“She meant everything to me.” A romantic soul, but I believed him. I could see in him the same sense of loss I’d seen in her girlfriends. “She was one of a kind. She didn’t know how to lie. She lived from the heart. You don’t meet many people like her.”
I didn’t pay much attention to whatever he said after that. What it came down to was that Nadia had been his guarantee against bad behavior.
But their relationship had been troubled. He wanted more time with her than she was willing to give. At last, a few weeks back, she had pulled the plug.
Had he been devastated?
No. In fact, he’d been relieved. He’d been wondering how long it would take before she finally acknowledged her doubts. He didn’t have a steady job, no wealthy parents, no brothers to support him. He had little chance of making something of himself. “She woke me up. I never hated her, not for one second.”
We had to believe him, he said.
Why do we always have to believe these people?
When I left him, we shook hands. His were dry, and rough as sandpaper.
* * *
The forensics report came in. No traces, which now suggested she hadn’t fought against her attacker. The conclusion was that she’d been lured to her death by someone she knew. “The killing must have been premeditated. It was carefully planned by someone who knew what he was doing.”
“I told you,” said Ali. “Whoever did this wasn’t normal. Wasn’t from around here. But he had an eye for pretty girls.”
* * *
Back on the street, I encountered two young Muslim men.
“As-salaam alaikum,” they said.
“Alaikum salaam,” I replied.
They introduced themselves. They were on their way to the mosque. Would I come by sometime, talk about my work as a policeman and what I contributed to society? “We are proud of you. You are one of us.” They’d be happy to welcome me to the mosque. The House of Good. I didn’t want to insult them, so I accepted their invitation. I would come. When I was ready, they said, when I was spiritually clean. When that day came, I would also call my parents.
That evening, I went to Ali’s home. I was uncomfortable about those two Muslims. It was as if they knew of my torment. And there, in Ali’s living room, I felt the earth shift beneath my feet. For the first time in months, I drank. By the end of the evening, I had no idea what I was saying. I talked and talked and talked. I rattled on about the young girls, my feelings of guilt, of rejection. I talked of death, said I hoped that when my time came I would be laid to rest with my head facing Mecca.
Ali comforted me. When I left, he looked at me differently than he had when the evening began. My only hope was that he would always be my friend.
* * *
I wanted to find out where that peppermint had come from, so I decided to go downtown. There were a number of places to get a quick bite near the Pathé De Munt. I went into many of them, ostensibly to use the men’s room, and on my way out I took a peppermint from the bowl by the door. It was, of course, a fool’s errand. She could have gone anywhere in the city that evening.
But I knew she’d been here. In the area around the theater. She’d had something to eat. To drink. She lived her life to the fullest.
In New-West, you didn’t have the luxury to be naive. She’d told him everything about her life, her yearning to be free, her bossy brothers. Her sweet sisters. Her wonderful parents. And he had listened. Understood that she was suffering. She told him everything. Deep inside her was a human being in pain. Someone who couldn’t see any hope for the future. The moment she stepped back inside her house, it was as if she’d confined herself within a glass cage. Running away wasn’t an option; it would break her heart. She was a good girl. Honest. But where had her honesty gotten her? She was living a lie, deceiving her family. And some boy had taken advantage of her.
* * *
A few months later, I was pulled off the case. Despite my background and knowledge, I hadn’t produced the result they’d expected. I rubbed them the wrong way. I wasn’t the Mocro-cop they’d dreamed of, who would fit in among the Moroccan community. In my evaluation, they wrote that my familiarity with the killer’s milieu and my ability to win the trust of its inhabitants had gotten in the way of my professional judgment, had perhaps even prevented the murder from being solved. They were ready to trade their approachable Moroccan man in for a more standoffish model. That’s how I read it, those are the conclusions I drew. Not long after that, I requested a transfer and left Sloten.
* * *
This all happened ten years ago. The case was never solved. The reports were filed and forgotten.
I’ve resigned from the police. I do something different now, though I still divide the world into places where you can safely hide a body and places where you can’t.
Sometimes I dream of Nadia. I see her quite clearly, before she disappears into the polder. She says, I don’t know how I wound up here.
A girl with too many secrets.
I beli
eved that, with my background, I’d be able to solve her murder. I thought I was convincing enough to get the answers I needed, that the solution would simply present itself to me.
I was wrong.
Had she lived, Nadia would still be a mystery.
The only indisputable fact is that she is dead.
The rest is silence.
GET RICH QUICK
by Walter van den Berg
Osdorp
So I tell Sayid pretty soon we’ll be rich. In two hours. Maybe three.
He says he don’t know what he’ll do with his share. He says he can’t imagine what a person would do with a fuckin’ million euros.
We’re at the Mickey D’s on the Osdorpplein, and we got cheeseburgers in front of us, but I can’t eat. I’m too hyped. “We can’t do nothin’ with it,” I say. “We bust ourselves if we spend it. We gotta wait a month. Maybe two.”
“Okay,” Sayid says, but I can see he don’t think it’s okay.
“We don’t spend it,” I say. “That’s lesson number one.”
“Lesson number one at what school, man? The Uni-fuckin-versity of Stealing?” He looks over at the counter, where his kid sister stands behind the register, ringing up an order.
I remind him he’s seen plenty of gangster movies.
“What are you tellin’ me, gangster—we’re gangsters now?”
I say I think we are gangsters now, and I open my jacket just enough so he can see the piece stuck in my waistband.
“Chill,” he says. “That’s way chill.” Then he shakes his head. He reaches across the table and opens my jacket a little wider, so he can get a good look. “When do we gotta give it back?”
I tell him that depends on if we use it or not. “We use it, we dump it in the lake. We don’t use it, I’m s’posed to bring it back tomorrow.”
“You got it from the Abduls?”
“Half,” I say. “I got it from Abdulhamed. Abdulhafid didn’t wanna give it to me. He said he promised my old man. Abdulhamed said he never promised my old man nothing.”
“Chill, man. The Abduls are chill.”
“They want a cut.”
“What?”
“They said nothing goes down in Osdorp unless they get a cut.”
“Shit, gangster, what’d you tell ’em?”
I shrug. “I told ’em they can have a cut.”
Sayid shakes his head.
I say I’ve given this some thought. “They got no idea how much money’s involved here, so we can tell ’em it was a hundred thou and slip ’em ten Gs.”
“Why’d you tell ’em anything, gangster?”
I say, ’cause we needed the piece. “It wouldn’t work without a gun, gangster.”
“True dat.”
I say I didn’t tell ’em what we were up to. “They asked, but I didn’t tell ’em. They said we should be careful, and I said we would. Then they asked again, but I ducked the question. If I’d told ’em, they’d know we’re not after no hundred grand.”
“Okay then,” says Sayid.
I remind him we’ll be rich in two hours.
“Rich or dead,” says Sayid.
“Forget dead. Rich.”
“Inshallah.”
“Yeah, inshallah, gangster.”
Then Linda waltzes into the Mickey D’s and every guy in the place checks her out. Linda wears these skintight jeans, man. I give her a wave, and she heads over. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say.
Sayid stays quiet. He looks to see if his sister is watching—his people don’t like him hanging out with girls like Linda.
I ask her if she’s ready.
She shrugs. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Wave. When you see Patrick coming, you step out in the street and wave. He’ll pull over. You get him talking, and we get in the car.”
She says she doesn’t know what he drives.
I say I’ll point it out. “I’ll give you a sign when I see him. All you gotta do is wave, and then give him a little chitchat.”
“Okay,” she says. “And what do I get?”
“A hundred euros,” I say.
“Two hundred.”
“All you gotta do is wave.”
“And chitchat,” she says.
“One hundred.”
“He wants to marry you,” Sayid chimes in.
“I know. Two hundred.”
“Okay, fine, two.” I stand up. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Linda climbs on behind me, and Sayid and me aim our scooters for the Osdorper Ban.
Here and there on the Ban are these clusters of shops. They got clusters like this all over Osdorp and the other New-West neighborhoods: used to be that the little groceries and cigar stores and bakeries were for the white people, but now the whites who still live in these parts go to the big supermarkets. So you got Turks roasting chickens on the sidewalks and stores selling hearing aids and Pakistani dry cleaners with their hawala banks in the back.
Patrick told Sayid and me he was making a run tonight. Patrick brags about shit like that, because he wants to impress us. He’s been bragging about shit like that for a couple months now, but we never took him serious until somebody said we oughta take him serious. Told us he’s been moving bags of cash back and forth between this one hawala here and another one in Rotterdam for months now, and he got the gig ’cause he’s about the whitest white guy ever lived, he even drives a fucking Ford Focus. He brags about it in this weird robot way he’s got, like he’s not really human, you know, and when we kid him about it, he’s the one laughs the loudest, but not exactly real, like he don’t know what’s funny and what ain’t, like he’s just guessing. He says he’s saving up so he can ask Linda to marry him. I say maybe he oughta try going steady before he starts talking about getting hitched, but he says he already thought it through, and in the movies girls go for romance and bust out crying if you ask ’em to marry you. So it’s better you ask ’em to marry you than go steady.
We park our scooters outside Snackbar Van Vliet. Sayid won’t go into Van Vliet, he says they cook the pork in the same fryers as the french fries, but it’s a good place to leave the scooters—there’s always scooters parked there, and I figure we better leave our scooters someplace they won’t stand out. I want to be professional about this, and I think that includes we put our scooters someplace they won’t stand out.
I tell Sayid and Linda we’ll wait across the street. Patrick will make his pickup at the dry cleaners, and then he has to take the ring road, so he’s gotta come right past here. There’s a parked van we can hang out behind. I tell Linda I’ll let her know when I see Patrick’s car, and I keep my eyes fixed on the dry cleaners. I check my phone and it’s almost five. It’s starting to get dark—it’s winter, but not cold. Feels like it’s gonna rain.
Without turning my head, I ask Sayid what’re the odds we’d get pulled over if we tried driving for the hawalas.
“One in four, gangster.”
“Maybe one in three,” I say. “That’s what you call racial profiling. What a world, right?”
“Are you two gangsters?” asks Linda.
I say society has made us gangsters. And then a blue Ford Focus pulls into the parking space in front of the dry cleaners.
“There he is,” I say.
Behind me, I hear Sayid puking. Linda gives out like a little scream. I shoot a quick glance over my shoulder and tell him he’s an asshole. I ask him does he want to be rich or not.
“I want to be rich,” he says.
I signal Linda to come closer. “You see that blue car? That’s him. So you step out in the street and wave him over, and when he rolls down his window you have a little chitchat. That’s all you got to do. You understand me?”
She says she understands me. She’s not retarded, she says.
“You’ll get your money tomorrow,” I say. I stay behind the van with Sayid, Linda goes to the curb, and she does just fine, plays a little with her phone, the
n looks up when she figures Patrick’s on his way. She makes like she spots him and waves, steps out in the street, and Patrick pulls up in front of the van.
“Shit, it’s working,” says Sayid. “Shit, man!”
Linda walks around the Focus to the driver’s side, where Patrick’s rolled his window down, and she leans in, her elbows on the window frame, her ass in those tight jeans sticking out behind her.
“We grab the bag now?” asks Sayid.
I look at him. I say we get in the car and make him drive to a good place.
Sayid asks what’s a good place. He says we can just as easy grab the bag of money now and head for our scooters.
I look across the street at our scooters parked in front of Van Vliet. I say Sayid’s idea would call too much attention to us. “We were gonna do that, we should’ve parked the scooters on this side of the street.”
“Come on, gangster, you didn’t think about that?”
I tell him to shut up, okay? “Come on,” I say, “let’s climb in.” I go up to the passenger side of the Focus and yank on the back door handle, but the back door is locked. Sayid bumps into me. I look at him. Linda’s still standing there with her ass in the air.
“What the fuck, gangster?” says Sayid.
I grab the piece from my waistband, circle around to the driver’s side, and pull Linda out of the way. She gives another little scream. I touch the front end of the gun to her head and tell Patrick to unlock the doors.
“Three hundred,” Linda says.
Patrick looks from me to Linda, scared-like. “Don’t hurt her,” he says, and I hear the locks pop up. I pull the driver’s-side back door open and nod to Sayid he should get in on the other side, next to Patrick, and I shove Linda into the car and she yells not so hard or she’ll go straight to five hundred. I get in after her and put the gun to the back of Patrick’s head and tell him to drive.
He doesn’t react.
He’s got his hands on the wheel, but he don’t do nothing.
I glance to my right. Linda looks kind of cramped, pressed up against this big laundry bag. Nylon, colored vertical stripes. My old man uses the same kind of bags to store the stuff he sells at the open-air market.