The Easy Chain

by Evan Dara

  … Between all, between everything, he races into The Mad Processor, into other net cafés. To check. To see …

  … Lying unto her lap, she would pet his head. Lying across the couch, she would stroke his belly. She had a book of stamps, blue and magenta and seagreen, from all around the world, forgotten on a low shelf. She’d said, once, that Lincoln was the best thing that had ever …

  … But there must be eight newspapers in Amsterdam. Het Parool, De Telegraaf, Trouw, De Volkskrant, more. Scattered, market-segment-managed, read by whom? …

  … He stands on a slight, single-arch bridge that crosses the canal by his hotel, near an Anton Pieck three-gable house from 1642, restored brick-clean and rose-brown. The watery causeway slinks and shivers beneath him. There are no relations. No patterns, no correlations. She does not go to any particular geldautomaat on any particular day, as far as he can tell. She does not stay within any particular part of the city, as far as he can tell. She does not favor any days of the week, as far as he can …

  … But there is effort. There is purpose …

  … A bicycle stands slightly to his right, chained to the bridge’s guardrail just beyond its busy flowerbox. Plump seat, thick wheels, strong horizontal male-designating crosspiece, soft all-weather rearbaskets. Just resting for the day. But he looks. The top of the bike’s bell has been stolen. Affixed to the handlebar’s leftside swerve, just by the handgrip, the bell’s twist-on, twist-off metal cover is gone. The annealed surface. The dinging part …

  … Just like Amsterdam. Steal everything not welded down …

  … Not only Amsterdam. Lying across the couch, she would stroke his belly …

  —So what we got.

  —Oh we got lots.

  —Yeah. Archy: what you got in.

  —Same-o, same-o, huh. We got new from Bill-Will Cleaners, Calker Bros. Original Pancake House, an Exxon station, The Walrus – I think it’s a clothing store – mm … Gypsum Wine and Spirits – you wanna hear all these? – Woolworth’s … And of course some on yet another Mastercard, this one issued by … PNC.

  —Got it. Stan?

  —Not too much this time. I got sheets from The Gap, something called Greek Islands, must be a restaurant, The—

  —What a scuzzer.

  —Yeah. Boy’s still at it. I got a stack in front of me, too.

  —What a leech.

  —And I assume no replies to notices.

  —What else is new.

  —Nothing in here either.

  —I’m just sitting here collecting his doorman’s signature, one more time the fucking—

  —OK. So, what. We comfortable with this? This working for you?

  —So far so OK, you know.

  —Mm, it’s—

  —’N you spoken to your people? They OK signing off on this?

  —Yeah. They’ll give it a shot.

  —Mine’ll go along too.

  —Good. So let’s go ahead and make copies of everything we have and make sure everybody has everything. Regular mail OK.

  —Done.

  —I’ll be able to get mine out in a day or two.

  —Good. So I think we should call it for today, OK?, ’n wait for everyone to get the files. Then I’ll set something up for end of next week. OK?

  —Got it.

  —Right-o.

  —OK. Good. So this has got to be the right way to go. Concentrate what we’re doing together so we aren’t also fighting each other—

  —So we can concentrate on nailing the scumboy.

  … Better than 10:30. In July, night falls late. Hotel-home from Bimhuis music, he ransacks maps, dates, numbers, trawling significance. But nothing will speak. His hotel room flows with papers, his notebook clogs with savage ink, mine-shafts towards the mom algorithm. Days of the week correlating with first letters of streetnames. Quantities as functions of city quadrants. Weekday/weekend parametrics. Timegaps and mooncycles. Like an ’05 Einstein, he presses data for pattern and meaning, but performs like the Einstein of ’50. He scrawls and scribbles, and learns to discount body temperature as a dependent variable. But it produces nothing, predictability, tendency, inspiration, sleep …

  Other people would just melt away beside him. They would just hush, be overcome, overawed.

  … Before first light qualifies, he walks across the Nieuwmarkt to the Rabo ATM on Sint Antoniesbreestraat. As a young man, he had withdrawn summer savings here for a Ducati motorscooter, a 12-2Y. It had lasted seven years, with minor repair. He stops, rubs his hands over his haunches, his unrestful face …

  … And pushes the ING card, bearing his father’s cap-letter name, into the wallslot. He negotiates formalities and codes, he hits Withdrawal. He punches 1000 euros, the highest round number below the account’s 1043-euro balance as of the night previous. He’s asked to wait. He’s told Amount Not Allowed. He’s asked Would You Like to Try Again? He punches 800 euros. He’s told Please Wait. He’s told Amount Not Allowed. He’s asked Would You Like to Try Again? He walks down Sint Antoniesbreestraat …

  … He walks down St. Antoniesbreestraat and sees, on the facing wall of a children’s day-care center, a copy of the snipe. Glued in place, above details of a school bus-trip to Breda. Torn, with much of his mother’s right hair handgrabbed away. She told me she’s ashamed of what she’s become, his father had said. I told her it isn’t true. I told her it’s not what she’s become, it’s what the world makes of us …

  … Now the innards. The little beanie-flywheel, the tiny plastic mesh-gears, capstans and rotors. The bike’s bell-guts. All gone. All that remains is the bottom silver disk, clamped to the handlebar. And a little nipple in the middle. Who could want that?, he thinks …

  … He stands on a slight, single-arch bridge that crosses the canal by his hotel, near an Anton Pieck three-gable house from 1642, restored brick-clean and rose-brown. Who could want that?, he thinks, eyes unmoving from the chained bike’s tornadoed bell …

  … At De Reiger, a Jordaan café, still no sense. He plies the statements, prods them, electrolyzes them with pentips, applies the strappado of the eraser. But they will not confess. He sits at bars, on benches, on hard-grit concrete stoops, but nothing yields. He lets the statements flop-fall and breaks to recharge his back, to uncloud his eyes, to gain the distance necessary to return …

  … Lost, it can be. Misplaced. Cards can be stolen. Lincoln bolts up from his hotel bed. He stops, he turns in place, he paces the ways, right angles only, permitted by the room. He puts his hand to his temple. Cards are constantly stolen …

  … He walks down Rozengracht, past careening cars. Whole syndicates use stolen cards …

  … To keep the game going, you don’t take everything, you don’t change typicals. You keep the sources feeding you as long as possible. Until the last dime dries up …

  Hey {Lindy, Karen, Mattius, Chrissie, Angela}:

  A quickie: Did you, super-socialite like only you are, ever cross paths with that guy Lincoln Selwyn who recently took a powder? Know anyone who did? If so, kindly shoot me an emie with all appropriate poop, and a time when we can talk, OK? Need it for Chicago Mag.

  Gratefully,

  Tracy

  To hear people say it, a comet arrived in Chicago last October. It went unnoticed by Yerkes Observatory. But within weeks, the fireball known as Lincoln Selwyn would shake up, transform, and indeed ignite the city’s once-creaky social sphere, breathe new life into several major businesses and civic undertakings, and blaze a trail through { }.

  And then it disappeared

  (Draft)

  My Dear Z—

  Here’s why you’re great: Because I can talk with you about plumbing. I mean, damn: So much grief for fixing the hot water: and who even needs the stuff when it’s like frigging 97° outside? The plumber can’t come, then the plumber won’t come, then the plumber says he’ll have to come another time (sounds like a Viagra commercial), and then I get so vexed about this alleged plug in my old substandard brass piping that I
blow a gasket of my own and let it flow out all over you. And is *this* what you were expecting when you opened this ever-lovin’ emie?

  Yours,

  Trace

  PK: Labor Day!

  … He sits on a bench in Oosterpark, in a shadowed grotto of shrub green. The park, not small, yet quiet, laces walkways through manicured lakes. He gets up, walks toward Linnaeusstraat, a geldautomaat there. In the middle of the park, by the tearduct corner of the largest lake, near the Bolhuis sculpture of a boy riding a goat, a man sells ices from a cart. The cart, unfolded and leg-propped, bears colors, letters, numbers …

  … Lincoln walks back toward the ice-seller, black-haired and squat, and waits for him to hand pink watermelon, in a cup, to a girl, must be 14. He asks the ice-seller if what he’s doing is legal. The man stops his movements, menaces his eyes. Lincoln asks him again. Do you have the right to be here. Menace growls to anger, and the man spits out gutted Dutch. It is incomprehensible, though Lincoln grabs the gist. Who are you? What do you want? Lincoln stares at the huffing man, glowering, upthrusting his arms …

  … Lincoln walks away. He reaches a swerve in the park’s path, turns back and kicks the man’s cart, causing a loud, low-aluminumy boom that sends a napkin holder stumbling to the ground. It separates on impact, accordioning the napkins. The ice-seller charges from behind the cart, but Lincoln stares him down, stares him into breathy stillness, into turning and picking up his napkin holder, into regaining the rear of his selling territory …

  … Lincoln walks through the park, bountiful with bodies. He walks down Linnaeusstraat …

  … Lincoln stands behind a car parked near a corner of the park. He gives two-euro coins, five-euro bills, to neighborhood kids, some just fiddling a football on the sidewalk, some just dawdling by, for ices on a summer’s day …

  … Between all, between everything, he races into The Mad Processor, into other net cafés. To check. To see …

  Merle Luxemburger?

  Bank Association(s)?

  Acad, of St. P?

  Doormen?

  I remember him as a man of principle and consistency who made a difference in everything he did, and who helped others to do the same. He inspired me in many ways.

  —H. Kissinger

  … On Kerkstraat, of an afternoon, he is on his hands and knees. He sifts through scattered slips of paper, gathering them in, looking for numbers, looking at numbers. The ATMs don’t ask to give receipts, just do …

  … Strong coffee, and eveningtime, and a corner desk at ASCII, a craggy net-café open late. Lincoln reviews the last four hours. His heart jolts when he sees the ABN ATM on Vijzelstraat. He had just been there yesterday. Swiveling, his knee inadvertently whangs the underside of the flimsy workstation. He hand-reassures the networkers who look. Then something else. He turns back to the screen. She took 80 …

  … He scrolls back to previous activity. On Wednesday, too, the last withdrawal, two days previously. And on Tuesday the 31st, the day before that. All of them. 80 euros. He whips down the past, screen burning screen, but he already knows. Never had she done that. Never had she withdrawn the same amount even twice in a row. He had been aware of this, he had thought about it, hard, he had admired her cleverness. And now three. Three in a row …

  …A nightbar on Bloemgracht, opens at eleven, closes no one knows. Sitting at the bar, a raven-haired woman, oozing jewelry, starts snipping down her clingy black leggings with a pair of scissors. The man on the stool next to her, in skipper’s cap and ice-blue eyes, laughs explosively.

  There’s thigh, there’s knee-hinge, there’s calf, bruised. The woman talks, growing louder, and moving her head more agitatedly, this way, that, the farther south she cuts. Three times. 80 …

  … The year they’d moved to Amsterdam. Her tenth anniversary – her fortieth birthday. His father’s fortieth birthday. The year she’d been let go by Price Waterhouse. Her sister’s thirty-fifth birthday. His tenth birthday. No. None of them …

  … Lincoln sits among statements. In front of his open, densely penned, second notebook …

  … An unusual number, special, non-offered. She would have to hit one-two-three-four additional buttons at the ATM …

  … Summoning a posse of trombone blat, Wolter Weirbos fills the Bimhuis with rumbustious music. A drummer thrashes, a bassist gropes. Maybe twelve people in the whole place. Lincoln leaves his table and moves closer to the music, lets its rumpled gloves embrace him. At the end of the set he moves back up and finds a scraggly man, toting a beer-glass, looking at the snipe laid out on Lincoln’s table. I see that?, the man says …

  … She like kind of wear red? She got like a limp or something? …

  … He would know. He looks like he would know. Snaggled black jeans and time-strafed jacket, sea-green, leatherette. Scarred brown work-boots and big blubber stomach. Rough hands, cheese nails, day-beard, scuff. Lincoln is heartsick. This man would know …

  … I’m Berry …

  … I think I do, Berry says. I’m like I believe I can, Berry says. And the tickle, the swallow. Not there. Not in Lincoln’s throat …

  … No sleep …

  … Then four. Now four …

  … 80 …

  … The next afternoon, innards roiling, at the Kinko’s on Overtoom. Four in a row …

  … The price of the bicycle she gave him. The number of letters she started to write to him. The number of their house on Gaaspstraat, the cost of a phone call to the States, the year she bought him roller skates, the number of times she ruffled his hair when he came home from school …

  … He stands on a slight, single-arch bridge that crosses the canal by his hotel, near an Anton Pieck three-gable house from 1642, restored clean and Sienese-brown. To his right, the bicycle, bell gone, tilts. Its front wheel is now bent, warped out of alignment. Thing must have been hit. Now impossible to ride, to go half a turn. But, chained to the railing, it still stands. In place, unmoving. Its front now lower to the ground …

  —So I got an idea.

  —Shoot.

  —Actually, it’s a question. I got a question. We gonna do this as an equal draw or we gonna do it proportionate.

  —Wuzzat?

  —Sorry. Archie, what you representing?

  —About forty.

  —’N Stan?

  —Maybe fifty-eight.

  —Motherfucker—

  —And I, we’re going after about forty-five.

  —Stannie, how’d you, what’d he … ?

  —Uh, we got ’em going back to Feb – January. Big rent, the lease on the Olds, maybe two dozen Mag Mile clothing places, that kinda. Guy was—

  —So that’s the question. Do we split what we catch thirty-three, thirty-three, or do we break it down proportionate to what we’re representing? Archie? Any thoughts?

  — … Don’t know.

  —’N Stan?

  — … I’ll go along with, with whatever we …

  —Well, exactly. That’s it. It isn’t obvious.

  —Nope.

  —So my instinct is just to split it. Go it together. Pool the research, pool the results. Just go ahead and concentrate everything.

  —So one for all—

  —Yeah—

  —’N all gonna bring down one.

  —Yeah.

  — … OK.

  —I’m game.

  —Yeah. Good. Good one, Philly.

  —Thanks.

  —Yeah. Good ’n.

  —So, now we all got all the files, right?, ’n so I think the next question is to get legal on board, ’cause the guy’s still doing his number, OK? So then the problem then is we gotta get good service. My gut tells me we’re only gonna get one shot at this guy—

  —What a fucking slimeball—

  —And—

  —A slimeball—

  —’N so we gotta make sure concerns about jurisdiction are taken care of. According to my guys, we can file in Cook County, ’n any of you guys got any contacts in the Br
itish or Dutch Embs – or what, Consulates?

  —Not – not that I …

  —I don’t know either.

  —I mean that’s like the last thing we want to deal with—

  —Oh yeah. Once we we’re going after some Portuguese guy, ’n hoo-la-la. What a nightmare.

  —But they gotta be notified, ’n that’s it. Statute 12.4418.

  —So on the papers, Philly, we all gonna be listed as plaintiffs?

  —Shit. Yeah. OK. I’ll take care of that. Thanks. You guys think you can get signed off on that?

  —Shouldn’t be a problem.

  —Same.

  —Good. Good. So OK, now, at this point, I think we should just go ahead and move to third stage, OK? No use waiting, OK? So Archie, you OK taking sector four fact-gathering, and maybe the MCI account, and to follow-up on the Experian search?

  —Got it.

  —Thank you. And Stan, if you could take judiciary and Equifax?

  —OK.

  —And so I’ll handle TransUnion, broad telephonies, and even waste a little time with Rastar-GPS. Results will determine future directives.

  —Whatever it takes, my man, to nail the pathetic fucker.

  —And Archie?, any luck on Dardan?

  —Nah. The guy’s gone.

  —Too bad.

  —Left two more messages, ’n sent someone around ’n his office is dark. Forget him. He’s gone. The guy’s gone.

  —You think there’s a connection?

  —What.

  —Between Dardan going under and—

  —And the scuzzer? Nah. He couldn’t have made that much of a difference. What were Dardan’s losses there. You got the sheet?

  —We all got it now somewhere.

  —Yeah. But no. I can’t see it. Too insignificant.

  —Yeah.

  —So what you think? I think our guy’s a Section 18B. You guys know Ratzenhofer? Anyone still read that stuff?