Reprobate - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series Book 1) Page 3

  After a moment, her client came on. “Good news?”

  Katla could hear a faint echo. “Blue expects the goods on the twentieth.”

  “That will be fine. All went well?”

  She chuckled. “Our friend regretted his mistake.”

  “You corrected him?”

  “Yes.” As she paused, Katla heard the echo again. “He won’t make any more mistakes.”

  “The ledger?”

  “You’ll receive it shortly.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her client rang off.

  That echo. Bad reception or somebody listening in?

  Didn’t matter. She never used her own voice or name, spoke only in code. This conversation wouldn’t make sense to an outsider.

  Katla erased the call history, removed the battery from the cell phone, and returned both to her messenger bag.

  Time for breakfast.

  She rode her Vespa slowly to the luncheonette Dolfijn used to frequent. As she looked inside, Katla spotted Merleyn, sitting in a booth and chatting with the counter girl. Hoping she hadn’t made a mistake sparing the blind man’s life, Katla rode past the luncheonette to find another place to eat.

  NEW YORK CITY

  Deborah Stern sat on the second story fire escape, reading with her bare feet propped up on the warm metal railing. At ground level a door opened. Deborah put down Arnon Grunberg’s Blauwe Maandagen and sniffed the air. Her mother’s Carmine Street apartment had seemed like a good place to recuperate from the shooting and in many aspects it was—she could read up on Dutch newspapers and practice her language skills—but inwardly she cursed her mother for living above an Italian pastry shop. Every time Rocco’s door opened downstairs the sweet smell of pastries and chocolate wafted up in a mouthwatering cloud swirling up around the green painted fire escape and she succumbed to the siren call on a daily basis, now that she was on the wagon.

  The warm sweet cloud dissipated and she combed her fingers through her long red hair. If this heat and humidity continued much longer, maybe she had to visit a hairdresser, even if she was loath to leave the house.

  Squinting against the morning sunlight, Deborah looked at the intersection with Bedford Street. On the sidewalk in front of Marinella’s, two men were engaged in a game of chess. A toddler played at their feet under the rickety table. Her gaze was drawn to the Sambuca glasses next to the chessboard, three coffee beans floating in each glass for good luck.

  There was a knock on the door. Probably a neighbour with the latest gossip for her mother. Only her employer knew she was living here and the DEA wasn’t known for surprise visits to sick employees. Deborah rubbed the scar on her left shoulder and picked up the book again.

  The knocking came again, more persistent now.

  With a sigh, Deborah slipped inside through the open window, crossed the apartment, and yanked the door open. The man on her doorstep looked like a salesman.

  “My mother is out,” Deborah said. “Please come back another time.”

  Deborah was about to close the door in his face, when the salesman flipped open his wallet and showed his ID. She skimmed the bold DEA and fixed on his name. Bishop, J. She remembered the name. Bishop was a section chief, abroad somewhere.

  “Can I come in, Ms. Stern?”

  “That depends on why you’re here.”

  He gave her a warm smile. “I’d like you to return to us.”

  “I haven’t resigned.” Yet, she thought. “I’m on sick leave.”

  “I know about your plans to resign.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How—”

  “Could we continue inside?” Bishop held up a paper bag with a familiar logo. “I brought pastries from the shop downstairs.”

  Tucking an obstinate strand of red hair behind her ear, Deborah stepped back and allowed him to enter. As he passed her, Deborah noted Bishop was two inches shorter than she was, which put him at five foot five inches.

  “Your mother is at work?”

  “Diaconal duties.” Deborah closed the door behind him. “Would you care for some ice coffee?”

  “I’d love some.”

  She took a clean glass from the kitchen and walked across the apartment. As she stepped onto the fire escape, Bishop followed and picked the book from her chair.

  “Is it any good?” Bishop held up the book and read the Dutch title aloud. He had a funny accent, but his pronunciation wasn’t bad.

  “Puerile, but it’s his debut.” She poured the ice coffee. “I’m sure you’re not here to talk about Grunberg though.”

  From his briefcase, Bishop took a slender folder with her name stencilled in the upper right corner. Deborah spotted a form with her picture tacked to the top.

  “Have you been to the Netherlands, Ms. Stern?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not curious about your ancestral country?”

  “Couldn’t afford to. I’m saving for my own place.”

  “Your Dutch is supposedly excellent.”

  Deborah shrugged again.

  “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Operational.”

  “The sleeping pills? You have trouble sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  Bishop tilted his head. “Are you always this defensive or just naturally reticent?”

  The kindness in his gaze took her by surprise.

  “We have two ears and one mouth,” Deborah said. “To show listening is twice as important as speaking.”

  One of her mother’s favourite sayings, although her mother always injected God into that statement.

  Bishop pursed his lips. “I never looked at it that way, but it makes sense.”

  Bishop observed indirectly, but she could feel him study her all the same. She wondered what he saw. She wasn’t the person in his file. Not anymore. And to be truthful, she didn’t want to be. Problem was, she didn’t know what she wanted. Except that she was tired of lying in bed surrounded by magazines and dirty plates, watching America expose itself on talk shows all day long, and hankering after a tumbler of golden whisky to ease the turmoil in her mind.

  Tears pricked behind her eyes. She turned away from him and took a sip from her ice coffee to avoid wiping her face. It would be a mistake to appear fragile or unstable to this man, despite his kind demeanour.

  Bishop held up a Dutch newspaper. “I would ask you to translate, but since you read Dutch books—”

  Her gaze slipped to the circled item. “Package in front of law office was bomb,” she translated. “A suspicious package found Monday evening on the threshold of a law office contained explosives. The Bomb Squad has...”

  He put the newspaper away. “How well do you understand spoken Dutch?”

  “Understand or translate? I’m not fast enough to be an interpreter.”

  Bishop took a tape recorder from his briefcase and switched it on. From the tiny speaker came an argument between a man with a dark soothing voice and a woman who spoke in clipped sentences. After a few minutes, he stopped the tape and took a transcript from the folder. “Tell me.”

  “One is male, the other female. Their quarrel is interspersed with slang. The woman says the man ogled the salesgirl in a store they just visited, when he should’ve appraised her choice of clothes. Man soothes her, says he wouldn’t be interested in the salesgirl, she’s too skinny. The woman accuses him of devouring the girl with his eyes, or he wouldn’t have known she was skinny. Before you stopped the tape, she tells him, next time she won’t take him, just his credit card.”

  “That’s right on the money.”

  She folded her arms. “So, what is this about?”

  “My team needs a member who can speak, write and understand Dutch like a native. I’d like to offer you the position, but I understand you’re considering leaving the DEA.”

  “I don’t think I’m the same person I was.”

  “Compared to before the shooting?”

  Deborah nodded.

  “I wouldn’t believe you if you said you were.” Bishop put the tape recorder and the folder back in his briefcase. “Everyone reacts differently to trauma. Often there is a deeper understanding of your own mortality.” He toyed with his pencil. “I’ve been shot three times. Each time I became both stronger and weaker, shedding unrealistic ideas about myself.” He smiled at her. “Does that make sense to you?”

  She could feel the tears again. “It does.”

  “You’re going through the same process, but you’re not handling it properly. Moping doesn’t help. Your mind turns on itself. You become self-absorbed.” He sipped his ice coffee. “You need a change of scenery. Other duties. Doesn’t mean you’d have to leave the DEA.”

  “What are you offering?”

  “A two-year appointment as a liaison officer with my office.”

  He handed her his business card. Jerome Bishop, Chief Liaison Officer, Drug Enforcement Administration. With an address in ’s-Gravenhage, Nederland.

  “Your office is in The Hague.”

  “That’s right. You’d have to relocate to the Netherlands. The team is small, but I think you’ll fit in.”

  “How small exactly?”

  “Me, my police liaison officer and my intelligence officer. You’d assist the three of us. With the promotion to GS-14, you’ll get a raise in pay and working abroad has other benefits.” He finished his ice coffee. “I need an answer in twenty-four hours, after that I’ll have to do with my second choice.”

  She wondered if he had a second choice. Far as she knew there weren’t many agents proficient in Dutch. Deborah put down the business card. “Two years. Sounds like a long time.”

  “That period is based on the costs of relocation. I’d be satisfied if you can hold out for at least one year. And you’ll have Dutch holid
ays—25 days of furlough per year.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  “I can be reached at the local number on the back of the card.”

  Bishop put his briefcase under his arm and stepped back into the living room. She let him out of the apartment and went back out on the fire escape. From her perch, Deborah watched Bishop cross to Bedford and disappear around the corner, then picked up her book again.

  And sat for a long time, the book unread in her lap.

  ROUSTABOUT

  Her inline skates whirring over the smooth asphalt, Katla raced along the Weteringschans. With still an hour to go until rush-hour, the boulevard was deserted, except for taxicabs speeding along the public transport lane towards the Leidseplein.

  Opposite the Barlaeus Gymnasium, Katla skipped the tram rails to the other side of the street, followed the bicycle path across Max Euweplein, sailed across the pedestrian crossing, and plunged into the Vondelpark.

  Unlike most Amsterdam parks, the Vondelpark featured a wide asphalt bicycle path circling the perimeter that attracted both hard-core and recreational inline skaters. The two groups rarely mingled. Recreational skaters used the whole park, but the hard-core skaters formed a cohesive group that occupied the west side of the park, where the asphalt was smoothest and the path wide enough to accommodate self-made ramps and slalom courses fashioned out of empty plastic bottles.

  Despite the early hour, the sun was already warm enough to disperse the dew from the grass and the vagrants sleeping on the benches. Katla found an unoccupied bench, loosened the fastenings of her skates and took a thermos with cold orange juice from her backpack. While she drank, she checked out the skaters practicing their moves.

  In the distance, an odd pair of joggers approached, wearing bright orange sweaters with bold black letters on the front. Except for the matching shirts the joggers were different in every aspect. One was short and broad across the chest, his glistening dark face crowned with a mane of bobbing dreadlocks; the other was two heads taller, pale, and slender. The Rastafarian’s sweater boasted ‘GUIDE’, but the tall jogger’s right arm obscured the text on his shirt. His arm fell away and she read ‘BLIND’.

  She looked up at his face again as the blind man from the gallery jogged past her bench, close enough to touch. His long dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, but the scars on his face and infectious grin were unmistakable. Merleyn’s left hand rested on the Rastafarian’s right shoulder as they jogged away, the backs of the orange sweaters featuring the same logos as the front.

  Katla put away the juice and refastened her skates, got up from the bench and weaved expertly through the slower pedestrian traffic, cold juice sloshing in her stomach. For a minute she thought Merleyn and the Rastafarian had left the park, but after another bend in the path the two orange spots bobbed up and down ahead. With powerful strokes she closed the remaining distance to ten meters and slowed to match their speed.

  Lithe on his feet, the blind man ran at a fluid pace, but the Rastafarian puffed like an asthmatic bulldog trying to keep up with a greyhound. Katla dropped back and followed at leisure until they slowed and walked to the P.C. Hooftstraat exit. She passed them, followed the street to the intersection and waited at the corner.

  A few minutes later, the Rastafarian pedalled by on a transport bicycle, the blind man on the rear carrier, seated sideways to keep his long legs off the ground.

  She watched them until they disappeared from view, then skated home slowly, lost in thought.

  -o-

  Katla pushed her sunglasses into her hair like a tiara and entered the dark tunnel under the converted warehouses. Halfway down, she climbed the stairs to the courtyard on the first level. A few children were drawing on the flagstones with coloured chalk, barely paying her attention as she mounted the stairs to her apartment on the fourth floor.

  No matter how silently Katla inserted her key in the front door lock, her macaw Kourou immediately imitated a ferocious dog. After parking her skates and sneakers in the corner of the hallway, she peeled off her damp socks and walked barefoot to the bathroom where she turned on the taps to fill her bath.

  She entered the living room. Her macaw stopped barking and flapped his huge blue wings in excitement. Kourou gazed at her with his pale eyes and croaked, “Happy?”

  “Happy,” she assured him.

  Katla walked up to his stand and offered her wrist. The macaw stepped from his perch one claw at a time, his sharp talons clutching her arm carefully. She opened the balcony doors and raised her arm. Kourou took a good look around, dropped to the quay, spread his wings, and soared across the canal to the zoo. Through her binoculars, Katla followed his descent to the Artis entrance, where Kourou would probably annoy the less colourful birds.

  After hanging the binoculars back on their peg, Katla strolled to the kitchen counter and the spoils from the gallery. The ledger had been forwarded to the client, but a decryption program was analysing a digital scan of the coded entries. Although she doubted if it would yield anything useful. She flicked through Dolfijn’s Filofax for Merleyn’s contact information, but all she could find was the number for The Roustabout on the Nieuwmarkt.

  With Paul Weller playing on the stereo, she undressed, strolled into the bathroom, turned off the taps and sank into the warm water. She folded a towel under her head and closed her eyes.

  What kind of club would a blind man frequent?

  -o-

  Jazz club The Roustabout was on the west side of the Nieuwmarkt. A huge black bouncer filled the doorway, his bald head and shoulders brushing the frame, dark skin glowing in the blue neon lights flanking the entrance.

  Katla halted in front of him and gazed up. “What’s the fee?”

  “You’re late.” His voice rumbled up from somewhere deep down inside. “The last set is nearly over.”

  “I’m not here for the music.”

  The bouncer frowned and stepped aside. She brushed past him and entered the small hallway. Behind her, the bouncer turned and blocked the entrance again—as if he held back a frenzied crowd instead of facing an almost deserted square.

  Katla crossed the hallway, put her palms together and split the blue drape with a darker blue leather circle, greasy from use. As she stepped through, she was enveloped instantly by a warm noisy blanket of air perfumed with beer, reefer, and sweat. Taking shallow breaths, she slunk through the crowd to the bar. Nobody offered her his stool, so she remained standing and ordered vodka.

  She studied the crowd to see if she could spot Merleyn anywhere.

  Fake gaslights hung on the perspiring walls, dimmed in favour of the electric spotlights centered on the stage against the far wall, where a jazz combo tried to drown out all other noises. In the spotlight, a willowy doe-eyed girl lamented some lost lover, hands wrapped around the microphone stand while her mournful gaze searched the smoky air stubbornly resisting dispersion by the whirling ceiling fans. The band remained outside the bright lights. The frail singer closed her eyes and ended her song.

  A smattering of applause accompanied her retreat from the spotlight.

  With feline grace, the blind man strode into the circle of light, halted near the edge of the stage, and lifted a saxophone to his lips. An intricate flurry of notes streamed from the gleaming instrument and filled the room, halting conversations.

  From the corner of her eye, Katla spotted the bartender as he placed her drink on the bar. She tossed him the money and carried her drink closer to the stage.

  Merleyn appeared taller than before, his shiny blue-black hair tied back in a severe ponytail, his angular features more prominent. Although his eyelids still weren’t covered, the horrific scars seemed less conspicuous.

  His scintillating solo whirled around the room until the spotlights dimmed and the stage turned dark, the only sound in the gloom a drawn-out note from his saxophone. The note went on for another thirty seconds, dipped, and ended in a soft sob.

  People applauded and the fake gaslights began to burn brighter, while the musicians left the stage. Taped jazz music started to play over the speakers to signal that the performance was over. Merleyn waited by the stage for the Rastafarian from the park, who leaned his double-bass against the piano. Together, the blind man and the Rastafarian followed the other musicians to a room in the back.