The Tulip Eaters (16 page)

29

Amarisa heard the teakettle scream from the kitchen. As she let the tea steep, she smiled. Yes, she had an excellent solution. She would call Dirk, Efram’s son, the little bastard. He’d grown up a petty thief until one evening she had caught him in her house trying to replace some of her diamonds with fakes. He didn’t know she had an alarm at home that quietly alerted her to any intruders. In return for not turning him in or telling his father, she had used him whenever she was forced to deal with unsavory types—dealers who tried to swindle her, customers who refused to pay. She had never learned how he managed such swift results, nor did she care.

She dialed his number. After the tenth ring, she heard a confused mumbling. She obviously had woken him. She instructed him to show up in ten minutes and he did, looking as if he’d spent the night in an alley sleeping with mangy dogs. His long dirty hair and ratty clothes exuded an execrable odor.

They sat at the kitchen table and, without any small talk, she gave him a Xerox copy of Nora’s passport photo and his marching orders. “Find this woman and convince her it is not in her best interest to stay in Amsterdam. That if she persists, she will never see her daughter again.”

He raised an eyebrow, but Amarisa waited until he recovered from her odd request, which he soon did. “Is the child in Amsterdam?”

“That is none of your business.”

He shrugged. “Fine. Where is this woman staying?”

Amarisa handed him the address. “But yesterday she spent the entire day at the
Oorlogsinstituut.
”

“Why?”

“If I knew that, why would I need you? My stupid nephew, Ariel, tried to run her out of town and botched it. I need a professional.”

He shifted in his chair. Amarisa could smell last night’s alcohol on his breath. “So, your nephew won’t get in my way?”

Amarisa shrugged. “I gave him orders to go home and stay there. If he doesn’t, the police will be most interested in certain illicit acts of his that I happen to know about.”

He shoved a greasy lock of hair from his right eye and stared at her. “You’d turn in your own
nephew?
”

“I prefer that you not harm him, but if he interferes, do what you have to do. Just be very, very sure none of this can be traced back to me.”

The young thug picked at the dirt under his fingernails with a switchblade. “What about the woman? How far do you want me to go?”

“I told you. Scare her off. Convince her to go back to Houston.”

“What’s it worth to you?”

“Two thousand now, five after it’s done.”

“Not good enough. Four now, four after.”

“Take what I offer or forget it.”

He shrugged. “All right. But how am I supposed to do it?”

Amarisa slammed down her teacup. “If one more idiot asks me that, I’m going to go nuts. You’re a professional. Do what it takes.”

“And if I can’t?”

“Then get rid of her.”

Both his bleary eyes were open now. “Hang on, Amarisa. That’s not in my line.”

“Well, it isn’t exactly a great leap, either.”

He shook his head. “I’ll do what I can. If I can’t run her off, I’ve got guys in mind who could handle the other.”

“No! Just you. No one else must know about it.”

His eyes glittered. “That’ll cost more.”

“Just do as you’re told.”

He snapped his knife shut and stood. “I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“See that you do.”

Once he was gone, Amarisa sipped her tea, feeling pleased. The only person who could cause her problems now was Ariel and she had him on a tight leash. She smiled. Now she would pull the noose tighter. She would let them have the baby for the afternoon. To remind Ariel of what he didn’t want to lose—contact with Jacoba. And to make sure he didn’t stick his nose into her plans and screw up again.

She went into the kitchen and prepared Jacoba’s formula. She would no longer call her Rose. This child was hers now. She could hardly believe how fiercely she already loved her. Holding Jacoba in her arms, feeding her in the rocking chair as the sunlight played on her red curls, giving her a bath as she chortled and splashed.

How had this wondrous creature wiped clean the slate of Nazi hatred that had consumed her for thirty years?
In its place now was joy. She still missed Isaac terribly, but every time she touched Jacoba, she felt as if she had vindicated him and Abram. Jacoba was the future, the proud inheritor of the past. She would have every advantage life had to offer. Amarisa would see to that.

30

The document room was now empty except for a woman poring over a large, wrinkled map and the old man who was there every day with his leather binder and bifocals, reading yellowed newspapers. She looked at her watch.
Five-forty.
She knew that the
Instituut
would close in twenty minutes. The
medewerkers
had all gone home. She saw only the receptionist, and he was due to begin locking up in a few minutes.
God bless the Dutch,
she thought. They kept strictly to their schedules. Like their trains that were never late.

She picked up her notepad and pencil and went to her locker. The receptionist walked by her into the document room, recognizing her with a brief nod and tapping his watch. Nora nodded. She knew that he would clear the room and wait until everyone had left through the main entryway.

Now.
She snuck behind the locker area, past reception and hid behind a row of bookcases next to the staircase. She peeked around its corner. The receptionist was talking to the old man with the newspapers, his back to her. She took off her shoes and walked quickly to the ornate wooden balustrade that led upstairs, her footfalls silent on the deep carpet. She felt as if she had stopped breathing.

Nineteen steps up, she reached the landing, turned right and ran down the red hallway to the last door on the right. Nico’s office, or at least it had been. She tried the knob. Locked.
Damn.
She ran back to the landing, crouched down and peered through the balustrade. The beating of her heart blotted out any hearing.
Where was the receptionist?
She had no clue what he did after he ushered them all out. Hopefully he just locked up, went to a café and drank beer.

The lights went off downstairs, save for the chandelier over the entrance to the main doorway. In the dark, it felt to her like the setting for a horror movie—the ruby carpet, dim light, the gargoyles she glimpsed through the windows on the second floor. She still wasn’t sure if the receptionist had left.
This is crazy.
She closed her eyes and listened.

She saw him before she heard him. A white hand on the banister, a black shoe on the first step on the plush carpet. Instinctively, she crouched lower and glanced right and left.
Where could she hide?
She tiptoed down the hallway, frantically yanking on the knobs of four offices.
Locked, all locked!
She heard the receptionist near the landing.
Oh, God, what could she do!
Desperate, she scanned both sides of the hallway.

She heard him spin a knob on a door somewhere, but not open it. Probably checking to make sure they were locked. Only minutes until he found her.
What then? Would he call the police? How would she explain herself?

Then she spotted it—a door without a handle. She pushed on it and burst into a small space, the door whooshing closed behind her. It was so dark that she was blinded. She almost cried out when she stubbed her toe on something. She blinked as her eyes finally adjusted. It was a tiny WC. The toilet and a miniature sink were all it held.

She heard his footsteps nearby as her fingers groped for a lock on the door, but her fingers made no purchase. She clambered onto the toilet, perched with one socked foot on the lid and the other pressed against the middle of the door. As if that would keep him out.
Was she out of her mind?

Nora kept her eyes closed and tried to calm her breathing. Her foot slipped off the toilet lid—
damned socks!
She tensed her leg muscles, spread her hands out against the narrow walls and steadied herself, straining to listen. The footsteps seemed to go to the end of the hall and pause. She heard him try the knob to what she thought was Nico’s office. She opened her eyes and heard his footsteps passing by her. She tried not breathe. Finally the footsteps receded. Minutes later, just as she feared she would fall from her precarious position, the sliver of light under the door went out.

Drawing ragged breaths, she climbed down and sat on the lid. She waited forever until the phosphorescent hands on her watch told her it had been thirty minutes since the lights went out. She put her shoes back on, picked up her purse and jacket and cracked the doorway.
Nothing.
She opened the door and peered down the hall. Black as coal.

Time to get down to business.
She crept down the stairs to the lobby, peering around corners. Satisfied that she was now alone, she let the dim light of a chandelier guide her to the elevator. She would get what she needed quietly and simply and then somehow get the hell out of there.

She pressed the button for the elevator.
Nothing.
She pressed again. This time she groaned. Locked or turned off.
What now?
She ran down the stairs to the basement in the pitch-dark, feeling her way by clutching the handrail. She tried what she believed were the doors to the archived documents, but they were also locked. She banged on the glass, furious.

She ran back up to the main floor. She spied the half door of the
medewerkers’
station. She opened it and turned on a small desk lamp on the counter. Pulling the cord as far from the wall as it would go, she shone the narrow light into the cubes affixed to the wall—the ones she had seen the
medewerker
scan that afternoon. She checked the one she thought he had focused on and then she spotted it. A white plastic card. Hands shaking, she grasped it and held it under the light. Its edges were furled and worn. She snatched it up, walked through the half door and inserted it into the box as the
medewerker
had done. A green light flashed and then she heard a whirring from below. A floor panel receded and the dumbwaiter ground its way up to the surface. Nora smiled.

She folded herself into the dumbwaiter, pressed the red button on the metal post and climbed in. She had to hug her knees to her chest and curl up tightly.
Thank God the thing was slow to close.
It had to be ancient. When the door finally closed over her, she was thrown into darkness. As she felt it descend, she tried to breathe normally in the claustrophobic space. Gears grated against one another until it jolted to a stop. The metal doors opened and she crept out.

She found herself in a dank room, so dark that Nora felt she was trying to see through India ink. She made her way past tables and chairs, groping along a wall until she felt a switch. She turned on the light. What she saw made her gasp.

A man decorated in a studded uniform pointed a black gun directly at her. She leaped back until she realized it was a mannequin. The shirt sported a black-and-red triangular patch with an N at the top, an S in the left corner and a B in the right corner. She recognized it from a photograph she’d seen in one of the books the
medewerker
had given her. The Dutch symbol of a lion roaring on its hind legs was in its center, but this lion held a golden sword and arrows against the backdrop of an orange, white and blue shield. Nora had read that the red and black stood for blood and soil, the shield represented the Netherland’s heroic past on the world seas, the lion the power of the Dutch people. The ominous black stripe had but one meaning. Nazism.

Nora took a slow look around the enormous room. The walls were lined with glass shadow boxes of what seemed to be war medals and weapons. She then walked to a smaller adjacent room and flicked on the light.

“Oh, my God.” All she saw were bookshelves, floor to ceiling, crammed with books of all sizes. Nora pulled one down. It appeared to be a
dagboek
similar to the ones upstairs. She stepped back and took in the enormity of the task of looking through these countless diaries. “Damn!” She studied a few more closely. At least they were arranged alphabetically. Someone sane had actually attempted to create order.

She put her hand to her forehead. She didn’t even know the name of the person who wrote the
dagboek
she sought. If it was a married relative of her mother’s, she would never find it. Nora went to the B’s and flipped through the dusty bindings until she got past the Br’s.
Nothing.
“Think!” she said aloud. “You have to think!”

Then she remembered that the
medewerker
had shown her the mysterious
dagboek
late in the day. Perhaps it had not been reshelved yet. She walked about, looking for a book cart or an in-box. Nothing
. I don’t care. I’m not leaving without that damned book.
She walked into a smaller room, avoiding the NSB memorabilia on the walls, searching every inch.
Still nothing.
She began to panic.
She couldn’t stay there all night. She had to find it!

She studied three of the four walls carefully and then she spied it. A slim green volume. It stood alone on a narrow shelf near the door. “Hold,” read the handwritten card clipped to the front cover.
And hold it she would!
She snatched it from the shelf and sat at a smooth, polished table, florescent lights glaring overhead.

She took a deep breath and carefully turned to the first page. In flowery script was written:
Het Dagboek van Miep Elizabeth Brouwer.

Nora stared at the page.
Who in hell was she?

31

Hunched under his raincoat, Dirk stood across the canal from the address Amarisa had given him.
Shit, he was so sick of rain.
Maybe when he got the dough, he’d head off to Greece or Spain. Somewhere warm, sunny.

He looked up. There she was, the woman. He shadowed her to the tram, got off when she did and tracked her to the
Instituut.
Amarisa had told him she was doing some kind of loony research.
Christ, would he have to hang around there all day?

Then he noticed something. One of the passengers he’d seen on the tram was loitering around the entrance to the building and then sat on a nearby bench. Dirk wandered a bit, watching him. The man never left the bench, huddled in the pouring rain, his eyes fixed on the glass entryway. He seemed nervous. And then it hit him. Amarisa’s nephew. Apparently he wasn’t the obedient hound she thought he was.

Dirk strolled around the neighborhood, dark thoughts crowding his mind.
God, how he hated that bitch, being her slave.
He thought for the thousandth time how to get out from under her. Every goddamned dirty thing she wanted done, old Dirk was her guy. He felt furious every time he thought about the noose she had around his neck. Paying his gambling debts, then threatening to cut off the money. He pushed up the sleeve of his raincoat and rubbed the sore place inside his elbow, feeling the tracks there. Damn, Amarisa somehow knew about that, too, keeping him strung out until she threw him a wad of dough to get high. She’d probably had him followed just like he was now dogging the American nutcase.

Whenever Amarisa slipped him extra money, they both knew what it was for.
And if she stopped—no, he couldn’t go there.
He needed the stuff more now than ever just to maintain. And she’d given him the two grand up front, so she had to be serious about him getting this job done.
God, what he wouldn’t do for a fix!

He lit a cigarette. Calmed the jitters.
Maybe he could just give the old bat false information about the woman.
Amarisa would still have to pay him. That would get the bookies off his back and buy him some smack. One thing about Amarisa, for such a tight bitch, she paid good bucks when the job got done.

He dropped his cigarette in a puddle and pulled a bottle from his jacket. He upended it and took a long gulp. Crap, but it was better than nothing. He wandered up and down the canal for another hour.
Nothing.
Just that idiot Ariel glued to his bench. Probably going to pee in a cup so he wouldn’t miss her.

Dirk looked at his watch. Almost noon. He smiled when he thought of Greta. She’d be home for lunch right about now. He glanced once more at Ariel.
Let the moron do the grunt work. He’d hit the Prinsengracht house tonight. Right now he was going to get himself a truly great piece of ass.