Chapter V

We have art in order not to die from the truth.

—NIETZSCHE

Chapter 11.

The Gentleman’s Canal

i.

THE LINCOLN TOWN CAR was circling the block—but when the driver stopped for us, it was not Gyuri but a guy I’d never seen, with a haircut that looked like someone had administered it to him in the drunk tank and piercing, polar-blue eyes.

Boris introduced us in Russian. “Privet! Myenya zovut Anatoly,”

said the guy, extending a hand slurred with indigo crowns and starbursts like the patterns on Ukrainian Easter eggs.

“Anatoly?” I said cautiously. “Ochyen’ priyatno?” A stream of Russian fol owed, of which I understood not a word, and I turned to Boris in despair.

“Anatoly,” Boris said pleasantly, “does not speak one stitch of English. Do you, Toly?”

In answer Anatoly gazed at us seriously in the rear view mirror and made another speech. His knuckle tattoos, I was pretty sure, had jailhouse significance: inked bands indicating time sentenced, time served, time marked in accretions like rings on a tree.

“He says you are pretty speaker,” said Boris ironical y. “Wel -

schooled in politeness.”

“Where is Gyuri?”

“Oh—he flew over yesterday,” Boris said. Scrabbling in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Fly? Fly where?”

“Antwerp.”

“My painting’s there?”

“No.” Boris had retrieved two sheets of paper from his pocket, which he scanned in the weak light before passing one to me. “But my flat is in Antwerp, and my car. Gyuri is picking up the car and some things and driving to meet us.”

Holding the paper to the light, I saw that it was a printout of an electronic ticket:

CONFIRMED

DECKER/THEODORE DL2334

NEWARK LIBERTY INTL (EWR) TO AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS (AMS) BOARDING TIME 12:45A

TOTAL TRAVEL TIME 7 HRS 44 MINS

“From Antwerp to Amsterdam is only three hours’ drive,” said Boris. “We wil arrive at Schiphol about same time—me, maybe an hour after you—I had Myriam book us on different planes. Mine connects through Frankfurt. Yours is direct.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes—wel , as you see, it does not leave us much time—”

“And why am I going?”

“Because I may need some help, and do not want to bring anyone else in on this. Wel —Gyuri. But I did not tel even Myriam purpose of our trip. Oh, oh, I could have,” he said, interrupting me. “It’s only—

fewer people know of this, the better. Anyway you must run in and get your passport and what cash you can lay hands on. Toly wil drive us to Newark. I—” he patted the carry-on, which I had only just noticed in the back seat—“I am al ready. Wil wait in the car for you.”

“And the money?”

“What you have.”

“You should have told me earlier.”

“No need. The cash—” he was rooting around for a cigarette

—“wel , I would not kil yourself with that. Whatever you have, whatever’s convenient—? Because, is not important. Is mostly for show.”

I took my glasses off, polished them on my sleeve. “Excuse me?”

“Because—” knocking himself with the knuckles on the side of his head, gesture of old, blockhead—“because I plan to pay them, but not the ful amount requested. Reward them for stealing from me?

Because why then won’t they rob and steal from me whenever they want? What kind of a lesson is this? ‘This man is weak.’ ‘We can do

what we like to him.’ But—” crossing his legs spasmodical y, patting himself down for a light—“I want them to think we are wil ing to pay the whole thing. Possibly you want to stop at a machine and get money—we can do that on the way, or at the airport maybe. They wil look nice, the new bil s. I think you are only al owed to bring ten thousand currency in, to EU—? But I wil rubber-band the extra and carry in my case. Also—” offering me a cigarette—“I do not think it is fair for you to come up with the whole sum. I wil supply more cash once we get there. My gift to you. And bank draft, as wel —at any rate, bad paper for bank draft—bad deposit slip, bad check. Brass-plate bank down in the Caribbean. Looks very good, very legitimate.

I do not know how wel that part is going to work out. We wil have to play it by ear. No one with any brains is going to accept bank draft instead of cash for something like this! But I think they are inexperienced, and desperate, so—” he crossed his fingers—“I am hopeful. We wil see!”

i .

WHILE ANATOLY CIRCLED THE block, I ran into the shop and grabbed al the unbanked cash to hand without counting it, somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen thousand. Then I ran upstairs and—while Popper paced and circled, whining with anxiety—threw a few things into my bag: passport, toothbrush, razor, socks, underwear, first pair of suit trousers I found, couple of extra shirts, sweater. The Redbreast Flake tin was at the bottom of my sock drawer and I grabbed it up too and then dropped it and shut the drawer on it, quick.

As I hurried down the hal , dog at my heels, Pippa’s Hunter boots standing outside her bedroom door brought me up sharply: their bright summer green fused in my mind with her and with happiness.

For a moment I paused, uncertain. Then I went back to my room, got the first edition of Ozma of Oz and dashed off a note so quickly I didn’t have time to second-guess. Safe trip. I love you. No kidding.

This I blew dry and tucked in the book, which I placed on the floor by her boots. The resulting tableau on the carpet (Emerald City, green wel ies, Ozma’s color) was almost as if I’d stumbled on a haiku or some other perfect combination of words to explain to her what she was to me. For a moment I stood in perfect stil ness—ticking clock, submerged memories from childhood, doors opening to bright old daydreams where we walked together on summer lawns—before, resolutely, going back to my room for the necklace which had cal ed to me in an auction house showroom with her name: lifting it from its midnight velvet box and, careful y, draping it over one of the boots so a splash of gold caught the light. It was topaz, eighteenth century, a necklace for a fairy queen, girandôle with diamond bow and huge, clear, honey-colored stones: just the shade of her eyes. As I turned away, averting my gaze from the wal of her photos opposite, and hurried down the stairs, it was almost with the old childhood terror and exhilaration of having thrown a rock through a window. Hobie would know exactly how much the necklace had cost. But by the time Pippa found it, and the note, I would be long gone.

i i.

WE WERE LEAVING FROM different terminals, so we said our goodbyes on the curb where Anatoly dropped me. The glass doors slid with a breathless gasp. Inside, past security, on the shiny floors of the predawn concourse, I consulted the monitors and walked past dark shops with the metal gates pul ed down, Brookstone, Tie Rack, Nathan’s hot dogs, bright seventies music drifting into consciousness ( love… love wil keep us together… think of me babe whenever…) past chil y ghost gates that were roped and empty except for col ege kids sprawled ful -length and drowsing across four seats at a time, past the lone bar that was stil open, the lone yogurt hut, the lone Duty Free where, as Boris had repeatedly and with some urgency advised me to do, I stopped for a fifth of vodka (“better safe than sorry… booze only available in the state control ed shops… maybe

you want to get two”) and then al the way to the end to my own (crowded) gate fil ed with dead-eyed ethnic families, backpackers cross-legged on the floor, and stale, oily-faced businessmen on laptops who looked like they were used to the dril .

The plane was ful . Shuffling on, crowds in the aisle (economy, middle of the row, five across), I wondered how Myriam had managed to get me a seat at al . Luckily I was too tired to wonder about much else; and I was asleep almost before the seat belt light went off—missing drinks, missing dinner, missing the in-flight movies

—waking only when the shades were pul ed up and light flooded the cabin and the stewardess came pushing her cart through with our pre-packaged breakfasts: chil ed twig of grapes; chil ed cup of juice; lardy, yolk-yel ow, cel ophane-wrapped croissant; and our choice of coffee or tea.

We’d arranged to meet in baggage claim. Businessmen silently grabbed up their cases and fled—to their meetings, their marketing plans, their mistresses, who knew? Loudly shouting stoner kids with rainbow patches on their backpacks jostled each other and tried to snatch duffels that weren’t theirs and argued about which was the best wake-and-bake coffeeshop to hit in the morning—“oh, guys, the Bluebird, definitely—”

“no, wait—Haarlemmerstraat? no, I’m serious, I wrote it down? It’s on this paper? no, wait, listen guys, we should just go straight there?

because I can’t remember the name but it opens early and they have awesome breakfasts? And you can get your pancakes and OJ and your Apol o 13 and vape up right at the table?”

Off they trooped—fifteen or twenty of them, carefree, lustrous-haired, laughing, hoisting their backpacks and arguing about the cheapest way to get into town. Despite the fact that I had no checked baggage, I stood in the claim area for wel over an hour, watching a heavily taped suitcase circle round and round forlornly on the belt until Boris came up behind me and greeted me by throwing his arm around my neck in a choke hold and trying to step on the back of my shoes.

“Come on,” he said, “you look awful. Let’s get something to eat, and talk! Gyuri’s got the car outside.”

iv.

WHAT I SOMEHOW HADN’T expected was a city prinked-up for Christmas: fir boughs and tinsel, starburst ornaments in the shop windows and a cold stiff wind coming off the canals and fires and festival stal s and people on bicycles, toys and color and candy, holiday confusion and gleam. Little dogs, little children, gossipers and watchers and package bearers, clowns in top hats and military greatcoats and a little dancing jester in Christmas clothes à la Avercamp. I stil wasn’t quite awake and none of it seemed to have any more reality than the fleeting dream of Pippa I’d had on the plane where I’d spotted her in a park with many tal fountains and a Saturn-ringed planet hanging low and majestic in the sky.

“Nieuwmarkt,” said Gyuri as we came out on a big circle with a turreted fairytale castle and—around it—an open air market, cut evergreens lightly frosted with snow, mittened vendors stamping, an il ustration from a children’s book. “Ho, ho, ho.”

“Always a lot of police here,” said Boris gloomily, sliding into the door as Gyuri took the turn hard.

For various reasons I was apprehensive about accommodations, and ready to make my excuses in case they involved anything like squatter conditions or sleeping on the floor. Luckily Myriam had booked me a hotel in a canal house in the old part of town. I dropped my bags, locked the cash in the safe, and went back out to the street to meet Boris. Gyuri had gone to park the car.

He dropped his cigarette on the cobblestones and dashed it under his heel. “I’ve not been here in a while,” he said, his breath coming out white, as he looked round appraisingly at the soberly clad pedestrians on the street. “My flat in Antwerp—wel it is for business reasons I am in Antwerp. Beautiful city too—same sea clouds, same light. Someday we wil go there. But I always forget how much I like it here as wel . Starving to death, you?” he said, punching me in the arm. “Mind walking a bit?”

Down narrow streets we wandered, damp al eys too narrow for cars, foggy little ochreous shops fil ed with old prints and dusty porcelains. Canal footbridge: brown water, lonely brown duck. Plastic

cup half-submerged and bobbing. The wind was raw and wet with blown pinpricks of sleet and the space around us felt close and dank.

Didn’t the canals freeze in winter? I asked.

“Yes, but—” wiping his nose—“global warming, I suppose.” In his overcoat and suit from the previous night’s party he looked both completely out of place and completely at home. “What a dog’s weather! Shal we duck in here? Do you think?”

The dirty canal-side bar, or café, or whatever it was, had dark wood and a maritime theme, oars and life preservers, red candles burning low even in the daytime and a desolate foggy feel. Smoky, muggy light. Water droplets condensed on the inside of the windowpane. No menus. In back was a chalkboard scrawled with foods unintel igible to me: dagsoep, draadjesvlees, kapucijnerschotel, zuurkoolstamppot.

“Here, let me order,” said Boris, and proceeded to do so, surprisingly, in Dutch. What arrived was a typical y Boris meal of beer, bread, sausages, and potatoes with pork and sauerkraut. Boris

—happily gobbling—was reminiscing about his first and only attempt to ride a bicycle in the city (wipeout, disaster) and also how much he enjoyed the new herring in Amsterdam, which fortunately wasn’t in season since apparently you ate it by holding it up by the tail fin and dangling it down into your mouth, but I was too disoriented by my surroundings to listen very closely and with almost painful y heightened senses I stirred at the potato mess with my fork and felt the strangeness of the city pressing in al around me, smel s of tobacco and malt and nutmeg, café wal s the melancholy brown of an old leather-bound book and then beyond, dark passages and brackish water lapping, low skies and old buildings al leaning against each other with a moody, poetic, edge-of-destruction feel, the cobblestoned loneliness of a city that felt—to me, anyway—like a place where you might come to let the water close over your head.

Before long Gyuri joined us, red-cheeked and breathless.

“Parking—bit of a problem here,” he said. “Sorry.” He extended his hand to me. “Glad to see you!” he said, embracing me with a genuine-seeming warmth that startled me, as if we were old friends long separated. “Everything is okay?”

Boris, on his second pint by now, was holding forth a bit about Horst. “I do not know why he does not move to Amsterdam,” he said, gnawing happily on a hunk of sausage. “Constantly he complains about New York! Hate hate hate! And al the holy while—” waving a hand at the canal outside the fogged window—“everything he loves is here. Even the language is same as his. If he real y wanted to be happy in the world, Horst? To have any kind of joyful or happy life?

He should pay twenty grand to go back to his rapid detox place and then come here and smoke Buddha Haze and stand in a museum al day long.”

“Horst—?” I said, looking from one to the other.

“Sorry?”

“Does he know you’re here?”

Boris gulped his beer. “Horst? No. He does not. It is going to be much, much easier if Horst learns about al this after. Because—”

licking a dab of mustard off his finger—“my suspicions are correct.

Fucking Sascha who stole the thing. Ulrika’s brother, ” he said urgently. “Which with Ulrika puts Horst in bad position. So—much better if I take care of it on my own, see? I am doing Horst a favor this way—favor he won’t forget.”

“What do you mean, ‘take care of it’?”

Boris sighed. “It—” he looked around to make sure no one was listening, even though we were the only people in the place—”wel , it is complicated, I could talk for three days, but I can also tel you in three lines what has happened.”

“Does Ulrika know he took it?”

Rol ed eyes. “Search me.” A phrase I had taught Boris years ago, horsing around at my house after school. Search me. Cut it out.

Smoky desert twilight, shades drawn. Make up your mind. Let’s face it. No way. Same shadows on his face. Gold light glinting off the doors by the pool.

“I think Sascha would have to be very stupid to tel Ulrika,” said Gyuri, with a worried expression on his face.

“I don’t know what Ulrika knows or does not know. Has no relevance. She has loyalty to her brother over Horst, as she has shown many and many times over. You would think—” grandly signal ing the waitress to bring Gyuri a pint—“you would think

Sascha had sense to sit on it for a while, at least! But no. He can’t get a loan on it in Hamburg or Frankfurt because of Horst—because Horst would hear of it in one second. So he has brought it here.”

“Wel look, if you know who has it we should just cal the police.”

The silence, and blank looks that fol owed this, were as if I’d produced a can of gasoline and suggested lighting ourselves on fire.

“Wel , I mean,” I said defensively, after the waitress had arrived with Gyuri’s beer, set it down, left again, and neither Gyuri nor Boris had spoken a word. “Isn’t that the safest? And easiest? If the cops recover it and you have nothing to do with it?”

Ding of a bicycle bel , woman clattering by on the sidewalk, rattle of spokes, witchy black cape flying behind.

“Because—” glancing between them—“when you think of what this picture has gone through—what it must have gone through—I don’t know if you understand, Boris, how much care has to be taken even to ship a painting? Just to pack it properly? Why take any chances?”

“This is my feeling exactly.”

“An anonymous cal . To the art-crimes people. They’re not like the normal cops—no connections with the normal cops—the picture is al they care about. They’l know what to do.”

Boris leaned back in his chair. He looked around. Then he looked at me.

“No,” he said. “That is not a good idea.” His tone was that of someone addressing a five year old. “And, do you want to know why?”

“Think about it. It’s the easiest way. You wouldn’t have to do a thing.”

Boris set his beer glass down careful y.

“They’d have the best chance of getting it back unharmed. Also, if I do it—if I cal them—shit, I could have Hobie cal them—” hands to head—“any way you look at it, you wouldn’t be putting yourselves at risk. That is to say”—I was too tired, disoriented; two pairs of Dremel-dril eyes, I couldn’t think—“if I did it, or someone else not a part of your, um, organization—”

Boris let out a shout of laughter. “Organization? Wel —” shaking his head so vigorously the hair fel in his eyes—“I suppose we count

as organization, of sorts, since we are three or more—! But we are not very large or very organized as you can see.”

“You should eat something,” said Gyuri to me, in the tense pause that fol owed, looking at my untouched plate of pork and potato. “He should eat,” he said to Boris. “Tel him to eat.”

“Let him starve if he wants. Anyway,” said Boris, grabbing a chunk of pork off my plate and popping it in his mouth—

“One cal . I’l do it.”

“No,” said Boris, glowering suddenly and pushing back in his chair. “You wil not. No, no, fuck you, shut up, you won’t, ” he said, lifting his chin aggressively when I tried to talk over him—Gyuri’s hand on my wrist very suddenly, a touch I knew very wel , the old forgotten Vegas language of when my dad was in the kitchen ranting about whose house it was? and who paid for what?—

“And, and,” said Boris imperiously, taking advantage of a lul in my response he was not expecting, “I want you to stop talking this stupid

‘cal ’ business right away. ‘Cal , cal ,’ ” he said, when he got no answer from me, waving his hand back and forth ridiculously in the air as if “cal ” were some absurd kiddie word that meant ‘unicorn’ or

‘fairyland.’ “I know you are trying to help but this is not helpful suggestion on your part. So forget it. No more ‘cal .’ Anyway,” he said amiably, pouring part of his own beer into my half-empty glass.

“As I was explaining to you. Since Sascha is in so big hurry? Is he thinking clearly? Is he playing more than one, or maybe two moves ahead? No. Sascha is out of towner. His connections here are poisonous to him. He needs money. And he is working so hard to stay clear of Horst that he has wandered smack into me.”

I said nothing. It would be easy enough to phone the police myself. There was no reason to involve Boris or Gyuri at al .

“Amazing stroke of luck, no? And our friend the Georgian—very rich man, but so far from Horst’s world and so far from art col ector, he did not even know of picture by name. Just a bird—little yel ow bird. But Cherry believes he is tel ing the truth that he saw it. Very powerful guy in terms of real estate? Here and in Antwerp? Plenty of paper and father to Cherry almost, but not person of great education if you understand me.”

“Where is it now?”

Boris rubbed his nose vigorously. “I do not know. They are not going to tel us that, are they? But Vitya has got in touch to say he knows of a buyer. And a meeting has been set up.”

“Where?”

“Not settled yet. They have already changed the location half a dozen times. Paranoid,” he said, making a screw-loose gesture at the side of his head with his hand. “They may make us wait a day or two. We may know only an hour before.”

“Cherry,” I said, and stopped. Vitya was short for Cherry’s Russian name, Viktor—Victor, the Anglicized version—but Cherry was only a nickname and I didn’t know a thing about Sascha: not his age, not his surname, not what he looked like, nothing at al except that he was Ulrika’s brother—and even this was uncertain in the literal sense, given how loosely Boris threw around the word.

Boris sucked a bit of grease off his thumb. “My idea was—set up something at your hotel. You know, you, American, big shot, interested in the picture. They”—he lowered his voice as the waitress switched his empty pint for a ful one, Gyuri nodding politely, leaning in—“they would come to your room. That’s how is done usual y. Al very businesslike. But”—minimal shrug—“they are new at this, and paranoid. They want to cal their own location.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t know yet! Didn’t I just say? They keep changing their mind.

If they want us to wait—we wait. We have to let them think they are boss. Now, sorry,” he said, stretching and yawning, rubbing a dark-circled eye with a fingertip, “I am tired! Want a nap!” He turned and said something to Gyuri in Ukrainian, and then turned back to me.

“Sorry,” he said, leaning in and slinging his arm around my shoulder.

“You can find your way back to your hotel?”

I tried to disengage myself without seeming to. “Right. Where are you staying?”

“Girlfriend’s flat—Zeedijk.”

“Near Zeedijk,” said Gyuri, rising purposeful y, with a polite and vaguely military air. “Chinese quarter of the old times.”

“What’s the address?”

“Cannot remember. You know me. I cannot remember addresses in my head and like that. But—” Boris tapped his pocket—“your

hotel.”

“Right.” Back in Vegas, if we ever got separated—running from the mal cops, pockets ful of stolen gift cards—my house was always the rendezvous point.

“So—I’l meet you back there. And you have my phone number, and I have yours. Wil cal you when I know something more. Now—”

slapping me on the back of the head—“stop worrying, Potter! Don’t stand there and look so unhappy! If we lose, we win, and if we win, we win! Everything is good! You know which way to go to get back, don’t you? Just up this way, and left when you get to the Singel. Yes, there. We wil speak soon.”

v.

I TOOK A WRONG turn on the way to the hotel and for several hours wandered aimlessly, shops decorated with glass baubles and gray dream al eys with unpronounceable names, gilded buddhas and Asian embroideries, old maps, old harpsichords, cloudy cigar-brown shops with crockery and goblets and antique Dresden jars. The sun had come out and there was something hard and bright by the canals, a breathable glitter. Gul s plunged and cried. A dog ran by with a live crab in its mouth. In my light-headedness and fatigue, which made me feel drastical y cut off from myself and as if I were observing it al at a remove, I walked past candy shops and coffee shops and shops with antique toys and Delft tiles from the 1800s, old mirrors and silver glinting in the rich, cognac-colored light, inlaid French cabinets and tables in the French court style with garlanded carvings and veneerwork that would have made Hobie gasp with admiration—in fact the entire foggy, friendly, cultivated city with its florists and bakeries and antiekhandels reminded me of Hobie, not just for its antique-crowded richness but because there was a Hobie-like wholesomeness to the place, like a children’s picture book where aproned tradespeople swept the floors and tabby cats napped in sunny windows.

But there was much too much to see, and I was overwhelmed and exhausted and cold. Final y, by accosting strangers for directions (rosy housewives with armloads of flowers, tobacco-stained hippies in wire-rimmed glasses), I retraced my path over canal bridges and back through narrow fairy-lit streets to my hotel, where I immediately changed some dol ars at the front desk, went up for a shower in the bathroom which was al curved glass and voluptuous fixtures, hybrid of the Art Nouveau and some icy, pod-based, science fiction future, and fel asleep face down on the bed—

where I was awakened, hours later, by my cel phone spinning on the bed table, the familiar chirrup making me think, for a moment, I was at home.

“Potter?”

I sat up and reached for my glasses. “Um—” I hadn’t drawn the curtains before I fel asleep and reflections of the canal wavered across the ceiling in the dark.

“What’s wrong? Are you high? Don’t tel me you went to a coffee shop.”

“No, I—” Dazedly I slid an eye around—dormers and beams, cupboards and slants and—out the window, when I stood, rubbing my head—canal bridges lighted in tracework, arched reflections on black water.

“Wel I’m coming up. You don’t have a girl up there, do you?”

vi.

MY ROOM WAS TWO different elevators and a walk from the front desk, so I was surprised how quickly the knock came. Gyuri, discreetly, went to the window and stood with his back to us while Boris looked me over. “Get dressed,” he said. I was barefoot, in the hotel robe and my hair standing on end from fal ing asleep straight out of the shower. “You need to clean up. Go—comb your hair and shave.”

When I emerged from the bathroom (where I’d left my suit hanging to let the wrinkles fal out) he pursed his lips critical y and

said: “Don’t you have anything better than that?”

“This is a Turnbul and Asser suit.”

“Yes but it looks like you slept in it.”

“I’ve been wearing it a while. I have a better shirt.”

“Wel put it on.” He was opening a briefcase on the foot of the bed. “And get your money and bring it here.”

When I came back in, doing up my cufflinks, I stopped dead in the middle of the room to see him standing head bent at the bedside, intent upon assembling a pistol: snapping a pin with a clear-eyed competence like Hobie at work in the shop, pul ing back the slide with a forceful true-to-life quality, click.

“Boris,” I said, “what the mother fuck.”

“Calm down,” he said to me, with a sideways glance. Patting his pockets, taking out a magazine and popping it in: snick. “Is not what you think. Not at al . Is just for show!”

I looked at Gyuri’s broad back, perfectly impassive, the same professional deafness I sometimes turned away to assume, in the shop, when couples were bickering over whether to buy a piece of furniture or not.

“It is just—” He was snapping something back and forth on the gun, expertly, testing it, then bringing it up to his eye and sighting it, surreal gestures from some deep underlayer of the brain where the black and white movies flickered twenty-four hours a day. “We are meeting them on their own ground, and they wil be three. Wel , real y only two. Two that count. And I can tel you now—I was a little worried Sascha might be here. Because then I couldn’t go with you.

But everything has worked out perfectly, and here I am!”

“Boris—” standing there, it had crashed in on me al at once, in a sick rush, what a dumb fucking thing I’d stepped into—

“No worries! I have done the worrying for you. Because—” patting me on the shoulder—“Sascha is too nervous. He is afraid to show his face in Amsterdam—afraid it wil get back to Horst. For good reason. And this is very very good news for us.

“So.” He snapped the gun shut: chrome silver, mercury black, with a smooth density that blackly distorted the space around it like a drop of motor oil in a glass of water.

“Don’t tel me you’re taking that,” I said, in the incredulous silence that fol owed.

“Wel , yes. For holster—to keep in holster only. But wait, wait,” he said, lifting a palm, “before you start—” although I wasn’t talking, I was only standing there blank with horror—“how many times do I have to say it? Is only for looks.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Dress-up,” he said briskly, as if I had not spoken. “Pure make-believe. So they wil be worried to try something if they see it on me, okay?” he added, when I stil stood staring. “Safety measure!

Because, because,” he said over me, “you are the rich man, and we are the bodyguards and this is how it is. They wil expect it. Al very civilized. And if we move our coat just so—” he had a concealed-carry holster at his waist—“they wil be respectful and not try anything. Much more dangerous to wander in like—” he rol ed his eyes around the room in the manner of a daffy girl.

“Boris.” I felt ashen and woozy. “I can’t do this.”

“Can’t what?” He pul ed back his chin and looked at me. “Can’t get out of the car and stand with me for five minutes while I get your fucking picture for you? What?”

“No, I mean it.” The gun was lying on the bedspread; the eye was drawn to it; it seemed to crystal ize and magnify al the bad energy humming in the air. “I can’t. Seriously. Let’s just forget it.”

“Forget?” Boris made a face. “Don’t do this! You have brought me over here for nothing and now I am in a pinch. And now—” flinging out an arm—“last minute, you start making conditions and saying

‘unsafe, unsafe’ and tel ing me how to do things? Don’t you trust me?”

“Yes, but—”

“Wel , then. Trust me on this, please. You’re the buyer,” he said impatiently, when I didn’t answer. “That’s the story. It’s been set up.”

“We should have talked about this earlier.”

“Oh, come on,” he said in exasperation, picking the gun off the bed and sticking it into the holster. “Please do not argue with me, we are going to be late. You would never have seen it at al , if you stayed in the bathroom two minutes longer! Never known I had a weapon on me at al ! Because—Potter, listen to me. Wil you listen,

please? Here is al that wil happen. We walk in, five minutes, stand stand stand, we do al the talking, talk only, you get your picture, everyone is happy, we leave and we go get some dinner. Okay?”

Gyuri, who had moved over from the window, was looking me up and down. With a worried frown, he said something to Boris in Ukrainian. An obscure exchange fol owed. Then Boris reached to his wrist and began to unbuckle his watch.

Gyuri said something else, shaking his head vigorously.

“Right,” said Boris. “You are right.” Then, to me, with a nod: “Take his.”

Platinum Rolex President. Diamond-crusted dial. I was trying to think of some polite way to refuse when Gyuri pul ed the whopping bevel-cut diamond off his pinky and—hopeful y, like a child presenting a home-made gift—held them both to me on his open hands.

“Yes,” said Boris when I hesitated. “He is right. You do not look rich enough. I wish we had some different shoes for you,” he said, looking critical y at my black monk straps, “but those wil have to work. Now, we wil put the money in this bag here”—leather grip, ful of stacked bil s—“and go.” Working quickly, clever hands, like a hotel maid making a bed. “Biggest bil s on top. Al these nice hundreds.

Very pretty.”

vi .

OUT ON THE STREET: holiday splendor and delirium. Reflections danced and shimmered on black water: laced arcades above the street, garlands of light on the canal boats.

“This is al going to be very easy and comfortable,” said Boris, who was clicking around on the radio past Bee Gees, past news in Dutch, in French, trying to find a song. “I am counting on the fact that they want this money quick. Sooner they get rid of the picture—less chance running crossways of Horst. They wil not be looking too

closely at that bank draft or deposit slip. That six hundred thousands figure is al they wil see.”

I was sitting alone in the back seat with the bag of money.

(“Because, you must accustom yourself, sir, to being distinguished passenger!” Gyuri had said when he circled around and opened the back door of the car for me to get in.)

“You see—what I hope wil fool him—deposit slip is perfectly legitimate,” Boris was saying. “So is bank draft. It is just from bad bank. Anguil a. Russians in Antwerp—here too, on P. C. Hooftstraat

—they come here to invest, wash money, buy art, ha! This bank was fine six weeks ago but it is not fine now.”

We were past the canals, past the water. On the street: multicolored neon angels, in silhouette, leaning out from the tops of the buildings like ship figureheads. Blue spangles, white spangles, tracers, cascades of white lights and Christmas stars, blazing, impenetrable, no more to do with me than the implausible pinky diamond glittering on my hand.

“See, what I have to tel you,” said Boris, forgetting the radio and turning to address me in the back seat, “I want to tel you not to worry. With al my heart,” he said, knitting his eyebrows and reaching out encouragingly to shake my shoulder. “Everything is fine.”

“Piece of cake!” said Gyuri, and beamed in the rear view mirror, happy to have produced the phrase.

“Here is plan. Do you want to know the plan?”

“I guess I’m supposed to say yes.”

“We are dropping the car off. Out of the city a bit. Then Cherry wil meet us at location, and drive us to meeting in his car.”

“And this is al going to be peaceful.”

“Absolutely. And because why? You have the cash! That’s al they want. And even with fake bank draft—good deal for them. Forty thousand dol ars for no work? Not much! Afterwards—Cherry wil leave us back off at the garage, with the picture—and then—we go out! we celebrate!”

Gyuri muttered something.

“He is complaining about the garage. Just so you know. He thinks it is a bad idea. But—I do not want to go in my own car, and last thing we need is to get hit with a parking ticket.”

“Where is the meeting?”

“Wel —bit of a headache. We have to drive out of the city and then back in. They insisted on their own place and Cherry agreed because—wel , real y, it is better. At least, on their ground, we can count on no interference from the cops.”

We had gotten to a lonelier stretch of road, straight and desolate, where the traffic was sparse and the streetlamps were farther apart, and the bracing crack and sparkle of the old city, its lighted tracery, its hidden design—silver skates, happy children beneath the tree—

had given way to a more familiar urban bleakness: Fotocadeau, Locksmith Sleutelkluis, signs in Arabic, Shoarma, Tandoori Kebab, gates down, everything closed.

“This is the Overtoom,” said Gyuri. “Not very interesting or nice.”

“This is my boy Dima’s parking garage. He has put out the Ful sign for tonight so no one to bother us. We wil be in the long term—

ah,” he screamed, “blyad,” as a honking van cut in front of us from nowhere, forcing Gyuri to swerve and slam on the brakes.

“Sometimes people here are little bit aggressive for no reason,”

said Gyuri gloomily as he put on his blinker and made the turn into the garage.

“Give me your passport,” Boris said.

“Why?”

“Because, am going to lock it in the glove box for when we get back. Better not to have it on you, just in case. I am putting in mine, too,” he said, holding it up for me to see. “And Gyuri’s. Gyuri is honest born American citizen—yes,” he said, over Gyuri’s laughing interjection, “al very nice for you, but for me? very very hard to get an American passport and I real y do not want to lose this thing. You know, don’t you Potter,” he said, looking at me, “that you are required now by law in Netherlands to carry ID at al times? Random street checks—non-compliance punished. I mean—Amsterdam? What kind of police state thing is this? Who would believe it? Here? Me—never.

Not in one hundred years. Anyway”—shutting and locking the glove box—“better a fine and talk our way out of it than the real thing on us if we are stopped.”

vi i.

INSIDE THE PARKING GARAGE, which vibrated depressingly with olive-green light, there were a number of empty spaces in the long-term area despite the Ful sign. As we nosed into the space a man in a sports coat lounging against a white Range Rover threw his cigarette in a spit of orange cinders and walked toward the car. His receding hairline, his tinted aviators and his taut military torso gave him the wind-whipped look of an ex-pilot, a man who monitored delicate instruments at some test site in the Urals.

“Victor,” he said, when we got out of the car, crushing my hand in his. Gyuri and Boris received a thump on the back. After terse preliminaries in Russian, a baby-faced curly-headed teenager climbed out of the driver’s seat and was greeted, by Boris, with a slap on the cheek and a jaunty seven note whistle: On the Good Ship Lol ipop.

“This is Shirley T,” he said to me, rumpling the corkscrew curls.

“Shirley Temple. We al cal him that—why? Can you guess?”—

laughing as the kid, unable to help it, smiled in embarrassment, displaying deep dimples.

“Do not be deceived by looks,” said Gyuri to me quietly. “Shirley looks like baby but he has as much onions as any of us here.”

Politely, Shirley nodded at me—did he speak English? it didn’t seem so—and opened the back door of the Range Rover for us and the three of us climbed in—Boris, Gyuri, and me—while Victor Cherry sat up front and talked to us from the passenger seat.

“This should be easy,” he said to me formal y as we pul ed out of the garage and back out onto the Overtoom. “Straightforward pawn.”

Up close his face was broad and knowing, with a smal prim mouth and a wry alertness that made me feel somewhat less agitated about the logic of the evening, or the lack of it: the car changes, the lack of direction and information, the nightmare foreignness. “We are doing Sascha a favor and because of that? He is going to behave nice to us.”

Long low buildings. Disjointed lights. There was a sense that it wasn’t happening, that it was happening to someone who wasn’t me.

“Because can Sascha walk in bank and get a loan on the painting?” Victor was saying, pedantical y. “No. Can Sascha walk in a pawn shop and get a loan on the painting? No. Can Sascha due to circumstances of theft go to any of his usual connections from Horst and get a loan on the painting? No. Therefore Sascha is extremely glad of the appearance of mystery American—you—who I have hooked him up with.”

“Sascha shoots heroin the way that you and I breathe,” said Gyuri to me quietly. “One stitch of money and he is out buying big load of drugs like clockwork.”

Victor Cherry adjusted his glasses. “Exactly. He is not art lover and he is not particular. He is utilizing picture like high interest credit card or so he thinks. Investment for you—cash for him. You front him the money—you hold the painting as security—he buys schmeck, keeps half, steps on the rest and sel s it, and returns with double your money in one month to pick up the painting. And if? In one month he does not return with double your money? The painting is yours. Like I said. Simple pawn.”