Герман Кох: Amsterdam Noir

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, then 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.