The Judas Goat

17

The KLM 727 came sweeping in low over Holland at about nine-thirty-five in the morning. I’d been there before and I liked it. It felt familiar and easy as I looked down at the flat green land patterned with canals. We were drinking awful coffee handed out by a KLM stewardess with hairy armpits.

“Don’t care for the armpit.” Hawk murmured.

“Can’t say I do myself,” I said.

“You know what it reminds me of?”

“Yes.”

Hawk laughed. “Thought you would, babe. You think old Kathie gonna be in Amsterdam?”

“Hell, I don’t know. It was the best I could do. Better bet than Montreal. It’s closer and I got the same address from two different sources. Or she could have stayed in Denmark or gone to Pakistan. All we can do is look.”

“You the boss. You keep paying me, I keep looking. Where we staying?”

“The Marriott, it’s up near the Rijksmuseum. If it’s slow I’ll take you over and show you the Rembrandts.”

“Hot dawg,” Hawk said.

The seat belt sign went on, the plane settled another notch down and ten minutes later we were on the ground. Schiphol Airport was shiny and glassy and new like the airport in Copenhagen. We got a bus into the Amsterdam railroad station, which wasn’t bad but didn’t match up to Copenhagen, and a cab from the station to the Marriott Hotel.

The Marriott was part of the American chain, a big new hotel, modern and color-coordinated and filled with the continental charm of a Mobil Station.

Hawk and I shared a room on the eighth floor. No point to concealing our relationship. If we found Kathie or Paul, they’d seen Hawk and would be looking over their shoulder for him again.

After we unpacked we strolled out to find the address on Kathie’s passport.

Much of Amsterdam was built in the seventeenth century, and the houses along the canals looked like a Vermeer painting. The streets that separated the houses from the canals were cobbled and there were trees. We followed Leidsestraat toward the Dam Square, crossing the concentric canals as we went: Prinsengracht, Keisersgracht, Heerengracht. The water was dirty green, but it didn’t seem to matter much. What cars there were were small and unobtrusive. There were bicycles and a lot of walkers. Boats, often glass-topped tour boats, cruised by on the canals. A lot of the walkers were kids with long hair and jeans and backpacks who gave no hint of nationality and very little of gender. Back when people used to speak that way, Amsterdam was said to be the hippie capital of Europe.

Hawk was watching everything. Walking soundlessly, apparently self-absorbed, as if listening to some inward music. I noticed people gave way to him as he walked, instinctively, without thought.

The Leidsestraat was shopping district. The shops were good-looking and the clothes contemporary. There was Delftware and imitation Delftware in some quantity. There were cheese shops, and bookstores and restaurants, and a couple of wonderful-looking delicatessens with whole hams and roast geese and baskets of currants in the windows. On the square near the Mint Tower there was a herring stand.

“Try that, Hawk,” I said. “You’re into fish.”

“Raw?”

“Yeah. Last time I was here people raved about them.”

“Why don’t you try one then?”

“I hate fish.”

Hawk bought a raw herring from the stand. The woman at the stand cut it up, sprinkled it with raw onions and handed it to him. Hawk tried a bite.

He smiled. “Not bad,” he said. “Ain’t chitlins, but it ain’t bad.”

“Hawk,” I said, “I bet you don’t know what a goddamned chitlin is.”

“Ah spec dat’s right, bawse. I was raised on moon pies and Kool-Aid, mostly. It’s called ghetto soul.”

Hawk ate the rest of the herring. We bore left past the herring stand and turned down the Kalverstraat. It was a pedestrian street, no cars, devoted to shops.

“It’s like Harvard Square,” Hawk said.

“Yeah, a lot of stores that sell Levi’s and Frye boots and peasant blouses. What the hell you doing in Harvard Square?”

“Used to shack up with a Harvard lady,” Hawk said. “Very smart.”

“Student?”

“No, man, I’m no chicken tapper. She was a professor. Told me I had a elemental power that turned her on. Haw.”

“How’d you get along with her seeing-eye dog?”

“Shit, man. She could see. She thought I was gorgeous. Called me her savage, man. Said Adam musta looked like me.”

“Jesus, Hawk, I’m going to puke on your shoe in a minute.”

“Yeah, I know. It was awful. We didn’t last long. She too weird for me. Surely could screw though. Strong pelvis, you know, man, strong.”

“Yeah,” I said, “me too. I think this is the place.”

We were at an open-front bookstore. There were books and periodicals in racks and on tables out front and rows of them inside. Many of the books were in English. A sign on the wall said THREE HOT SEX SHOWS EVERY HOUR, and an arrow pointed toward the back of the store. In back was another sign that said the same thing with an arrow pointing downstairs.

“What kind of books they sell here?” Hawk said.

There were all kinds, books by Faulkner and Thomas Mann, books in English and books in French, books in Dutch. There was Shakespeare and Gore Vidal and a collection of bondage magazines with nude women on the cover so encumbered in chains, ropes, gags and leather restraints that it was hard to see them. You could buy Hustler, Time, Paris Match, Punch, and Gay Love. It was one of the things about Amsterdam that I never got over. At home you found a place that sold bondage porn sequestered in the Combat Zone and specializing. Here the bookstore with the THREE HOT SEX SHOWS EVERY HOUR was between a jewelry store and a bake shop. And it also sold the work of Saul Bellow and Jorge Luis Borges.

Hawk said, “You figure Kathie lives here, we could look on a shelf under K.”

“Maybe upstairs,” I said. “This is the address.”

“Yeah,” Hawk said. “There’s a door.”

It was just to the right of the bookstore, half obscured by the awning.

“Think she in there?”

“I know how we find out.”

Hawk grinned. “Yeah. We watch. You want to take the first shift while I make sure she not down there among the hot sex films?”

“I didn’t figure you for a looker, Hawk. I figured you for a doer.”

“Maybe pick up a trick or two. Man’s never too old to learn a little. Nobody’s perfect.”

“Yeah.”

“We gonna go round the clock on this, babe?”

“No. Just daytime.”

“That’s good. Twelve on, twelve off ain’t no fish fry.”

“This time out it’ll be harder. If she’s in there she knows us both, and she’s going to be very edgy.”

“Also,” Hawk said, “we camp out here long enough a Dutch cop going to come along and ask us what we doing.”

“If they’re any good.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll circulate,” I said. “I’ll stay up there by the dress shop for a half hour, then I’ll stroll down to the place that sells broodjes and you stroll up to the dress shop. And we’ll rotate that way every half hour or so.”

“Yeah, okay,” Hawk said, “let’s make the circulation irregular. Each time we switch we’ll decide how long before we switch again. Break up the rhythm.”

“Yes. We’ll do that. Unless there’s a back way she’ll have to pass one of us if she leaves.”

“Why don’t you anchor here for a while, babe, and I’ll go around and see if I find any back way. I’ll check in the store and I’ll go around the block and see what I can find.”

I nodded. “If she comes out and I go after her I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”

Hawk said, “Yowzah” and went into the bookstore. He went to the back and down the stairs. Five minutes later he was back up the stairs and out of the bookstore, his face glistening with humor.

“Get any pointers?” I said.

“Oh yeah, soon’s I make a move on a pony, I gonna know just what to do.”

“These Europeans are so sophisticated.”