When I showed up for work five days ago and he wasn’t there, I tried his doorbell — he lives upstairs from his snack bar/Chinese takeaway, see. I was only inside his apartment one time, and the stink of grease made me want to hurl. He really needs to do something about his ventilation.
So I got no response when I rang, and there wasn’t any lights on I could see. Pissed me off, because it was payday, and man does not live by tips alone. For the last couple months, the old guy and me have had a little side deal. “Call it hush money,” is the way he put it. I never asked for nothing extra. Didn’t need to. The old guy read in my eyes that I knew the score. I mean, I’m not stupid. He never should have asked me to fetch that box of croquettes from the freezer, the fool.
All those bricks of brown and white powder hidden among the frozen snacks and fries! Street value? I have no idea. Jesus. I mean, you want to play gangster, at least you could be a little careful about it. Fine, well, anyway, the way I saw it, we had us what you call a win-win situation there. And I could use the extra cash. Him too, apparently. The Mercury Snackbar on the Mercuriusplein ain’t exactly a gold mine, if you catch my drift. Until he gets the windows washed and loses those disgusting orange plastic stools and the greasy Formica countertop and does something about the ventilation, he pretty much needs a little sideline if he wants to stay afloat, you see what I’m saying?
I understand the Chink. He’s gotta think about his future. He’s not gonna wind up some old geezer wasting away in that pitiful apartment on the Mercuriusplein, not when he could live out his golden years in Malaysia or Hong Kong or Singapore or wherever the hell he comes from. Am I right? So I figured he emptied out his bank accounts and was having himself a roll in the hay with some Chinese hottie in a massage parlor off in Whereverland. I was actually kind of proud of him. I wasn’t worried about our deal, or about the cops implicating me in his drug trade, because there was absolutely no paper trail or anything else pointing my way. I’m the delivery boy for the Mercury Snackbar, and that is all I am.
Except, with those two cops standing there awkwardly at the door, I began to feel just a wee bit sweaty.
The older of the two — you could already see the male-pattern baldness making inroads on his temples — cleared his throat. “We’re sorry to bother you so early, but I’m afraid we have bad news. May we come in?”
No way, I thought. But Mom automatically took a step back. I could see her fear in the slump of her shoulders inside her pink robe. She grabbed my face and started whining like a wounded animal. “Where did I go wrong, Armin? You were always such a sweet little boy!” I was afraid she was about to keel over, so I slung an arm around her to keep her on her feet. I mean, I am the man of the house. But I guess I can’t blame her for projecting her shit onto me.
“Calm down, Ma,” I said. “Don’t worry. Let’s hear what the officers have to say.”
To make a long story short, the Chink was dead. At least the detectives thought it was the Chink they’d found hacked to bits and the bits deep-fried, “considering how close the dumpster in the Maanstraat is to the Mercury Snackbar, and his contacts in the Chinese tongs.” The only thing they could say for sure at this point was that what they had found was definitely human remains, though they were in such a state they weren’t sure it would ever be possible to positively identify the victim. Somebody from the neighborhood had called it in. His little Staffordshire terrier had started barking and howling when they came in sight of the dumpster. The smell was pretty ripe, they said.
The older detective must have seen the dismay in Mom’s eyes, ’cause all of a sudden he put a hand on her shoulder and said they were 99 percent sure it was the Chink, and they hoped the techs would come up with like a molecule of DNA that would lock in that last 1 percent. No such thing as a perfect crime, he said, puffing out his chest, “there’s usually a loose end or two, we know that from experience,” looking like he was starring in an episode of CSI, like he was some kind of a big shot. “We don’t want you folks to worry now, ma’am, do we? Tuindorp Oostzaan’s such a quiet little neighborhood, where nothing ever happens.” I could hear the contempt in his voice. On the downtown side of the IJ, they think we’re all hicks up here in Amsterdam-North.
So I told you I sort of freeze at times like this, right? My friends don’t call me Ice for nothing — after the old rapper/actor with the pigtail from Law & Order, you know? Maybe the story was a little too crazy to believe. Even Mom just stood there crying silently instead of busting out screaming. But I realized pretty quick that the cops weren’t out to tie me to whatever had gone down. When you’re in their headlights, you know it. They were pretty chill about the whole thing. Just said they’d appreciate whatever I could tell them about the Chink, seeing how I was the Mercury’s scooter boy and all — I wanted to correct them and say moped boy, but I didn’t think I ought to interrupt — and I saw the old guy pretty much every day, so maybe I could help them with their inquiries. I told them I thought the Chink was out of town for a couple days, he said something about needing a break, checking out the tulips at the Keukenhof, yadda yadda yadda, and running a Chinese takeout/snack bar in Tuindorp Oostzaan ain’t exactly what you call a sinecure, right? Meanwhile, the little gears in my head are spinning overtime, you know what I mean?
See, something told me maybe the deep-fried dead guy was not the Chink, after all.
Maybe I watch too many cop shows. On TV, nothing ever turns out the way you think it will, right?
But there was something else. Which is why I’m writing all this down, not as evidence but as a sort of testimony, in case something happens to me. For Mom’s sake, you with me? Ain’t nobody I love more than her, not even Miriam.
I don’t know if I can call Miriam my girlfriend, exactly, since she’s married and all that. She and her husband and their two little girls live in one of those villas on the Kometensingel, a fancy place next door to the house where our family doctor used to live. Once upon a time, Mom was the cleaning lady there. So one night they order a double portion of chow mein from the Mercury. I deliver it, Miriam answers the door, and the rest is history.
Trust me, Miriam is not just some ordinary chick. She is what I’d call a perfect ten. From our very first date, though, she told me she was never ever gonna divorce her husband, ’cause her own parents split when she was fifteen and she wasn’t gonna put her girls through that kind of trauma. That’s class, am I right?
Her husband’s a lung doctor in some hospital up north. His name’s Ed. He’s forty-four. (Just so you know: I’m twenty-four.) I only know him from Miriam’s stories and his Facebook page. Soon as the detectives left, I went online: his most recent photo was posted yesterday, from a bar, right after the Ajax — Sparta game. He was grinning into the lens with this smug doctor expression on his face and a glass of beer in his hand, an Ajax scarf draped around his neck, like, See how normal I am? You could almost hear André Hazes singing in the background. That’s why he bought that house in Tuindorp Oostzaan — to prove what an ordinary guy he is. Miriam told me his whole bio. Ed’s dad worked in the metal foundry on the Distelweg; the five of them lived in this dreary little bungalow on the Pomonastraat. Ed was a nerd, so after high school they told him he could go to college and he grabbed the chance. Props to him and his family, I gotta give them respect. If my loser of a father had half the guts Ed’s dad had, I could’ve... nah, never mind, I don’t want to go throwing stones.