That gave me the encouragement I needed. “Please,” I said, “stop, before you kill him. Have mercy!”
Imran whirled around, his expression furious, and when his eyes met first mine and then Saleem’s, it was as if the gladiator’s mask slipped from his face and he morphed back into a concerned uncle. Imran was still holding the bicyclist by a limp wrist. He glanced down at his victim one last time, then let him go. The man collapsed onto the jetty. His thin body convulsed.
Imran took a step toward us. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I... I lost control.” He looked at his bloody hand and wiped it on his shirt. “He shouldn’t have bitten me. I was only going to rough him up a little.”
The man dragged himself to a sitting position, looked around in a daze, and dropped his head to his knees. He sat there defeated, folded almost in half to protect his battered rib cage from further damage, his spine so slender it seemed it might snap in two at any moment. Again I felt pity wash over me.
Imran fetched his water bottle from the bench and held it out to him. “Drink.”
Without looking up, the man took the bottle. As he drank, blood dripped from his nose down his chin and onto his naked chest. I figured his nose must be broken. As if he’d only now noticed it, he waved at a fanny pack lying on the bench. I picked it up, unzipped it, and found a ring of keys, three foil-wrapped rubbers, lip balm, and a pack of tissues.
Groaning, the man got to his feet. He seemed only barely conscious, with nothing left to lose. One eye was puffed shut, his nose was unnaturally bent and continued to bleed. Not saying a word, he held out his hand to me, palm up. I hardly dared to look at him, but as I gave him the pack of tissues, I couldn’t avoid the sight of his chest all covered with blood. With a trembling hand, he pulled a tissue from the pack and pressed it to his nose. The white paper immediately reddened.
“You’ll never see me again,” he said. He dropped the bloody tissue to the jetty. “As far as I’m concerned, this never happened.”
Imran nodded. “None of it happened.”
The man picked up his water bottle, staggered to the bench for his fanny pack, and strapped it to his waist with some difficulty. Then, breathing heavily, he righted his bicycle and pushed it through the weeds to the path. Moaning, holding onto the handlebars with one hand, pressing the other to his ribs, he pulled himself onto his saddle.
Without looking back, he pedaled away.
Lucky Sevens
by Theo Capel
De Jordaan
The A4 was crowded, as usual. Felix had been stuck behind a brand-new Seat Ateca for some time. He could almost see the guy in front of him frowning in his rearview mirror at Felix’s old Cordoba. It was time for a new car. There was enough money to buy one in the inside pocket of his uniform jacket. The problem was, it wasn’t his money.
When he hit the ring road, the traffic got worse. Up ahead, somebody slammed on his brakes, and Felix barely managed to avoid rear-ending him.
Eyes on the road, he told himself.
Imagine getting into an accident with all that cash on him. Some of his brothers in blue would surely suspect him of being crooked. He wouldn’t even be given the chance to explain himself. He shook off the thought and proceeded carefully to the exit for the S105 — he still insisted on thinking of it by its traditional name, the Jan van Galenstraat — which would take him to his home in the Jordaan. The bureaucrats didn’t care that the Jordaan was the best-known part of the city. They felt it was good enough to put a simple Downtown on the exit signs.
It had been an unusual day for Felix. He was on his way back from South Holland, where he’d attended the funeral of a fellow Amsterdam police officer. Every cop there had been in uniform, including detectives like Felix. Dark-blue jacket, peaked cap. That had caused an uncomfortable moment, later in the day. Coincidentally, he’d also had an appointment in The Hague, at the headquarters of the agency that ran the national lottery. Tickets were cheap, and if you were lucky, instant happiness. Felix wasn’t a gambler himself, but today he’d walked in the door with a scratcher that had revealed a fifty-thousand-euro prize beneath its layer of foil. He’d bought it at the corner cigar store, along with two packs of filtered cigarettes and a magazine. Felix didn’t smoke, and it wasn’t a magazine he liked to read. The winning ticket wasn’t his either, and that’s why he’d collected the money in cash.
They’d been upset at the sight of his uniform. They were expecting a Mr. Felix de Grave, and what they got was a cop. He’d cleared up the confusion, but there’d been another misunderstanding when he left. The woman who showed him out was surprised by his pale purple car. She’d anticipated a police cruiser, not this sad old jalopy. She’d just been telling him that lots of winners bragged the first thing they were going to buy was a new vehicle, but most of them wound up sticking their winnings in the bank. She seemed to think that banking the fifty thousand euros would, in Felix’s case, be a mistake. She didn’t say it in so many words, but he could read it in her expression when she got a look at his car.
They’d already thought it was odd that he’d wanted the money in cash. The unspoken suspicion was that he didn’t want his wife to know about his win. Felix wasn’t married, but the money was indeed intended for a woman. The winning ticket belonged to his neighbor, which was really nobody’s business. It was Felix and the neighbor’s little secret.
Many of the streets in the Jordaan — Carnation, Laurel, Rose — are named after flowers. Misnamed, really, because the neighborhood was originally a wasteland, with long, narrow alleys and canals that dead-ended where the world-famous seventeenth-century Canal Ring begins. Nowadays, you need to be well-off to live in the shadow of the Western Church’s bell tower, since the realtors do their best to make it seem as if the Jordaan is a part of the Canal Ring.
If Felix leaned out his living room window, he’d be looking right at the church’s Westertoren, which for the older Jordaaners would be good reason to burst out in song. Ever since the neighborhood began to attract a demographic that was still disparagingly referred to as yuppies, the tower had been considered an annoyance, thanks to the fact that, every fifteen minutes, day and night, its carillon played a little tune. For the tourists, the tower was a beacon, guiding them to the Anne Frank House, which stood just around the corner from the church, on the Prinsengracht. Every day they lined up, waiting their turn to go inside, the line usually stretching along the canal to the tower. Felix’s across-the-street neighbor, who was generally to be found hanging out the front window of her apartment, observing the passing scene below, never ceased to be surprised by the enormous interest in the Frank family’s WWII hideout.
“There’s nothing to see in there,” she told anyone who would listen. “I should charge admission to come look at my house. I’d be rich!” She loved daydreaming of wealth, and the fact that Anne Frank had come to a tragic end — which gave the Frank House a dramatic attraction hers couldn’t hope to compete with — didn’t seem to interest her.
As he turned into his street, Felix wondered if he ought to honk his horn to notify his neighbor of his arrival. Probably not necessary, he decided. She peered out her window the whole damn day, so she’d be sure to see him. Especially today, since she knew where he had gone.
Except, to his surprise, she wasn’t at her usual post. When he pulled up to his garage door and, just to be sure, looked up, he saw that her window was closed. The garage door, on the other hand, stood wide open.