“You already tried? Did you call Vladimir’s cell?”
“Yes, but he didn’t pick up. And the woman at the station wouldn’t tell me anything. She said they don’t give information over the phone.”
“You go fetch your son,” Felix told her. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I still dream about him,” Fetty had said when she was finished dancing and dropped, breathless, back into her chair.
She was so excited she tried to light the filtered end of a Stuyvesant, but Felix stopped her just in time. He wasn’t sure who she was talking about.
“He’s in trouble, and I can’t help him. Can you believe it, Felix, sometimes I wake up sobbing? But now I really can help him.” She fell silent, gazing straight ahead, beginning to sniffle. “If I only knew where he was,” she said. She grabbed Felix’s arm. “You’re a detective. You know how to find a missing person. And I have money now. You can help me. You can find my little boy for me. You’ll do it, won’t you?” She’d let go of his arm and picked up the ticket, stroking it like a pet.
He sat there and listened to the story. Long ago, Fetty had been a live-in maid for a doctor and his family, and one of the doctor’s sons had gotten her pregnant, then denied ever having touched her. The family was Roman Catholic, and the boy’s father had refused to help her. It was too late to end the pregnancy, and she didn’t know where to turn. The father’s patient list included a home for unwed mothers, run by nuns, and he made arrangements for them to take her in, which at least was something.
“And that’s where you gave birth?”
Yes, but she couldn’t remember a thing about it. According to Fetty, they had sedated her. It was better that she never even see the child, they told her. She had to sign a paper giving up custody. God had arranged for the baby to be taken in by a good family, they said. That would erase the shame the devil had caused by putting the child inside her in the first place.
“I woke up, and they acted like nothing had happened. I lay there weeping for days. They were witches, Felix, but there was one nun who took pity on me. She told me she had prayed for God to look after my son.”
He understood that the events she was recounting had taken place forty years in the past.
“You can give him the money, Felix. And keep some for yourself, for your trouble. I trust you. You’re the only one I can ask for help. People tell you things. You’re a policeman.”
She was being overly optimistic. In fact, most people had a tendency to say nothing when a cop showed up at their door.
“Here,” she’d said, “you take the ticket. You know what to do. I’m counting on you. Help me find my little boy.”
Felix swung his garage door shut and looked across the street. There was nothing left to be seen of the day’s drama. The ruffled sheets still hung in Fetty’s front window. Not long ago, someone farther up the street had passed on. Everyone knew about it, because the curtains had been taken down and white sheets hung in the windows. Many of the longtime residents said the Jordaan wasn’t the Jordaan they remembered anymore, but the old customs linger.
The Westertoren’s bells began to ring. It was the day of the weekly concert, Felix realized. Life went on. The carillonneur was known to be a Beatles fan. The bells played John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Yes, indeed, imagine...
Only then did he notice that someone in the house next door to Fetty’s was waving at him. Aunt Corrie, naturally. She saw him notice her and opened her window.
“Felix,” she called, “I’m coming down!”
Fetty had been fat and shapeless, where Aunt Corrie was fat but big-boned with more hair, which she dyed blond and wore piled atop her head. An Amsterdammer, Felix knew intuitively which women to call Auntie and which were Ma’am. Explaining the difference to an outsider would be a mission impossible.
Aunt Corrie’s eyes were puffy from crying. “Oh, Felix, I can’t believe it, gone just like that. And then the police at my door and that young man from up the street — what was he doing there? You must know all about it, don’t you?”
He could tell she was angry at herself for not immediately rushing next door to gawk. She’d been in her bedroom vacuuming and had heard screams, but she’d thought they were coming from the television, which was tuned to one of those shows where a host brings on people who are embroiled in some kind of family feud and knows exactly how to stoke the fire. By the time she returned to her living room, another program had begun and the racket had stopped. She’d looked out her window and seen Iris’s husband go in Fetty’s door. And then, later, a police car had pulled up outside.
“Well, that’s when I knew there was something wrong. But who could have guessed what it was? That poor woman. She’d finally hit the lottery, she told me so herself. You don’t think that had anything to do with it, do you, Felix? I hope not. She sent me out to buy a ridiculously expensive bottle of liquor for her. Usually, she only drank lemon gin. But she’d written the name of it on a piece of paper for me, otherwise I never would have remembered. A bottle of Highland Park whiskey, she wanted. You don’t buy something that pricey if you haven’t had a real windfall.”
She pronounced the name of the whiskey Higg-land, but he understood what she meant. It was his favorite brand. Fetty had asked him what she could give him as a thank you.
Aunt Corrie was not impressed with Iris’s husband. Neither was Felix. He’d always had the idea that Iris was the breadwinner in that family, and no idea whether or not the husband worked at all. He was certainly a world-class gabber. He’d told Felix once that he was named after a famous writer, and the implication was that he too was destined for great things.
“Vladimir,” he’d said, “after Vladimir Nabokov. Maybe you heard of Lolita? He wrote that. My father was a big fan of him.”
Felix had stood there and listened, though he had no idea why the man was telling him the story. It was not a good idea to arouse the suspicions of a detective. So Felix had done some sleuthing and discovered that the man’s middle name was Ilyich, which suggested that he had in fact been named after Lenin, not Nabokov. Of course, that didn’t mean he would harm a hair on his neighbor’s head. But Felix knew anything the man said had to be taken with a grain of salt.
“Iris is worried about her husband,” he explained. “He called her and said there was a Canta parked on the sidewalk.”
“A red one?” asked Aunt Corrie. “That must have been her brother Koos. He’s got a bad leg, so they let him drive one of those little things. But I thought they weren’t speaking, I haven’t seen him around in forever. Was he here?”
Felix didn’t know. Fetty had been a good woman, according to Aunt Corrie. But her brother was a scoundrel, only showed up when he needed money. Money for booze.
“Was he here today?” Corrie asked again.
Felix said the only thing he knew was that a handicapped car had been spotted in front of the house.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t sold that little car for booze by now. It must have been Koos. Funny I didn’t see him.”
He’d stashed the lottery money in his gun safe and hung his uniform in the closet. Back in civilian clothes, he was on his way with his colleague Dirk Blokdijk to the farthest corner of the Jordaan, just past the Palmgracht. Given that gracht is Dutch for canal, you would expect the Palmgracht to be a waterway, but the original canal had long since been filled in, and all that was left of it was the name.