“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.
“We grab the bag now?” asks Sayid.
I look at him. I say we get in the car and make him drive to a good place.
Sayid asks what’s a good place. He says we can just as easy grab the bag of money now and head for our scooters.
I look across the street at our scooters parked in front of Van Vliet. I say Sayid’s idea would call too much attention to us. “We were gonna do that, we should’ve parked the scooters on this side of the street.”
“Come on, gangster, you didn’t think about that?”
I tell him to shut up, okay? “Come on,” I say, “let’s climb in.” I go up to the passenger side of the Focus and yank on the back door handle, but the back door is locked. Sayid bumps into me. I look at him. Linda’s still standing there with her ass in the air.
“What the fuck, gangster?” says Sayid.
I grab the piece from my waistband, circle around to the driver’s side, and pull Linda out of the way. She gives another little scream. I touch the front end of the gun to her head and tell Patrick to unlock the doors.
“Three hundred,” Linda says.
Patrick looks from me to Linda, scared-like. “Don’t hurt her,” he says, and I hear the locks pop up. I pull the driver’s-side back door open and nod to Sayid he should get in on the other side, next to Patrick, and I shove Linda into the car and she yells not so hard or she’ll go straight to five hundred. I get in after her and put the gun to the back of Patrick’s head and tell him to drive.
He doesn’t react.
He’s got his hands on the wheel, but he don’t do nothing.
I glance to my right. Linda looks kind of cramped, pressed up against this big laundry bag. Nylon, colored vertical stripes. My old man uses the same kind of bags to store the stuff he sells at the open-air market.
So that’s the cash.
Patrick just sits there.
I tap the back of his head with the end of the gun barrel. “Pat,” I say, “drive.”
He says he’s not afraid of me.
Sayid, sitting next to him, looks from him to me and back again.
“Pat,” I say, “you gotta drive.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” he says again, like the weird robot he is. I figure that’s another reason he got this gig with the Pakis. He’s so white he’ll never get pulled over, and he’s a weird robot you can’t scare.
I point the piece at Linda.
Patrick watches in the rearview mirror. “Don’t hurt her,” he says.
I tell him Linda wants to marry him, but I’ll blow her brains out if he doesn’t drive.
Patrick starts the Focus and drives, and Linda says now she wants a thousand euros.
Patrick drives, and Sayid looks at me and says, “Where we going, man? Where the fuck we going?”
I say we need to find a good place.
Sayid says I ain’t given this enough thought. “Shit, G, you shoulda thought about this.”
“You didn’t think about it either, did you?”
He says he ain’t the brains of the outfit.
I say I never said I was neither.
Linda sighs.
“Turn right,” I tell Patrick, but he doesn’t listen. He keeps going straight.
I push the gun into the back of his neck. I tell him he better listen or I’ll blow his brains out.
He don’t react, just drives straight ahead. We come to the intersection with Meer en Vaart, and he finally pulls into the right lane. Off to the left are the new apartments where the rich white people live. To the right are the old buildings on the Ruimzicht where they used to live.
“Okay, good,” I say.
“I’m not doing it because you say so,” he says. “I’m doing it because it’s my job.” He turns onto Meer en Vaart, the cop shop on the right, and I jerk the piece down behind his seat. I tell him in a second I’ll aim it back at his head.
Sayid turns around and rests his arm on the back of his seat and glares at me. “In a second you’ll aim back at his head?”
“Come on, gangster, we know Patrick, right?”
He says what difference does that make. “For fuck’s sake, man, we’re ripping him off!”
Patrick says he knows us too.
“That’s logical,” I say. “We all know each other.”
He says that means we’ll have to kill him. Otherwise, he’ll turn us over to the cops. He downshifts for the red light at the Osdorpplein.
Sayid looks at me and nods. “He’s right,” he says.
Patrick drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I have to do my job,” he says.
I push the gun deeper into his neck. “Pay attention,” I say. “Make a right.”
“I’m going straight,” he says. “I’m going to the Lelylaan, and then I’m getting on the ring road, and then I’m driving to Rotterdam.”
A car pulls up beside us, so I lower the piece again. The light turns green, and Patrick drives straight ahead.
I tell him, “It’s time for you to get scared, Patrick.”
“I’m scared already,” he says. “But not of you.” He looks in his rearview mirror.
“What?” says Sayid.
I turn around and see a big black Dodge Ram behind us. It’s so close all I can see is the front grill.
“The fuck,” I say. “Who’s that? Who the fuck is that, Patrick?”
“That’s the people I work for.” He drives on, doing exactly the speed limit. Ahead of us is the back edge of the Osdorpplein, where a little while ago we were sitting at Mickey D’s, which we never should have left. We definitely shouldn’t’ve done this. To our left is the narrow side of the Sloter Lake. The water is black as death.
“Speed up,” I say. “Now!”
He says he’s going to do his job just the way they told him.
“Patrick, I got a fucking gun here.”
He says he’s not afraid of my gun.
Behind us, the Dodge Ram’s engine races.
Linda screams again — I forgot all about her. I point the piece at her. “Patrick,” I say, “I’m gonna shoot Linda in the face. Now go.”
Patrick hits the gas. Linda and I are thrown back in our seats, and she swats the piece aside. “Just stop it,” she says. Then she turns to the laundry bag behind her and unzips it. Bundles of pale purple paper: five-hundred-euro notes. “What’s all this?”
“It’s money,” says Patrick.