Lost(20)

“Is that good or bad?”

“Just surprising.” She started to stroll down the street and added, “I like surprises.”

As we continued on, I couldn’t stifle a yawn. Marie said, “Is a big, tough American police officer like you getting sleepy?”

Her mocking tone made me smile. She sounded like Stephanie Hall or my sister. That meant she was okay. It also meant she was giving me some kind of a test. She might have wanted to see if I would take offense or show me how tough she could be by outlasting me. I didn’t need any convincing.

When I saw the Hilton sign in the Noord District, I knew salvation was at hand.





CHAPTER 25





IT WAS LATE in Amsterdam, but it was a good time to call home. I wanted to check on my mother and Lila, though I knew my mom didn’t like that I worried so much about her; she always said I needed to get a life.

Lila picked up the home phone on the second ring. The first thing I did was get Lila to talk a bit so I could listen to her speech and make sure she was sober. Then I ran through our regular checklist of concerns: Did Mom have any doctor appointments coming up? Was she getting exercise? Was she staying occupied? That was a big one; we’d learned that her dementia was worse when she wasn’t busy. When she focused on the piano or crochet, she tended to stay grounded. Even reading helped quite a bit.

One thing I’d noticed recently was that my mom tended to read the same books over and over. I thought she was just a huge Brad Meltzer fan until I realized she had read the same book of his, The President’s Shadow, at least four times in a row.

It was tough to deal with my mom’s issues, but I could never put them out of my head. It was part of my upbringing; I’d been raised a good Lutheran and still attended services with my mom. I still believed. But like most humans, I had questions. That’s what had attracted me to philosophy in the first place. That whole notion of the search for truth.

Philosophy came down to opinions. It wasn’t science. It was one man’s or woman’s idea of what life should be. So far, I hadn’t found any answers that would solve all my problems.

I’d read what Plato and Schopenhauer and various other philosophers had said about adversity, but it was former president Bill Clinton who’d said it best: “If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit.”

It was that quote that kept me going sometimes. In football, in police work, and especially in dealing with my mother.

Everything at home was fine, and after the call, I conked out almost immediately. In fact, when my room phone started ringing at seven forty-five the next morning, I was still lying on top of the covers in the khakis and blue button-down oxford I had been wearing the day before.

It wasn’t a good idea for a guy my size to cram himself into a tiny airplane seat for a transatlantic flight and then spend the next twenty-four hours walking around town. As I reached for the phone, I heard creaks in my joints that reminded me of every time I’d caught a football and then been knocked to the ground by some defensive back.

“Good morning, Detective Moon,” Marie Meijer said cheerfully. “Are you ready for another day of excitement in Europe’s most interesting city?”

I know I made a sound like a groan before I said, “Please call me Tom, and please call me again in two hours.”

She laughed and said, “I’ll meet half your demands. I’ll be in the lobby waiting for you in about ten minutes, Tom.”

Before I could object, she hung up.





CHAPTER 26





SOMEHOW, TEN MINUTES later, I was in the lobby wearing clean clothes and searching desperately for a cup of coffee.

Marie bounced into the hotel as if she’d just gotten back from vacation. She greeted the doorman by name and then we hopped in her official VW hatchback.

It seemed like every third building was some sort of museum. When they talked history in Amsterdam, the topics were events that had occurred before the U.S. was a going concern. In South Florida, history meant the Cuban migration or Jackie Gleason living there in the seventies.

It wasn’t all sightseeing; there was a purpose behind it. Marie explained how the city was laid out and told me where different crimes were most common. She also showed me potential safe houses for the Russian mob. At one point, we stopped by a building next to a canal.

Marie said, “These apartments are often used to house people before they’re smuggled to their next destination. There’s going to be an operation to make some arrests tonight. I wanted to bring you so you can see what it’s like. There are some legal prostitution houses in this block as well,” she added.

I was genuinely curious. “Did you find that legalizing prostitution had much of an effect on crime?”

“There’s never an easy answer to things like that. Even if you legalize something, there’s still a black market. People think that decriminalization eliminates black markets, but those are people who don’t experience life on the streets. For customers who want to avoid taxes or identification, there’s always a market that the government can’t control. Legalizing prostitution has made Amsterdam a destination for desperate people, and that provides an avenue for human traffickers. They convince runaways or young people with drug problems that if they can just get to somewhere else, everything will be all right. It’s basically the same scam every criminal has used for the past two hundred years.”