It was growing dark as Bastiaan and I made our way to MacIntrye’s a fortnight later. The woman whom Smoot had described as his best friend was visiting him from Dublin, and a plan had been made for us all to go for a late dinner together, an idea that made me a little nervous. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear stories about how the city had either changed or stayed the same, even if it was from a stranger. She’d hired a car for a day’s expedition outside the city but was due back to her hotel shortly, from where we were planning on collecting her. Turning the corner onto Herengracht, however, I noticed a figure walking unsteadily from the other direction.
“That’s him,” I said, feeling my heart sink as I tugged on Bastiaan’s sleeve.
“Who?” he asked.
“Ignac’s pimp. The one I told you about.”
Bastiaan said nothing, but I could feel him increasing our pace slightly and within a minute or two we were all standing outside the pub. The doors were closed and locked, which meant that Smoot and Ignac were probably upstairs, lodging the day’s takings in the safe.
“My old friend Cyril,” said Damir as he recognized me, the stench of whiskey so strong on his breath that I took a step back. “They told me I might find you here.”
“Who did?” I asked.
“The very kind people at the Anne Frank House. It wasn’t difficult to track you down. The Irish fag with his teenage boy. All your friends at the museum know about him, don’t they? You must be very much in love if you talk about him so much.”
“Why don’t you just fuck off?” said Bastiaan quietly.
“And who’s this?” asked Damir, glancing at him, and I could tell that he felt a little more intimidated by my boyfriend than he did by me.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” he replied. “Just fuck off, OK? Ignac’s not going anywhere with you.”
Damir shrugged and lit a cigarette. “Calm down, the pair of you,” he said. “I haven’t come to cause any trouble. In fact, I come with good news. In my generosity, I’ve decided not to charge you for all the time you kept Ignac away from me, even though it left me seriously out of pocket. But I’m good-natured that way, so I’ve decided to let you off. However, I have a client who has met with Ignac before and has some very specific and, I must say, imaginative plans for him. There’s a lot of money in it for me. And so he simply has to come with me. He’s had his holiday, but that’s over now. He works in here, doesn’t he?” he added, nodding toward the bar. “That’s what I’ve been told anyway.”
“No,” I said.
“Of course he does,” he said, rolling his eyes. “There’s no point lying. I’m a well-informed man.” He reached out now and tried to open the door but to no avail. “Open it,” he said.
“We don’t have a key,” said Bastiaan. “It’s not our bar.”
Damir ignored him and banged on the door a few times, calling out for someone on the inside, and I looked up and saw Smoot pulling the curtains back in the flat above and glancing down, probably expecting to see a group of late-night drinkers and instead finding two familiar faces and a stranger.
“There’s rooms up there, isn’t there?” asked Damir, looking up now. “Is that where the bar owner lives?”
“You must have many boys,” said Bastiaan. “Why can’t you just leave Ignac alone? He wants a different life.”
“Because he doesn’t get to make that choice.”
“Why not?”
“Ten years,” he said. “In ten years’ time he won’t look like he does now and then he can do whatever he likes with his time. I won’t stand in his way. But right now…right now he must do as I say.”
“But why?” insisted Bastiaan.
“Because that’s what sons do for their fathers,” said Damir.
I felt my head grow a little dizzy at the words and glanced at Bastiaan, who was frowning as he took them in. Of course, now that I thought of it the man might have borne no physical similarity to Ignac but their accents were similar.
“You’ve pimped out your own son?” I asked, appalled.
“I left him with his mother,” he said. “But the stupid woman died and my lazy bitch of a mother wouldn’t take care of him. So I paid for him to come here instead. I took him from a troubled homeland to a safe city.”
“There’s nothing safe about what you make him do,” said Bastiaan. “How can you do this to your own son?”
Before he could answer, however, the door opened and a girl named Anna, one of the waitresses, came outside as she left for the night. She recognized us, of course, but not our companion, who pushed past her and marched inside, leaving us standing on the street, uncertain what to do next.
“We’re closed!” shouted Anna after him.
“Where’s Ignac?” asked the man.
“Go home,” said Bastiaan to the girl. “We’ll sort this out.”
She shrugged her shoulders and continued on her way, and we followed Damir inside to find him marching around the empty bar.
“He must have left already,” I said, hoping he might believe me, but Damir shook his head and looked toward the staircase behind the bar that led upstairs to Smoot’s flat and marched toward it.
“I’ll call the police,” I called after him.
“Call whoever the fuck you like!” he roared back, disappearing out of sight.
“Shit,” said Bastiaan, running after him.
We ran up after him to find the man ineffectively rattling the door handle to the flat. When it didn’t open immediately, he took a step back and kicked it so hard that it flew open, slamming against the wall and causing a shelf of books to fall to the floor. The living room was empty but even as he stumbled inside with me and Bastiaan in pursuit, the sound of anxious voices could be heard from the kitchen beyond. I had been up here a few times before. There was a safe in one of the cupboards and Smoot locked his takings in there each night before bringing them to the bank the next day.
“Get out here, Ignac!” roared the man. “I’m a patient man but even I have my limits. It’s time to come with me now.”
He lifted his hand and brought it down solidly against the table a few times as Smoot and Ignac appeared in the doorway. The boy looked terrified, but it was Smoot’s expression that most concerned me. He looked angry and upset but also strangely calm, as if he knew what to do.
“Leave,” I said, reaching for the man’s sleeve, but he pushed me away violently and I tripped on a rug and fell backward against the floor, landing on my elbow.