Looking for Answers

I should have known better than to come back home to The Netherlands.

“Tu! Che diavolo stai guardando?” Meaning, “Hey you! What devil in hell are you looking at?”

I was plotting which direction I was going to go in the old part of Amsterdam when a group of young men started yelling out to me in Italian.

“Those women are ugly! They keep all the fat ugly ones here near the Oude Kirk”

These testosterone laden young men were on vacation, looking to smoke marijuana, gamble and for the sex tourism that our liberal country is known for. I spoke their language as my mother was Italian and my father was Dutch and passed on to me my love of Kibbeling and Stroopwafel.

I completed my Artist-In-Residence program at the University of Chicago and Art Museum on Vincent Van Gogh and Impressionism and received a message from my old friend Inge Kiplag to come home back to Holland that my first true love; Margot Vos was missing.

“Come ‘on with us old man to the center of town to see the pretty ones, then we’ll all go to the coffeeshop across Hotel Zuurdesem to burn una spleef!”

Earlier that day, I had taken a direct flight from Chicago in the U.S., arriving at Schiphol airport that late spring morning with a hangover to match my Jetlag. I had known Andre Groot who was a boat captain for tourists on the canal. I was to meet him at the Heineken brewery where we were to go to Singelgraght street to meet his friend, police Sargent Kijken Antwoorden, who was looking for answers.

“Let’s go Andre! Time is of the essence. Inge Kiplag said it has been five days, and no one has heard from Margot?”

“Sure Lucien”

I explained to Andre that I had known Margot since we were children. She was my first love. This was personal. Andre didn’t say much, he just nodded and smiled.

I grew up in Vonder Park on the Noorder Amstel Canal, famous for the Amsterdam Hilton where John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their Give Peace A Chance Bed Love protest in 1969. I was quite anxious after hearing the news and not feeling very peaceful myself.

When we arrived in the Centrum, I quickly was led upstairs to the Sargent’s office. The pace and anxiety quickly wore off my jetlag and morning hangover.

“Goedemorgen” I maintained direct eye contact and shook his hand sternly.

“Mr. Froud, we understand that you are looking for Margot Vos. Is that correct?”

“Yes, we were friends”

“Were you lovers?”

“If you mean, were we in touch with one another recently. No.”

“We understand you are staying at a hotel in Amsterdam. Now that you are back, do you remember anything about what had happened?”

“I don’t know? What have you found out?”

“We would like for you to check-in with us weekly. Do you know Jongen Speelse?”

“Yes. Does he have something to do with her disappearance?”

“We are not accusing him of anything; we would like for him to stop to see you once a week. I know you were close to Margot”

“Andre, please show Mr. Speelse in”

“Hello Lucien”

“Jongen! Why are you here? What do you know about Margot?”

Jongen turned and looked at the Sargent then looked at me and back at Sargent Antwoorden.

“Did you ever hear of the name Femke Duister?” The Sargent interrupted.

“No”

“Are you sure? Think Mr. Froud think…Femke. Femke”

“Maybe? But it’s not ringing a bell?”

Apparently Femke Duister was her friend and worked with Margot in the Red-Light district. Margot and Femke were only of just a few of Dutch prostitutes that worked in Amsterdam’s famous Red-Light district. Most of the women in this commodity trade were either from South America or were from Eastern Europe; Ukraine, Russia or Romania.

“Jongen, where is she? What have you done with her? Tell me!”

“Lucien, let go of me, I don’t know where she is. We had met at the Rijksmuseum before her night shift was to begin. That’s all”

“You were the one who got her involved in prostitution. You son of a bitch! You were the one who made her do it!”

“Lucien let go of me!”

I didn’t trust Jongen or the police and partially blamed them for Margot’s disappearance.

It was clear I needed to find Femke to see if I could find anything out from her about Margot.

I left the police station and walked through the labyrinth of alleys along the canals to locate where Margo may have been last seen. Stomach to back, back to stomach in a claustrophobic line of gawkers and potential foreign customers. It was like shopping for exotic banned alligator skinned shoes, Christian Lobutin’s designer shoes, some velvet, all with high heels. I was looking for the pair of missing shoes, the ones with real leather insoles that I hadn’t seen in years.

Most of the women had sullen faces, like puppies at the kennel hoping you would take them home. To take them away from their indentured servitude at best, the sex trade, slavery at worst.

“Please come in, enter, my name is Minerva” her long eye lashes fluttering like a moth in the thick perfumed night air.

I smiled back at the bleach blonde young woman as she motioned for me to sit down on the bed in the dark burgundy velvety room.

“You’re very handsome”

“Are you Dutch?”

I knew full well there were very few native Dutch women in the street widows who may know Margo.

Sounding more like an investigator than a paying customer, she looked back at me nervously and quizzically. Looking more like a teenager, Minerva should have been asking where her sociology class was on her the first day of school than working at a brothel.

“No, why?”

“I’m looking for a young woman named Margot Vos. Have you ever heard of her?”

“Why who are you?”

“My name is Lucien, Lucien Froud”

Minerva nervously looked around as if she was in trouble, her magenta lipstick looking like a little girl who had gotten into her mother’s makeup purse.

As soon as the warm impersonal light hit my face from the pink glowing lampshade she recoiled. I could tell she was taken aback by the scar that went from my left temple down to the corner of my mouth.

“Do I frighten you?”

“Please, I can’t help you, maybe it’s best you just leave”

“Wait, Minerva…I”

“Nezakonen, that man there on the corner, he is my boss, he is watching us”

Nezakonen Zagubenyak, the corpulent Bulgarian pimp who was the mob’s underling in charge of the redlight district neighborhood. A grubby greasy haired man with soft pillow-like hands, whose shirt was always untucked and smelled of cabbage. I had had a run in with him years back over an unpaid gambling debt by my alcoholic neighbor, Vette Beer, and knew I would have to at least reconnect with him if I was to ever see Margot again.

“I’ll leave” as I pulled out my old worn-out photo of Margot to show her, she never even glanced at it and quickly shut the door.

I was planning on going to the Rijksmuseum in the morning, that is where Vette Beer was a museum guard my old neighbor and friend. I walked through the Spiegelwartier, past what was called the Hospital Bar, a one-time city hospital that now was repurposed and advertised live porn shows. I blamed myself that I wasn’t there to somehow save Margot.

I was staying at the Clayton Hotel on the Leidseplein and stopped for a cocktail at the Café Americain Bar to meet Inge Kiplag.

“Hi Inge, it’s been too long”

“Yes, I suppose it has. How are you? Are you ok? Are you sure?”

“Bartender! a Damrak G&T for the both of us”

I cut right to the chase.

“What happened to Margot? Inge, please tell me whatever you know”

After a long pause Inge said, “I’m surprised they let you out?”

“Let me out? What do you mean, let me out of what?”

“Well, I thought after the incident I thought that they’d…”

“What incident?”

“The letter, the knife. Lucien, after you found out that Margot was leaving you and it was over, you know really over and her finally leaving…leaving you”

“What are you talking about?”

“The letter, that Margot was done, finished. It was definitively over once and for all between you two. She had met that girl Femke Duister. You didn’t like her at all; you told her she was bad news. Margot liked her a lot. The two of you argued and fought about her all the time. Her new friend Femke convinced her to work with her in the windows. When you received the letter and found out she was leaving you and was going to work through the glass and Femke was the reason, you lost your mind” 

“I don’t believe you”

“When Femke came to pick up Margot to leave that day, there was a struggle with the knife, and you…”

“You are lying!”

“Lucien you never went to the USA. You were never in Chicago, Lucien. You’ve been sick and under medication in the hospital the last four years”

“You are lying, where is Margot!”

“You know Lucien, you know”