Chapter 21 Maggie
Maggie
Monday
When she was a young woman, Maggie could board a flight in DC and, twenty-four hours later, walk off the plane in Bangkok, still sharp and energetic enough to plunge straight into a mission.
Jet lag, unfortunately, was not kind to an older brain, and a mere seven sleepless hours aboard the overnight flight to Amsterdam had left her drained.
When she and Lloyd wheeled their carry-ons out of Schiphol airport, she felt dazed by the noise of traffic and the glare of morning sunlight.
Lloyd looked equally exhausted, his shirt rumpled and stained from spilled coffee, his gray hair fluffed up after a restless night wearing a sleep mask.
What they both needed was a long nap, but when they climbed into the taxi, Lloyd didn’t tell the driver to take them to their hotel.
Instead, he directed the driver to Antony Moddermanstraat, the street where the man in the gray suit had been photographed.
“Shouldn’t we check into the hotel first?” Maggie said.
“I want to eyeball the address.”
“We need to stow our luggage.”
“Let’s just see if we identified the correct location.
This will only take a few minutes.” After a night crammed in a coach seat, his face had the sallow tint of exhaustion, but Lloyd’s eyes were now alert and focused on the street scene outside his taxi window.
For most of her career, Ingrid had been posted to Western Europe, where Lloyd had joined her after their marriage.
He was familiar with Amsterdam and he politely addressed the taxi driver as meneer, even though knowing how to speak Dutch was scarcely necessary in a multilingual country where most of the locals could pivot among languages as effortlessly as drivers shifting gears.
Morning traffic was a confusing tangle of bicycles and buses and cars that somehow managed not to collide, navigating the streets like parallel schools of fish.
To Maggie’s tired eyes, it all looked like sheer chaos.
She desperately wanted a shower and a bed, but Lloyd seemed reinvigorated by his mission.
He tilted forward in his seat, eyes focused intently on the road ahead.
“There,” he said. “That’s the corner. Stop here!”
The driver braked so abruptly that Maggie was thrown against her seat belt. “Jesus, Lloyd,” she said. “Take it easy.”
“I want to get out and take a look around.”
“Now?”
He climbed out of the taxi. Glanced back at Maggie. “Why don’t you go to the hotel and check in?”
“Why don’t we both go to the hotel? We’ll come back when we’re rested and more alert. This street isn’t going anywhere.”
“I don’t need to rest. I’m all revved up.”
“We have to drop off our suitcases.”
“You bring mine to the hotel. I’ll see you there later.”
“Lloyd, you can’t just take off on your own.”
But that’s exactly what he was doing, already lumbering across the street, heedless of the bicycles swerving to avoid him.
With a sigh, she climbed out too. “Can you wait here?” she said to the driver.
“Stopping here is not allowed.”
“Then how about waiting around the corner?”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“First, you need to pay.”
She glanced across the street and saw Lloyd was already halfway down the block, moving toward the nearest building. “Here,” she said, pulling a bundle of euros out of her wallet.
“I can’t wait here long. You should take your suitcases,” he said, and popped open the trunk.
Just a babysitting job. An easy mission, she thought as she hauled their two wheeled suitcases out of the taxi trunk.
Dragging them behind her, she made her way across the street, dodging cars and bicycles.
“Lloyd!” she yelled. Either he didn’t hear her, or he was deliberately ignoring her, because he kept walking toward the apartment building.
She pursued him, pulling the luggage across the brick sidewalk, the wheels bumping and shimmying over the cracks. “Lloyd!”
At last, he stopped and looked back at her. “You don’t need to come, Maggie.”
“I absolutely need to come.”
“Why?”
“Because you might need some help.”
“Help with what?”
“Look, Lloyd. You’re tired and you’re upset about Ingrid. That could lead you to make mistakes.”
“Mistakes? I’m just going to see if anyone recognizes the man in the photo.”
“By asking random people?”
“By going in that building and knocking on doors. Because it’s clear this is the street he was standing on.
And that tree there, it’s the one in the photo.
And that bus stop there, that’s from the photo too.
” He paused as a blue-and-white bus rolled by with the GVB logo painted on the side. “And there. That’s the number 21 bus.”
“Okay, we’ve established this is the right location.”
“And that’s the closest apartment building.” He pointed to the four-story brick building. “If this is his regular bus stop, that building could be where he lives. Let’s find out.”
“Hold on.”
“What?”
“I’m not your sherpa. Take your own suitcase.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He grabbed his carry-on, and together, they proceeded down the sidewalk like two lost senior citizens in search of a hotel, the wheels of their suitcases rattling across the bricks.
They arrived at the apartment building, and Lloyd studied the names on the buzzers, as if he could somehow match one of those names to the man in the photo. In frustration, he pushed a button at random.
No one answered.
He tried another and another. Again, no response. Maggie imagined those buzzers sounding in empty apartments where breakfast dishes were still in the sinks.
“It’s Monday morning. They’re probably at work,” she said.
Lloyd pressed another button. This time, a voice did answer. A woman.
“Ja?”
“Oh!” said Lloyd, so startled he took a moment to pull together his next words. “Spreek je Engels?” he asked.
“Who are you?” came the response in English.
“We’re from the US. May we ask you a few—”
“Not interested.” The connection went dead.
Lloyd sighed. “She never even let me finish.”
Maggie reached past him to press a different button.
A man answered this time, his voice gravelly with age.
“Hello, meneer. We’re from America, visiting Missus .
. .” She glanced at the list of tenants for one of the names that had not answered the buzzer.
“Achterkamp. She’s not answering. Can we just leave our suitcases in . . .”
The door buzzed. She pushed it open.
“So that’s how it’s done,” said Lloyd.
“I’m too tired to pick the lock.”
They left their luggage inside the entrance, moved down the hallway to the first apartment, and rang the doorbell. No one answered. They tried the next apartment and the next.
At the fourth apartment, the door finally opened, and a woman peered out at them. She had to be at least in her eighties, and judging by the volume of the TV blaring in her apartment, she was also extremely deaf.
“Good morn—um, Goedemorgen,” said Lloyd. “I’m trying to find—”
The woman started to close the door.
“Wait! Please.” He held out his phone to show the photo of the man in the gray suit. “This man. Do you know him?”
The woman squinted at the photo, clearly bewildered by the question.
Then she eyed Lloyd and Maggie with suspicion.
They were hardly anyone’s version of hucksters, just a benign gray-haired couple with travel-rumpled clothes, yet this woman was having none of it.
She muttered something in Dutch, clearly noncomplimentary, and closed the door in their faces.
“I think we need to refine our approach,” said Maggie. “Let’s go to the hotel and look up the names on the mailboxes. Maybe we can match his face to one of those names.”
But Lloyd was already moving toward the staircase. “Let’s try upstairs,” he said.
“If you keep knocking on doors, you’re announcing to the whole neighborhood what you’re up to.”
“I just want to find Ingrid.”
“There are other ways to do it, Lloyd. Quieter ways that don’t call attention to us.
If this is his usual bus stop, we could start by surveilling it from the park.
Or from that coffee shop across the street.
I’m too tired to think straight, and I can use the caffeine.
We’ll watch who gets off the number 21 bus and—”
The building door suddenly opened, and a woman walked in. From the far end of the hall where they stood, she was little more than a silhouette, backlit by the glare of the entrance windows. The woman glanced down at the suitcases left by the door, then focused on the two visitors.
“Excuse me,” Lloyd called out. “Do you speak English?”
The woman said, cautiously, “I do.” She approached them, and as she moved away from that bright window, her features came into view. She was in her forties, with cropped brown hair, dressed in a fitted blazer and dark slacks.
“We’re looking for this man. We think he lives in the neighborhood.” Lloyd held out his cell phone with the man’s photo.
The woman studied the photo with narrowed eyes. “Why are you looking for him?”
“He, um—we think—”
“He’s a witness to an accident at that bus stop,” said Maggie. “It happened right as this photo was taken. We’d like to find him.”
The woman gave Maggie a long, thoughtful look. “He lives upstairs, Apartment 225,” she finally said.
“And his name?”
“Willem Dekker. But he works evenings, so he’s probably sleeping now. You should come back tonight, after he comes home from work.”
“What time would that be?”
“Try him at midnight. I’ll leave a note to let him know to expect you.” The woman turned and headed for the stairs.
“Wait!” said Lloyd. “One more question, if you don’t mind.” Quickly he scrolled to an image of Ingrid, and he handed the phone to the woman. “Have you ever seen her?”
“Who is she?”
“My wife.”
The woman handed the phone back to him. “I am sorry. I have never seen this woman.”
“I hope we didn’t blow our hand by alerting him,” said Maggie.