The Snowman Read online

  “Good stuff,” said Ted, who had taken a pinch and was cleaning his nose. “But at present the market’s chaotic. That makes things a little difficult.”

  “How much of it do you have?” asked Tim.

  “Didn’t Cora tell you?”

  “Cora just said it would be a shame if you didn’t turn up.”

  “I still have about 2,400 grams. If you take it all, of course I’ll give you a special price.”

  “How much do you want for it?”

  Blum named a sum in guilders. He noticed Cora looking at him. The two dealers exchanged glances. Here they went again – singing the same old song.

  “And I have to insist on cash, boys. With a discount like that you’ll see it has to be cash. If possible in large notes, but of course I’ll take smaller denominations.”

  The two of them smoked their cigarettes. The cuckoos performed their aria, but Blum was not a Japanese.

  “Can’t you turn those things off for a bit?”

  They were turned off. Cora was drawing as if oblivious of her surroundings, but she didn’t fool Blum. The cat had woken up and was washing its paws. It was an ordinary black domestic cat, but it had a white spot on each paw, to which it devoted at least as much attention as a belly-dancer to her beauty marks.

  “So if you can’t do business in cash,” Blum summed up, “you can forget the deal.”

  “I’m thinking of the guano,” said Ted slowly, looking at Tim.

  “Good idea. Killing two birds with one stone.”

  Blum cleared his throat. Cora’s pencil hesitated.

  “Guano?”

  “That’s right,” said Tim. “At present prices I’d put it at about 125,000 guilders.”

  “The only drawback is, it’s cruising around somewhere in the South China Sea,” said Ted, “but we won’t let that stand in our way.”

  “It’s a question of logistics.”

  “Exactly. Do you have that last telex somewhere?”

  “In my head. Coming into Macao, dated 17 March, Captain Willems or whatever his name is. Absolutely reliable, Blum, you needn’t have any unnecessary suspicions. If Willems sends a message to say he’ll be in Macao on such-and-such a date, you can set your watch by him.”

  “If you happen to be in Macao. Another Bloody Mary?”

  Blum put his hand over his glass. This was not the moment for strong liquor. His veins seemed to be swelling, and his voice sounded unnaturally loud. “What’s the idea? You want to give me guano in exchange for the cocaine?”

  “Do you know what a pound of guano is worth?”

  “St Laurent would pay any price for it.”

  “That shit they use to make perfume?”

  “You only have to fly there and take over the cargo. From Willems or whatever he’s called.”

  “In Macao.”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this. You two must be trying to pull my leg.”

  The cat stopped licking itself. It looked attentively at Blum. Cora too had stopped pretending she had nothing but art in her head.

  “No need to get so worked up,” said Ted. “The guano is ours as soon as it reaches Macao. A simple forward transaction, understand?”

  “Since when does one have to go and take receipt of the wares personally in a forward transaction?”

  “They’re not pulling your leg,” said Cora. “You can trust them, Blum.”

  “Like I could trust you, right?”

  She looked him straight in the face and pouted. Slut, thought Blum, but he suddenly felt a pang at his heart. He drew on his cigarette. The pang passed over. They always passed over, except the latest. Ted cleared his throat, and the cat returned its attention to its paws.

  “Let’s stick to business,” suggested Tim.

  “We must integrate you and your stuff in our current deals,” Ted explained. “All deals are parts of a complex system, like interlocking cogwheels. The cocaine has to be a part of the machine, like the guano or that cargo of new Japanese torches our agent in Hong Kong has rustled up for us – switch them on and you see a naked woman, and there’s Jane Birkin moaning, ‘Je t’aime.’ ”

  “That’s nothing new,” said Blum. “I popularized them myself when I was at school. Anyway, I haven’t the faintest wish to be a little wheel in your big machine—”

  “With five pounds of cocaine you wouldn’t be exactly a little wheel—”

  “—or a big wheel either. I don’t want to be a wheel at all, understand? I never did want to and I never will.”

  “But you are. Everyone’s a wheel. And all of us together—”

  “Listen, boy. Not me. I’m my own business. I always have been. Always a one-man firm. No one under me, no one above me, no one beside me. Just me. I’ve always managed perfectly well that way. And I’m not planning to change my system in the future. Get it? No commission, no forward transaction, no cheques. I get paid in cash. Always. On principle. Direct methods. The direct way.”

  “Oh wow,” said Ted, “spare me that individual capitalism stuff, it belongs in the early eighteenth century.”

  Glances were exchanged. Then Cora said, “And I thought you’d get on so well with these two. You and your figures and agents and Bahamas—”

  Blum rose, emptied his glass and put it down on a stack of old issues of Fortune.

  “You weren’t listening to me, Cora. You were too busy going behind my back. Supplying Hermes with information. Just tell him I still have the stuff. And I’m operating on my own. Blum still has it and Blum will sell it yet. To the highest bidder. Cash and carry. The old method. Well, you know where to find me.”

  “You’d be a real hit in Macao, Blum,” said Ted, and Tim started the cuckoo clocks again. The cat had turned its back on everyone and gone to sleep. It too was a one-man firm. Blum closed the door behind him. It was the only thing to do. And now back to the cocaine, the cold category D hotel rooms, and nights in combat against the cartels. You were the only person you could be, and you did it, you stayed that way. It might not always be a good feeling, but it was all you had, so you accepted it.

  35

  The bar was in the middle of the Old Town. It wasn’t exactly the Pegasus Bar in the Phoenicia, and it certainly was not the bar Blum was planning to open once he had found his island, but the beer was cold, and odd characters didn’t bother him so long as they kept themselves to themselves. He was drinking his beer, staring at a circus poster on the wall and thinking of nothing in particular, when a man wearing a hat pushed his way in between him and the odd characters at the counter. Glancing at him sideways, Blum immediately knew what he was, and why. This man too was flotsam washed up in these surroundings, with his shabby raincoat, Trevira suit, striped tie and some fifty-five years of the struggle for survival showing in his face: the bags under his eyes, the wart on his cheek, the wrinkled turkey neck. But his eyes were still in search of something, and his chin wasn’t done for yet. Another traveller, thought Blum, on the long journey from Solingen to Neheim-Hüsten by way of Stalingrad, but this one still believes in the Bahamas, just as I do. Or perhaps Ascona is more like it. The man nodded to Blum, raised his hat – Blum noticed his heavy black signet ring – and ordered a gin in Dutch. When he turned to Blum he spoke German. He had a husky smoker’s voice.

  “Nice bar,” he said, tipping back his gin.

  “Nothing much wrong with it,” Blum agreed.

  “You from Germany too?”

  “You can hear I am.”

  The man nodded, and ordered another gin. “One for you as well?”

  “I’ll stick with the beer, thanks.”

  “Very sensible.”

  “Yes, beer is the only reliable thing.”

  “Beer and cash in hand, eh?”

  “You’re dead right.”

  They drank for a while, and then the man said: “Nice city, Amsterdam.”

  “That depends,” opined Blum.

  “Do you visit it often?”

  “When business brings me.�
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  “May I ask what your line is?”

  “I’m an agent,” said Blum.

  An interested glance, another gin. This old soak certainly wasn’t bothered about his liver any more.

  “That’s a wide field,” said the man at last. “What do you deal in, as an agent?”

  “I take what comes. Mainly chemicals and information. And what’s your line?”

  “I’m in the import–export business.”

  “Ah. Do you know Frankfurt?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  He should come out with it now. The key words had all been spoken. Perhaps there was still one missing.

  “Then you’ll know the ICA, I expect?”

  “ICA? Which fair is that?”

  Got it wrong, then. Ah well, you can’t always win. But it was about time for something definite in all this obfuscation.

  “Forget it. Comes under the heading of information.”

  A tart with blue hair started towards the man, but he dismissed her with a glance.

  “Information is too vague for me, see? I prefer dealing with concrete things.”

  “Like tropical fruits? Spare parts? Plastic bags?”

  “More or less. It depends what’s in the plastic bags.”

  The eyes were the same as those that had sent the tart packing, but now they were the eyes of an innocent angel. Careful, Blum.

  “Most plastic bags have chemical items in them.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “Not that chemical items have a very good press, these days.”

  “Ah, well, in my line the products of the press are simply for wrapping up the goods. And you don’t survive long in our kind of business if you’re prejudiced, am I right?”

  “Just what I always say myself. Have another gin?”

  “Thanks, yes. But I suggest we move somewhere more comfortable, okay?”

  He’s right, of course, thought Blum. I can hardly broach the subject of five pounds of coke in this dump. Even the arses have ears here, and not every weirdo confines himself to singing Verdi arias or “Stranger in the Night”. On the other hand, if the man isn’t working for Hackensack he could be just sounding things out. Blum drained his beer glass. He looked around again, but saw nothing that represented an alternative. Perhaps this was what the advertising people called the drugs scene – the blue-haired tart now devoting her attention to two American sailors, the Chinese hermaphrodite with a pigtail, sucking the end of it, a thousand years of torture in those lashless eyes, the leather-clad yobs talking big about the number of cops they’d chew up next time round, the ethereal disco girls, stars in a sky where no natural sun now shone, the people gawping in the corners – but it was not Blum’s scene. He had never been a part of it, and strange as it might seem, he was less a part of it than ever now with his five pounds of cocaine. At that moment he would have given something to know where he did belong, but as no one could tell him he paid for his beer and followed the man with the hat and the wart and the import–export business out into the street.

  36

  “What kind of a man is he?” asked Cora. She was sitting astride the only chair that the Hotel Roder Leeuw allowed the guests in its single rooms, watching Blum pack. Not that there was much left to pack, but Blum had a considerable talent for making an elaborate ceremonial even out of stowing away two pairs of socks and a toothbrush.

  “A small businessman,” he said thoughtfully. “A loner like me. Grey hat, grey suit, grey voice. Import–export business.”

  “A character like him isn’t going to buy five pounds of coke straight off, just like that. These things don’t happen. For cash, too.”

  “Cash down, yes. Look, to you the word cocaine doesn’t mean the same as it does to his sort. You see it as exotic, of course – magical, mystical, gift of the gods, Paradise White, the White Lady, all that stuff. I’m not saying it’s entirely beside the point, but for normal businessmen cocaine is just a commodity like any other. What does illegal mean today? At least it’s more profitable than shoelaces or staples. Good business.”

  “Normal businessmen don’t deal in coke, Blum.”

  “What does normal mean? Since these aren’t normal times you can hardly expect ordinary businessmen to be the only normal people around. Selling staples, dried petfood, inner tubes. Think of your friends Ted and Tom.”

  “Tim. Ted and Tim.”

  “Yes, well, I . . .”

  “But they’re eccentrics, they’re putting on an act.”

  “Not everyone in a grey suit is a sober citizen, Cora, and I personally can only laugh when you say your friends are doing it just for fun.”

  “I didn’t say that. But you don’t know them. You didn’t want to get to know them either. You simply ran for it when everything wasn’t going exactly as you wanted – cash down on the table, a done deal, off you go.”

  “Either Sekt or seltzer water, that’s what I always say.”

  “Then you’ve been drinking an awful lot of seltzer water recently, you poor thing. Have you finished packing yet?”

  “Take it easy, little one. What do you want to do, then? Fuck?”

  “Sometimes you make me want to throw up, Blum. But somehow I like you all the same, and I didn’t betray you. To anyone. I don’t know why you ran away from James like that, but you never stick around long enough for anyone to explain anything. Except when you’re packing, then you take your time. And now this so-called businessman – I see how it is, he waved a few banknotes at you and now it’s yes and amen to everything. And later you’ll feel insulted because he’s a cop after all. Haven’t you thought of that one?”

  “You really think I’m naïve, child, don’t you.”

  “And don’t keep calling me child.”

  “What else do I say? You don’t like baby either.”

  “You’re crazy – baby, child! Haven’t you noticed that I’m a grown woman?”

  “Not losing your sense of humour, are you?”

  That was payback for the seltzer remark. He took off his ankleboots and held them up to the light. It was nearly mid-day, and a strip of spring sunlight shone on one side of the roof outside. Cora had been here for an hour, and he still didn’t know why. He dampened a towel with hot water and rubbed his ankleboots till they shone. Cora smoked and stared at him.

  “All right, neither of us is naïve and we haven’t lost our sense of humour either. That man’s not a cop, Cora. A businessman, say he’s gone broke ten times, he simply says to himself, I’ll never get my villa in Ascona by legal means so let’s try the narcotics, maybe that’s better than the used-car business or a dry-cleaning outfit. There are plenty of his sort around. They don’t all start dealing in drugs, but after a while they get to thinking of it. It’s not the exclusive affair it was ten or twenty years ago, with a lot of fuss and bother. The fuss and bother is just for the poor bastards who do themselves in with the stuff.”

  “Sometimes you talk like a cop yourself. Are your boots clean yet?”

  “If either of us is like a cop it’s you, Cora. It takes a cop mentality to let yourself be planted on me, to spy on me. And who for? For a narcotics pro like Hermes. Or was he only putting on an act for the hell of it too? And who says you haven’t been planted on Hermes by the cops. Where’s your police tag, Cora? Third jacket pocket from the left?”

  Her face froze. Two tears dyed with mascara ran down her cheeks, drawing two fine lines on her skin. She stared at him, her hands clutching the chair back, her white knuckles standing out. Blum turned away and put his boots on. When he looked up again she was reaching out her hands.

  “Help me, Blum!”

  He stayed where he was.

  “Help me, you idiot! My legs have gone to sleep, I can’t stand up! Blum!”

  He pulled her up, the chair fell over, and of course she landed in his arms. Gone to sleep nothing – she was pressing close to him, trembling, hot, her ash-blonde hair crackling, then they were lying on the bed, he below, sh
e on top of him, her eyes closed, like a parachutist leaping from a plane. But Blum was not a cloud, nor was he going to be the meadow on which the bold conqueror of the heights might land.

  “I have to leave, Cora. Really, this isn’t the moment.”

  “You wanted us to stay together once.”

  “That was before I knew what your job was.”

  “Aren’t you making it a little easy for yourself?”

  “Is that what it looks like? Do I look as if I’d ever made things easy for myself? The deal will finally go through in an hour’s time – I’m only risking a couple of years or a knock on the head – and here I am lying with you on this bed which is creaking under us, and you’re working on me with your lies, claiming I make it easy for myself just because I don’t fall for your line.”

  “Hermes had a hold over me. I owed him something. And I told him you didn’t have any snow. I—”

  “Because you wanted it yourself. You and your nice clean fashion photographer, you wanted the whole five pounds for yourselves, that’s why you didn’t tell Hermes anything.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, if I’d wanted your coke I’d have it by now! Do you really think I didn’t know where the key to the locker was all the time? Do you think I’d have needed someone like James to get at your stuff? You poor fool, you thought we were all after your pathetic bit of Peruvian snow the whole time.”

  “Well, you are, admit it. You must see it’s no use soft-soaping me.”

  “Is that what you really think? Weren’t things ever different between us?”

  “I don’t believe in that any more, Cora. I don’t believe in us.”

  “I need you, Blum.”