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know if it was important but they knew
to come and talk to me.”
    “What did you say?”
    “That we never met.”
    “And they believed you?”
    “I’m not sure. Did you tell the police about the two men Michael
was with?”
    She glanced towards the floor. “Of course.”
    “You know them?”
    “No. I described them.”
    “Did the police know who they were?”
    She shrugged. “I do not think so. They wanted to know if Michael
had met them before.”
    “And?”
    “I said I did not know. It’s true,” she told me, eyes wide. “I
never met any of Michael’s friends.”
    “Some friends.”
    “But that is what he called them to me.”
    “How about the monkeys?” I tried. “Did you tell the police about
them?”
    She shook her head, slowly.
    “What is it with them anyway? How much are they worth?”
    “They are worth nothing.”
    “You’re sure? Because when I showed you one of them the other
night…Your eyes.”
    “Yes?”
    “They opened up. Like I was holding a bright light in my
hands.”
    She began to smile then, as if she might laugh at me, but she
managed to control herself and rested her chin on her hands.
    “I had not seen him before,” she said, simply. “The one covering
his eyes, yes. But not the others.”
    “But what do they mean, Marieke? To you? To Michael?”
    “Do you have them with you?” she asked, peering at me.
    I shook my head.
    “Where are they?”
    “Someplace secure.”
    “Take me to them.”
    “Not just yet. I don’t know what I’m involved in here. They give
me protection.”
    “You will have your money,” she said coldly.
    “Maybe. But right now all I want are some answers. Why not tell
me about the second thief? Did you know about him?”
    Marieke’s face tangled into a question mark, her lips pursed
together to form the dot at the base of the curve her eyebrows and
nose were describing.
    “So you didn’t. I think I believe you. There was a second man,
Marieke. He broke into the apartment in the Jordaan while I was
there. He was looking for the same thing I was.”
    “I do not know about this second man,” she said.
    “I think Michael hired him. I think he wanted a back-up when I
said no to him.”
    “But why would he do this?”
    “Because he needed the monkeys on that night in particular. He
was very specific about it. It bothered me at the time, though not
as much as it should have done.”
    Marieke unfolded her legs and found her feet, moving to the
window at the front of the room. She wrapped her arms about herself
and stared at her faint reflection in the window glass. I watched
her watching herself, caught up in the circularity of the image.
Those freckles on her neck again. Tiny blemishes. Calling out.
    “He only wanted you,” she said. “Nobody else. You were
recommended to him. Someone in Paris. A friend.”
    “That can’t be right,” I told her. “I know a man in Paris but he
would have told me about this.”
    “Not if Michael did not want him to.”
    “Yes. Even then.”
    “You think so?”
    “Yes,” I said. “The man I’m thinking of passes work my way. It’s
how he makes his money. But I have to trust him for it to work. He
knows that.”
    She hitched her shoulders. “Perhaps Michael had to trust him
too.”
    “Not in the same way.”
    “Of course in the same way,” she said, turning to me, her face
as open as I’d seen it so far.
    “No,” I pressed on. “You don’t understand. This man is a
fence.”
    “Yes?”
    I looked at her expectantly, waiting for my words to register
somewhere inside her thick head. They didn’t though. They began to
register inside mine instead.
    “Marieke,” I said, “what is it Michael did for a living?”
    “You do not know?”
    I shook my head.
    “But he is like you, Charlie.”
    “Exactly like me?”
    “Yes. A burglar, ja?”

∨ The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam ∧
9
    I sat in my desk
chair, fingers laced together behind my neck, and tried to work out
how to solve the