Chapter 8: The Amsterdam Cutting-House

The only question that Mozzie had on his mind was,

“Why is this frigging city always so grey when I want it to be all bright and colorful and ready to surrender up all her goodies without a single look over her shoulder?”

The utter grey monotone was equally matched by a depressing fog and chilling mist that shrouded the old quarter with enough suppressive atmosphere to extinguish any spark of energy or hope of redemption.

He had thought the cobblestoned streets would be ringing with the shouts of female hustlers drumming up business for yet another down in the dumps day. Instead, he saw the blobs of black-garbed supposed females in burkas sliding furtively in unsexy, genderless shuffles close to the walls and out of sight around a corner like a ghost from some other country. The sight of more familiar yarmulkes and woven shawls did little to change his feeling of dread that this entire operation might truly be doomed to failure.

It was difficult for him to shake this feeling of pending defeat.

He opened the dual coded locks on the leather briefcase and unwrapped the gems from their little cocoons of isolated snug rest appreciating how they reflected the sources of light from the dimmed lights and the garish neon sign out in the street in front of the hotel. One by one, he held them up to his lighted monocle and noted the imperfections exactly in the correct positions and better than recorded fingerprints in verifying their authenticity.

No tourist buses and no drunken sailors to disturb the peace like in the good old days.

It was like he had landed on an alien planet with the similar name of Amsterdam to mock him with his antiquated perception of what it should be and had to adapt to the way it really was.

A light knock on the hotel room door caused him to secure the diamonds back in their resting places and place the leather briefcase under the coffee table still handcuffed to his out of sight wrist. He hated that precaution because he had heard old wives tales of couriers that had their hand chopped off just to get the merchandise away from the rightful owner.

It was far too late to worry about losing a hand now.

If they really wanted the diamonds, they would just cut his throat and probably have a bolt cutter to cut the handcuffs from his cold, lifeless body. He smiled at his image in the side mirror. There was no reason for his sudden bout with depression except for that hint of pending doom that had gotten under his skin.

“Yes, what did you want?”

He stood to the side of the peep hole without looking outside.

Mozzie had seen one too many formula action films that made a point of showing the good guy getting shot through the door just by peeking out to see who the unknown visitor was with the natural curiosity of any normal human.

“Mozzie, open the door, you schmuck; it’s your uncle Hymie. Let’s get this thing over so I can get some lunch in the restaurant downstairs.”

He looked through the peep hole and it was his sarcastic uncle with the yen for pretty young shiskas hopefully chewing gum and giggling like the American girls with their cheerleader attitudes. Of course, he was married and anchored with no less than five little ones that forced him to work harder with each passing year. Still, he harbored that urge to nail the feisty females with no respect for their elders and a dislike for the opposite sex that was built into their selfish cores. He liked to make them take it with their faces buried in the hotel or motel pillows and cautioned them to stay silent because he didn’t want to hear any back talk from them when he was straddling their fresh young buttocks.

Mozzie had the thought that he would have liked Miss Lee but he was not quite certain because her ethnic background might be too exotic for the older conservative man. He tended to prefer the European teenaged girls that pretended to be American and act like their generation was the only one that really counted.

In fact, he didn’t mind if they had some hair under their arms and sported a nice “old country” bush between their legs.

He let the older man inside and told him,

“Take what you like from the drink bar. The room comes with free drinks so it is all on the house and you might as well take advantage of it.”

He set up the velvet tray and spread the diamonds in random fashion to indicate he had no tricks up his sleeve.

His uncle was working for the center now and his loyalty to his employer was more valued than his kinship to an upstart nephew. He worked quickly and soon had most of the important pieces tagged correctly and valued according to the latest specifications.

The ten million pound operation would give him four and a half million pounds on an even split after the one million pound “tribute” was paid to the mafia consortium that hosted the transactions. They were guaranteed official “hands off” policy unless some other crime was committed that had nothing to do with the transfer of diamonds. With those funds, he could set up the Hong Kong clearing house for the filched artistic rights he was marketing for the Chinese in a way that kept them out of the picture as far as the Americans or Interpol was concerned. They were real finicky about any scent of involvement because they didn’t want to trigger any sanctions or start any trade wars that would tear down a segment of their complicated economy. There were so many unforeseen circumstances with deals like these in recent years that Mozzie tried to avoid them at any cost. It was the size of the prize that had tempted him in this case and if all went well, he could move out of the diamond business entirely and function strictly as a deal maker in the high-rises of Hong Kong.