Dutch Me Deadly

next—The Erotic Cellar or the Video Sexshop? Honestly, if the Dicks weren’t so endearing in their own annoying way, I’d want to kill them.

“Je-sus, yes! Porn-o, no!” The demonstrators on the bridge began a rhythmic chant. “Je-sus, yes! Porn-o, no!” Their voices grew louder as they hypered each other into a frenzy, thrusting their signs into the air like peasants brandishing pitchforks and torches. “JE-SUS, YES! PORN-O, NO!” And in the middle of it all stood Mike McManus, eyes slatted and mouth tight, scanning the crowd like a human surveillance camera.

“Mike!” I waved my arm over my head and shouted his name again, but realizing there was no way he was going to hear me, I pushed my way onto the bridge and made a beeline for him before he could pull a disappearing act.

“Gotcha!” I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.

Startled, he jerked his head around and stared at me blankly before recognition crept into his eyes. “Emily. Jeez, I thought you were some loony.”

“Sorry!” I cupped my hand around my mouth and spoke close to his ear. “I called out your name as loud as I could, but I got drowned out by the competition. I’m surprised the protesters haven’t fixed you up with a sign yet.”

“I could use a sign! Something that says, ‘Mary Lou, Where are You?’”

“How long since you’ve seen her?”

He checked his watch. “About an hour. I was leading her and Laura through the crowd but got a little too far ahead. When I turned around, they were both gone. It was the damnedest thing. They literally vanished into thin air.”

“There’s a lot of that going around tonight. At least Mary Lou’s not alone. She and Laura are pretty cool customers. They’re probably making their way back to the hotel even as we speak.”

“I dunno.” He passed a glance over the crowd again, his face etched with doubt. “There are some serious nut-jobs walking around out there. Gives me the willies to think Mary Lou might be walking around with them. Coming down here was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Wait’ll I get my hands on that damn Dietger. He’s probably laughing all the way to the bank.”

“How much longer are you going to wait here?” I questioned.

“As long as it takes. I’m not leaving without her. She’s my whole life. I mean, what would I do without her?”

“I’ll tell you what, if you’re still here when I wrap up looking for my guys, I’ll stop by and we can walk back together. Deal?”

“You’re missing people as well?”

“My two Dicks. I figured they might have found their way into one of the live sex theaters, but the three classiest places insisted I pay full admission for the privilege of looking for them, so I’m narrowing my search down to less classy establishments, like triple X-rated video shops and tattoo parlors.”

“Are your boys wearing the standard issue nametags?”

“Last I knew, they were.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for them.”

“Thanks.” I smiled my appreciation. “And if I run into Mary Lou and Laura, I’ll stick with them like glue and drag them back with me.”

He tried to smile, but there was such anguish in his face, his mouth refused to cooperate. “Sounds good,” he said dismally, looking as if his knees were about to buckle beneath the weight of his predicament.

Poor Mike. I sure hoped Mary Lou showed up soon, because if she didn’t, he looked as if he might suffer a complete breakdown. This was so weird. At first blush, he’d struck me as the kind of guy who bled confidence, but had I read him correctly? Or was the real Mike McManus still an emotionally stunted sixteen-year-old whose mental health could be derailed by the slightest disruption?

I mulled this over as I rejoined the mob in the street.

Funny thing about people. Old friend or new, they always managed to surprise you.

_____

The Dicks weren’t here. I’d looked everywhere I could possibly search—darkened doorways, smoky cafes, hotel lounges, dingy cellar shops, erotic bars, erotic clubs, and several erotic outlets where I picked up a slew of free catalogs for Nana. I gave descriptions to store clerks, waiters, bouncers, and desk clerks, but all I heard was the same old thing: “Haven’t seen them.”

At two o’clock I called Jackie’s cell. “Please, please, please tell me the Dicks are back at the hotel.”

They weren’t. “But everyone else is functioning normally again, except for the double vision, so I made them form a conga line on their way back to their rooms so they could hold onto each other for support. You better get them to a clinic in the morning though. Double vision isn’t a good thing for old people to have. I don’t want to be an alarmist or anything, but I think it means they’re all getting ready to suffer kidney failure.”

At 4:20 a.m., discouraged by my failed efforts and unable to keep my eyes open, I decided if I didn’t call it a night, Nana might soon be sending out a search party for me. Not only did I need to catch forty winks, I needed to regroup.

I passed by the “Come to Jesus” bridge, where the same batch of protestors were warning people to repent, but Mike was gone, so I hoped that was a good omen. Too tired to hoof it back to the hotel, I phoned a cab and began the weary walk to my pick-up point. As I approached the footbridge by the Cafe Bar de Stoof, I noticed a woman leaning against a van parked by the canal and realized there was a good chance she might know more about the Dicks’ whereabouts than any other person I’d talked to this evening.

“Excuse me, Officer,” I said as I approached her, “could you help me?”

_____

I returned to the hotel armed with official police forms that were to be filled out and delivered to the nearest station within twenty-four hours of my reporting the members of my party missing. The policewoman had assured me that most people who went missing in the Red Light District usually turned up embarrassed but deliriously happy the next morning, so I should probably wait a few hours before filing a formal report. “Things like dis happen all der time,” she insisted.

Feeling slightly more confident that the situation would have a positive outcome, I headed straight for my room, kicked off my shoes, and collapsed face down on the bed without bothering to brush, floss, or moisturize. I was awakened about six seconds later by a loud and persistent knock on my door.

“God, Emily,” Jackie warbled when I let her in, “you look terrible, but you don’t have time to do anything about it now. You have five minutes to get downstairs before the breakfast service ends. Our new tour director wants to speak to you, Nana and the gang are running into the furniture in the dining room like it’s not even there, and the Dicks never came back last night.”

I hung my head tiredly. “Is that all?”

“Nope. Paula Peavey never came back either.”

Nine

“Emily?” The man waiting for me at the entrance to the dining room looked vaguely familiar, which probably explained why my name flew from his mouth like a spitball rather than a greeting.

I suspected he knew me.

“Holy crap. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Emily Andrew? Well, well, well. This explains a lot.”

Recognition struck, accompanied by an uncomfortable twinge of guilt. Oh. My. God. He hadn’t changed all that much since I’d last seen him. Same chubby chipmunk cheeks. Same bland eyes. Same neat, buttoned-down appearance. He’d traded in his navy-blue blazer and khakis for a pea-green Passages Tours blazer, but if you ignored his expanding waistline and receding hairline, he still looked a lot like the boy next door, in a middle-aged kind of way.

I hazarded a cautious smile. “Wally?”