About a week ago, I got a call from a man asking me to meet him at a bar in Tribeca. The Parlor, a private bar on Spring Street for people with suspiciously large bank accounts and even bigger secrets. The man didn’t give me his name, just the date and time to meet and then hung up.

           On an unseasonably warm night in late February, I found myself in front of an unmarked door on Spring Street. I knocked and the big black brother on the other side looked me up and down and let me pass. My guess is someone told him to look out for a cheaply dressed man, so he knew who was calling. I walked in and chuckled to myself at the interior of the place, remembering it all too well. The Parlor is dressed to look like one of those speakeasy throwback joints, dimly lit with nice black and burgundy Chesterfield sofas, brick walls with wood panels, fat Churchill chairs propped before controlled fireplaces and plush velvet chaises to lean seductively back in. Customary dark corners to conduct clandestine business in no short supply. What I liked most about the spot was the end to end fully stocked bar against the north-facing wall. A real gem of rare whiskies.

           I figured whoever was looking for me would find me, they usually do, so I perched myself on a cushioned stool at the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender poured me a healthy double Johnnie Walker Green with two ice cubes and didn’t charge me. After a couple gulps of amber elixir, a man, scratch that, a gentleman appeared and stood to my left. He wasn’t giving me the pick-up vibe so I assumed he was my contact. I turned and offered him a big grin. I was greeted with a long face. ‘Why the long face?’ I asked. He cocked his head to the side, furrowed his brow and sort of smiled. Either he didn’t get it or wasn’t feeling funny tonight. He turned on his heel and walked towards the interior of the saloon. I slid off my stool and followed him to a quiet corner in the back, nestled between brick and a wood panel. He motioned me to sit down in a brown leather Churchill. He sat across from me in a hard black bistro chair. I liked that, him giving me the comfortable option,immediately showing where we stood. Man knew how to play.  

Women would describe this gentleman as tall, dark and handsome. Brown expensively cut mid-length hair, with fair skin, and a little bit of age gracefully showing around his eyes. In a finely cut navy suit against the background of a crisp white open-collared shirt, the man was refined. But I could see he hadn’t slept in a long while. He crossed his legs in a way that for the average Joe would look precious, but I knew it to be inbred straight, European upper-class breeding. Rarefied in his hard chair with a bit of my shit does stink air. I figured Scandinavian or Dutch, ‘cause there was no Mediterranean warmth to him; all cold, tight business.  

‘Mr. Marlen, thank you for coming.’ He spoke English in the finely accented way Northern Europeans do.

‘You didn’t give me the chance to refuse on the phone,’ I replied. Telling him where I stood. We were just meeting. I hadn’t agreed to anything.

He nodded and shrugged. ‘What could he do,’ his shoulders said, ‘needs must.’

‘So, what can I do for you, Mr.--?’ I never caught his name.

‘Jens. It is easier if you call me Jens.’

‘Okay, Mr. Jens, what do you need a guy like me for?’

‘I need you to find someone.’

Shocker. Classy guy like himself, of course he’d lost something precious.

‘Tell me more, amigo,’ I prodded,taking a swig of my Johnnie Green.

‘Yes.’ He shifted in his chair and crossed his legs again. Long legs, the man was tall. Close to 6’4”if I measured right. I’m up there, but he was tall and thin, where I’m tall and wide. He was in shape too, that tight little suit showed off all the right thigh muscles. My guess was he owned a room full of bicycles that cost more than what I make in a year.

He didn’t offer anything after his‘yes,’ so I figured the classy fellow was shy and needed some encouragement: ‘You lost someone?’

‘My fiancée,’ he confirmed.

Again, big surprise.

‘She’s been missing since December.’

I checked my inner calendar, we were in February. Took him a while to get worried.

He darted his eyes away like he knew what I was thinking.

‘I need you to find her. The sooner the better, please.’

I picked up my drink, all the while keeping an eye on the guy. The sooner the better, he said. What does the girl have on him he doesn’t want out?

Reading my mind again, the next words out of his mouth were: ‘Do not worry, there is no trouble involved. I only want you to find her.’

When people tell me not to expect trouble, I immediately do. Otherwise, why would they warn me? As much as my curiosity was a little piqued, I wasn’t interested in getting involved with international crime syndicates. He needed to give me a reason to take this job,i.e. I needed to know why he desperately needed to find her.

Mr. Jens didn’t bother to read my mind that time--or maybe he did and didn’t want to answer—instead he pulled from his jacket pocket a white envelope which he handed to me.

‘Inside is what will cover your expenses and how to contact me. You will also find my wife’s--my fiancée’s name.You have no timeline because I believe you will do your best quickly. I do not care what it costs. Please be discreet.’ He punctuated his request with a confident smile to accompany his steely stare. He doesn’t know me from Adam, yet he trusts I’ll get the job done.

‘Just find her, Mr. Marlen,’ he repeated averting his eyes. He was either naïve or at the end of his rope. In dire straits. Totally desperate. I suddenly felt a little bad for this man who had everything.

‘Anything else you forgetting?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Keep your receipts.’

I chuckled. He didn’t.

Since we were now best buds, I thought I could ask him the as yet unanswered burning question: ‘So Jens, why do you need to find her so bad?’

He replied without hesitation. ‘To protect her.’ He took a breath, and for the first time since we’d started talking, I caught a whiff of agitation on his cool self. 'Om haar tegen zichzelf te beschermen,' he said to himself under his breath.

It’d been years since I heard German, and this wasn't German though it sounded a lot like it. Somehow, I knew he wasn’t talking about money. My guess, this was about pure stupid love. I sighed, this job was going to be messy and without a clear conclusion. But I needed the extra cash.  

I watched Mr. Jens a long time. He was looking at his classy shoes, but he knew I was looking at him. I pocketed the envelope. He knew I would take the job, that’s why he didn’t give me a choice.

*

Leaving the dapper gentleman sitting on a hard chair in the shadows, I walked home from the Parlor. I got to my hovel and immediately Googled the woman’s name written on the back of a picture inside the envelope.  After the biblical references I found the girl I was looking for, at least I assumed it was her. I gave the results a quick swipe and decided I’d need proper provisions before delving deeper.

I went back out to the bodega on the corner and grabbed a pack of Lucky’s, a bottle of seltzer and a carton of orange juice. I got back to my apartment and poured myself a glass of Irish whiskey and made myself comfortable in front of my computer. Six cigarettes and two glasses of whiskey later, I knew who Mr. Jens and his mystery girl were and figured this wouldn’t be as unpleasant as I’d originally thought.

What people look like on the computer screen is rarely the truth, but Jens and Salomé, a tall, handsome cosmopolitan couple, for all intents and purposes looked pretty perfect. Of the few pictures I found of them together, she smiled with her eyes and when he looked at her you saw a twinkle in his. If the internet could be believed they’d been together five years and met at an event somewhere called the Thalia Theatre. When a very eligible bachelor starts dating a cabaret dancer, tongues are bound to wag and wag they did. Despite the hate, one thing led to another and they became the ‘It Couple’ of a certain global set. ‘The Quintessential couple of the future’ New York Magazine called them on the far bottom left-hand corner of the society page.

According to the New York Times announcements page, November of last year he proposed and she said yes. Jens said she disappeared in December and according to the trades her shows were abruptly cancelled at the same time. ‘Cold feet for the dancer?’ tabloid’s asked. Comments pages and Reddit feeds speculated she’d fallen ill. More specifically that she’d suffered a nervous breakdown. The self-professed well-informed speculated she’d run away, that Jens’ pure bred, upper-class family couldn’t accept a woman of color who pranced around half naked for money. One particularly mean-spirited commentator, with an accompanying incriminating picture of Salomé looking somber and deflated, confirmed Salomé was being driven to madness my Jens’ controlling, jealous behavior. If the Google Chrome Dutch translator was accurate, those were some juicy details Mr. Jens forgot to share.

I asked myself the question of the hour: why would a leggy siren with a prince charming suddenly drop off the face of the earth? My guess was the envelope with a Gold American Express Business card in it, would get me as close as I could get.

[1][Dutch] To save her from herself.

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