Judas Page 11

  Richie was surprised to see us, but apparently had no idea what had happened. Without saying anything about it, we headed to Gerard’s house, where my mother was waiting. Richie was joyfully talking about what he had been doing at school.

  My head was spinning. How should I do this? How should I tell him his father had just died?

  “We’re going to see Grandma,” I said.

  Richie loved her, and I was happy she would be there when he heard the news.

  My mother was already upstairs in the bedroom, and Richie ran toward her: “Grandma!”

  I followed him.

  “Hello, darlings,” my mom said.

  She looked at Richie and started crying.

  “What is it, Grandma?” he asked, and took her hand. “Are you in pain?”

  “No, love,” she said, “I’m not in pain.”

  I started crying, too, and I saw Richie was confused. He felt something bad was going on. I had to tell him. I gathered all my courage and said, “Come sit with me. I have to tell you something, sweetheart.”

  “Is Mom dead?” he asked fearfully, as if he suddenly realized why we were crying.

  “No, darling, not your mom. Daddy is dead,” I heard myself saying.

  After I uttered the words, a heart-wrenching, dark growl escaped his little body. He started shouting. “Mama,” he cried out. “I want to see Mama, where is Mama?”

  “Mama will be here soon, honey. Granny and I are with you now. You can hold me tight.”

  Richie put his little arms around me and cried until he was so worn out that he felt weak in my arms.

  “Here, Mom, please take him. So I can ask Son what else I can do.” Sonja and Francis had driven to the place where Cor had been shot. Sonja wanted to be with him, hold him right there on the sidewalk, but she wasn’t allowed to. They were doing forensic research, and she was not to disturb the crime scene. Cor had become a crime scene. He was there on the cold ground, unreachable to everybody who loved him.

  It was useless hanging around there any longer. Francis came to us, to stay with her uncle and aunt, her grandmother, and Richie. Sonja drove to her own house, and I followed her.

  We sat there, overcome with grief. The doorbell rang. It was Wim.

  I opened the door and sat back down on the sofa with Sonja. We cried. Wim sat down between us, put his arms around us, and cried with us.

  After a while he got up and left. After all we had been through together, it didn’t feel right.

  We still hadn’t seen Cor, and Francis did everything she could to get in to see him. The police were being difficult, but as young and as sad as she was, she managed to pressure them enough that we were allowed to see him that night.

  Sonja, Francis, and I went there. We left Richie at home. Sonja didn’t want him to go.

  We arrived at the hospital and had to use a back entrance. A couple of cops were waiting for us.

  Before we went in to see Cor, they warned us that we might be shocked, that he did not look like himself, that he had been brutalized.

  Sonja and I went in first, to see if it was safe for Francis to see her father like that.

  There he was, in a white gown on a table. Two burning candles stood at both ends of the table. I looked at Cor’s face and his hands.

  They had literally shot him to pieces.

  Sonja ran toward Cor, screaming. “No, no, no!” She took his head in her hands and kissed his lips. “Wake up, Cor, please, wake up!” she cried and shook his head, as if trying to rouse him.

  It was best Francis didn’t see him like this, but against our advice, she’d followed us into the room.

  “I have to see him,” she said, “or I won’t believe that he is dead.”

  “Go on, then,” I said.

  Francis walked toward him hesitantly, took his battered hand and put it to her face. “Daddy, Daddy!” she cried. “No, Daddy, you can’t be dead!”

  Through her tears she kissed his broken fingers.

  I put my hand on his arm and tried to look for a sign of life in his face. “Look at me, Cor,” I whispered, hoping he’d open his eyes. “Look at me,” I said louder, but nothing happened.

  Cor didn’t open his eyes. He never would again.

  After a while, we were asked to leave the room. We had to leave him again. One by one, we kissed him goodbye.

  “See you tomorrow, love,” Sonja said.

  Francis and I looked at each other. Sonja still could not believe he was gone.

  We drove home.

  It was later in the evening when the doorbell rang, startling me.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Me.”

  It was Wim.

  “Son, come outside for a bit,” he called over my head to Sonja. Sonja, still in shock, followed him like a zombie.

  After half an hour, she was back.

  “What did he want?” I asked when Sonja came back. She gestured me to follow her to the bathroom, like we used to do when we talked about Wim. She switched on the dryer to drown out our conversation. The police had searched the whole house today and we didn’t know if they had installed bugs.

  “He asked for the shares of Achterdam. Do you think what I think?”

  “I think so,” I answered.

  The shares of Achterdam: the person who owned them was the owner of a couple of whorehouses in the city of Alkmaar’s red-light district. It had been a joint project by Cor, Wim, and Robbie following the investment of the Heineken ransom in Amsterdam’s red-light district. After they went their separate ways in 1996, Cor got the Achterdam shares.

  “Box, I need the shares for those whorehouses,” he had said to Sonja, and Sonja could now only think that he was behind Cor’s death.

  She told him she didn’t have the shares. He’d gone ballistic, had ordered her to go find them, gotten into his car angrily, and driven away.

  The next day he was back. He took Sonja outside again and “comforted” her. Cor had been a filthy dog anyway, she would mourn him for just three months and then her grief would be over. Cor was a serious alcoholic and for the kids his death was a blessing. Had she found his shares yet? Oh, and didn’t Cor have gold? She should hand that over to him now.

  She couldn’t refuse, but Sonja, determined that Wim should not profit from Cor’s death, improvised: Cor had sold all his gold. She had one bar left, and she wanted to keep that for the children, if he was okay with that.

  Wim was beside himself. “One bar left?!”

  With Cor out of the way, Wim thought Sonja would be easy prey, but she stood firm.

  Days later, Wim called and told me to come see him.

  “Listen, As, I need Sonja. You have to get her and take her to the Amsterdam Forest Park. She will have to give her house in Spain to Stanley Hillis, because the hit men have to be paid. So go get her now. I’ll see you in the forest in one hour.”

  I was stunned. Had I heard him correctly? The gunmen had to be paid? Was he talking to me about Cor’s hit men? Sonja had to pay for the murder of her husband, the father of her children, by donating her house to his posse? The house Cor had named after his daughter, Villa Francis?

  I hurried to Sonja’s and told her what he had told me. She turned white as a sheet.

  “You see he is behind all this, As?”

  “Yes.”

  “What now?”

  “You have to come with me to Forest Park. He’ll be waiting for us.”

  “No!”

  We were scared of what might happen to us there in the forest. We parked the car and walked toward him.

  “Hey, Son.” He told Sonja what he’d told me. “You have to give your house in Spain to Stanley Hillis because the hit men have to be paid.”

  Sonja had told him twice before that she had nothing to give him, but Wim wasn’t having it. He grew impatient. And we had seen firsthand how fast his impatience could turn to violence.

  Sonja’s Grief

  IT WAS THE DAY WE BURIED COR. SONJA AND I WERE VERY T
IRED,​ AND we were lying on her bed discussing the burial.

  “It went exactly as Cor would have wanted it,” said Sonja.

  “Yes, I think so, too. I think he would have liked it very much.” I switched off the light. “Let’s go to sleep.”

  Less than five minutes later I heard Sonja’s voice in the darkness. “Did you do that, As?”

  “What, Son?”

  “No, I thought not, but I wanted to be sure.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Cor came and kissed me. I felt his lips on mine.”

  “Are you okay, Son? Are you not losing it a bit?” I was worried.

  “Not at all. Really, he is still here. He won’t leave us alone. You know I don’t believe in miracles, but it’s really true. He came to give me a kiss.”

  I understood what she was saying. I felt Cor’s presence in the room, too. Being a rational person, I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but after Sonja told me, I was sure. He was still here.

  “Sweet dreams, Cor,” Son said. I was quiet for a minute and then echoed, “Sweet dreams, Cor.”

  Immediately after Cor was assassinated, I moved in with Sonja. Living with her, I saw firsthand how Wim dictated Sonja’s life now that Cor was gone. Her house was his house. He walked in and out and brought with him a holdover from his Klepper and Mieremet posse—Sandra.

  Sonja had to look after her so he could occupy himself unhindered with his other women. And if Sonja was unable to do it, Francis had to step in.

  Sandra wasn’t the only woman she had to entertain, though she was the one Sonja loathed most passionately.

  And entertaining his various women was not Sonja’s only task. Wim’s life was in danger, and Sonja had to drive him around in his bulletproof car whenever he felt like it. Sonja would have to get the car, which was parked in a garage in Amstelveen, off the street, so that they couldn’t place any bugs or bombs underneath it.

  “It’s extremely ironic, isn’t it, Son? You of all people helping him to survive,” I said when Sonja suddenly had to skip dinner because Wim wanted to be driven somewhere.

  “It drives me crazy sometimes,” she replied.

  “How do you cope with it?”

  “I do it for the kids. They keep me going. I would have killed myself a long time ago if it wasn’t for them. I would have crawled up next to Cor.”

  She left the table. “I need to go before he starts asking where I am.”

  Shortly after the funeral, Wim said to me, “You know, As, it’s for the best. They cry for two months, and then they forget about it. That fat one was a fucking asshole anyway.”

  He had told Sonja the same thing, and later I read the same sentence in Endstra’s back seat conversations.

  Meanwhile, on the day of the funeral he had been crying with us on the sofa, displaying his so-called grief for everyone. A great actor.

  He also wanted to “contribute.” He overheard a discussion between Sonja and the undertaker about a small bill she still had to pay but which she could not cover at that point. Wim immediately saw an opportunity to strengthen his alibi and had me transfer the amount from his account, and he subsequently told everybody he had paid for the funeral.

  Soon afterward, he had me come to Stadhouderskade to meet him.

  “Walk with me,” he said. “Any news?”

  “No, no news.”

  “Okay, fine. Hey, As, that money I paid for the funeral, I really think it’s a waste of my money. It’s clean money, so I have to get it back into my account, you see.”

  I felt a knot in my stomach. Did he say waste? Yes, of course it was a “waste” now. He had already accomplished his goal. He had broadcast everywhere that he had contributed, and in criminal circles he had claimed, for convenience’s sake, that he had paid for everything.

  “I actually loaned it to her, didn’t I, because she was short of money.”

  All of sudden it was a loan. Well, okay. She didn’t want him to contribute anyway.

  I had only been able to convince her to accept the money because otherwise I feared he would catch on that we saw him as the perpetrator.

  That same day the money was in his account. Sonja was glad she could transfer it back to him.

  The attacks on Cor had made it impossible for him and Sonja and the kids to function as a normal family. After the first one in 1996, being together was no longer easy or normal.

  For a long time, Sonja and the kids would see Cor only briefly, at various secret locations. Cor started drinking more after each attempt. Despite all the lows, they stayed together, connected for twenty-five years by their love and trust, the children, and all they had been through together.

  Cor’s death ended that period. Sonja thought she could know no greater loss.

  But she was wrong.

  A few days after the funeral, Peter R. de Vries, one of Holland’s most famous investigative journalists and a friend of Cor’s, came to see Sonja. We were sitting at her dining table when he said he’d like to share something about Cor, but he didn’t know if he’d be doing the right thing. He wanted to keep nothing from her, but maybe she didn’t want to know.

  “Of course I want to know,” Sonja said.

  “Okay, well. Cor had an affair with someone at my office.”

  I saw Sonja’s face turn red, but she remained calm. She asked how it happened, and after Peter answered, she said, “I’m glad you’ve been honest with me. I now understand why some people at the funeral were acting so mysteriously.”

  Sonja saw Peter out, and as soon as the door was shut, she started to cry uncontrollably. “The bastard! How could he do that to me? And carry on the affair for two years!”

  Cor was no saint, she had known that; she had dragged him out of brothels more than once. But this was different. This was a relationship, and he’d never done that to her before. He had taken this woman to his house in Nigtevecht and to Sonja’s house in Spain, where they had spent time in Sonja’s bed.

  After finding out about this relationship, she wanted to see what the woman looked like.

  Sonja’s grief about Cor’s affair was clear to Francis. She too wanted to know what this other woman looked like.

  We went to see Peter de Vries, to ask if he had a picture of her.

  “Yes, I think so,” Peter replied.

  “Can I see it?” Sonja asked.

  He looked for a photo and handed it to Sonja.

  Sonja was silent on the way back. “How are you, sis?” I asked.

  “It hurts a lot. I’ve been played for a fool. For two years. Everybody knew except me. It feels like a knife in my back.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I understand.”

  “No, As, you don’t. You could confront Jaap when he had an affair. You could shout at him, hit him. I can’t do anything. Cor is gone, and I’m left behind with so much anger and incomprehension. I hold that against him the most. You have no idea how that feels.”

  When we got home, she went to bed. We heard her crying all night.

  The next morning, she brought me toast and jam and sat down on my bed.

  “As, I have been thinking carefully. I’m not going to have twenty-five years’ worth of memories destroyed by what happened. It’s the way it is, and I don’t love him any less.”

  Part III

  Hidden Agenda

  2011–2013

  A Plan Forms

  2011

  THE KIDNAPPING OF BEER TYCOON FREDDY HEINEKEN AND HIS DRIVER Ab Doderer in 1983 had established Wim’s reputation as a ruthless criminal. The details of their brutal treatment shocked the world.

  After his release in 1992, he became the menace of real estate tycoons. In the years that followed, a wave of contract killings hit the Amsterdam world of real estate and the criminal world. And every time, his name was mentioned as the contractor. Everybody was terrified of him. And we were more terrified than all of them, because we knew him best.

  Cor’s life had ended on January 24, 2003, on the cold co
bbles of a street in Amstelveen. He had just had a meeting with his friend Robert ter Haak in a Chinese restaurant and was standing around talking when two men on a motorbike sprayed him with bullets.

  Sonja and I didn’t know who had fired those bullets at Cor, but we knew who his murderer was. There was no reason to assume that we wouldn’t suffer the same fate, a fate Wim reminded us of constantly.

  “You know what I’ll do, right?” he would threaten us, whenever we tried to determine the course of our own lives.

  Yes, we knew what he would do if we didn’t obey him unconditionally. Everything in our relationship with Wim was determined by fear of his violence, so we lived by his rules. We walked on eggshells, did everything to prevent becoming his next victims, tried to survive our life with him, and above all, kept quiet.

  But every day we felt like we were betraying Cor. We felt dirty for passing time with his killer. We desperately hoped that Wim would pay for what he had done to Cor and to us, but we didn’t dare take action against him. We became more afraid as the killings continued. Murders of people who, like Cor, thought they were his friends.

  Going to the police was not an option. If Wim were to find out that we had talked to the police, he would “immediately take care of this.” And the risk that he would find out was enormous. He had often told me about his rats, corrupt contacts inside the police organization who informed him about investigations in which his name came up. No, he wouldn’t hesitate one second to have us killed.

  No one talked to the police about him and survived.

  Wim’s friend Willem Endstra, a real estate mogul, made as many as fourteen statements—in secret—in the back seat of a police car. They led to nothing, but Wim still found out.

  Endstra was murdered.

  The criminal Kees Houtman made confidential statements to the police. He was killed on the doorstep of his house.