Shred of Evidence

He was waiting for his luggage at Schiphol Airport when he spotted her. She was wearing the somber, seal-gray coat he had given her last Christmas, and it was only the crimson in the scarf at her throat that caught his eye. They had decided it was silly for her to meet his plane. He had outlined the reasons against it; she nodded her acceptance. But here she was anyway looking lovely, standing as still and pale as a porcelain figurine amidst the stolid Dutch pea-soupers in their bulky winter dress. Almost involuntarily, his hand rose in a greeting. She placed one gloved hand up to the glass in response and smiled. The delicacy of her movement encapsulated all that he loved about her.

Moments later, he pulled his bags off the carousel and walked quickly through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ gate. She turned for his kiss and they bumped noses. He wondered whether other married couples miss each other’s lips as frequently as they did.

“I thought we decided you were going to wait at home.”

“Didn’t you miss me at all?”

How had they fallen into this miserable routine anyway? “Of course, I missed you, Anna. I’ve thought of nothing else the whole trip home.” He wondered if it was possible she didn’t know such things.

“We’ve had nothing but misty rain,” she said, ignoring his confession. “Was it nice in France? Why don’t we ever live in sunny places?”

“Shall I ask for Madrid next year?” He didn’t actually mean this, of course. No one moving up in the organization rotated to Spain.

Twenty minutes later, he followed her up the spiral staircase to their flat. Anna waited patiently while he searched for his key, not noticing he had to pile the bags between his legs and shift his carryon. She smiled agreeably, finding nothing unusual in his frantic scramble. She was too thin and a pulse beat anxiously beneath the nearly transparent skin of her forehead. For a few seconds, his heart took up its feverish pace. Willing it to slow, he put the key into the lock. He wondered if she had eaten anything more than rabbit food since he left.

Inside, the pleasant rooms were brightly lit by the rare incidence of the sun. He put his luggage down, sighing with pleasure. Although they had only been in Amsterdam six months, Anna had managed to make it seem both homey and elegant. Mrs. Jongkind had laid out their meal by the window overlooking the Amstel. Since their arrival, he had weaned the housekeeper away from most of the classic Dutch fare although pea soup turned up with persistent regularity. Today she had prepared a light beef broth and broiled swordfish with a white asparagus salad. He finished the broth and then grated some nutmeg over his asparagus.

“Anna, your broth’s growing cold,” he chided. “What have you been up to? Did you go to the book chat at Waterstones?”

She shook her head. “It was some fellow talking about climbing Everest. They’re having a novelist next week. Maybe you’ll be able to go.”

He frowned. “Fiction writers don’t make very interesting speakers.” He patted her hand. “Did you keep your appointment last Friday?” The asparagus was overcooked and he pushed the plate aside.

“You know I promised to.”

“And you’re still happy with—what’s his name—Dr. Leyden?”

She shrugged noncommittally. “He seems nice enough.”

“Well, I’m not sure “nice”….” He stopped mid-sentence as Mrs. Jongkind came in to clear. Anna had trained the woman to take away her untouched dish without comment when she removed Duncan’s plate. He would have liked to change this arrangement, but he was loath to discuss personal matters with servants, even though Mrs. Jongkind had been hired, albeit unbeknownst to her, to keep an eye on Anna..

“So what have you been doing then?” he asked. “Did you go shopping with Beatrix?”

“No, she was going to Utrecht. Mother can send us anything we need from the States for much less than we pay at De Bijenkorf. She knows what we like better than I do.”

He sighed. “I hope you didn’t criticize the Hoog Catherijne to Beatrix. The Dutch are very proud of it, even if it’s exactly like the American malls they laugh at.” After considering the enigmatic Dutch for a minute, Duncan continued. “Anyway, you need something to do. If you won’t shop, and won’t find a hobby….? Maybe you could take a class.”

Anna’s large gray eyes looked uncompromisingly earnest. “I don’t mind being on my own. I like going to museums, and walking and reading. I write Mother every other day and my sister twice a week. Then there’s my needlepoint.”

The last canvass he had bought for her—two swans on the Avon River—remained in the package after four months. “Harriet Winters is over from England. Why not tag along with her?”

“Tag along, Duncan! How you embarrass me. Asking your colleagues’ wives to entertain me.” She had twisted her linen napkin into a tight knot.

“We both know the trouble you can get into,” he began.

Anna stood up, threw the knotted napkin on the table, and fled the room. Duncan sighed, pushing his spoon into the dish of pudding Mrs. Jongkind had set before him. It was butterscotch and she had kindly allowed a skin to form. He wondered how his mother contrived the burnt sugar taste of his childhood.

* * *

The trouble arose in London. Anna was recovering from a miscarriage suffered a few months before in Philadelphia. Each of her three pregnancies had ended in the fourth month. This time, the doctor had ordered bed rest, drugging her with all the meds in his arsenal. Anna obeyed every instruction. Still they awoke one morning to find the sheets awash in dark red.

Anna seemed to recover. She was excited about the move to England and flew over with Duncan a month later to choose a flat. There was no reason to believe they couldn’t try to have a child again in a few months. New procedures and medications came onto the scene every day. There was still time; Anna was not yet thirty.

The flat near Hyde Park was lovely. Anna made a few friends among the wives and began to resume a normal life. Often Duncan came home to find her in the garden, chatting with, or rather listening to their gregarious neighbor. Esme was taking a two-year leave from her position as a solicitor to care for little Miranda. Once or twice, Anna looked after Miranda when the Osbornes had to be away. Nothing seemed amiss.

Then one day, coming up the tube steps at Marble Arch, Duncan spotted Anna pushing Miranda’s carriage toward Speaker’s Corner. She had a distant look on her face and was moving at a breakneck speed. Dashing after her, he caught up with his wife near the park’s entrance.

“Giving Esme a break?” he asked, planting a kiss on her cheek. Anna, looking flustered by his question, continued walking.

“Isn’t it time for Miranda’s nap?” he asked, glancing as his watch. “She’s usually asleep in the back garden about now.” Anna stopped suddenly, bent over the carriage, and examined the sleeping infant. “Why don’t we start for home?” Duncan suggested, disturbed by her dreamy, unfocused look. He propelled the carriage around, but in minutes, his hurried gait woke Miranda.

The baby’s cries threw Anna into complete bewilderment and she started to sob, too. For a tense minute, Duncan stood on the street, holding the baby in one arm, his sobbing wife in the other. Noontime shoppers swarmed around them, many looking at Duncan accusingly. Finally, they made their way home where Esme came flying out the door. Seeing Miranda safe, she burst into tears.

When it had been sorted out, it was agreed that Anna needed professional help. She was still vague about what her intentions had been, unclear about where she’d been headed.

No one mentioned contacting the police although Duncan was certain Osborne considered it. If he had not promised the couple immediate psychiatric help, would they have been so forgiving? He doubted a strong case could be made against Anna; her walk toward the park with Miranda was too innocuous to prosecute. He was grateful to the Osbornes for their generosity toward Anna, but soon all four were anxious to be rid of each other. Duncan put in a request for a transfer and a few months later they came to Amsterdam.

Although the word baby hadn’t been mentioned in nearly a year, their growing estrangement was probably due to Anna’s inability to carry a child to term. She hadn’t made a single friend and her supposed activities—the walks, the museums, and the needlepoint—were figments of her imagination. She hadn’t written her mother in weeks; he had a message on his machine to prove it. He wondered if she had been to Dr. Leyden after the first few visits. According to her calendar, she had her next appointment Tuesday, and he arranged to be away from the office long enough to see whether she kept it.

He was waiting on the street when she left the flat. A block or two away, she turned onto the Herengracht, the most lovely of the canal streets. This was something Duncan had been told rather than experienced since he had spent very little time exploring Amsterdam. He had never been inside De Bijenkorf, the department store. He had attended just one concert at the Concertgebouw and finally made it to the Van Gogh museum only last month. His lone trip to the Red Light district was at a client’s insistence.

Anna turned again. It was easy to keep sight of her despite the bustle of midday shoppers. Quite simply, she dominated any scene, Duncan realized, not for the first time. Anna didn’t know this, of course. She was raised too well.

She made her way through the thongs of workers, many who seemed to eat on their feet, popping into bakeries, herring stands or pancake houses for a quick lunch. Soon Anna disappeared inside a cafe where he watched through the large windows as she found herself a table and pulled out a book. He went back to his office and put out some fires, then considered his domestic situation.

The next evening, his key was still in the lock when he heard Anna call from the living room. He found her sitting across the coffee table from a young Asian woman. He couldn’t help but notice the short, tight skirt, the blouse stopping well short of her navel, the ridiculously high platform shoes. Her eyes were ringed with kohl. Her cheeks unnaturally pink. She looked predatory.

“Duncan, this is Hue Duc Do,” Anna said. “We’ve become friends on my afternoon walks.”

Duncan and the woman eyed each other warily. Where the hell had Anna been walking? “What’s this all about?”

“Hue has two young sons,” Anna began nervously. “She works very hard to support them. They’re very healthy boys.”

Duncan was nonplussed but didn’t comment.

“I think you know where Hue works, Duncan.” Anna was almost whispering.

“What’s that to us?” He spoke in a normal voice.

“Hue doesn’t want to continue to…to continue working on Oudezijds Voorburgwal.” Although Anna struggled with the Dutch name, all three understood. “Her boys are nearly school age. She wants a better life for them. She’s a very good mother and intended on becoming a cook when she came to Amsterdam. Hue studied at a culinary school in Hanoi.”

“Do you want me to give her money?”

Hue giggled and Anna threw her a sharp look. “Duncan, I’m going to send Hue away so we can talk. Will you give her a hundred euros please? I promised her that.”

“Is that the going price?” But he reached for his wallet. It was money well spent if it got Hue Duc Do out of his house. It depressed him to see her standing in front of his Karel Appel painting. Hue took the proffered notes and Anna saw her to the door, putting a hand over the woman’s as she closed it. The gesture suggested an intimacy that shocked him.

“Would you like a drink?” Anna walked to the drinks cabinet and poured him a Dewars without waiting for his response. He took it wordlessly, sinking into a chair. She poured herself a glass of tomato juice and joined him, choosing the small, embroidered footstool near his knees and resting her cheek on his knee. He wondered if there was any cunning in the gesture.

“Hue is willing to carry a baby for us, Duncan. She did it once before—for a Dutch couple. I’ve seen pictures of that child and met her own two boys. Her deliveries were textbook. I’d like to make arrangements for her to do the same for us. It’s done all the time, you know. They’ll remove my eggs, fertilize them with your sperm and implant one in Hue.”

His stomach convulsed. “Do you really think I’d allow a street whore to carry my child?” His throat was parched as he gulped down the scotch.

“I’ll never be able to carry a child to term. I will only be able to have a baby if I make an arrangement like this. It’ll be our child in every important respect, Duncan. Hue’s just the vessel.”

“And what a vessel! Do you imagine you can pour something pure into a dirty jar, store it for nearly a year, and not find it sullied?” The image filled him with horror. “If it comes to this, we can do better than a prostitute.” He paused. “Why haven’t you been seeing your doctor, Anna? I know you didn’t meet your appointment yesterday.” He swallowed the remaining scotch in his glass and, shaking the ice cubes, started to rise.

She got up swiftly, and taking his glass, made him another. “I couldn’t get him to understand that I had to do….”

“There you see!” he interrupted triumphantly. “No sane person would support you in such a thing.”

Anna blanched, but shook it off and walked over to the console table behind the sofa, pulling an envelope out of the drawer. “Look, Duncan, these are Hue’s sons, Hung and Tuyen. Not that our child would be Asian,” she went on, “but it shows that Hue delivers healthy babies. They both weighed over seven pounds at birth, which is large for a Vietnamese child.”

“You forget they’re probably only half Vietnamese. The other half could be anything at all, Anna. Swedish, Argentinian.”

Silently, she held another photo out to him. This third child bore no resemblance to its surrogate mother, of course. It was one of those nondescript Polaroid photos taken soon after birth. It looked vaguely Asian, but all babies do. Even when their mothers are not Vietnamese prostitutes.

* * *

In Duncan Parsons’ firm, he was often called on to explain things to people who didn’t want to listen. He dismissed secretaries who couldn’t grasp complex technology. He pushed through early retirements for men who fell asleep at seven p.m. meetings, and fired employees out carousing too late to make the ones at seven a.m.

He also did a range of things beyond these more prosaic duties. He arranged for photographs to be taken of certain nocturnal activities when the need arose—which it did quite often in Amsterdam. He made late night visits to employees with difficult spouses or children. He paid off people with damaging information if threats didn’t serve the company well. He did everything that was asked.

Few people in the firm could identify him as the one who performed such chores. He didn’t relish or even speak about it. Consequently, it was not very difficult for Duncan to deal with this new circumstance. This was for Anna.

It was entirely possible that at some future date, Anna and he would be forced to turn to a surrogate, but that would be a woman he found himself, someone entirely different from Hue. He made one more attempt to persuade Anna of Hue’s unsuitability.

“The reason I’m so keen on doing it here is so we can return to the U.S. with a baby,” Anna told him. “No one will imagine I didn’t carry and deliver our child. We won’t have to answer any questions about it since no one will ever suspect. And Hue will be out of our lives forever. She’ll have enough money to leave Amsterdam and head in another direction entirely.”

“You say she’s done this before.”

“For a Dutch family. I have their name somewhere.” She began to fumble in her purse.

“What happened to the money they paid her? Why is she back on the streets after her big score?”

“I knew you’d ask that.” Anna put the card away and sat down. “Hue brought her mother over from Viet Nam. That cost some money, mostly in bribes. Then her younger brother came the next year. He got into trouble, developed a habit, it seems.”

“And this is the woman you want to trust with our child?” His voice rose despite his best efforts to temper it.

“She’s thirty-two now. She has two boys to think of.”

On one level, Anna had made a better plan than he’d expected. She had shown initiative, intelligence. She looked into Hue’s background, raised certain issues. Briefly, he considered going ahead with it. There were people who could check Hue out, and he could certainly hire someone to supervise the pregnancy.

But in the end, he realized, though Anna didn’t, that a street whore could never be trusted. A woman who permitted such degradation was not a fit “vessel,” as Anna put it, for his child. If he once saw Hue’s belly swell, he’d never be able to be a father to his child. He preferred no child to one grown in Hue’s belly like some hothouse tomato. No, there would be no Hue in their future. Give a person like her any power and you were finished.

It was not difficult to find a number for the Duc Do household. One look at last month’s phone bill revealed an oft-repeated local number and he dialed it a day later.

“Dag,” she said in a soft voice, ill suited to the harsh Dutch hello.

“This is Duncan Parsons. Is this Hue? ”

“Yes,” she admitted hesitantly. After a halting and strained conversation, they agreed to meet the next evening.

He didn’t think to make a map. Hue had given him her address and a brief explanation of where her flat was located. Between her faulty grasp of English and his inadequate knowledge of Amsterdam, he wasn’t on firm footing. His one excursion to the Red Light District had been in daylight when the streets were filled with gawking tourists more amused than titillated by the sights. It had a certain festival atmosphere at noon that was only vaguely repulsive.

But it was after seven and dark. All but the most deliberate “shoppers” had moved on to the theaters, concert halls or restaurants. Within a few minutes, he was on a street lit by a pulsating pinkish light, and the same shop windows that advertised baked goods, hardware supplies and antiques a few blocks away, here, lit by strings of gaudy neon lights, pitched women. The women pressed their gyrating bodies against the glass, their lips leaving large red O’s. This was what he had expected to see and he was mildly aroused despite himself. When he paused too long at one window, a young man, dressed entirely in leather and sporting a shaven head decorated with a field of silver studs sunk into his scalp—painfully, no doubt—sprung from the door, grabbing his arm. Duncan shook him off, but not before the pimp grabbed teasingly at his erection.

“You know you want it,” the young man said in perfect English, nodding toward the window. “She’ll do things you haven’t even thought of. Things your wife won’t do.” He laughed at Duncan’s surprise when a spray of misty water splattered the shop window and the woman writhed against the steamy glass.

Duncan picked up his pace, looking around despite himself. Now, the creatures in the windows wore even more bizarre costumes and were tied down, handcuffed or held back by some seemingly brutal means. Some of the larger “women” were probably transvestites. There was something here for every taste, every fetish.

The street activity grew even more fevered as he passed the House of Pain and the Hanky Panky Tattooing Museum. The air was close with the smell of pot and he felt as high as he had in college. A gang of kids tumbled out the door of a disco. The pulsating music, an indiscriminate European techno pop, flooded out behind them and then stopped just as suddenly as the large black door swung shut. A girl, looking no more than sixteen, leaned over suddenly, vomiting on the cobblestone street. Pale but undefeated, she wobbled after her giggling friends in her huge platform shoes, her short suede skirt revealing thighs no thicker than her calves. Her chest, covered in a leather halter despite temperatures in the forties, was almost concave. Looking up, Duncan saw the sign above the large black door warned in English as well as Dutch and French “Strict Leather Dress Code.”

Unable to catch up with her friends, the girl whirled around to ask him “Est-ce bien la route de La Disco de Kopenhagen?” He shrugged. She reached down, removed her shoes, and ran barefoot down the street.

Minutes later, he rang Hue’s bell. Prinsenhofstraat Street was rather subdued after what came before it. Hue’s face quickly appeared at a second floor window. She rang the buzzer to let him in and he climbed the narrow staircase.

Hue stood at the door. One hip jutted out, as did her chin. Her hands gripped opposite elbows. Her defensive position was familiar to him, of course. He saw it often enough at the firm. Sometimes he saw it too at home.

“Mr. Parsons?” Her voice was barely audible. On her own turf, she looked less rapacious. Gone was the elaborate hairstyle. In its place, Hue wore a ponytail. She wore no makeup and her feet were bare.

As Duncan was considering his next move, one of her sons ran into the room. Hue scooped him up and the child squirmed, giggling in her arms. He said something in Vietnamese, and shrugging, she set him back down. It was only then that the boy noticed Duncan and despite his age, surely no more than four, he gave Duncan a wary look and shouted something at him. He struck a martial arts pose and kicked the air. Duncan, usually puzzled by the behavior of children, reacted instinctually and pretended fear. He crouched, covering his head with his arms. The boy collapsed in laughter. Hue said something and the child ran out of the room, returning a minute later with a fat cookie. Flopping down in front of the television, he was immediately absorbed in a cartoon.

“Usually my mother here with him.”

“I think you have made an arrangement with my wife?” Duncan asked, getting to the point at once.

She stood motionless, her wariness increasing. “Anna want baby very bad. I do that one time now. She show you pictures?” Duncan nodded. “She say you pay me a…a fee, is that right word?” He nodded again. “After baby come, we go somewhere else.” She nodded at her son. “Hung start school this year. Tuong next year. Time to go. “

“I won’t pay you to have a child.” He shook his head, thinking the gesture might speak louder than his words. “It’s impossible.”

Hue didn’t look surprised. She shrugged as if it were just what she expected. “You tell Anna this?”

“No,” he admitted. “She’s not well.”

Hue nodded knowingly. “You pay me, I tell her. Tell her I not do it. Yes?”

Duncan considered this. He could come up with a story for Hue to tell Anna. Perhaps, Hue could say she was already pregnant, or that she had a venereal disease. She was not unintelligent and could probably pull it off. But could he trust her not to strike some new bargain with Anna?

“I’ll tell her myself,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d like to pay you something. For your troubles, Hue.” He reached in his pocket and removed an envelope. “It’s a large amount of money.” He had given her one-third the amount Anna promised her for her services as a surrogate.

Hue stood there counting the notes. When she had finished, she looked up at him. “What you want me to do?”

“I want you to take your boys and leave Amsterdam. I want you to never see my wife again. I want you to go in the next day. Can you do that?” he asked putting a hand out for the money.

“I do it,” Hue said, putting the envelope behind her back. “We gone tomorrow. Never see me again.”

“If I do see you again, I will take my money back. There are other things I can do, too,” he told her. “Far worse things than taking back my money.” He looked down at the floor where the boy sat lost in his cartoons, and took a half- step toward him.

Hue swooped in. White-faced with anger or fear, she lifted the boy up in one swift movement. The cookie flew out of the boy’s hand and his flying legs knocked over the photograph on the television top. Glass cracked. Surprised at his mother’s rough handling, Hung burst into tears. Duncan backed away. He had never frightened a child before. Never that.

“Mr. Parsons,” Hue called out to him, shouting to be heard over her son’s tears. “I glad I not have your baby. I don’t want you inside of me.”

“Me, too, Hue,” Duncan said, starting down the stairs and wondering it she meant it literally. Did she actually think he’d put his penis inside her to make a baby?

It was settled though. Now would come the harder part, telling Anna a credible lie. He could still hear the boy’s cries when he reached the street. He never imagined a boy of four could cry so loudly. Perhaps Tuyen had joined his older brother. Perhaps it was all three of them crying now.