CopShop

By Gerard Mak

What am I?

You teach children from birth that I am the bogeyman.
You accuse me of being too soft on the young... until its your child.
You know the road rules but when you break one, you are not to blame.
You see it as part of my job if I get beaten or shot; but if I hit back you call it brutality.
You complain that I earn too much, but expect me to be available twenty-four hours a day.
It would not enter your mind to tell your dentist or doctor how to perform, yet you tell me how to do my job.
You complain that something has to be done about crime but refuse to be a witness or become involved.

But you forget your possessions, your family, and your life are in the hands of my colleagues and me. I am a Cop!

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311949073

Gerard Mak

The author is married and lives with his wife Anita in the semi-rural village of Wormer just north of Amsterdam. He has three children and four grand children. Growing up in a family with five boys, his father worked in a paper mill , the core of their village.After high school and a time working for the Government, he joined the Amsterdam police rising to the rank of superintendent. For almost twenty-seven years he was stationed in the Red Light District, the most infamous part of Amsterdam. It remains a neighborhood where drugs, sex and prostitution and fun and entertainment are all available.During those years there was much crime and the police station on Warmoesstraat had more than two hundred policemen and women within a mere square kilometer. The Author kept a diary of happenings which ultimately became a collection of stories. After publication in a police newspaper, a respected Dutch magazine offered a contract as a columnist. As a result his police stories became well-known and unintentionally, he became an author. Gerard Mak has written eight successful books in Dutch. Copshop is his first English book.This year he retired to spend more time on writing, and following his other loves of soccer and skating ‒ ice in winter and rollerblading during the summer – and painting and photography.

Book preview

What am I?

You teach children from birth that I am the bogeyman.

You accuse me of being too soft on the young… until its your child.

You know the road rules but when you break one, you are not to blame.

You see it as part of my job if I get beaten or shot; but if I hit back you call it brutality.

You complain that I earn too much, but expect me to be available twenty-four hours a day.

It would not enter your mind to tell your dentist or doctor how to perform, yet you tell me how to do my job.

You complain that something has to be done about crime but refuse to be a witness or become involved.

But you forget your possessions, your family, and your life are in the hands of my colleagues and me. I am a Cop!

To all of my colleagues all over the world, I say:

Do not do to others what you would not like to be done to you,

but enjoy your job, as I did, and respect every one as a human being.

THE AUTHOR

The author is married and lives with his wife Anita in the semi-rural village of Wormer just north of Amsterdam. He has three children and four grand children. Growing up in a family with five boys, his father worked in a paper mill , the core of their village.

After high school and a time working for the Government, he joined the Amsterdam police rising to the rank of superintendent. For almost twenty-seven years he was stationed in the Red Light District, the most infamous part of Amsterdam. It remains a neighborhood where drugs, sex and prostitution and fun and entertainment are all available.

During those years there was much crime and the police station on Warmoesstraat had more than two hundred policemen and women within a mere square kilometer. The Author kept a diary of happenings which ultimately became a collection of stories. After publication in a police newspaper, a respected Dutch magazine offered a contract as a columnist. As a result his police stories became well-known and unintentionally, he became an author. Gerard Mak has written eight successful books in Dutch. Copshop is his first English book.

This year he retired to spend more time on writing, and following his other loves of soccer and skating ‒ ice in winter and rollerblading during the summer – and painting and photography.

Copyright © 2013-14 Gerard Mak

Published by

CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS

All the characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, film or other means, without the written permission from the publisher.

COPSHOP

by

GERARD MAK

HAVE A BEER?

'Is that allowed?' asked my partner Martin, when we passed a snackbar on Damrak Road.

A couple of guys in the snackbar were having a beer. Initially I didn't know what Martin meant, and it did not seem strange to me.

'Selling beer in a snackbar, that's not allowed,' my partner remarked.

'Oh; that! No, they're not allowed.' I wanted to move on, against my will however I had to turn back. My partner had already entered the snackbar. With an air of authority he asked for the owner.

A friendly looking Tunisian presented himself as the owner, 'Oh well,' said the Tunisian apologetically '…when the tourists are thirsty, I sell them a beer, that's not a crime?'

He amicably touched Martin on the arm, and offered us a cup of coffee.

Martin seemed unmoved. He reprimanded the Tunisian about competition, sales to the under-aged, and the destruction of society. He took out his pad and wrote the Tunisian a hefty fine.

The friendly man changed immediately into a raging maniac particularly when he was also told that his entire stock of cans would be confiscated.

'You morons,' he screamed. While his glasses fogged up, his perfect Dutch immediately changed to a tirade of Arabic swearwords, objections and wild gestures. Suddenly he had a knife in his hand, threatening us.

It was totally out of hand, but in the quiet spell that followed, the Tunisian came to his senses and threw the knife down.

Silently objecting to his faith, he let us take the eight cartons of beer.

'Did you really have to?' I asked Martin, while we struggled with four cartons each on our way back to police headquarters. 'I could have been knifed over this!'

'You've got to keep an eye on the small guy as well, Makkie; it wasn't as bad as that?'

I wisely kept quiet. The beer we stored for the time being in our lockers.

This incident had an aftermath, when later in the afternoon we were sent to a hardware store.

The owner had called headquarters in a panic, saying that someone in his shop had been stabbed to death.

We heard the message, and were closest to the location where we found a man in a pool of blood, curled up on the timber floor. Dead, he was still holding a big knife protruding from his belly.

'Where's the assailant?' I asked.

The shop assistant motioned to the body. 'He did it himself, there is no assailant.'

He looked as if he was going to faint. Martin caught him. Concerned, Martin put his arm around his shoulder and asked one of his colleagues for a glass of water.

'Did it himself?' Puzzled, I leaned over the body, carefully turning him to have a better look.

'Well I'll be damned,' said Martin almost at once.

He had paled all of a sudden.

'Do you know him?'

Martin reminded me of the incident in the snackbar, and when again I looked at the agonised stricken face I realised. 'Shit, it's him!'

For a while I was speechless, then I asked for something to cover the body. I turned to the shop assistant and asked him what had happened.

'He came into the shop and asked me for a good knife, I showed him three, but according to him they were much too small. The Tunisian was pleasant, behaved as an ordinary customer and after being shown the larger knifes, he had chosen one and paid for it.'

'It's a bastard of a knife,' I remarked.

'There is absolutely nothing wrong with it… I don't understand,' he replied. He finished his glass of water and gazed at the body. 'Something must have happened… he started screaming after he bought the knife.'

'What did he say?'

The shop assistant looked at me and said it was all totally incomprehensible, 'Something about bankrupt and beer; I didn't understand a word, it was all very vague.'

'Beer? …what did he say about beer?' Martin questioned him however he could not help any further.

'All his other remarks were in Arabic, unfortunately I don't understand that.'

Martin was upset, staring in front of him. When they picked up the body and asked for the identity, he pulled out his notepad and read out the details. He then took his pen and scratched out the fine.

'I think I had better bring those cartons of beer back,' was his closing remark.

'Yes, you better, something for the relatives to share, or for their wake!'

*****

A DOG'S LIFE

It was a warm summer night, not exactly weather to be working, a night to sit on a terrace, and on the Martelaarscanal they were all full. The drinks were flowing and there was a generally happy atmosphere. Jealously the two policemen walked passed the terraces.

One of the terraces was quiet, far too quiet. Several Japanese tourists made us aware something was wrong. One of them had a large bite wound to his left leg.

'Yes… there… with a big dog.' The Japanese had pushed the smallest among them forward, mainly because of his language knowledge. Perhaps only three feet high; he spoke with hands but to no avail.

Meanwhile Frits called for a paramedic, and placed the Japanese on a safe terrace. 'We go to terrace…' said Frits in his best combination of Japanese and English.

When we arrived at the spot, we noticed only one man, dead drunk – Bacchus the booze god had him in his grip. The man wore a dark uniform. 'A security guard,' said Frits when he checked the badges.

As if this terrace was overcrowded, the man had picked a spot in the far corner and away from the door. He paid no attention to us, grabbed one of his numerous beers and emptied it in one swallow under his big black moustache. He then belched loudly, wiped his hairy lip with his sleeve, placed the empty back on the table, and started all over again.

'He must be thirsty,' I said, counting the empties on his table. It was still a mystery to us why this terrace was empty, we could not see anything wrong. The patrons inside behind the café window, were indicating something incomprehensible.

'What do they want, what are they saying?' mumbled Frits. He went to go to the entrance when they started banging on the window. They pointed towards the security guard; only then did we notice the big black Rottweiler next to him, a huge monster of a dog.

'I'll be damned,' said Frits.

He immediately took a few steps back. The dog was extremely alert, his ears were up as raced up to Frits as soon as he noticed him. The dog gave him quite a fright, however his handler had wisely tied him up to one of the table legs, but not well enough it seemed.

'That dog is dangerous, it bites everyone!' yelled a frightened customer through the half-opened door.

Like a flash the dog went for the door, slamming shut just in time; the leash was much too long.

'Damnit…' grumbled the security guard, when his table shook and he spilled some of his beer. 'Here!' he commanded; the Rottweiler went back to his spot and lay down.

The leash was far too long and the customers were forced to stay inside. It was profitable for the barman being hot and crowded.

We tried moving in from different angles to solve the problem, but every time the dog jumped forward and the dog's jaws snapped dangerously close. He narrowly missed Frits, and my partner was white as a ghost.

'I told you,' said the same customer, '…it's a menace.' The dog returned to the drunken guard.

The customer had decided to gather all his courage and make a run for safety, and this time he won. The sudden pull of the leash had moved the table, the guard's beer bottles clattered to the ground.

'Goddamn… stupid dog… come here!' barked the security guard. The animal was well trained, immediately going back to his post.

Our problem was getting very real by now, when Frits noticed a security van parked nearby, obviously belonging to our dog handler.

'Hey, you,' called Frits to the guard. 'Throw us your car keys so we can move your van.'

Without a word the security guard threw the keys.

The keys fitted both doors, Frits left them wide open and asked a passing junkie for his help.

Frits went back to the terrace, took a deep breath and with encouragement of the window crowd started to harass the dog which immediately barked, pulling his leash with force as he went for Frits.

His boss somehow still controlled him, but then the booze played its part. The table tumbled, the chair fell, and the dog was loose. His target was Frits who ran like a wild man, closely chased by a crazed monster with his teeth bared. Frits ran for his life, at the car he dived in one open door, followed by the dog.

'Now!' I heard him scream, while he dived out the other side, I slammed one door and the junkie slammed the other shut, the beast safely locked inside. Frits had his ovation, then said to me, 'I think I probably shit myself?'

A triumphant smell!

*****

A LOVELY SOUVENIR

It was because he slammed his passport on the counter; Otherwise I never would have known which country this man came from. The guttural sounds he created didn't sound like a language, more like a person in need of air.

Nevertheless he tried to explain something to me.

The tall dark stranger was very well dressed.

I took his passport and studied it as if I'd recognise a fake Somalia passport instantly.

To make things clear the Somalian showed me his airline ticket, he was on his way to Canada, with a few hours stopover in Amsterdam. Normally tourists go for a canal trip or something; this man however had problems with his hormones, after his long flight.

I gave him pen and paper to indicate his problems.

First he drew a man with a penis. He pointed at the drawing and then to himself.

I gave him a stern look. He smiled and immediately drew the penis a bit smaller. Now the picture looked more logical and in proportion.

He finished his drawing and with the necessary pantomime and pelvic movements I understood that he had been enjoying sex, and just when he reached his climax, had been kicked out the door.

'Ah, sir wants justice, value for money.' I said with a friendly smile.

He had not a clue what I was talking about, just said, 'Yes, yes, yes.'

I looked at my watch, still too early for hookers, eight in the morning is way past knock-off time, and I was wondering who could have pulled this stunt. After all the man was a snappy dresser, and I was getting curious as to what had actually happened.

'Come on my friend, lets go for a walk and check it out?' I guided him out the door into the street and took him for a tour in the red light district. After a few streets and alleys he stopped in front of an old building.

'Oh, no,' was my first reaction, the Somalian was eager for me to go in with him and made that clear.

The building was well known to me, I'd been there several times, a favourite place for sniffers, shooters, swallowers of all sorts of chemical highlights. With the faeces on the stairs I realised that our Somalian tourist's hygiene level was in need of an overhaul.

Without touching the banister we reached the top floor, the abode of a heroin hooker.

When she let us in it was clear to me even with my scant knowledge of first aid, that she was not the healthiest creature on this planet.

No more glamour shots for her.

The stench was unbearable and in no time the matter was resolved. Her tariff was way below the going rate – the whole hump had cost him no more than five bucks!

'You'd better get back to sleep,' I said to the living dead, and carefully made our way back down.

Back at the station I wrote some details and an address on a piece of paper, pointed our Somalian in the right direction, and with a pat on his shoulder sent him on his way. He bowed numerous times with an enormous smile on his face, and happily made his way to the address.

'Where on earth did you send him,' asked my mate no unsurprisingly.

'To the nearest clinic,' I said, 'for his free venereal diseases injection. A lovely souvenir!'

*****

ARTHUR

'Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere'

The slogan on the T-shirt was apparently a winner, because next to me I heard an enthusiastic buyer remark in broad country Dutch, 'That's one for me, girlie!'

At once he entered the shop on Damstreet, while his four buddies waited outside. One of them seemed to be in charge, and although I don't believe in coincidence, I somehow recognised him by his weathered complexion and his farmer's accent. I had not seen him for some eight years. Arthur; was a good honest gentle giant, naive as can be. 'Dutch Glory' my mum would have said. The son of a fisherman from the coast, as a member of the Military Police, he was stationed temporarily at our headquarters. Time for Arthur to discover a whole new world.

'Sure as can be,' he said convincingly. 'True, mark my words!' He had just told his buddies an unbelievable story. They just laughed, fairytales were long gone and his mates did not believe a word. Amused, I had followed the story and I told them, 'It's true, gentlemen, the shooting took place here.'

He looked at me, and his mouth fell open in amazement. 'Hey, Makkie! It's true ain't it; believe me, he knows all about it.'

I ignored his handshake and thumped him on the shoulder.

Arthur doesn't know his own strength; shaking hands meant counting your fingers.

That first day at our station must have seemed like a movie script for Arthur. The experiences had made a huge impression, and still does. He basically had been ripped from his protected surroundings, a religious village, and dumped in the Sodom and Gomorrah of the inner city.

He was teamed up with an experienced policeman who had to show him the ropes. A guided tour and meeting the characters was a must. Much against his religion and beliefs, his first port of call was a topless bar. 'I'd rather not,' he had said to his mentor when about to enter.

The mentor had grabbed him by his jacket, and pushed him inside. He had his instructions. Once inside Arthur did not feel at ease, he felt like running out of the place. His mentor accepted a Coke, otherwise he would be outside as quickly as possible.

Topless girls talked to him, not an everyday happening for Arthur. 'Wow, she was something else,' he said, acting different once he had returned outside.

On the program was a visit to a sex show; Arthur couldn't object, his mentor would not permit it. During the show a naked Negro girl bounced through the pocket hall club behind Arthur's back. His mentor surreptitiously pointed him out, he knew the show by heart.

With a broad smile the girl came their way, her big melons bouncing with the rhythm of the music. Before Arthur realised; she was legs apart and on his lap, his face disappeared in her fruit stall. His glasses ended up twisted on his face. It did not take long, but long enough to make him the centre of attention.

He was deeply embarrassed with a face as red as a beetroot. After the girl had given him a big wet kiss; he stood up, and left the hall to loud cheering. Wound up after this experience and somewhat ashamed they went on to the Damstreet.

His mentor was more talkative by now, and the grin on his face was devilish. It was busy in the Damstreet, the terraces were full and hordes of tourists made their way down to the red-light district. All of a sudden a shot could be heard, and there was a slight panic in the Damstreet.

His mentor had at once located the victim and culprit.

Arthur did not know what to do; unknowingly he had unclipped his holster to 'gun the enemy down.' To his astonishment his mentor grabbed a passer-by, pressed him against a wall, and before he knew what had happened, the handcuffs were secured.

'The gun is in his waistband, Arthur'

Arthur carefully felt around the waist and there was a gun. He beamed with pride, and his first case had really something…

Not long after the victim himself reported; he had a small wound to his cheek, and the bullet, a small 22 calibre was stuck.

'Let's have a look,' said his mentor while he carefully squeezed the cheek, after which the bullet dropped in his palm. 'Not too bad then, would you like me to call first aid?'

The victim shook his head.

'Would you like to report this?'

The victim and the culprit looked at each other; they knew one another, that much was clear.

'No,' he said abruptly. They left in a hurry.

All this was a revelation for Arthur. His legal studies, practical exercises and his studies were useless, in one swipe crushed by the streetwise cop.

'Y'see, true! Here's where it happened, right here.'

'Yes, Arthur experienced quite a bit here,' I confirmed.

'Yeh, way too much!' said Arthur.

'And now? Hit the town?'

One of his friends remarked that Arthur knew the right places and they were assured of a great night out.

'Ask Arthur where you can find the big Negro girl,' I suggested. As if stung by a bee, Arthur glared at me, and before I could give any more details he said hurriedly, 'We're going, cheers Makkie.'

'Arthur's going to show us heaven,' added one of his mates.

'Better watch out for the black hole!' I called after them.

*****

AT THE WRONG MOMENT

Without success we had patrolled through the inner city the whole afternoon, in search of pickpockets. For a change we were attached to this team for a month.

Frits, wearing the wrong shoes that day, was getting sore feet. His legs also protested, and he had the feeling that any minute now the lot would detach from his body. 'Hang on a minute!' he said puffing. He sat down on a bench at Beurssquare and pulled off his sneakers. With loving care he rubbed his feet. In need of a rest also, I gladly sat down.

Next to me I could hear the moaning of my partner.

'It stinks around here,' remarked Red Rita walking past. A hooker with the face of a bulldog, she was blessed with a drop-dead gorgeous body. She was on her way to her office.

Frits looked up. 'Stinks? You'd better take smaller steps then Rita!' She giggled and walked on.

Following right behind her walked a naffer – a person of doubtful North African origin. The little fellow of about four feet high had not noticed us, and was focussing on Rita's handbag.

I hissed at Frits to get his sneakers back on quick smart. At once all his aches vanished. He was on his feet in no time and cautiously we followed our potential criminal.

In the meantime the smart-ass had made several attempts to get to Rita's bag.