Choke Point

by Ridley Pearson

  Knox stops to stab the tennis ball with the knife. The rubber is thick, the task not easy. He creates a small slit in the seam, squeezes the ball and it sighs. “We all serve a useful purpose,” he says.

  His pulse quickens as they reach street level. His us-against-them mentality warms him. He turns to Sonia in the faint yellow light of the foyer and sees her eyes shining. She’s either terrified or excited, but it turns him on, whatever her present state. His urge is to take her here, now. Her eyes soften and she smiles.

  “Follow my lead,” he says.

  “Of course,” she replies, her voice raspy and hoarse.

  It’s her face that would be recognized, not his. He tugs her scarf farther forward, the contact intimate. “I will go first. Watch me before you follow. We’re going directly to the Fiat, you to the passenger side. If there’s trouble, you run in the opposite direction from where I turn. If we separate, avoid any place familiar to you.” He picks up a piece of junk mail from the floor beneath the buzzer box and writes down Dulwich’s phone number. “Call this number. He can help you.” Seeing suspicion on her face, he says, “He’s an old friend, the only person I know well here, a good man. And resourceful.” He has gone too far, poisoned by the combination of hormones and adrenaline.

  Knox is out the door before there’s room for discussion. He pauses between two parked cars, using them as screens as he listens and looks for anything unusual. He’d prefer a busy street to this. But his hesitation is infinitesimal; he’s out across the street, heading for the Fiat, the tennis ball gripped in his right hand. He hears the door pop shut behind her—does not look in that direction. Guiding the slit in the tennis ball to the keyhole in the car’s door handle, he holds the ball firmly in his left hand while punching it with his right. The ball collapses and the driver’s-side lock pops up. He’s inside a beat before she arrives. He stretches to unlock her door while his left hand probes the wires beneath the dash. He’s chosen the Fiat for its age. As she slides into the seat, he’s already contorting to reach below the dash. He’s pulling apart and biting the ends of the wires, spitting plastic onto the floor. He twists three of the wires together and touches them to a fourth. It sparks and the engine turns over and starts. One final twist of wires. As he turns on the headlights and the dash comes alive, Sonia’s indicting expression weighs on him.

  “An ill-spent youth,” he explains. He catches a single, slow moving headlight in the rearview mirror. It approaches at a patrol-like speed.

  Sonia notices the vehicle as well and pulls Knox into a kiss. Knox would’ve held the kiss if he thought it would’ve fooled anyone. But with his eye on the interior mirror, he grabs the door handle and throws open the door as the motorcycle comes alongside. The bike swerves to miss the door. Knox charges out into the street. He tackles the helmeted rider from behind, throwing him off. Kicks the man twice while hollering back to her, “Come on!”

  He pats down the writhing rider, finds a mobile phone and throws it into the canal.

  Sonia springs out of the car, dragging Knox’s camera case. He rights the bike. She throws her leg across. They’re off. She clings to him tightly as he leans the bike into the first turn.

  “Who the hell are you?” she shouts too loudly for the closeness of his ear.

  Knox doesn’t answer. Accelerating the bike, he seeks out the cover of traffic.

  It’s unnecessary,” Knox complains to Dulwich as if Grace weren’t part of the conversation. “We’re making progress.”

  They sit at different tables in Café Papeneiland, a brown café—the Amsterdam equivalent of a London pub—at the intersection of Prinsengracht and Brouwersgracht. The mood is lively, the beer flowing. It’s so dark, due to the wood-paneled walls that stretch back to 1624 and and the thick smoke in the air that might be as old, it’s difficult to make out Dulwich in the corner by the main door. Grace is visible where she sits on a bench seat alongside a table of men, most of whom can’t keep their eyes off her. The three speak into their cell phones, a Skype conference call initiated by Grace.

  Grace places her hand across her mouth as she speaks into the mobile. “The object is to bring them to us. Not the soldiers, but the generals. The soldiers outnumber us. We have been lucky so far—all of us. If we are to expedite results, if we are to survive, we need a new strategy.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Dulwich says.

  But Knox wishes he would. The plan as proposed presents unnecessary risk to Grace. It amounts to a frontal attack instead of the guerrilla methods they’ve been using. While certain to win the attention of those behind the knot shop, there’s no guarantee it will have the intended results, and Knox says so for the third time. He finishes with, “They’ll have your head.”

  “They would rather know my business,” she says. “They will be impressed by my investment capital. Before you kill the competition, you win all their assets. Who knows? Maybe they would welcome a silent partner with deep pockets. Expand the business.”

  “And maybe they’re content to just kill you and move on.”

  “Not without having a look at me first.”

  Dulwich intervenes like a boxing referee. “Let’s remember, she’s not proposing that they will set up something face-to-face. It’s stealth warfare. It’s a good plan, Knox. Give it a chance.”

  “At what cost? We’re doing fine. Kreiger is going to connect me to them as a buyer. We’re so close to that. There’s a teacher . . . If we can get to one of the parents . . . Let’s give the current plan some time.”

  “No one is suggesting one plan over the other,” Grace says. “We continue working every angle.”

  “If she’s going to set up shop, she has to find a shop,” Dulwich says, attempting to clarify things for Knox. “That means—”

  “I get it, Sarge,” Knox snaps. He’s left Sonia. He doesn’t trust her to stay put and is therefore anxious to be out of here. “My vote, for what it’s worth, is no.” He can’t see her face clearly as Grace turns to look at him across the barroom, but he knows her expression must be disappointment. Wonders when that came to matter to him. Is he opposed to the idea because he didn’t come up with it, or because it’s ill-conceived? “We have too many balls in the air. We don’t need another.” His last push.

  “That’s for me to decide,” Dulwich says.

  Knox leaves five euros on the table for the empty beer and heads to the door without looking at either of them. He wants badly to catch Grace’s eye, but is afraid it might be the last time he sees her alive.

  “Get a load of that,” Dulwich says to Grace, Knox having left the conversation, “I think he cares about you.”

  “John Knox cares only about his last lay and his next meal.”

  “Not necessarily in that order.” Alone at the table, Dulwich laughs to his stein of beer. People sitting nearby purposefully avoid looking at him.

  —

  GRACE HOLDS ON to a cool brick wall behind the line of street market tents on Ten Katestraat where empty coolers and stacked crates, cardboard boxes and plastic milk cartons spill out of cars and microvans raked up onto the curb. Taking a drag on a cigarette, she sees through the tents to the quickly emptying center of the street, the pedestrian lane down the market’s middle. It’s a disgusting habit she picked up in the Army and dispensed with shortly after her discharge, but one that comes in handy at times like this. Truth be told, she misses it, though knows she’s better for the decision to quit.

  The stalls are joined one to the next, their aluminum tent poles secured with plastic ties. They stretch two blocks on either side of the street, sandwiching the milling crowds and squeezing money out of pockets. The regular shoppers bring their own bags, making the tourists easier to spot. Grace buys a green tote from a nearby vendor and carries it on her forearm. The linen vendor who steered her to the community center packs up by category: napkins, bath towels, kitchen towels. Each unsold stack goes into its own plastic bin, the bin into the back of a beat-up Volkswagen. The woman is
methodical, robotic in her movements. Her lip stud catches the light from the string of bare bulbs that runs the length of the tents, sparking like an animated hero’s teeth. She is forced to shut the hatchback door twice in order for it to latch.

  Grace grinds out the cigarette’s ember with the toe of her shoe and crosses to intercept. She grabs the vendor by her upper arm, twists her against the vehicle and blocks the woman’s right hand as she raises it defensively.

  “You listen carefully.” Grace leans against the woman to pin her, but the contact is more than that—both threatening and intimate. “Remember me? Your idea of a little fun?”

  The vendor’s eyes remain at half-mast. She’s on the wrong end of having been stoned for the past two hours. Grace represents a buzz kill.

  “Marta?” calls a man’s rough voice. “Everything okay?”

  Grace releases the woman’s right hand, and the vendor waves off her retail neighbor. “A lovers’ quarrel is all.” Until the woman smiles, Grace had forgotten what beautiful lips she has.

  “Your son? Brother? Lover? Who was it that attacked me?”

  “Screw you.”

  “You only sent two? Do I look like I am so easy?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Grace chokes the woman’s upper arm tightly; isn’t afraid to turn and crush her hip against the woman’s pubic bone. She blocks the woman’s free arm with her elbow and cups the woman’s small breast painfully. “I am looking for a dozen girls to start. Twice that within a month. Five euros a day. Decent conditions. Working toilets. A true lunch break. No chains. No one held against their will. No questions asked from either side. But I can tell you this: my shop will be run by women, not men. The highest quality garments. You tell the mothers that. If trouble follows me or finds me, a colleague knows where to find you. And he—yes, he—will find you. You will be punished.” She exerts enough pressure to know the woman is by now light-headed. “Clear?”

  The woman’s lips are bloodless, her eyes squinted shut. She manages a nod.

  —

  THE WAY BACK TO HER HOTEL challenges her patience. She doesn’t trust any form of public transportation, and the walk is a long one. She stops to use storefront glass as mirrors; she takes four consecutive right turns, walking squarely around the block in an attempt to spot tails, not just once, but three separate times. She shakes off the dirty feeling of being watched, not knowing.

  Wanting to avoid her room, needing an outlet for pent-up aggression, she makes eyes at a man in the hotel bar. Men are so easy, so predictable. A plunging neckline and they’re putty. She lets him buy her a drink.

  This encounter is just nuts-and-bolts. He twists and she receives and soon there’s a fit of convenience. His small talk lacks originality; her flirting lacks interest. As it wears on into a second drink, it’s clear to both that it’s to be purely physical—a grinding struggle to find some sense of satisfaction amid unfamiliarity that borders on embarrassment. Finally upstairs to the man’s room. She demands it remain dark. She’s rough with him and he climaxes too early. She pulls off, raw and annoyed at herself, disappointed and unsatisfied. It isn’t the first time she has screwed a stranger, which makes the experience all the more loathsome.

  She begs a shower off him. He’s snoring by the time she’s toweled off.

  Grace sleeps in the overstuffed chair. Wakes to rain on the windows. The self-loathing burns her stomach. This is not who she wants to be. It disappoints her. She wishes the sun would never come up.

  Great care is taken by Knox in his return to where he left Sonia. He rides the stolen motorcycle, doubling back repeatedly; he watches vehicles and pedestrian traffic; he parks several blocks from his destination and spends an inordinate amount of time getting there on foot.

  The B&B is one of hundreds of boats that line the canals. It offers two bow cabins for sixty euros a night. Knox has paid cash for both cabins and has tipped the night manager of a nearby small inn, the Bed on Board, to text him if anyone arrives asking questions about recent check-ins. His bases covered, he slips through the line of trees that all but hides the canal boat; a narrow flagstone path is the only indication of its whereabouts.

  It’s not the perfect cover—a small, contained space. But the boats that take guests are cash-only, off grid and operated by independents.

  He knocks lightly on the door to the port cabin, pauses and knocks once more. He hears her move a chair blocking the door and she admits him. Forced to duck by the low ceiling, he takes a seat in the chair she has just moved. It’s a small but warm space—teak and varnished hardwoods, nautical-themed fabrics, a clock fashioned after a captain’s wheel. Her laptop is running, and plugged in, the pillow on the narrow berth crumpled where she leaned against it as she worked. An empty mug of tea sits in a gimbaled holder attached to the wall. He has never known her to look anything but tired, and she does not disappoint him.

  “You never answered me,” she says.

  A thoughtful and exhausted Knox takes the chair. “Refresh my memory.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You’ve Googled me. You know who I am.”

  She wants to contradict this. As she considers how to, Knox speaks.

  “Can you make me one of those, please?”

  Sonia fills a small electric teapot with water from a ceramic pitcher. The thing starts boiling nearly immediately. She wipes off her cup, pours over a fresh tea bag and hands it to Knox, who cradles it in his big hands.

  “You’re writing.”

  “What else? It’s how I relax.”

  “About the teacher? Maja’s artwork?”

  “Compelling stuff,” she says. “A young girl’s insight into the criminal world. A clue worth sharing with the general population. Maybe other girls have drawn similar images.”

  Knox sets the mug on the floorboards and unzips two of the many pockets inside the Scottevest, retrieved while he was making arrangements. Inserting the three different SIM cards and rebooting the iPhone takes several minutes. “You have more than one SIM?” she says, a challenge in her voice.

  It has become so routine, Knox failed to realize how it would look to others. “Business and personal. Easier for tax records. U.S. taxes . . . don’t get me started.”

  “A lot of bother for a struggling freelancer.”

  “Who said I was struggling?

  “I just did.” She returns to her typing, but her furrowed brow lingers longer than it should.

  He checks texts, e-mails and voice messages for the chips that provide the various services. He scratches out notes onto the back of a receipt. Tommy has called several times on his private number; Knox feels badly about not having been in touch over the past few days. There are a half dozen business calls on his second card that need following up. The last of the three phone cards connects him to a voice mail from Chief Inspector Brower. Knox saves the message, reminding himself to return to it later. Grace will want to hear this one.

  “You’ve made yourself a target, that much is obvious.”

  “Making enemies is making yourself significant,” she says. “It comes with the job.”

  “Your enemies apparently have a long reach.”

  “If it’s more than you can handle, no problem. I understand.”

  He takes a sip of tea. John Knox can think of several ways to turn that statement around and sting her; John Steele’s reluctance to do so frustrates Knox.

  “You don’t need me until and unless there are some good photographs to make. Anyone can photocopy children’s artwork.”

  “I feel safer with you around.” The walls are thin—they can hear conversation from an adjacent boat—and so they have been speaking quietly. Her comment is barely audible.

  “Maybe some kind of day rate is in order.”

  “If I want a bodyguard, I’ll hire someone trained for the job.”

  “You are outnumbered. We are outnumbered. These people have clearly spread money around the town in an effort to find you. They got people to t
hat neighborhood quickly. That suggests what, a half dozen guys on bikes? More? That’s a big payroll.”

  “I appreciate what you’ve done for me, Mr. Steele. This place . . . I live here and it wouldn’t have occurred to me. I probably would’ve gone to a friend’s house, and I now see what a mistake that would have been. I’m not ashamed to tell you I’m afraid.” She pulls her knees to her chest and places her chin on her knees, contemplative and vulnerable. “But I consider my own fear and magnify it ten times, and I still don’t come close to the fear these children must be living with.”

  “Your niece.”

  She appraises him, openly pondering telling him. “Similar circumstances, I suppose.”

  He waits her out. The people on the nearby boat are making it a four-person party.

  “Similar, but not identical. My niece disappeared the week after she turned thirteen. There is a worldwide market for virgins—did you know that? Upward of fifty thousand dollars U.S. All races. Boys and girls. Three girls—all friends—from the same school went missing on the same night. Never to be seen again. To this day, I search Craigslist each day for her initials: KP. She is called Kala. This is how the ransom demand is made.

  “My brother,” she continues, “asked me to get involved, to write about it, to raise awareness in hopes of getting her back. This series won me awards, led to many good job offers. I took the best of these. Yet my niece never came home. My brother says he’s happy for me.”

  “Rough.”

  “Sometimes life offers a chance to correct one’s previous mistake.”

  “I don’t see the mistake,” Knox says.

  “The series did nothing to uncover the human trafficking. Did nothing to slow it down. It provided me job opportunities, that’s all.”

  “And you’re supposed to feel guilty about that?”

  “Whether I’m supposed to or not, I do.”