Choke Point

by Ridley Pearson

  “Kreiger, G.,” Knox says, believing he saw the name during the scrolling. “Gerhardt Kreiger.”

  The three separate as a matter of procedure. Dulwich drives off in the Mercedes. They have no idea what kind of heat, if any, the hacking will draw. They entered and departed the office building cognizant of security cameras watching, careful to avoid offering their faces. But they are in the security business and are made painfully aware of how much can be made of little. For twenty-four hours they will make no contact. Communication will be reestablished through coded text messages.

  Knox returns to the houseboat via a circuitous and careful route. He doesn’t know what to expect. He wants to find Sonia waiting for him, but is loath to admit it to himself. It’s a romantic notion, one that doesn’t come easily for him. He’s greeted by the proprietor, a wiry man with an Abe Lincoln beard and the rheumy eyes of a morning drinker.

  “She paid for a second night,” the man tells Knox.

  His sense of relief surprises Knox. He’s inwardly giddy.

  “There’s an envelope.”

  Knox hurries forward, nearly bumping his head. The envelope is sealed, no name written on it. He tears it open a little too eagerly.

  You didn’t pick up. I left you a message.

  He silently compliments her on her lack of detail while chastising himself for not switching out his SIM cards and checking messages and texts. The events of the past two hours have put him off his routine.

  John, I heard back from Maja’s teacher with an address. Also, the name and address of another student who is also a possible. He notes her careful use of language; she divulges nothing in the message, yet conveys all that is necessary. I will return later today, or call me.

  She picks up on the third ring.

  Without introduction, he says, “I think a silhouette shot, the mother in front of a window or in a doorway. A kind of spooky anonymity might work very well.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Will you wait for me? Are you there yet? I’d rather you wait.”

  “If you get too protective, it’s over.”

  “Noted. I’m an older brother. Cut me some slack.”

  “No, I will not.”

  “An address?”

  She supplies the address and tells him if he’s not there in twenty minutes, not to bother.

  He’s stuck with an audiotape loop running in his head: I will return later today. It goes around and around in her Indian-accented English with him reading more into it on each replay. There are other places she could go than the houseboat. She not only wants to see him again, but has decided to see him again, a decision he can live with. Why any of this should matter to him, he doesn’t know. Women are good company, sometimes a physical pleasure. With the constant travel that comes with his job, he has become a seaman or a door-to-door salesman. He has friends, not relationships. So, he can’t help but wonder why he has already decided where he will be sleeping tonight, that he would not dare to let her down. He may be stood up; it may be nothing but an ill-conceived test on her part, but he’s willing to play along. Is eager to play along.

  He doesn’t know how she got across town, but she didn’t walk. He had the motorcycle, so it must have been a taxi or tram, and he bristles at the thought. He weaves his way through traffic taking chances he shouldn’t, wondering if this is solely for the sake of the job or if there’s something more to it, something that bears consideration. The camera bag slung across his shoulder now bounces in his lap. He’s constantly checking the time.

  He arrives with a few minutes to spare. Introduces himself to the plain-looking Slavic woman who answers the door and is shown inside to an apartment occupied by three generations of women. It’s pillows and rugs, a television and two large futons strapped around the middle with bungee cords that tower in the corner like sentries. Two boys pass through the room on their way from the kitchen, one fourteen, one eight, both suspicious of Knox. They disappear into the apartment’s only bedroom and pull the door shut. A very old woman smokes a cigarette by a partially open window, harboring a comfortable distrust in her unblinking, quiet eyes.

  Sonia sits cross-legged amid a pile of decorative pillows, a notepad open at her ankles. Standing across from her is Maja’s mother, who greeted them at the door. In the corner is Maja herself—sleepy-eyed but not missing anything. The girl’s face is young—twelve or thirteen, Knox is guessing—but her eyes contain an unshakable depth that is twice that.

  The Dutch is spoken rapid fire as Maja’s mother objects vehemently to the presence of a photographer, all before Knox has unzipped his bag. Again, Knox admires Sonia’s calm under fire. She is unruffled; her voice steady and deliberate as she explains nothing is going to happen without the woman’s consent.

  Knox removes the camera, turns it on and shows her the LCD screen on the back of the camera. “We will remove any photographs you do not approve.”

  “I swear to it,” Sonia says.

  The mother settles. “I ask that you go now.”

  Sonia flashes a sideways look at Knox, who wishes the camera did not make a shutter noise. He wants to capture that agonized expression, finds himself thinking as a photographer. Wonders how long he can keep the truth from Sonia.

  Unfolding her legs, Sonia comes to her knees and hands Maja’s watercolor to the girl’s mother. She sits back down, indicating she isn’t going anywhere. The mother opens the drawing and squints her eyes shut painfully.

  “How did they contact you, Yasmina?” Sonia inquires.

  Yasmina shakes her head. The watercolor hangs at her side, pinched between two fingers. Her hands are rough-skinned.

  “Have you been to this place?”

  “Please . . . go.”

  Knox trains the camera on the old biddy by the window, so ensconced she acts as if she doesn’t notice. He adjusts the exposure for the gray glow on the window behind her, tries a shot. Then another. The third time is just right: a spiral of gray smoke, a faceless woman but one whose years are apparent. He is quick to delete the first two.

  “Look at the artwork, Maja’s artwork, once again. The girl in the leg iron. Please, look again.”

  Surprisingly, Yasmina obeys. Her eyes tick between Sonia and the watercolor.

  “Maja,” Sonia asks sweetly, “do you know this girl?”

  Mother and daughter exchange glances. “No names,” the girl says.

  “What language? Do you all speak Dutch?”

  “No talking,” the child replies. “We talk with hands.”

  “You approved of this?” Sonia asks the mother.

  “Do not judge me.”

  “I ask only what the agreement was going in. What you understood the working conditions to be. How it was they contacted you.”

  Knox captures an amazing shot of Maja, her knees to her chest. Yasmina wants to object, but is more concerned with Sonia.

  “It is money. Steady money.”

  “Were you approached directly?” Sonia asks.

  Yasmina looks afraid.

  “The other mothers at the community center,” Knox says, winning a fiery look from both women. “You heard from them.” Sonia does not want him speaking; Yasmina is rattled by his accuracy. Sonia is quick to translate the woman’s expression.

  “We know about the community center.” Sonia lies beautifully, something that is not lost on Knox.

  “You hear things.”

  “At some point you must make contact, they must make contact.” If Sonia is excited by their progress, she doesn’t show it.

  Yasmina corrects her. “The first day she is taken by a friend. After that, she knows the way and can go alone. Some of the mothers . . . if you follow your child . . . if you’re caught . . .” The protective glance toward her daughter finishes the thought.

  “Schooling?”

  “She is enrolled, of course. The excuse is illness. We do as much work here in the evenings as possible. I do not expect you to understand. I do not want your sympathy. My
Maja is an important part of this household. She helps us all.”

  The girl looks up from her tucked position proudly.

  Sonia directs her attention to the girl. “You must know the names of some of the other girls.”

  “Turtle.” Maja makes a fish with her thumb tucked into the fingers. “Bunny.” Thumb and pinky finger raised. She smiles awkwardly. “They call me”—she draws a finger across her lips—“Silence.”

  “The other times your father came to school, did he take you to work?”

  Yasmina strains to contain her alarm. She is no actor. “Answer.”

  Maya’s silence draws her mother’s ire.

  Yasmina turns to Sonia. “Which day was this?”

  Smart enough to stay out of a fire she has herself started, Sonia bites her lip.

  “Not my son,” says the woman by the window, mournfully. “Who was this man, precious?”

  “Not the girl’s father,” Sonia says.

  Yasmina spins in the vortex created by her mother-in-law, Sonia and her daughter. She seeks sanctuary in Knox, but then sees him working the camera in his lap and holds up her hand to block her face.

  “Get out!” she says.

  Sonia collects the fallen watercolor and smooths it open with calm hands. “It is these girls we must save,” she says, pointing to the leg iron. “These nameless girls.”

  “He wasn’t her father,” Knox says. “Then who? A man from the shop?”

  “She disobeyed,” Yasmina says, glowering at her child. “How could you do this to us? You know the rules!”

  “By attending school,” Knox says.

  Sonia does not appreciate his participation.

  But Knox is on a roll. “They tried to pull her out of school and put her back to work.”

  Yasmina sits down heavily, hands to her head. She’s talking to herself in a language Knox does not understand. She takes in each of them, including her mother-in-law, one by one.

  “My husband is in jail. Two more years.” It’s all she says. It is meant as confession, justification and apology, all in one.

  The old woman stares out the window as if this is an indictment of her. Her cigarette is burned down to the filter, still clasped between her fingers. Knox takes a lap shot of her.

  “We ask that Maja take us close enough to the shop to point it out,” Sonia says.

  “Never! They have eyes everywhere. You understand nothing. The mothers who have tried . . . How close do you think they ever came? Absurd.”

  “We could show Maja a map,” Knox says. “Photographs.” He’s thinking of Google’s street view. The girl could lead them right to the door without ever leaving the room. “We can pay you three hundred euros.”

  Yasmina gives the offer consideration.

  Sonia is ready to castrate John Steele for his interference.

  “How many weeks must Maja work to earn three hundred? Ten? Twenty? She could be in school instead.”

  Maja sits forward expectantly, hanging on her mother’s decision like an inmate at a parole hearing.

  “And what after that, daughter?” the older woman says, aimed again at Yasmina, who cringes at the appellation. “We must resist the sin of temptation.”

  “I asked you to leave,” Yasmina says, unable to look at either Sonia or Knox.

  “And I ask you what is best for your daughter?”

  “Take your poison and go!”

  “The girls in the leg irons . . . ask Maja what happens to the pretty ones when they reach the age. What if Maja fails to come home one night? What then? Where do you look? To whom do you turn?”

  Yasmina’s face drains of color and her lips tremble as tears form. “Without her . . . we starve.”

  Her words seem to echo in the room. A dog barks down the block. The sound of the old woman working her lighter sounds like a cat scratching at the door. She disappears behind a cloud.

  Knox fires off another lap shot, wondering how much the cigarettes cost.

  “I wish to see the photos.” Yasmina extends her hand to him.

  But Sonia takes Knox’s camera from him and together she and Knox show the woman the half dozen shots he’s taken. It’s good work, if he does say so. No faces. A good deal of mood and texture.

  The mother selects two for deletion, simply exercising her power to do so. Knox resents losing them.

  As they are huddled around the camera, Yasmina says softly, “You do not understand. These people know where we live. They . . . the things they have done . . .”

  “Have you seen these things, yourself, or heard about them?” the journalist asks.

  “Please leave.” Yasmina once again avoids looking at Knox.

  —

  BACK ON THE STREET, John Steele and Sonia Pangarkar exhale at once.

  “Damn!” Sonia says.

  “We follow her,” says Knox. “I can follow her. She will never know.”

  “And if you’re seen? It won’t be you who suffers, but she, a twelve-year-old girl. And her mother, and her grandmother. No, John.”

  But I won’t be seen, he wants to say, but does not.

  “You know what they would do to that poor girl?”

  He does know, and by making the comment she pushes him to consider ramifications, which is not something that comes naturally to him. For whatever reason, he thinks of Tommy and how he owes him his daily call that often comes weekly. He thinks of Dulwich and Grace working behind his back to track the money embezzled from him. He thinks of bills he must pay and contracts he must honor. The reality of straddling two worlds comes crashing down on him out on a sidewalk in the Amsterdam suburbs where it’s impossible to tell one street from another.

  “Damn,” he says, echoing her.

  “We know more than we did,” she says.

  “‘A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.’”

  “You need not remind me.”

  He’d parked the motorcycle around the block. He leads her there. She follows.

  “Will you write something?” he asks.

  “Not yet.”

  “Should I e-mail you these?”

  “It is a good idea.” She climbs onto the back of the motorcycle. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Now, or later?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Now, to the houseboat.”

  “I am glad.”

  “It doesn’t have to be Maja.” He revs the motor and toes the bike into gear.

  “Schools in the U.S.,” he adds. “Visitors are required to check in at the school office. They must sign in. Pick up a name tag.”

  “The same is true here.”

  “Many public schools—our government schools—print a photo onto the name tag,” says the photographer. “A vid cam shot at the reception desk.”

  Her hands go from around his waist to his shoulders. She shakes him. “The ‘father’!” she shouts.

  —

  RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC clogs Kinkerstraat as commuters use it to avoid the major surface streets out of downtown. Buses and trolleys use center lanes, choking the street to a single right of way, compounding the problem. Grace kills time at the postcard stand outside the Bruna bookstore, stealing glimpses between passing vehicles. The building across from her, just at the start of the tram stop, has a pink wall of mailboxes mounted between sets of doors. She watches long enough for someone to enter without use of a key or card.

  “I am going in,” she tells Dulwich over her phone.

  “Copy.”

  There’s no waiting for a break in traffic. She forces herself between bumpers, hesitates as a bus growls past, and reaches the opposite curb just before a cyclist would have paved her. Donning the mind-set of a resident, she enters through the outer door, then the inner door and finally an unmarked door to the building’s stairway identified by the discolored wear in the vinyl-tile flooring. She bounds up to the landing, turns and continues to the first floor.

  “I am in,” she says for the sake of her Bluetooth earpiece.r />
  “Copy. Awaiting your confirmation.”

  She looks right and assures herself the hallway is clear. Turns left toward the pair of glass doors leading out to the balcony seen from the streets. It is common to a half dozen apartments, wraps around the Kinkerstraat and Ten Katestraat sides of the building and is dotted with television satellite dishes. The architectural glass outer wall is banister height. As she moves toward Ten Katestraat, a Kelly Clarkson song rises from the market street. She looks down onto the tent roofs of the street market stalls, intent upon identifying the one selling kitchen linens. She finds it thirty meters down, recognizes it not by its contents, nor its vendor, but by the beater Volkswagen hatchback parked behind.

  “Go!” she says.

  “Copy.”

  She steps closer to the corner, eyes down, awaiting the red baseball cap Dulwich has suggested she use to spot the runner he’s hired. The red cap enters from the canal side of the street and pushes its way into the center of the scrum. It sits atop a head connected to broad but underdeveloped shoulders. Grace can picture the acne-riddled face of a boy sixteen or seventeen. He maneuvers through the horde of late-afternoon shoppers burdened with bags of fresh vegetables and fruits. He twists and turns and creates his own lanes, rising onto tiptoe in search of the vendor. He homes in on the stall in question. Dulwich has told him what to say.

  Grace moves along the balcony as she monitors him, stopping as he stops. Waiting as he waits. She steps back from the low wall, exposing as little of herself as possible.

  Marta, with whom Grace is all too familiar, takes time with each customer. Finally it’s the boy’s turn. He leans over the display of place mats. Grace can’t see the vendor. He’s stuck there for a long count.

  “The lady asked you for a dozen names,” the boy is saying by now. “You must give her at least three. I’m supposed to tell you things will happen if you don’t.”

  Grace imagines: the boy is waiting for Marta to write down the names. The longer it stretches, the more hopeful she is that Marta has delivered.

  Dulwich’s large frame doesn’t fit well in the market. He towers over the rest as he crosses through the thick crowd and vanishes beneath her. He’s to deliver a raw potato to the Volkswagen’s exhaust pipe should the boy come up empty. It will plug the car’s exhaust, choking the engine and making it impossible to start; it’s a warning shot. The repercussions will only get worse for Marta should she fail to deliver.