Choke Point

The enclosed alleyway reminds her of a subway tunnel. One with no lights. One that smells sour and sordid. Tobacco. Marijuana. Stale beer. Human piss. Dog excrement. The entire urban experience reduced to olfactory overload. She enters the dark with trepidation. The woman in the scarf haunts her. Be careful, haunts her. The path beneath her is covered in a viscous goo, a residual sediment not washed away by rain. Her soles smack with it. It seems to move beneath her. She’s through the space in less than thirty seconds, but in that short time her heart accelerates to an aerobic level and her mouth goes dry. She’d give anything for a Coke.

God hears her: there’s a lighted vending machine alongside the entrance to a two-story brick building that fills the front half of an inner courtyard. Its windows hide behind black chain link. Graffiti has been sandblasted and chemically removed, leaving the brick two-tone.

She time-checks her phone, remembering to call off Knox. But not yet. Not so soon. She senses six minutes could prove to be an eternity here.

Corner lights on the building have either burned out or been stoned and broken. The interior lights are ablaze. She checks behind herself. Her long thin shadow stretches behind her like a crooked finger. No one back there. No one coming for her.

But they could be waiting. This could be a trap.

She walks fully around the building, behind which she discovers a blacktop playground. She puts her face to a back window. It’s a recreation room. A half dozen kids sitting at battered folding tables in battered folding chairs. There’s a kiddie station at the far end: a blue plastic fort and slide, some yellow plastic cubes and an orange airplane that can be straddled like a horse. It’s a neighborhood youth center. She sucks down some Coke. Nothing has ever tasted better. She pauses for another sip before letting herself inside.

It’s study time and quiet. Against the wall are long-outdated computers, their screens glowing. She’s approached by a woman in her sixties who has a slight limp to her right leg, a face creased by the sun and dull blue eyes.

She speaks Dutch, welcoming Grace, who returns a thank-you and continues in Dutch. After two or three exchanges they have settled into English without discussing the switch.

Grace identifies herself as being with the EU. She offers her business card. The woman slips it into a sweater pocket without looking at it.

“How may I help you?”

Grace proffers the newspaper photo of Berna.

The woman sees it, studies it, but it’s radioactive; she does not reach out to take hold of it.

“I am familiar with the story,” she says.

“I am trying to find the girl.”

“It exaggerates. You know this, yes? The story? These ankle wounds described are more likely from a game or an accident. We see every kind of thing on our playgrounds.”

“You do not believe the article?” Grace says, trying her best to mask her own surprise.

“You cannot possibly believe everything you read in the papers.”

Grace says, “I believe this.”

The woman openly displays her cynicism.

Grace crosses her arms tightly in annoyance. “No matter what caused her health issues—malnutrition and dehydration among them—she is a minor who fled the clinic and has not been found.”

“I understand.” Genuine concern seeps through the woman’s cold exterior. “How many others each week? Each month?” She motions to the kids studying. “No one has it easy. Just because a reporter happens to be there one afternoon . . . all this attention. How many since then? How many before?” She lowers her voice. “Listen to me: If this little one is working in a shop, as reported, she has it good. Do you understand? Prostitution is legal here. Do you know how many girls enter Amsterdam each year looking to be a window girl? And what happens to them? Where do they end up? Is anyone counting them? Looking for them? All this—the EU”—she motions to Grace—“for one little girl. It’s touching,” she mocks, “but pardon me if it strikes me as hypocrisy.”

“These children have families,” Grace says, indicating the kids studying at the desks.

The woman looks over her flock. “Most have a parent, or an aunt or uncle, it’s true. A place to sleep. Someone to feed them a meal a day if they’re lucky. They might sleep five or more to a room. They come here to do the book work. They are good children.”

“And during the day?”

“The little ones. Day care. Physical recreation after school. That is when we are busiest. Seventy-five to a hundred each day. I have one other on my staff. We receive donations: balls, pencils and paper, clothing. A local bakery provides yesterday’s unsold pastries. We get by.”

Grace takes it all in.

“I would say . . . it is impossible to know . . . but I would say at least one a month goes missing. Running away? Sex slavery? Or this labor shop of yours? Of the choices, I would take the shop.”

“You are saying she has it good?” Grace is on the edge of indignant.

“I hope you find this girl.”

“Do you know her? Recognize her?”

“Does her face look familiar to me? If I say yes, I give you false hope. If I say no, maybe you give up. I would prefer to say nothing.”

“She is familiar then.”

“Listen to me: there are no jobs out there. None. No fathers, half the time. The children who find work provide for their families, no matter how meager the wage, no matter the working conditions. You take away that small amount of income and many would starve. If you think you will find support here in the neighborhoods, you are sadly mistaken. Communities like this solve problems others cannot or choose not to solve for them. Is the solution always legal? No. But the mothers would rather have their girls sewing or gluing trainers than selling themselves or dealing dope. It is the lesser of two evils.”

“I won’t get help?”

The woman shrugs. She says nothing.

—

THE CLICK OF THE DOOR behind Grace feels ominous. She leaves the community center, heads for the alley tunnel leading back to Van Speijkstraat. She walks the ten meters to its entrance and stops, aware of the charged particles in the air. The unexpected whiff of fresh cigarette smoke. She turns.

Two men come at her in a blur of shadow and muscle. The first thing she notices is their height; neither is tall. They are fast and they are strong, and while one twists and pulls on her purse, the other blocks her left arm as it comes forward and runs his hand up under her skirt and between her legs and cups her. She surprises him by clamping her legs together so fast that he has no time to remove his hand. She traps it there and then head-butts him in the nose. The other one has her so tangled in her purse that by the time she lifts her knee to finish off the one in front of her, she’s turned and her knee misses. The hand comes free and punches her left breast with such force that sparks fly and her stomach lurches. She’s dizzy and going down. No more than a few seconds have passed.

The purse strap slips down her arm but she grabs for it. With her right hand she claps the one in front of her on the ear and he cries out. She stabs him in the eye with a locked finger and a manicured nail. He cries again, this time louder. She kicks at his knee, but misses.

He winds up a clenched fist. She regrets everything she has just done. She can’t take a second chest punch.

Her opponent collapses, all joints failing simultaneously.

Grace slumps into the disgusting, sticky goo of the tunnel floor amid the sound of the other mugger thief fleeing. She’s kneeling. A shadow looms over her.

The headlights of a passing car flood the tunnel with light. Before her stands the woman in the scarf from the market. It’s not a gun in her hand but a stun stick, explaining the doll-like collapse of her assailant.

“You ask too many questions.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“You will get yourself killed.”

Grace extends her arm for the woman to help her up. The woman reaches for her, but stops.

“Grace?” It’s Knox, a backlit figure at the end of the tunnel. He switches on a small penlight that casts a faint blue light at this distance like a train’s dim headlight.

“Here!”

Before the word is out of her mouth, the woman in the scarf is gone.

—

KNOX DRAGS THE KID by the back of his coat collar—a kid, not a grown man. Eighteen? Nineteen? Pulls him through the door of the community center.

“What’s this?” the director asks, her voice breaking.

Knox lifts the semi-conscious kid with one arm and deposits him into a vinyl chair. The studying students are all made of marble and are turned toward them.

“You must take this outside,” the director says, sensing Knox’s intentions.

The kid’s left eye is swollen nearly shut and oozing. His nose is a bloody mess.

Grace enters last, a ripe bruise already forming on her forehead, her right shoulder lowered to favor her painful chest. Her skirt has slipped down a few inches, revealing the elastic of her bikini underwear.

“The toilet?” Grace speaks Dutch.

The director helps Grace by the arm, guiding her across the room. “What happened? What has happened?” She looks back over her shoulder at Knox. “Not in here.”

Knox takes in the studying kids frozen in their seats. “He slipped and fell,” Knox tells them, “but he’s going to be all right.” He hauls the kid to his feet and leads him back out the doors, pounding him against the brick wall and allowing him to sag to the concrete. He keeps him close to the doors for the sake of the ambient light. Knox squats. The kid is still dazed from the stun stick, though no longer paralyzed. Knox unlaces the kid’s military-style boot and uses the lace to tie the boy’s hands behind his back.

Taking the boy by the chin, he lifts and turns his face into the light. The eye is worse by the minute; the nose is clotting.

Knox speaks Dutch. “If you play tough, it will get rough. Understand?”

The one good eye fills with contempt. Knox grabs the boy’s crotch. Takes a handful and twists. The eye rolls back into its socket. “She tells me you touched her like this.” He twists harder. The kid groans. “One good tug and you’re singing soprano for life. Your call.” He tightens his hold. “Who put you up to this?”

The eye rolls back, filled with an innocent terror. The kid tries to shake his head but Knox holds his chin firmly in hand. But not with his right hand; that one turns a few more degrees clockwise. “Who? And where do I find him?”

“The purse. A little fun. That’s all.”

Another half turn and Knox will do permanent damage. He squeezes instead. “Fun yet?”

The color drains from the boy’s face. He’s not breathing.

The earlier look of fright goes a long way to convincing Knox the kid was not on orders, but he doesn’t want to believe his own intuition. Fahiz was attacked and beaten. For Knox, this kid will do. An act of random violence won’t satisfy his craving for conspiracy and connection. He wants an easy route to follow back to the knot shop. He takes the kid’s wallet, but removes the cash and a debit card and stuffs them into the front pocket of the boy’s jeans. Confirms there’s ID with an address.

“If I should ever see you again, I am coming after you with the full intention of ending your life. Do you understand?”

The boy is slow to respond. Knox loosens his grip on his testicles. The boy’s chin tries to nod.

Behind him, Grace stands framed by the door, looking out. She has put herself back together; her dark hair covers her forehead.

Knox opens the door for her. Says to the director, “Do you know this boy?”

The director shakes her head without looking. “These are hard times. There are many such boys. Too many.”

“Fix the lights in the tunnel,” Knox says.

The woman nods. “Yes. Of course.”

“Do not untie him. He can make it home without his arms. Lock the door until he’s gone. If he doesn’t leave, call the police.”

Another nod from the director. “I already have.”

The boy struggles to get up. Knox kicks him back down. “Ladies first.”

Knox offers his hand to Grace, and to his surprise she accepts it.

—

KNOX HELPS GRACE feed the key card into the hotel room door, her hand shaking too violently.

“I can come in,” he says. “Make you a drink. You could use one.”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” She pushes open the door but doesn’t move. Knox slips past her. He checks the bathroom, the closet and the rest of the room.

“Clear.”

She enters. “Vodka, rocks.” She is unbuttoning her blouse as she enters the bathroom. Shuts and locks the door.

He hears the bath water running, not a shower. She’ll be a while. He’s got her room key. He fetches ice and waits to make her drink. Takes a Scotch for himself. Drinks it from a plastic cup that he removes from a plastic wrapper.

The water stops running.

He hears the door lock pop as she cracks the door.

“Thank you,” she calls out.

“No problem.” He pours the vodka and approaches with his back to the bathroom door, then passes the drink inside. They touch hands. Hers is ice cold.

He heads back to his chair. Hears the shower curtain sing as she slides it aside and hears her ease down into the water.

“Why were you there?”

“A vendor in the market. I’m not so sure she recognized Berna in the photo so much as thought the community center director might help me.”

“Some help.”

“The director painted a different picture,” Grace says. “The girls providing income for broken families. A way to battle the poverty.”

“I’m not buying that,” Knox says. He tilts the Scotch in the cup and swirls it.

“I’m not selling. But she was.”

“It’s a load of shit.”

“More like realpolitik. No matter, it doesn’t help us any.”

Locals and residents, he thinks. He tells her about Sonia’s theory of two classes of workers.

“If we can’t get help from the mothers of these girls—” Grace says.

“Yeah.”

“Graham Winston wants this shut down. We have our work cut out for us. If it’s finding someone to hang this on, you have a wallet in your pocket. I will testify. Fahiz, I’m not so sure.”

“Finding Berna and closing the shop are one and the same. Concurrent.” The Scotch warms him. He uncaps another minibottle and dispenses it into the plastic cup. “Refill?”

“Please.” He hears the shower curtain being adjusted. “You can come in.” He enters the bathroom. Her clothes are neatly folded on the counter. Grace. Her arm is extended from behind the curtain. He takes her empty cup and pulls the door nearly shut behind him. Hears her chewing ice.

“There was a woman . . . in the market. It was she who rescued me.”

It was she. Grace. “I’m listening.”

“In the tunnel . . . She knew who I was. My EU persona. Warned me.”

“Threatened?”

“Warned.”

“Were the boys hers? Was it staged for your benefit?”

It’s a long time before she says anything. “I don’t like the way you think.”

“It’s the Scotch,” he says.

“No, I am afraid not,” she says. “She told me I ask too many questions and that I’d get myself killed.”

“Hardly a warning. That’s a threat.”

“It wasn’t. I’m telling you. She was hiding—waiting—in the tunnel. Waiting for me to leave the center.”

“And we have no idea who she is.”

“None.”

“You’re going back to Hong Kong. We’re getting you out of here.”

“Foolish. This is exactly what we’d hoped for. It just does not happen to be connected to the knot shop.”

Knox’s phone buzzes. A text.

in the lobby

“Dulwich is downstairs.”

“Your doing?”

“Yes,” he says. “Assaults, robberies and sexual assaults tend to win his attention.”

“He can’t come up,” she says. “My room could be watched. One man in my room can be explained. Two is an orgy.”

“No one is more careful than Sarge. Let me handle it.”

Ten minutes later, after Knox has walked the hallway and scouted the stairs, the three are in Grace’s room. The hotel doesn’t offer robes so she’s in pajamas with a towel wrapped around her head. She sits cross-legged on the bed. She looks about fourteen.

Dulwich drinks beer. Grace and Knox are on their third. They’ve run the minibar out of vodka and Scotch. Knox feels good for the first time all day.

Grace gives the recap.

Knox adds in enough of his meeting with Sonia to complete the picture. He looks over at Grace. “You’ve got to go,” Knox says.

“Not the way the EU would see it,” Dulwich explains. “They might assign a driver. That could be you.”

“Can’t be me,” Knox says. He reminds them about Gerhardt Kreiger’s efforts to connect him to a rug merchant, about his serving as Sonia’s photographer, about already being stretched thin.

“Me, then.”

“You limp. Some bodyguard.”

“All the better,” Dulwich says. “I look like a driver, as it should be.” He asks Grace, “Good with you?”

She nods. She looks like she’s in shock. Or maybe drunk is more like it, Knox thinks.

“Can we talk about Fahiz?” Grace asks.

“No,” Knox says.

“Sonia Pangarkar interviews Kabril Fahiz, but Kahil’s the enigma. Are we accepting that he intentionally lied on his health clinic admittance form and on the police report, all to protect himself? Is anyone that cognizant when admitted to a clinic in such bad shape?”

“He’s collateral damage. Forget him.” Knox sets down the rest of the Scotch vowing not to touch it.

“Agreed,” Dulwich says. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“You didn’t speak to him. His attackers were Dutch or Europeans. He saw it as a hate crime. I don’t think so.”

“Your attackers were Dutch,” Knox says.

“My attackers were kids.” She wraps herself in her own limbs more tightly. She can’t rid herself of the boy holding her down there, feels on the verge of screaming or vomiting.

“Has anyone spoken to the doctors?” Dulwich asks.

“Waste of time,” Knox says. “We’re off track.”

“We’re trying to stop whoever’s intimidating Sonia Pangarkar’s sources,” Dulwich says. “Kahil Fahiz was a victim of those people. Mistaken identity or not, we’re hardly off track.”

Knox thought Sarge was on his side. The adrenaline is wearing off. The booze is swimming around his head. He upends the waiting cup. Better. “You want this short and sweet,” he tells Dulwich. “That means we go for beheading, not cutting off fingers and hands. Who gives a shit that Kahil Fahiz was mistaken for someone else? Who gives a shit what condition he was in? They got the wrong guy. How can that possibly be worth our time?”

“What if we find out his attackers were two kids in their late teens?” Dulwich asks. “For instance.”

“I had this kid by the short hairs. He was not hired to attack her. Trust me.”

“Maybe he was led into it by his friend.”

“The doctors are going to tell us that? I don’t think so. Why am I the one drinking, but you’re the one talking like a drunk?”

“People explain their injuries. They’re in shock,” Dulwich says, casting a sideways glance at Grace, “their adrenaline’s screaming. They’re given sedatives. Their tongues wag. More secrets are spilled in the emergency room than the confessional. You two can carry on.” He sounds disgusted. “I can do this. I will do this.”

“My cover’s better,” Grace says, still in a tight ball. There’s only ice left in her cup.

“Suit yourself,” Knox says. “Waste of time.”

“Ours to waste.” Dulwich is angry with him.

“Between Sonia’s work and Kreiger wanting to sell me a container of rugs, we’re aimed at the top of the pyramid. Grace should chill out for a few days. Lose the fieldwork. We get a suspect and she goes to work on the person’s finances. If and when we have our evidence, we make our move.”

Dulwich cannot believe what he’s hearing. “So your work is the only work that matters?”

“For now.”

Grace rocks forward and back on the bed. She’s biting down on the hand that holds the cup. She removes her lips long enough to say, “I found a piece of your money.” Her dark eyes, wet now from the liquor, stare over her hand at Knox.

“Come again?”

“Grace and I have been involved in a little extracurricular activity.”

Knox looks suspiciously between them. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I found forty-seven thousand,” Grace says. “It’s a good lead. I’m going to find the rest. And then I’m going to find more.”

“My money? The money Eve—?” Knox says, though he can’t finish the sentence, can’t hear himself say it.

“If we find the money—when we find the money—we will find Evelyn Ritter along with it,” Grace says imperiously.

Dulwich hunches his shoulders. “It was a bum deal.”

“It was my deal. Is my deal.”

“What are friends for?”

Grace explains, “It was the change. The fifty-four cents. It’s all in the details. We’re having fun, John. Don’t spoil our fun.”

“And don’t talk to me about returning favors,” says the man whose life Knox saved—twice.

“Forty-seven thousand?”

“I do not have the money, but I know where to find it. I can determine how it got there—that is the key. Getting it back . . . That is not of primary importance at the moment. First, we find it. We find it all.”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Dulwich says.

But Knox is surprised. Flattered. Impressed. Guilt-ridden that they’ve taken the time to pursue his loss when it has nothing to do with Rutherford Risk.

“Does Primer know?” Knox asks.

“Hardly,” says Dulwich.

“But you’re on his payroll. His clock.” He looks over at Grace. “His gear.”

“Field testing the gear is critical,” she says.

“There are more than eight hours in a day,” says Dulwich.

The comment is laughable, though Knox doesn’t laugh. Dulwich lives his job—fourteen-to-eighteen-hour days. He doesn’t have time to tie his own shoes—he wears Top-Siders.

“Thank you.” Knox wishes he’d saved some of the Scotch. He thinks about suggesting a trip to the hotel bar, drinks on him, but knows that’s absurd. The three of them can’t be seen together.

“Thank us when you have her head on a stick,” Dulwich says.

“And the funds back in your account,” Grace says, still rocking.

She looks like a scared little girl. Knox considers reaching out to comfort her, but the timing is wrong; she’ll think it has to do with the money.