Choke Point

Knox occupies the seat of the motorcycle across the canal from Kreiger’s latest hangout: a coffee shop/pot bar in the red-light district. A cold drizzle falls causing him to wipe the visor of his helmet. It’s not wet enough to want to get out of it, but he’s hardly dry. It’s nearing the lunch hour; Kreiger isn’t in there to get high. It’s business.

Three days of following the man and it’s apparent to Knox that Kreiger has his hand in everything the city has to offer: a company offering walking tours; a private brothel where Kreiger keeps an office. This is the man’s third visit to a “coffee shop” in as many days. The previous two he entered alone and left with a young woman. The city is working to eliminate the coffee shops and clean up the red-light district, a plan that can’t sit well.

Knox switches out SIM cards and texts Sonia if she wants to meet for lunch. She’s been writing around the clock and could use the break. She texts back that she needs to keep working, showing her true colors. He envies her that kind of singular focus. He’s more of a Ping-Pong ball in a cardboard box. The stakeout on Kreiger has tested him. It’s getting time to bust some heads and take shortcuts. He understands why police detectives are such assholes.

—

“YOU’RE SCREWING HER, AREN’T YOU?” His only meeting with Dulwich in the past seventy-two hours. “That’s a mistake.” They’re customers in a brown café near the Van Gogh Museum. Tourists go in every direction. Cabs are queued up. There are more people in the bar from the UK than the Netherlands.

“That’s indelicate,” Knox says.

“Find yourself another hole.”

“And again.” Knox fights the urge to jump across the table and shut him up.

“She’s a source. The most important source we have. What happens when it goes south?” he asked rhetorically.

“Such confidence.”

“We can’t lose her, Knox. She’s at the center of this storm.”

“I won’t lose her.” He adds, “You’ve had that phone number for three days. What the hell?”

“We’re using our Paris office. They’re on it. The chip is a pay-as-you-go just like yours and mine.”

“So map it.”

“I said they’re on it. When they have something, we’ll have it.”

“That’s actionable intelligence,” Knox says. “Three days.”

“End it, nice and gentle, or you’ll find yourself on a plane to Detroit.”

“If I end it, we have problems. It wasn’t planned, and we aren’t . . . we aren’t sleeping together. Not in the way you’re thinking.”

“Don’t go all Bill Clinton on me.”

Dulwich relates Grace’s theory about Kreiger’s using the money trail to hide behind.

“Where does she get this stuff?” Knox asks.

“Don’t ask me.”

“It’s a blind?”

“It’s a possibility he’s using it as one. Yes.”

“So we treat Kreiger as hostile. That’s where he was anyway. No change.”

“Agreed.”

“I sit on him until something better comes along.”

“And you stop her from sitting on you,” Dulwich says.

“You’re not going to enjoy where this goes if you keep that up.”

A table of women laugh from the corner. One of them makes eyes at Knox, causing Dulwich to moan like he’s sick.

“Have you ever had to work for anything in your life?” Dulwich asks.

He’s ruined the moment. Knox can think only of Tommy, of all the work that has gone into saving for his brother’s independence, of how far there is to go. He guzzles some beer. Dulwich notes the change from sipping.

“We’ll find her,” he says. Dulwich isn’t referring to the knot shop.

“Soon, or it’ll all be spent.”

“She’s an accountant—”

“A bookkeeper.”

“She’ll invest it. Purchase assets. It won’t be spent frivolously. We’ll regain ninety percent or better.”

“Your lips . . .”

“Trust me.”

Knox polishes off the beer and sets the stein down heavily. Says nothing. Doesn’t offer to pay. Never looks back on his way out.

Grace’s plan is fraught with risk. Knox wishes he and Sarge had spent less time on his sex life and more on how to best protect her. His concern for her takes a backseat to the embezzlement. He stews on establishing priorities as he endures the drizzle.

Across the street, Kreiger is on the move.

—

KREIGER LEAVES THE COFFEE SHOP with yet another young woman and they walk up the street to his electric silver Volvo C30. The car pulls out and Knox parallels him across the canal. Knox has left two messages for the man and has yet to hear back. If any of the man’s appointments have to do with Knox’s purchase, Knox has yet to make a connection.

With his earlier two attempts to follow the Volvo botched because of traffic and weather, Knox tightens the distance of the current tail. He backs off only at traffic lights. He detours to avoid a jam and ends up getting ahead of Kreiger, allowing himself to wait for the Volvo to retake him. The tactic works: he’s got the Volvo in sight five minutes later as it slows for a parking space. Knox knows the final destination, having been here before. He drives past.

PRIVAAT CLUB

NATUURHONIG

The engraved plaque is mounted to the left of the stone stairs leading to the canal house’s imposing front door. Knox has passed close enough to read it only once, and that was three days earlier. Natural Honey. It’s the whorehouse where Kreiger keeps an office.

“Kreiger’s earlier stops make sense now,” Knox tells Sarge over the phone, watching the club from a distance. “The coffee shops sell drugs. Teens from all over Europe arrive in droves, get high and expect to find work. Instead, they run out of money, some more quickly than others. What better place than the coffee shops to recruit girls for a sex club? The manager keeps his eye out, calls Kreiger, and Kreiger pimps the girl to the club, taking a cut of her earnings.”

“Unless he owns the club in the first place.”

“There’s that, too.”

“Can you get in there?”

“The only thing private about the club is the cover charge. Fifty euros to get through the door. Helps keep the window gawkers from Oudezijds Achterburgwal out.”

“Your accent’s improving.”

“Kreiger knows me. If I’m spotted, I’m busted. But if I make a date with him that takes him away from the club . . .”

“If you’re asking me to volunteer, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

“Your job is Kreiger. I will set up a meet. You’re my backer and you’re sick and tired of all the delays with the rug deal. It’s either yes or no, but you’re not waiting around. It guarantees he’s out of the building. Grace and I do this together: a couple shopping for a threesome. I get the office open, Grace does whatever she does and we find out if Kreiger is our guy.”

“Fahiz identified his attackers as two Caucasians. Not Muslim, or Turks or Russians. Kreiger’s Caucasian.”

“That hasn’t slipped my mind,” Knox says.

“But it’s too easy. We both know that,” Dulwich states.

“We do.”

“Shit like this doesn’t drop into your lap.”

“Grace teed it up for us. We have to swing at this one in order to get a mulligan.” It was unfair but necessary to manipulate Dulwich through his love for golf. “We know it was his cash that reached the trigger man. It’s not a matter of going after Kreiger, it’s how—as a somewhat innocent bystander, or the big dick. Big difference.”

“I’d rather be the one doing the legwork. Why don’t you take Kreiger?”

“Who is going to buy you and Grace as a couple?”

“Up yours.”

“He hasn’t been answering my calls, so it may all be moot, but I’m sure he’s getting them. If you imply it’s now or never—”

“It is now or never,” Dulwich says.

“But maybe not for him. I’ll let you know.”