Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“My mother was a Turk. My father, Chechen. I no longer hear such things when they’re said. My ears filter them out.” He lights a cigarette, savors the first inhale. Barely any smoke escapes as he exhales, or maybe the wind caused by the movement of the ferry carries it away.

She does not quote the police file directly. She wants him to volunteer the same information a second time. People say strange things—incorrect things—when in shock and under duress. People will blurt things out to the police, invented on the spot, having no idea why.

Give me what you gave the police. Convince me.

“What can anyone do about such hate crimes?” he asks.

“I’m a civil servant. Trained as an accountant. I’m not much of an investigator. I ask questions I am told to ask. I write reports. We build statistics.”

“I’m a statistic.”

“Soon. Yes. Of course.”

“Earlier you said you were investigating.”

“Following orders.”

“The police report. I would not have filed in the first place, except for my attackers’ comment about me keeping my mouth shut.”

Thank you.

“ How many?” she asks.

“It is this Kabril Fahiz they were after. I know that now. You should be speaking to him, not me.”

“He is on my list, of course. But he was not attacked. He is not the victim.”

“Victim,” he repeats. “So you are investigating.”

“I am doing what I am told. Seriously. No more, no less.”

“I’m not sleeping. If I am to see even my close friends,” he said, meeting eyes with her for the first time, “it’s like this.” He motions out to the river. The ferry is pulling up to the dock. “Precautions. Paranoia.”

“What exactly did they say?”

“You have read the report.”

“Can you give me some descriptions? We often remember more a day or two later. Hmm?”

“Not I. I want to forget, not remember.”

“We don’t control our memories. They control us.”

“A philosopher?” he says, mocking her. Again, eye contact. “What I ask is simple enough. This is not my fight. But they brought it to me. They know my face. My habits. How would I know until it’s too late? You . . . and the police . . . you owe it to me to let me know what’s going on ahead of time so I am not made a victim a second time.” He touches the fresh scar on his cheek. It’s an angry red. “You owe me.”

“I need more,” she says. “If I am to—”

She’s cut off as the gangway begins its groaning descent. The passengers surge forward as a unit.

“Listen, from what I experienced, you should not pursue these people. They will hurt you. Worse. Go back to your superiors and tell them it was a dead end. Give this up.”

“Height? Weight? You must remember something.”

She sees Fahiz trying to time his next comment, his eyes shifting toward the lowering gangway.

“Three of them. One who spoke Dutch, but like a German speaks Dutch.”

She says, “You did not tell this to the police.”

He doesn’t look at her, seems not to have heard her. “I have your number. If I should remember more . . .”

“The longer your assailants remain at large, the longer you are at risk. Help us find them, and your trouble is over.”

“Once started, trouble is never over. That is a myth.” He returns her phone. Then he’s off into the departing passengers, putting a wall of flesh between them.

You owe me, echoes in her ears.

Behind him follows a man walking a twenty-year-old bicycle.

The bicycle’s rear wheel squeaks on each revolution, its rhythm steady as Knox keeps his distance behind Fahiz. He, and a few hundred others in and around Centraal Station, wears stereo earbuds on white wires. His are connected to an iPhone zippered into his Scottevest windbreaker. But Knox is not listening to Coldplay; he’s waiting for the call from Grace. He slings the camera bag over his shoulder.

Fahiz circumnavigates the station, rather than taking the shortcut through it. An interesting choice that puzzles Knox. Fahiz arrives at the outdoor tram platforms. Riders crowd the stops. Jiggering the camera bag, Knox mounts the bike and rides ahead of Fahiz and stops at a crosswalk, looking back to see Fahiz board the number 5. Knox knows the line. He can get a jump on the trolley and beat it to its first stop if the lights are favorable.

His ring tone purrs in the earbuds and he reaches into the windbreaker to connect the call, though he doesn’t answer at first.

“Clear,” comes Grace’s voice.

“Got it.”

Grace has executed a series of procedures to determine she’s not being followed and Knox trusts her. She’s as good as—or better than—him in the field, having spent a year in Chinese Army Intelligence.

Knox hangs up and dismounts the bike. The number 5 passes. He likes the bike too much to ditch it. He walks it across the pedestrian crossing, over another grouping of multiple tram tracks, and follows up a sidewalk, the bike off the curb. The island to his right is a vast construction site and parking lot behind wire fencing. Its top boundary is Prins Hendrikkade. The neighborhood is coffee shops, T-shirt stores and restaurants, all aimed at tourists. At the next light he hits speed dial and mounts the bike and rides straight.

“Go ahead,” answers the deep voice of David Dulwich.

“I’m shorthanded.”

“I arrive this evening. I’m at the Sofitel Grand on Oude-zijds Voor . . . burgwal.” The Dutch words come out sounding like a soap brand.

“I was thinking of someone half your age and twice your speed.”

“Tell me how you really feel.”

“A lot of balls in the air.”

“So hire a juggler. You have a sizable expense account.”

“Two men. Maybe three.”

“Not going to happen, unless you agree to waive half your fee.”

“Our client is rich.”

“Every client has limits. My job is to see there’s something left for Brian Primer to put on the P side of the P-and-L.”

“One more man, then.”

“You’re talking to him.”

Knox dodges a taxi and runs a red light. The street narrows a hundred meters ahead. Knox pinches the iPhone through the fabric of the windbreaker and kills the call.

—

THE TUDOR ALE HOUSEKnox has named as the meeting place has a view across the Leidsegracht canal. The magnificent canal houses are out of the nineteenth century. A slim waitress serves him. She has a platinum bob and black ceramic ear gauges the size of buffalo nickels. Without her to interrupt his fantasy, he might have been time traveling. He might have been spying on Vermeer or Jan van Goyen across the dimly lit room, with its heavy, exposed wooden beams, plank tables, wrought-iron candelabra. He can imagine a big-breasted woman wearing too much rouge delivering warm dark beer. Instead, he gets a scene-kid waitress smacking chewing gum in a room filled with people in T-shirts.

“I have caught you in meditation perhaps?” The older man with the scrubby white beard speaks his English with a Dutch accent so thick he’s hard to understand. His nose is cratered with acne scars and spiderwebbed with broken blood vessels. His ice blue eyes study Knox from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His meaty hand is inhumanly cold as they greet each other. He sits down slowly, perhaps painfully, and looks as if he could use help pulling closer to the table, but Knox fears humiliating him by offering.

“I was wishing for a different waitress,” Knox says.

“I can procure for you any girl you want. Certified clean.”