Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

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 Against the wall are long-outdated computers, their screens glowing.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 DOORbehind 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.