Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“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.

The rug shop is on Kinkerstraat, sandwiched between a bra shop and an optiek , hardly a neighborhood for upscale rugs, but then again, looking around the narrow shop, Knox realizes the rugs are more Pottery Barn than Heriz.

Gerhardt Kreiger is smoking in the back with the floor manager. Kreiger looks like a history professor in a tweed sport coat and black turtleneck. The manager needs to gain more than a few pounds. Knox searches the stock for anything of quality.

“You’re wasting my time, Gerhardt.” Knox turns for the door.

“Easy!” Kreiger has all the panache of a Buick salesman. “Not these! Wait, my friend.” Gerhardt hasn’t had a friend since 1978. He sidles up to Knox. “This is our gallery, nothing more. Patience, please.”

It isn’t going the way Knox had hoped. He’d wanted a tour of the facility and says so. “As much as I appreciate you, Gerhardt, I’d hoped to talk directly with the seller.”