Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

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RUSH-HOUR TRAFFICclogs Kinkerstraat as commuters use it to avoid the major surface streets out of downtown. Buses and trolleys use center lanes, choking the street to a single right of way, compounding the problem. Grace kills time at the postcard stand outside the Bruna bookstore, stealing glimpses between passing vehicles. The building across from her, just at the start of the tram stop, has a pink wall of mailboxes mounted between sets of doors. She watches long enough for someone to enter without use of a key or card.

“I am going in,” she tells Dulwich over her phone.

“Copy.”

There’s no waiting for a break in traffic. She forces herself between bumpers, hesitates as a bus growls past, and reaches the opposite curb just before a cyclist would have paved her. Donning the mind-set of a resident, she enters through the outer door, then the inner door and finally an unmarked door to the building’s stairway identified by the discolored wear in the vinyl-tile flooring. She bounds up to the landing, turns and continues to the first floor.

“I am in,” she says for the sake of her Bluetooth earpiece.

“Copy. Awaiting your confirmation.”

She looks right and assures herself the hallway is clear. Turns left toward the pair of glass doors leading out to the balcony seen from the streets. It is common to a half dozen apartments, wraps around the Kinkerstraat and Ten Katestraat sides of the building and is dotted with television satellite dishes. The architectural glass outer wall is banister height. As she moves toward Ten Katestraat, a Kelly Clarkson song rises from the market street. She looks down onto the tent roofs of the street market stalls, intent upon identifying the one selling kitchen linens. She finds it thirty meters down, recognizes it not by its contents, nor its vendor, but by the beater Volkswagen hatchback parked behind.

“Go!” she says.

“Copy.”

She steps closer to the corner, eyes down, awaiting the red baseball cap Dulwich has suggested she use to spot the runner he’s hired. The red cap enters from the canal side of the street and pushes its way into the center of the scrum. It sits atop a head connected to broad but underdeveloped shoulders. Grace can picture the acne-riddled face of a boy sixteen or seventeen. He maneuvers through the horde of late-afternoon shoppers burdened with bags of fresh vegetables and fruits. He twists and turns and creates his own lanes, rising onto tiptoe in search of the vendor. He homes in on the stall in question. Dulwich has told him what to say.

Grace moves along the balcony as she monitors him, stopping as he stops. Waiting as he waits. She steps back from the low wall, exposing as little of herself as possible.

Marta, with whom Grace is all too familiar, takes time with each customer. Finally it’s the boy’s turn. He leans over the display of place mats. Grace can’t see the vendor. He’s stuck there for a long count.

“The lady asked you for a dozen names,” the boy is saying by now. “You must give her at least three. I’m supposed to tell you things will happen if you don’t.”

Grace imagines: the boy is waiting for Marta to write down the names. The longer it stretches, the more hopeful she is that Marta has delivered.

Dulwich’s large frame doesn’t fit well in the market. He towers over the rest as he crosses through the thick crowd and vanishes beneath her. He’s to deliver a raw potato to the Volkswagen’s exhaust pipe should the boy come up empty. It will plug the car’s exhaust, choking the engine and making it impossible to start; it’s a warning shot. The repercussions will only get worse for Marta should she fail to deliver.

The signal is simple: if the boy should stay in the center of the lane, he has come up empty. If instead he heads behind the stall, accidentally bumping into Dulwich as he hurries—simultaneously passing him a list of names and addresses of young girls accepting Grace’s offer of employment—the potato remains in Dulwich’s pocket.

The red cap moves to the sidewalk. Grace looks on from above as the collision with Dulwich occurs. It’s a neat little performance by both. Though knowing what to expect, Grace misses the pass. She stays even with the red cap as it moves back toward the traffic on Kinkerstraat.

“Got it,” Dulwich confirms through the earbud.

“Copy,” she replies.

“Any tail?”

“On it.” The pent-up expectation surprises her. Scanning all four corners of the intersection as well as the entrance to Ten Katestraat and the throng of shoppers that belches into the street, she’s aware that Dulwich’s bad leg limits him to all bark and no bite. He can cover ground but cannot run, offering a form of backup but not true partnership. If she’s in this, she’s in this alone.

The two look far smaller from above than they did in the gloom of the tunnel outside the community center. She has re-imagined them as rough men when reliving the attack. But from where she stands they are just small bugs, ripe for the squashing.

“Two following,” she says for the benefit of the open phone line. “Mark is across Kinkerstraat heading south on Ten Katestraat. I am on it.”

“With you.”

Grace is down the stairs and out onto the street within seconds. She crosses Kinkerstraat’s traffic as if invisible. No horns sound. Turns down Ten Katestraat cursing the stupidity of the street kid Dulwich hired. Instead of staying on the busy sidewalks of the main avenue, he’s isolated himself and is heading into a dangerously vacant neighborhood. He compounds his problems by crossing diagonally at the next intersection and heading into an empty kiddie park, Ten Kateplein. It’s a quarter acre of pavement, slides and a spinning jungle gym. He appears to be using the park as a shortcut, but it serves to give his tails an open space to attack.

She catches up to the two black leather jackets as they reach the park entrance, a gap between a section of metal fence and stone block. From this perspective they are eerily familiar: not just shorter than full-grown adults, but walking with a cocky swagger that speaks of their immaturity.

“Geert!” she calls, not breaking stride. The name on the ID in the wallet Knox confiscated.

Geert glances furtively over his shoulder. She kicks him in the chest with the sole of her left foot and sends him ass over teakettle. The sound of his head striking the asphalt is sickening. He won’t be trouble.

The other one is fast. Two strides and he’s left her behind. A fraction of a second passes before a red baseball cap lies on the blacktop and their runner’s throat is clamped in the elbow of a leather jacket while being dragged backward. Grace marches toward the assailant.

“Any closer,” the assailant shouts, “I break his neck!”

The runner’s face turns bright red. He’s quickly deadweight in the chokehold. She checks once to make sure the first kid is still down. That felt good. Her limbs scream with adrenaline wanting an outlet.

“He is nothing to me,” she says honestly. “Do as you wish. It is you I want.” She waves him toward her, daring him. The man-child is twenty at best. His left eye is bandaged, his face scratched. His remaining eye possesses the cruelty of a person much older.

She remembers poking the eye of the one who’d groped her, savors that it has worked out this way. Suddenly possessed by an unrelenting sadism, Grace wants to torture him for what he did, sickened and embarrassed by the intimacy he presumed in touching her down there. A kick in the groin won’t do. It goes well beyond the desire to inflict pain. There’s a message that must be sent as well, a retribution. He must be taught a lesson.

His lack of one eye benefits her. She spends no time on negotiation. She leaps to his left, where he loses her to his blind spot before he overcorrects. She drives her right heel into his lower ribs, cracking them.