Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“Can she be moved?”

“Yes,” Knox answers.

Dulwich drags the unconscious realtor to inside the darkened stairwell leading to the parking lot.

“There’s a guy out back changing a tire,” Knox hollers. “Or he was.”

“Got it.”

Dulwich leaves the realtor in a pile. She’ll awaken soon and take off—won’t dare head back inside.

Dulwich crosses back and hoists Grace into his arms. He stands.

“Brower?” Knox says. “The shots could have been heard.”

“Doubtful. I didn’t hear them,” Dulwich says. “A big no to Brower. Grace and I are wanted for questioning. Don’t worry about Grace. We have friends who can help her.” He turns Grace toward the door he came through. “Put the prints on this guy when you’re done with him. Wipe down the jack.” By not speaking what is on both their minds, Dulwich has given Knox carte blanche to interrogate the one who shot Grace.

“Thanks,” Knox says.

—

“WHERE AM I?”She speaks Chinese. Corrects herself to English, repeating the question.

Knox answers in Shanghainese. “You will heal.”

“Smells like a dentist’s office,” Grace says.

“She knows what she’s doing. Sarge arranged it. She’s a legitimate surgeon. And yes, it is a dentist’s office. Two to three weeks, you’re on your feet again.”

“So long?”

“You were very lucky. Could have been far worse.”

“We do not have three weeks.”

“Not your problem. You need to rest.”

“You waited for me to awake,” she says. It just comes out of her; she attributes it to the medication.

Knox says nothing at first. He looks at her and smiles. “Wanted to see if you’d cry.”

“Sure,” she says.

“You didn’t,” Knox says in the warmest voice he’s ever used with her.

“You should go. With all that happened . . . They could pack up and move.”

“It’s Fahiz.” He explains it to her. “They don’t know what happened. Not yet. At best they have a pair of men missing.”

“What about Ms. Pangarkar?”

Knox winces. She sees deadness in his eyes, a mixture of grief and regret. She wants to ask him to explain, but lacks the strength. “That’s a disconnect,” he says.

“You must get me my computer. I can help you.”

“You need to rest.”

She repeats herself. “I am close. More information will be coming from Hong Kong. Between Kreiger and the attack on my laptop . . . You were told of the camera registration?”

“Sarge caught me up.”

“I can help. From the bed. As I am.”

“We’ll move you to a houseboat.”

“By now Marta—the street vendor—will have completed her list for me. One of the mothers on that list will take cash for information.”

“Good to know.”

Knox is not about to go door-to-door. She can hear it, see it. He shot a man. She doesn’t dare ask what happened to the man who shot her.

“He was muscle,” Knox says. She feels a chill at the coincidence of thought. “The one I shot was a driver. The other guy mentioned a van. A white van. He rode in the back with the girls. They move the girls to a safe house each night. It’s on a canal. He didn’t know which canal. He was useless.”

“Not entirely.”

“No, not entirely. He was inside the shop daily. Gave me a decent description. That could help.”

She doesn’t ask about the outcome of the man he interrogated. She doesn’t want to know. As much as she wants the fieldwork, there are places people like Dulwich and Knox will go that she will not. If that disqualifies her, then so be it.

“Is it Pangarkar? What is troubling you?”

He smirks. “What could possibly be troubling me?”

“What is her status, John?”

“AWOL,” he says.

“You have every right to be worried.”

She has upset him. Whether the drugs, the shock or exhaustion, she feels something she can’t decipher.

“My computer,” she says.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“They will not kill a journalist,” she says, the devil’s ventriloquist. “We know them to be smart, John.” She adds, “She is also smart, eh? This is not to be overlooked.”

Dulwich enters. He has been on the phone with Hong Kong continuously.

“We’re done here,” Dulwich announces.

Knox stands there, paralyzed.

“How can they do that?” Grace asks like a defense attorney.

“The client is satisfied with Brian’s decision to turn it over to the Dutch. Given all the data we’ve collected and our collateral losses,” he says, looking down at Grace, “it’s the right call.”

“Bullshit,” Knox says, spittle flying off his lips.

“Of course it’s bullshit,” Dulwich says, aiming at disarming Knox. “It’s the bullshit I’m paid to say, and the bullshit you’re paid to do. Happy clients mean more business. This is over. Brian wants us out of here before he has to explain your death to Tommy.”

“And you?” Knox says. “What do you want?”

“Don’t push it.”

“Sonia’s in the wind.”

“And no one saw that coming.”

“Stop.” Grace can see the fight about to erupt. She manages to sit up, but the pain is excruciating. The two men face each other like wild boars, paws scraping the dirt. “Time line?”

“Less than twenty-four,” Dulwich says, never taking his eyes off Knox. “They’re sending the jet. Coming up from Istanbul. Late afternoon. Early evening at the latest.”

“We make use of this time,” Grace says, concentrating on Knox. “We do not waste it having such arguments.”

Knox reminds Dulwich of the promise of backup teams if the case progressed.

Dulwich responds, “What case? The client is satisfied.”

“Will he be satisfied when the journalist who started all this is found floating in a canal?”

“She’s smarter than that. She’ll attack with words.”

“Which will require an interview.”

“Which he won’t give,” Dulwich says. “Collaring a guy like this is going to take the Dutch . . . Interpol . . . who the hell knows?”

“She will press this. She has a number he checks.”

“We have most of a day,” Grace interjects. “We should be planning, not arguing! You two are idiots.”

“You don’t know her,” Knox tells Dulwich, who can barely contain himself.

“Not like you do.”

“Will someone please get me my laptop?” Grace hesitates. “Now!”

It breaks the mesmerism. The two men stop the staring contest.

“Late afternoon, early evening,” Dulwich repeats.

“We’ll see.”

Well, that complicates things.”

The two men have moved Grace from the surgery to a hostel west of downtown in the Audi. It’s a bare-bones backpack establishment with a kid in dreads behind the counter, ten minutes from the KLM Jet Center FBO used by corporate jets.

They’ve taken a room with a set of bunk beds and an open-shelf dresser that holds a sink basin. The mirror is bolted to the wall. The room is registered under a Dulwich alias.

Grace was carried up a back stairwell by Knox, the limping Dulwich trailing. That Dulwich curses his failure to heal completely goes unspoken. He’s boiling over on a daily basis, no more so than at times like this when Knox can do what he cannot.

The door is closed and locked. At Grace’s request Knox has taken ten minutes to splice into a co-ax cable found in the hung ceiling. He seems impressed Grace would know such a cable would be found there, impressed that she understands it will provide them access to the hostel’s closed-circuit security cameras.