Choke Point gc&jk-2 Page 16

  Do the math, Knox wants to say. If this man is Maja’s father, he was a father at fourteen. He’s darkly complected, with a nearly shaved head and a heavy shadow of beard. Greek? Turk? Slavic? Mixed blood. A Euro mutt with dead, angry eyes. It’s the face of the enemy and Knox identifies it as such immediately, reacts to it viscerally. Coughs again, taking another photo. He simultaneously memorizes the mobile number listed among the man’s information, wondering if it’s legitimate. Could they get that kind of break?

  The head of school pulls the monitor back. “I cannot give out such information, of course.”

  “If it means possibly rescuing these girls?”

  “To the police, of course.”

  “They are not involved yet,” Sonia presses. “Whereas, I am . . . we are.” She indicates Knox. “I am able to operate in ways the police cannot, as I’m sure you understand. This hastens certain investigative avenues that become restrictive for the police.” While Galbraith considers this, Sonia continues. “How trustworthy is this individual’s phone number?”

  “As to that,” the woman says, “it would have been verified at the time of registration.”

  “Verified?” Knox says, unaware of a mobile phone registry.

  “We had . . . that is, the Amsterdam school system . . . There was a child pornography ring. They used one or two girls . . . horrible acts.” She closes her eyes, recovers slowly. “For the photographs.” She looks at Knox’s camera. “They used dozens—hundreds—of local girls’ faces. Digitally pasted onto the bodies to give variety to their customers. It was discovered that some of the head shots were taken on school grounds. Photographs taken primarily by mobile phone. It prompted a regulation to account for the mobile numbers of all registered visitors.”

  “So that number is valid?” Sonia asks anxiously.

  “It was at the time of registration. Our receptionist personally calls the mobile at the time of registration. It was a horrible—despicable—case. Girls who’ve never been compromised in any way made to look like willing participants. The parents . . .”

  “I remember the story,” Sonia says. “I would very much appreciate his phone number, Ms. Galbraith. I can do much more, far more, and much faster if I’m in possession of that number.”

  Knox has the number memorized. He wants to prompt her, but there’s no opportunity. Sonia and Galbraith battle over the good of the whole weighed against an individual’s privacy. It’s too socialistic an argument for Galbraith. She works the keyboard, closing the file, no doubt.

  “You will have to obtain this information another way.”

  “What other way?” Sonia objects. “It’s a face. An unremarkable face at that. Every girl used by them is subjected to the disgrace and abuse you’ve just outlined for us. Certainly you see your own hypocrisy?”

  “I will, of course, cooperate fully with the police. I promise to contact them immediately. It’s the best I can do. You must have sources within the police?”

  She’s not only holding a gun to their heads, but has started a clock running as well.

  “Might I suggest Chief Inspector Joshua Brower?” Knox’s speaking seems to surprise Galbraith.

  “By all means,” Galbraith answers.

  “Yes,” says an incredulous Sonia, “by all means.”

  It was John Knox speaking, not Steele. He curses himself, but sees no reason to backtrack.

  Sonia returns her attention to the head of school. “I cannot believe you would not have the child’s best interest at heart,” she says. “This will be reflected in my article. You understand?”

  “I understand, Ms. Pangarkar, that my obligation is first and foremost to the child’s family and the proper authorities, and so alerted I now intend to follow through with precisely those responsibilities. Providing the man’s personal information to the press could hardly be called responsible or proper. However you choose to report that, I trust you will at least keep this in mind. And now if you both will excuse me, I have calls to make.”

  Sonia is unaccustomed to losing; it’s a side of her Knox has not witnessed. He would not like to find himself on that side—he recognizes the fury of the scorned when he sees it. He takes her gently by the arm and she looks down at his grip spitefully. He lets her go.

  He’d like to review what just happened. Not Sonia.

  She’s gone.

  Knox occupies the seat of the motorcycle across the canal from Kreiger’s latest hangout: a coffee shop/pot bar in the red-light district. A cold drizzle falls causing him to wipe the visor of his helmet. It’s not wet enough to want to get out of it, but he’s hardly dry. It’s nearing the lunch hour; Kreiger isn’t in there to get high. It’s business.

  Three days of following the man and it’s apparent to Knox that Kreiger has his hand in everything the city has to offer: a company offering walking tours; a private brothel where Kreiger keeps an office. This is the man’s third visit to a “coffee shop” in as many days. The previous two he entered alone and left with a young woman. The city is working to eliminate the coffee shops and clean up the red-light district, a plan that can’t sit well.

  Knox switches out SIM cards and texts Sonia if she wants to meet for lunch. She’s been writing around the clock and could use the break. She texts back that she needs to keep working, showing her true colors. He envies her that kind of singular focus. He’s more of a Ping-Pong ball in a cardboard box. The stakeout on Kreiger has tested him. It’s getting time to bust some heads and take shortcuts. He understands why police detectives are such assholes.

  —

  “YOU’RE SCREWING HER, AREN’T YOU?” His only meeting with Dulwich in the past seventy-two hours. “That’s a mistake.” They’re customers in a brown café near the Van Gogh Museum. Tourists go in every direction. Cabs are queued up. There are more people in the bar from the UK than the Netherlands.

  “That’s indelicate,” Knox says.

  “Find yourself another hole.”

  “And again.” Knox fights the urge to jump across the table and shut him up.

  “She’s a source. The most important source we have. What happens when it goes south?” he asked rhetorically.

  “Such confidence.”

  “We can’t lose her, Knox. She’s at the center of this storm.”

  “I won’t lose her.” He adds, “You’ve had that phone number for three days. What the hell?”

  “We’re using our Paris office. They’re on it. The chip is a pay-as-you-go just like yours and mine.”

  “So map it.”

  “I said they’re on it. When they have something, we’ll have it.”

  “That’s actionable intelligence,” Knox says. “Three days.”

  “End it, nice and gentle, or you’ll find yourself on a plane to Detroit.”

  “If I end it, we have problems. It wasn’t planned, and we aren’t . . . we aren’t sleeping together. Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “Don’t go all Bill Clinton on me.”

  Dulwich relates Grace’s theory about Kreiger’s using the money trail to hide behind.

  “Where does she get this stuff?” Knox asks.

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “It’s a blind?”

  “It’s a possibility he’s using it as one. Yes.”

  “So we treat Kreiger as hostile. That’s where he was anyway. No change.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I sit on him until something better comes along.”

  “And you stop her from sitting on you,” Dulwich says.

  “You’re not going to enjoy where this goes if you keep that up.”

  A table of women laugh from the corner. One of them makes eyes at Knox, causing Dulwich to moan like he’s sick.

  “Have you ever had to work for anything in your life?” Dulwich asks.

  He’s ruined the moment. Knox can think only of Tommy, of all the work that has gone into saving for his brother’s independence, of how far there is to go. He guzzles some beer. Dulwich notes
the change from sipping.

  “We’ll find her,” he says. Dulwich isn’t referring to the knot shop.

  “Soon, or it’ll all be spent.”

  “She’s an accountant—”

  “A bookkeeper.”

  “She’ll invest it. Purchase assets. It won’t be spent frivolously. We’ll regain ninety percent or better.”

  “Your lips . . .”

  “Trust me.”

  Knox polishes off the beer and sets the stein down heavily. Says nothing. Doesn’t offer to pay. Never looks back on his way out.

  Grace’s plan is fraught with risk. Knox wishes he and Sarge had spent less time on his sex life and more on how to best protect her. His concern for her takes a backseat to the embezzlement. He stews on establishing priorities as he endures the drizzle.

  Across the street, Kreiger is on the move.

  —

  KREIGER LEAVES THE COFFEE SHOP with yet another young woman and they walk up the street to his electric silver Volvo C30. The car pulls out and Knox parallels him across the canal. Knox has left two messages for the man and has yet to hear back. If any of the man’s appointments have to do with Knox’s purchase, Knox has yet to make a connection.

  With his earlier two attempts to follow the Volvo botched because of traffic and weather, Knox tightens the distance of the current tail. He backs off only at traffic lights. He detours to avoid a jam and ends up getting ahead of Kreiger, allowing himself to wait for the Volvo to retake him. The tactic works: he’s got the Volvo in sight five minutes later as it slows for a parking space. Knox knows the final destination, having been here before. He drives past.

  PRIVAAT CLUB

  NATUURHONIG

  The engraved plaque is mounted to the left of the stone stairs leading to the canal house’s imposing front door. Knox has passed close enough to read it only once, and that was three days earlier. Natural Honey. It’s the whorehouse where Kreiger keeps an office.

  “Kreiger’s earlier stops make sense now,” Knox tells Sarge over the phone, watching the club from a distance. “The coffee shops sell drugs. Teens from all over Europe arrive in droves, get high and expect to find work. Instead, they run out of money, some more quickly than others. What better place than the coffee shops to recruit girls for a sex club? The manager keeps his eye out, calls Kreiger, and Kreiger pimps the girl to the club, taking a cut of her earnings.”

  “Unless he owns the club in the first place.”

  “There’s that, too.”

  “Can you get in there?”

  “The only thing private about the club is the cover charge. Fifty euros to get through the door. Helps keep the window gawkers from Oudezijds Achterburgwal out.”

  “Your accent’s improving.”

  “Kreiger knows me. If I’m spotted, I’m busted. But if I make a date with him that takes him away from the club . . .”

  “If you’re asking me to volunteer, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

  “Your job is Kreiger. I will set up a meet. You’re my backer and you’re sick and tired of all the delays with the rug deal. It’s either yes or no, but you’re not waiting around. It guarantees he’s out of the building. Grace and I do this together: a couple shopping for a threesome. I get the office open, Grace does whatever she does and we find out if Kreiger is our guy.”

  “Fahiz identified his attackers as two Caucasians. Not Muslim, or Turks or Russians. Kreiger’s Caucasian.”

  “That hasn’t slipped my mind,” Knox says.

  “But it’s too easy. We both know that,” Dulwich states.

  “We do.”

  “Shit like this doesn’t drop into your lap.”

  “Grace teed it up for us. We have to swing at this one in order to get a mulligan.” It was unfair but necessary to manipulate Dulwich through his love for golf. “We know it was his cash that reached the trigger man. It’s not a matter of going after Kreiger, it’s how—as a somewhat innocent bystander, or the big dick. Big difference.”

  “I’d rather be the one doing the legwork. Why don’t you take Kreiger?”

  “Who is going to buy you and Grace as a couple?”

  “Up yours.”

  “He hasn’t been answering my calls, so it may all be moot, but I’m sure he’s getting them. If you imply it’s now or never—”

  “It is now or never,” Dulwich says.

  “But maybe not for him. I’ll let you know.”

  The last time we were together in a place like this, it did not work out so well.” Grace’s nervousness manifests itself as tightness in her body, even her voice.

  “You’re walking like a robot. Loosen up. Remember, this is exciting for us. We are flush with anticipation.”

  She snorts. “I may look the part, but I do not feel it. Do not set your expectations too high, John.”

  “So noted.”

  “Not exactly my area of expertise.”

  They’ve taken the usual precautions in order to be together. Grace has gone one step further—she has found herself a leather miniskirt, and a metallic gray silk shirt that’s unbuttoned to her navel. She’s wrapped in a silver trench coat and completes the look with black spike heels that give her the calves of a supermodel. He catches himself looking over at her yet again, not seeing her as a colleague, and looks away.

  “You apparently like robots.”

  “Busted.”

  “I am flattered.”

  “You’re nervous.”

  Of course I am. Another woman? “A threesome? I am not this woman, John.”

  “I’m open to suggestions. We can still call it off. I can do this alone, if you can coach me through the IT stuff.”

  “No one is requiring this. I will do what the job requires of me.”

  Over the course of the next city block, she transforms. It is the butterfly appearing from the chrysalis. There’s a definite, defiant swing to her walk, and her spine straightens. Her posture is aggressive, but also alluring—even the sound of her high heels on the concrete is different, more certain, more determined. She has entered the zone.

  —

  GRACE IS WORRIED ABOUT HIM. She has witnessed his Messiah complex. Though honorable, it has no place here. They aren’t here to save a prostitute. Together, they must buy each other time. She has set herself to that goal. She would like to avoid getting naked in front of Knox, though she’s no prude. Her earlier sexual encounter at the hotel has prepared her well; nothing could be worse than an unfulfilling lay with a stranger.

  Her focus must remain on the IT needs of the operation. Knox’s job is to get her into the office; once there, the real challenge begins. Will there be a computer in the office? Wireless or Ethernet? Physical files to copy? A landline telephone?

  She carries listening devices, line taps and cameras to install—all in a purse slung over her shoulder. The items are hidden in the bottom of her bag beneath a camisole, a cordless vibrator and a riding crop. She is a one-woman wrecking ball.

  She mentally choreographs each phase of the operation. Her mathematical mind serves her well. Without any knowledge of what the room will look like, she nonetheless visualizes each stage of the job, rehearsing it. Knox has given her a limit of twenty minutes, promising to occupy their willing partner at least this long. It is barely enough, given so many unknowns. An hour would have been more comfortable—an hour with a team of two or three, better yet. She enters the job knowing they will not get everything they are after, that they will have to settle for less. She hates such compromise.

  Knox pays the fifty euros to a fabulous beauty in a Pulp Fiction platinum wig and an elegant evening dress that shows off an abundance of smooth cleavage and nut-hard nipples that could be pasties. She has the body of a lingerie model, and the smile of a quiz-show hostess. Knox’s gaze lingers a little too long on the cleavage; Grace is unsure if it’s intentional or not.

  The interior of the house is more contemporary than clubby. Dance music plays in the parlor to the right where a half dozen extr
emely young women show off their wares by dancing together. The smell of pot and tobacco commingle. Nonsmoking is the room to the left, where love seats, couches and coffee tables break the room up into more intimate spaces. The lighting is low and warm. A self-serve liquor bar and small buffet table divide the room. The management is smart: the couches are not crowded with girls. Instead, there are three or four in the room at a time, rotating constantly from a pool of girls at the back of the house. The exchange is done naturally. It doesn’t come off as a parade, nor a runway, but feels more like a cocktail party that is moving between rooms.

  The girls are young and very pretty, well groomed and fashionably dressed. Grace feels old by comparison. For everything it tries not to be, it is nonetheless a meat market: blondes, redheads, brunettes; skinny, plump, plus-sized; flat, busty, leggy, tough, cuddly. Grace has always admired the artistry of women’s bodies. God was having a good day when he created woman. Regardless of taste, a man—or woman—could find the look of choice here. Everything is engineered to seduction. She is excited, aroused even. She can only imagine the conflict in Knox—rage versus desire. Repugnance mixed with hormones. Hell for him. Only now does she realize how difficult it must be for him to participate.

  Grace clutches his arm. He guides her to a couch. She holds the short skirt as she sits, the hem rides up to where the slightest movement of her legs will flash her red lace panties.

  Knox brings her a vodka on the rocks with a twist, three fingers deep. He has poured himself a single malt. She has to watch herself with the vodka; it can go down too easily.

  They make small talk with a very well put-together brunette who goes by the name Usha. They begin in Dutch, but her Slavic accent makes her incomprehensible. Grace attempts Russian, but they soon settle on English so Knox can participate.

  “You are together,” the woman says, as if in surprise.

  “We like adventure,” Knox says.

  “Don’t we all?” the woman returns.

  “Do you like adventure, Usha?” Knox asks. He takes hold of Grace’s free hand to make the request more obvious.