Choke Point by Ridley Pearson Page B

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.
    —
    T HE CLICK OF THE DOOR behind 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.
    —
    K NOX DRAGS THE KID by the back of his coat collar—a kid, not a grown man. Eighteen? Nineteen? Pulls him through the door of the community center.
    “What’s this?” the director asks, her voice breaking.
    Knox lifts the semi-conscious kid with one arm and deposits him into a vinyl chair. The studying students