Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 7

‘This goes to trial, you’re coming in second,’ Detective Mallinson said. ‘There’s no way a New York jury finds for you.’

‘My colleague’s right, Mr Koenig,’ Detective Wagstaff added. ‘Don’t matter what fancy-ass trick your lawyer pulls, they’re gonna find for the DA. Juries always do when a cop’s been killed. Makes ’em feel safer. That usually means life without the possibility of parole. Come clean now, though, and you might get out before you’re eighty.’

Mallinson and Wagstaff had been interviewing Koenig for an hour. Mallinson was wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and a stained tie. Looked like coffee. Wasn’t the worst cop Koenig had met, wasn’t the best. Wagstaff had a Van Dyke beard, trimmed and dyed. He seemed the smarter of the two. Koenig got the impression neither he nor Mallinson liked Beetle-Brow and his crew. Probably didn’t even know why. Corrupt cops gave off a vibe other cops could sense. Like when you knew which dog was going to bite and which one wasn’t. They were still cops, though. The blue shield covered them all.

The interview room was small and boxy. Drab but functional. A table bolted to the floor, two light chairs on the cops’ side, a welded bench on Koenig’s. The bench had an eyebolt, and his handcuffs were threaded through it. They’d exchanged his rigid arrest cuffs for a pair with a longer chain. Meant he could take a drink from the beaker of dusty water they’d put in front of him. A dome camera stuck to the ceiling like a shiny wart. Koenig could see three microphones but assumed there’d be more he couldn’t. Courts had ruled the NYPD were allowed covert mics in interview rooms.

‘What time is it?’ Koenig said.

‘That’s the third time you’ve asked what the goddamned time is,’ Mallinson said. ‘The time is whatever the hell I tell you it is. That’s what time it is.’

Koenig nodded. ‘I agree that time is an artificial construct,’ he said. ‘That it’s just an illusion of memories. If the human brain didn’t have memories, time as we know it wouldn’t exist. We would live in a succession of nows.’ He took a sip of water. ‘Did you know there’s a clock that’s so accurate it only loses one second every fifteen billion years?’

Wagstaff sighed. ‘You may not believe me, Mr Koenig, but we’re trying to do you a favour. We know Cunningham and her crew are douchebags. Everyone in this precinct knows they’re douchebags. And I have no doubt that they were up to something they shouldn’t have been. No way do the four of them decide to meet for a coffee at an internet café. Not on their day off. Not unless those places pay you to drown cats.’

He paused a couple of beats and, in a well-rehearsed move, Mallinson took over. ‘Maybe they ripped you off, maybe they did something else. But can we at least agree that what you did was a staggering overreaction?’

Koenig said, ‘What time is it, please?’

Wagstaff threw up his hands. ‘If I tell you the goddamned time, will you tell us what happened in that goddamned parking lot?’

‘No,’ Koenig replied. ‘But I will tell you what’s going to happen next.’