Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 30

All eyes turned to Koenig and Danielle as they stepped into Big City Nights. The chatter stopped. Only the soccer commentator kept talking. Koenig studied the bar’s clientele. Saw that ‘all eyes’ wasn’t the same amount as the number of people multiplied by two.

There was a guy at the bar who only had one.

Koenig wondered how he’d lost it. Not well, judging by the lumpy scar tissue in and around his eye socket. He’d replaced it with a ball bearing. Koenig was sure it was supposed to look menacing. Probably was in his social circle. All Koenig saw was someone with compromised vision. Monocular instead of binocular. Limited depth perception. A reduced ability to judge spatial distance. Probably why the bar didn’t have a dartboard or a pool table. Games like that need two eyes. One-Eye looked like he was in charge, and that meant if he couldn’t play, no one could.

One-Eye was a big man, bigger than the Jolly Green Giant. Six and a half foot in his bare feet. Bulky. Prison muscles, Koenig thought. The kind of man who found employment as someone else’s blunt instrument. His face looked like it had been riveted together from scrap iron. Crudely shaved head. Looked like a badly plucked chicken. Lots of nicks, as if the razor had been blunt. He had the swollen knuckles of a brawler. He was probably effective against other brawlers. Put him up against a professional boxer, though, and he’d lose every time. He’d be too slow. Wild haymakers. No footwork, no balance. Just rage.

Nothing subtle.

Which as a metaphor for the bar was perfect.

Because Big City Nights was as subtle as a five-foot wrench. It didn’t even have a bar. Not in the traditional sense. What Big City Nights had was scaffolding boards nailed onto stacked pallet crates. Three stacks. Two at each end, one in the middle to stop the boards sagging. The kind of hipster bullshit found in Greenwich Village. Where interior designers were paid thousands to get an edgy-but-safe look.

There was a metal bucket perched at one end of the makeshift bar. It was big and round and looked like the kind of thing farmers used to feed livestock. Pigs, not chickens. It was full of half-melted ice and cans of beer. Some cigarette butts. None of those woke ideas like fridges for Big City Nights. The floor was stickier than a fly trap.

There were no windows in Big City Nights. It was a square room. Like a holding cell. Or a drunk tank. It had probably been part of the bookmaker’s or the doughnut shop before it was annexed. The metal door was the only way in and out. Big City Nights was less welcoming than a do not stop for hitchhikers sign. It was the most unfriendly bar Koenig had ever been in, and he’d spent time in Paris.

Unless there was someone in the bathroom – which seemed unlikely; there wasn’t one – there were five people in the bar. One-Eye, the bartender, and three men seated around a table that looked like it had come from a yard sale. They were playing three-card brag. Idiot’s poker.

‘What would you like to drink?’ Koenig said to Danielle.

‘What are my choices?’

Koenig cast his eyes behind the barman to the shelf where the whiskies and gins and vodkas were usually kept. All he saw was a bunch of dead flies and a mangy cat. It was either asleep or dead. It certainly wasn’t moving.

‘Beer or nothing, I think,’ he said.

‘Beer’s fine.’

‘Two,’ he said to the bartender. ‘And I don’t suppose you have any Sam Adams cooling in the back?’

The bartender replied by pointing a remote at the TV on the wall and muting the soccer game. ‘We’re closed,’ he said.

‘That’s a real shame,’ Koenig said. ‘This place looks so kitsch .’

‘We’re closed,’ the bartender said again.

‘And I say you’re not. I say you’re not being hospitable to strangers. I’m not sure I like how that makes me feel.’

The bartender looked to One-Eye for instructions. One-Eye shrugged. The bartender reached across and fished two cans from the farmer’s bucket. He slammed them on the makeshift bar.

‘Not those two,’ Koenig said. ‘I’d like ones that aren’t going to spurt everywhere. I’d hate to damage the wood.’

‘Who are you?’ the bartender asked.

‘Nobody,’ Koenig said. ‘I’m nobody, you’re nobody, the three gentlemen playing cards are nobodies.’ He faced One-Eye. ‘But you, sir, I think you might be someone.’

‘Depends,’ One-Eye said.

‘On?’

‘On who’s asking.’

‘I’ve told you,’ Koenig said. ‘I’m no one.’

‘And what do you want, Mr No One? You might be a Yank, but you don’t look like no tourist.’

‘I have a problem you might be able to help me with.’

‘How?’

‘I need hardware.’

‘A gun?’

‘ Guns ,’ Koenig confirmed. ‘Plural. And I’m a cash buyer.’

‘Guns are illegal in this country.’

‘Which is why I’m not shopping at Walmart.’

‘Walmart is definitely illegal in this country.’

‘Can you help, or do I need to go elsewhere?’

One-Eye paused. Narrowed his eye until it was a slit. ‘You don’t look like filth,’ he said.

‘I have a wash every Sunday,’ Koenig said. ‘Even if I’m not dirty.’

‘Not filthy . Filth. A pig. Five-O, as you fucking Yanks say.’ He inclined his head towards Danielle. ‘She stinks of bacon, though. Stinks of bacon so much she’s making me hungry.’

‘We’re not cops,’ Koenig said.

‘You sure? Cos you know you have to tell me if you are. Otherwise, it’s entrapment.’

‘We’re not cops,’ Koenig repeated.

‘Let her answer,’ the brawler said. ‘That way it’s all nice and legal.’

‘I’m not, and never have been, a cop,’ Danielle said without missing a beat.

She said it so convincingly even Koenig believed her. He reckoned she’d been undercover before. Lying like your life depended on it became second nature when you wore two hats. And it was surprising how many idiots believed the entrapment thing. Of course undercover cops were allowed to lie about not being cops.

‘Something isn’t adding up, though,’ One-Eye said. ‘My Spidey senses are tingling.’

Koenig sighed. Convincing a bunch of lowlifes to sell guns to a stranger was never the plan. Not in a gun-phobic country like the UK. Men like this were stupid, but they had animal-like cunning. If it were a choice between making a thousand bucks or going down for twenty years, well, that was no choice at all. Koenig knew that. Just like he knew that the men playing cards had stopped playing. They had gone from playing three-card brag to whispering excitedly. He’d said he was a cash buyer. It was possible they thought they had someone to rob. An easy mark for guys like them. Take the money, leave him in the gutter, bleeding. Do the same to the woman. Equal opportunity assholes.

But it could have been something else. One of the men at the table, a man with a pockmarked face and hair that stuck up like a toilet brush, was staring at Koenig, but trying to make it look like he wasn’t. He then tapped something into his cell phone. Koenig heard a whoosh as he pressed send.

A fraction of a second later, One-Eye’s phone beeped. Koenig didn’t carry a cell phone, but he knew what an incoming SMS alert sounded like. A bunch of 1s and 0s had gone from the pockmarked guy’s phone to One-Eye’s phone. Unless it was a coincidence. Koenig knew coincidences happened all the time. Mark Twain’s birth and death dates coincided with Halley’s Comet. Without any planning, the first and last British soldiers to die in the First World War were buried next to each other. But Koenig had been a federal agent. Coincidences were a lazy explanation. He reached behind and lifted his jacket free of his Fairbairn–Sykes.

One-Eye glanced at the screen, then frowned. He then looked at Koenig. His expression changed. Went from suspicious to welcoming. Which was the most suspicious thing he could have done. Koenig readied himself.

‘My name’s Stan,’ he said. ‘ Steeleye Stan.’

He said it like he was James Bond, then waited. Clearly, Koenig was supposed to ask a question. Koenig didn’t.

‘For obvious reasons,’ Stan added.

‘Oh, you have a ball bearing instead of an eye,’ Koenig said. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’