Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 73

‘There’s a murder-for-hire team we need to find,’ Koenig said to Cunningham. ‘Help us, you walk out of here with a bleached record. Don’t, and you spend the rest of your life in this rat hole. Somewhere worse if we can find it.’

‘How the hell am I supposed to know—’

‘Rumour is it’s a father and daughter. The father has xanthophobia.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The colour yellow makes him puke like a supermodel.’

Cunningham’s eyes narrowed. Her face went hard. She either knew them or she knew of them. Looked like she was figuring out the best way to play this. She had information and they needed it. Koenig could see her cogs turning.

‘I want access to my bank accounts, and I want a new identity,’ she said. ‘And I want to be relocated. Somewhere warm.’

‘Are you fucking high?’ the AG said. ‘The deal is the deal is the deal. You either talk or you don’t. Believe me when I say I don’t give a rat’s ass what you choose. But if I were you, I’d choose quick ’cause there ain’t much sand left.’

‘I heard of ’em,’ Cunningham admitted. Beaten.

‘Anything you tell me now is covered by the agreement, Miss Cunningham. Anything we find out afterward is not.’

‘They lived under our umbrella,’ she said.

‘You let them operate?’ Koenig said. ‘In return you took a cut of their take?’

Cunningham nodded. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Start with their names.’

‘The dude’s called Stillwell Hobbs,’ Cunningham said. ‘I don’t know if it’s legit, but it’s the name he used when we met with him.’

‘His daughter?’

‘Harper Nash.’

Draper snorted. ‘Harper Nash and Stillwell Hobbs? Are you shitting me?’

‘Like I said, I ain’t sure they were their real names.’

‘Tell me about Stillwell Hobbs,’ Koenig said. ‘What does he look like? Where does he live? How do you contact him?’

Cunningham shrugged.

‘White. About five ten. Mid-forties. Balding. Normal-looking, I guess. Type of guy you wouldn’t look twice at. Which would be a mistake as he’s one of the most dangerous men in the world. I know when we met with him no one ran their mouth. You don’t disrespect a dude who knows a hundred and one ways to stop your clock.’

‘Distinguishing features?’

Cunningham looked at the table. Seemed like she was concentrating. ‘His teeth,’ she said eventually.

‘What about them?’

‘They’re rotten. All brown and uneven and chipped. Looked like he went to a Brit dentist.’

‘Hey,’ Margaret said.

Koenig didn’t respond. Bad teeth weren’t uncommon with people serious about protecting their privacy. Dentists took X-rays. Photographs. They occasionally took blood. Koenig had once used a half-bitten apple to confirm a perp’s identity. Took it from him in a diner, had it checked against his dental records, and arrested the guy that night.

‘And the girl?’ he said.

‘Skinny cold-hearted bitch,’ Cunningham replied. ‘Bunch of tattoos on her arms. Look real, not fake.’

‘What kind of tattoos?’ he asked. ‘Tribal? Portraits? Japanese? Black and grey or colour? Professional or the kind done in prison?’

‘Like the old ones sailors used to get,’ Cunningham said.

Koenig thought she meant traditional tattoos. Bold black lines and bright primary colours. Lots of anchors and women wearing oyster-shell bikinis. Roses and playing cards. They’d gone out of fashion in the 1950s but had seen a surge in popularity recently. Retro.

‘Are they covering scars?’

‘Not that I saw.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A brown birthmark.’ She touched her left cheek. Pushed her fingers up to her temple to show where it was. ‘It’s gross, like someone’s flung mud at her face. Shaped like Italy. Didn’t seem self-conscious about it, though. Guess no one was gonna laugh at her. Not twice, anyway.’ She paused. ‘I know it’s Hobbs who does the wet work, but that Harper Nash was scary as hell. A real psycho. When you find her, look in her eyes and tell me I’m wrong.’

‘That bad?’

‘When I was a kid, I wanted to be an artist,’ Cunningham said. ‘Problem was I couldn’t draw for shit. I kinda fell into the NYPD. They were recruiting and I didn’t have a job. But that girl . . . you just know killing people is what she’s always wanted to do.’

‘If you do what you love for a living, you’ll never work a day in your life?’

‘Exactly.’

‘How do people make contact with them?’

‘They don’t. Strictly by referral. And if you think they’ll accept one now, you must be stupider than you look. They’ll know we’ve been picked up, and they’ll assume we’ll be looking for things to trade. Anyway, I heard they hadn’t taken on a job in two years. Big contract.’

Draper and Koenig exchanged a glance. Carlyle looked worried. Margaret yawned. It ended with a small hiccup.

‘OK,’ Koenig said. ‘How do you make contact with them?’

‘We had set times. Two of us would go to a bar and wait.’

‘Which bar?’

‘It changed, but it was always here.’

‘New York?’

‘Well, it ain’t in the MDC. Of course New York.’

‘Talk me through it.’

‘We’d sit in a bar that was set the last time. Someone would come by our booth and drop us a note telling us where the new bar was.’

‘Why the subterfuge?’

‘We were cops, they were contract killers. I assume they wanted to make sure it wasn’t a trap.’

Koenig nodded. Hobbs and Nash were right to be cautious. Corrupt cops couldn’t be trusted. It was kind of the point.

‘But?’ Koenig said.

‘But what?’

‘The East Coast Sweeney operated for years without anyone knowing they existed. You were bad fiction.’

‘Yet here I am.’

‘You got greedy,’ Koenig said. ‘Saw an easy payday and moved before you’d done your research. Most of the time you’d have been even more careful than Hobbs and Nash. And that means, despite what they thought, you were controlling the meeting, not them. You might not have known which bar it was going to be in, but that didn’t matter, did it?’

Cunningham shook her head.

‘Because you knew where they lived. People like you don’t take chances. You can’t risk it being a setup. At the very first meeting you’ll have followed them home. Had them checked out. Maybe even surveilled them for a while. Made sure they were who they claimed to be. That about right?’

‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Answer the question,’ the AG said.

‘We followed them home,’ Cunningham admitted. ‘Watched them for a few weeks. Saw him walking that cat of his.’

‘He has a cat?’

Cunningham nodded. ‘One of those creepy-ass breeds. Bald as an egg. More wrinkles than Yoda. He follows it around the block on a leash. Looks like he’s taking his balls for a walk.’

‘Where do they live?’ Draper asked.

Cunningham told them.

‘Well, isn’t that handy,’ Koenig said.