Brooklyn Knight (28 page)

Knight thanked LaRaja for the information with honest sincerity. The potion the professor had spiked the meeting-room water with had almost completely worn off, at least as far as Klein was concerned. He had not heard anything of the agent’s thoughts since the episode with Bakur. The
back of Knight’s mind was, however, still filled with the thoughts of Abigail Brinkley. The museum’s director had downed three glasses of water during the meeting, taking one back to her office with her when their meeting finally broke up.

I swear
, Knight mused to himself,
if she doesn’t solve the overwhelming problem of whether to go strapless or not to the Weinstein formal, I may have to drive a pencil into my ear simply for the relief.
Attempting to distract himself from such thoughts, the professor asked the detective about the facility in question.

“The whole place is one big wilderness,” LaRaja told him. “I used to do National Guard training there.”

“Really,” quipped Knight, trying to hide a smile. “I didn’t know the Guard dated back to the Civil War.” Ignoring the professor, the detective turned to Bridget instead, saying;

“And this is how he treats those trying to help him. Do take note.”

“I’ve known him less than half a week, and believe me, I’ve already filled half a notebook.” Although he knew she was teasing, the detective did not smile back at her. Instead, he shot her a knowing, sour look, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at Knight as he advised the redhead to;

“Refer to it often. It’ll come in handy if you’re going to continue to hang around with the likes of him.” Then, finally turning back to the professor, LaRaja added; “Anyway, wise guy, just to let you know, the whole get-the-damn-thing-out-of-the-city-and-away-from-people idea has been covered. Also, the place is the home of the 10th Mountain Division and the 42nd; that was my Guard division.”

“And that means?”

“And that means, young lady, that there’s never less than ten thousand military personnel on hand at any one time. Considering that both units store all their weapons there, and that includes a
large number of Bradleys and Abrams—” Bridget’s eyes filled with such immediate confusion that the detective stopped to explain;

“The latest in armored personnel carriers and tanks. Anyway, my point is if that thing can’t be protected there, I don’t know where else it would be any safer.”

“Oh, I agree,” said Knight honestly. “I’m just happy it’s out of the city.”

“Klein also said the people he has tailing both Bakur and Ungari report that neither one of them has done much of anything suspicious since they left the museum.” As the three got into LaRaja’s vehicle, Knight pulled at his chin as he mused;

“Nothing that would look suspicious to the untrained eye, anyway.”

“Now there,” said the detective, “is one of those statements that just beg to be questioned.” His hand falling away from his keys, he listened to them squeak as they rocked back and forth hanging from the car’s unengaged ignition. Turning across to the professor, who had chosen the front seat, leaving the back for Bridget, LaRaja asked;

“So tell me, Piers, just exactly what kind of training is it you think you have that the FBI is lacking?”

Knight sighed softly, wondering what exactly to say in response. He had already divulged far more to his assistant than he would usually ever admit to most people.

“For once something is simply too big for you to hide away from it. There is something terribly wrong with all this business, and if you do nothing, good people will suffer. Don’t make me quote Edmund Burke. I will, you know.” Facing LaRaja, the professor told him;

“I promise you, all will be answered once we get to where we’re going this evening. I’m hoping to be able to simply show you what I’m talking about, but if when we arrive at our destination,
if there is nothing to show you, then I will endeavor to explain myself. Although, frankly, that way will be far more unsatisfactory, and most likely leave you unconvinced.”

“One picture,” added Bridget suddenly, “is worth a thousand words, Officer.”

LaRaja pursed his lips, staring at the young woman in his backseat. In his mind, the detective knew he had to play that evening Knight’s way. By breaking protocol, by agreeing to work outside the department’s knowledge, he had placed himself in the professor’s hands. It was the kind of thing he would never do without a staggeringly important reason. Discovering what really had happened in the property room, to his best friend, in the lobby of the Brooklyn Museum—all of that was important enough, LaRaja decided, to give Knight at least one more day’s breathing room. Nodding to Bridget, acknowledging the truth of her statement, the detective turned back to the professor with one last question.

“Okay, we can let that one pass for now. But tell me, Piers,” he asked, “answer this one puzzler. The Dream Stone might be safely upstate now. But how is our boy supposed to know the thing isn’t here in the city anymore? What’s to keep him from launching another attack on the museum anyway?”

“Detective,” started Knight slowly, his tone suggesting he might be a tad uncertain as to how he should proceed, “the answer to that question also has a great deal to do with why I wanted to see you tonight.” As the awkward silence between the two men suddenly grew a touch uncomfortable once more, Bridget leaned forward, offering;

“Officer LaRaja, I know the professor is asking a lot of you. You wanted to be wherever the Dream Stone is because you want to pay back whoever it was that killed your partner. You gave up that chance to help us, without any explanations. Now, you would like a few. Am I right?”

“Do you blame me?”

“No, sir,” answered Bridget. “But I know what the professor is hoping we can do tonight. All I want to say is, something happened to us that … how to say it? If … if I’d been told what was going to happen, I don’t think I would have handled it very well. I would have doubted it actually happened, because I would have suspected that I wanted to witness such a thing so badly that I made it happen in my mind.”

“What my assistant is trying to say,” said Knight, “is that I’m hoping the same thing that happened to us will happen to you tonight. My first reason is that if you see what we saw, that further confirms that we actually did see it.” The professor paused for a moment, then added;

“My second reason for wanting you there is, if I’m correct in the assumptions I’ve made about our experience, then you might be the one man on earth best suited to deal with it.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?” Looking across the front seat at the detective, Knight nodded, answering;

“If it’s enough to get us there without any further questions, then yes.”

LaRaja considered the professor for a long moment, then finally moved his hand back to his vehicle’s steering column. Turning his key in the ignition, he gave his gas pedal a couple of gentle taps to start his engine warming up, then said;

“Okay—give me a direction to point this beast in, and let’s get going.”

“You know,” said Detective LaRaja, his voice low and respectful, “if I’d been forced to guess where we were going to go tonight, I’d have to admit that this place would have been way down on my list.”

The detective had parked his vehicle less than twenty-five feet from where Knight had parked the evening he had brought his assistant to the Green-Wood Cemetery. Standing in the middle of the sprawling graveyard in the oppressive darkness, LaRaja and the professor faced each other in the gloom while Bridget remained in the car. If there was to be a repeat of what had happened the night before, he wanted his assistant safely away from them, if for no other reason than she may be needed to rescue himself and the detective in the same manner she had saved Knight the other evening.

“I would have been surprised if you’d been able to predict our destination, myself.”

“So, man of mystery, you were pretty tight-lipped
about where we were going. Now that we’re here, you think you might want to give me some idea as to exactly
why
we’re here?”

“I want you to see something, to experience it,” answered the professor. His head in constant motion, looking first one way and then another, he strained his eyes against the black all about them—searching. Without facing LaRaja, Knight added absently, “Please understand, it took a while for things to begin the last time we were here—‘we,’ Bridget and I. Let’s give the moment a bit of time to see if anything’s going to percolate this time as well, if you don’t mind?”

“So, you mean, this could all be for nothing? You don’t even know if anything—”

The professor cut the detective off with a hand motion, whispering to him, “No—I cannot guarantee you that anything will happen. But I can assure you that nothing whatsoever will happen if we fill the air with negativity.” His eyes filled with an earnestness the detective could not ignore, Knight added;

“I hate to sound all turbans and tarot, but please, Denny, just a few minutes.” Then, focusing his attention directly on LaRaja, locking eyes with the officer, the professor’s voice filled with a pleading note as he asked;

“You’ve trusted me as best you could so far in all of this. Trust me just this one last time—all right?”

Crossing his arms over his chest, the detective nodded as he sighed deeply, throwing his mind to wondering about exactly what he might have gotten himself into this time. There had never been any doubt in his mind that Knight was holding back a great deal of information about whatever was going on all about them—he and his late partner had both felt so. But then, LaRaja reminded himself, they had both suspected as much every time the three of them had come in contact for any reason, and so far the professor had proved himself in each instance.

Of course
, thought the detective with a touch of a chuckle,
then again, maybe it just comes down to the fact that Piers Knight is simply an odd duck who somehow always seems to end up in the middle of weirdness.

LaRaja had no problem with such a notion. New York City, after all, was filled with plenty of characters who made it their business to immerse themselves in all manner of lunacy. Some were thrill seekers; others craved attention, or mere publicity. They were the easiest ones to handle. Worse by far were the self-appointed saviors, the noble protectors, and, of course, the never-ending parade of voyeurs who were underfoot at every official investigation. Those were the souls whose interference caused policemen to go gray before they were thirty.

“Worse than the damn media,” mused the detective. “How they find us …”

LaRaja stopped there. His problem had never been the fact that the crazies were capable of sniffing out crime scenes. It was the fact that they wanted to—that they actually wished to be there—that had always puzzled him. There was no cop he had ever known who enjoyed surveying a murder site. Comforting rape victims, searching rooms for the limbs of dismembered children, trying to determine if the blunt-trauma markings on a corpse’s face came from a chair leg or a knife sharpener, one became inured to such casual horrors—it was simply an occupational survival mechanism—but to actively seek such things out, to view them as some sort of … what would the word be … entertainment?

“You seem distracted, Denny.”

“Yeah, I suppose you could call it that.”

The professor stared at LaRaja for a quick moment, preparing to do what he had to do next. Knight had known since asking the detective to meet him that night that he was going to have to reveal at least a few things about himself he would have preferred to
keep private. He needed LaRaja whole and functioning if he was going to accomplish what he was hoping to that evening. And to do that, he had to ensure the detective believed what he experienced.

Completely and utterly.

You know what needs doing, Piers
, a voice from the back of the professor’s mind whispered to him.
So for once in your life stop stalling and just get it done.

“Something happened here the other evening,” Knight said sharply, hurling the words out from his head. Damning the part of his mind that tried to force him to keep every aspect of his life a secret, knowing that what he did then he did for the greater good, he continued on, saying, “Here, in this graveyard, Bridget and I encountered a ghost.”

“What?” asked LaRaja, his expression showing traces of amusement. Pointing to a particular nearby gravesite, he joked, “Crazy Joe Gallo raising hell again?”

“If only things were that simple.”

The detective simply stared at Knight, his mind incapable of giving him a clue as to where the professor might be attempting to lead him. Unconsciously the hardened mask of skepticism he had learned through all his years on the force settled across his face. Until he chose to have it otherwise, nothing about him would reveal the slightest trace as to his inner feelings. Whatever Knight wanted to tell him, the man would have to do so without the benefit of any clues as to what reception his words were receiving. Understanding that, Knight continued.

“It was not a random specter, either, but one come to visit me on purpose.” The professor paused for a moment, expecting LaRaja to possibly ask a question or make a comment. When nothing was forthcoming, he continued.

“I don’t believe it’s any secret that Jimmy maintained certain
suspicions about myself and my activities over the years. I’m quite certain you have them yourself. And why shouldn’t you? It’s not like … well, I mean … it’s—”

Flustered, years of hard-learned self-preservation tactics screaming at him to stop, Knight suddenly found himself tongue-tied. Embarrassed. Frightened. Anger at his cowardice rushing through his entire being, he dismissed his fears, shutting them away as he finally continued, saying;

“I apologize for that—all of it. But please understand, I’m trying to do something now that is very hard for me. I am going to tell you … exactly what you want to know.”

LaRaja’s eyes grew slightly wide. It was an involuntary reaction. Despite his decades of on-the-job conditioning, the detective could not stop that one slight slip from occurring. As he stood there in the darkened cemetery, suddenly LaRaja’s focus narrowed to a tightly controlled sliver in reaction to what he had just been told. Gone was the feel of soil and short-clipped grass from beneath his feet. Gone was the sensation of the evening’s slight breeze weaving through his thinning hair, the sight of the sky full of stars above his head, or the sounds of crickets and faraway cars mixed within his ears. The detective was standing too close to Knight not to feel his sincerity. LaRaja understood what he was being told—as well as why.