Brooklyn Knight (16 page)

“MY HEAVENS, GENTLEMEN, WHAT A GATHERING. TO WHAT DO I OWE the honor?”

Knight had gotten off at the sixth floor of the museum to find his office staked out by a cluster of men whose look signaled nothing but trouble to the professor. Dix had been correct—“cops and like worse” were indeed in evidence, and in far greater numbers than Knight had actually expected. Dollins’ assessment that “the feds” would be stopping by had also been correct.

In fact, if Knight was reading those gathered correctly, he had both Brooklyn and Manhattan detectives, members of the state police, FBI agents, and, he was fairly certain, CIA spooks in attendance with the rest.

“Don’t be shy. Somebody speak up.”

Despite his encouragement, none of the men or women in the hallway said anything to him. Making his way as pleasantly as possible through the throng of obvious underlings, the professor headed directly for his office. Finally, when he reached what he was reasonably certain had to be an FBI man, one who had parked himself directly in front of the door to Knight’s chambers, he was told;

“They’re waiting for you in the big conference room.”

“Oh, are they now? How exciting.” The professor felt like saying a bit more, had several sarcastic bon mots lined up, but held off on delivering any of them. As much as his first inclination was to do so, instead he simply smiled at the messenger before his door and turned for the room the agent had designated. Rummaging through his pockets for a vial he had brought from home, he thought as he palmed the thing;

“No sense in making enemies—especially of grunt-level functionaries. Besides, throwing wit to the likes of these, what did
Thurber say? ‘As futile as a clock in an empty house.’ Let’s save the A-list material for their superiors, shall we?”

Throwing open the doors to Conference Room A, Knight walked in with his head down, his hands fumbling within his bag, looking as if he thought he were there to teach a class, not to be interrogated. Paying no attention to those gathered, he walked to a table against the wall that held four pitchers of ice water and a herd of glasses. Passing his hand over the pitchers as if unable to decide which one he liked the best, the professor finally picked one and poured himself a glass of water.

Then, glass in hand, forcing himself to present a calm exterior, the curator walked directly to the seat obviously left for him. Still rummaging around within his black leather shoulder bag, he finally withdrew a pad and pen, placed them on the table before him, then sat down quietly.

“Professor Knight—”

“Oh yes—I’m sorry, may I help you?”

“May—” The speaker cut himself off abruptly, not allowing whatever he was about to ask to escape his lips. The fellow appeared to be in his late thirties, early forties, tallish, sandy hair—thinning somewhat, brown eyes—just drab enough to be anyone. His suit was just expensive enough to make him either a dishonest cop or a run-of-the-mill government agent. From the somber cut of his clothes, Knight was willing to bet FBI.

Whoever this chap might be
, Knight thought,
it’s apparent he’s used to giving orders and being both feared and obeyed. Well, let’s see how that’s working for you this morning.
Deciding that small bit of information gave him all he needed to know, the professor continued to stare innocently at the speaker, waiting for the inevitable to begin in earnest.

“Yes,” the man started again, his tone unchanged, his attitude showing he planned on following his normal approach to such
matters. “I believe you can help us, Professor. I certainly know that you had better help us.”

“Really?” Knight filled his voice with a sort of bemused guilelessness, creating a persona for those in the room that bespoke a kindly, somewhat confused mouse of a man, one who not only spent most of his time working in quiet, dusty rooms by himself but who also preferred it that way. “Tell me, why would that be?”

“Why would—?” Again the speaker cut himself off before repeating Knight’s complete response in amazement. The man began to speak again, but this time he was interrupted by a woman sitting several seats down from him. Dressed in a proper dark blue business suit, thick dark brown hair just beginning to be shattered by streaks of gray, she was Abigail Brinkley, the main director of the Brooklyn Museum. This was one of the only people whom Knight knew in the conference room, and certainly the only one who knew him well enough to understand exactly what he was up to at the moment.

“Professor,” she said, her tone implying that she did not have time to watch him have sport with the officials gathered there that morning, “these men represent various local and federal agencies. Mr. Klein here,” she said, indicating the man with whom Knight had been toying, “is with the FBI.”

“Oh my,” the professor answered, moving a hand toward his lips as if surprised by the information. “The FBI—really? And, and why are they here?”

“They’re here, Professor,” Brinkley growled ever so slightly, hinting at her displeasure with Knight’s usual shenanigans, “for the same reasons our lawyers Mr. Feldon and Ms. Grillstein are here—because of what happened downstairs last night. You do remember being here, downstairs, after hours last night, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, my—how dreadful, how simply terribly dreadful. Oh, Abigail, have they told you, all—”

“Look,” snapped Klein, the normal cool demeanor he had been trained to display slipping more every moment he spent in the professor’s presence, “let’s knock off this game, all right? You knew you were going to be seeing the police again today. And, unless you’re willing to admit that you’re some kind of simpleton, you had to have known the federal government would be wanting to talk to you as well.”

“Of course I expected the lot of you,” answered Knight with a sudden surprising candor. “But I also expected to be interviewed as a witness, to be asked for cooperation, not threatened by a drab, unimaginative, buttoned-down bully whose idea of tactful interaction with the public is to dispense vague hints of being run through some legal grinder.”

“Professor Knight, we have no intention—”

“Oh, please—don’t compound the arrogance of that sloppy, boilerplate opening salvo you fired at me by lying about it. Hallway lined with silent, brooding enforcer types, scowling faces in dark suits all around the table, my seat, positioned with my back to the wall, centered so that all eyes can glare at me, why not just spread a towel out covered with thumbscrews and sharp, pointy things and be done with it—”

“Professor Knight!” Brinkley snapped her words furiously, but the professor raced past them, telling Klein;

“The legendary FBI—pfah. You and yours are so used to cracking nuts with a hammer, it never dawns on you to try any other approach.”

“Now see here, Knight, your director, Brinkley, has promised us your full cooperation, and I—”

“Cooperate with you I certainly will, and without hesitation,” interrupted the professor. “But be intimidated by your gestapo tactics? No, I think not. Five places to your left you will find Detective
Sergeant Denny LaRaja. Ask him how long I cooperated with the NYPD last night.”

“Professor Knight was a model witness,” the detective answered, enjoying the chance to tweak the FBI’s collective nose. “He worked with us for hours until a fire broke out in the station house, forcing us to postpone any further interviews until this morning.”

Knight glared at Klein, his eyes daring the FBI man to escalate the situation any further. For a moment, it seemed as if the government agent was willing to do just that, but then something within Klein caught hold of his emotions, shoving them back down into the recess where he usually was able to keep them stored without any problem. Nodding to the professor, the FBI man acknowledged;

“All right, perhaps we’ve all grown a bit too defensive of late. But if you will grant that we have a reason to be concerned when someone sets off explosives in a public place these days without any further admonishments over our tactics, I’ll admit we should be seeking your cooperation rather than demanding it.”

“Well,” answered Knight, allowing one side of his mouth to curl into a smile, “any man who can use a word such as ‘admonishment,’ in a sentence and make it sound unforced certainly deserves a second chance in my book. Shall we proceed?”

Agent Martin Klein pursed his lips for a moment. He had just been played like a rookie by an expert. After eighteen years with the bureau, a twice-decorated senior agent with a corner office, it was not something he appreciated. Indeed, so annoyed was the FBI man that he found a part of himself wanting to start probing the professor for weaknesses, to have him investigated on the off-chance there was something in his background that could possibly be used to embarrass him, or even land him in court. Another part of Klein’s mind, however, whispered that perhaps he actually was
allowing the routine of his job to turn him into somewhat of a paint-by-the-numbers type rather than the investigator he had trained to be.

Besides
, he thought, grinning within his mind,
he complimented us on our vocabulary. How bad can he be?

Deciding getting some answers and trying to assemble an accurate picture of what had happened the night before was far more important than rubbing salve on his ego, Klein nodded in the professor’s direction, saying;

“All right, let’s give it another run. After all, we can always throw you in irons for impeding an investigation later—right?”

“There you go,” answered Knight with a laugh. Slapping a single palm against the tabletop before him, he added, “That’s the spirit.” And with that, everyone present began revealing what they knew to one another.

Although Bridget had her cab take her to the Brooklyn Museum, she did not enter immediately. Instead she crossed the street to wander for a while within the Brooklyn Botanic Garden situated on the hillside leading up to the summit upon which the museum rested. As she stared down through the trees and well-tended gardens, she thought on the view of the city she had received the day before.

From atop the Empire State Building, Manhattan had appeared as it did in movies and on television shows—endlessly flat. But Brooklyn seemed built of hills and valleys, far greener than the rest of the city, more tranquil and inviting—

“More like home,” she told herself.

She allowed herself a few more minutes of self-delusion, just enough time to steel herself to enter the museum and to get on with pretending that her knowledge of the basic rules of physics had not changed. Going back across the
street, she entered the front door of the museum roughly an hour and a half after the professor had done so. The museum had been closed to the public for the day because of the police investigation filling the main lobby, but even her temporary ID had been sufficient to allow her entry. Knight had left word that she be admitted when she arrived. What neither of them knew was that Detective LaRaja had done so as well.

Staring at the various forensic teams puzzling over the scant evidence to be found, the dozens of yards of yellow police tape festooned everywhere, and the general confusion to be found in every corner of the lobby, the redhead suddenly realized she had no real idea as to what she should do.

She had no way of knowing, of course, that Knight was still in Conference Room A, or that he would be there for quite some time. Although neither of them had realized it when they had spoken at breakfast, the professor had given her no actual instructions for her first day. No meeting place or time—no assignments. Nor had he given her the name of anyone else to whom she might report.

Indeed, it was not until she entered the main lobby that she realized she had no idea where Knight’s office was located, or even if that was where she would find him. Staring once more at all the official activity taking place, however, she decided that whatever she was going to do, she should probably find some other place to do it. Trying to make her way around the various taped-off areas, she suddenly found an extremely thin black man of medium height headed in her direction. The fact that he was wearing a museum guard’s uniform did not completely dismiss her apprehension, something that made her realize she was far more nervous about the current situation than she had realized.

“Ms. Elkins … ?”

In seconds, however, the man had introduced himself as Dix Mitchell, a friend of Knight’s whom the professor had asked to
watch out for her. Hearing that her new boss had thought to have someone watching out for her greatly improved the young woman’s attitude, much of her fear dissipating as the back of her mind accepted the idea that she might not be completely alone and on her own in “the big city” after all. When she asked where Knight was at the moment, the guard explained not only where the professor was but also what he would be going through as well.

“He thought maybe you might want to avoid that mess if possible, so he told me to send you in to Human Resources. You gonna have to get it smooth with them anyway, so you might as well go on to it and do it now. Skip bein’ browbeat by these—” Dix nodded in the direction of the various official types in the lobby, pausing as he obviously sanitized the phrase he was about to use, changing it to a weaker, but more socially acceptable, “ah … officers—”

When Bridget covered her mouth, a touch of a chuckle escaping her lips nonetheless, the guard narrowed his eyes, making a face that let the young woman know that if his skin were not such a dark shade she would be seeing him blush right then. Touching his arm softly, she said;

“Please, don’t be offended. I think it’s sweet.”

“Not supposed to cuss on duty, anyway,” he offered, letting a bit of his trademark grin show through despite Knight’s admonishment to not turn his charms in Bridget’s direction. As he raised his eyebrows toward her playfully as well, to both ease the tension and let the redhead know there were no hard feelings, she leaned in conspiratorially close, telling him;

“Maybe some night after work we can go somewhere when you’re off duty and you can teach me how to cuss New York City style.”