Free Brooklyn Knight by null Page B

detectives continued to stare, Knight merely shrugged and added; “What? What more do you want?”
    LaRaja, his usually gentle eyes narrowing, focusing to hard points, leaned forward from his chair. With two fingers of his left hand, he brushed his neat, graying moustache first one way, then the other. After that he leaned in even closer, asking quietly;
    “Piers, Piers—really; what is it with you? Why are you always doing things like this to us? Don’t you like us? Aren’t we your friends anymore?”
    “Why, whatever do you mean, Denny? I like both you fellows considerably. You’ve always been very good to the museum, not to mention the way you’ve always—”
    “Oh, cut it—Knight.” Dollins’ voice roared up out of him like a geyser rushing to the surface. Spewing it at the professor, he shouted, “Do not think you can get away playin’ us! I’m warning you—do not do it. Do not try. We’re talkin’ four goddamned dead bodies. Blown to mother-humpin’ little gooey bits! They’re jelly, for Christ’s sake. Your cleaning staff’s gonna be Four-oh-nining that lobby for the rest of the week.”
    “It was quite a mess,” admitted the professor.
    “A mess?” Dollins rubbed a beefy hand over his face. “There’s man-meat blown up, down, and around in every direction possible. You’ve got intestines festoonin’ the front stairs and eyeballs embedded in your ceiling. That’s more than just a goddamned mess, Knight!”
    “Well yes,” answered the professor softly, “I do agree with you, of course. But I don’t understand your meaning.”
    “I think what we’re trying to get at here, Piers,” LaRaja interjected in his softer, scalpel of a voice, “is how you could be so close to the explosion to be singed as you were, but to have nothing else happen to you. I mean, honestly now, it does seem at least a little bit amazing—doesn’t it?”
    Knight spread his hands apart before him, presenting his body language as meek and uncertain, his face carefully set into an imploring map of confusion. His look crafted to give him as innocent an appearance as possible, using a voice calculated to ring with a desperate need to both please and find understanding, the professor answered;
    “Gentlemen, I assure you, the only thing I know about my survival is that I’m overwhelmingly grateful to whatever force from beyond or accident of physics spared me any injury.”
    “Spare us another evening of your ten-dollar vocabulary.”
    “Jimmy, please,” answered Knight, forcing his tone to convey the sense that he was in some kind of shock, “try to understand. I was almost killed. I’m lucky to be alive.” The professor gave the large man a moment to let his words sink in, then added;
    “I mean, did you question it two years ago when those men were shooting at you down in Red Hook? Do you remember that? How many rounds did they expend in your direction? Wasn’t it over a hundred? And yet you came through it without a scratch?”
    “What’s that—”
    “Can you explain your survival that day with anything outside of ‘luck’?”
    “Don’t change the subject… .”
    “I’m not changing the subject.” Wearily, the professor inhaled sharply, then let it out in a sad, slow drizzle. Closing his eyes against the harsh lighting in the gray interrogation room, he said, “I’m trying to defend myself by using an example from your life to try and explain this moment in mine. I mean, tell me, do you actually think I shot those men?”
    “No—”
    “Am I under suspicion of having tried to blow up my own museum?”
    “No,” LaRaja took over. “Not yet.”
    The professor’s head snapped back slightly. Thinking he had gained control of the conversation, he was surprised by the shorter detective’s response. Knowing he was being manipulated into asking his next question, still Knight could see that he had no choice other than to do so.
    “ ‘Not yet’? Bless all the tiny monkeys—not yet? And