The 19th Christmas (Women's Murder Club #19) - James Patterson Page 0,61
be open to making a deal. I took a seat across from the shivering hulk and relaxed my face, hoping to look sympathetic.
“Ben,” I said nicely, “you understand your situation? If the victim who was shot inside the train dies, even if you didn’t shoot him yourself, you’re going to be charged with accessory to murder. If you discharged your gun at all, that’s assault with a deadly weapon. I see a real chance you’re going to be charged with kidnapping.”
He nodded, gulped, looked like he was going to puke again. There was a garbage can under the computer stand by the door, and I brought it over to him.
I continued. “Homeland Security is going to charge you with terrorism. That’s a federal offense. You’re still a kid. You could spend every last day of your life in a maximum-security prison with no chance of parole.”
I let that sink in. Tears slipped out of Ben’s downcast eyes.
I kept going. “Right now your only two friends in the world are Inspector Conklin and me. We’ve both been shot at today. Speaking for myself, I’m in a bad mood. But we need help catching Loman. You help us, we’ll help you. That’s a limited-time offer.”
Conklin, a.k.a. the good cop, said, “Ben. We know you aren’t the key man in this operation. You got swept up in something and now you’re in way over your head. You’re a small fish. But small fish sometimes end up in the boat if the big fish can’t be reeled in.”
Ben was nodding.
Conklin said, “Let’s start at the beginning. See where we go from there.”
CHAPTER 78
I LEFT THE interrogation room, dried the sweat from my face with my sleeve, and reset my ponytail.
Then I wandered the hall until I found the vending machine. After three bottles of water had plunked down the chute, I picked them up and returned to the box.
I pushed a bottle of water across the table to Wallace, handed one to Conklin. Then I sat down next to my partner and just kept quiet while he ran the interview. Wallace appeared to be responding to him.
Wallace told Conklin, “It was my brother, Sam. He’s the one who got me into this airport job.”
Conklin encouraged Ben Wallace to keep talking. The story he told was this: Ben’s brother, Sam, age thirty, had once been arrested for an unarmed liquor-store shoplift, caught with a bottle of ten-dollar hooch under his jacket. He was arrested, pleaded guilty, got bail, and immediately fled. There was a warrant out for Sam Wallace’s arrest, but he wasn’t one of the top ten, or even one of the top ten thousand, most wanted. So he was free, doing odd jobs, living with whoever would put him up, including Ben, but most often living on the street.
Ben went on to say that last week he’d gotten a call from his brother about a man named Russell—whether that was a first name or a last name, Sam didn’t say—who worked with Mr. Loman, apparently as an agent or deal broker. Through Sam, Russell was offering Ben fifteen thousand dollars to be part of a robbery crew. He would be given a uniform and a gun, and all he had to do was put on that uniform and meet up with the three others in the crew at the airport outside the International Terminal. The uniforms would get them through security, and after they were in, they were supposed to take the AirTrain out to the cargo terminal.
He went on to say, “Once we got to cargo, we had to look for a wooden box about one cubic yard in size.”
He tried to show us, but the cuffs gave him only about twelve inches of range. “The box was, like, marked with Japanese letters, and some canvas bags of papers were inside. We were told that the papers were none of our business.
“Once we had the bags, we were supposed to leave the cargo area and go outside to the parking lot. Russell was going to pick us up in his van and take us to a drop-off, I don’t know where.
“It was supposed to be easy-breezy,” Wallace said, sniffling and crying now. “Look like airport cops, act like airport cops. Take the train. Grab the bags. Get the hell out. A half day’s work for fifteen K. I’m happy to make fifteen thousand a year.”