Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“Hi, Lawrence,” I said, smiling, despite my fury as I stepped inside. “Can I call you Lawrence?”

“Absolutely, Detective,” Berger said, looking around the old precinct’s dingy space. “I used to be an auxiliary cop here, can you believe it? After my shift, I would go to cop bars to watch Yankees games and check out the badge bunnies with the guys. They called me super-buff behind my back, but I didn’t mind. I was like a mascot, one who was always good for a round.”

“That’s really interesting, Lawrence,” I said. “But actually I wanted to ask you some more about Carl. We looked for him upstairs in your apartment, like you said, but he wasn’t around. Where would Carl go, do you think? To your weekend property in Connecticut?”

“Maybe,” Berger said, squinting. “But I doubt it. To tell you the truth, I think you’ll have a hard time finding him. He grew up in terrible poverty in Appalachia, and when I met Carl, he was living on the street near Union Square Park. He called it “urban camping.” Carl’s ex-military, he likes things hard. He claimed he was in Delta Force before getting kicked out. I think he actually enjoys pain. He’s a pretty singular individual.”

“In what way?” I said.

“Well, for one thing, he wasn’t formally educated, but he has a truly keen intelligence. After I got him off the street, I introduced him to things. Art. Literature. I even sent him to City College. He absorbed everything instantly. He was like a sponge.”

“Wow,” I said.

“ ‘Wow’ is right,” Berger said. “We used to stay up late, sometimes all night, just talking about everything under the sun. What we loved. What we hated. When I opened up about some of my darker tastes, like my obsessions with the bloodiest crimes of the century, Carl was always cool with it, always nonjudgmental.”

“You guys were good buddies,” I said, wishing I had some aspirin.

“Yes. We were friends,” Berger said. “Is it that hard to believe that even someone as disgusting as me could have a friend? Carl proved it when I found out I was going to die. Did I tell you? I have a congenital heart condition. Coupled with a little excessive snacking. You can laugh, Mike. That’s a joke.”

I smiled, thinking, You’re a joke.

“Anyway, a few days after I heard the bad news about my heart, Carl said he had a surprise for me. The best gift anyone ever gave anyone. He laid out his plan to take out my enemies and to entertain me at the same time. I was intrigued. I didn’t know if he was just kidding. You get to be my size, stuck in bed all day, you get bored. But then I saw an article in the paper about the bomb in the library, and I knew he was actually doing it! Carl did everything he said he’d do and then some.”

I glanced at the mirror, where Emily was watching. What Berger said made some sense. It certainly explained why we had had trouble putting things together. It had never been just one motive from one perpetrator, but an odd mix of several odd motives.

“You didn’t think to come forward?”

Berger shrugged. He looked away and began examining his fingernails.

“Must have slipped my mind,” he mumbled.

“And you readily admit everything?” I said, staring down at Berger. “You freely admit your involvement?”

“Proudly so,” Berger said. “Write it up, Mike, and get me a pen. I’ll be more than happy to sign on the dotted line.”

It was odd as I turned on my heel to leave, but I suddenly wasn’t angry anymore. I refused to let Berger’s evil and his twisted ridiculous pathetic feelings affect me. I was suddenly able to see him for what he was, a pile of human wreckage. I was just a garbage man trying to get through the rest of my shift.

“Be back in five, Lawrence,” I said, my smile not forced now.

I actually felt happy. Happy that I would soon be out of here and back with my family. This mistake of a man forgotten by the time I finished my shower.

“Thanks for being so forthcoming. I’ll be right back with that statement and that pen.”

Chapter 75

IN THE DUSTY BACK ROOM of the precinct house, Lawrence Berger lay sideways on a steel-reinforced hospital cot that had been loaned to the NYPD by the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic in Queens.

The chamber’s fluorescent glare glistened off the layer of sweat on his pale face. He gazed with unfocused eyes at the wall beside him in a kind of rapture.

At first, when he’d been rolled into the pen, the strangeness of his new surroundings, the unclean taste of the stuffy air, and the stench of burnt coffee and old sweat and urine had been so overwhelming that he’d thrown up all over himself. The officers who were in charge of the holding pen let him lie in his vomit for over an hour before getting him some napkins and a new sheet.

Berger endured the humiliation by remembering the fate of the great throughout history who suffered at the hands of their inferiors. From his near-photographic memory, he conjured up Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates.

He thought about Detective Michael Bennett. He’d actually been following Bennett’s career ever since the St. Patrick’s Cathedral hostage situation. For some time, he’d felt a kind of psychic link with the man, an almost metaphysical twinning. Confessing to him of all people had been like a dream come true, the icing on a long- and painstakingly planned birthday cake.

But now the party was coming to a close, wasn’t it? he thought with a sigh.

And yet, through all his suffering and ponderings, he kept coming back to one thing. The only thing. What it always came down to in the end.