Chapter 6
A SINGLE BARE BULB with a flickering filament hung over Sam’s head, the only source of light in the small interrogation room.
“I know this looks … bad, but really, this is just a huge misunderstanding,” she started, and Detective Roscoe, an officer with thinning red hair and an abundance of freckles, snorted into his New York Mets coffee mug, laughing at her. “I’m serious. I am not a—a robber.”
“Sure, sweetheart,” he said in a thick Queens accent.
She knew he was from Queens because he’d mentioned it no fewer than four times since placing her in the back of his cruiser and hauling her into the precinct, where he’d booked her and then shoved her into the cold little interrogation room she’d been in for the last three hours, waiting and worrying and watching the clock.
And really needing to pee. “A misunderstanding. And I’m the king of England. ”
She laughed, not because the joke was funny but because—it was all so absurd.
“No, see, you’re not getting it. When I was in middle school, we went on this field trip to the museum.
It was the, uh, the Louisiana Art and Science Museum.
At the end of the day, we stopped at the gift shop, and I accidentally put this, uh, this amethyst geode in my pocket.
I swear, I had every intention of buying it, but then my teacher hollered for us to get back on the bus and I completely forgot about that rock until I got home, and I—I felt so sick to my stomach over it that I made my mom drive me all the way back the next day so I could return it.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night. So, clearly, I don’t have the constitution for crime.
” Sour spit filled her mouth as if to support her point.
“The thought of it alone makes me feel like I’m gonna barf. ”
Roscoe’s partner, Detective Jenkins, an older man with a thick gray handlebar mustache and a startling lack of laugh lines around his blue eyes for his age, flipped open the manila file in front of him.
“Melissa Thoms. Felix and Oslo Williams. Javier Chavez. Emma Chen. All pictured here—and, oh, can’t forget Jasper Reynolds and Horace Cohen.
Then, of course, there’s you.” He spread out a series of photos and tapped a finger to the first, leaving a fingerprint smudge on the glossy finish.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, Miss Cooper, and these photos say it all.”
The images were, admittedly, incriminatory, placing Sam at the scene of what looked like several crimes.
Six, seven, eight grainy snapshots from CCTV footage and traffic cameras and in every single one of them she was pictured with varying degrees of clarity, a sliver of her profile here, the back of her head there, slipping out of warehouses and climbing into unmarked vans.
It was her, but it wasn’t. Sam, this Sam, didn’t remember committing any crimes other than the one she’d been peripherally involved in tonight. And really, should that even count, seeing as she’d mostly stood on the fringes, confused and trying not to hyperventilate?
“I can admit,” she said carefully, “the person in these pictures does bear a startling resemblance to me.”
Roscoe pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “That’s what you’re going with? Really? You got an evil twin or something?”
Sam pursed her lips. “Or something.”
“Kids, Miss Cooper?” Jenkins asked, fingers drumming against the edge of the metal table. “You have any?”
She shook her head, but she had a feeling, based on the fat file sitting in front of him, that he already knew that.
“I do. The sooner you cut the shit, the sooner I get to go home and tuck them in. Why don’t you do us all a favor and tell us what we already know?”
She wasn’t trying to inconvenience anybody, but she wasn’t about to incriminate herself or, heaven forbid, confess, when the only true offense she’d committed was trusting the wrong demon. And unless she was shooting for the insanity defense, she couldn’t tell them that.
“So we’re all on the same page here,” she said, and Roscoe and Jenkins shared a look, a glance of mutual exasperation. “What is it that you think you already know?”
Roscoe rested his forearms on the table. “We know we’re looking at the head of the Manger Mafia.”
Sam blinked hard and shook her head. “The head of the what ?”
“Manger Mafia,” Roscoe repeated, tripping over the French. “You know, manger, as in to eat . Mafia, as in—”
“I know what Mafia means,” she cut in. “But I still have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what the Manger Mafia is. I’ve never even heard of it.”
Another of those world-weary looks passed between the two detectives before Jenkins sighed deeply and told her, “The Manger Mafia is a criminal syndicate responsible for the theft of nearly thirteen million dollars in rare and valuable culinary items and ingredients from around the tristate area.”
“Thirteen million ?” Sam’s voice was shrill. “Holy shit.”
That was more money than she knew what to do with.
“I wanted to name you guys the Caper Capers,” Roscoe said, chuckling under his breath.
“Get it? The Caper Capers? I thought it rolled off the tongue nice, but then that reporter on the ABC Nightly News dubbed you all the Manger Mafia like that was clever, and”—he held out his hands in a what can you do gesture—“it stuck.”
“A crying shame,” Jenkins said, delivery so deadpan she couldn’t tell if he was teasing his partner or not.
“And you both think I’m the head of this … outfit.”
“Like Detective Roscoe said, we know. Two years you’ve been a scourge along the Northeast megalopolis, committing heists and getting away with them. That stops now. You’re done, Miss Cooper.”
“And like I said, the idea alone of committing a crime makes me feel like I’m gonna ralph. And you don’t know me, so you couldn’t possibly know this, but I lack the leadership qualities of a crime lord. Boss. Don? See, I don’t even know what I’d be called, let alone how to be one.”
Jenkins hummed. “You aren’t what we expected. I’ll give you that.”
“Yeah.” Roscoe nodded. “We were expecting someone—”
“Let me guess. Dastardly? Devious? A real unscrupulous type, I bet.” Sam nodded along to her own words.
“Clearly, I am none of those things. I mean, when I was working as a server, I even reported all my cash tips on my taxes, and, oh! Sometimes I help my neighbor Mrs. Nelson carry her groceries. Real sweet lady, law-abiding and everything. Can’t you ask her for a, I don’t know, a character reference? ”
Jenkins dropped his head into the cradle of his hands with a sigh.
“See, I was gonna say we were expecting someone … smarter,” Roscoe said with a casual shrug, and her face fell.
“Look. I know this looks”—she winced as her eyes caught on one of the photos in front of her—“bad, but—”
“It looks damning to me,” Jenkins said, and her left eye twitched at the word. “Bet the judge is going to think so, too.”
Sam started to sweat. “You’re not hearing what I’m saying.”
“Oh, we’re hearing you.” Roscoe chuckled.
“Jokes aside, you’re good, Miss Cooper. Don’t get me wrong.
You gave us the runaround for two whole years.
But we caught you red-handed at the scene of a crime tonight.
And if that wasn’t enough, the judge signed off on a warrant.
We already searched your apartment and your restaurant, and in addition to finding blueprints and schematics of several of the locations you’ve hit up over the years, we also recovered approximately”—he glanced at the open file—“ten thousand dollars in stolen goods. You don’t get much guiltier than that, sweetheart. ”
Under the table, Sam’s knees knocked, and she was glad she was sitting down, because her legs suddenly felt rubbery and weak, like overcooked spaghetti.
“That’s the bad news for you. Good news is, we’re prepared to offer you a plea bargain. Reduce your sentence from fifteen years to five if you help us find your buddies Jasper and Horace, who, unfortunately for us, managed to evade arrest.”
“Fifteen years?!”
“Maybe even twenty,” Roscoe said, and Sam’s lips trembled, an uncontrollable whimper escaping.
“Look, honey, we got you on grand larceny with intent to sell or distribute in the first degree, conspiracy to commit larceny, transportation of stolen goods, criminal possession of stolen property in the third degree, intent to illegally traffic caviar, which, as it turns out, is a violation of the”—he squinted down at the paper lying in front of Jenkins—“Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and as such, the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s International Affairs department has decided to step in to confer. ”
“But I didn’t even take—”
“On top of that, the prosecutor’s probably gonna try to smack you with felony burglary charges and destruction of private property for tonight, too.
So, to tell you the truth, now that I think about it, if they throw the book at you, you probably are looking at more like twenty-five years. Wouldn’t you agree, Jenkins?”
Jenkins nodded.
“Plus, technically you were armed.”
“Armed?!”
“One of the duffel bags you and your crew were in possession of contained a meat cleaver and an oyster-shucking knife. But seeing as youse guys are a bunch of cooks, we were thinking that might be par for the course.” He paused and looked at her expectantly.
“Get it? Par? Like you cut? And course like a meal—”
“It’s pare , you putz.” Jenkins pinched the bridge of his nose. “You par boil your potatoes. Jesus.”
Their bickering faded into a hum of white noise.