Blue Labyrinth (15 page)

L
ieutenant D’Agosta had never been in the gun room of Pendergast’s Riverside Drive mansion before. There were many rooms he’d never seen—the place seemed to go on forever. However, this room was a particularly welcome surprise. His father had been an avid collector of vintage firearms, and D’Agosta had picked up the interest to a somewhat lesser degree. As he looked around, he saw that Pendergast owned some rare pieces indeed. The room was not large, but was luxuriously appointed, with rosewood walls and a matching coffered ceiling. Two huge tapestries, obviously very old, hung opposite each other. The rest of the walls were taken up by recessed cabinets, with locked glass doors, that held an astonishing variety of classic weaponry. None of the guns seemed to be more recent than World War II. There was a Lee-Enfield .303 and a Mauser Model 1893, both in pristine condition; a rare Luger chambered in .45; a .577 Nitro Express elephant gun by Westley Richards with an inlaid ivory stock; a Colt .45 single-action revolver straight out of the Old West, with seven notches on its handle; and many other rifles, shotguns, and handguns D’Agosta didn’t recognize. He moved from cabinet to cabinet, peering inside and whistling appreciatively under his breath.

The room’s only furniture was a central table, around which half a dozen chairs were arranged. Pendergast sat at the head of the table, fingertips tented, his index fingers tapping against each other, cat’s
eyes staring into nowhere. D’Agosta glanced from the weapons to the FBI agent. He’d been annoyed at Pendergast’s cryptic refusal to explain who the man was, but he reminded himself that the agent did things in his own eccentric way. So he had swallowed his impatience and accompanied Pendergast from the Museum back to his mansion.

“Quite a collection you got here,” D’Agosta said.

It look Pendergast a moment to glance toward him; an even longer moment to answer. “The collection was assembled by my father,” he said. “Aside from my Les Baer, my own taste runs in other directions.”

Margo came into the room. A moment later, Constance Greene entered. Despite having a last name similar to Margo’s, Constance couldn’t have been more different. She was wearing an old-fashioned evening dress with bands of white lace at both the throat and wrists, which, D’Agosta thought, made her look like a character in a film. He admired her rich mahogany-colored hair. She was a beauty. A forbidding, even scary beauty.

When she saw D’Agosta, she gave him a nod.

D’Agosta smiled back. He didn’t know why Pendergast had assembled everyone like this, but no doubt he was about to learn.

Pendergast gestured for everyone to take a seat. As he did so, the faintest rumble of thunder from outside penetrated the thick walls. The big thunderstorm they’d been predicting for a couple of days had arrived.

The FBI agent looked first at D’Agosta, then at Margo, his eyes like silver coins in the dim light. “Dr. Green,” he said to Margo. “It is nice to see you again after all this time. I wish it could have been under more pleasant circumstances.”

Margo smiled an acknowledgment.

“I have asked you here,” Pendergast went on, “because it is now a certainty that the two murders we have been investigating as separate affairs are, in fact, linked. Vincent, I have kept certain information from you because I did not want to involve you any more than necessary in my son’s murder investigation. I’ve put you in an awkward enough position with the NYPD already. But now the time has come to share what I know.”

D’Agosta inclined his head. It was true: Pendergast, through no fault of his own, had burdened him with a terrible secret. But that was, as his grandmother used to say,
acqua passata
, water under the bridge. At least he hoped so.

The agent turned to Margo. “Dr. Green, I know that I can count on your discretion—nevertheless, I must ask you and everyone here to keep what is spoken of within these walls absolutely confidential.”

There were murmurings of agreement.

Pendergast, D’Agosta noticed, seemed uncharacteristically restless, his fingers tapping on the table. Normally he was as motionless as a cat.

“Let us review the facts,” Pendergast began. “Exactly eleven days ago this evening, my son, Alban, was found dead on the doorstep of this house. A piece of turquoise was found in his digestive tract. I traced the turquoise to an obscure mine on the shores of the Salton Sea in California. A few days ago, I visited that mine. An ambush awaited me: I was attacked.”

“Who the hell could get the drop on you?” D’Agosta asked.

“An interesting and as yet unanswered question. As I managed to subdue my attacker, we were both subjected to a paralyzing agent of some kind. I blacked out. Once I regained consciousness, I apprehended my assailant and he was incarcerated. The man has remained absolutely silent, his identity as yet unknown.”

He glanced back at D’Agosta. “Let us now turn to your case: the death of Victor Marsala. The prime suspect appears to be a gentleman who posed as a scientist and examined a curious skeleton in the Museum’s collection. With Margo’s assistance, you were able to determine three additional items of interest. First: a bone was missing from the skeleton.”

“The right femur,” Margo said.

“Evidently our ersatz scientist made off with this bone, for reasons unknown. He later killed Marsala.”

“Perhaps,” said D’Agosta.

“Second: the skeleton in the collection did not match its accession label. Instead of being a young Hottentot male, it was an elderly American woman—most likely the remains of the wife of a Museum
curator who was put on trial for killing her in 1889. He was acquitted: there was no body. Now you have found the body.” Pendergast looked around the table. “Have I missed anything of importance so far?”

D’Agosta stirred. “Yeah—just how are these two murders connected?”

“That leads to my third point: the man who attacked me at the Salton Sea, and the man you are searching for in connection with Victor Marsala’s death—this would-be ‘visiting scientist’—are
one and the same
.”

D’Agosta felt himself go cold. “
What?
”

“I recognized him immediately from your most excellent composite image.”

“But what’s the connection?”

“What indeed? When we know that, my dear Vincent, we will be well on the way to solving both cases.”

“I’ll have to go interview him in Indio, of course,” D’Agosta said.

“Naturally. Perhaps you’ll be more successful than I was.” Pendergast shifted restlessly and turned to Margo. “And now, perhaps, you could fill in for us the details of your own inquiry?”

“You’ve pretty much covered it,” Margo said. “I have to assume the curator, a man named Padgett, snuck his wife’s corpse into the Museum, macerated it in the Osteology vats, and then placed it in the collections with a false accession record.”

Across the table, Constance Greene had drawn her breath in sharply. All heads turned toward her.

“Constance?” Pendergast asked.

But Constance was looking at Margo. “Did you say a Dr. Padgett?” These were the first words she had spoken since the conference began.

“Yes. Evans Padgett. Why?”

For a moment, Constance did not reply. Then she passed a hand over the lacework at her throat. “I’ve been doing archival research into the background of the Pendergast family,” she said in her deep, strangely antique voice. “I recognize that name. He was one of the first people to publicly accuse Hezekiah Pendergast of peddling a poisonous patent medicine.”

Now it was Pendergast’s turn to appear startled.

D’Agosta was growing increasingly confused. “Wait. Who the heck is Hezekiah Pendergast? I’m totally lost.”

The room fell silent. Constance continued to look at Pendergast. For what seemed like ages, the FBI agent did not respond. Then he gave an almost imperceptible nod. “Please proceed, Constance.”

“Hezekiah Pendergast,” Constance continued, “was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius—and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own ‘medicine’: Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. He was a shrewd marketer, and during the late 1880s sales of the nostrum quickly exploded. The elixir was inhaled—not uncommon in those days—using a special kind of atomizer he called a Hydrokonium. An old-fashioned nebulizer, really, but he patented the device and sold it along with the elixir. Together they helped restore the wealth of the Pendergast family, which at the time had been in decline. As I recall, the elixir was called a ‘pleasant physic for all bilious complaints’ that could ‘make the weak strong and the neurasthenic calm’ and ‘perfume the very air one breathes.’ But as use of Hezekiah’s elixir spread, rumors began to rise: of madness, homicidal violence, and painful, wasting death. Lone voices—such as Dr. Padgett’s—rose in protest, only to be ignored. Some medical doctors decried the elixir’s poisonous effects. But there was no public outcry until an issue of
Collier’s
magazine exposed the compound as an addictive and lethal blend of chloroform, cocaine, noxious botanicals, and other toxic ingredients. Production ceased around 1905. Ironically, one of the final victims was Hezekiah’s own wife—named Constance Leng Pendergast, but always known to the family as Stanza.”

A freezing silence descended on the room. Pendergast had resumed looking into space, fingers drumming lightly on the table, his expression unreadable.

It was Margo who broke the silence. “One of the newspaper articles we uncovered mentioned that Padgett blamed his wife’s sickness on a patent medicine. When I did the isotope analysis of her bones, I got some anomalous chemical readings.”

D’Agosta glanced at Constance. “So you’re saying that Padgett’s
wife was a victim of this patent medicine—this elixir formulated and sold by Pendergast’s ancestor—and that he killed her to end her pain and suffering?”

“That’s my guess.”

Pendergast stood up from his chair. All eyes swiveled toward him. But he simply smoothed his shirtfront and then sat down again, his fingers trembling ever so slightly.

D’Agosta was about to say something, then stopped. A connection among all these facts was starting to assemble itself in his mind—but one so bizarre, so terrible, that he could not bring himself to seriously consider it.

At that moment, the door opened quietly and Mrs. Trask entered. “There’s a call for you, sir,” she told Pendergast.

“Please take a message.”

“Pardon me, but it’s from Indio, California. The man said it can’t wait.”

“Ah.” Pendergast rose again and began to make his way toward the door. Halfway across the room, he stopped.

“Ms. Green,” he said, turning to Margo. “What we’ve discussed here is of the most sensitive nature. I hope you won’t think it amiss if I ask you to promise not to divulge it to anyone else.”

“As I said, you can rely on me. You already asked us to practically swear an oath of secrecy tonight.”

Pendergast nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” And with a brief look at each of the three still arrayed around the table, he followed Mrs. Trask out of the room and shut the door behind him.

A
s they approached the town of Indio from Interstate 10 East, D’Agosta looked curiously out of the window of the State Department of Corrections vehicle. He’d been to California only once before, as a kid of nine, when his parents had taken him to visit Disneyland. He remembered only fleeting images of palm trees, sculptured pools, clean wide boulevards adorned with flower-filled planters, the Matterhorn, and Mickey Mouse. But this, the backside of the state, was a revelation. It was all brown and desiccated, hot as hell, with weird bushes, stunted cactus-like trees, and barren hills. How anyone could live in such a godforsaken desert was beyond him.

Beside him in the rear of the car, Pendergast shifted.

“You’ve already tried to get the guy to talk once—got any fresh ideas?” D’Agosta asked.

“I learned something, ah, “fresh” in the telephone call I received last night. It was from the senior corrections officer at the Indio jail. It seems our friend in custody
has
begun to talk.”

“No kidding.” D’Agosta looked back out the window. Typical of Pendergast to withhold this particular nugget of information until the last minute. Or was it? On the red-eye flight out he had seemed silent and irritable, which D’Agosta had assumed was due to lack of sleep.

The California State Holding Facility at Indio was a long, low,
drab-looking affair that—had it not been for the guard towers and the three rings of walls topped with razor wire—would have looked like a series of Costcos strung together. A few sad clumps of palm trees stood outside the wire, limp in the relentless sun. They entered the main gate, were buzzed through a series of security checkpoints, and finally arrived at the official entrance. There they got out of the car. D’Agosta blinked in the sunlight. He had been up for seven hours already, and the fact that it was only nine
AM
California time was more than a little disorienting.

A narrowly built, dark-haired man was waiting for them just inside. As Pendergast approached, the man extended his hand. “Agent Pendergast. Nice to see you again.”

“Mr. Spandau. Thank you for contacting me so promptly.” Pendergast turned to make the introductions. “John Spandau, senior corrections officer. This is Detective Lieutenant D’Agosta of the NYPD.”

“Lieutenant.” Spandau shook D’Agosta’s hand in turn and they started down the corridor.

“As I mentioned on the phone last night,” Pendergast told Spandau, “the prisoner is also the suspect in a recent murder in New York that the lieutenant is investigating.” They paused to pass through another security checkpoint. “The lieutenant would like to question him first.”

“Very well. I told you he was talking, but he isn’t making much sense,” said Spandau.

“Anything else of note?”

“He’s gotten restless. Pacing his cell all night. Not eating.”

D’Agosta was ushered into a typical interrogation room. Pendergast and Spandau left to take up positions in an adjoining space that overlooked the room through one-way glass.

D’Agosta waited, standing. A few minutes later, the security bolt was drawn back and the door opened. Two security guards entered, a man in a prison jumpsuit between them. He had a cast on one wrist. D’Agosta waited as the guards sat him down in the lone chair on the table’s far side, then took up positions beside the door.

He turned his attention to the man across the table. He was
well built, and of course the face was familiar. This man did not look particularly like a criminal, but that didn’t surprise D’Agosta: the man had had the stones to pose as a scientist, and had done so convincingly enough to fool Marsala. That took both intelligence and self-confidence. But the look was oddly offset by the man’s facial expression. The charismatic features so recognizable from Bonomo’s reconstruction seemed to be compromised by some kind of mysterious inner dialogue. His red-rimmed eyes drifted around the room—sluggishly, like an addict’s—without settling on the man across from him. His manacled hands were crossed protectively over his chest. D’Agosta noticed he was rocking back and forth in his chair, ever so faintly.

“I’m Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta, NYPD homicide,” D’Agosta began, pulling out his notebook and placing it before him. The man had already been Mirandized, so he didn’t need to go through all that. “This interview is being recorded. Would you mind stating your name, for the record?”

The man said nothing, merely rocking subtly back and forth. His eyes were looking around with more purpose now, the brows furrowed, as if searching for something forgotten—or, perhaps, lost.

“Excuse me, hello?” D’Agosta tried to get his attention.

The man’s eyes finally settled on him.

“I’d like to ask you some questions about a homicide that took place two weeks ago in the New York Museum of Natural History.”

The man looked at him placidly, then his eyes drifted away.

“When were you last in New York?”

“The lilies,” the man replied. His voice was surprisingly high and musical for such a large man.

“What lilies?”

“The lilies,” the man said in a tone of wistfulness combined with pained reverie.

“What about the lilies?”

“The
lilies
,” the man said, his eyes snapping back to D’Agosta, startling him.

This was nuts. “Does the name Jonathan Waldron ring a bell?”

“The smell,” the man said, the wistful tone in his voice increasing. “That lovely smell, the scent of lilies. It’s gone. Now… it smells terrible.
Awful
.”

D’Agosta stared at the man. Was he faking? “We know you stole the identity of Professor Jonathan Waldron to gain access to a skeleton in the Museum of Natural History. You worked with a technician in the Osteology Department of the Museum by the name of Victor Marsala.”

The man went abruptly silent.

D’Agosta leaned forward, clasped his hands together. “I’m going to get to the point. I think you killed Victor Marsala.”

The rocking stopped. The man’s eyes drifted away from D’Agosta.

“In fact, I
know
you killed him. And now that we’ve got your DNA, we’re going to look for a match with DNA from the crime scene. And we’re going to find it.”

Silence.

“What’d you do with the leg bone you stole?”

Silence.

“You know what I think? I think you’d better get yourself an attorney, pronto.”

The man had gone still as a statue. D’Agosta took a deep breath.

“Listen,” he said, increasing the menacing tone. “You’re being held here because you assaulted a federal officer. That’s bad enough. But
I’m
here because the NYPD are going to extradite you to the fine Empire State for murder one. We’ve got eyewitnesses. We’ve got you on video. If you don’t start cooperating, you’re going to be so far up shit creek that not even Lewis and Clark could paddle you back. Last chance.”

The man was now looking around the room as if he’d forgotten D’Agosta was even there.

A great weariness settled over D’Agosta. He hated interrogations like this, with the repeated questions and mulish suspects—and this guy seemed loony, to boot. He was sure they had their man—they were just going to have to build the case without a confession.

The door slid open, and D’Agosta looked up to see the dark figure of Pendergast standing in the hallway. He gave a gesture as if to say:
Mind if I try?

D’Agosta picked up his notebook and stood up.
Sure
, his answering shrug said,
knock yourself out
.

He went into the observation room next door and took a seat beside Spandau. He watched as Pendergast made himself comfortable in one of the chairs opposite the suspect. He seemed to spend an interminable amount of time adjusting his tie, buttoning his jacket, examining his cufflinks, adjusting his collar. At last, he sat forward, elbows on the desk, fingertips resting lightly on the scuffed wood. For a moment the fingertips drummed a nervous tattoo, then—as if recollecting himself—he curled them into his palms. He stared across the table, gaze resting lightly on his attacker. And then—just when D’Agosta thought he would burst from pent-up impatience—Pendergast began to speak in his dulcet, gracious accent.

“In the parts I come from, it is seen as unbearably rude not to refer to somebody by his proper name,” he began. “The last time we met, you seemed unwilling to supply that name—a name that I know is not Waldron. Have you changed your mind?”

The man looked back at him but did not reply.

“Very well. Since I abhor rudeness, I shall confer on you a name of my choosing. I shall call you Nemo, which, as you may know, is Latin for ‘no one.’ ”

This did not elicit any result.

“I don’t wish to waste as much time on this visit as I did on my last, Mr. Nemo. So let us be brief. Are you willing to tell me who hired you?”

Silence.

“Are you willing to tell me why you were hired, or the purpose of that bizarre trap?”

Silence.

“If you do not wish to provide names, are you at least willing to tell me what the intended outcome of all this was to be?”

Silence.

Pendergast examined his gold watch with an idle gesture. “I hold the key to whether you will be tried in state or federal court. By talking or not talking to me, you can choose between Rikers Island or the Florence Administrative Maximum Facility in Colorado. Rikers is a hell on earth. ADX Florence is a hell that not even Dante could have imagined.” He peered at the man with a peculiar intensity. “The furniture in each cell is made of poured concrete. The shower is on a timer. It goes off three times a week, at five
AM
, for exactly three minutes. From the window, you can see only cement and sky. You get one hour of ‘exercise’ a day in a concrete pit. ADX Florence has fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors and is surrounded by pressure pads and multiple rings of twelve-foot razor-wire fences. There your very existence will vanish from the tablets of history. If you don’t talk to me right now, you truly will become ‘no one.’ ”

Pendergast stopped speaking. The man shifted in his seat. D’Agosta, watching through the one-way glass, was now convinced the guy was crazy. No sane man could have resisted that line of questioning.

“There are no lilies in ADX Florence,” Pendergast said quietly.

D’Agosta exchanged a puzzled glance with Spandau.

“Lilies,” the man said, slowly, as if tasting the word.

“Yes. Lilies. Such a lovely flower, don’t you think? With such a delicate, exquisite aroma.”

The man hunched forward. Pendergast had finally gotten his attention.

“But then, the scent is gone, isn’t it?”

The man seemed to tense. He shook his head slowly, from side to side.

“No—I’m wrong. The lilies are still there; you said as much. But something’s wrong with them. They’ve gone off.”

“They stink,” the man muttered.

“Yes,” Pendergast said, his voice a curious mixture of empathy and mockery. “Nothing smells worse than a rotting flower. What a stench it produces!”

Pendergast had suddenly raised his voice.

“
Get it out of my nose!
” the man screamed.

“I can’t do that,” Pendergast said, his voice abruptly dropping to a whisper. “You won’t have lilies in your cell at ADX Florence. But the stink will remain. And it will grow as the rottenness increases. Until you—”

With a sudden, animal cry, the man leapt out of his chair and across the table at Pendergast, his cuffed hands like talons, his eyes wide with murderous fury, flecks of foam and spittle flying from his mouth as he screeched. With a swift dodge, like a bullfighter, Pendergast rose out of his chair and sidestepped the attack; the two guards came forward, Tasers at the ready, and zapped the man. It took three shots to subdue him. In the end he lay draped across the table, twitching spasmodically, tiny wisps of smoke rising toward the microphone and ceiling lights. Pendergast stood to one side, examining the man with a clinical eye, then turned and strolled out of the room.

A moment later Pendergast entered the observation room, flicking a piece of lint off the shoulder of his suit with a look of irritation. “Well, Vincent,” he said. “I don’t see much point in our remaining here any longer. What is the expression? I’m afraid our friend is, ah, ‘bird-shit’ crazy?”

“Bat-shit crazy.”

“Thank you.” He turned to Spandau. “Once again, Mr. Spandau, I thank you for your invaluable assistance. Please let me know if his ravings grow lucid.”

Spandau shook the proffered hand. “I will.”

As the two left the prison, Pendergast took out his cell phone and began to dial. “I’d worried we might have to take the red-eye back to New York,” he said. “But our friend proved so unforthcoming we may catch an earlier flight. I’ll just check, if you don’t mind. We aren’t going to get anything else out of him now—or, I fear, ever.”

D’Agosta took a deep breath. “Mind telling me what the hell just happened in there?”

“What do you mean?”

“All those crazy questions. About flowers, lilies. How’d you know he’d react that way?”

Pendergast stopped dialing and lowered the phone. “It was an educated guess.”

“Yeah, but
how
?”