Blue Labyrinth (27 page)

V
incent D’Agosta sat back in his chair and stared morosely at his computer screen. It was after six. He had canceled a date with Laura at the Korean place around the corner and he was determined not to let up until he’d done all he could. So he sat, staring mulishly at the screen as if trying to force it to yield up something useful.

He’d spent over an hour digging into NYPD files and elsewhere, looking for information on John Barbeaux and Red Mountain Industries, and had come up with precisely squat. NYPD had no files on the man. An online search yielded little more. After a brief but distinguished career in the Marine Corps, Barbeaux—who came from money—had founded Red Mountain as a military consulting company. The firm had grown into one of the country’s largest private security contracting organizations. Barbeaux had been born in Charleston; he was sixty-one years old and a widower; his only son had died of an unknown illness not two years before. Beyond that, D’Agosta had learned nothing. Red Mountain was notoriously secretive; its own website gave him little to go on. But secretiveness wasn’t a crime. There were also online rumors of the kind that swirled around many military contractors. A few lone voices, crying in the digital wilderness, linked the company to various South American and African coups, mercenary actions, and shadow military ops—but these were the same types of people who claimed Elvis was still alive
and living on the International Space Station. With a sigh, D’Agosta reached out to turn off the screen.

Then he remembered something. About six months back, a program had been put in place—spearheaded by a police consultant, formerly of the NSA—to digitize all NYPD documents and run them through OCR software. The idea had been to ultimately cross-link every scrap of information in the department’s files, with the goal of looking for patterns that might help solve any number of “cold” cases. But, as with so many other initiatives, this one had gone off the rails. There were cost overruns, the consultant had been fired, and the project was limping along with no completion date in sight.

D’Agosta stared at the computer screen. The team was supposed to start with the newest documents logged into the system and then work backward chronologically through the older ones. But with the size of the team slashed, and the volume of new material that came in every day, the word was they were basically treading water. No one used the database—it was a mess.

Still, a search would take only a moment. Luckily, Barbeaux was not a common name.

He logged back into the departmental network, moused his way through a series of menus, and accessed the project’s home page. A spartan-looking screen appeared:

Below was a text box. D’Agosta clicked on it to make it active, typed in “Barbeaux,” then clicked on the
ENTER
button beside it.

To his surprise, he got a hit:

“I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

There was an icon of a document next to the text. D’Agosta clicked on it, and the scan of an official document appeared on the screen. It was a memo from the Albany police, sent—as a departmental courtesy—to the NYPD about six months back. It described rumors, from “unnamed third parties,” of illicit arms deals being made by Red Mountain Industries in South America. However—the document went on to say—the rumors could not be confirmed, the firm in all other ways had a stellar record, and so instead of bumping the investigation up the hierarchy to federal agencies such as the ATF, the case had been closed.

D’Agosta frowned. Why hadn’t he discovered this factoid through normal channels?

He clicked on the screen and examined the attached metadata. It showed that the physical copy of the memo had been filed in the “Barbecci, Albert” folder of the NYPD’s archives. The record header showed that the person who had filed it had been Sergeant Loomis Slade.

With a few more mouse clicks, D’Agosta opened up the file on Albert Barbecci. Barbecci had been a small-time mobster who had died seven years ago.

Barbeaux. Barbecci. Misfiled. Sloppy work. D’Agosta shook his head. That sort of sloppiness didn’t seem like Slade. Then he picked up his phone, consulted a directory, dialed a number.

“Slade,” came the atonal voice on the other end of the line.

“Sergeant? This is Vincent D’Agosta.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

“I’ve just come across a document on a man named Barbeaux. Heard of him?”

“No.”

“You should have. You filed the document yourself—in the wrong folder. Put it under Barbecci.”

A pause. “Oh. That. Albany, right? Stupid of me—sorry.”

“I was wondering how you happened to be in possession of that memo.”

“Angler gave it to me to file. As I recall, it was Albany’s case, not ours, and it didn’t check out.”

“Any idea why it was sent to Angler in the first place? Did he request it?”

“Sorry, Lieutenant. I’ve got no idea.”

“It’s all right, I’ll ask him myself. Is he around?”

“No. He took a few days off to visit some relatives upstate.”

“All right, I’ll check in with him later.”

“Take care, Lieutenant.” There was a click as Slade hung up.

R
ead down the list of ingredients,” Margo said to Constance. “We’ll take them one by one.”

“Aqua vitae,” Constance said. She was seated in the library of the Riverside Drive mansion, the old journal in her lap. It was just past eleven in the morning—at Constance’s urgent summons, Margo had ducked out of work as quickly as possible. Constance’s graceful hands were trembling slightly with agitation, her face flushed. But her expression was under rigid control.

Margo nodded. “That’s an old-fashioned name for an aqueous solution of ethanol. Vodka will suffice.” She jotted a notation in a small notebook.

Constance turned back to the journal. “Next is laudanum.”

“Tincture of opium. Still available by prescription in the United States.” Margo made another notation, squinting as she did so—although it was still morning, the library windows were shuttered, and the light was dim. “We’ll get Dr. Stone to write us out a prescription.”

“Not necessary. There’s plenty of laudanum in the basement chemical stores,” said Constance.

“Good.”

Another pause, and Constance consulted the old journal. “Petroleum jelly. Calomel… Calomel is mercurous chloride, I believe. There are jars of it in the basement, too.”

“Petroleum jelly we can get at any drugstore,” said Margo. She looked over the list of the dozen-odd compounds she’d jotted down in her notebook. Despite everything, she felt a prickling sensation of hope. At first, Constance’s news of Hezekiah’s antidote, her showing Margo the old journal, seemed like a long shot. But now…

“Cascara bark,” Constance said, returning her attention to the journal. “I’m not familiar with that.”

“Cascara buckthorn,” said Margo. “
Rhamnus purshiana
. Its bark was, and still is, a common ingredient in herbal supplements.”

Constance nodded. “Oil of chenopodium.”

“That’s another name for wormseed oil,” said Margo. “It’s mildly toxic, but nevertheless was used as a common ingredient in nineteenth-century quack medicines.”

“There should be some bottles of both in the basement, then.” Constance paused. “Here are the last two ingredients: Hodgson’s Sorrow and
Thismia americana
.”

“I haven’t heard of either of them,” Margo said. “But they are obviously botanicals.”

Constance rose and retrieved a huge botanical dictionary from the bookshelf. Placing it on a stand, she began leafing through it. “Hodgson’s Sorrow. An aquatic, night-blooming water lily of the family Nymphaeaceae, with a spectacular deep-pink color. In addition to its color, it has a most unusual odor. It doesn’t say anything here about pharmacological properties.”

“Interesting.”

There was a silence as Constance continued to read through the entry. “It’s native only to Madagascar. Very rare. Prized by collectors of water lilies.”

Silence settled over the library. “Madagascar,” said Margo. “Damn.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out her tablet, accessed the Internet, and did a quick search for Hodgson’s Sorrow. With the flick of a finger, she scrolled quickly down through the entries. “Okay, we’ve got a break. It seems there’s a specimen in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.” She called up the website for the garden, searched through
it for a moment. “It’s in the Aquatic House, which is part of the main greenhouse complex. But how will we get it?”

“There’s only one sure way.”

“Which is?”

“Steal it.”

After a moment, Margo nodded.

“Now for the final ingredient.” Constance consulted the encyclopedia again. “
Thismia americana
… A plant found in the wetlands around Chicago’s Lake Calumet. It flowers for less than a month above ground. Of interest to botanists not only because of its very localized habitat, but because it’s a mycoheterotroph.”

Margo said, “That’s a rare kind of plant that parasitizes underground fungi for its nourishment, instead of photosynthesis.”

Suddenly Constance froze. A strange expression crept over her face as she stared at the encyclopedia. “According to this,” she said, “the plant went extinct around 1916, when its habitat was built over.”

“Extinct?”

“Yes.” Constance’s voice had taken on a dead cast. “A few years ago, a small army of volunteers undertook a careful search of Chicago’s Far South Side, with the specific intent of finding a specimen of
Thismia americana
. They were unsuccessful.”

She laid the book down, walked to the dying fire. She stopped, staring into it, while twisting a handkerchief between her hands. She said nothing.

“There’s a possibility,” Margo said, “the Museum might have a specimen in its collections.” Using her tablet again, she accessed the Museum’s Internet portal, entered her name and password. Opening the online catalog of the Botany Department, she did a search for
Thismia americana
.

Nothing.

Margo let the tablet settle on her lap. Constance continued twisting the handkerchief.

“I can see if there isn’t something similar in the Museum’s collection,” said Margo. “The mycoheterotrophs are all quite similar, and might have similar pharmacological properties.”

Constance turned toward her quickly. “Go to the Museum. Retrieve the closest range of specimens you can find.”

Of course
, thought Margo,
this would also involve stealing
. God, how was that going to work out? But when she thought of Pendergast upstairs, she realized they had no choice. After a silence, she said: “We’re also forgetting something.”

“Which is?”

“The antidote that Hezekiah wrote down here… it didn’t work. Hezekiah’s wife died anyway.”

“Leng’s final note said something about a wee mistake. One small oversight. Do you have any idea what the oversight might have been?”

Margo turned again to the formula. It was a simple preparation, really, except for the last two highly unusual botanicals. “It could be anything,” she said, shaking her head. “The proportions might be wrong. The preparation could have been botched. A wrong ingredient. An unexpected interaction.”

“Think,
please
think!” Margo could hear the handkerchief tear in Constance’s hands.

Margo tried to comply, thinking carefully about the ingredients. Again, the last two were the ones that were unique. The rest were more common, their preparations standard. It would have to be in the two rare ingredients where the “oversight” lay.

She scanned the preparation directions. Both plants had been extracted into tinctures using a common method—boiling. Usually that worked, but in some cases boiling denatured certain complex plant proteins. Today the best method of botanical extraction for pharmacological use was via chloroform.

Margo looked up. “A room-temperature extraction of these two botanicals using chloroform would be more efficacious,” she said.

“I’m sure I can find chloroform in the collections. Let us proceed with all haste.”

“We should test it first. We have no idea what compounds are in these two plants. They could be deadly.”

Constance stared at her. “There’s no time for a test. Pendergast seemed to rally yesterday evening—but now he’s taken a decided turn for the worse. Go to the Museum. Do what you have to do to get the mycoheterotrophs. Meanwhile, I’ll collect as many of these other ingredients as I can from the basement, and…” She stopped when she saw the look on Margo’s face. “Is there a problem?”

“The Museum,” Margo repeated.

“Of course. That’s the logical place to find the necessary ingredients.”

“But they would be stored in… in the basement.”

“You know the Museum better than I,” Constance said. When Margo did not reply, she continued: “Those plants are vital if we’re to have any hope of saving Pendergast.”

“Yes. Yes, I know they are.” Margo swallowed, then slipped her tablet back into her bag. “What are we going to do about D’Agosta? We said we’d stay in touch, but I’m not so sure we should mention these… plans.”

“He’s a police officer. He couldn’t help us—and he might stop us.”

Margo bowed her head in assent.

Constance nodded. “Good luck.”

“You, too.” Margo paused. “I’m curious—that note… in the journal. It was written to you. What was that all about?”

A silence. “Before Aloysius, I had another guardian. Dr. Enoch Leng. The man who wrote that final note in the journal.”

Margo paused, waiting. Constance never volunteered information about herself; Margo knew virtually nothing about her. Many times she had wondered where she had suddenly come from and what her real relationship was to Pendergast. But now, most uncharacteristically, Constance’s voice took on a softer, almost confessional tone.

“Dr. Enoch had a notorious interest in a certain branch of chemistry. I sometimes acted as his lab assistant. I helped him with his experiments.”

“When was this?” Margo asked. It seemed strange: Constance
looked to be only in her early twenties, and she had been Pendergast’s ward for years.

“Long ago. I was a mere child.”

“Oh.” Margo paused. “And what branch of chemistry interested this Dr. Enoch?”

“
Acids
.” And Constance smiled faintly: a faraway, almost nostalgic smile.