Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2) (Relic) Page 16

  “Come in,” the voice said.

  The curtain was pulled aside. Reluctantly, D’Agosta followed Pendergast into the chamber beyond.

  The interior was dark, lit only by the reflected glow of the naked bulb outside and by a small fire that smoldered beneath a vent in one corner. In front of them, a man sat in a massive, thronelike chair that had been placed in the exact center of the room. He was tall, with large limbs and long, thick gray hair. The man was dressed in an ancient bell-bottom suit of tan corduroy and wore a threadbare Borsalino hat. A heavy silver Navajo squash blossom necklace set with turquoise hung around his neck.

  Mephisto stared at them with unusually penetrating eyes. “Mayor Whitey. Unoriginal. Not likely to induce reverence. But in your albinoid case, appropriate.” The hiss had taken on a slow, formal tone.

  D’Agosta felt the gaze turn on him. Whatever else this guy is, D’Agosta thought, he ain’t crazy. At least, not completely crazy. He felt uneasy; Mephisto’s eyes glittered with suspicion.

  “And this one?” he asked.

  “Cigar. My runner.”

  Mephisto stared at D’Agosta for a long time. Then he turned back to Pendergast. “I’ve never heard of a Grant’s Tomb community,” he said, voice laced with doubt.

  “There’s a large network of service tunnels beneath Columbia and its outbuildings,” Pendergast said. “We’re small, and we mind our own business. The students are pretty generous.”

  Mephisto nodded, listening. The look of suspicion slowly vanished, replaced by something that was either a leer or a smile, D’Agosta couldn’t be sure which. “Of course. Always nice to meet an ally in these dark days. Let’s seal this meeting with some refreshments. We can talk afterwards.”

  He clapped his hands. “Chairs for our guests! And get that fire going! Tail Gunner, bring us some meat.” A thin, short man D’Agosta had not seen before appeared out of the shadows and left the caboose. Another, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor, struggled to his feet and, moving with glacial slowness, piled wood on the fire and poked it into life. It’s already too damn hot in here, D’Agosta thought as he felt the sweat trickle down the inside of his greasy shirt.

  An enormous, heavily muscled man came in with two packing crates, which he set in front of Mephisto’s chair. “Gentlemen, please,” Mephisto said with mock gravity, gesturing at the crates.

  D’Agosta settled himself gingerly on the packing crate as the man called Tail Gunner returned, carrying something wet and dripping in a piece of old newspaper. He dropped it beside the fire, and D’Agosta felt his stomach seize up involuntarily: inside was an enormous rat, its head half crushed, paws still twitching rhythmically as if to some internal beat.

  “Excellent!” cried Mephisto. “Fresh caught, as you can see.” He turned his piercing eyes on Pendergast. “You do eat track rabbit, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Pendergast replied.

  D’Agosta noticed that the heavily muscled man was now standing directly behind them. It began to dawn on him that they were about to undergo a test they had better not fail.

  Reaching out, Mephisto took the carcass in one hand and a long metal roasting spit in the other. Holding the rat beneath its front haunches, Mephisto deftly threaded the skewer from anus to head, then set it over the fire to roast. D’Agosta watched in horrified fascination as the hair immediately sizzled and caught fire, and the rat gave one final convulsive spasm. A moment later the entire animal flared up, sending a plume of acrid smoke toward the roof of the caboose. It died down again, the tail withering into a blackened corkscrew.

  Mephisto watched the rat for a moment. Then he plucked it from the fire, pulled a knife out of his coat, and scraped the remaining hair off the skin. Piercing the belly to release the cooking gases, he returned it to the flame, this time at a higher elevation.

  “It takes skill,” he said, “to cook le grand souris en brochette.”

  D’Agosta waited, acutely aware that all eyes were on him and Pendergast. He did not want to imagine what would happen if he betrayed the slightest hint of disgust.

  Minutes passed in silence as the rat sizzled. Mephisto rotated the rack, then looked at Pendergast. “How do you like yours?” he asked. “I prefer mine rare.”

  “Suits me,” Pendergast said, as placidly as if he were being offered toast points at Tavern on the Green.

  It’s just an animal, D’Agosta thought in desperation. Eating it won’t kill me. Which is more than I can say for these guys.

  Mephisto sighed in ill-concealed anticipation. “Look done to you?”

  “Let’s eat,” said Pendergast, rubbing his hands together.

  D’Agosta said nothing.

  “This calls for alcohol!” cried Mephisto. Almost immediately a half-empty bottle of Night Train appeared. Mephisto eyed it with disgust.

  “These are guests!” he said, tossing the bottle aside. “Bring something suitable!” Shortly, a mossy bottle of Cold Duck and three plastic glasses arrived. Mephisto removed the metal skewer and slid the cooked rat onto the newspaper.

  “You do the honors,” he said, handing it to Pendergast.

  D’Agosta struggled with a sudden sense of panic. What was Pendergast supposed to do? He watched with mingled horror and relief as Pendergast, without hesitation, raised the rat and put his lips to the gash in its flank. There was a sharp sucking sound as the rodent was eviscerated. D’Agosta felt his gorge rise.

  Licking his lips, Pendergast set the newspaper and its burden in front of their host.

  “Excellent,” he said simply.

  Mephisto nodded. “Interesting technique.”

  “Hardly.” Pendergast shrugged. “They spread a lot of rat poison around the Columbia service tunnels. You can always tell by tasting the liver whether it’s safe to eat.”

  A broad, and genuine, smile spread across Mephisto’s face. “I’ll remember that,” he said. Taking the knife, he cut several strips of meat from one haunch and handed them to D’Agosta.

  The moment had come. Out of the corner of his eye, D’Agosta saw the hulking figure behind them grow tense. Squeezing his eyelids closed, he attacked the meat with feigned gusto, stuffing everything into his mouth at once, chewing furiously and swallowing the strips almost before he had a chance to taste them. He grinned through his agony, wrestling with the horrible feeling of nausea that swept across his gut.

  “Bravo!” said Mephisto, watching. “A true gourmand!”

  The level of tension in the air decreased palpably. As D’Agosta sat back on his packing crate, putting a protective hand over his stomach, the silence in the room gave way to low laughter and whispered conversation.

  “You’ll forgive my suspicion,” Mephisto said. “There was a time when life underground was much more open and trusting. If you are who you say you are, you know that already. But these are difficult times.”

  Mephisto poured them each a glass of wine, then raised his own in a toast. He sliced off several more cuts of meat and passed them to Pendergast, then demolished the rest of the rat himself.

  “Let me introduce my Lieutenants,” Mephisto said. He waved at the hulking figure that stood behind them. “This is Little Harry. Got into horse pretty young. Took to petty thievery to support the habit. One thing led to another, and he ended up in Attica. They taught him quite a lot there. When he got out, he couldn’t find a job. Luckily, he wandered below and joined our community before he could fall back into bad habits.”

  Mephisto pointed at the slow-moving figure by the fire. “That’s Boy Alice. Used to teach English at a Connecticut prep school. Things went sour. He lost his job, got divorced, ran out of money, began hitting the bottle. He gravitated to the shelters and soup kitchens. That’s where he heard about us. As for Tail Gunner, he got back from ‘Nam only to find that the country he’d defended didn’t want anything to do with him.”

  Mephisto wiped his mouth on the newspaper. “That’s more than you need to know,” he said. “We’ve left the past behind,
as you must have. So you’re here about the killings?”

  Pendergast nodded. “Three of our people have been missing since last week, and the rest are getting concerned. We heard your call for alliance against the Wrinklers. The headless killers.”

  “Word is getting around. Two days ago I heard from the Philosopher. Know of him?”

  Pendergast hesitated for just a second. “No,” he replied.

  Mephisto’s eyes narrowed. “Odd,” he said. “He’s my counterpart, leader of the communities beneath Grand Central.”

  “Perhaps some day we shall meet,” Pendergast said. “For now, I need to take word back, reassurances for my people. What can you tell me about the killings and the killers?”

  “They started almost a year ago,” Mephisto replied in a silky hiss. “First was Joe Atcitty. We found his body dumped outside the Blockhouse, head gone. Next, Dark Annie disappeared. Then Master Sergeant. It went on and on. Some we found. Most we didn’t. Later, we got word from the Manders that deep activity had been detected.”

  Pendergast frowned. “Manders?”

  Again, Mephisto shot a suspicious glance toward him. “Never heard of the Manders?” He cackled. “You ought to stretch your legs more, get out, see the neighborhood, Mayor Whitey. The Manders live below us. Never come up, never use lights. Like salamanders. Versteht? They said there were signs of movement below them.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They said the Devil’s Attic had been colonized.”

  D’Agosta looked questioningly at Pendergast. But the FBI agent merely nodded. “The lowest level of the city,” he said, as if to himself.

  “The very lowest,” Mephisto replied.

  “Have you been down there?” Pendergast asked with deliberate casualness.

  Mephisto flashed him a look as if to imply even he wasn’t that crazy.

  “But you think these people are behind the killings?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it. They’re beneath us, right now.” Mephisto smiled grimly. “But I’m not sure I’d use the word people”

  “What do you mean?” Pendergast said, the casualness gone from his voice.

  “Rumor,” Mephisto said very quietly. “They say they’re called Wrinklers for a reason.”

  “Which is—?”

  Mephisto did not answer.

  Pendergast sat back on his crate. “So what can we do?”

  “What can we do?” The smile vanished from Mephisto’s face. “We can wake up this city, that’s what we can do! We can show them that it won’t just be the mole people, the invisible people, who die!”

  “And if we do that?” Pendergast asked. “What can the city do about these Wrinklers?”

  Mephisto thought a moment. “Like any infestation. Get them where they live.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  Mephisto’s hard, glittery gaze landed on the FBI agent. “You got a better idea, Whitey?” he hissed.

  Pendergast was silent. “Not yet,” he said at last.

  24

  Robert Willson, librarian at the New York Historical Society, looked at the other occupant of the map room with irritation. Odd-looking guy: somber black suit, pale cat’s eyes, blond-white hair combed severely back from a high forehead. Annoying, too. Annoying as hell. He’d been there all afternoon, making demands and throwing the maps askew. Every time Willson turned back to his computer to resume work on his own pet project—the definitive monograph on Zuñi fetishes—the man would be up, asking more questions.

  As if on cue, the man got out of his chair and glided over noiselessly. “Pardon?” he said in his polite but insistent mintjulep drawl.

  Willson glanced up from the screen. “Yes?” he snapped.

  “I hate to trouble you again, but it’s my understanding that the Vaux and Olmstead plans for Central Park called for canals to drain the Central Park swamps. I wonder if I could look at those plans?”

  Willson compressed his lips. “Those plans were rejected by the Parks Commission,” he replied. “They’ve been lost. A tragedy.” He turned back to his screen, hoping the man would take the hint. The real tragedy would be if he didn’t get back to his monograph.

  “I see,” the visitor said, not taking the hint at all. “Then tell me, how were the swamps drained?”

  Willson sat back in his chair exasperatedly. “I should have thought it was common knowledge. The old Eighty-sixth Street aqueduct was used.”

  “And there are plans for the operation?”

  “Yes,” said Willson.

  “May I see them?”

  With a sigh, Willson got up and made his way through the heavy door back into the stacks. It was, of course, in its usual mess. The room managed to be both vast and claustrophobic, metal shelves reaching two stories into the gloom, tottering with rolled maps and moldering blueprints. Willson could almost feel the dust settling on his bald scalp as he scanned the arcane lists of numbers. His nose began to itch. He found the correct location, pulled the ancient maps and carried them back to the cramped reading room. Why do people always request the heaviest maps, he wondered to himself as he emerged from the stacks.

  “Here they are,” Willson said, placing them on the mahogany counter. He watched as the man took them over to his desk and began looking them over, jotting notes and making sketches in a small leatherbound notebook. He’s got money, Willson thought sourly. No professor could afford a suit like that.

  A heavenly quiet descended on the map room. At last, he could get some work done. Bringing some yellowed reference photographs out of his desk, Willson began making changes to his chapter on clan imagery.

  Within minutes, he felt the visitor standing behind him again. Willson looked up again silently.

  The man nodded at one of Willson’s photographs. It showed a nondescript stone carved in an abstract representation of an animal, a small piece of sinew holding a flint point to its back. “I think you’ll find that particular fetish, which I see you’ve labeled as a puma, is in fact a grizzly bear,” the man said.

  Willson looked at the pale face and the faint smile, wondering if this was some kind of a joke. “Cushing, who collected this fetish in 1883, specifically identified it as puma clan,” he replied. “You can check the reference yourself.” Everybody was an expert these days.

  “The grizzly fetish,” the man continued undeterred, “always has a spearpoint strapped to its back, as this one does. The puma fetish has an arrowhead.”

  Willson straightened up. “Just what is the difference, may I ask?”

  “You kill a puma with a bow and arrow. To kill a grizzly, you must use a spear.”

  Willson was silent.

  “Cushing was wrong on occasion,” the man added gently.

  Willson shuffled his manuscript together and laid it aside. “Frankly, I would prefer to trust Cushing over someone …” He left the sentence unfinished. “The library will be closing in one hour,” he added.

  “In that case,” the man said, “I wonder if I could see the plates from the 1956 Upper West Side Natural Gas Pipeline Survey.”

  Willson compressed his lips. “Which ones?”

  “All of them, if you please.”

  This was too much. “I’m sorry,” Willson said crisply. “It’s against the rules. Patrons are allowed only ten maps at a time from the same series.” He glared at the visitor triumphantly.

  But the man seemed oblivious, lost in thought. Suddenly, he looked back at the librarian.

  “Robert Willson,” he said, pointing at the nameplate. “Now I remember why your name is familiar.”

  “You do?” Willson asked uncertainly.

  “Indeed. Aren’t you the one who gave the excellent paper on mirage stones at the Navajo Studies Conference in Window Rock last year?”

  “Why, yes, I did,” Willson said.

  “I thought so. I wasn’t able to be there myself, but I read the proceedings. I’ve made something of a private study of southwestern religious imagery.” The visitor paused. “Nothing as serious as
yours, of course.”

  Willson cleared his throat. “I suppose one cannot spend thirty years in such study,” he said as modestly as possible, “without one’s name becoming known.”

  The visitor smiled. “It’s an honor to make your acquaintance. My name is Pendergast.”

  Willson extended his hand and encountered an unpleasantly limp handshake. He prided himself on the firmness of his own.

  “It’s gratifying to see you continuing your studies,” the man named Pendergast said. “Ignorance of southwestern culture is so profound.”

  “It is,” Willson agreed wholeheartedly. He felt a peculiar sense of pride. Nobody had taken the least interest in his work before, let alone been able to talk about it intelligibly. Of course, this Pendergast was obviously misinformed about Indian fetishes, but …

  “I’d love to discuss this further,” Pendergast said, “but I fear I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “Not at all,” Willson replied. “What was that you’d asked to see? The ’56 Survey?”

  Pendergast nodded. “There was one other item, if I may. I understand there was a survey of existing tunnels done in the 1920s for the proposed Interborough Rapid Transit system. Is that correct?”

  Willson’s face fell. “But there are sixty maps in that series …” His voice trailed off.

  “I see,” Pendergast said. “It’s against the rules, then.” He looked crestfallen.

  Suddenly, Willson smiled. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said, pleased at his own recklessness. “And don’t worry about closing time. I’ll be here late, working on my monograph. Rules were made to be broken, right?”

  Ten minutes later, he emerged from the gloom of the storage room, pushing an overloaded cart across the worn floorboards.

  25

  Smithback walked into the cavernous entryway of the Four Seasons, eager to leave the heat and stench and noise of Park Avenue behind. He approached the four-square bar with measured step. He’d sat here many times before, looking enviously across the room, past the Picasso hanging, toward the unattainable paradise beyond. This time, however, he did not dally at the bar, but continued toward the maitre d’. A quickly mentioned name was all it took, and now he, Smithback, was himself walking down that corridor of dreams toward the exclusive restaurant beyond.