City of Endless Night Page 26

  “Captain Hayward, NYPD. You’re under arrest, shitbird.”

  “Wha—?”

  But the woman, who did not appear particularly strong or fast, suddenly grabbed him with some kind of martial arts movement, spun him around, pulled his hands behind his back, and cuffed the other wrist. It was all done in a second.

  All of a sudden, the Great Lawn blazed with light. High-intensity lamps hidden in the trees along its perimeter had snapped on, illuminating the bonfire. And now, a large battery of official vehicles—police cruisers, SWAT vans, fire trucks—began rolling across the grass toward the group, light bars flashing and sirens whooping. Other police in riot gear trotted forward on foot, talking into their radios.

  The brethren around Swope, looking around in surprise at the sudden raid, wavered, broke—and then began to back off and scatter. The police let them go.

  It all happened so quickly that Swope could not process it at first. But as the woman pushed him forward through the chaos, toward the line of police, he began to realize what had happened. The cops had gathered themselves, quietly, in the trees. Instead of provoking a riot by moving in force to arrest him, they sent in one undercover officer, in plainclothes. And now, with him in cuffs, the cops were at last coming out, with bullhorns, calling on everyone to peaceably disperse, while a fire crew came over, dragging a hose, and sprayed water on the heap of smoldering valuables, putting it out.

  Ahead loomed a wagon of the kind used to transport prisoners. Its rear opened and the plainclothes cop grabbed Swope by the elbow and lifted him onto the metal step. As the woman cop helped put him into the paddy wagon, she said: “Before we leave, you might want to have a good look at your followers.”

  Swope turned to give them a farewell gaze, but what he saw shocked him. What just moments before had been a peaceful, prayerful assemblage had suddenly escalated into bedlam. Despite the police bullhorns, a large number of his followers had not dispersed: they had become looters, clustering around the pile, pulling things out and pocketing them, while the cops, surprised, yelled and chased them. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, followers now surged onto the dead pile of vanities, so many that the cops were temporarily overwhelmed. They grabbed fistfuls of money and silver bars and bearer bonds and jewelry and watches and shoes, frantically looting the very heap of vanities they had come to burn, and then scuttling away into the darkness of the trees with their swag, hooting in glee and triumph.

  59

  OZMIAN WAITED, THE echo of the shot slowly fading away, until Pendergast opened his eyes once again.

  “Oops. Missed.”

  He saw no corresponding reaction in the man’s eyes.

  “Shall I give you another ten-minute head start, or shall I end it now?”

  He waited, but Pendergast made no answer.

  “All right. I’m a sport. You get ten more. But please try to muster a little more cleverness. There will be no more second chances.” He glanced at his watch. “One hour and thirty-five minutes left in the hunt.” He gestured with the barrel of his gun toward Pendergast’s Les Baer, lying in the debris. “Go ahead. Pick it up—two fingers only—and be on your way. I’ll remain here for ten minutes to give you another head start.”

  The quarry bent down, reaching for the gun.

  “Easy now. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get off a shot before I blow your head apart.”

  Picking up the gun with two fingers, Pendergast slid it into his waistband.

  Ozmian pulled a key from his pocket and showed it to Pendergast. “I used some of that downtime, while you were out there on that ledge, retrieving a key to these rooms from the orderly’s desk.” Gun still trained on Pendergast, he unlocked the door and pushed it open, then tossed the key out of the window into the night. “There. Once again, we’re even; no advantages. And now: on your way. Ten minutes.”

  Pendergast walked silently out of the room. At the door he turned and briefly locked eyes with Ozmian. To Ozmian’s surprise, the look of defeat had changed; there was something even worse in those eyes now, a kind of existential despair…or was it his imagination? And then the figure was gone.

  Ozmian waited, taking the ten-minute break to concentrate his thoughts and ponder where Pendergast would go next and what he might do. He was sure that, this time, his quarry would not waste a precious ten-minute advantage staking out his presumed exit point. Would he lead him on a fast chase through the building, trying to arrange a double-back? Or would he try to set up another trap? Ozmian wasn’t sure what the man’s next move would be—animals under the pressure of a close stalk sometimes behaved in unpredictable ways. His only certitude was that Pendergast would try to upend the game, change the assumptions—and the thought gave him a tingle of anticipation.

  Pendergast raced down the hallway and plunged down the stairwell, intent on putting as much distance between himself and Ozmian as possible. He could run faster than Ozmian could track, so the key would be to lay down a long trail and buy himself even more time. He emerged from the stairwell and ran along dark corridors, up stairs and then down again, from floor to floor, creating a long, random and maze-like tracking problem for his opponent.

  As he ran, he made a supreme effort to suppress an uncharacteristic feeling of desperation. Even though he had anticipated the second chance, he had also been finessed twice now. He may have gained psychological insight, but how could he turn that to his benefit? He saw that his fundamental mistake had been to think he could play Ozmian’s game and beat him at it; that he could out-ratiocinate his opponent. He was playing a game of chess with a grand master, and he now realized—halfway through and fatally down by pieces—that he was surely going to lose.

  Unless…

  Unless he changed the game entirely. Yes: changed the game from chess to a game of…craps. A game of chance.

  He remembered noting on his approach to Building 93 that the west wing had partially burned and was unstable. That would be an environment that offered the very unpredictability he sought.

  His irregular journey carried him into a large space, and he stopped to catch his breath and consider his next move. He was somewhere in the back part of the hospital, once again on the first floor, and as he looked around he realized he was in some sort of arts-and-crafts room. Long plastic tables were strewn with half-finished projects, ravaged by time and rats. Pendergast quickly scanned the room for anything useful. A weaving lay decomposing on a small loom; childish watercolors were pinned to a corkboard; shriveled lumps of modeling clay half formed into grotesque shapes lay arranged on one table; warped plastic knitting needles with half-completed scarves lay on another. At the far end of the room, chairs were arranged around a bulbous 1950s television set, its picture tube exploded and lying in shards on the floor.

  Pendergast swept up several half-finished scarves, pulled the knitting needles out of them, and tied them around his feet. As he walked on, he could see an improvement in the track he made: though still faintly visible, it was now more difficult to read amid the comings and goings of earlier travelers. He had no illusions: Ozmian could surely follow even this track, but it would take more care. That would buy Pendergast a little time.

  Now he headed west, toward the ruined wing, moving as lightly as possible. As he passed room after room, one corridor after another, turn after turn, he began to pick up the acrid scent of an old fire. And then, passing a kitchen, he came to a hallway leading unmistakably into the burnt wing. He was now far enough from Ozmian to dare his flashlight; he flicked it on and aimed the beam into the blackened interior.

  What he saw gave him pause. The walls were leaning and crooked; some had partially collapsed. Ceilings had caved in, leaving piles of charred wooden beams and spalled concrete pillars, exposing twisted snarls of rebar. And this was just the first floor—nine stories of building were stacked above, barely held up by these unstable walls. As he surveyed the damage, he realized the fire was not ancient—it had probably happened in the past year.


  A homemade sign, written in silver marker on a blackened piece of plywood, had been hammered to an adjacent wall.

  HAIL FELLOW CREEPERS!

  LISTEN UP, DUDES: IF YOU THINK EXPLORING WING D OFFERS A UNIQUE CHALLENGE, THINK AGAIN. THIS PLACE IS SERIOUSLY DANGEROUS. IF ANYONE GETS KILLED IN HERE IT WILL IMPACT ACCESS FOR ALL OF US. SO PLEASE, ENJOY THE REST OF BUILDING 93, BUT STAY OUT OF WING D. DON’T FORGET THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF THE GREATEST CREEPER OF THEM ALL:

  ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

  After a moment’s hesitation, Pendergast stepped into the dark, foul-smelling labyrinth.

  60

  OZMIAN TOOK HIS time following the trail, savoring the pleasure of the stalk. There was no rush: time was on his side. Even though up to this point his quarry had disappointed him, the man was clever and dangerous and it would be fatal to underestimate him. And he was learning. He was getting better.

  The long, meandering wild-goose chase of a trail eventually led him to the arts-and-crafts room. Strangely enough, he had no memory of this room, or of doing any crafts during his time at King’s Park. Even so, the space was highly unsettling, with the tables still displaying the last unfinished craft projects of the patients—half-knitted scarves, clay heads, atrocious watercolors, the pathetic productions of misshapen minds. The tracks passed by the table of scarves and instantly Ozmian divined what had happened: Pendergast had swiped some of the scarves to wrap around his feet, thus leaving a fainter, more diffuse trail.

  A clever move.

  And from that point on the trail became more challenging to follow, requiring frequent pauses when it intersected the tracks of earlier explorers. He continued along the hall, in and out of several rooms. Pendergast was gaining time with this diversion, slowing him down. He was planning some sort of trap or ambush—one that would take time to set up.

  The general trend in the trail was westward toward Wing D, and Ozmian wondered if that was where Pendergast was headed. That would be a most unexpected move.

  Another few minutes of tracking did indeed bring him to the burnt section. At the point where the track entered the tangle of debris, he examined it closely with his flashlight. It could be a diversion, an attempt to lure him into this dangerous area, but a close look revealed that Pendergast had indeed entered the unstable wing himself. There was simply no way to fake it. He was in there—somewhere.

  And now, peering into the scorched interior, Ozmian felt himself taken aback. He could actually hear the entire wing groan and creak with every gust of the winter wind. It almost looked as if the walls were moving, and the unceasing sounds made him feel as if he were in the belly of some foul beast. The walls were crumbling and the floors burnt, leaving great gaps and diagonals of fallen beams. It had been a hot fire, so hot there were puddles of glass and aluminum on the floor and sections of concrete wall that had crumbled and fractured. It was truly insane for Pendergast to venture into a place like this—an indication more of desperation than cleverness.

  But no matter: if this was where his quarry wanted to continue the hunt, this was where the hunt would continue.

  Ozmian shut off his light. He would have to move forward now by moonlight and by feel, making his way over the sagging, gaping floors with great care while at the same time maintaining high alert, trusting in his almost supernatural sense of peril. He was sure Pendergast had set up an ambush for him. He was like that wounded lion waiting in the mopane brush to spring upon his tormenter.

  Moving past a heap of concrete rubble, he came into a huge open room that had clearly once been a communal dormitory. The beds, still lined up, were now rows of blackened iron frames. The far wall had collapsed, exposing a bathroom of heat-cracked porcelain sinks, scorched urinals, and exposed shower stalls, many of the fixtures warped and melted.

  Pendergast’s track led him to the main stairwell of Wing D. It was a perfect nightmare of destruction; Ozmian found it hard to believe it was still standing. Naturally, seeking the most dangerous area, the quarry had gone up the stairs. Again stealing forward with extreme care in absolute silence, expecting an ambush at any moment, Ozmian worked his way by feel up the noisome and crooked staircase. The trail exited at the second-floor landing into another ruined hall, a veritable labyrinth of charred and twisted beams. A fire hose lay stretched down the length of the hallway, evidently left by the firefighters who had put out the blaze. The end was still screwed to a standpipe. He paused. Something had been lying on the ground near the hose, and fresh scuff marks in the char and dust indicated that Pendergast had picked it up. What could it have been?

  His preternatural hunting senses began to tingle. In his previous life as a big-game stalker, such a feeling meant he was getting close; that his quarry had decided to turn and face him; and that the charge was imminent. He paused, tensing. A particularly strong gust of wind caused a flurry of creaks, and it seemed to Ozmian that the whole edifice might come tumbling down at any moment. When was the fire? Only last year, he recalled. The building had stood since then; he shouldn’t be overly concerned that it would happen to collapse just now. Unless given a little help.

  Ah! The thought was a revelation. He had been pondering what sort of attack Pendergast was planning—and from what direction. But would he actually bring the building down upon them both? That was a crazy idea, far too unpredictable, as likely to kill him as his pursuer—and yet as he considered the possibility he became sure that this, indeed, was what Pendergast planned to do.

  Ozmian took a silent step forward, keeping to the darkness of the outside wall, positioning himself behind a heap of concrete rubble. He was in excellent cover with a clear field of fire, near the outer skin of the building, his own figure hidden in darkness, with just enough indirect moonlight ahead and behind to see. He was exactly where he wanted to be. Still in darkness, Ozmian reached out, grasped the unrolled fire hose in his free hand, and slowly and silently drew it toward him.

  Every cell in his body felt alive. Something was about to happen. And he would be ready for it.

  61

  ONE FLOOR ABOVE, braced against two wobbly beams with an exposed section of corridor visible through gaps in the floor below, Agent Pendergast waited for Ozmian. The fireman’s ax was slung over his left shoulder, the Les Baer grasped in his right. Either his pursuer would continue tracking and come into range on the second-floor corridor, in which case Pendergast would have at least a modestly reasonable shot; or he would sense a trap, stop, and wait.

  The minutes ticked by and Ozmian did not appear. Pendergast wondered if, once again, he had been outfoxed. But no—not this time. Ozmian would follow him into Wing D; it was a challenge he would not be able to resist. Even though he couldn’t see or hear him, he knew Ozmian was out there, following his trail. He must be there, and very close. And evidently, he was waiting for Pendergast to make the first move.

  The wind gusted outside, generating a chorus of creaks and a perceptible movement in the beams Pendergast was balanced upon. Wing D was a house of cards, a heap of pickup sticks, a wobbly stack of dominoes.

  There was no point in waiting any longer. Sliding the Les Baer into his waistband, he grasped the fire ax with both hands, raised it above his head, focused his gaze on the point of impact, and swung it with tremendous force into one of the main load-bearing beams he was standing on. The massive blade bit deeply into the unburnt heart of the beam, charred bits spraying out, and a crack as sharp as gunfire signaled the breaking of the beam, instantly followed by the machine-gun fire of other load-bearing beams, supports, and concrete walls as they gave way in series. The floor lurched downward, not in free fall but in a sort of chaotic, semi-controlled descent, as Pendergast dropped the ax and whipped out his firearm; for a split second, as the debris heaved down, he had a clear field of fire at a suddenly exposed Ozmian, who was himself thrown off balance; Pendergast got off two shots before his own downward movement and the structure collapsing around him obscured everything in a great cloud of dust.

  L
eaping free of the slowly imploding mass, Pendergast projected himself out from the crumbling first floor, falling half a story and landing hard on the frozen ground, bricks and debris thundering down around him. The outcome was unpredictable…and that itself was its beauty, a dramatic transformation of the game. Ozmian was deeper in the building and thus more likely to be crushed—or so he hoped.

  The rumbling collapse came to a halt. Incredibly, the rupture was only partial, the far corner of Wing D now a gaping hole directly in front of him, but the rest of the ten-story wing still intact—if barely. The entire edifice complained loudly, emitting a volley of cracks, screeches, and groans as the load-bearing walls and concrete pillars settled to accommodate the shifting burden of mass. Pendergast tried to stand, staggered, managed to get to his feet; he was battered but essentially sound, with no broken bones. The dust cloud billowed up around him, obscuring his view.

  He had to get out of the dust and falling debris and into the open, where he could take advantage of the chaos and press the attack on Ozmian, if indeed the man had survived. Feeling his way through the chaos of rubble, moving away from the zone of falling debris, he emerged from the thinning dust cloud and into the moonlight, hard up against the chain-link fence that surrounded the building.

  And that was when he spied Ozmian: unhurt, partway up the damaged façade, rapidly lowering himself from the gaping ruin by a fire hose. At the same time, Ozmian saw him. Dropping to one knee, Pendergast aimed and fired, but Ozmian simultaneously kicked himself away from the building, swinging sideways, even as Pendergast got off another round before Ozmian had released himself and dropped into the dust cloud, vanishing from sight.