Reliquary (Pendergast, Book 2) (Relic) Page 28

  Margo stood up from the computer terminal and walked over to the worktable. She picked up a piece, studied it a moment, then put it down. “This could be anything,” she said, picking up another, a tube of metal with one end encased in gray rubber.

  “Anything,” Pendergast agreed. “But I sense, Dr. Green, that when we know what they are—and why they were lying enshrined on a stone platform, thirty stories below New York City—we’ll have the key to this puzzle.”

  43

  Hayward shouldered the riot gear, adjusted the lantern visor strapped around her head, and glanced across the mass of blue milling around the lower concourse of the 59th Street station. She was supposed to find Squad Five, led by a Lieutenant Miller, but the vast space was in chaos, everyone trying to find everyone else and consequently finding nobody.

  She saw Chief Horlocker arrive, fresh from mustering the squads that were assembling at the 81st Street station under the Museum. Horlocker took up a position on the far side of the concourse next to Tactical Head Jack Masters, a thin, sour-looking man. Master’s long arms, which usually hung down by his side like an ape’s, were now gyrating as he talked to a group of lieutenants, slapping a series of maps, tracing out imaginary lines. Horlocker stood by, nodding, holding a pointing device like a swagger stick, occasionally tapping it on the map to emphasize a particularly salient point. As Hayward watched, Horlocker dismissed the lieutenants and Masters picked up a bullhorn.

  “Attention!” he barked in a rasping voice. “Are the squads assembled?” It reminded Hayward of Girl Scout camp.

  A rumbling murmur that might have been “No” arose.

  “Squad One here, then,” Masters said, pointing toward the front. “Squad Two, assemble at the downtown level.” He continued through the squads, assigning them various sections of the concourse. Hayward headed for the Squad Five assembly point. As she arrived, Lieutenant Miller was spreading out a large diagram of his own squad’s area of responsibility shaded in blue. Miller was wearing a light gray assault uniform whose loose folds could not conceal a generous load of adipose tissue.

  “I don’t want no heroics, no confrontations,” Miller was saying. “Okay? It’s basically a traffic cop assignment, nothing fancy. If there’s any resistance, you’ve got your mask and your tear gas. Don’t fart around; show them you mean business. But I don’t expect any trouble. Do your job right, and we’ll be out of here in an hour.”

  Hayward opened her mouth, then restrained herself. It seemed to her that using tear gas in underground tunnels might be a little tricky. Once, years before the Transit Police merged with the regular force, someone at headquarters had suggested using gas to quell a disturbance. The rank and file almost revolted. Tear gas was bad enough on the surface, but it was murderous belowground. And she could see that their detail covered the deeper subway and maintenance tunnels beneath Columbus Circle station.

  Miller swivelled his head, the dark glasses around his neck swinging from a Day-Glo chord. “Remember, most of these moles are wigged out on some shit or other, maybe weakened by too much juice,” he barked. “Show them some authority and they’ll fall in line. Just move ‘em up and out like cattle, if you know what I mean. Once you get them started, they’ll keep going. Head them toward this central point here, beneath the number two turnaround. That’s the staging point for squads four through six. Once the squads have reassembled, we’ll move the moles up to the parkside subway exit, here.”

  “Lieutenant Miller?” Hayward said, unable to keep silent any longer.

  The Lieutenant looked at her.

  “I used to roust some of those tunnels, and I know these guys. They’re not going to move along as easily as you think they are.”

  Miller’s eyes widened, as if seeing her for the first time. “You?” he asked in disbelief. “A rouster?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hayward said, thinking she’d give the next guy who asked her that a swift kick in the balls.

  “Jesus,” said Miller, shaking his head.

  There was a silence as the other cops looked at Hayward.

  “Any other ex-TAs here?” Miller asked, looking around. Another officer raised his hand. Hayward quickly took in the obvious features: tall, black, built like a tank.

  “Name?” Miller barked.

  “Carlin,” the heavyset man drawled.

  “Any others?” Miller asked. There was a silence.

  “Good.”

  “Us ex-Transit Police, we know those tunnels,” Carlin said in a mild voice. “Too bad they didn’t think to enlist more of us for this picnic. Sir.”

  “Carlin?” Miller said. “You got your gas, you got your stick, you got your piece. So don’t wet your pants. And when I want your opinion again, I’ll ask for it.” Miller looked around. “There are too many goddamn bodies in here. This action calls for a small, elite group. But what the Chief wants, the Chief gets.”

  Hayward glanced around herself, estimating there were perhaps a hundred officers in the room. “There’re at least three hundred homeless beneath Columbus Circle alone,” she said evenly.

  “Oh? And when did you last count them?” Miller asked.

  Hayward said nothing.

  “There’s one in every group,” Miller muttered to no one in particular. “Now listen up. This is a tactical operation, and we’ve got to be tight and obey orders. Is that understood?”

  There were a few nods. Carlin caught Hayward’s eye and rolled his own briefly toward the ceiling, indicating his opinion of Miller.

  “All right, partner up,” Miller snapped, rolling up the chart.

  Hayward turned toward Carlin, and he nodded in return. “How you doing?” he asked. Hayward noticed her first impression of the officer as overweight was wrong: He was strongly built, cut like a weight lifter, not an ounce of fat anywhere. “What was your beat before the merge?”

  “I had the tour under Penn Station. The name’s Hayward.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a derisive look cross Miller’s face: Carlin and the broad.

  “This is really a man’s job,” Miller said, still looking at Hayward. “There’s always the chance things could turn a little ugly. We won’t hold it against you if—”

  “With Sergeant Carlin here,” Hayward interrupted, “there’s enough man for the both of us.” She swept her eyes appraisingly across Carlin’s massive frame, then looked pointedly at Miller’s stomach.

  Several cops erupted into laughter, and Miller frowned. “I’ll find something in the rear for you two.”

  “Officers of the law!” Horlocker’s voice suddenly barked through the bullhorn. “We have less than four hours to clear the homeless from the areas beneath and surrounding Central Park. Keep in mind that precisely at midnight, millions of gallons of water will be released from the reservoir into the storm drain system. We’ll be channeling the flow precisely. But there’s no guarantee that a couple of wandering homeless won’t get caught in the downward rush of water. So it’s imperative that your work be done, and everyone within the clear zone evacuated, well before the deadline. Everyone. This is not a temporary evacuation. We’re going to use this unique opportunity to clear out, once and for all, the underground homeless from these areas. Now, you have your assignments, and you have team leaders who’ve been chosen for their experience. There is no reason why these assignments cannot be completed with an hour or two to spare.

  “We’ve made arrangements to provide these people with food and shelter for the night. Explain this to them, as necessary. From the exit points marked on your maps, buses will take them to shelters in Manhattan and the other boroughs. We don’t expect resistance. But if there is resistance, you have your orders.”

  He looked around at the assembled group for a moment, then raised the bullhorn again.

  “Your fellow officers in the northern sections have been fully briefed and will begin their operations simultaneously with your own. I want everyone moving together. Remember, once underground, your radios will be of limited use. You ma
y be able to communicate with each other and nearby team leaders, but aboveground communication will be intermittent at best. So keep to the plan, keep to the schedule, and do your part.”

  He stepped forward. “And now, men, let’s do some good!”

  The ranks of uniformed officers straightened up as Horlocker walked through them, clapping some on the back, dispensing encouraging words. As he was passing Hayward, he stopped, frowning. “You’re Hayward, right? D’Agosta’s girl?”

  D’Agosta’s girl, my ass. “I work with D’Agosta, sir,” she said out loud.

  Horlocker nodded. “Well, get to it, then.”

  “Hey, sir, I think you’d better …” Hayward began, but an aide had run up to Horlocker’s side, babbling something about a rally in Central Park growing much larger than expected, and the Chief moved away quickly. Miller shot her a warning look.

  As Horlocker left the concourse with a retinue of aides, Masters picked up the bullhorn. “Move out by squad!” he barked.

  Miller turned to the group with a lopsided grin. “Okay, men. Let’s bag some moles.”

  44

  Captain Waxie stepped out of the ancient puddingstone Central Park precinct station and huffed along the path that angled northward into the wooded gloom. On his left was a uniformed officer from the station. On his right was Stan Duffy, the city’s Chief Engineer of Hydraulics. Already, Duffy was trotting ahead, looking back at them impatiently.

  “Slow it down a bit,” Waxie said, panting. “This isn’t a marathon.”

  “I don’t like being in the Park this late,” Duffy replied in a high, reedy voice. “Especially with all these murders going on. You were supposed to be at the station half an hour ago.”

  “Everything north of Forty-second is messed up,” Waxie said. “Gridlocked beyond belief. It’s all that Wisher woman’s fault. There’s some kind of march, formed out of nowhere.” He shook his head. They’d jammed up Central Park West and South, and stragglers were still wandering up Fifth Avenue, causing all kinds of chaos. They didn’t even have a damn permit. And she’d given no warning. If he were mayor, he would have clapped them all in jail.

  Now the bandshell loomed ahead to their right: empty and silent, festooned with impossibly dense graffiti, a haven for muggers. Duffy glanced at it nervously, hurrying past.

  The three angled around the pond, following the East Drive. In the distance, beyond the shadowy borders of the Park, Waxie could hear yelling, cheering, the sounds of horns and motors. He glanced at his watch: eight-thirty. The plans called for initiating the drainage sequence by eight forty-five. He trotted a little faster. They were barely going to make it.

  The Central Park Reservoir Gauging Station was housed in an old stone building a quarter mile south of the Reservoir. Now, Waxie could see the building looming through the trees, a single light glowing through a dirty window, the letters CPRGS chiseled on the doorway lintel. He slowed to a walk while Duffy unlocked the heavy metal door. It swung inwards to reveal an old, stone room sparsely decorated with map tables and dusty, long-forgotten hydrometric instruments. In one corner, in dramatic juxtaposition to the rest of the equipment, sat a computer workstation, along with several monitors, printers, and strange-looking peripherals.

  Once they were inside, Duffy closed and locked the door carefully, then went over to the console. “I’ve never done this before,” he said nervously, reaching under a desk and removing a manual that weighed at least fifteen pounds.

  “Don’t crap out on us now,” Waxie said.

  Duffy swiveled a yellow eye in his direction. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to say something. Instead, he paged through the manual for a few minutes, then turned to the keyboard and began to type. A series of commands appeared on the larger of the monitors.

  “How does this thing work?” Waxie asked, shifting from one foot to the other. The intense humidity of the room made his joints ache.

  “It’s fairly simple,” Duffy said. “Water from the lower Catskills is gravity fed into the Central Park Reservoir. That Reservoir may look big, but it holds only about three days’ worth of water for Manhattan. It’s really more of a holding tank, used to smooth out rises and dips in demand.”

  He tapped at the keys. “This monitoring system is programmed to anticipate those rises and dips, and it adjusts the flow into the Reservoir accordingly. It can open and close gates as far away as Storm King Mountain, a hundred miles away. The program looks back over twenty years of water use, factors in the latest weather forecasts, and makes demand estimates.”

  Safe in his locked chamber, Duffy was warming to his subject. “At times there are departures from the estimate, of course. When demand is less than expected, and too much water flows toward the Reservoir, the computer opens the Main Shunt and bleeds the excess into the storm drain and sewer system. When demand is unexpectedly high, the Main Shunt is closed and additional upstream gates are opened to increase the flow.”

  “Really?” Waxie said. He’d lost interest after the second sentence.

  “I’m going to do a manual override, which means I’m going to open the gates upstream and open the Main Shunt. Water will pour into the Reservoir and drain immediately into the sewer system. It’s a simple and elegant solution. All I have to do is program the system to release twenty million cubic feet—that’s about a hundred million gallons—at midnight, then revert back to automatic mode upon completion.”

  “So the Reservoir isn’t going to go dry?” Waxie asked.

  Duffy smiled indulgently. “Really, Captain. We don’t want to create a water emergency. Believe me, this can be done with the most minimal impact on the water supply. I doubt we’ll see the level in the Reservoir drop more than ten feet. It’s an incredible system, really. Hard to believe it was designed over a century ago, by engineers who anticipated even the needs of today.” The smile faded. “Even so, nothing on this scale has ever been done before. Are you sure you really want to do this? All the valves opening at once … well, all I can say is it’s going to make one heck of a surf.”

  “You heard the man,” Waxie said, rubbing his bulbous nose with his thumb. “Just make sure it works.”

  “Oh, it’ll work,” Duffy replied.

  Waxie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Of course it will,” he said. “Because if it doesn’t, you’re going to find yourself a junior sluice gate operator in the Lower Hudson sewage treatment plant.”

  Duffy laughed nervously. “Really, Captain,” he repeated. “There’s no need for threats.” He resumed his typing while Waxie paced the room. The uniformed cop stood soberly by the door, watching the proceedings disinterestedly.

  “How long will it take to dump the water?” Waxie asked at last.

  “About eight minutes.”

  Waxie grunted. “Eight minutes to dump a hundred million gallons?”

  “As I understand it, you want the water dumped as quickly as possible, to fill up the lowest tunnels under Central Park and sweep them clean, right?”

  Waxie nodded.

  “Eight minutes represents the system at one hundred percent flow. Of course, it will take almost three hours for the hydraulics to get in position. Then it will simply be a matter of draining water from the Reservoir, at the same time that we bring new water into the Reservoir from the upstate aqueducts. That should keep the Reservoir’s water level from dropping excessively. It has to be done just right, because if the flow coming into the reservoir is greater than the flow going out … well, that means a major flood in Central Park.”

  “Then I hope to hell you understand what you’re doing. I want this thing to proceed on schedule, no delays, no glitches.”

  The sound of typing slowed.

  “Stop worrying,” Duffy said, his finger poised on a key. “There won’t be any delays. Just don’t change your mind. Because once I press this key, the hydraulics take over. I can’t stop it. You see—”

  “Just hit the damn key,” Waxie said impatiently.

  Duffy pres
sed it with a melodramatic flourish. Then he turned to face Waxie. “It’s done,” he said. “Now, only a miracle can stop the flow. And in case you hadn’t heard, they don’t allow miracles in New York City.”

  45

  D’Agosta gazed at the small pile of rubber and chromed parts, picked one up, then dropped it again in disgust. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Could these have been left there by accident?”

  “I assure you, Vincent,” Pendergast said, “they were carefully arranged on the altar, almost as if they were some kind of offering.” There was a silence while he paced restlessly across the lab. “There’s another thing I’m uneasy about. Kawakita was the one who was growing the lily in tanks, after all. Why would they kill him and burn the lab? Why would they destroy their only source of the drug? The one thing an addict is most terrified of is losing his connection. And the lab was burned deliberately. You said there were trace accelerants in the ashes.”

  “Unless they were growing it somewhere else,” D’Agosta said, fingering his breast pocket absently.

  “Go ahead and light up,” Margo said.

  D’Agosta eyed her. “Really?”

  Margo smiled and nodded. “Just this once. But don’t tell Director Merriam.”

  D’Agosta brightened. “It’ll be our secret.” He slipped the cigar out, jabbed a pencil into its head, and moved to the lone window, lifting the sash wide. He lit up and puffed the clouds of smoke contentedly out over Central Park.

  I wish I had a vice I enjoyed half as much as that, Margo thought as she watched idly.

  “I considered the possibility of an alternate supply,” Pendergast was saying. “And I kept my eyes open for signs of an underground garden. But there was no evidence of one. Such a lily farm would require still water and fresh air. I can’t imagine where they could be hiding it underground.”

  D’Agosta blew another stream of blue smoke out the window, resting his elbows on the windowsill. “Look at that mess,” he said, nodding southward. “Horlocker’s going to have kittens when he sees that.”