Pendergast returned the gaze, a speculative expression on his face. “You’re probably correct,” he replied at last.
“Enough,” Horlocker snapped at the group of officers who had brought Mephisto in. “Get him downtown. We’ll deal with him once the dust has settled.”
“And what would be in it for you?” Pendergast asked Mephisto.
“Room to live. Freedom from harassment. The grievances of my people redressed.”
Pendergast gazed at Mephisto almost meditatively, his expression unreadable.
“I said, get the man the hell out,” Horlocker roared.
The cops pulled Mephisto to his feet and began to drag him toward the exit.
“Stay where you are,” Pendergast said. His voice was low, but the tone was so commanding the officers instinctively stopped in their tracks.
Horlocker turned, a vein pulsing in his temple. “What’s this?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“Chief Horlocker, I’m taking custody of this individual, under the authority vested in me as a federal agent of the United States government.”
“You’re bullshitting me,” Horlocker replied.
“Pendergast!” Margo hissed. “We’ve got barely two hours.”
The agent nodded, then addressed Horlocker. “I’d like to stay and bandy civilities, but I’m afraid I’ve run out of time,” he said. “Vincent, please get the handcuff key from these gentlemen.”
Pendergast turned toward the knot of policemen. “You, there. Release this man into my custody.”
“Don’t do it!” Horlocker shouted.
“Sir,” one of the officers said, “you can’t fight the Feds, sir.”
Pendergast approached the bedraggled figure, now standing beside D’Agosta and rubbing his manacled wrists. “Mr. Mephisto,” he said in a low voice, “I don’t know what role you played in today’s events, and I can’t guarantee your personal freedom. But if you help me now, perhaps we can rid this city of the killers that have been preying on your community. And I will give my personal guarantee that your demands for homeless rights will be given a fair hearing.” He held out his hand.
Mephisto’s eyes narrowed. “You lied once,” he hissed.
“It was the only way I could make contact with you,” said Pendergast, continuing to hold out his hand. “This isn’t a fight between the haves and have-nots. If it was once, it isn’t anymore. If we fail now, we all go down: Park Avenue and Route 666 alike.”
There was a long pause. At last, Mephisto nodded silently.
“How touching,” said Horlocker. “I hope you all drown in shit.”
= 50 =
SMITHBACK PEERED through the rusting steel grid of the catwalk floor, down into the brick-lined shaft that ran away into vertiginous darkness beneath his feet. He could hear Waxie and the rest—far below him—but he couldn’t see what they were up to. Once again, he fervently hoped that this wouldn’t turn into a wild-goose chase. But he’d followed Waxie all this way; he might as well stick around and see just what the hell was up.
He moved forward cautiously, trying to catch a glimpse of the five men below him. The rotten catwalk hung down from the underside of a gigantic bowl of pitted metal, moving in a long gentle arc toward a vertical shaft that seemed to head for the center of the earth itself. The catwalk sagged with his every movement. Reaching a vertical ladder, he craned his neck out into the chill space and looked downward. A bank of floodlights shone into the shaft, but even their power was inadequate to penetrate deeply into the gloom. A tiny thread of water came from a crack in the vault above and spiraled down through empty space, disappearing silently into the darkness. There was a pinging noise coming from above, like the creaking of a submarine hull under pressure. A steady rush of cold, fresh air blew up from the shaft and stirred the hair on his forehead.
In his wildest dreams, Smithback could not have imagined that such a strange, antique space existed beneath the Central Park Reservoir. He knew that the enormous metal ceiling above him must actually be the drainage basin at the lowest level of the Reservoir, where its earthen bed met the complex tangle of storm drains and feeder tunnels. He tried not to think of the vast bulb of water hanging directly over his head.
He could see the team in the dim spaces below him now, standing on a small platform abutting the ladder. Smithback could vaguely make out a complicated tangle of iron pipes, wheels, and valves, looking like some infernal machine out of an Industrial Age nightmare. The ladder was slimy with condensation, and the tiny platform far below him had no railing. Smithback took a step down the ladder, then thought better of it and retreated. As good a vantage point as any, he thought, curling up on the catwalk. From here, he could see everything that went on, but remain virtually invisible himself.
Flashlights were licking across the brick walls far below him, and the policemen’s voices, rumbled and distorted, floated up to him. He recognized Waxie’s basso profundo from the evening he’d spent in the Museum’s projection booth. The fat cop seemed to be speaking into his radio. Now he put his radio away and turned to the nervous-looking man in shirt sleeves. They seemed to be arguing bitterly about something.
“You little liar,” Waxie was saying, “you never told me that you couldn’t reverse the flood.”
“I did, I did,” came a high-pitched whine in response. “You even said you didn’t want it reversible. I wish I’d had a tape recorder, because—”
“Shut up. Are these the valves?”
“They’re here, at the back.”
There was a silence, then the groaning protest of metal as the men shifted position.
“Is this platform safe?” came Waxie’s voice from deep within the pit.
“How should I know?” the high-pitched voice replied. “When they computerized the system, they stopped maintaining—”
“All right, all right. Just do what you have to do, Duffy, and let’s get out of here.”
Smithback inched his nose farther into space and peered down. He could see the man named Duffy examining the nest of valves. “We have to turn all these off,” came his voice. “It closes the Main Shunt manually. That way, when the computer directs the Reservoir to drain, the shunt gates will open, but these manual valves will contain the water. Works on the siphon principal. If it works at all. Like I said, it’s never been tried.”
“Great. Maybe you’ll win the Nobel Prize. Now do it.”
Do what? Smithback wondered. It sounded as if they were trying to prevent the Reservoir from being drained. The thought of millions of cubic feet of water thundering down from above was enough to swivel his eyes toward the exit far over his head. But why? Computer glitch of some kind? Whatever it was, it didn’t sound worth leaving the biggest riot in a hundred years for. Smithback’s heart began to sink; this was definitely not where the real story was.
“Help me turn this,” Duffy said.
“You heard him,” Waxie snapped at the policemen. From his perch, Smithback could see two of the tiny figures gripping a large iron wheel. There was a faint grunting. “It ain’t moving,” one of the policemen announced.
The man named Duffy bent closer, inspecting. “Somebody’s been messing around here!” he cried, pointing. “Look at this! The shaft’s been packed with lead. And over here, these valves have been broken off. Recently, too, by the looks of it.”
“Don’t give me any of your bullshit, Duffy.”
“Look for yourself. This thing is shot to hell.”
There was a silence. “Shit on a stick,” came Waxie’s fretful voice. “Can you fix it?”
“Sure we can. If we had twenty-four hours. And acetylene torches, an arc welder, new valve stems, and maybe a dozen other parts that haven’t been manufactured since the turn of the century.”