D’Agosta hung up the phone and nodded. Pendergast slipped into the chair with his catlike grace. He looked around, taking in the boxed files and the bare patch on the wall where the map had once hung. He turned back to D’Agosta, eyebrows raised quizzically.
“It’s Waxie’s headache now.” D’Agosta answered the unspoken question. “I’ve been placed on modified assignment.”
“Indeed,” Pendergast replied. “Lieutenant, you don’t seem dismayed by the turn of events.”
“Dismayed?” D’Agosta said. “Look around again. The precinct board’s gone, the files are packed, Hayward’s in bed, the coffee is hot, the cigar is lit. I feel terrific.”
“I doubt it very much. Still, you’ll probably sleep better tonight than Squire Waxie will. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,’ and all that.” He looked at D’Agosta with an amused expression. “So what’s next?”
“Oh, I’m still assigned to the case,” D’Agosta replied. “Exactly how, Waxie hasn’t bothered to say.”
“He probably doesn’t know himself. But I think we can ensure that you won’t be sitting idle.” Pendergast fell silent and D’Agosta leaned back in his chair, enjoying his cigar, content to let the silence spread out to fill the room.
“I was once in Florence,” Pendergast said at last.
“Oh, yeah? I was just in Italy. Took my son there last fall to see his great-grandmother.”
Pendergast nodded. “Did you visit the Pitti Palace?”
“Pity who?”
“It’s an art museum, actually. Quite exquisite. There’s an old medieval map painted as a fresco on one of its walls, done the year before Columbus discovered America.”
“No kidding.”
“In the place where the continent of America would later be found, the map is blank except for the words Cui ci sono del mostri.
D’Agosta screwed up his face. “Here there are… mostri. What’s that?”
“It means, ‘Here there be monsters.’ ”
“Monsters. Yeah. Jesus, I’ve forgotten my Italian. I used to speak it with my grandparents.”
Pendergast nodded. “Lieutenant, I want you to hazard a guess at something for me.”
“Shoot.”
“Guess the largest inhabited region on earth that remains unmapped.”
D’Agosta shrugged. “I don’t know. Milwaukee?”
Pendergast smiled mirthlessly. “No. And it’s not Outer Mongolia. Or the Antipodes. It’s underground New York.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“I am not ‘shitting you,’ as you so charmingly put it.” Pendergast shifted in his chair. “Vincent, underground New York reminds me of that map. in the Pitti Palace. It is truly unexplored territory. And it is, apparently, unimaginably vast. For example, there are almost a dozen stories’ worth of structures below Grand Central—not counting the sewers and storm drains. The levels below Penn Station go even deeper.”
“So you’ve been down,” D’Agosta said.
“Yes. After meeting with you and Sergeant Hayward. It was an exploratory journey, really. I wanted to get a sense of the environment, test my ability to move around and learn what I could. I was able to speak with a few of the underground dwellers. They told me much, and they hinted at even more.”
D’Agosta sat forward.” “Learn anything about the murders?”
Pendergast nodded. “Indirectly. But those who know the most are deeper underground than I dared go on my first descent. It takes a while to gain these people’s trust, and I have a long way to go. Especially now. You see, the underground homeless are terrified.” Pendergast turned his pale eyes toward D’Agosta. “From piecing together various whispered conversations, I’ve gathered that a mysterious group of people have colonized the underground. And most of the rumors don’t even use the word people.Supposedly, they are feral, cannibalistic, subhuman. And it is these beings who are responsible for the killings.”
There was a pause. D’Agosta stood and moved to the window, gazing out at the nocturnal cityscape of Manhattan. “You believe this?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know,” Pendergast replied. “I need to speak to Mephisto, the leader of the community beneath Columbus Circle. Many of the things he told the Postin that recent article ring disturbingly true. Unfortunately, he’s a difficult man to contact. He is distrustful of all outsiders and hates the authorities with a passion. But I feel he is the one person who can lead me where I have to go.”
D’Agosta’s lips twitched. “Need a partner?” he asked.
A small smile appeared on Pendergast’s face, then disappeared again. “It’s an extremely dangerous and lawless place. However, I will consider the offer. Fair enough?”
D’Agosta nodded.
“Good. Now, I suggest you go home and get some sleep.” Pendergast rose. “Although he doesn’t know it, friend Waxie is going to need all the help he can get.”
= 21 =
SIMON BRAMBELL zippered up his portfolio, humming “Macushla” to himself. He passed a loving glance over the lab: the safety shower in the corner, the rows of chrome and steel instruments lined up neatly behind glass, winking at him in the subdued light. He was feeling enormously pleased with himself. Once again, he replayed in his head the scene of his little coup, in particular the impassive look on Frock’s face as he’d been speaking. Impassive, yet no doubt fuming inside. It made up for Frock’s little sneer of triumph over the strength of the bites. Though he worked for the city government, Brambell enjoyed the one-upmanship of academia as much as anybody.
He tucked the soft leather portfolio under his shoulder and once again cast his eyes about the laboratory. It was a wonderful laboratory, well designed and well equipped. He longed for something as elegant and comprehensive at the Medical Examiner’s office. It would never happen, he knew; the city was chronically short of money. If he didn’t find the detective work of forensic pathology so absorbing, he’d move to some well-endowed ivory tower in half a second.
He closed the door behind him softly, surprised as always by the emptiness of the corridor. He’d never seen a bunch so averse to working late as the Museum staff. Still, he didn’t mind the quiet. It was refreshing and different, just as the Museum’s smell of dust and old wood was so different from the stench of formalin and decay that pervaded the Medical Examiner’s office. He decided to take the long way out of the Museum, as he did every evening, through the Hall of Africa. He found the dioramas in that particular hall to be true works of art. And they looked especially good at such an advanced hour, the hall lights turned off, each diorama glowing with internal light like a window into another world.
He walked down the long corridor and, being averse to elevators, skipped down three flights of stairs. Passing beneath a metal archway, he found himself in the Hall of Ocean Life. Only the nocturnal lighting was on, and the hall looked dark and mysterious, quiet except for the ever-present clicks, groans, and creakings of the ancient fabric of the Museum. Lovely,he thought. This was the way to see the Museum, with all those horrid shrieking children and their braying teachers absent. He passed under the replica of a giant squid, through a brace of yellowed elephant tusks, and entered the Hall of Africa.
Midnight. He passed slowly through the hall, the herd of elephants at its center barely emerging from the darkness, the habitat groups arranged in a double tier around the walls on both sides of him. The gorilla group was his favorite, and he paused in front of it, pursing his lips, letting himself merge with the scene. It was so very real, and he wanted to enjoy it. Things would be wrapping up here very soon; his work was almost done. If he was right, this poor Bitterman fellow and the remains of Shasheen Walker would fall right into the pattern.
At last, he turned with a sigh under a low doorway, then down a stone corridor toward the Tower. He knew the story of the famous Tower: how in 1870 Endurance S. Flyte, railroad baron and third director of the NYMNH, had commissioned a monstrous, fortresslike addition to the original Museum building. It was to be modeled after the Welsh castle of Caernarvon, which Flyte had tried—unsuccessfully—to purchase for himself. Saner heads eventually prevailed, and Flyte was removed from office with only the central tower of his fortress completed. Now the cornerstone of the institution’s southwest facade, the six-sided Tower was used primarily to store the Museum’s endless collections. It was also, Brambell had heard, a favorite trysting place for the more ghoulish-minded of the Museum’s staff.