As O’Shaughnessy turned and left the office, he heard Custer mutter “wise ass” to Noyes.
THREE
“A PERFECT AFTERNOON to take in a museum,” said Pendergast, looking up at a lowering sky.
Patrick Murphy O’Shaughnessy wondered if it was some kind of joke. He stood on the steps of the Elizabeth Street precinct house, staring off into nowhere. The whole thing was a joke. The FBI agent looked more like an undertaker than a cop, with his black suit, blond-white hair, and movie-cliché accent. He wondered how such a piece of work ever got his ass through Quantico.
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a cultural paradigm, Sergeant. One of the great art museums of the world. But of course you knew that. Shall we go?”
O’Shaughnessy shrugged. Museums, whatever, he was supposed to stay with this guy. What a crappy assignment.
As they descended the steps, a long gray car came gliding up from where it had been idling at the corner. For a second O’Shaughnessy could hardly believe it. A Rolls. Pendergast opened the door.
“Drug seizure?” O’Shaughnessy asked.
“No. Personal vehicle.”
Figures. New Orleans. They were all on the take down there. Now he had the guy pegged. Probably up here on some kind of drug business. Maybe Custer wanted in. That’s why he put him, of all the cops in the precinct, on this guy’s ass. This was looking worse by the minute.
Pendergast continued holding the door. “After you.”
O’Shaughnessy slid in the back, sinking immediately into creamy white leather.
Pendergast ducked in beside him. “To the Metropolitan Museum,” he told the driver. As the Rolls pulled away from the curb, O’Shaughnessy caught a glimpse of Captain Custer standing on the steps, staring after them. He resisted the impulse to flip him the bird.
O’Shaughnessy turned to Pendergast and gave him a good look. “Here’s to success, Mister FBI Agent.”
He turned away to look out the window. There was a silence on the other side.
“The name is Pendergast,” came the soft voice, finally.
“Whatever.”
O’Shaughnessy continued to look out the window. He allowed a minute to pass, and then he said: “So what’s at the museum? Some dead mummies?”
“I have yet to meet a live mummy, Sergeant. However, it is not the Egyptian Department we are going to.”
A wise guy. He wondered how many more assignments he’d have like this. Just because he made a mistake five years ago, they all thought he was Mister Expendable. Any time there was something funny coming down the pike, it was always: We’ve got a little problem here, O’Shaughnessy, and you’re just the man to take care of it.But it was usually just penny-ante stuff. This guy in the Rolls, he looked big-time. This was different. This looked illegal. O’Shaughnessy thought of his long-gone father and felt a stab of shame. Thank God the man wasn’t around to see him now. Five generations of O’Shaughnessys in the force, and now everything gone to shit. He wondered if he could hack the eleven more years required before an early severance package became available.
“So what’s the game?” O’Shaughnessy asked. No more sucker work: he was going to keep his eyes open and his head up on this one. He didn’t want any stray shit to fall when he wasn’t looking up.
“Sergeant?”
“What.”
“There is no game.”
“Of course not.” O’Shaughnessy let out a little snort. “There never is.” He realized the FBI agent was looking at him intently. He continued looking away.
“I can see that you’re under a misapprehension here, Sergeant,” came the drawl. “We should rectify that at once. You see, I can understand why you’d jump to that conclusion. Five years ago, you were caught on a surveillance tape taking two hundred dollars from a prostitute in exchange for releasing her. I believe they call it a ‘shakedown.’ Have I got that right?”
O’Shaughnessy felt a sudden numbness, followed by a slow anger. Here it was again. He said nothing. What was there to say? It would have been better if they’d cashiered him.
“The tape got sent to Internal Affairs. Internal Affairs paid you a visit. But there were differing accounts of what happened, nothing was proven. Unfortunately, the damage was done, and since that time you’ve seen your career—how should I put it?—remain in stasis.”
O’Shaughnessy continued looking out the window, at the rush of buildings. Remain in stasis. You mean, go nowhere.
“And you’ve caught nothing since but a series of questionable assignments and gray-area errands. Of which you no doubt consider this one more.”
O’Shaughnessy spoke to the window, his voice deliberately tired. “Pendergast, I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t need to listen to this. I really don’t.”
“I saw that tape,” said Pendergast.
“Good for you.”
“I heard, for example, the prostitute pleading with you to let her go, saying that her pimp would beat her up if you didn’t. Then I heard her insisting you take the two hundred dollars, because if you didn’t, her pimp would assume she had betrayed him. But if you tookthe money, he would only think she’d bribed her way out of custody and spare her. Am I right? So you took the money.”
O’Shaughnessy had been through this in his own mind a thousand times. What difference did it make? He didn’t have to take the money. He hadn’t given it to charity, either. Pimps were beating up prostitutes every day. He should’ve left her to her fate.
“So now you’re cynical, you’re tired, you’ve come to realize that the whole idea of protect and serveis farcical, especially out there on the streets, where there doesn’t even seem to be right or wrong, nobody worth protecting, and nobody worth serving.”
There was a silence.
“Are we through with the character analysis?” O’Shaughnessy asked.
“For the moment. Except to say that, yes, this is a questionable assignment. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
The next silence stretched into minutes.
They stopped at a light, and O’Shaughnessy took an opportunity to cast a covert glance toward Pendergast. The man, as if knowing the glance was coming, caught his eye and pinned it. O’Shaughnessy almost jumped, he looked away so fast.
“Did you, by any chance, catch the show last year, Costuming History?” Pendergast asked, his voice now light and pleasant.
“What?”
“I’ll take that as a no. You missed a splendid exhibition. The Met has a fine collection of historical clothing dating back to the early Middle Ages. Most of it was in storage. But last year, they mounted an exhibition showing how clothing evolved over the last six centuries. Absolutely fascinating. Did you know that all ladies at Louis XIV’s court at Versailles were required to have a thirteen-inch waist or less? And that their dresses weighed between thirty and forty pounds?”
O’Shaughnessy realized he didn’t know how to answer. The conversation had taken such a strange and sudden tack that he found himself momentarily stunned.
“I was also interested to learn that in the fifteenth century, a man’s codpiece—”
This tidbit was mercifully interrupted by a screech of brakes as the Rolls swerved to avoid a cab cutting across three lanes of traffic.
“Yankee barbarians,” said Pendergast mildly. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, the codpiece . . .”
The Rolls was caught in Midtown traffic now, and O’Shaughnessy began to wonder just how much longer this ride was going to take.
The Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum was sheeted in Beaux Arts marble, decorated with vast sprays of flowers, and almost unbearably crowded. O’Shaughnessy hung back while the strange FBI agent talked to one of the harried volunteers at the information desk. She picked up a phone, called someone, then put it down again, looking highly irritated. O’Shaughnessy began to wonder what this Pendergast was up to. Throughout the extended trip uptown he’d said nothing about his intended plan of action.