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Pendergast turned to the shopkeeper—a small, vivacious woman—and began speaking rapidly.

“Nin hao, lao bin liang. Li mama hao ma?”

The woman shook her head. “Bu, ta hai shi lao yang zi, shen ti bu hao.”

“Qing li Dai wo xiang ta wen an. Qing gei wo yi bei Wu Long cha hao ma?”

The woman walked away, returning with a ceramic pot from which she poured a minuscule cup of tea. She placed the cup in front of Nora.

“You speak Chinese?” Nora asked Pendergast.

“A little Mandarin. I confess to speaking Cantonese somewhat more fluently.”

Nora fell silent. Somehow, she was not surprised.

“King’s Tea of Osmanthus Oolong,” said Pendergast, nodding toward her cup. “One of the finest in the world. From bushes grown on the sunny sides of the mountains, new shoots gathered only in the spring.”

Nora picked up the cup. A delicate aroma rose to her nostrils. She took a sip, tasting a complex blend of green tea and other exquisitely delicate flavors.

“Very nice,” she said, putting down the cup.

“Indeed.” Pendergast glanced at her for a moment. Then he spoke again in Mandarin, and the woman filled up a bag, weighed it, and sealed it, scribbling a price on the plastic wrapping. She handed it to Nora.

“For me?” Nora asked.

Pendergast nodded.

“I don’t want any gifts from you.”

“Please take it. It’s excellent for the digestion. As well as being a superb antioxidant.”

Nora took it irritably, then saw the price. “Wait a minute, this is two hundred dollars?

“It will last three or four months,” said Pendergast. “A small price when one considers—”

“Look,” said Nora, setting down the bag. “Mr. Pendergast, I came here to tell you that I can’t work for you anymore. My career at the Museum is at stake. A bag of tea isn’t going to change my mind, even if it is two hundred bucks.”

Pendergast listened attentively, his head slightly bowed.

“They implied—and the implication was very clear—that I wasn’t to work with you anymore. I likewhat I do. I keep this up, I’ll lose my job. I already lost one job when the Lloyd Museum closed down. I can’t afford to lose another. I needthis job.”

Pendergast nodded.

“Brisbane and Collopy gave me the money I need for my carbon dates. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me now. I can’t spare the time.”

Pendergast waited, still listening.

“What do you need me for, anyway? I’m an archaeologist, and there’s no longer any site to investigate. You’ve got a copy of the letter. You’re FBI. You must have dozens of specialists at your beck and call.”

Pendergast remained silent as Nora took a sip of tea. The cup rattled loudly in the saucer when she replaced it.

“So,” she said. “Now that’s settled.”

Now Pendergast spoke. “Mary Greene lived a few blocks from here, down on Water Street. Number 16. The house is still there. It’s a five-minute walk.”

Nora looked at him, eyebrows narrowing in surprise. It had never occurred to her how close they were to Mary Greene’s neighborhood. She recalled the note, written in blood. Mary Greene had known she was going to die. Her want had been simple: not to die in complete anonymity.

Pendergast gently took her arm. “Come,” he said.

She did not shrug him off. He spoke again to the shopkeeper, took the tea with a slight bow, and in a moment they were outside on the crowded street. They walked down Mott, crossing first Bayard, then Chatham Square, entering into a maze of dark narrow streets abutting the East River. The noise and bustle of Chinatown gave way to the silence of industrial buildings. The sun had set, leaving a glow in the sky that barely outlined the tops of the buildings. Reaching Catherine Street, they turned southeast. Nora glanced over curiously as they passed Henry and the site of Moegen-Fairhaven’s new residential tower. The excavation was much bigger now; massive foundations and stem walls rose out of the gloom, rebar popping like reeds from the freshly poured concrete. Nothing was left of the old coal tunnel.

Another few minutes, and they were on Water Street. Old manufacturing buildings, warehouses, and decrepit tenements lined the street. Beyond, the East River moved sluggishly, dark purple in the moonlight. The Brooklyn Bridge loomed almost above them; and to its left, the Manhattan Bridge arced across the dark river, its span of brilliant lights reflected in the water below.

Near Market Slip, Pendergast stopped in front of an old tenement. It was still inhabited: a single window glowed with yellow light. A metal door was set into the first-floor facade. Beside it was a dented intercom and a series of buttons.

“Here it is,” said Pendergast. “Number sixteen.”

They stood in the gathering darkness.

Pendergast began to speak quietly in the gloom. “Mary Greene came from a working-class family. After her father’s upstate farm failed, he brought his family down here. He worked as a stevedore on the docks. But both he and Mary’s mother died in a minor cholera epidemic when the girl was fifteen. Bad water. She had a younger brother: Joseph, seven; and a younger sister: Constance, five.”

Nora said nothing.

“Mary Greene tried to take in washing and sewing, but apparently it wasn’t enough to pay the rent. There was no other work, no way to earn money. They were evicted. Mary finally did what she had to do to support her younger siblings, whom she evidently loved very much. She became a prostitute.”

“How awful,” Nora murmured.

“That’s not the worst. She was arrested when she was sixteen. It was probably at that point her two younger siblings became street children. They called them guttersnipes in those days. There’s no more record of them in any city files; they probably starved to death. In 1871 it was estimated there were twenty-eight thousand homeless children living on the streets of New York. In any case, later Mary was sent to a workhouse known as the Five Points Mission. It was basically a sweatshop. But it was better than prison. On the surface, that would have seemed to be Mary Greene’s lucky break.”

Pendergast fell silent. A barge on the river gave out a distant, mournful bellow.

“What happened to her then?”

“The paper trail ends at the lodging house door,” Pendergast replied.

He turned to her, his pale face almost luminous in the gloaming. “Enoch Leng— DoctorEnoch Leng—placed himself and his medical expertise at the service of the Five Points Mission as well as the House of Industry, an orphanage that stood near where Chatham Square is today. He offered his time pro bono. As we know, Dr. Leng kept rooms on the top floor of Shottum’s Cabinet throughout the 1870s. No doubt he had a house somewhere else in the city. He affiliated himself with the two workhouses about a year before Shottum’s Cabinet burned down.”

“We already know from Shottum’s letter that Leng committed those murders.”

“No question.”

“Then why do you need my help?”

“There’s almost nothing on record about Leng anywhere. I’ve tried the Historical Society, the New York Public Library, City Hall. It’s as if he’s been expunged from the historical record, and I have reason to think Leng himself might have eradicated his files. It seems that Leng was an early supporter of the Museum and an enthusiastic taxonomist. I believe there may be more papers in the Museum concerning Leng, at least indirectly. Their archives are so vast and disorganized that it would be virtually impossible to purge them.”

“Why me? Why doesn’t the FBI just subpoena the files or something?”

“Files have a way of disappearing as soon as they are officially requested. Even if one knew which files to request. Besides, I’ve seen how you operate. That kind of competence is rare.”

Nora merely shook her head.

“Mr. Puck has been, and no doubt will continue to be, most helpful. And there’s something else. Tinbury McFadden’s daughter is still alive. She lives in an old house in Peekskill. She’s ninety-five, but I understand very much compos mentis.She may have a lot to say about her father. She may have even known Leng. I have a sense she’d be more willing to speak to a young woman like yourself than to an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”