City of Endless Night

52

Just as quickly as blackness fell, brilliant light suddenly flooded the room. There — seated in a wooden chair in a far corner — sat Lieutenant D’Agosta. He was hog-tied to the chair, wearing nothing but boxers and a sleeveless coat stuffed with packets of plastic explosive — a suicide vest. A cue-ball gag was in his mouth. He looked at Pendergast, his eyes on fire.

“I arrived within the requisite fifty-five minutes, Mr. Ozmian,” Pendergast said. “And yet you killed Howard Longstreet. That was not part of the deal.”

A moment passed. And then, Anton Ozmian stepped quietly into the room. He was wearing blacked-out camos, and in one hand he held a 1911 handgun — trained on Pendergast — while the other cupped a remote detonator.

“Place your weapon on the floor, please, Agent Pendergast,” he said in a cool voice.

Pendergast complied.

“Now nudge it toward me with your foot.”

Pendergast did so.

“Take off your jacket, turn around, place your feet apart, and spread-eagle yourself against the wall.”

Pendergast did this as well. The opportunity, he was fairly sure, would come for turning the tables, but for now there were no options except to obey. He heard Ozmian approach; he felt the cold hard muzzle of the gun against the nape of his neck as the man searched him, uncovering the spare magazine along with several knives, lock picks and bump keys, a garrote, two cell phones, money, some test tubes and tweezers, and a single-shot derringer.

“Put one hand behind your back while balancing yourself against the wall with the other.”

When Pendergast did this, he felt a pair of plastic zip cuffs slip around his wrist. Then his other hand was pulled back and cuffed as well. He heard Ozmian step back.

“Very good,” the entrepreneur said. “Now you may have a seat beside your friend. And we’ll have a little talk.”

Wordlessly, Pendergast sat down next to the body of Longstreet — which, no longer propped up by the arm, had fallen forward onto the table, next to Longstreet’s lolling head. D’Agosta looked on from his chair in the far corner, his own eyes wide and red-rimmed.

Ozmian settled into a chair on the other side of the table and inspected Pendergast’s primary weapon. “Very nice. You’ll be getting it back soon, by the way.” He put it down, paused a moment. “First: I never promised to keep both men alive. My exact words were, ‘you’ll never see either of your friends alive again.’ As you can see, Lieutenant D’Agosta is still very much alive — for the time being. Second: congratulations on deducing that I was the Decapitator. How did you do it, exactly?”

“Hightower. You led us to a suspect who was simply too perfect. That was when I sensed a master puppeteer at work, and started to assemble the pieces.”

“Very good. Have you also guessed why I am killing these particular people?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Pendergast said.

“I’d much rather hear it from you.”

“The hobby you supposedly gave up many years ago — big-game hunting. You were desirous of the ultimate thrill: the ‘most dangerous game,’ so to speak.”

Ozmian grinned widely. “I am impressed!”

“I am puzzled about one thing: why your daughter was your first victim. Although I suspect it had something to do with your recent company troubles.”

“Well, I’ll help you with that one, as it’s getting late and the game will soon begin. As you’ve guessed, it was my own daughter, my dear, devoted daughter, who leaked our proprietary code onto the Internet — almost capsizing my company in the process.”

“I take it, then, that your relationship wasn’t quite as close as you pretended.”

At this, Ozmian paused for a moment. “When she was a girl, we were quite close. Bosom companions, actually. She worshipped me, and in her alone I found unconditional love. But as puberty approached, she zigged when she should have zagged. She had a brilliant mind when she wanted to use it, not to mention a remarkable facility with computers from a very early age. I’d always expected her to be my partner and eventual replacement. Her betrayal of me when it came was, as you can imagine, all that much keener.”

“Why did she betray you?”

“The zig rather than the zag. You know how it goes, Agent Pendergast: a family gone wrong thanks to too much money, too many ex-wives, too much dysfunction.” He scoffed. “Oh, we kept up appearances — today it’s all about celebrity-watching and paparazzi, isn’t it, and we both had skin in that game. But the fact is, my daughter became a drug-addicted, self-destructive, vicious little slut who hated everything about me except my money. And when I cut that off, she used her considerable skills to break into my private computer and do the one thing she knew would hurt me the most. She tried to ruin the company I had built — for her.”

“And so, in a fit of rage, you killed her.”

“Yes. They tell me I have ‘anger management issues.’” Ozmian made air quotes. “The only thing is, I never seem to regret my outbursts. It’s been quite useful to me in business.”

“And once you’d cooled off…I presume you got to thinking. About her head.”

“I see you’ve found the final piece of the puzzle. There was Grace’s body, lying in a Queens garage. And there I was, in my freshly cleaned apartment, sipping cognac and thinking. To be honest, I was shocked at what I’d done. I’d been consumed with fury, but after that was gone a depression set in. It wasn’t just Grace — it was my whole life. Here I’d achieved everything I ever wanted. Made a fortune. Humiliated my enemies. And still I felt unfulfilled. Restless. My thoughts turned to big-game hunting. You see, I’d given it up after bagging the biggest, baddest game there was — including, by the way, a black rhino, a bull elephant, and a few other critically endangered species, although naturally I kept those a closely guarded secret. But in my edginess it occurred to me that I’d become bored with big-game hunting prematurely. You see, I’d never hunted the biggest game of all. Man. Not just your average, run-of-the-mill cretin, however. No — my ‘big game’ would be powerful, affluent men with enemies: men who had surrounded themselves with layers of security; smart men, alert men, men who would be almost impossible to take down. Oh, and lest I be called sexist, women as well. I ask you, as a fellow big-game hunter: what better game to stalk than Homo sapiens?”

“And you decided your own daughter would become your first trophy. An honor for her, really. So you went back and cut off her head.”

Ozmian nodded again. “You understand me astonishingly well.”

“Your choice of targets had nothing to do with them being corrupt. That’s why Adeyemi didn’t seem to fit the profile. The attraction was that she, like the others, was surrounded by supposedly impenetrable security. She was extremely challenging to ‘bag.’”

“And you want to know the true irony? I meant her to be my final trophy. But then you and Longstreet here forced your way into my office. And you thought you played me so well. Ha ha! I had such fun telling you about Hightower. I wish I could have seen old Hightower’s face when you paid him a visit. I hope you sweated him good! The whole time you were peppering me with questions, I was thinking of one thing: how lovely that pale, fine head of yours would look when mounted on my trophy wall.”

His laughter echoed in the shabby space.

A muffled grunt of rage, like a wounded buffalo, came from D’Agosta. Ozmian ignored it.

“After that visit, I was intrigued with you. And what I found only solidified my belief that you, not Adeyemi, should be my ultimate trophy. I also realized the best way to lure you in.” He nodded toward Longstreet’s corpse. “In my office, I sensed that you two had a history. It wasn’t hard to learn about your good friend D’Agosta, either.”

He reached out, took hold of a lock of Longstreet’s hair, and gave the decapitated head a desultory spin. “With both of them at my mercy, I knew you would have no choice but to come out here and play my game.”

Pendergast said nothing.

Ozmian sat forward in his chair. “And you do know the game we are about to play — right?”

“It is all too clear.”

“Good!” He paused. “We will both be on totally fair and equal footing.” He raised his gun. “We will each have the same weapon, the venerable 1911, and an additional magazine. You might think you have a slight advantage in that Les Baer of yours, but mine is equally fine. We will each also have a knife, watch, flashlight, and our wits. Our hunting ground will be the adjoining structure, Building Ninety-Three. You saw it on your way in, that abandoned hospital?”

“I did.”

“I give myself no advantage. This will be a sporting stalk in which we are simultaneously the hunter and the hunted. No fox, no hound; just two experienced hunters each stalking their ultimate prey: each other. The winner will be the one who bags the loser!” He waved the detonator in D’Agosta’s direction. “The lieutenant is an insurance policy to make sure you abide by the rules of the hunt. That suicide vest is on a two-hour timer. If you kill me, you can simply take the timer from my pocket and shut it off. But if you cheat — by walking away, or trying to alert the authorities — all I need to do is press the remote and boom goes D’Agosta. The detonator also ensures that the hunt is completed within two hours: no dawdling or hiding and running out the clock. In a few minutes, I’ll give you back your gun and extra magazine, remove the handcuffs, furnish you with blacked-out clothing…and give you a head start. Make for Building Ninety-Three. After ten minutes, I’ll come after you and the stalk will commence.”

“Why?” Pendergast asked.

“Why?” Ozmian laughed. “Didn’t I already explain? I’ve done it all, I’m standing on the summit, and the only view I have is looking down. This will be the most delicious thrill of my life — the ultimate, the final thrill. Even if I’m to die, at least I’ll go out with a bang, no pun intended — knowing it took the very best to kill me. And if I survive, then I’ll have a memory to cherish…no matter what the future brings.”

“That wasn’t my question. What I meant was, why Building Ninety-Three?”

For a moment, Ozmian looked nonplussed. “You’re kidding, right? It is perfect for a hunt like ours. It’s over four hundred thousand square feet, a huge, rambling ruin, with ten floors divided into numerous wings, miles of corridors, and over two thousand rooms! Imagine the possibilities for traps, ambushes, and blinds! And we’re far, far from any busybody who might hear gunshots and call the cops.”

Pendergast stared at Ozmian through narrow eyes, saying nothing.

“I see you’re not satisfied. Very well. There is a second reason.” He gave Longstreet’s head another casual spin on the tabletop. “There was a day during my twelfth year when our dearly beloved parish priest, Father Anselm, locked me in the sacristy and raped me repeatedly. He said while he did it that God and Jesus were watching and it was all right with them, and he threatened me with hell and worse if I ever told. I had a mental collapse. I stopped speaking, stopped thinking, stopped everything. My family, having no idea what had happened, assumed I’d gone crazy. A diagnosis was made of catatonic schizophrenia. King’s Park back then had a stellar reputation, the one hospital in the country they were sure would cure me. Yes, Agent Pendergast: I became a patient of the main complex in King’s Park. One of the last, it turns out. And here, I eventually recovered. Not through anything they did, but through my own internal resources.”

“King’s Park was known for its electroconvulsive treatments.”

“Indeed it was — and that was why it was shut down in the end. But the shock treatments — and worse! — were reserved for the gibbering lunatics, incorrigibles, and pathetic wretches. I fortunately escaped that fate.”

“And, I’m given to understand, cured yourself.”

“Your sarcastic tone is unpleasant, but yes, indeed I did. One day I realized that I had something important to do: revenge. Perhaps the strongest human motivator there is. So I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and convinced the credulous and easily manipulated doctors that they had cured me. I resumed my life. I continued growing up, went to high school, and finally did the thing I had resolved to do — punish Father Anselm. Death was too much of a release for that man: my goal was to make the rest of his life full of misery and pain. And then I went to Stanford, graduated summa cum laude, founded DigiFlood, made billions of dollars, fucked beautiful women, traveled the world, lived a life of unimaginable luxury and privilege — in short, I did all the things that truly gifted human beings like myself do.”

“Indeed,” Pendergast said drily.

“Anyway, to resume, not long after my discharge, King’s Park was abandoned, shut up, and left to rot.”

“How fitting for you, then, that this will be the place of the final hunt.”

“I see you’re getting into the spirit of it already. Surely you understand how this experience will bring things full circle for me. Of course, I barely knew the building then: just the room where I was drugged and held in restraints day and night, and the therapy room where I told my doctor a bunch of lies that he believed and carefully wrote down. I’m as essentially unfamiliar with the place as you are — there will be no advantage there.”

Ozmian placed the Les Baer on the table, along with an extra magazine, while pocketing the detonator. Next to it he laid a watch, a flashlight, and a fixed-blade knife.

“Your gear.” He stood up. “And so, Agent Pendergast. Shall we begin?”