Blue Labyrinth

17

Clad in faded jeans, a denim shirt with studded buttons, and old cowboy boots, Agent A. X. L. Pendergast surveyed the Salton Sea from the thick cover of ripgut grass at the fringes of the Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge. Brown pelicans could be seen hovering over the dark waters, wheeling and crying. It was half past ten in the morning, and the temperature stood at a comfortable 109 degrees.

The Salton Sea was not a sea at all, but rather an inland lake. It had been created by accident at the turn of the twentieth century, when an ill-conceived network of irrigation canals was destroyed by heavy rains, sending the water of the Colorado River flooding into the Salton Sink, submerging the town of Salton and eventually creating a lake covering almost four hundred square miles. For a time the region was fertile, and a series of resorts and vacation towns sprang up along the shores. But as the waters receded and grew increasingly salty, the towns were left high and dry, the vacationers stopped coming, and the resorts went bankrupt. Now the area — with its barren desert hills and salt-encrusted shores, fringed by wrecked trailer parks and abandoned 1950s resorts — looked like the world after nuclear armageddon. It was a land that had been depopulated, skeletonized, burned to white, a brutal landscape where nothing lived — save thousands upon thousands of birds.

Pendergast found it most appealing.

He put up his powerful binoculars and walked back out to his car — a 1998 pearl-colored Cadillac DeVille. He drove back to Route 86 and began making his way up the Imperial Valley, following the western edge of the sea. Along the way, he stopped at roadside stands and sad-looking “antiques” shops, where he spent time examining the merchandise, asking about collectibles and dead pawn Indian jewelry, passing out his card, and occasionally buying something.

Around noon, he pointed the Caddy down an unmarked back road, drove a couple of miles, and parked at the foot of the Scarrit Hills, a series of naked ridges and peaks stripped to the bone by erosion and devoid of life. Plucking the binoculars from the passenger seat, he exited the car and trekked up the nearest rise, slowing as he approached the summit. Ducking behind a large rock, he fitted the binoculars to his eyes and slowly peered over the crest.

To the east, the foothills ran down to the desert floor and, perhaps a mile away, the bleak shores of the Salton Sea itself. Wind devils crawled across the salt flats, whipping up cyclones of dust.

Below him, halfway between the hills and the shore, a bizarre structure rose from the desert floor, weather-beaten and dilapidated. It was a vast, sprawling mélange of concrete and wood, once painted in garish colors but now bleached almost white, studded with gables, minarets, and pagodas, like some fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor. This was the former Salton Fontainebleau. Sixty years before, it had been the most lavish resort on the Salton Sea, known as “Las Vegas South,” frequented by movie stars and mobsters. An Elvis film had been shot on its beaches and capacious verandas. The Rat Pack had sung in its lounges, and people like Frank Costello and Moe Dalitz had cut deals in its back rooms. But then the waters of the sea had receded from the resort’s elegant piers, the increasing salinity had killed the fish, which washed up in stinking, rotting piles, and the resort had been abandoned to the sun, winds, and migrating birds.

From his place of concealment, Pendergast examined the old resort with minute attention. The weather had scoured the paint from the boards, and most of the windows were mere black openings. In a few spots, the vast roof had collapsed, leaving yawning holes. Here and there, elaborate balconies listed to one side, weakened by years of desuetude. There was no sign of recent activity. The Fontainebleau was untouched, undisturbed, isolated, not even worth the attention of teenage gangs or graffiti artists.

Now Pendergast aimed his binoculars half a mile to the north, beyond the resort. Here, an ancient, gullied track led to a dark opening in the hillside, its ragged maw barred by an ancient wooden door. This was the entrance to the Golden Spider Mine — the site from which the piece of turquoise found in Alban’s digestive system had been extracted. Pendergast surveyed the entrance, and the approach to it, with extreme care. Unlike the Fontainebleau, the old turquoise mine had evidently been the site of recent activity. He could see fresh tire tracks going up the old road, and in front of the mine the crust had been disturbed, broken, exposing a lighter shade of salt. An effort had been made to erase both the tracks and prints, but ghost images of them were nevertheless evident from the vantage point of the hilltop.

This was no accident, no coincidence. Alban had been killed and the turquoise planted in his body for one reason: to lure Pendergast to this godforsaken place. The reason why was deeply mysterious.

Pendergast had allowed himself to be lured. But he would not allow himself to be surprised.

He continued to examine the mine entrance for a long time. Then, finally, he pointed the binoculars still farther to the north, scanning the surrounding landscape. Some two miles beyond the Fontainebleau, atop a small rise of land, were the gridded streets, broken streetlights, and abandoned houses of what had once been a town. Pendergast scrutinized it carefully. Then he spent another hour scouring the landscape both north and south, looking for anything else that might indicate recent activity.

Nothing.

He retreated down the hill to his car, got in, and drove in the direction of the abandoned development. As he approached, a large, weather-beaten sign, barely readable, welcomed him to the town of Salton Palms. The ghostly illustration below appeared to show a bikini-clad woman on water skis, waving and smiling.

Reaching the outskirts of the decrepit neighborhood, Pendergast parked and strolled into Salton Palms in a desultory fashion, his cowboy boots making a hollow sound on the cracked asphalt streets, kicking up plumes of snow-like dust. Salton Palms had once been a hamlet of modest second homes. Now the homes were in ruins — wind-scoured, doors missing, burned, others collapsed. A ruined marina, tilted at a crazy angle, sat, beached and rotting, hundreds of yards from the current shoreline. A lone tumbleweed was affixed into the crust of salt, festooned with salt crystals like some gigantic snowflake.

Pendergast wandered slowly through the disarray, glancing around at the rusty swing sets in the grassless backyards, the ancient barbecue grills and cracked kiddie pools. An old toy pedal car from the ’50s lay on its side in the middle of the street. In the shade of a breezeway lay the skeleton of a dog, salt-encrusted, its collar still attached. The only sound was the faint moaning of the wind.

On the southern outskirts of Salton Palms, away from the other structures, stood an improvised shack with a tar-paper roof — dingy, rimed with salt, cobbled together from pieces of abandoned houses. An ancient but operable pickup truck, more rust than metal, stood beside it. Pendergast stared at the shack for a long, appraising moment. Then, with an easy, loping stride, he began to approach it.

Other than the pickup truck, there was no evident sign of life. The shack seemed to be without electricity or running water. Pendergast glanced around again, then rapped on the piece of corrugated metal that served as a rude door. When there was no reply, he rapped again.

There was the faintest sound of movement within. “Go ’way!” a hoarse voice rang out.

“Pardon me,” Pendergast said through the door, the accent of the Old South replaced by a mild Texas twang, “but I wonder if I might have just a minute of your time?”

When this produced no discernible result, Pendergast plucked a business card from one of the breast pockets of his shirt. It read:

He slid it beneath the piece of corrugated metal. For a moment, it remained in place. Then it quickly disappeared. And then the hoarse voice spoke again. “What you want?”

“I was hoping you might have a few things for sale.”

“Don’t got nothin’ right now.”

“People always say that. They never know what they have until I show them. I pay top dollar. Ever watch Antiques Roadshow?”

No response.

“Surely you’ve rustled up some interesting things around here, combed this old town for collectibles. Maybe I can buy some off you. ’Course, if you aren’t interested, I’ll just have a look around some of these old houses myself. Having come all this way, I mean.”

Still nothing for perhaps a minute. And then the door creaked open and a grizzled, bearded face appeared, hovering like a ghostly balloon in the darkness of the interior, creased with suspicion.

Immediately, Pendergast took the opportunity to put his foot inside the door with a jolly greeting, pumping the man’s hand enthusiastically as he pushed his way in, with a show of bluff good-fellowship, showering the man with thanks and not giving him an opportunity to get in a single word.

The inside of the shack was rank and stifling. Pendergast looked around quickly. A rumpled pallet lay in one corner. Beneath the lone window sat a cookstove, atop which was a cast-iron skillet. Two sawn-off sections of tree trunk substituted for chairs. Everything was a whirlwind of disorder: clothes, blankets, bric-a-brac, empty tin cans, ancient road maps, driftwood, broken tools, and innumerable other items lay scattered around the tiny abode.

Something glinted faintly amid the ruin. Breaking off his handshaking, Pendergast bent down to seize it with a cry of delight. “You see what I mean — just look at this! Why, heck, what’s this doing on the ground? This should be in a display case!”

It was a piece of a squash blossom necklace, dented and scratched, of cheap pot silver, missing its precious stone. But Pendergast cradled it as reverently as if it were a stone tablet from God. “I can get sixty bucks for this on eBay, no sweat!” he crowed. “I handle the entire transaction, take the photo, do the write-up, deal with the mailing and the collection, everything. All I ask is a small commission. I make you a payment to get the ball rolling, and then, if I make more on eBay, I keep ten percent. Did I say sixty? Let’s make that seventy.” And without further ado, he pulled out a roll of money.

The rheumy eyes of the shack’s resident went from Pendergast’s face to the huge wad. They stayed there as Pendergast peeled off seven $10 bills and proffered them. There was the slightest hesitation, and then the old man’s trembling hand reached up and snatched away the money, as if it might fly off at any moment, and stuffed it into the pockets of his dungarees.

With a big Texas smile Pendergast made himself at home, easing himself down onto a tree trunk. His host, with an uncertain expression on his ancient face, did likewise. The man was short and skinny, with long, tangled white hair and whiskers, stubby hands, and incredibly dirty fingernails. His face and arms were dark from long days in the sun. Suspicion still burned in his eyes, tempered somewhat by the sight of money.

“What’s your name, friend?” Pendergast asked. He kept the bankroll casually gripped in his hand.

“Cayute.”

“Well, Mr. Cayute, allow me to introduce myself. Bill Feathers, at your service. You’ve got some nice little things here. I’m sure we’ll be able to come to terms!” Pendergast picked up an old metal road sign for State Highway 111, propped up on two cinder blocks, being used as a small table. The paint was peeling and its surface was peppered with buckshot. “For example, this. You know, they hang these on the walls of steak houses. Big demand. I’ll bet I can turn this around for — oh, I don’t know — fifty bucks. What do you say?”

The gleam in the eyes grew brighter. After a minute, Cayute gave a quick, ferret-like nod. Pendergast duly peeled off five more bills and handed them over.

Then he beamed. “Mr. Cayute, I can see that you’re a man of business. I calculate this will be a most productive exchange for both of us.”