Reliquary

= 20 =

D’AGOSTA LOOKED AT his watch: 10:00 P.M., and they still had jack shit to show for all their work. Details of beat cops had checked the shelters, redemption centers, and soup kitchens, searching fruitlessly for word of anyone who might have an excessive interest in Mbwun. Hayward, whose knowledge of the underground homeless was becoming an ever more valuable resource, had led a number of special rousting details. Unfortunately, the results had also been disappointing: the moles had melted before their sweeps, disappearing into ever darker and more obscure recesses. Besides, as Hayward explained, the sweeps could only scratch the surface of the vast tunnel networks beneath the city’s streets. At least the stream of nutcases calling in to claim the Post reward was beginning to slow to a trickle. Maybe everyone was too worried about the Times report and the Bitterman murder.

He looked down at his desk, still buried under the half-coordinated results of the sweeps. Then he glanced up at the precinct board for the hundredth time that evening, staring fixedly at the map as if the fierceness of his glare would force it to yield up an answer. What was the pattern? There had to be one; it was the first rule of detective work.

He didn’t give a shit what Horlocker said: his gut told him that these killings were the work of more than one murderer. And it wasn’t only his gut—there were just too many; and the MOs, while similar, weren’t similar enough: some decapitated, some with their heads crushed, others simply mutilated. Perhaps it was some kind of truly screwed-up cult. But whatever it turned out to be, Horlocker’s threatening deadlines were time-consuming distractions. What was needed here was patient, methodical, intelligent detective work.

D’Agosta laughed to himself. Christ, I’m sounding more like Pendergast all the time.

From beyond the closed door of the storage room at one side of his office, he began to make out a series of odd shuffling noises. Hayward had gone in there a few minutes earlier on her coffee break. He stared at the door for a moment while the noises continued. At last, he rose, walked to the door, turned the handle, and stepped in. Hayward stood in the middle of the storage room, crouched in an animal-like stance, her left hand stuck rigidly in front of her like an arrow, her right cocked back to the side of her head. Her hands were tensed and slightly curved, bent thumbs protruding upward. As he watched, she swiveled her small form through ninety degrees of the compass, reversed the position of her arms in a silent punching motion, then turned another ninety degrees. It looked like some kind of dangerous ballet.

The movements were punctuated by sharp exhalations, not unlike the breathing she’d done during the confrontation in the tunnels. As he watched, she swiveled again, facing him this time, and brought her hands together in front of her with a slow, deliberate motion.

“Need something, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“Just an explanation of what the hell you’re doing,” he replied.

Hayward straightened up slowly to her full height, released a deep breath, then looked up at him. “It’s one of the heian series of kata.”

“What’s that again?”

“Formal exercises of shotokan karate,” she said. Then she caught his look. “It helps keep me relaxed, in shape,” she explained. “And it is my break, Lieutenant.”

“Then get on with it.” D’Agosta turned toward the door, then stopped and looked back. “What’s your belt?”

She looked up at him for a moment. “White,” she replied at last.

“I see.”

Hayward smiled slightly. “Shotokan is the original Japanese school of karate. They don’t usually believe in all sorts of pastel belt colors, Lieutenant. There are six degrees of white belt, three brown, then black.”

D’Agosta nodded. “So what degree are you?” he asked curiously.

“I go for my sankyu brown belt examination next month.”

From his office beyond D’Agosta could hear the rattle of a knob. Stepping out of the supply room and closing the door behind him, he found himself looking at the corpulent form of Captain Waxie. Without a word, Waxie sauntered over to the precinct board. He studied the riot of red and white pins intently, hands clasped behind his back.

“There’s a pattern here,” he said at last.

“Really?” D’Agosta asked, fighting to keep his voice neutral.

Waxie nodded sagely, keeping his back turned.

D’Agosta said nothing. He knew he was going to regret to his dying day bringing Waxie into the case.

“It originates here.” Waxie’s finger hit a green spot on the map with a soft thump. D’Agosta saw that he had fingered the Ramble, the wildest area of Central Park.

“How do you figure?”

“Simple,” said Waxie. “The Chief had a talk with the top actuary in human resources. He looked at the murder locations, did a best-fit linear analysis, and said they were radiating right from this spot. See? The deaths form a semicircle around this point. The Belvedere Castle murder was the key.”

He turned. “Out there in the Ramble, there are rocks, caves, dense woods. Lots of homeless, too. It’s a perfect hideout. That’s where we’ll find the killer.”

This time, D’Agosta was unable to keep the incredulity off his face. “Let me get this straight. Some insurance dweeb in personnel gave you this tip? Did he try to sell you on the savings plan, too?”

Waxie frowned, his jowly cheeks turning a rich crimson. “I don’t appreciate your tone, Vinnie. It wasn’t appropriate in the meeting this afternoon, and it isn’t appropriate here.”

“Look, Jack,” D’Agosta said, struggling to keep his patience. “What the hell would an actuary, even a police actuary, know about a murder pattern? That just isn’t enough. You have to take into account ingress, egress, everything. Besides, the Belvedere Castle murder is the one that least fits the pattern.” Then he gave up. There was no point in telling Waxie anything. Horlocker was one of those chiefs who loved specialists, experts, and consultants. And Waxie was such a yes-man that…

“I’m going to need this map,” Waxie said.

D’Agosta stared at the broad back in front of him. As he did, a light suddenly turned on inside his head. Now he knew what this was all about.

He stood up. “Be my guest,” he said. “The primary case files are in these cabinets here, and Sergeant Hayward has some valuable—”

“I won’t be needing her,” said Waxie. “Just the precinct board and the files. Have them sent over to my office by eight tomorrow morning. Suite 2403. They’re moving me here to headquarters.”

He slowly turned on his heel and eyed D’Agosta. “Sorry, Vinnie. I think it boiled down to a question of chemistry. Me and Horlocker. He needs someone he can relate to. Someone who can keep a lid on the press. Nothing personal, you know. You’ll still be on the case, in one capacity or another. And now that we’re going to start making progress, you might even feel better about things. We’ll be staking out the Ramble, and we’re going to catch this guy.”

“Sure,” said D’Agosta. He reminded himself that this was a no-win case, that he hadn’t wanted it in the first place. It didn’t help.

Waxie held out his hand. “No hard feelings, Vinnie?”

D’Agosta shook the plump warm hand. “None at all, Jack,” he heard himself saying.

Waxie took another look around the office, as if searching for other items worth appropriating. “Well, I gotta go,” he said at last. “I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Thanks.”

They stood for a moment as the uncomfortable silence grew. Then Waxie patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and walked out of the office.

There was a soft rustle as Hayward came up beside him. They stood silently, listening to the footsteps retreat down the linoleum corridor until they were finally lost amidst the low buzz of typing and distant conversations. Then Hayward turned to D’Agosta.

“Lieutenant, how can you let him get away with it?” she asked bitterly. “I mean, when our backs were against the wall down in those tunnels, that mother ran.”

D’Agosta sat down again, feeling inside the upper drawer of his desk for a cigar. “Respect for superiors isn’t your strong suit, is it, Sergeant?” he asked. “Anyway, what makes you so sure this isn’t a reward?” He located the cigar, dug a hole in its crown with a pencil, and lit up.

It was two hours later, as D’Agosta was making final arrangements to move the case files upstairs, that Pendergast strolled into his office. It was Pendergast as D’Agosta remembered him: impeccable black suit severely tailored to his spare frame, blond-white hair combed back from his high forehead, handmade English loafers in polished oxblood. As usual, looking more like a fashionable undertaker than an FBI agent.

Pendergast indicated the visitor’s chair with a brief nod of his head. “May I?”

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 Post in 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.”