Reliquary

= 27 =

THE LENGTH OF grimy industrial avenue ended in an embarkment of riprap, half tumbling into the murky depths of the East River. Beyond lay a panoramic view of Roosevelt Island and the 59th Street Bridge. Across the river, the thin gray strip of the FDR Drive wound its way up past the United Nations and the luxurious Sutton Place co-ops. Nice view, thought D’Agosta as he stepped out of the unmarked cruiser. Nice view, lousy neighborhood.

The August sun slanted into the avenue, softening the puddles of tar and coaxing waves of shimmering heat from the pavement. Loosening his collar, D’Agosta once again checked the address the Museum personnel office had given him: 11-46 94th Avenue, Long Island City. He glanced at the nearby buildings, wondering if there was some mistake. This sure as hell didn’t look like a residential neighborhood. The street was lined with old warehouses and abandoned factories. Even though it was noon, the place was almost deserted, the only sign of life a shabby panel truck pulling out of a loading bay at the far end of the block. D’Agosta shook his head. Another frigging dead end. Leave it to Waxie to saddle him with what, in Waxie’s opinion, was the assignment of lowest priority.

The door to 11-46 was of thick metal, dented and scarred, and covered in perhaps ten coats of black paint. Like everything else on the block, it looked like the entrance to an empty warehouse. D’Agosta rang the ancient buzzer and then, hearing nothing, pounded heavily on the door. Silence.

He waited a few minutes, then ducked into a narrow alley along one side of the building. Making his way through crumbling rolls of tar paper, D’Agosta approached a window of wired glass, webbed with cracks and almost opaque with dust Climbing onto the tarpaper, he rubbed a hole clean with his tie and looked in.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim interior, he made out a vast empty space. Faint bars of light striped across the stained cement floor. At the far end was a staircase leading up to what must once have been the office of the line boss. Otherwise, nothing.

There was a sudden movement in the alley, and D’Agosta turned to see a man coming at him fast, a long kitchen knife shining wickedly in one hand. Reflexively, D’Agosta leapt for the ground, pulling his service piece as he did so. The man stared at the gun in surprise, stopping short. He gathered himself to flee.

“Halt!” D’Agosta barked. “Police officer!”

The man turned back again. Inexplicably, a look of amusement came over his features.

“A cop!” he cried sarcastically. “Fancy that, a cop in these parts!”

He continued to stand there, grinning. He was the strangest-looking person D’Agosta had ever seen: a shaved head, painted green; a wispy goatee; tiny, Trotskyesque glasses; a shirt made out of something like hairy burlap; ancient, red Keds sneakers.

“Drop the knife,” said D’Agosta.

“Hey, it’s okay,” the man said. “I thought you were a burglar.”

“I said, drop the damn knife.”

The grin disappeared from the man’s face. He tossed the knife onto the ground between them.

D’Agosta kicked it aside. “Now turn around, slowly, and put your hands on the wall. Spread your feet wide.”

“What is this, Communist China?” the man objected.

“Do it,” D’Agosta said.

The man obeyed, grumbling, and D’Agosta patted him down, finding nothing more than a wallet. He flipped it open. The driver’s license showed an address next door.

D’Agosta holstered his gun and handed the man his wallet. “You know, Mr. Kirtsema, I could’ve shot you back there.”

“Hey, but I didn’t know you were a cop. I thought you were trying to break in.” The man stepped away from the wall, wiping his hands together. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been robbed. You guys don’t even bother to respond anymore. You’re the first cop I’ve seen around here in months, and—”

D’Agosta waved him silent. “Just be more careful. Besides, you don’t know squat about handling a knife. If I was a real burglar, you’d probably be dead right now.”

The man rubbed his nose, mumbling something incomprehensible.

“You live next door?” D’Agosta asked. He could not get over the fact that this man had painted his entire scalp green. He tried not to stare at it.

The man nodded.

“How long?”

“About three years. I used to have a loft in Soho, but I got evicted. This is the only place I found where I can do my work without being bothered.”

“And what kind of work is that?”

“It’s hard to explain.” The man grew suddenly guarded. “Why should I tell you?”

D’Agosta dug into his pocket, flashed his badge and ID.

The man looked at the badge. “Homicide, eh? Someone murdered around here?”

“No. Can we go inside and talk for a moment?”

The man looked at him suspiciously. “Is this a search? Aren’t you supposed to have a warrant?”

D’Agosta swallowed his annoyance. “It’s voluntary. I want to ask you a few questions about the man who lived in this warehouse. Kawakita.”

“Was that his name? Now there was a weird guy. Seriously weird.” Leading D’Agosta out of the alley, the man named Kirtsema unlocked his own black metal door. Stepping inside, D’Agosta found himself inside another vast warehouse, painted bone white. Along the walls were a number of oddly shaped metal cans filled with trash. A dead palm tree stood in one corner. In the middle of the room, D’Agosta could see countless black strings, hung from the ceiling in clumps. It felt like some kind of nightmarish moon-forest. In the far corner he could see a cot, sink, exposed toilet, and hot plate. No other amenities were visible.

“So what’s this?” D’Agosta asked, fingering the strings.

“My God, don’t tangle them!” Kirtsema almost knocked D’Agosta aside in his rush to repair the damage.

“They’re never supposed to touch,”he said in a wounded tone as he fussed with the strings.

D’Agosta stepped back. “What is this, some kind of experiment?”

“No. It’s an artificial environment, a reproduction of the primeval jungle that we all evolved in, translated to New York City.”

D’Agosta looked at the strings in disbelief. “So this is art? Who looks at it?”

“It’s conceptual art,” Kirtsema explained impatiently. “Nobody looks at it. It’s not meant to be seen. It is sufficient that it exists. The strings never touch, just as we human beings never touch, never really interact. We are alone. And this whole world is unseen, just as we float through the cosmos unseen. As Derrida said, ‘Art is that which is not art,’ which means—”

“Did you know if his first name was Gregory?”

“Jacques. Jacques Derrida. Not Gregory.”

“I mean the man who lived next door.”

“Like I said, I didn’t even know his name. I avoided him like the plague. Guess you’re here because of the complaints.”

“Complaints?”

“Yeah. I called, again and again. After the first couple of times, nobody came.” He blinked. “No, wait. You’re Homicide. Did he kill somebody?”

Without answering, D’Agosta took a notebook out of a coat pocket. “Tell me about him.”

“He moved in two years ago, maybe a little less. At first, he seemed pretty quiet. Then these trucks began pulling up, and all kinds of boxes and crates started going inside. That’s when the noise started. Always at night. Hammering. Thuds. Loud popping noises. And the smell ...” Kirtsema wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Like something acrid burning. He’d painted the inside of the windows black, but one of them got broken somehow and I got a look inside before it was repaired.” He grinned. “It was a strange-looking setup. I could see microscopes, big glass beakers boiling and boiling, gray metal boxes with lights on them, aquaria.”

“Aquaria?”

“One aquarium after another, rows upon rows. Big things, full of algae. Obviously, he was a scientist of some kind.” Kirtsema pronounced the word with distaste. “A dissector, a reductionist. I don’t like that way of looking at the world. I am a holist, Sergeant.”

“I see.”

“Then one day the power company came around. Said they had to hook up some special heavy-duty lines to his place, or something. And they turned off my power for two days. Two days! But try complaining to Con Ed. Dehumanized bureaucrats.”

“Did he have any visitors?” D’Agosta asked. “Any friends?”

“Visitors!” Kirtsema snorted. “That was the last straw. People began arriving. Always at night. They had this way of knocking, like some kind of signal. That was when I first called the cops. I knew something seriously weird was happening there. I thought maybe it was drugs. The cops came, said there was nothing illegal going on, and left again.” He shook his head bitterly at the memory.

“It went on like that. I kept calling the cops, complaining about the noise and the smell, but after the second visit they wouldn’t come anymore. And then one day, maybe a year ago, the guy appeared at my door. Just showed up, no warning or anything, about eleven o’clock at night.”

“What did he want?” D’Agosta asked.

“Don’t know. I think he wanted to ask me why I’d called the cops on him. All I know is, he gave me the willies. It was September, almost as hot as it is now, but he had on a bulky coat with a big hood. He stood back in the shadows, and I couldn’t see his face. He just stood there, in the darkness, and asked if he could come in. I said no, of course. Sergeant, it was all I could do not to shut the door in his face.”

“Lieutenant,” corrected D’Agosta absently, scribbling in his notebook.

“Whatever. I don’t put stock in labels. Human being is the only label worth anything.” The green dome bobbed in emphasis.

D’Agosta was still scribbling. This didn’t sound like the Greg Kawakita he’d met once in Frock’s office, after the disaster at the Superstition exhibition opening. He racked his brains, trying to remember what he could about the scientist.

“Can you describe his voice?” he asked.

“Yes. Very low, and with a lisp.”

D’Agosta frowned. “Any accent?”

“Don’t think so. But it was such a strong lisp I couldn’t really tell. Sounded almost Castilian, except it was English instead of Spanish.”

D’Agosta made a mental note to ask Pendergast what the hell ‘Castilian’ was. “When did he leave, and why?” he asked.

“A couple of weeks after he knocked on my door. Maybe October. One night I heard two big eighteen-wheelers pull up. That wasn’t so unusual. But this time, they were loading stuff out of that place, not into it. When I got up at noon, the place was totally empty. They’d even washed the black paint off the inside of the windows.”

“This was at noon?” D’Agosta asked.

“My normal sleep period is five to noon. I am not a slave to the physical rotations of the earth-sun-moon system, Sergeant.”

“Did you notice anything on the trucks? A logo, say, or the name of a firm?”

Kirtsema went silent, thinking. “Yes,” he said finally. “Scientific Precision Moving.”

D’Agosta looked at the middle-aged man with a green scalp. “You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

D’Agosta believed him. With his looks, the guy wouldn’t be worth shit on a witness stand, but he was pretty damn observant. Or maybe just nosy. “Anything else you want to add?” he said.

The green dome bobbed again. “Yes. Right after he arrived all the streetlights went out, and they never seemed to be able to fix them. They’re still out. I think he had something to do with that, though I don’t know what. I called Con Ed about that, too, but as usual the faceless corporate robots never did anything. Of course, try forgetting to pay your bill one time, and—”

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Kirtsema,” D’Agosta interrupted. “Call if anything else comes to mind.” He closed the notebook, stuck it in his pocket, and turned to leave.

At the door, he paused. “You said you’d been robbed several times. What did they take? There doesn’t seem to be much worth lifting in here.” He glanced around the warehouse again.

“Ideas, Sergeant!” Kirtsema said, head back, chin raised. “Material objects mean nothing. But ideas are priceless. Look around you. Have you ever seen so many brilliant ideas?”