Two Graves

33

ALOYSIUS PENDERGAST BROUGHT THE ROLLS TO A HALT at the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Meserole Street in Brooklyn. This was—according to the cab company’s records—where the taxi had picked up the fleeing boy. It was an old, mostly abandoned industrial neighborhood that had just started to see the invasion of creative pioneers. But it still retained the rawness of graffiti, trash, boarded-up buildings, and the hulks of burned-out cars. The street scene was a mixture of derelicts, hipsters, and sketchy-looking young men.

Pendergast was conspicuous in his black suit as he stepped out of the Silver Wraith, locking the door behind him. Hands in his pockets, he strolled down Meserole Street. It was midafternoon, a brilliant but warmthless sun blasting the pavement. Several blocks ahead of him rose an old nineteenth-century brewery complex, covering almost an acre of ground. A huge square stack for the hops kiln rose above it, with the name VAN DAM still visible on it, along with the date of its founding: 1858.

A brewery. Tristram had, without knowing it, described just such a place: the long underground tunnel where the casks were stored; the huge brick kiln where the hops were dried. This, undoubtedly, had been the site of his incarceration and the site that his captors, Alban and no doubt his Nazi handlers, had been using as a base of operations—for whatever it was they were planning.

Pendergast approached, scrutinizing the building carefully. It was, even in this benighted corner of Brooklyn, a prime piece of real estate, and it had accordingly been securely boarded up with galvanized tin and plywood. Two ancient, massive industrial metal doors blocked what had once been the main entrance. These doors had been bolted shut, and the pedestrian door set into one of them was not only chained and padlocked, but also welded closed with two pieces of rebar.

Pendergast walked on, examining some of the smaller, secondary entrances set into the crumbling brick façade along the street, all of which were more or less impregnable. As he paused at one door, examining its frozen lock, he heard a voice behind him.

“Got any money, friend?”

Pendergast turned to see a rail-thin youth, undoubtedly a heroin addict, staring at him with hollow, hungry eyes.

“As a matter of fact I do.” Pendergast delved into his suit and brought out a twenty-dollar bill. A spark ignited in the man’s dead eyes, and he reached out with trembling fingers.

“I want to break into this building,” said Pendergast, twitching the bill out of reach. “How?”

The man stared at him, his mouth open. “You a thief?”

“Insurance adjustor.”

A hesitation as the man tried to think. “Can’t get in there, that I know of.”

“Yes, but if I were to try to break in—how would I?”

Another desperate effort to think. “I’d go ’round the back, where the railroad tracks are. Climb the fence.”

Pendergast twitched the bill back toward the man, who snatched it and then set off down the street at a fast wobble. “Don’t get caught,” he called over his shoulder.

Pendergast walked to the far end of the block and followed the complex around the corner, where it ended in a disused railroad yard, stacked with rotting containers and old machinery, surrounded by a chain-link fence.

In a single, bat-like motion, Pendergast grasped the fence, vaulted the top, and dropped down onto the far side. He paused a moment to smooth down his suit. Then, moving among the containers and chest-high weeds, he followed a set of railroad tracks to the back of the brewery, where the tracks disappeared into the complex behind another set of industrial metal doors. As he approached, he noted that a number of the weeds had been bruised, broken, or otherwise recently disturbed by the passage of people and objects. The soft ground away from the tracks showed signs of footprints.

He followed the faint marks of disturbance across the railroad yard, away from the tracks and toward a small door set into the massive brick façade. Reaching the door, he found it as old and massive as the others, but not welded, and with freshly oiled hinges and a new brass lock of a model he did not recognize.

The lock proved to be a challenge, requiring the full set of his tools and skills. It also, unfortunately, caused quite a bit of noise, as several of the pins had to be sheared off with brute force.

Finally the lock yielded, but Pendergast did not open the door immediately. He waited, .45 drawn, for almost ten minutes. And then, flattening himself behind the door, he nudged it open with his shoe. It swung silently at first, then stopped with a loud groan of metal.

Silence.

Five more minutes passed. Pendergast ducked inside, diving to the floor, rolling, and taking cover behind a brick knee wall.

More silence. No one had shouted an alarm; no one had opened fire.

He waited, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. He was in a vast space, illuminated by scattered holes and cracks in the roof, which let in brilliant pencil-beams of sunlight. Motes drifted through in slow cadences. The air smelled faintly sweet, earthy.

This was clearly the storage and loading area for the brewery, as the train tracks ran through the space, with loading docks and rotting cranes arrayed alongside. Where the tracks ended an old railroad car listed, its wheels off the rails, roof rusted and partially caved in.

Between him and the car was about thirty feet of open ground.

With a sudden burst of speed, Pendergast flitted across the space, then took cover behind the railcar. From this new vantage point he could see the door he had just come through, as well as a large, arched door at the far end of the open space. Debris littered the dusty, concrete floor, and in that dust he could see recent footmarks.

Edging along the railcar, he ducked across another open space, flattened himself behind one pillar, then another, and a moment later scurried up to the arched door. It was shut but not locked.

Reaching into his pocket, Pendergast turned on a small LED flashlight, held it against his .45, then spun around and—raising his weapon—burst through the door, panning across the space.

It was not a room at all, but the long, cool tunnel that had evidently once been used for storing beer, attested to by several stacks of rotting barrels and countless old mold-blown beer bottles.

Pendergast’s sense of puzzlement deepened. They should be here, waiting for him. They would have guessed he’d be coming. And yet he could see no sign of them.

A few moments brought him to the far end of the tunnel and a second archway. Beyond that, he could see another vast, open space, speckled with fragments of sunlight, with the great hop kiln dominating one corner.

His light showed footprints all over the floor now, clustering around the massive riveted iron door of the kiln, which stood ajar. Above, a metal catwalk ran around the walls, just beneath the arched ceiling.

Creeping along the wall, Pendergast reached a point where he could look up to the catwalk. By now his eyes had fully adjusted to the gloom, and he could see that the catwalk was empty.

He continued moving against the wall, toward the great door to the kiln. He approached it from the far side, weapon drawn; then skipped past the door frame, coming at it from the other side, pulling it open while using it as a shield against potential fire.

But there was nothing save the loud groan of rusty iron, and when he shone the light around the interior of the hop kiln, nobody was there.

The walls were blackened with soot and the floor was strewn with food trash. A bucket sat in the corner. Shackles had been driven into the walls, and on the scorched brick floor underneath were some small stains of blood. A filthy blanket with no mattress lay rucked up in the corner. Some old bloody bandages had been tossed in another corner. Clearly, this had been Tristram’s temporary prison.

Pendergast sorted through the trash with meticulous care, once in a while retaining something in a test tube or ziplock bag. But he found nothing of interest.

Back in the large space, he began to explore the area thoroughly. In an alcove he found the spot where Alban had presumably been living: a cot, an empty steamer trunk, a clean bucket. He searched the area, but it had been carefully cleaned out.

They’d known he was coming—and had abandoned the hideout.

In another alcove was a raw plywood table, on which sat a hot plate, a ten-dollar coffeemaker, and a mug. Shining the light low to the ground, Pendergast traced the web of footprints in the dust and dirt, hither and yon, and followed them as best he could, looking for other areas that might have been used. When that yielded nothing, he mounted the rickety metal stairs to the catwalk and traversed it, looking for hidden spaces. Nothing.

Once again, Pendergast searched Alban’s alcove. He next inspected the table. The raw, unsealed top was splattered with coffee stains and rings. He held his flashlight at one edge of the table and began shining it at various raking angles across the surface. On the fourth try, the beam illuminated some faint writing marks in the soft plywood top. There was one mark in particular that had been written with pressure and underlined twice. Laying the light on the table, Pendergast removed a piece of paper and pencil from his suit and placed the paper over the marks, rubbing it ever so lightly with the side of the pencil. Slowly, bits and pieces of a scattering of letters materialized. On a separate piece of paper, Pendergast jotted them down, leaving blank the letters that were too faint to make out. He tried rubbing in several directions, each time getting a slightly different take on the letters, until he had five of the eight.

BE _ _ _ EST

He examined the rubbing with a loupe, examined the table itself, and was finally able to add another letter.

BE _ A _ EST

He stared at the piece of paper for a long time. And then, with one swift motion of the pencil, he completed the word:

BETATEST