The Book of the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  “What’s Lacarra’s record here?”

  “Leads a gang in here known as the Broken Teeth. A major pain in the rear for our guards.”

  “The Broken Teeth,” Coffey murmured. The exhilaration was quickly returning. “Now, tell me, Mr. Imhof. Where does this Pocho Lacarra currently enjoy his exercise privileges?”

  “Yard 4.”

  “And what would happen if you transferred Agent Pendergast to, ah, yard 4 for his daily exercise period?”

  Imhof frowned. “If Lacarra recognized him, it would be ugly. Or even if he didn’t.”

  “How so?”

  “Lacarra… Well, there isn’t a delicate way of putting it: he likes a white boy for his bitch.”

  Coffey thought for a moment. “I see. Please give the order at once.”

  Imhof’s frown deepened. “Agent Coffey, that’s a rather extreme step-”

  “I’m afraid our man has left us with no choice. I’ve seen hard cases in my time, I’ve seen sullen impudence before, but nothing like this. The way he disrespects the legal process, this prison-and you, in particular-is shocking. It really is.”

  Imhof drew in a breath. Coffey noticed, with satisfaction, that the man’s nostrils flared briefly.

  “Stick him in there, Imhof,” Coffey said quietly. “Stick him in there, but keep an eye on the situation. Extract him if things get out of hand. But don’t extract him too soon, if you get my meaning.”

  “If something does happen, there could be fallout. I’ll need you to back me up.”

  “You can count on me, Imhof. I’m behind you, in all the way.” And with that, Coffey turned, nodded to the still-grinning Rabiner, and left the office.

  Chapter 28

  Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward sat at her desk, gazing at the storm of paperwork in front of her. She hated disorder; she hated mess; she hated unsquared papers and shabby piles. And yet it seemed no matter how much she sorted and squared and organized, it ended up this way: the desk a physical manifestation of the disorder and frustration within her own mind. By rights, she should be typing up a report on the murder of DeMeo. Yet she felt paralyzed. It was damned hard to work on open cases when you felt you’d royally screwed up on a previous one; that maybe an innocent-or mostly innocent-man was in prison, unjustly charged with a crime that carried a potential death sentence…

  She made another enormous effort to impose order on her mind. She had always organized her thoughts in lists: she was forever making lists nested within lists within lists. And she was finding it difficult to move forward with her other cases while the Pendergast case remained unresolved in her mind.

  She sighed, focused, and began again.

  One: a possibly innocent man was in prison, charged with a capital crime.

  Two: his brother, long thought dead, had resurfaced, kidnapped a woman with apparently no connection to anything, stolen the world’s most valuable diamond collection… and then destroyed it. Why?

  Three-

  A knock on the door interrupted her.

  Hayward had asked her secretary to make sure she was not disturbed, and she struggled with a momentary anger that shocked her with its intensity. She brought herself back under control and said coldly, “Come in.”

  The door opened slowly, tentatively-and there stood Vincent D’Agosta.

  There was a brief moment of frozen stasis.

  “Laura,” D’Agosta began. Then he fell silent.

  She maintained an utter coolness even as she felt the color mounting in her face. For a moment, she could think of nothing to say except “Please sit down.”

  She watched him enter the office and take a seat, crushing with ruthless efficiency the emotions that welled up inside her. He was surprisingly trim and reasonably well dressed in a suit and a twenty-dollar sidewalk tie, his thinning hair combed back.

  The moment of awkward silence lengthened.

  “So… How’s everything?” D’Agosta asked.

  “Fine. You?”

  “My disciplinary trial is scheduled for early April.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? If they find me guilty, there goes my career, pension, benefits-everything.”

  “I meant, it will be good to have it over with,” she said tersely. Is that what he’d come here to do-complain? She waited for him to get to the point.

  “Look, Laura: first, I just want to tell you something.”

  “Which is?”

  She could see him struggling. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I know I hurt you, I know you think I treated you like dirt… I wish I knew how to make it up.”

  Hayward waited.

  “At the time, I thought, I really thought, I was doing the right thing. Trying to protect you, keep you safe from Diogenes. I thought that by moving out I could keep the heat off you. I just didn’t figure on how it would look to you… I was winging it. Things were happening fast and I didn’t have time to work everything out. But I’ve had plenty of time to think about it since. I know that I looked like a cold bastard, walking out on you with no explanation. It must have seemed like I didn’t trust you. But that wasn’t it at all.”

  He hesitated, chewing his lip as if working up to something. “Listen,” he began again. “I really want us to get back together. I still care about you. I know we can work this out…”

  His voice trailed off miserably. Hayward waited him out.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “Consider it said.”

  Another excruciating silence.

  “Is there anything else?” Hayward asked.

  D’Agosta shifted uncomfortably. Slats of sunlight came in through the blinds, striping his suit.

  “Well, I heard…”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That you were still looking into the Pendergast case.”

  “Really?” she said coolly.

  “Yeah. From a guy I know, works for Singleton.” He shifted again. “When I heard that, it gave me hope. Hope that maybe I could still help you. There are things that I didn’t tell you before, things that I felt sure you wouldn’t believe. But if you’re really still on the case, after all that’s happened… well, I thought maybe you should hear some of these things. To, you know, give you as much ammunition as possible.”

  Hayward kept her face neutral, not willing to give him anything but a thunderous silence. He was looking older, a little drawn, but his clothes were new and his shirt was well ironed. She wondered, briefly and searingly, who was taking care of him. Finally she said, “The case is settled.”

  “Officially, yeah. But this friend said that you were-”

  “I don’t know what you heard, and I don’t give a damn. You should know better than to listen to departmental gossip from so-called friends.”

  “But, Laura-”

  “Refer to me as Captain Hayward, please.”

  Another silence.

  “Look, this whole thing-the killings, the diamond theft, the kidnapping-was all orchestrated by Diogenes. All of it. It was his master plan. He played everyone like a violin. He murdered those people, then framed Pendergast for it. He stole the diamonds, kidnapped Viola Maskelene-”

  “You’ve told me all this before.”

  “Yes, but here’s something you don’t know, something I never told you-”

  Hayward felt a rush of anger that almost overwhelmed her icy control. “Lieutenant D’Agosta, I don’t appreciate hearing that you’ve continued to withhold information from me.”

  “I didn’t mean it that-”

  “I know exactly what you meant.”

  “Listen, damn it. The reason Viola Maskelene was kidnapped is that she and Pendergast-well, they’re in love.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I was there when they met on the island of Capraia last year. He interviewed her as part of the investigation into Bullard and the lost Stradivarius. When they met, I could see this connection between them. Diogenes somehow learned of it.”<
br />
  “They’ve been seeing each other?”

  “Not exactly. But Diogenes lured her here using Pendergast’s name.”

  “Funny she never mentioned that during her debriefing.”

  “She was trying to protect Pendergast and herself. If it got out that they had a thing for each other-”

  “From one brief meeting on an island.”

  D’Agosta nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Agent Pendergast and Lady Maskelene. In love.”

  “I can’t speak one hundred percent about the strength of Pendergast’s feelings. But as for Maskelene-yeah, I’m convinced.”

  “And how did Diogenes discover this touching bit of sentiment?”

  “There’s only one possibility: while Diogenes was nursing Pendergast back to health in Italy, after rescuing him from Count Fosco’s castle. Pendergast was delirious, he probably said something. So, you see? Diogenes kidnapped Viola to ensure that Pendergast was maximally distracted at precisely the moment he undertook the diamond heist.”

  D’Agosta fell silent. Hayward took the time for a long breath and another effort at control.

  “This,” she said quietly, “is a story straight out of a romance novel. This isn’t the way things happen in real life.”

  “What happened with us wasn’t all that different.”

  “What happened with us was a mistake I’m trying to forget.”

  “Listen, please, Laura-”

  “Call me Laura again and I’ll have you escorted out of the building.”

  D’Agosta winced. “There’s something else you ought to know. Have you heard of the forensic profiling firm of Effective Engineering Solutions, down on Little West 12th Street, run by an Eli Glinn? I’ve been spending most of my time down there recently, moonlighting.”

  “Never heard of it. And I know all the legitimate forensic profilers.”

  “Well, they’re more of an engineering firm, and they’re pretty secretive, but they recently did a forensic profile of Diogenes. It backs up everything I’ve told you about him.”

  “A forensic profile? At whose request?”

  “Agent Pendergast’s.”

  “That inspires confidence,” she said sarcastically.

  “The profile indicated that Diogenes isn’t through.”

  “Isn’t through?”

  “All of what he’s done so far-the killings, the kidnapping, the diamond theft-has been leading up to something else. Something bigger, maybe much bigger.”

  “Such as?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Hayward picked up some files and squared them on the desk with a crack. “That’s quite a story.”

  D’Agosta began to get angry. “It’s not a story. Look, this is Vinnie you’re talking to, Laura. It’s me.”

  “That’s it.” Hayward pressed an intercom button. “Fred? Please come to my office and escort Lieutenant D’Agosta off the premises.”

  “Don’t do this, Laura…”

  She turned to him, finally losing it. “Yes, I will do it. You lied to me. Played me for a fool. I was willing to offer you anything. Everything. And you-”

  “And I am so very sorry. God, if only I could turn back the clock, do things differently. I tried my best, tried to balance my loyalty to Pendergast with my… loyalty to you. I know I screwed up a wonderful thing-and I believe that what we had is worth saving. I want your forgiveness.”

  The door was opened by a police sergeant. “Lieutenant?” he said.

  D’Agosta rose, turned, and exited without even a look back. The sergeant shut the door, leaving Hayward behind her heaped-up desk, silent and trembling, looking at the mess but seeing nothing, nothing at all.

  Chapter 29

  A dark, chill night had fallen over the restless streets of Upper Manhattan, but even on the brightest noon no sunlight ever penetrated the library of 891 Riverside Drive. Metal shutters were closed and fastened over mullioned windows, and drapes of rich brocade hid the shutters in their turn. The room was lit only by fire: the glow of candelabra, the flicker of embers dying on the wide grate.

  Constance sat in a wing chair of burnished leather. She was very erect, as if at attention, or perhaps poised for flight. She was looking tensely at the other occupant of the room: Diogenes Pendergast, who sat on the couch across from her, a book of Russian poetry in his hands. He spoke softly, his voice as liquid as honey, the warm cadence of the Deep South strangely appropriate to the flow of the Russian. “,” he finished, then laid the book down and looked over at Constance. “‘Heart’s memory of sun grows fainter, sallow is the grass.’” He laughed quietly. “Akhmatova. No one else ever wrote about sorrow with the kind of astringent elegance she did.”

  There was a short silence.

  “I don’t read Russian,” Constance replied at last.

  “A beautiful, poetic language, Constance. It’s a shame, because I sense hearing Akhmatova speak of her sorrow in her own tongue would help you bear your own.”

  She frowned. “I bear no sorrow.”

  Diogenes raised his eyebrows and laid the book aside. “Please, child,” he said quietly. “This is Diogenes. With others, you may put up a brave front. But with me, there’s no reason to hide anything. I know you. We are so very alike.”

  “Alike?” Constance laughed bitterly. “You’re a criminal. And me-you know nothing about me.”

  “I know a great deal, Constance,” he said, voice still quiet. “You are unique. Like me. We are alone. I know you’ve been blessed and cursed with a strange and terrible burden. How many would wish for such a gift as you were given by my great-uncle Antoine-and yet how few could understand just what it would be like. Not liberation, not at all. So many, many years of childhood… and yet, to be deprived of being a child…”

  He looked at her, the fire illuminating his strange, bicolored eyes. “I have told you. I, too, was denied a childhood-thanks to my brother and his obsessive hatred of me.”

  Immediately, a protest rose to Constance’s lips. But this time she suppressed it. She could feel the white mouse shifting in her pocket, contentedly curling himself up for a nap. Unconsciously she moved a hand over the pocket, stroking it with slender fingers.

  “But I’ve already spoken to you about those years. About my treatment at his hands.” A glass of pastis sat at his right hand-he had helped himself from the sideboard earlier-and now he took a slow, thoughtful sip.

  “Has my brother communicated with you?” he asked.

  “How can he? You know where he is: you put him there.”

  “Others in similar situations find ways to get word to those they care about.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t want to cause me further discomfort.” Her voice fell as she spoke. Her eyes dropped to her fingers, still absently stroking the sleeping mouse, then rose again to look at Diogenes’s calm, handsome face.

  “As I was saying,” he went on after a pause, “there is much else we share.”

  Constance said nothing, stroking the mouse.

  “And much that I can teach you.”

  Once again, she summoned a tart retort; once again, it remained unvoiced. “What could you possibly teach me?” she replied instead.

  Diogenes broke into a gentle smile. “Your life-not to put too fine a term to it-is dull. Even stultifying. You’re trapped in this dark house, a prisoner. Why? Aren’t you a living woman? Shouldn’t you be allowed to make your own decisions, to come and go as you please? Yet you’ve been forced to live in the past. And now, you live for others who only take care of you through guilt or shame. Wren, Proctor-that busybody policeman D’Agosta. They’re your jailers. They don’t love you.”

  “Aloysius does.”

  A sad smile creased Diogenes’s face. “You think my brother is capable of love? Tell me: has he ever told you he loved you?”

  “He doesn’t have to.”

  “What evidence do you have that he loves you?”

  Constance wanted to answer, but she felt herself coloring i
n confusion. Diogenes waved a hand as if to imply his point was made.

  “And yet you don’t have to live this way. There’s a huge, exciting world out there. I could show you how to turn your amazing erudition, your formidable talents, toward fulfilling, toward pleasing, yourself.”

  Hearing this, Constance felt her heart accelerate despite her best intentions. The hand stroking the mouse paused.

  “You must live not only for the mind, but for the senses. You have a body as well as a spirit. Don’t let that odious Wren jail you with his daily babysitting. Don’t crush yourself any longer. Live. Travel. Love. Speak the languages you’ve learned. Experience the world directly, and not through the musty pages of a book. Live in color, not black and white.”

  Constance listened intently, feeling her confusion mount. The fact was, she felt she knew so little of the world-nothing, in fact. Her entire life had been a prelude… to what?

  “Speaking of color, note the ceiling of this room. What color is it?”

  Constance glanced up at the library ceiling. “Wedgwood blue.”

  “Was it always that color?”

  “No. Aloysius had it repainted during-during the repairs.”

  “How long do you suppose it took him to pick that color?”

  “Not long, I imagine. Interior decorating is not his forte.”

  Diogenes smiled. “Precisely. No doubt he made the decision with all the passion of an accountant selecting an itemization. Such an important decision, made so flippantly. But this is the room you spend most of your time in, isn’t it? Very revealing of his attitude toward you, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Diogenes leaned forward. “Perhaps you will understand if I tell you how I choose color. In my house-my real house, the one that is important to me-I have a library like this. At first I thought of draping it in blue. And yet after some consideration and experimentation, I realized blue takes on an almost greenish tint in candlelight-which is the only light in that room after the sun has set. Further examination revealed that a dark blue, such as indigo or cobalt, appears black in such light. If pale blue, it fades to gray; if rich, like turquoise, it becomes heavy and cold. Clearly blue, though my first preference, would not work. The various pearl grays, my second choice, were also unacceptable: they lose their bluish gloss and are transformed into a dead, dusky white. Dark greens react like dark blues and turn almost black. So at length I settled on a light summery green: in shimmering candlelight, it gives the dreamy, languorous effect of being underwater.” He hesitated. “I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and candles extinguished, listening to the roar of the surf, and I become a pearl diver, within, and as one with, the lime-green waters of the Sargasso Sea. It is the most beautiful library in the world, Constance.”