City of Endless Night

by Douglas Preston

  After an hour in the room, with no visible sign of annoyance from Pendergast, Longstreet finally lost his temper. “This is outrageous!” he said to the drone. “Two senior FBI agents on an active investigation, being obstructed! We’re doing Ozmian a favor by trying to solve the case of his murdered daughter—and we’re forced to sit here like this?”

  The drone only nodded. “I’m sorry—orders.”

  Longstreet turned to Pendergast. “I’d just as soon go back to Federal Plaza, get a court order ourselves—and a SWAT team for good measure—and beat down the man’s door with a battering ram.”

  “Du calme, H; du calme. All this is obviously calculated to create a particular effect—as was the case with my visit here two days ago. Mr. Ozmian wishes to demonstrate total control of the situation. Let us allow him to believe he has that. Remember what you told me earlier: this is my show; you’re just along to observe. Even in the waiting, we’ve been shown valuable information.”

  Longstreet swallowed and sat back, determined to let Pendergast handle it his way. The two sat in the room for another half an hour before the door opened once again and they were at last ushered into Ozmian’s private eyrie. As they approached the huge double doors through soaring spaces, Longstreet was surprised at the number of people busily working all around them on what was a major holiday. Things such as holidays probably meant very little to Anton Ozmian.

  The man himself was sitting behind his massive desk, arms folded and fingers interlaced on the surface of black granite. He regarded them impassively. A woman sat in one of the chrome-and-leather chairs arrayed before the desk. She seemed more interested in the view of New York Harbor through the floor-to-ceiling windows than she was in the new arrivals.

  After an insolently lengthy interval of silence, Ozmian gestured for Pendergast and Longstreet to take seats. “Special Agent Pendergast,” he said laconically. “How nice to see you again.” He turned to Longstreet. “And you are—?”

  “Howard Longstreet, executive associate director for intelligence.”

  “Ah, of course. You’re the person responsible for expediting this meeting.”

  Longstreet began to speak, but Pendergast restrained him with a gentle hand on his arm.

  Ozmian smirked at Longstreet. “Well, I’m pleased you’re here. Because this investigation could certainly use some intelligence.” The CEO turned his attention back to Pendergast. “No doubt you’ve come to fill me in on the blitzkrieg swiftness and rapier-like brilliance with which you’ve been advancing the case.”

  “No,” Pendergast said. He was still, Longstreet noted, adopting the deferential posture he’d assumed while waiting at security.

  At this, Ozmian affected surprise. He sat back in his chair, fixing Pendergast with his ascetic stare. “Very well, then. Why are you here?”

  “Mr. Ozmian, in your line of work, you buy out, take over, or otherwise absorb other companies and their technologies.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “Is it fair to say that not all of these companies are eager to be so acquired?”

  A look of amusement came over Ozmian’s face. “That’s right. It’s called a hostile takeover.”

  “Forgive my ignorance. In matters of business, I am but a child. Is this the case with most of your takeovers? That they are hostile?”

  “In many cases, the CEOs and shareholders were happy to be made rich.”

  “I see.” Pendergast appeared to consider this for a moment, as if such a thing had not occurred to him before. “But there are some who aren’t so happy?”

  Ozmian shrugged, as if the observation was so obvious as not to merit reply.

  “Again, you’ll pardon my ignorance,” Pendergast continued in the same deferential tone. “And if these people were unhappy—extremely unhappy—they may well have come to hate you, personally?”

  There was a brief silence during which Pendergast sat forward, almost imperceptibly, in his chair.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Allow me to rephrase. The question is too vague, admittedly, because I’m sure that many people hate you. Mr. Ozmian, who hates you the most?”

  “That’s a ridiculous question. Takeovers are the bread and butter of corporate life, and I don’t pay attention to whiners whose companies I’ve acquired.”

  “Perhaps then you’ve made a serious miscalculation—one that has landed you in your current unfortunate circumstance.”

  “Unfortunate circumstance? Are you referring to my daughter’s death?” His face darkened; Longstreet could see he was enraged.

  As Longstreet watched, Pendergast sat forward a little more. “Consider my question very carefully, Mr. Ozmian, as I ask you once again: who hates you most of all?”

  A look Longstreet could not quite read passed across Ozmian’s face before it mastered its anger and once again assumed its remote, faintly supercilious expression.

  “Think carefully,” Pendergast pressed, a faint iciness now lacing his voice. “Who hates you so much that he would kill your daughter, and not even leave it at that, but come back and take her head?”

  Ozmian did not reply. His face had grown very dark.

  Pendergast straightened up and pointed a white finger at the chairman of DigiFlood. “Who hates you that much, Mr. Ozmian? I know that you must have a name in your head. And, by not telling me that name, you’re indirectly aiding the person who, perhaps, killed your daughter.”

  A strangled, poisonous atmosphere filled the room. Both Ozmian and his unnamed associate were now staring at Pendergast with undivided attention. Ozmian’s expression once again became studiously neutral, but behind that face Longstreet could sense wheels turning furiously. A minute passed, then two, before he spoke again.

  “Robert Hightower,” Ozmian said at last, in a neutral voice.

  “Again,” Pendergast said. It was an order, not a request.

  “Robert Hightower. Ex-chairman of Bisynchrony.”

  “And why does he hate you?”

  Ozmian shifted in his chair. “His father was a beat cop from a long line of NYPD beat cops. Grew up poor in Brooklyn. But he was a mathematical whiz. He devised an algorithm for simultaneously compressing files while streaming them in real time. He kept improving it, maximizing bandwidth use while increasing the binary resolution. When the algorithm was able to process a bit depth of thirty-two, I became interested. He wanted no part of the DigiFlood family. I sweetened my offer several times, but he continued to rebuff me. The algorithm was his pet, he said; his life’s work. In the end, I was forced to dilute the value of Bisynchrony’s stock—never mind how. He was forced to sell me everything. At the time, he blamed me for what he melodramatically called ‘ruining his life.’ Brought several lawsuits against me, which did nothing but drain his bank account. Telephoned me again and again, threatening to kill me, ruin my business, and destroy my family, until finally I had a restraining order slapped on him. His wife’s car went over a cliff a year after the takeover. She was behind the wheel, intoxicated. Totally unrelated, of course.”

  “Of course,” Pendergast said drolly. “And why did you not share this information with the police earlier?”

  “You asked who hates me the most. I answered the question. But there are a hundred others who hate me, too. I can’t imagine any of them murdering an innocent girl and cutting off her head.”

  “But you said Robert Hightower actually threatened to kill you and your family. Did you believe him?”

  Ozmian shook his head. He looked defeated. “I don’t know. People say stupid things. But Hightower…he went off the deepest end.” He looked from Pendergast to Longstreet and back again. “I answered your question. Now get out.”

  It was clear to Longstreet that he would have no more to say on this or any other subject.

  Pendergast rose from his chair. He made a slight bow without offering to shake hands. “Thank you, Mr. Ozmian. And good day.”

  Ozmian responded with a perfunctory no
d.

  Minutes later, as the elevator doors whispered open and they stepped out into the main lobby, Longstreet could not restrain a chuckle. “Aloysius,” he said, slapping the man’s slender back, “that was a tour de force. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone turn the tables quite so neatly. Consider yourself officially out of the doghouse.”

  Pendergast acknowledged the compliment in silence.

  Across the expansive lobby, Bryce Harriman—who had just entered from the chilly street via the bank of revolving doors—stopped in his tracks. He recognized the man exiting one of the elevators: it was Special Agent Pendergast, the elusive fed who had figured, one way or another, in several of the murder cases he’d reported on over the years.

  The FBI agent could be doing only one thing here at DigiFlood: following up on the Decapitator case, perhaps even interviewing Ozmian. That would put Ozmian into a foul mood. So much the better. A moment later he was hurrying toward the security station.

  44

  LIEUTENANT VINCENT D’AGOSTA sat in the tidy living room of the apartment he shared with Laura Hayward, moodily drinking a Budweiser and listening to the bleat of traffic on the avenue below. From the kitchen came sounds of cooking—the creak of an oven door opening, the whuff of a gas burner being lit. Laura, a superb cook, was in the midst of outdoing herself in the preparation of a New Year’s Day feast.

  D’Agosta knew why she was working so hard—to cheer him up, make him forget the Decapitator case…if only for a little while.

  The prospect filled him with guilt. He didn’t feel worthy of all this effort—in fact, at the moment, he didn’t feel worthy of anything.

  He drained his Budweiser, moodily crushed the can in his fist, then placed it on a magazine that sat on the end table. Four similarly crushed cans were there already, lined up like injured sentries.

  He was popping the tab on his sixth when Laura emerged from the kitchen. If she noticed all the empties, she said nothing; she merely sat down in an armchair across from him.

  “Too hot in there,” she said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Anyway, all the heavy lifting is done.”

  “Sure I can’t help?” he asked for the fourth time.

  “Thanks, but nothing to do. We’ll be eating in half an hour—hope you’ve got a good appetite.”

  D’Agosta, who felt more thirsty than hungry, nodded and took another pull.

  “What the hell ever happened to Michelob?” he asked suddenly, holding up the can of Bud almost accusatorily. “The real Michelob, I mean. Now, there was a premium beer. And that fat-bellied brown bottle with the gold foil at the neck—you really felt you were drinking something special. But today everybody’s crazy for craft beers. It’s like they’ve forgotten what a classic American beverage tastes like.”

  Laura said nothing.

  D’Agosta lifted the can to take another pull, then put it aside. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I’m sitting around, sulking like a kid, feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Vinnie, it’s not just you. It’s everybody who’s on the case. I mean, it’s tearing apart the whole city. I can’t even imagine the pressure you’re under.”

  “I’ve got a ton of detectives working on this—and they’re just going around and around in circles.” They’re probably spending miserable New Year’s Days, too, he thought. And it’s my fault. I haven’t moved the case forward.

  He sat forward, realized he was a little drunk, sat back again. “It’s the goddamnedest thing. This Adeyemi. I’ve talked to anyone who might have an ax to grind with her. Nothing. Even her enemies say she’s a saint. I’ve had my people digging twenty-four seven. Christ, I’ve even thought of flying to Nigeria myself. I just know there’s some deep shit in her background!”

  “Vinnie, don’t beat yourself up about it. Not today.”

  And yet he couldn’t leave it alone. It was like a sore tooth that your tongue kept returning to, testing and probing despite the pain. The worst of it, he knew, was a feeling he couldn’t shake: that the whole case was unraveling, coming apart before his eyes. Like the rest of the NYPD and everyone else in the city, he was sure it was some crazy psycho targeting the worst of the one percenters. God knew when Harriman first published the idea, it made perfect sense to him and everyone else. But no matter what stone he looked under, he couldn’t make this latest killing fit the pattern.

  Then there was Pendergast. More than once, he’d thought back on what the FBI agent had said: There is indeed a motive for these murders. But it is not the motive that you, the NYPD, and all of New York seem to believe. He felt bad that he’d blown his stack. But the man could be so damn infuriating—trashing your theories while withholding his own.

  What he had to do, D’Agosta realized, was refocus. After all, Pendergast hadn’t come out and said he thought Adeyemi was a saint, exactly. He’d just implied they were looking at things the wrong way. Maybe instead of a history of hidden bad behavior, Adeyemi had done one truly horrific thing in her life. That would be a whole lot easier to cover up. Harder to find, admittedly—but once found, bingo.

  He was woken from this reverie by the clatter of china; Laura was setting the dining room table. Leaving his beer unfinished, he rose and went over to help her. In the last few minutes, he’d found that his appetite had, in fact, sharpened. He’d forget about the case for a little while, enjoy his wife’s company and cooking…and then get back to headquarters and start making a fresh round of calls.

  45

  FROM HER CHAIR, Isabel Alves-Vettoretto watched her employer read over the three sheets of paper that Bryce Harriman had handed him, then read them over again.

  She gave Harriman an appraising glance. Alves-Vettoretto was a dead shot at reading people. She could sense a mix of emotions warring within the reporter: anxiety, moral outrage, pride, defiance.

  Now Ozmian finished his second reading and—leaning over his massive desk—handed Harriman’s proposed article to Alves-Vettoretto. She read it through with mild interest. So the reporter had done his homework, she thought. Alves-Vettoretto had studied accounts of the great conquerors of world history, and now a quotation of Julius Caesar’s came to mind: It’s only hubris if I fail.

  She set the papers carefully on the edge of the desk. In the brief period between Pendergast’s walking out and Bryce Harriman’s being ushered in, Ozmian had been uncharacteristically still, poring over something on his computer, deep in thought. But now his gestures became quick and economical. After Alves-Vettoretto had put down the papers, she caught a silent glance from Ozmian. Understanding what the glance meant, she stood up and excused herself from the office.

  What she had to do had been carefully set up and putting it in motion took five minutes. When she returned, Harriman was placing another piece of paper on Ozmian’s desk with an air of triumph—it appeared to be a copy of the affidavit Harriman had said he’d gotten from the eyewitness in Massachusetts.

  Now Ozmian was talking and Harriman was listening.

  “And so this ‘counter-blackmail,’ as you call it, consists of three parts,” Ozmian was saying, his voice calm, indicating the draft of the article. “You lay out, in detail, the events of thirty years ago, in which, before a crowd of churchgoers, I beat Father Anselm senseless at Our Lady of Mercy church. And you’ve got the affidavit to prove it.”

  “That’s pretty much it.”

  Ozmian leaned across the desk. “I couldn’t be less concerned with public opinion. However, I must confess—” and here he faltered for a moment. The anger seemed to drain away and a deflated look came over his features. “I must confess that the board of DigiFlood might not welcome this information getting out and casting a shadow over the company. I congratulate you on your investigative skills.”

  Harriman accepted this compliment with dignity.

  Ozmian swiveled in his chair, stared out the vast windows for a moment. Then he turned back to Harriman. “It seems like we’re at a Mexican standoff. So here’s
what’s going to happen. I’ll take the frame off you, transfer the funds back into the account of the Shannon Croix Foundation, and make it look like a bank error. In exchange, you’ll leave me with the original of that affidavit when you leave—and you’ll agree not to publish anything on what happened at Our Lady of Mercy.”

  As Ozmian spoke, Alves-Vettoretto noted that Harriman fairly glowed. He swelled in his chair like a peacock. “And what about my reporting on the murder?”

  “I would ask you frankly, man-to-man, not to sully my daughter’s name any further than you’ve already done. There are plenty of murders after hers to occupy your pen.”

  Harriman absorbed this gravely. When he spoke, his voice was freighted with gravitas. “I’ll try. But I have to tell you—if newsworthy information about your daughter comes to light, I’ll have to write about it. Surely you understand?”

  Ozmian opened his mouth as if to protest, but ultimately said nothing. He slumped slightly in his chair, giving the faintest nod as he did so.

  Harriman rose to his feet. “We have a deal. And I hope you’ve learned something from all this, Mr. Ozmian—despite your money and power, it’s never a good idea to take on the press. Especially in the form of a reporter as dedicated and experienced as myself. Truth will out, Mr. Ozmian.”

  This miniature lecture on ethics accomplished, the reporter swiveled on one heel, and—without offering to shake hands—made for the double doors, trailing an air of injured virtue.

  Ozmian waited until the doors had closed behind Harriman. Then he turned to look inquiringly at Alves-Vettoretto, who nodded in response. And as she did so, she noted that Ozmian’s equanimity—which had become rather discomposed in the wake of the meeting with Agent Pendergast—now appeared to be fully restored.

  Harriman could barely restrain himself from leaping with triumph in the elevator as it shot downward toward the lobby. It had worked—just as he’d known it would work, during that dark night of the soul in his apartment, mere days before. All it had taken was the right kind of reportorial skill. And, truth be told, he had been a little modest just now, in his talk with Ozmian—there were few others who could have uncovered the man’s vicious little secrets as quickly and thoroughly as he’d done.