City of Endless Night

by Douglas Preston

  Although it was not yet six thirty in the morning, the call was answered on the first ring, and the voice on the other end did not sound sleepy. “Yeah?”

  Longstreet noticed the voice did not identify itself. “Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re the one our mutual acquaintance calls ‘H.’”

  “Correct. Please keep your answers as brief as possible. Has he contacted you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And suggested a place where the two of us should go?”

  “No place. Just told me to expect a call from you—urgent and confidential.”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you outside your, ah, place of business at noon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Absolutely confidential.”

  “Got it.”

  The line went dead.

  Longstreet replaced the phone. Despite a long career in covert operations, he could not help feel a quickening of excitement. After years of commanding large assault teams, a small, tactical operation like this was like going back to his roots. That Pendergast—always full of surprises. He had handled this extremely well. Nevertheless, the lieutenant’s involvement would be crucial if this was an NYPD situation.

  He lay down in bed, hoping not for sleep—that was now impossible—but for clarity of mind and concentration of purpose. Noon would be at hand soon enough, and the case would enter its final stretch: the takedown. He hoped to God this nightmarish string of serial murders was finally at an end.

  He closed his eyes as the breaking dawn light illuminated the bedroom curtains.

  49

  B​RYCE HARRIMAN WAS led by the armed corrections officer down the sterile hallways of the Manhattan Detention Complex, then ushered into a tiny room with a table bolted to the floor, two chairs, a clock, and an overhead light—both fitted with wire screens. There were no windows; he only knew that it was quarter to nine in the morning because of the clock.

  “Here you are,” the officer said.

  Harriman hesitated, looking at two beefy, shaved-head characters already in the holding cell who were eyeing him as if sizing up a cut of rare roast beef.

  “Come on, let’s go!” The guard gave Harriman a light shove. He entered and the door clanged shut behind him, the bolt shooting into place with a clank.

  He shuffled in and took a seat. At least he wasn’t wearing leg irons anymore, but the orange prison jumpsuit was stiff and abrasive against his skin. The last many hours had passed in a dreadful kind of blur. The arrest, the trip in a squad car to the local precinct, the waiting, the arraignment and booking for embezzlement, and then the depressingly short ride to the detention complex just a few blocks away—it was over almost before he could process what had happened. It was like a nightmare from which he could not shake himself awake.

  As soon as the guard was gone, one of the brawny guys came and stood over him, real close, staring down.

  Harriman, not knowing what to do, finally raised his head. “What?”

  “My seat.”

  Harriman jumped up with alacrity while the man sat down. Two seats: three men. No cot. This was going to be a long day.

  As he sat on the floor, back propped against the wall, listening to the yammer and bluster of fellow prisoners up and down the cell block, the mistakes he’d made paraded themselves before his eyes in dumb show. He’d been blinded by overconfidence, reinforced by his recent celebrity—and he’d fatally underestimated Anton Ozmian.

  His first mistake, as Ozmian had taken pains to point out, had been to overlook the obvious question: Why had Ozmian beaten up the priest in the first place? Why no repercussions? It had been such an outrageous assault, right in front of an entire congregation, that his reportorial alarm bells should have rung, five-alarm.

  His second mistake had been tactical: showing the piece to Ozmian before publishing it. That had not only tipped his hand, but also given Ozmian time to react. With bitter self-recrimination, he remembered all too well how Ozmian’s lieutenant had slipped out for a few minutes early in their meeting—only to return after setting the frame job in motion, no doubt. And then they’d kept him there in the office, talking, while the trap was being sprung. By the time he walked out of the DigiFlood building, flushed with success, he was already dead meat. He recalled, with a fresh wave of frustration and shame, what Ozmian had told him earlier: Our company has many fine programmers, and they created a most lovely digital theft leading back to you. And you simply do not have the knowledge, or the resources, to undo it. That was proving all too true: in one of the few calls he’d been allowed to make, he’d told his editor what had happened to him, how he’d been framed, and how he’d write a hell of a story about Ozmian that would explain it all. Petowski’s response had been to call him a liar and hang up.

  It seemed an eternity, but it was actually only six hours later when his two cellmates, who had blessedly ignored him, were taken out of the holding cell. And then it was his turn. A guard came, unlocked the door, and ushered him down the hall to a tiny room with chairs and a table. He was told to sit, and a moment later a man arrived, wearing a well-tailored suit and gleaming shoes that squeaked as he walked. He had a cheerful, almost cherubic face. This was Leonard Greenbaum, the lawyer Harriman had retained—not a public defender, but an experienced and lethal defense attorney, the most expensive Harriman could afford…given the fact that most of his assets had now been frozen. The man nodded a greeting, put his heavy leather case on the table, sat down across from Harriman, opened the case, removed a pile of papers, and spread them out before him.

  “I’ll be brief, Mr. Harriman,” he told the reporter as he looked over the papers. “After all, at this point there really isn’t much to say. First, the bad news. The district attorney has an airtight case against you. The paper trail has been all too easy to establish. They have the records of your opening the Cayman Islands account, along with a video of you entering the bank, they have records of you secretly transferring all the funds from the foundation, and they have evidence of your intent to flee the country the day after tomorrow, in the form of a one-way plane ticket to Laos.”

  This last was news to Harriman. “Flee the country? To Laos?”

  “Yes. Your apartment has been searched by order of the court and all documents and computers seized. It’s all in there, Mr. Harriman, as clear as day, along with the electronic ticket.”

  Greenbaum’s voice had taken on a sorrowful, even reproachful tone, as if he wondered why Harriman had been quite so thickheaded.

  Harriman groaned, put his head in his hands. “Look, it’s all a setup. A frame job for blackmail. Ozmian created all this out of thin air. He’s got the best hackers in the world working for him, and they staged this whole thing! I told you about my meetings with Ozmian, how he threatened me. There will be records that I was in the building, not once but twice.”

  “Mr. Ozmian admits you were in the building, but states you were simply looking for more information on his daughter for a new article.”

  “He did this to me as pure revenge because of what I wrote about his daughter! The man texted me right as I left the building, telling me what he did and why!”

  The lawyer nodded. “You are, I take it, referring to the text that cannot be located on your phone or anywhere else.”

  “It’s got to be somewhere!”

  “And I agree. That’s the problem. In my experience—and no doubt, that of the prosecution—texts simply don’t delete themselves. There’s always some trace left somewhere.”

  Harriman slumped in his chair. “Look, Mr. Greenbaum, I hired you to defend me. Not catalog all this phony evidence of guilt!”

  “First of all, please call me Lenny. I’m afraid we’re going to be working together for a long time.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his voice sympathetic. “Bryce, I will defend you to the utmost. I’m the best in the business and that’s why you hired me
. But we have to face facts: the DA has an overwhelming case. If we insist on going to court, you’ll be convicted and they will throw the book at you. The only chance you have—the only chance—is to plead.”

  “Plead? You think I’m guilty, don’t you?”

  “Let me finish.” Greenbaum took a deep breath. “I’ve spoken with the DA, and under the right circumstances he’s inclined to be lenient. You’ve got no priors, and you’ve led an upstanding, law-abiding life so far. In addition, you’re a well-known reporter who has provided a public service to the city with this recent case. As a result, he might be willing to think of this as a onetime aberration, albeit egregious. After all, stealing funds from a charitable foundation for cancer patients, established under the pretext of memorializing a deceased friend…” His voice trailed off.

  Harriman swallowed. “Lenient? Lenient how?”

  “That’s to be decided—if you give me authority to negotiate. The fact is, none of the extradited money was actually spent, and you did not flee the country. I could get you off with intent. If you were to plead guilty to that, with luck I’d say you’d have to do no more than—oh, two years, three, tops.”

  With another groan, Harriman let his head sink back into his hands. There was no other word for it, this was in fact a living nightmare—a nightmare that, it now seemed, he would not wake from for at least a couple of years.

  50

  SEVERAL MILES TO the north of the Manhattan Detention Center, Marsden Swope stood next to a tarp spread in the center of the Great Lawn. He waited with a thrill of satisfaction mingled with a sense of humility as people began emerging from walkways, stands of trees, and nearby avenues and—slowly, haltingly, as if sensing the gravity of the occasion—walking across the vast lawn to gather silently around him. A few passersby, hurrying to their destinations in the cold January air, slowed to stare at this motley and growing assemblage. But so far they had not attracted the attention of the authorities.

  Swope knew his message had reached a varied group, a real cross section of America, but he could not have imagined just how diverse it would be. All ages, races, creeds, and income brackets were now quietly surrounding him in a deepening circle. People wearing business suits, headdresses, tuxedos, saris, baseball uniforms, kaftans, Hawaiian shirts, gang colors—it went on and on and on. This was what he had so fervently hoped, that the one percenters and ninety-nine percenters would unite in their rejection of wealth.

  “Thanks be to God,” Swope whispered to himself. “Thanks be to God.”

  Now the time had come to start the bonfire. He would do it fast, so that the cops would not have time to stop it or push through the crowd to douse the fire.

  He rose to full height, standing in the middle of a circular clearing, already surrounded by pilgrims ten to fifteen deep. With a gesture that was both dramatic and—he hoped—deferential, he threw off his cape to reveal a garment he had woven himself over many painstaking evenings: a hair shirt made of the roughest, coarsest animal hair he’d been able to acquire. Next, he took hold of the tarp and snatched it away, revealing a large white X he had spray-painted on the grass. Beside it were two jerrycans of kerosene.

  “People!” he cried out. “Children of the living God! You have gathered here—rich and poor, from all over the country—for a single purpose: to unite in ridding ourselves of the luxuriant and prideful possessions that are so hateful to God, the wealth that Jesus so clearly stated would prevent our entry into heaven. Let us now solemnly swear to divest ourselves of these trappings of greed and purify our hearts. At this place, in this time, let us each make a symbolic offering to the bonfire of the vanities, as our promise to live from this day until the end of our days lives of simplicity!”

  Now he backed away from the painted cross, picking up the jerrycans as he did, until he had joined the front line of the circle. Reaching into a pocket of his torn jeans, he plucked out a pen—a gold-filled fountain pen that his father, whom he had not seen or communicated with in a decade, had given him on graduating from the Jesuit seminary. He held the pen up for all to see; its precious metal inlay glinted in the rays of the setting sun. Then he threw it into the open area, where it landed, nib down, in the center of the painted cross.

  “Let all who wish to walk in the way of grace,” he intoned, “follow my example!”

  There was a brief ripple through the crowd, like a shudder of expectation. This was followed by a moment of stasis. And then incredible showers of items were tossed from the surrounding circle, landing on the grass marked by the cross: designer handbags, clothing, jewelry, watches, car keys, sheaves of bearer bonds, ziplock bags of drugs and packets of marijuana, stacks of hundred-dollar bills, books detailing diet and get-rich-quick schemes, along with some surprising items: a jewel-studded dildo, an electric guitar with a beautifully book-matched top, and a Smith & Wesson handgun. Countless other things that beggared description rained down or were dropped onto the quickly growing pile. The heap of glitter and tinsel and empty luxury mounted up, including a perfectly astonishing number of women’s shoes—stiletto pumps, mostly.

  Now a transcendent glow, a sense of divine inevitability, suffused Swope like the caress of an angel. This must be how Savonarola felt, he realized, all those centuries ago in Florence. Taking one of the jerrycans of kerosene, he stepped forward and, unbunging it, poured it in widening circles over the ever-growing litter of vanities. Things thudded around him and fell against his head and shoulders, but he took no notice.

  “And now!” he said, throwing aside the empty can and producing a box of wooden safety matches. “Let our new life in purification begin with fire!”

  Pulling a match from the box and striking it into life, he threw it onto the pyre—and in the huge, yellow-orange crump of fire and heat that rose, he could see—briefly illuminated as if by daylight—the dark images of thousands of additional pilgrims, coming in from all sides of the Great Lawn, to join in this latter-day bonfire of the vanities, even as luxuries continued to rain down into the conflagration.

  51

  DUSK WAS FALLING over the city as Mrs. Trask bustled her way northward up Riverside Drive, her string bag full of groceries for the evening’s dinner. Normally she didn’t wait until such a late hour to do her shopping, but she had gotten preoccupied rearranging and cleaning the third-best set of china, and hadn’t realized how late it had become. Proctor had offered to drive her, but these days she preferred to get out for a bit of a walk—an early evening’s constitutional did her good, and besides, what with all the gentrification the neighborhood had undergone in recent years, it had become a pleasure to do her own shopping at the local Whole Foods. But as she walked across the circular driveway of 891 Riverside, heading toward the servants’ entrance at the back of the house, she was dismayed to see a dark figure hovering in a shadow near the front door.

  Her immediate instinct was alarm, and to call for Proctor—until she saw that the figure was no more than a boy. He looked shiftless and dirty—what she would have referred to growing up in London’s East End as a street urchin—and as she approached he came out of the shadows.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he said, “but is this the residence of Mister, um, Pendergast?” He even had the Bow Bells accent and speech of a street urchin.

  She stopped well short of him. “Why do you want to know, young man?”

  “Because I was paid to give him this.” And he pulled an envelope out of his back pocket. “And there doesn’t seem to be anyone as is answering the door.”

  Mrs. Trask considered a moment. Then she extended her hand. “Very well, I’ll see that he gets it. Now scarper.”

  The youth handed her the letter. Then, with a tug of a forelock, he turned and hurried away down the driveway.

  Mrs. Trask watched him vanish into the bustle of the city. Then, shaking her head, she made her way to the back kitchen entrance. Really, one never knew what to expect, working for her employer.

  She found him sitting in the l
ibrary, a cup of green tea untouched on the table beside him, staring into the low fire burning in the grate.

  “Mr. Pendergast,” she said, standing in the doorway.

  The agent did not respond.

  “Mr. Pendergast?” she said in a slightly louder tone.

  At this, he roused himself. “Yes, Mrs. Trask?” he said, turning toward her.

  “I found a young boy waiting outside. He said nobody was answering the door. Did you not hear the bell?”

  “I did not.”

  “He said he’d been paid to bring you this letter.” She advanced, bringing with her the dirty, folded envelope on a silver salver. “I wonder why Proctor did not answer the door?” she couldn’t help but add—as she slightly disapproved of Proctor and the liberties he sometimes took with the master.

  Pendergast looked at the letter with an expression Mrs. Trask could not quite fathom. “I believe he did not answer because the doorbell was never rung. The boy lied to you. Now, if you would please place it on the table.”

  She put the salver down beside the tea set. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Not for the present, thank you, Mrs. Trask.”

  Pendergast waited until she had exited the library; until her steps had died away down the hallway; until the entire mansion was quiet once again. And still he did not stir, or act, or do anything but regard the envelope the way he might an explosive device. What it was, he could not be sure—and yet he had all too strong a premonition.

  At last, he leaned forward, picked it up by one edge, and unfolded it. The envelope was printed with a single word, typed on a manual typewriter: ALOYSIUS. He regarded this for a long moment, his sense of premonition increasing. Then, he gingerly slit the envelope open along its narrow edge with a switchblade he kept nearby for a letter opener. Looking inside, he saw a single sheet of foolscap and a small USB memory stick. He slid the sheet out onto the salver, then used the tip of the switchblade to unfold it.