The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  TWELVE

  PATRICK O’SHAUGHNESSY STOOD ON THE CORNER OF Seventy-second and Central Park West, staring at the facade of the Dakota apartment building. There was a vast arched entrance to an inner courtyard, and beyond the entrance the building ran at least a third of the way down the block. It was there, in the darkness, that Pendergast had been attacked.

  In fact, it probably looked just about like this when Pendergast was stabbed—except for the old man, of course; the one Pendergast had seen wearing a derby hat. Astonishing that the guy had almost managed to overpower the FBI agent, even factoring in the element of surprise.

  O’Shaughnessy wondered again just what the hell he was doing here. He was off duty. He should be in J.W.’s hoisting a few with friends, or messing about his apartment, listening to that new recording of The Bartered Bride. They weren’t paying him: so why should he care?

  But he found, strangely enough, that he did care.

  Custer, naturally, had dismissed it as a simple mugging: “Friggin’ rube out-of-towner, no surprise he got his ass mugged.” Well, O’Shaughnessy knew Pendergast was no rube. The man probably played up his New Orleans roots just to keep people like Custer off guard. And he didn’t think Pendergast had gotten mugged, either. But now it was time to decide: just what was he going to do about it?

  Slowly, he began to walk toward the site of the attack.

  Earlier in the day, he’d visited Pendergast in the hospital. Pendergast had hinted to him that it would be useful—more than useful—to have the coroner’s report on the bones found at the construction site. To get it, O’Shaughnessy realized, he would have to go around Custer. Pendergast also wanted more information on the developer, Fairhaven—who Custer had made it clear was off-limits. It was then O’Shaughnessy realized he had crossed some invisible line, from working for Custer to working for Pendergast. It was a new, almost heady feeling: for the first time in his life, he was working with someone he respected. Someone who wasn’t going to pre-judge him on old history, or treat him as a disposable, fifth-generation Irish cop. That was the reason he was here, at the Dakota, on his night off. That’s what a partner did when the other one got into trouble.

  Pendergast, as usual, was silent on the attack. But to O’Shaughnessy, it had none of the earmarks of a mugging. He remembered, dimly, his days at the academy, all the statistics on various types of crimes and how they were committed. Back then, he had big ideas about where he was going in the force. That was before he took two hundred bucks from a prostitute because he felt sorry for her.

  And—he had to admit to himself—because he needed the money.

  O’Shaughnessy stopped, coughed, spat on the sidewalk.

  Back at the academy, it had been Motive, Means, Opportunity. Take motive, for starters. Why kill Pendergast?

  Put the facts in order. One: the guy is investigating a 130-year-old serial killer. No motive there: killer’s dead.

  Two: a copycat killer springs up. Pendergast is at the autopsy before there’s even an autopsy. Christ, thought O’Shaughnessy, he must have known what was going on even before the doctor did. Pendergast had already made the connection between the murder of the tourist and the nineteenth-century killings.

  How?

  Three: Pendergast gets attacked.

  Those were the facts, as O’Shaughnessy saw them. So what could he conclude?

  That Pendergast already knew something important. And the copycat serial killer knew it, too. Whatever it was, it was important enough that this killer took a big risk in targeting him, on Seventy-second Street—not exactly deserted, even at nine o’clock in the evening—and had almost succeeded in killing him, which was the most astonishing thing of all.

  O’Shaughnessy swore. The big mystery here was Pendergast himself. He wished Pendergast would level with him, share more information. The man was keeping him in the dark. Why? Now that was a question worth asking.

  He swore again. Pendergast was asking a hell of a lot, but he wasn’t giving anything in return. Why was he wasting a fine fall evening tramping around the Dakota, looking for clues that weren’t there, for a guy who didn’t want help?

  Cool it, O’Shaughnessy told himself. Pendergast was the most logical, methodical guy he’d ever met. He’d have his reasons. All in good time. Meanwhile, this was a waste. Time for dinner and the latest issue of Opera News.

  O’Shaughnessy turned to head home. And that’s when he saw the tall, shadowy figure come into view at the corner.

  Instinctively, O’Shaughnessy shrank into the nearest doorway. He waited. The figure stood on the corner, precisely where he himself had stood only a few minutes before, glancing around. Then it started down the street toward him, slowly and furtively.

  O’Shaughnessy stiffened, receding deeper into the shadows. The figure crept down to the angle of the building, pausing right at the spot where Pendergast had been assaulted. The beam of a flashlight went on. He seemed to be inspecting the pavement, looking around. He was dressed in a long dark coat, which could easily be concealing a weapon. He was certainly no cop. And the attack had not been in the papers.

  O’Shaughnessy made a quick decision. He grasped his service revolver in his right hand and pulled out his shield with his left. Then he stepped out of the shadows.

  “Police officer,” he said quietly but firmly. “Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  The figure jumped sideways with a yelp, holding up a pair of gangly arms. “Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m a reporter!”

  O’Shaughnessy relaxed as he recognized the man. “So it’s you,” he said, holstering his gun, feeling disappointed.

  “Yeah, and it’s you,” Smithback lowered his trembling arms. “The cop from the opening.”

  “Sergeant O’Shaughnessy.”

  “Right. What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you, probably,” said O’Shaughnessy. Then he stopped abruptly, remembering he was speaking to a reporter. It wouldn’t be good for this to get back to Custer.

  Smithback mopped his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “You scared the piss out of me.”

  “Sorry. You looked suspicious.”

  Smithback shook his head. “I imagine I did.” He glanced around. “Find anything?”

  “No.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Who do you think did it? Think it was just some mugger?”

  Although Smithback was echoing the same question he’d asked himself moments before, O’Shaughnessy merely shrugged. The best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut.

  “Surely the police have some kind of theory.”

  O’Shaughnessy shrugged again.

  Smithback stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Look, I understand if it’s confidential. I can quote you ’not for attribution.’ ”

  O’Shaughnessy wasn’t going to fall into that trap.

  Smithback sighed, looking up at the buildings with an air of finality. “Well, there’s nothing much else to be seen around here. And if you’re going to clam up, I might as well go get a drink. Try to recover from that fright you gave me.” He snugged the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Night, Officer.”

  He began to walk away. Then he stopped, as if struck by an idea.

  “Want to come along?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Come on,” the reporter said. “You don’t look like you’re on duty.”

  “I said no.”

  Smithback took a step closer. “You know, now that I think about it, maybe we could help each other out here. Know what I mean? I need to keep in touch with this investigation into the Surgeon.”

  “The Surgeon?”

  “Haven’t you heard? That’s what the Post is calling this serial killer. Cheesy, huh? Anyway, I need information, and I’ll bet you need information. Am I right?”

  O’Shaughnessy said nothing. He did need information. But he wondered if Smithback really had something, or was just bullshitting.

  “I’ll level
with you, Sergeant. I got scooped on that tourist killing in Central Park. And now, I have to scramble to get new developments, or my editor will have my ass for brunch. A little advance notice here and there, nothing too specific, just a nod from a friend—you, for instance. That’s all.”

  “What kind of information do you have?” O’Shaughnessy asked guardedly. He thought back a minute to what Pendergast had said. “Do you have anything on, say, Fairhaven?”

  Smithback rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? I’ve got a sackful on him. Not that it’ll do you much good, but I’m willing to share. Let’s talk about it over a drink.”

  O’Shaughnessy glanced up and down the street. Despite his better judgment, he found himself tempted. Smithback might be a hustler, but he seemed a decent sort of hustler. And he’d even worked with Pendergast in the past, though the reporter didn’t seem too eager to reminisce about it. And finally, Pendergast had asked him to put together a file on Fairhaven.

  “Where?”

  Smithback smiled. “Are you kidding? The best bars in New York City are just one block west, on Columbus. I know a great place, where all the Museum types go. It’s called the Bones. Come on, the first round’s on me.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE FOG GREW THICKER FOR A MOMENT. PENDERGAST waited, maintaining his concentration. Then through the fog came flickerings of orange and yellow. Pendergast felt heat upon his face. The fog began to clear.

  He was standing outside J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities. It was night. The cabinet was burning. Angry flames leapt from the first- and second-story windows, punching through billowing clouds of black, acrid smoke. Several firemen and a bevy of police were frantically roping off the street around the building and pushing curious onlookers back from the conflagration. Inside the rope, several knots of firefighters arced hopeless streams of water into the blaze, while others scurried to douse the gaslights along the sidewalk.

  The heat was a physical force, a wall. Standing on the street corner, Pendergast’s gaze lingered appreciatively on the fire engine: a big black boiler on carriage wheels, belching steam, Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in gold letters on its sweating sides. Then he turned toward the onlookers. Would Leng be among them, admiring his handiwork? No, he would have been long gone. Leng was no pyromaniac. He would be safely ensconced in his uptown house, location unknown.

  The location of the house was a great question. But another, perhaps more pressing, question remained: where had Leng moved his laboratory?

  There was a tremendous, searing crack; roof timbers collapsed inward with a roiling shower of sparks; an appreciative murmur rose from the crowd. With a final look at the doomed structure, Pendergast began threading his way through the crowd.

  A little girl rushed up, no older than six, threadbare and frighteningly gaunt. She had a battered straw broom in her hand, and she swept the street corner ahead of him industriously, clearing away the dung and pestilential garbage, hoping pathetically for a coin. “Thank you,” Pendergast said, tossing her several broad copper pennies. She looked at the coins, eyes wide at her good fortune, then curtsied awkwardly.

  “What’s your name, child?” Pendergast asked gently.

  The girl looked up at him, as if surprised to hear an adult speak to her in a solicitous tone. “Constance Greene, sir,” she said.

  “Greene?” Pendergast frowned. “Of Water Street?”

  “No, sir. Not—not anymore.” Something seemed to have frightened the girl, and, with another curtsy, she turned and melted away down a crowded side street.

  Pendergast stared down the foul street and its seething crowds for some time. Then, with a troubled expression on his face, he turned and slowly retraced his steps. A barker stood in the doorway of Brown’s Restaurant, delivering the bill of fare in a loud, breathless, ceaseless litany:

  Biledlamancapersors.

  Rosebeefrosegoorosemuttonantaters—

  Biledamancabbage, vegetaybles—

  Walkinsirtakaseatsir.

  Pendergast moved on thoughtfully, listening to the City Hall bell toll the urgent fire alarm. Making his way to Park Street, he passed a chemist’s shop, closed and shuttered, an array of bottles in diverse sizes and colors decorating the window: Paine’s Celery Compound; Swamp Root; D. & A. Younce’s Indian Cure Oil (Good for Man and Beast).

  Two blocks down Park, he stopped abruptly. He was fully attentive now, eyes open to every detail. He had painstakingly researched this region of old New York, and the fog of his memory construct retreated well into the distance. Here, Baxter and Worth Streets angled in sharply, creating a crazy-quilt of intersections known as the Five Points. In the bleak landscape of urban decay that stretched before him, there was none of the carefree revelry Pendergast had found earlier, along Bowery.

  Thirty years before, in the 1850s, the “Points” had been the worst slum in all New York, in all America, worse even than London’s Seven Dials. It remained a miserable, squalid, dangerous place: home to fifty thousand criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, orphans, confidence men, villains of all shape and description. The uneven streets were broken and scored into dangerous ruts, brimming with garbage and offal. Hogs wandered about, rooting and wallowing in the fouled gutters. The houses seemed prematurely aged, their windows broken, tarpaper roofs hanging free, timbers sagging. A single gas lamp threw light into the intersection. On all sides, narrow streets marched off into endless darkness. The doors of the first-floor taverns were flung wide against the summer heat. The smells of liquor and cigar smoke issued forth. Women, bare-breasted, lolled in the doorways, exchanging obscene jeers with whores in the neighboring saloons or soliciting passersby in lurid tones. Across the way, nickel-a-night flophouses, riddled with vermin and pestilence, sat between the shabby cow-sheds of fencers of stolen goods.

  Pendergast gazed carefully around at the scene, scrutinizing the topography, the architecture, for any clue, any hidden link that a mere study of historical records could not provide. At last he turned eastward, where a vast, five-story structure sat, decayed and listing, dark even in the light of the gas lamp. This was the former Old Brewery, at one time the worst of all the Five Points tenements. Children who had the misfortune to be born within were known to pass months or even years without tasting the outside air. Now, thanks to the efforts of a charitable group, it had been rebuilt as the Five Points Mission. An early urban renewal project for which, in 1880, the good Dr. Enoch Leng had volunteered his medical services, pro bono. He had continued to work there into the early ’90s, when the historical record on Leng vanished abruptly.

  Pendergast walked slowly toward the building. An ancient sign for the Old Brewery remained painted along its upper story, dominating the far newer and cleaner Five Points Mission sign beneath. He considered entering the building, then decided against it. There was another visit he had to make first.

  Behind the Five Points Mission, a tiny alley ran north into a dark cul-de-sac. Moist, fetid air seeped out from the darkness. Many years before, when the Points region had been a marshy pond known as the collect, Aaron Burr had installed a large subterranean pump for the natural springs at this spot, founding the New Amsterdam Water Company. The pond grew increasingly foul, however, and eventually had been filled in to make way for tenements.

  Pendergast paused thoughtfully. Later, this alleyway had been known as Cow Bay, the most dangerous street in the Five Points. It had been crowded with tall wooden tenements with names like “Brickbat Mansion” and “The Gates of Hell,” tenanted by violent alcoholics who would stab a man for the clothes on his back. Like many structures in the Five Points, these were warrens of vile-smelling chambers, honeycombed with secret panels and doors that connected to other houses on adjoining streets by networks of underground passageways, allowing criminals easy escape from pursuing law enforcement. In the mid-nineteenth century, the street had averaged a murder a night. Now it was home to an ice delivery company, a slaughterhouse, and an abandoned substation of the city
’s waterworks, shut down in 1879 when the uptown reservoir rendered it obsolete.

  Pendergast moved on another block, then turned left onto Little Water Street. At the far corner was the Five Points House of Industry, the other orphanage graced with the medical attention of Enoch Leng. It was a tall Beaux Arts building, punctuated along its north end by a tower. A small rectangular widow’s walk, buttressed by iron fencing, sat atop its mansard roof. The building looked woefully out of place among the shabby wooden houses and ramshackle squatteries.

  He stared up at the heavy-browed windows. Why had Leng chosen to lend his services to these two missions, one after the other, in 1880—the year before Shottum’s Cabinet burned? If he was looking for an endless source of impoverished victims whose absence would cause no alarm, the cabinet was a better choice than a workhouse. After all, one could have only so many mysterious disappearances before someone grew suspicious. And why had Leng chosen these missions in particular? There were countless others in lower Manhattan. Why had Leng decided to work—and, presumably, draw his pool of victims—from this spot?

  Pendergast stepped back onto the cobbles, glancing up and down the lane, thinking. Of all the streets he had traveled, Little Water Street was the only one no longer extant in the twentieth century. It had been paved over, built upon, forgotten. He had seen old maps that showed it, naturally; but no map ever drawn had superimposed its course onto present-day Manhattan…

  An incredibly shabby man with a horse and cart came down the street, ringing a bell, collecting garbage for tips, a brace of tame hogs following behind. Pendergast did not need him. Instead, he glided back down the narrow road, pausing at the entrance to Cow Bay. Although with the disappearance of Little Water Street it was difficult to tell on modern maps, Pendergast now saw that the two missions would both have backed onto these terrible old tenements. Those dwellings were gone, but the warren of tunnels that once served their criminal residents would have remained.