“Thank you,” said D’Agosta.
At that moment footsteps sounded in the hallway. Sandoval reappeared, the familiar-looking collection tray held in both hands. He carefully laid it on the table between them.
“I’ll be at my desk,” he said. “Let me know when you’re finished.”
He left, closing the door behind him. D’Agosta watched as Margo pulled the gloves tighter onto her hands, then took a folded sheet of cotton from a nearby drawer, smoothed it out on the table’s surface, and began plucking bones from the tray and placing them on the cloth. A procession of bones emerged: ribs, vertebrae, arm and leg bones, skull, jaws, and many small bones he couldn’t identify. He remembered how Margo had bounced back from the trauma of the Museum murders, how she’d begun working out, gotten a handgun license, learned how to use a weapon. She seemed so together. But he’d seen the same thing happen to cops, and he hoped to hell this wasn’t making things worse…
He forgot his train of thought as he looked at Margo. She was sitting beside him, having suddenly gone still, a pelvis held in both gloved hands. The look on her face had changed. The distant, preoccupied expression was gone, replaced by puzzlement.
“What is it?” he asked.
Instead of answering, she turned the pelvis around in her hands, peering close. Then she carefully laid it on the cotton, picked up the lower jaw, and examined it intently, viewing it from one angle and another. At last she put it down and glanced over at D’Agosta.
“A Hottentot male, age thirty-five?”
“Yeah.”
Margo licked her lips. “Interesting. I’ll need to come back when I have more time, but I can tell you one thing already: this skeleton is about as much a Hottentot male as I am.”
The sun had been burning in the noonday sky when Pendergast drove away from Salton Palms in his pearl-colored Cadillac. When he returned again, it was after midnight.
He stopped three miles short of the ghost town. Turning off the headlights, he drove well off the road and hid the car behind a stand of stunted Joshua trees. He shut off the motor and sat motionless in the driver’s seat, considering the situation.
Most aspects remained shrouded in mystery. However, he now knew two particulars. Alban’s death had been an elaborate device to lure him to this place—the Golden Spider Mine. And the mine itself had been carefully prepared for him. Pendergast had no doubt that the mine entrance, even now, was under close observation. They were waiting for him.
Pendergast retrieved two rolled-up pieces of paper, which he smoothed open on his lap. One was the map of the Golden Spider Mine he had purchased from Cayute. The other contained old construction blueprints of the Salton Fontainebleau.
Pulling a hooded flashlight from the glove compartment, he first turned his attention to the map of the mine. It was a relatively small mine, with a central passage that appeared to slope downward at a shallow angle, heading southwestward away from the lake. About half a dozen smaller passages angled off from the central one, some straight, others crooked, following the veins of turquoise. Some ended in deep shafts. Pendergast had already committed all this to memory.
He moved the beam of his flashlight to the far edge of the map. At the back end of the mine, a corkscrew passage led off from the main works, narrowing as it went, finally terminating half a mile away in a steep, almost vertical climb: an air shaft, perhaps, or more likely a back entrance that had gone unused. Its lines were faded and worn, as if even the cartographer had forgotten about it by the time the map was complete.
Now Pendergast overlaid the diagram of the mine with the blueprints of the old hotel. He looked back and forth between one and the other, trying to set in his mind the relative positions of the Golden Spider and the Salton Fontainebleau. The blueprints were arranged by floor, and clearly showed the guest suites, capacious lobby, dining rooms, kitchen, casino, spas, ballrooms—and a curious circular construction between the cocktail lounge and the rear promenade labeled ANM. GRDN.
Animal garden, Cayute had said. Built it up out of a natural hole in the ground beneath the hotel. Had real live lions and black panthers and Siberian tigers down there.
Once again, Pendergast compared the blueprints with the map with extreme care. The resort’s animal garden was situated precisely over the back entrance to the Golden Spider Mine.
Pendergast turned off the flashlight and sat back. It made perfect sense: what better place to construct a subterranean animal garden than in a forgotten, disused section of a long-abandoned mine?
His mysterious hosts had busily prepared the mine for his arrival and taken pains to conceal their tracks. The mine was, without doubt, a trap—but a trap with a back door.
While the cooling engine ticked quietly, Pendergast considered how to proceed. Under cover of darkness, he would reconnoiter and enter the resort, locate the back entrance to the mine, and approach the trap from the rear. He would learn the nature of the trap and, if necessary, retask it for his own purposes or disable it. Then, the following day, he would drive up to the main entrance of the mine, without any attempt at disguise, seemingly unaware of the trap inside. And in this way, he would lay his hands on his host or hosts. Once they were in his power, he had no doubt he could encourage them to reveal what lay behind this expensive and absurdly elaborate scheme… and who had killed his son to set it in motion.
Of course, he had to admit to the possibility that there might be something he had overlooked; some unknown complication that would force him to revise his plans. But he had been very careful in his surveillance and his preparations, and this strategy seemed to offer the greatest chance of success by far.
He spent another fifteen minutes poring over the hotel blueprints, committing every last hallway and closet and staircase to memory. The animal garden itself was in the basement, its beasts kept at a safe distance from the spectators above. It was accessible through a small suite of rooms comprising a grooming area and several handling and veterinary rooms. Pendergast would have to pass through these rooms to access the garden itself—and thereby reach the back entrance to the mine.
Taking his Les Baer .45 from the glove compartment, Pendergast checked it and snugged it into his waistband. Blueprints in hand, he exited the car, quietly closed the door, and waited in the darkness, all his senses on alert. The half-moon was partially obscured by wispy clouds, providing just enough light for his preternaturally sharpened senses to see by. Gone were the jeans, denim shirt, and cowboy boots: he now wore black pants, black rubber-soled shoes, and a black turtleneck under a black utility vest.
All was utterly still. He waited another moment, carefully scanning the landscape. Then he stuffed the blueprints into his vest and began moving silently northward, in the concealing shadow of the Scarrit Hills.
After fifteen minutes, he veered eastward and climbed up the rearward side of the hill. From the rocks at the summit he examined the lines of the Salton Fontainebleau, its gables and minarets looking even more spectral in the faint moonlight. Beyond lay the dark, dank, motionless surface of the Salton Sea.
Pulling the binoculars from his utility vest, Pendergast surveyed the area, from south to north, with extreme care. All was silent and still, the landscape as dead as the sea that it surrounded. To the north, he could just make out the small black declivity that led into the main entrance of the mine. Even now, unseen eyes, hidden somewhere in the ruins of Salton Palms, were probably surveilling it, awaiting his arrival.
He spent another ten minutes, concealed in the rocks, binoculars constantly roaming. Then, as clouds thickened before the moon, he crept over the crest of the hill and made his way down the far side, careful to remain in the darkness behind the ruins of the Fontainebleau, where he could not be seen by anyone watching the mine entrance. As he inched forward, black against the night-dark sand, the huge resort loomed up until it blotted out the sky.
A broad veranda ran along the rear of the resort. Pendergast flitted up to it, paused, and carefully climbed its sta
irs to the quiet protest of desiccated wood. With each step he took, blooms of fine dust rose in small mushroom clouds. It was like walking on the lunar surface. From the vantage point of the veranda, he glanced left and right along its length, back at the short set of stairs he had climbed, down at the railing. There was nothing to see but his own footprints. The Fontainebleau slept in undisturbed silence.
Now he approached a set of double doors leading into the resort. He trod as lightly as a cat, testing the floorboards with each step. The doors were closed, and had once been locked, but long-ago vandals had ripped one door from its hinges, and it hung open.
Beyond lay a large common room of some kind, perhaps used for afternoon tea. It was very dark. Pendergast stood motionless just within the doorway, giving his eyes time to adjust. There was a strong smell of dry rot, salt, and rat urine. A huge stone fireplace dominated one wall. Wing chairs and skeletonized sofas were arranged around the room, springs protruding from their rotten fabric. Leather banquettes with their tables ran along the far edge of the room, the once-soft seats now cracked, split, and spewing cotton. A few broken and faded photographs of the Salton Sea in its 1950s heyday—motorboats, water-skiers, fishermen in waders—adorned the walls among many empty, pale rectangles, the rest having long been stolen. Everything was covered in a fine mantle of dust.
Pendergast crossed the room, stepped beneath an archway, and emerged into a central passage. There was a huge staircase here that swept up to the floors above, where the guest rooms and suites were located. Ahead lay the dim outlines of the main lobby, with its thick wooden columns and seaside murals only partially visible. He stood for a moment in the silence, getting his bearings. The resort’s blueprints were tucked into his vest, but he did not need them—the layout was imprinted on his mind. A spacious corridor led down to the left, presumably to the spa and the ballrooms. To his right was a low archway leading into the cocktail lounge.
Set into a nearby wall was a broken glass display case, containing a single sheet of mimeographed paper, curled and faded. Pendergast approached it and—peering close in the faint moonlight—scanned its contents.
Welcome to the fabulous Salton Fontainebleau!
“The In Place on the Inland Sea”
Saturday, October 5, 1962
Today’s Activities:
6 AM – Health swim with Ralph Amandero, two-time Olympic contender
10 AM – Water-skiing competition
2 PM – Inline motor boat races
4 PM – “Miss Salton Sea” pageant
8:30 PM – Dancing in the Grand Ballroom, Verne Williams Orchestra, starring Jean Jester
11 PM – “The Jungle Comes Alive” animal viewing, with free cocktail service
Pendergast turned toward the arch leading into the lounge. The windows of the lounge were shuttered, and although several slats were drooping or had fallen away, the glass shattered, the room was still very dark. Pendergast reached into a pocket of his vest, pulled out a pair of night-vision goggles with a third-generation image intensifier, fitted them to his head, and turned them on. Instantly his surroundings bloomed into clarity, chairs and walls and chandeliers all outlined in ghostly green. Pendergast turned a dial on the goggles, adjusting the brightness of the image tube, then moved across the lounge.
It was large, with a stage in one corner and a long, semicircular bar dominating the far wall. Round tables were arranged around the rest of the room. Broken cocktail glasses lay on the floor and on the tables, their contents long since evaporated into tarry deposits. The bar itself, although the liquor was gone, displayed neatly arranged rows of napkins and jars full of swizzle sticks, all covered with a fine layer of dust. The marbled mirror behind the bar had shattered, dully glittering shards lying on the bar and floor. It was a testament to the remote bleakness of the Salton Fontainebleau—or, perhaps, the vague sense of restless unease, such as a haunted house might exude—that vandals, or scavengers like Cayute, had not completely preyed upon it. Instead the old hotel remained for the most part a time capsule of the Rat Pack generation, abandoned to the vagaries of the elements.
One wall of the lounge was supplied with a picture window, which had survived the passage of time with only a few cracks in it, but so covered with a hoarfrost of salt that it was almost opaque. Pendergast walked over to it, wiped a spot clear with a paper napkin, and peered through. Beyond lay a circular enclosure, lounge chairs arranged around its circumference, as around an indoor swimming pool, except that where the pool would normally be was a yawning black hole lined with brick, surrounded by a protective iron railing. It was about fifteen feet across and looked like the maw of an oversize well. Peering closely with the night-vision goggles, Pendergast thought he could make out, within the blackness of the hole, the plastic, warped upper leaves of several fake palm trees.
The animal garden. It was not hard to imagine high rollers and Hollywood stars rubbing shoulders here half a century earlier, under the starry night, highballs in hand, laughter and the clinking of glasses mingling with the roar of wild beasts as they sipped their drinks and looked down at the animals roaming below.
Pendergast mentally reviewed the hotel blueprints and the map of the Golden Spider Mine. The animal garden was situated directly over the rear entrance to the mine, utilizing the tunnel as a place for the animals to roam under the sight of the guests.
Turning away from the window, he lifted up the hinged bar and stepped into the bartender’s station. He walked past the empty shelves that had once held innumerable bottles of fine cognac and vintage champagne, being careful not to tread on broken glass, until he reached a cobwebbed door with a single round window set into it. He pressed against the door and it opened with a soft creak, the cobwebs parting softly. He heard the faintest skittering of rodents. A smell of stuffiness, rancid grease, and droppings reached his nostrils.
Beyond lay a warren of kitchens, storage rooms, and food preparation areas. Pendergast moved silently through them, looking this way and that with the goggles, until he located the door that opened onto a concrete stairway leading down.
The service spaces of the resort’s basement were spare and functional, like the lower decks of a passenger ship. Pendergast made his way past a boiler room and several storage areas—one full of rotting deck chairs and beach umbrellas, another with rack after rack of moth-eaten maids’ uniforms—until he reached a door of solid metal.
Once again he paused to mentally reconstruct the layout of the hotel. This door led to the animal handling area: housing, veterinary care, feeding. And beyond that would be the animal garden itself—and the rear entrance to the mine.
Pendergast tried to open the door, but the metal had rusted over long years of disuse and would not budge. He tried again, exerting more pressure, until it opened an inch with a disturbing screech of iron. Reaching into his equipment vest, he removed a small pry bar and applied it to half a dozen spots around the edge of the door, working the rust loose, with the help of a spray of marine super-penetrating oil. This time, when he tried the handle, the door yielded just enough for him to squeeze through.
Beyond lay a corridor tiled in white porcelain. Open doors lay on either side, pools of darkness even in the night-vision goggles. Pendergast moved forward carefully. Even now, all these years later, the musk of wild animal and big-game scat freighted the air. To the left was a room containing four large, iron-barred cages with feeding doors. This opened to another room, a tiled veterinary area for examinations and, it appeared, minor surgical procedures. A little farther on, the hallway ended in another metal door.
Pendergast stopped, staring at the door through his goggles. Beyond, he knew, was the handling room. Here was where the animals would have been sedated if the need arose, for special handling, cleaning, emergency removal from the garden, or medical treatment. As best he could make out from the blueprints, the room acted as a kind of air lock, a staging area between the subterranean garden and the controlled atmosphere of the handling areas.
The blueprints did not indicate precisely how the animal garden had been constructed over the rear entrance to the mine: not shown was whether the mine had been sealed or whether it was open to the animal garden itself. Either way, he was ready; if it had been sealed, he had the means to break through—chisels, hammer, lock picks, pry bar, and lubricant.
This second metal door was rusted, too, but not as badly, and Pendergast was able to open it without much difficulty. He stood in the doorway and inspected the room beyond. It was small and extremely dark, clad in porcelain tile, cross-ties and restraint fixtures on the walls, with some closed vents in the ceiling. It had been sealed so well from the outside elements that it appeared to be in much better shape than the rest of the ruin—indeed, almost new. The walls were clean and almost gleamed in the sickly light of his goggles…
Suddenly a terrific blow to his neck sent him sprawling to the floor. He fell, stunned, and as his head cleared he saw his attacker standing between him and the door: tall, well muscled, wearing camos and night-vision goggles, aiming a .45.
Pendergast slowly removed his hand from his vest, leaving the Les Baer in its holster. He rose quietly as he saw the door shutting behind the man as if of its own accord, locking with an audible click. Giving every sign of complete submission and cooperation, he kept his hands in sight, moving slowly, as he recovered from the surprise of being waylaid. The extreme emptiness of the place, the dust and the age, had lulled him into a false sense of isolation.
Quickly, his preternatural sharpness of senses returned.
The man had said nothing. He hadn’t moved. But Pendergast could see his frame relaxing ever so slightly, his sense of extreme readiness softening as Pendergast continued to convey by his body language that he was under the man’s control.
“What’s going on?” he asked, a submissive whine in his voice, the Texas accent back in force. “Why’d you hit me?”
Blue Labyrinth Page 10
