Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

As he pulled up the drive of the old plantation, he saw that Pendergast had beaten him home: the Rolls-Royce sat in the shade of the cypress trees. Parking beside it, D’Agosta crunched his way across the gravel, then climbed the steps to the covered porch. He stepped into the entry hall, closing the front door behind him.

  “Pendergast?” he called.

  No reply.

  He walked down the hallway, peering into the various public rooms. They were all dark and empty.

  “Pendergast?” he called once more.

  Perhaps he’s gone out for a stroll, D’Agosta thought. Nice enough day for it.

  He went briskly up the stairs, turned sharply at the landing, then stopped abruptly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar silhouette sitting silently in the parlor. It was Pendergast, occupying the same chair he’d sat in the previous night. The parlor lights were off, and the FBI agent was in darkness.

  “Pendergast?” D’Agosta said. “I thought you were out, and—”

  He stopped when he saw the agent’s face. It carried an expression of blankness that gave him pause. He took the adjoining seat, his good mood snuffed out. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Then Pendergast took a slow breath. “I went to Torgensson’s house, Vincent. There’s no painting.”

  “No painting?”

  “The house is now a funeral home. The interior was gutted—right down to the structural studs and beams—to make way for the new business. There’s nothing. Nothing.” Pendergast’s lips tightened. “The trail simply ends.”

  “Well, what about the doctor? He must have moved someplace else; we can pick up the trail there.”

  Another pause, longer than before. “Dr. Arne Torgensson died in 1852. Destitute, driven mad by syphilis. But not before he’d sold off the contents of his house, piecemeal, to innumerable unknown buyers.”

  “If he sold the painting, there should be a record of it.”

  Pendergast fixed him with a baleful stare. “There are no records. He might have traded the painting to pay for coal. He might have torn it to shreds in his insanity. It might have outlived him and perished in the renovations. I’ve hit a brick wall.”

  And so he’d given up, D’Agosta thought. Come home, to sit in the dark parlor. In all the years he’d known Pendergast, he’d never seen the agent so low. And yet the facts didn’t warrant this sort of despair.

  “Helen was tracking the painting, too,” D’Agosta said, rather more sharply than he intended. “You’ve been searching for it—what, a couple of days? She didn’t give up for years.”

  Pendergast did not respond.

  “All right, let’s take another approach. Instead of tracking the painting, we’ll track your wife. This last trip she took, where she was gone for two or three days? Maybe it had something to do with the Black Frame.”

  “Even if you’re right,” Pendergast said. “That trip is a dozen years in the past.”

  “We can always try,” D’Agosta said. “And then we can pay a visit to Mr. John W. Blast, retired art dealer, of Sarasota.”

  The faintest spark of interest flickered in Pendergast’s eyes.

  D’Agosta patted his jacket pocket. “That’s right. He’s the other guy who was chasing for the Black Frame. You’re wrong when you say we’ve hit a wall.”

  “She could have gone anywhere in those three days,” Pendergast said.

  “What the hell? You’re just giving up?” D’Agosta stared at Pendergast. Then he turned, stuck his head out into the hall. “Maurice? Yo! Maurice!” Where was the man when you finally needed him?

  For a moment, silence. Then, a faint banging in the far spaces of the mansion. A minute later, feet sounded on the back stairway. Maurice appeared around the bend of the corridor. “I beg your pardon?” he panted as he approached, his eyes wide.

  “That trip of Helen’s you mentioned last evening. When she left without warning, was gone for two nights?”

  “Yes?” Maurice nodded.

  “Isn’t there anything more about it you can tell us? Gas station receipts, hotel bills?”

  Maurice fell into a silent study, then said: “Nothing, sir.”

  “She didn’t say anything at all after her return? Not a word?”

  Maurice shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Pendergast sat, utterly motionless, in his chair. A silent pall settled over the parlor.

  “Come to think of it, there is one thing,” Maurice said. “Although I don’t think you’ll find it of use.”

  D’Agosta pounced. “What was it?”

  “Well…” The old servant hesitated. D’Agosta wanted to grab him by the lapels and shake him.

  “It’s just that… I recollect now that she called me, sir. That first morning, from the road.”

  Pendergast slowly rose. “Go on, Maurice,” he said quietly.

  “It was getting on toward nine. I was having coffee in the morning room. The phone rang, and it was Mrs. Pendergast on the line. She’d left her AAA card in her office. She’d had a flat tire and needed the member number.” Maurice glanced at Pendergast. “You recall she never could do anything with cars, sir.”

  “That’s it?”

  Maurice nodded. “I got the card and read her the number. She thanked me.”

  “Nothing else?” D’Agosta pressed. “Any background noise? Conversation, maybe?”

  “It was so long ago, sir.” Maurice thought hard. “I believe there were traffic noises. Perhaps a honk. She must have been calling from an outdoor phone booth.”

  For a moment, nobody spoke. D’Agosta felt hugely deflated.

  “What about her voice?” Pendergast asked. “Did she sound tense or nervous?”

  “No, sir. In fact, now I do recollect—she said it was lucky, her getting the flat where she did.”

  “Lucky?” Pendergast repeated. “Why?”

  “Because she could have an egg cream while she waited.”

  There was a moment of stasis. And then Pendergast exploded into action. Ducking past D’Agosta and Maurice, he ran to the landing without a word and went tearing down the stairs.

  D’Agosta followed. The central hallway was empty, but he could hear sounds from the library. Stepping into the room, he saw the agent feverishly searching the shelves, throwing books to the floor with abandon. He seized a volume, strode to a nearby table, cleared the surface with a violent sweep of his arm, and flipped through the pages. D’Agosta noticed the book was a Louisiana road atlas. A ruler and pencil appeared in Pendergast’s hand and he hunched over the atlas, taking measurements and marking them with a pencil.

  “There it is,” he whispered under his breath, stabbing a finger at the page. And without another word he raced out of the library.

  D’Agosta followed the agent through the dining room, the kitchen, the larder, the butler’s pantry, and the back kitchen, to the rear door of the plantation house. Pendergast took the back steps two at a time and charged through an expansive garden to a white-painted stable converted to a garage with half a dozen bays. He threw open the doors and disappeared into darkness.

  D’Agosta followed. The vast, dim space smelled faintly of hay and motor oil. As his eyes adjusted, he made out three tarp-covered objects that could only be automobiles. Pendergast strode over to one and yanked off the tarp. Beneath lay a two-seat red convertible, low-slung and villainous. It gleamed in the indirect light of the converted barn.

  “Wow.” D’Agosta gave a whistle. “A vintage Porsche. What a beauty.”

  “A 1954 Porsche 550 Spyder. It was Helen’s.” Pendergast leapt in nimbly, felt under the mat for the key. As D’Agosta opened the door and got into the passenger seat, Pendergast found the key, fitted it to the ignition, turned. The engine came to life with an ear-shattering roar.

  “Bless you, Maurice,” Pendergast said over the growl. “You’ve kept it in top shape.”

  He let the car warm up for a few seconds, then eased it out of the barn. Once they were clear of the doors, he stomped on the acc
elerator. The vehicle shot forward, scattering a storm of gravel that peppered the outbuilding like so much buckshot. D’Agosta felt himself pressed into the seat like an astronaut on liftoff. As the car swept out of the driveway, D’Agosta could see Maurice’s black-dressed form on the steps, watching them go.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Pendergast looked at him. The despair was gone, replaced by a hard glitter in his eye, faint but noticeable: the gleam of the hunt. “Thanks to you, Vincent, we’ve located the haystack,” he replied. “Now let’s see if we can find the needle.”

  23

  THE SPORTS CAR BOOMED ALONG THE SLEEPY byways of rural Louisiana. Mangrove swamps, bayous, stately plantations, and marshes passed in a blur. Now and then they slowed briefly to traverse a village, the loud, beastly engine eliciting curious stares. Pendergast had not bothered to put up the convertible’s top, and D’Agosta felt increasingly windblown, his bald spot chapping in the blast of air. The car rode low to the ground, making him feel exposed and vulnerable. He wondered why Pendergast had taken this car instead of the far more comfortable Rolls.

  “Mind telling me where we’re going?” he yelled over the shriek of the wind.

  “Picayune, Mississippi.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because that’s where Helen telephoned Maurice.”

  “You know that?”

  “Within ninety-five percent certainty.”

  “How?”

  Pendergast downshifted, negotiating a sharp bend in the road. “Helen was having an egg cream while she waited for the auto club.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So: egg creams are a Yankee weakness I was never able to cure her of. You seldom find them outside of New York and parts of New England.”

  “Go on.”

  “There are—or were—only three places within driving distance of New Orleans that served egg creams. Helen sought them all out; she was always driving to one or another. Occasionally I went along. In any case, using the map just now, I inferred—based on the day of the week, the time of day, and Helen’s proclivity for driving too fast—Picayune to be the obvious choice of the three.”

  D’Agosta nodded. It seemed simple, once explained. “So what’s with the ninety-five percent?”

  “It’s just possible that she stopped earlier that morning, for some other reason. Or was stopped—she attracted speeding tickets by the bushel.”

  Picayune, Mississippi, was a neat town of low frame houses just over the Louisiana border. A sign at the town line proclaimed it a PRECIOUS COIN IN THE PURSE OF THE SOUTH, and another displayed pictures of the floats from the previous year’s Krewe of Roses Parade. D’Agosta looked around curiously as they passed down the quiet, leafy streets. Pendergast slowed as they rumbled into the commercial district.

  “Things have changed a bit,” he said, glancing left and right. “That Internet café is of course new. So is that Creole restaurant. That little place offering crawfish po’boys, however, is familiar.”

  “You used to come here with Helen?”

  “Not with Helen. I passed through the town several times in later years. There’s an FBI training camp a few miles from here. Ah—this must be it.”

  Pendergast turned a corner onto a quiet street and pulled over to the curb. The street was residential except for the closest structure, a one-story cinder-block building set well back from the road and surrounded by a parking lot of cracked and heaving blacktop. A leaning sign on the building front advertised Jake’s Yankee Chowhouse, but it was faded and peeling and the restaurant had obviously been closed for years. The windows in the rear section had muslin curtains, however, and a satellite dish was fixed to the cement wall: clearly the building served as residence as well.

  “Let’s see if we can’t do this the easy way,” Pendergast murmured. He pursed his lips, examining the street a moment longer. Then he began revving the Porsche with long jabs of his right foot. The big engine roared to life, louder and louder with each depression of the accelerator, leaves blowing out from beneath the car, until the vehicle’s frame vibrated as violently as a passenger jet.

  “My God!” D’Agosta yelled over the noise. “Do you want to wake the dead?”

  The FBI agent kept it up another fifteen seconds, until at least a dozen heads were poking out of windows and doors up and down the street. “No,” he replied, easing off at last and letting the engine rumble back into an idle. “I believe the living will suffice.” He made a quick survey of the faces now staring at them. “Too young,” he said of one, shaking his head, “and that one, poor fellow, is clearly too stupid… Ah: now that one is a possibility. Come on, Vincent.” Getting out of the car, he strolled down the street to the third house on the left, where a man of about sixty wearing a yellowing T-shirt stood on the front steps, staring at them with a frown. He clutched a television remote in one meaty paw, a beer in the other.

  D’Agosta suddenly understood why Pendergast had taken his wife’s Porsche for this particular road trip.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Pendergast said as he approached the house. “I wonder if you’d mind telling me if, by chance, you recognize the vehicle we—”

  “Blow it out your ass,” the man said, turning and going back inside his house, slamming the door.

  D’Agosta hoisted up his pants and licked his lips. “Want me to go drag the fat fuck back out?”

  Pendergast shook his head. “No need, Vincent.” He turned back, regarding the restaurant. An old, heavyset woman in a flimsy housedress had come out of the kitchen and stood on the porch, flanked by a brace of plastic pink flamingos. She had a magazine in one hand and a cigarillo in the other, and she peered at them through old-fashioned teardrop glasses. “We may have flushed out just the partridge I was after.”

  They walked back to the old parking lot and the kitchen door of Jake’s. The woman watched their approach with complete taciturnity, with no visible change of expression.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” Pendergast said with a slight bow.

  “Afternoon yourself,” she replied.

  “Do you, by chance, own this fine establishment?”

  “I might,” she said, taking a deep drag on the cigarillo. D’Agosta noticed it had a white plastic holder.

  Pendergast waved at the Spyder. “And is there any chance you recognize this vehicle?”

  She looked away from them, peering at the car through her grimy glasses. Then she looked back. “I might,” she repeated.

  There was a silence. D’Agosta heard a window slam shut, and a door.

  “Why, how remiss of me,” Pendergast said suddenly. “Taking up your valuable time like this uncompensated.” As if by magic, a twenty-dollar bill appeared in his hand. He held it out to the woman. To D’Agosta’s surprise, she plucked it from his fingers and stuffed it down her withered but still ample cleavage.

  “I saw that car three times,” the woman said. “My son was crazy about them foreign sporty jobs. He worked the soda fountain. He passed away in a car crash on the outskirts of town a few years back. Anyhow, the first time it showed up he just about went nuts. Made everybody drop whatever they were doing and take a look.”

  “Do you remember the driver?”

  “A young woman. Pretty thing, too.”

  “You don’t recall what she ordered, do you?” Pendergast asked.

  “I’m not likely to forget that. An egg cream. She said she’d come all the way from N’Orleans. Imagine, all that way for an egg cream.”

  There was another, briefer silence.

  “You mentioned three times,” Pendergast said. “What about the last time?”

  The woman took another drag on the cigarillo, paused a moment to search her memory. “She showed up on foot that time. Had a flat tire.”

  “I commend you on your excellent memory, ma’am.”

  “Like I said, you don’t forget a car—or a lady—like that any time soon. My Henry gave her the egg cream for free. She drove on back and let him
get behind the wheel—wouldn’t let him drive it, though. Said she was in a hurry.”

  “Ah. So she was going somewhere?”

  “Said she’d been going in circles, couldn’t find the turnoff for Caledonia.”

  “Caledonia? I’m not familiar with that town.”

  “It ain’t a town—I’m talking about the Caledonia National Forest. Blame road wasn’t marked then and it ain’t marked now.”

  If Pendergast was growing excited, he didn’t show it. To D’Agosta, the FBI agent’s gestures—as he lit another cigarillo for the old woman—seemed almost languid.

  “Is that where she was headed?” he asked, placing the lighter back into his pocket. “The national forest?”

  The woman plucked the fresh cigarillo from her mouth, looked at it, masticated her gums a few times, then inserted the holder back between her lips as if she were driving home a screw. “Nope.”

  “May I ask where?”

  The woman made a show of trying to remember. “Let me see now… That was a long time ago…” The excellent memory seemed to grow vague.

  Another twenty appeared; once again, it was quickly shoved down into the same crevasse. “Sunflower,” she said immediately.

  “Sunflower?” Pendergast repeated.

  The woman nodded. “Sunflower, Louisiana. Not two miles over the state line. Take the Bogalusa turnoff, just before the swamp.” And she pointed the direction.

  “I’m most obliged to you.” Pendergast turned to D’Agosta. “Vincent, let us not waste any time.”

  As they strode back to the car, the woman yelled out, “When you pass the old mine shaft, take a right!”

  24

  Sunflower, Louisiana

  KNOW WHAT YOU’D LIKE, SUGAR?” THE WAITRESS asked.

  D’Agosta let the menu drop to the table. “The catfish.”

  “Fried, oven-fried, baked, or broiled?”

  “Broiled, I guess.”

  “Excellent choice.” She made a notation on her pad, turned. “And you, sir?”

  “Pine bark stew, please,” said Pendergast. “Without the hush puppies.”

  “Right you are.” She made another note, then turned away with a flourish, bouncing off on sensible white shoes.