Brimstone p-5

by Douglas Preston

  Mullin's Pub was still where he remembered it, little more than a dim storefront with a long bar and old wooden tables along the opposite wall. D'Agosta entered, his heart warmed by the thought of a real New York cheeseburger, cooked rare, not one of those fussy avocado-arugula-Camembert-and-pancetta things they sold in Southampton for fifteen dollars.

  An hour later, well fed, D'Agosta emerged, then headed north to the subway station at 66th. Even at 7:30, there were a million cars rushing, vying, and honking, a fuming chaos of steel and chrome, including one shitbox eighties-era gold Impala with smoked windows that nearly clipped off his toes. Laying a suitable string of curses in the car's wake, D'Agosta ducked down into the subway. He fumbled with the magnetic card, swiped it through the machine, then headed down the stairs for the platform of the uptown IRT local. Even having killed an hour, he was going to be early. Maybe he should have stayed in Mullin's for another brew.

  In less than a minute a growing roar, along with a balloon of stale air that forced its way out of the dark tunnel, signaled the arrival of a train. He boarded, managed to find a seat, settled onto the hard plastic, and closed his eyes. Almost instinctually he counted the stops: 72nd, 79th, 86th. When the train slowed for 96th, he opened his eyes again, rose, and exited at the southern end of the station.

  He crossed Broadway and walked west down 94th Street, past West End Avenue to Riverside Drive. On the far side of the leafy drive, past the thin green sliver of Riverside Park, he could make out the West Side Highway and the river beyond. It was a pleasant enough evening, but the sky was darkening and there was a smell of moisture in the air. The sluggish waters of the Hudson roiled along like black ink, and the lights of New Jersey speckled the far shore. There was a faint flicker of lightning.

  He turned and scanned the address of the building on the nearest corner. Number 214.

  Two fourteen? D'Agosta swore. He really had lost it in those few years in Canada. Eight ninety-one was a lot farther uptown than he realized, maybe close to Harlem. What the hell was Pendergast doing living up there?

  He could go back to the subway, but that meant a long uphill walk back to Broadway, and perhaps a long wait in the station, then the local crawl farther uptown. He could grab a cab, but that still meant walking back to Broadway, and uptown cabs were almost impossible to find at that time of night.

  Or he could hoof it.

  D'Agosta turned north and began walking up the drive. It was probably only ten or fifteen short blocks. He slapped his gut. It would do him good, work off some of that greasy burger. Besides, he still had more than an hour to kill.

  He set a brisk pace for himself, his cuffs and keys jangling. The wind was sighing through the trees along the edge of Riverside Park, and the facades of the elegant apartment buildings that faced the river were brightly lit, most sporting doormen or security guards. Even though it was almost eight, a lot of people were still coming home from work: men and women in suits, a musician carrying a cello, a couple of college professor types in tweedy jackets arguing loudly about somebody named Hegel. Once in a while someone glanced at him, smiled, nodded, glad that he was there. September 11 had changed a lot of things in New York City, and one of them was the way people looked at cops. Another reason to get himself rehired at the first opportunity.

  D'Agosta hummed as he walked along, filling his lungs with the heady fragrance, that West Side perfume of salt air, car fumes, garbage, and asphalt. He caught a brief whiff of roasting coffee from some all-night delicatessen. New York City. Once it got into your blood, you could never get it out again. When the economy turned around and the city began hiring again, D'Agosta would be first in line. Christ, he'd start off as a tire-kicker in Far Rockaway if it meant working again for the NYPD.

  He crossed 110th Street. The numbers were still only in the 400s, rising but not fast enough. What the hell was the cross-street rule for Riverside? Something divided by something minus 59 . He couldn't even guess anymore-all he knew was it was going to be farther uptown than he thought.

  At least he had plenty of time. Maybe Pendergast lived in one of those professorial brownstones up by Columbia. That must be it: Pendergast, slumming with the academics. He quickened his pace. Now the buildings were less elegant, plainer, but still neat and trim. He was getting into the Columbia University neighborhood, with its students and their baggy clothes, a kid shouting down from a window to some other kid on the sidewalk, tossing down a book. D'Agosta wondered what his life would have been like if he'd come from a family that had sent him to college. He might be a big-time writer by now. Maybe the critics would have liked his books more. You made a lot of contacts in the right college, and a hell of a lot of those New York Times critics seemed to come from Columbia. And they all reviewed each other's books. The downtimes Book Review was like a private club.

  He shook his head. As his old Italian grandfather used to say, it wasacqua passata.

  He paused at 122nd Street to catch his breath. He had reached the northern fringe of Columbia. Ahead was International House, standing like the last outpost on the edge of the frontier. Beyond was no-man's-land.

  And the numbers were only up to 550.

  Shit. He checked his watch. Ten past eight. He'd hiked a mile. He'd done his duty for the day. He still had plenty of time, but he was no longer enjoying himself. And this far uptown, there was zero chance of getting a cab. There were still one or two students in view, but there were also crowds of kids loitering on stoops, watching him pass, sometimes giving a little hiss or muttering something. He now realized that 891 Riverside would be somewhere around 135th Street, if not a little farther. He could make it in another ten minutes-and he would still be early-but it meant walking into the heart of Harlem.

  Once again he pulled the card from his pocket. There was the address, in Pendergast's elegant script. It seemed impossible. But there could be no mistake.

  He left the bright oasis of International House behind, neither hurrying nor loitering. There was no reason for him to be nervous: not in uniform and packing his Glock 9mm.

  As he walked on, the neighborhood changed abruptly. Gone now were the students, the bustle of activity. The streetlights were broken, the apartment facades dim. It became quiet, almost deserted. At 130th Street, D'Agosta passed an empty mansion, one of the really old ones: the tin ripped off the empty window frames, the very frame of the building exhaling a smell of mold and urine into the street. A junkie palace. The next block contained a single-room-occupancy "hotel," the inhabitants sitting on the stoop and drinking beer. They fell silent and watched him go by with bleary eyes. A dog barked incessantly.

  Though plenty of antiquated cars lined the curb-battered, windowless, sometimes even wheelless-there were fewer cars on the road now. An ancient, microscopic Honda Accord CVCC passed by, so rusted its original color was impossible to discern. A minute or so later it was followed by a gold Impala with smoked windows. It seemed to D'Agosta that it slowed as it went past. He watched as it took the next right.

  A gold Impala. There must be a million of them in the city. Hell, he was starting to get paranoid. All that soft living in Southampton .

  He continued steadily on, passing rows of abandoned buildings, old mansions broken into apartments and SROs. Dogshit littered the sidewalk now, along with garbage and broken bottles. Most of the streetlights were out-shooting at them was a favorite gang pastime-and with the city's general neglect of this area, it took forever to get them repaired.

  He was now approaching the hard-core center of western Harlem. It seemed incredible that Pendergast had a place here: the guy was eccentric, but not that eccentric. The next block, 132nd, was completely dark, every streetlight out, the two remaining buildings on the block abandoned and boarded up. Even the lights on the park side had been blown away. It was a perfect muggers' block-except no one in his right mind would ever walk there at night.

  D'Agosta reminded himself he was packing, in full uniform, with a radio. He shook his head. What a wimp he'd be
come. He strode resolutely forward, down the dark block.

  That was when he noticed a car behind him, moving slowly. Way too slowly. As it passed under the last streetlight, D'Agosta saw the gleam of gold-the same Chevy Impala that had nearly taken off his toes on West 61st Street.

  D'Agosta may have forgotten the street address formula, but his NYPD cop radar remained in perfect working order, and now it went off loudly. The car was moving at precisely the speed that would bring it next to D'Agosta at the middle of the dark block.

  It was an ambush.

  D'Agosta made an instant decision. Breaking into a sudden run, he cut left and sprinted across the street in front of the approaching car. He heard the screeching acceleration of the tires, but he had moved too quickly and was already heading into Riverside Park by the time the car squealed to a stop along the curb.

  As he sprinted into the darkness of the trees, he saw both doors open simultaneously.

  { 13 }

  The door to the tenth-floor suite at the Sherry Netherland Hotel was opened by an English butler so impeccably outfitted he seemed to have stepped from the pages of a Wodehouse novel. He bowed to Pendergast, standing to one side. The man's double-breasted Prince Albert frock coat was immaculately brushed, and when he moved, his starched white shirtfront rustled faintly. One white-gloved hand took Pendergast's coat; the other held out a silver tray. Without hesitation, Pendergast reached into his pocket, removed a slim gold card case, and placed his card on the tray.

  "If the gentleman would kindly wait." The butler gave another slight bow and disappeared into a long hallway, carrying the tray before him. There was the soft opening of a door, the faint sound of clicking and hammering. Another, farther door was opened. Minutes later the butler returned.

  "If the gentleman will follow me," he said.

  Pendergast followed the butler into a wood-paneled sitting room, where he was greeted by a birch fire, flickering merrily within a large fireplace.

  "The gentleman is welcome to seat himself where he pleases," the butler said.

  Pendergast, always attracted to heat, chose the red leather chair nearest the fire.

  "The count will be available momentarily. Would the gentleman care for amontillado?"

  "Thank you."

  The butler retreated noiselessly and reappeared less than thirty seconds later, bearing a tray on which reposed a single crystal glass half filled with a pale amber liquid. He set it on the nearby table and, just as noiselessly, was gone.

  Pendergast sipped the dry, delicate liquid and gazed about the room with growing interest. It had been furnished in exquisite and yet understated taste, managing to be both comfortable and beautiful at the same time. The floor was covered with a rare Safavid carpet of Shah Abbassid design. The fireplace was old, carved from gray Florentine pietra serena , and it bore the crest of an ancient and noble family. The table that held his glass also bore an interesting array of items: several pieces of old silver, an antique gasogene, some lovely Roman glass perfume bottles, and a small Etruscan bronze.

  It was the painting above the mantelpiece, however, that startled Pendergast. It appeared to be a Vermeer, depicting a lady at a leaded-glass window examining a piece of lace; the cool Flemish light from the window shone through the lace, which cast a faint shadow across the woman's dress. Pendergast was familiar with all thirty-five of Vermeer's known paintings. This was not one of them. And yet it could not be a forgery: no forger had been able to duplicate Vermeer's light.

  His eye roamed farther. On the opposite wall was an unfinished painting in the Caravaggesque style, showing the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. It was a smaller and even more intense version of Caravaggio's famous painting in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. The more Pendergast looked at it, the more he doubted it was a copy or a "school of" rendering. In fact, it looked like a study in the master's own hand.

  Pendergast now turned his attention to the right-hand wall, where a third painting hung: a little girl in a dark room, reading a book by candlelight. Pendergast recognized it as very similar to-yet not a copy of-a series of paintings on the same subject, The Education of the Virgin by the mysterious French painter Georges de la Tour. Could it possibly be real?

  They were the only three paintings in the room: three breathtaking gems. But they weren't displayed with pomp and pretense; instead, they seemed to be part of the environment of the room, placed for private enjoyment rather than public envy. None of the paintings even bore a label.

  His curiosity about Fosco increased.

  More faint sounds emanated from chambers beyond. Immediately, the agent's preternatural hearing focused on them. A distant door had opened, and Pendergast could hear the whistling of a bird, the light patter of footsteps, and a deep, gentle voice.

  Pendergast listened intently.

  "Come out and hop upstairs! One, two, three, and up! Three, two, one-and down!"

  A burst of chirping and twittering, combined with another sound-clacking and whirring-floated into the room from beyond, mingled with cheerful exhortations. Then, softly, a beautiful tenor voice sounded, singing the notes of a bel canto aria. The bird-if that's what it was-fell silent, as if under a spell. The voice rose in pitch and volume, then faded slowly away, and as it did, the butler returned.

  "The count will see you now."

  Pendergast rose and followed him down a long, broad corridor, lined with books, to a studio beyond.

  The count stood in all his corpulent majesty in a capacious studio, one end with floor-to-ceiling glass, his back turned, looking out on a small balcony framed with rosebushes, sinking into twilight. He was wearing slacks and a crisp white shirt, open at the collar. Beside him was an immaculate worktable. At least a hundred tools were lined up on the table in geometric precision: tiny screwdrivers, pinpoint soldering irons, tiny jeweler's saws, watchmaker's vises and files. Laid out next to them was an array of exquisitely small gears, ratchets, springs, levers, and other finely machined metal parts, along with chips, small circuit boards, bundles of fiber-optic cabling, LEDs, bits of rubber and plastic, and other electronic objects of mysterious function.

  In the center of the worktable stood a wooden T-bar stand, and on the stand stood a strange object that at first glance looked like a Triton cockatoo, brilliant white with a lemon-colored crest, but which on closer inspection proved to be a mechanical device: a robotic bird.

  The butler indicated politely for Pendergast to seat himself on a nearby stool. As if by magic, his half-drunken glass of amontillado appeared; then the butler vanished like a ghost.

  Pendergast watched the count. With his free hand, he plucked a casuarina nut from a tray, placed it between his fat lips, then protruded it. With a whistle of excitement, the robot cockatoo climbed to Fosco's shoulder, then to his ear, and-leaning forward with a whirring of gears-plucked the seed from the projecting lips, cracked it with its mechanical bill, and made every appearance of eating it.

  "Ah! My pretty, playtime is over!" cooed the count. "Back to your perch." He gave his gloved hand a little wave. The cockatoo gave a screech of displeasure and flared his mechanical crest, but made no further movement.

  "Ah, stubborn today, I see." The count spoke louder, more firmly. "Back to your perch, my pretty, or you will be eating millet instead of nuts the rest of the day."

  With another screech, the cockatoo hopped off his shoulder onto the table, waddled over to the stand, climbed it with metal claws, and resumed its place, casting its beady LED eyes on Pendergast.

  And now at last, the count turned with a smile and bow, offering Pendergast his hand. "I am so sorry to keep you waiting. My friend-as you see-requires his exercise."

  "Most interesting," said Pendergast dryly.

  "No doubt it is! It is true, I cut a ridiculous figure with my pets."

  "Pets?"

  "Yes. And you see how they love me! My cockatoo and-" He inclined his suety head toward the other side of the room, where what looked like a pack of mice were dis
porting themselves within an elaborate wire pagoda with various clicks and whirs and digital squeaks. "And my dear little white mice! But, of course, of all my pretties, Bucephalus here is my pride and joy." And Fosco turned toward the cockatoo. "Are you not, my pretty?"

  The bird's only response was to bury its massive black bill within a fluff of fake beak feathers, as if rendered timid by the compliment.

  "You must forgive Bucephalus!" Fosco said, tut-tutting. "He is not partial to strangers. He is slow to make friends and screams when displeased-ah, my friend, such screams as you would not believe! I have been forced to take the two apartments adjoining this and keep them unoccupied, at great personal expense. Mere walls, you see, are no defense against the lungs of this magnificent creature!"

  The robotic cockatoo gave no acknowledgment of this panegyric, continuing to eye Pendergast motionlessly.

  "But they are all quite fond of opera. As Congreve said, music hath charms et cetera. Perhaps you heard my poor singing. Did you recognize the piece?"

  Pendergast nodded. "Pollione's aria from Norma , 'Abbandonarmi così potresti.'"

  "Ah! Then you liked it."

  "I said I recognized it. Tell me, Count, did you build these robots yourself?"

  "Yes. I am a lover of animals and gadgets. Would you like to see my canaries? The real ones, I mean: I rarely distinguish between my own children and those of nature."

  "Thank you, no."

  "I should have been born an American, a Thomas Edison, where my inventiveness would have been encouraged. But instead I was born into the stifling, decaying Florentine aristocracy, where skills such as mine are useless. Where I come from, counts are supposed to keep both feet firmly in the eighteenth century, if not earlier."

  Pendergast stirred. "May I trouble you with some questions, Count Fosco?"

  The count waved his hand. "Let us do away with this 'Count' business. We are in America, and here I am Isidor. May I call you Aloysius?"