Douglas Preston - The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Why are you doing this?”

Pendergast gazed at him mildly. “Because I’ve seen you rise to the challenge. I need a man with the courage of his convictions. I’ve seen how you work. You know the streets, you can talk to the people in a way I can’t. You’re one of them. I’m not. Besides, I can’t push this case alone. I need someone who knows his way around the byzantine workings of the NYPD. And you have a certain compassion. Remember, I saw that tape. I’m going to need compassion.”

O’Shaughnessy reached for the papers, still dazed. Then he stopped.

“On one condition,” he said. “You know a lot more about this than you’ve let on. And I don’t like working in the dark.”

Pendergast nodded. “You’re quite right. It’s time we had a talk. And once we’ve processed your papers, that’s the next order of business. Fair enough?”

“Fair enough.” And O’Shaughnessy took the papers, scanned them quickly.

Pendergast turned to the driver. “Federal Plaza, please, Proctor. And quickly.”

NORA PAUSED BEFORE the deep archway, carved of sand-colored stone streaked with gray. Although it had been recently cleaned, the massive Gothic entrance looked old and forbidding. It reminded Nora of Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London. She half expected to see the iron teeth of a portcullis winking from the ceiling, defenestrating knights peering out of arrow slits above, cauldrons of boiling pitch at the ready.

At the base of an adjoining wall, before a low iron railing, Nora could see the remains of half-burnt candles, flower petals, and old pictures in broken frames. It looked almost like a shrine. And then she realized this arch must be the doorway in which John Lennon was shot, and these trinkets the remains of offerings still left by the faithful. And Pendergast himself had been stabbed nearby, not halfway down the block. She glanced upward. The Dakota rose above her, its Gothic facade overhung with gables and stone decorations. Dark clouds scudded above the grim, shadow-haunted towers. What a place to live, she thought. She looked carefully around, studying the landscape with a caution that had become habitual since the chase in the Archives. But there was no obvious sign of danger. She moved toward the building.

Beside the archway, a doorman stood in a large sentry box of bronze and glass, staring implacably out at Seventy-second Street, silent and erect as a Buckingham Palace guard. He seemed oblivious of her presence. But when she stepped beneath the archway, he was before her in a flash, pleasant but unsmiling.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I have an appointment to see Mr. Pendergast.”

“Your name?”

“Nora Kelly.”

The guard nodded, as if expecting her. “Southwest lobby,” he said, stepping aside and pointing the way. As Nora walked through the tunnel toward the building’s interior courtyard, she saw the guard return to his sentry box and pick up a telephone.

The elevator smelled of old leather and polished wood. It rose several floors, came to an unhurried stop. Then the doors slid open to reveal an entryway, a single oak door at its far end, standing open. Within the doorway stood Agent Pendergast, his slender figure haloed in the subdued light.

“So glad you could come, Dr. Kelly,” he said in his mellifluous voice, stepping aside to usher her in. His words were, as always, exceedingly gracious, but there was something tired, almost grim, in his tone. Still recovering, Nora thought. He looked thin, almost cadaverous, and his face was even whiter than usual, if such a thing were possible.

Nora stepped forward into a high-ceilinged, windowless room. She looked around curiously. Three of the walls were painted a dusky rose, framed above and below by black molding. The fourth was made up entirely of black marble, over which a continuous sheet of water ran from ceiling to floor. At the base, where the water gurgled quietly into a pool, a cluster of lotus blossoms floated. The room was filled with the soft, pleasant sound of water and the faint perfume of flowers. Two tables of dark lacquer stood nearby. One held a mossy tray in which grew a setting of bonsai trees — dwarf maples, by the look of them. On the other, inside an acrylic display cube, the skull of a cat was displayed on a spider mount. Coming closer, Nora realized that the skull was, in fact, carved from a single piece of Chinese jade. It was a work of remarkable, consummate artistry, the stone so thin it was diaphanous against the black cloth of the base.

Sitting nearby on one of several small leather sofas was Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, in mufti. He was crossing and uncrossing his legs and looking uncomfortable.

Pendergast closed the door and glided toward Nora, hands behind his back.

“May I get you anything? Mineral water? Lillet? Sherry?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Then if you will excuse me for a moment.” And Pendergast disappeared through a doorway that had been set, almost invisibly, into one of the rose-colored walls.

“Nice place,” she said to O’Shaughnessy.

“You don’t know the half of it. Where’d he get all the dough?”

“Bill Smi — That is, a former acquaintance of mine said he’d heard it was old family money. Pharmaceuticals, something like that.”

“Mmm.”

They lapsed into silence, listening to the whispering of the water. Within a few minutes, the door opened again and Pendergast’s head reappeared.

“If the two of you would be so kind as to come with me?” he asked.

They followed him through the door and down a long, dim hallway. Most of the doors they passed were closed, but Nora caught glimpses of a library — full of leather- and buckram-bound volumes and what looked like a rosewood harpsichord — and a narrow room whose walls were covered with oil paintings, four or five high, in heavy gilt frames. Another, windowless, room had rice paper walls and tatami mats covering its floor. It was spare, almost stark, and — like the rest of the rooms — very dimly lit. Then Pendergast ushered them into a vast, high-ceilinged chamber of dark, exquisitely wrought mahogany. An ornate marble fireplace dominated the far end. Three large windows looked out over Central Park. To the right, a detailed map of nineteenth-century Manhattan covered an entire wall. A large table sat in the room’s center. Upon it, several objects resting atop a plastic sheet: two dozen fragments of broken glass pieces, a lump of coal, a rotten umbrella, and a punched tram car ticket.

There was no place to sit. Nora stood back from the table while Pendergast circled it several times in silence, staring intently, like a shark circling its prey. Then he paused, glancing first at her, then at O’Shaughnessy. There was an intensity, even an obsession, in his eyes that she found disturbing.

Pendergast turned to the large map, hands behind his back once again. For a moment, he simply stared at it. Then he began to speak, softly, almost to himself.

“We know where Dr. Leng did his work. But now we are confronted with an even more difficult question. Where did he live? Where did the good doctor hide himself on this teeming island?

“Thanks to Dr. Kelly, we now have some clues to narrow our search. The tram ticket you unearthed was punched for the West Side Elevated Tramway. So it’s safe to assume Dr. Leng was a West Sider.” He turned to the map, and, using a red marker, drew a line down Fifth Avenue, dividing Manhattan into two longitudinal segments.

“Coal carries a unique chemical signature of impurities, depending on where it is mined. This coal came from a long-defunct mine near Haddonfield, New Jersey. There was only one distributor for this coal in Manhattan, Clark & Sons. They had a delivery territory that extended from 110th Street to 139th Street.”