Douglas Child - Fever Dream

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 accelerator. 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 cafe 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."