Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

“Got it,” Harriman said.

He began to turn away, but Petowski wasn’t quite finished. “Oh, and Harriman?”

The reporter glanced back. “Yes, Mr. Petowski?”

“That hundred-dollar-a-week raise I mentioned? I’m rescinding it. Retroactively.”

As Harriman made his way back through the newsroom, not a single eye rose to meet his. Everyone was studiously at work, hunched over notebooks or computer screens. But just as he reached the door, he heard somebody intone, in a quiet, singsong voice: “Ye one percenters, mend your ways before it’s too late...”

D’Agosta quietly followed Pendergast around Anton Ozmian’s home in the Time Warner Center. Like the man’s vast office in Lower Manhattan, the huge eight-bedroom condo was practically in the clouds. Only the view was different: instead of New York Harbor, outside and below these windows lay the toy trees, lawns, and winding boulevards of Central Park. It was as if the man scorned the banality of a life lived at sea level.

The CSU team had come and gone long ago — there was precious little evidence of Grace Ozmian’s shooting to be documented — and now there was just a small knot of NYPD techs on hand, snapping pictures here and there, taking notes, and chatting in low whispers. Pendergast had not spoken to them. He’d arrived with a long roll of architect’s blueprints under his arm, along with a small electronic unit — a laser measuring tool. He had laid out the plans on a black granite table in the expansive living room — the industrial style of the condo was similar to that of the DigiFlood offices — and studied them in great detail, every now and then straightening up to peer around at the surrounding room. At one point he rose and measured the room’s dimensions with the laser tool, moved through several adjacent rooms taking measurements, and then came back.

“Curious,” he said at last.

“What is?” D’Agosta asked.

But Pendergast had turned away from the table and walked over to a long wall covered with polished mahogany bookcases, punctuated here and there by objets d’art mounted on plinths. He walked along the bookcases slowly, then stepped back a moment, like a dilettante studying a painting in a museum. D’Agosta watched, wondering what he was up to.

Two days ago, when Pendergast had reappeared mere minutes before he was to be blown sky-high, D’Agosta had felt mostly a huge rush of relief that he wasn’t, after all, going to die in a most humiliating and ignominious way. Since then, he’d had plenty of time to think, and his feelings had become a lot more complicated.

“Hey, listen, Pendergast—” he began.

“One moment, Vincent.” Pendergast lifted a small Roman bust from its stand, then replaced it. He continued down the row of bookcases, pushing here, prodding there. After a few moments, he paused. One book in particular seemed to get his attention. He reached for it, slid it out, and peered into the empty slot left by its absence. He snaked a hand into the space, felt around, and appeared to press something. There was a loud snick of a lock and then the entire section of bookshelf rolled forward, disengaging itself from the wall.

“Remind you of a certain library we both know, Vincent?” Pendergast murmured as he swung the shelf away on well-oiled hinges.

“What the hell is this?”

“Certain inconsistencies in the blueprints for this condo made me suspicious that it might contain a hidden space. My measurements proved it. And this book—” he held up a tattered copy of J. H. Patterson’s Man-Eaters of Tsavo — “seemed too appropriate to be overlooked. As for what I’ve found — don’t you think there is still a large piece missing from this puzzle?”

“Um, no, not really.”

“No? What about the heads?”

“The police think—” D’Agosta paused. “Oh, Jesus. Not here.”

“Oh, yes — here.” Pulling a flashlight from his pocket and snapping it on, Pendergast stepped into the dark space revealed by the swinging bookcase. D’Agosta followed, suppressing a sense of dread.

A small alcove led to a mahogany door. Pendergast opened it to reveal a tiny, odd-shaped room, about six feet wide by fifteen feet long, paneled in wood with a Persian runner. As Pendergast’s flashlight beam licked over the room, D’Agosta’s gaze was immediately transfixed by a bizarre sight: the right-hand wall held a series of plaques, and mounted on each plaque was a human head, beautifully preserved, glass eyes gleaming, the skin a fresh, natural color, the hair carefully combed and coiffed, the faces waxwork-like in their strange stillness of perfection — and, most grotesque of all, each head had been given a faint smile. There was an odor of formalin in the air.

Beneath each plaque, a small brass plate had been screwed into the wall, engraved with a name. Revolted, yet fascinated despite himself, D’Agosta followed the FBI agent down the grisly corridor space. GRACE OZMIAN read the plate under the first head: a bleach-blond girl with a remarkably pretty face, red lipstick, and green eyes; MARC CANTUCCI read the plaque beneath the second head: an older, graying, heavyset man with brown eyes and a queer, wry little smile. And so it went, the procession of mounted heads leading to the rear of the secret room, until the two arrived at a single, empty plaque. There was a brass plate already in place below it. ALOYSIUS PENDERGAST read the legend engraved on it.

At the very end of the room stood a leather wing chair with a small accent table beside it on which sat a cut-glass decanter and a brandy snifter. Next to the table was a standing lamp of Tiffany glass. Pendergast reached over and pulled the cord. The room was suddenly illuminated in soft light, the six mounted heads throwing ghoulish shadows across the ceiling.

“Ozmian’s trophy room,” Pendergast murmured as he slipped his flashlight back into his pocket.

D’Agosta swallowed. “Crazy son of a bitch.” He couldn’t tear his eyes from the empty plaque at the end of the row — the one that had been intended for Pendergast.

“Crazy, yes, but a man with extraordinary criminal skills — in breaching security, hiding in plain sight, disappearing almost without a trace. Take, for example, the very expensive silicone mask he must have used to impersonate Roland McMurphy. Combine those skills with extreme intelligence, a perfect absence of compassion and empathy, and a high degree of ambition, and you get a psychopath of the highest order.”

“But here’s one thing I don’t understand,” D’Agosta said. “How did he get into Cantucci’s place? I mean, the town house was a fortress, and that security specialist Marvin and everyone else said only an employee of Sharps and Gund could have gotten past all the alarms and countermeasures.”

“Not so formidable for a computer genius like Ozmian, with a stable of prize hackers — not just extremely well paid, but some being blackmailed by Ozmian for their previous hactivist crimes — at his beck and call, in one of the most sophisticated and powerful dot-com companies in the world, with access to all the latest digital tools. Look what he and his people did to frame that reporter, Harriman. A diabolical piece of work. Having a brain trust like that on hand would make getting inside Cantucci’s residence not so difficult.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

Pendergast turned to leave.

“Um, Pendergast?”

The agent turned. “Yes, Vincent?”

“I think I owe you an apology.”

Pendergast arched his eyebrows in query.

“I was stupid, I was desperate for answers, I had everyone from the mayor on down climbing up my ass... I bought that damned reporter’s theory hook, line, and sinker. And then I mouthed off at you when you tried to warn me the theory was bogus—”