Линкольн Чайлд - Bloodless

Once outside, the senator turned to Pendergast. “So you’re the two agents Pickett’s assigned to this case.” He looked at them, one after the other. “You must be Agent Pendergast.”

Pendergast inclined his head.

“They tell me you’re the best. That you always solve your cases. That there’s no smarter agent in the Bureau to handle this sort of thing.”

Pendergast remained still, face betraying nothing.

“To be frank, all I’ve seen so far is a whole lot of zilch. No arrests, no leads, no nothing. Oh: except, of course, for the raid on a bunch of old swingers wallowing in duck blood. And when I woke up yesterday, what did I see on the morning news? Pictures of ghosts, and Savannah the laughingstock of the nation. ‘The Savannah Vampire’—Christ. May I ask, Agent Pendergast, what you and your partner have been doing in the past ten days or so?”

“You may ask,” said Pendergast.

Drayton waited, but Pendergast apparently had finished speaking.

The senator stepped closer. “Let me explain something to you, Pendergast. You heard what I said back there. I’ve got a rally coming up that’s crucial to my re-election. I can’t have anything interfering with or depressing attendance. I can’t do anything to reprimand you about your failure to move this case forward, you or your partner here. Frankly, you’re too low-level, and I can’t reach down that far. But your boss, Pickett — who assured me you’d solve the case, who sang your praises, and who’s been covering for you — well, he was up for promotion to associate deputy director. Note my use of the past tense.”

Coldmoon felt his blood rise up. While he didn’t like Pickett, he felt a loyalty to the Bureau, and he took deep offense at this political hack making threats. But Pendergast said nothing.

“You understand what I’m saying, Pendergast?”

“Naturally.”

This was too much. “I’m sorry to hear, Senator,” Coldmoon said, “that your re-election campaign isn’t going well.”

Drayton turned two small, squinty, rage-filled eyes on him. “You insolent bastard. Maybe I can do something about squashing a low-level bug like you.”

“Go ahead,” said Coldmoon.

Drayton gave a smile, exposing his rack of snowy teeth. “You’re both going to find out what it means to disrespect a sitting U.S. senator, that I can tell you.”

“ If you’re still sitting after the election,” said Coldmoon.

“Oh, believe me, the shit’s going to rain on you sooner than that, Agent—” He paused and picked up the ID hanging on his lanyard, then let it drop. “Coldmoon.”

At this, Drayton snapped his fingers over his head and spun around. The gesture sent his minions rushing to the SUV, some opening the door for him while he climbed inside as the rest of the retinue swarmed into the other vehicles.

Coldmoon tried to take a few measured breaths and calm himself down. He glanced at Pendergast, but the man’s face was as distant and neutral as ever.

“There goes the Lord of the Douchebags,” said Coldmoon as they watched the entourage pull out of the parking lot, light bar flashing.

“You should meet my friend Lieutenant D’Agosta of the NYPD,” said Pendergast mildly. “He, too, has a remarkable store of colorful expressions.”

“And here I’ve been holding back.” Coldmoon was still watching the receding vehicles. “You know, that guy really needs to be struck by lightning.”

“Patience, Agent Coldmoon.”

He swiveled toward Pendergast. “What does that mean?”

“Someone with his level of hubris and narcissism almost inevitably orchestrates their own downfall.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Coldmoon asked.

“Then I shall have to arrange for him to be caught en dasha belle .”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a rather rude expression. Let me put it this way: you are named Armstrong because one of your ancestors supposedly killed General Custer. Right?”

“There’s no ‘supposedly’ about it.”

“As you wish. The point is: if Squire Drayton does not manage to disgrace himself , then I’ll personally make sure he meets his own Little Bighorn.”

He would not elaborate.

Wellstone sat, nursing a club soda and lime, at a window table in the bar of the newly opened Telfair Square Hotel. It was almost ten o’clock, and the bar was in the quiet period between the stampede of dinner-hour drinkers and the late-night revelers still to come. He, of course, was not staying here — his own suite was in the Marriott Riverfront — but this bar was a most convenient place to keep an eye on his target, directly across State Street.

The Ye Sleepe was a quirky hotel that cultivated a kind of seedy bohemian chic. It was clearly the latest of several generations of commercial lodging: the pentimento of a red-crowned Best Western logo could still be seen faintly, beneath the façade’s paint job, and the hotel’s external marquee looked suspiciously like the “Great Sign” of vintage Holiday Inns.

The waiter came up to his table. “Anything else, sir? Perhaps something with a little higher octane?”

“I’ll stick to club soda, thanks.” He’d put booze — especially red wine — off-limits for the time being.

He sat, gazing across the street while the waiter brought him a fresh drink. When he’d heard that Barclay Betts and his entourage were staying at the Ye Sleepe, his primary feeling had been one of disdain. Couldn’t the cheap bastard afford to put his people up on the waterfront? But sitting here across the street from the hotel, he could see method in Betts’s madness. The rooms — so the waiter had informed him — were old and very large, and the place catered to thirsty, horny young travelers on a budget. That meant Betts could afford a lot of room to spread out his entourage, and his donkey-like braying and yelling was not likely to elicit complaints from the management.

It had another advantage — for Wellstone, at least. Its on-site parking lot, currently being resurfaced, was barricaded off and unlighted. It took up the rest of the block on the building’s western flank, and it was naturally deserted. That side of the hotel was where Betts had booked a block of rooms, all on the first floor.

And Gerhard Moller’s room was the fifth window in from the street.

It had taken only a little research and surveillance for Wellstone to learn this. The layout was better than he’d hoped — in fact, it made what had initially seemed like a somewhat far-fetched scheme into something very workable. Very workable indeed.

He’d suffered nothing but setbacks in his progress to unmask Barclay Betts, most recently Daisy Fayette’s eviction from the graveyard shooting set. The feral cunning he sensed beneath the southern belle’s veneer had, ultimately, failed him. And now, thanks to his graveyard shenanigans, Betts was working with an even higher profile. Under normal circumstances, Wellstone would have returned to Boston and not bothered with this hack. But he could still practically feel the warm crème anglaise dribbling down his back as Betts laughed. And ironically, it was Daisy’s humiliation — which he’d heard about in querulous detail — that had given him an idea that might turn everything around.

As part of her breathless litany of injustices done by Betts & Co., Daisy described how Moller had taken photos with that special camera of his and then distributed them, via Bluetooth, to the crowd of reporters and rubberneckers. After leaving Daisy’s house with vague promises of retribution, Wellstone had immediately gone to the tourist ghetto along Bay Street, where most of the reporters were staying, and managed to get his hands on copies of Moller’s photos. There were three of them, with normal-enough subjects: a CSI worker, a tomb with a marble angel, another broken tombstone. But each one was also overlaid with a sinister apparition, indistinct but disturbing nonetheless — an outstretched bony hand; a huge, sinister face; and a wispy-haired skull and claw emerging from the earth.