Douglas Preston - Reliquary

He turned. “Out there in the Ramble, there are rocks, caves, dense woods. Lots of homeless, too. It’s a perfect hideout. That’s where we’ll find the killer.”

This time, D’Agosta was unable to keep the incredulity off his face. “Let me get this straight. Some insurance dweeb in personnel gave you this tip? Did he try to sell you on the savings plan, too?”

Waxie frowned, his jowly cheeks turning a rich crimson. “I don’t appreciate your tone, Vinnie. It wasn’t appropriate in the meeting this afternoon, and it isn’t appropriate here.”

“Look, Jack,” D’Agosta said, struggling to keep his patience. “What the hell would an actuary, even a police actuary, know about a murder pattern? That just isn’t enough. You have to take into account ingress, egress, everything. Besides, the Belvedere Castle murder is the one that least fits the pattern.” Then he gave up. There was no point in telling Waxie anything. Horlocker was one of those chiefs who loved specialists, experts, and consultants. And Waxie was such a yes-man that…

“I’m going to need this map,” Waxie said.

D’Agosta stared at the broad back in front of him. As he did, a light suddenly turned on inside his head. Now he knew what this was all about.

He stood up. “Be my guest,” he said. “The primary case files are in these cabinets here, and Sergeant Hayward has some valuable—”

“I won’t be needing her,” said Waxie. “Just the precinct board and the files. Have them sent over to my office by eight tomorrow morning. Suite 2403. They’re moving me here to headquarters.”

He slowly turned on his heel and eyed D’Agosta. “Sorry, Vinnie. I think it boiled down to a question of chemistry. Me and Horlocker. He needs someone he can relate to. Someone who can keep a lid on the press. Nothing personal, you know. You’ll still be on the case, in one capacity or another. And now that we’re going to start making progress, you might even feel better about things. We’ll be staking out the Ramble, and we’re going to catch this guy.”

“Sure,” said D’Agosta. He reminded himself that this was a no-win case, that he hadn’t wanted it in the first place. It didn’t help.

Waxie held out his hand. “No hard feelings, Vinnie?”

D’Agosta shook the plump warm hand. “None at all, Jack,” he heard himself saying.

Waxie took another look around the office, as if searching for other items worth appropriating. “Well, I gotta go,” he said at last. “I wanted to tell you in person.”

“Thanks.”

They stood for a moment as the uncomfortable silence grew. Then Waxie patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and walked out of the office.

There was a soft rustle as Hayward came up beside him. They stood silently, listening to the footsteps retreat down the linoleum corridor until they were finally lost amidst the low buzz of typing and distant conversations. Then Hayward turned to D’Agosta.

“Lieutenant, how can you let him get away with it?” she asked bitterly. “I mean, when our backs were against the wall down in those tunnels, that mother ran.”

D’Agosta sat down again, feeling inside the upper drawer of his desk for a cigar. “Respect for superiors isn’t your strong suit, is it, Sergeant?” he asked. “Anyway, what makes you so sure this isn’t a reward?” He located the cigar, dug a hole in its crown with a pencil, and lit up.

It was two hours later, as D’Agosta was making final arrangements to move the case files upstairs, that Pendergast strolled into his office. It was Pendergast as D’Agosta remembered him: impeccable black suit severely tailored to his spare frame, blond-white hair combed back from his high forehead, handmade English loafers in polished oxblood. As usual, looking more like a fashionable undertaker than an FBI agent.

Pendergast indicated the visitor’s chair with a brief nod of his head. “May I?”

D’Agosta hung up the phone and nodded. Pendergast slipped into the chair with his catlike grace. He looked around, taking in the boxed files and the bare patch on the wall where the map had once hung. He turned back to D’Agosta, eyebrows raised quizzically.

“It’s Waxie’s headache now.” D’Agosta answered the unspoken question. “I’ve been placed on modified assignment.”

“Indeed,” Pendergast replied. “Lieutenant, you don’t seem dismayed by the turn of events.”

“Dismayed?” D’Agosta said. “Look around again. The precinct board’s gone, the files are packed, Hayward’s in bed, the coffee is hot, the cigar is lit. I feel terrific.”

“I doubt it very much. Still, you’ll probably sleep better tonight than Squire Waxie will. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,’ and all that.” He looked at D’Agosta with an amused expression. “So what’s next?”

“Oh, I’m still assigned to the case,” D’Agosta replied. “Exactly how, Waxie hasn’t bothered to say.”

“He probably doesn’t know himself. But I think we can ensure that you won’t be sitting idle.” Pendergast fell silent and D’Agosta leaned back in his chair, enjoying his cigar, content to let the silence spread out to fill the room.

“I was once in Florence,” Pendergast said at last.

“Oh, yeah? I was just in Italy. Took my son there last fall to see his great-grandmother.”

Pendergast nodded. “Did you visit the Pitti Palace?”

“Pity who?”

“It’s an art museum, actually. Quite exquisite. There’s an old medieval map painted as a fresco on one of its walls, done the year before Columbus discovered America.”

“No kidding.”

“In the place where the continent of America would later be found, the map is blank except for the words Cui ci sono del mostri.

D’Agosta screwed up his face. “Here there are… mostri . What’s that?”

“It means, ‘Here there be monsters.’ ”

“Monsters. Yeah. Jesus, I’ve forgotten my Italian. I used to speak it with my grandparents.”

Pendergast nodded. “Lieutenant, I want you to hazard a guess at something for me.”

“Shoot.”

“Guess the largest inhabited region on earth that remains unmapped.”

D’Agosta shrugged. “I don’t know. Milwaukee?”

Pendergast smiled mirthlessly. “No. And it’s not Outer Mongolia. Or the Antipodes. It’s underground New York.”

“You’re shitting me, right?”

“I am not ‘shitting you,’ as you so charmingly put it.” Pendergast shifted in his chair. “Vincent, underground New York reminds me of that map. in the Pitti Palace. It is truly unexplored territory. And it is, apparently, unimaginably vast. For example, there are almost a dozen stories’ worth of structures below Grand Central—not counting the sewers and storm drains. The levels below Penn Station go even deeper.”

“So you’ve been down,” D’Agosta said.

“Yes. After meeting with you and Sergeant Hayward. It was an exploratory journey, really. I wanted to get a sense of the environment, test my ability to move around and learn what I could. I was able to speak with a few of the underground dwellers. They told me much, and they hinted at even more.”

D’Agosta sat forward.” “Learn anything about the murders?”

Pendergast nodded. “Indirectly. But those who know the most are deeper underground than I dared go on my first descent. It takes a while to gain these people’s trust, and I have a long way to go. Especially now. You see, the underground homeless are terrified.” Pendergast turned his pale eyes toward D’Agosta. “From piecing together various whispered conversations, I’ve gathered that a mysterious group of people have colonized the underground. And most of the rumors don’t even use the word people. Supposedly, they are feral, cannibalistic, subhuman. And it is these beings who are responsible for the killings.”