Douglas Preston - Two Graves

A small blue LED began to flash beside the door. For Miss Ishimura, who was deaf and mute, this was the signal that the phone was ringing. She walked over to a corner table where a telephone sat and examined the caller ID. It was Lieutenant D’Agosta, the policeman. Calling again.

She stared at the ringing phone for perhaps five seconds. Then—on impulse—she picked it up, despite express orders to the contrary. She placed the receiver in one of the TTY machines she used and typed a message: You wait, please. I will call him.

She exited the room, then passed down the long hallway, turned when it doglegged, continued down a second hallway, then stopped and rapped quietly on a shoji —a rice-paper partition serving as a door—pulling it back after a moment and stepping inside.

The room beyond contained a large Japanese ofuro bathtub built of blond hinoki wood. Agent Pendergast reclined within the tub, only his head and narrow shoulders rising above the steaming, high-walled surface. Bottles of pills and French mineral water were arrayed in lines, like sentinels, behind him. Naked, his appearance shocked her even more: his face dreadfully gaunt, and his pale eyes dark, almost bruised. A copy of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets sat on the wide tub edge beside a heavy, gleaming straight razor. She had noticed him absently stropping the razor, sometimes for hours, in the bath, until its edge sparkled wickedly. The bathwater was tinged the palest rose—the bandage on his leg injury must be leaking again. He had done nothing about it, despite her urgent entreaties.

She handed him a note: Lieutenant D’Agosta .

Pendergast merely looked at her.

She held out the phone and mouthed a word. “Dozo.”

Still he said nothing.

“Do zo ,” she mouthed again, with emphasis.

At last, he told her to engage the speakerphone in the wall. She did so, then stepped back deferentially. She could not hear, but she could read lips with complete perfection. And she had no intention of leaving.

“Hello?” came the voice, tinny and thin through the speakerphone. “Hello? Pendergast?”

“Vincent,” Pendergast replied, his voice low.

“Pendergast. My God, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for days!”

Pendergast said nothing, merely reclining farther into the bath.

“What’s happened? Where’s Helen?”

“They killed Helen,” Pendergast replied in a flat, expressionless, terrible voice.

“ What? What do you mean? When?”

“In Mexico. I buried her. In the desert.”

There was an audible gasp, then a brief silence, before D’Agosta spoke again. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus . Who killed her?”

“The Nazis. A shot to the heart. Point-blank range.”

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, so sorry. Did you… get them?”

“One got away.”

“All right. We’re going to get the bastard. Bring him to justice—”

“Why?”

“Why? What do you mean, why ?”

Agent Pendergast raised his eyes to Miss Ishimura, and with a small twirl of his right index finger indicated that she should hang up the phone. The housekeeper—who had been intently watching his lips during the brief exchange—came forward after a short hesitation, pressed the OFF button, stepped backward across the slate floor of the bath, and then very quietly shut the shoji , leaving Pendergast once again alone.

Now she knew what the problem was. But it did not help her at all. Not at all.

7

BALANCING THE SMALL METAL SERVING TRAY OF DRINKS in one hand, Vincent D’Agosta opened the sliding door and stepped out onto the apartment’s microscopic balcony. There was just enough room for two chairs and a table. One of the chairs was occupied by Captain Laura Hayward. One lovely leg was crossed over the other, and she was perusing the pathology report D’Agosta had brought home with him. Traffic noise drifted up from First Avenue, and, though still very warm considering it was the last day of November, there was a pronounced bite to the air: this was probably the last time they’d share the balcony until spring.

He set the tray of drinks down on the table and Hayward glanced up from the grisly photographs, apparently undisturbed. “Mmm, those look good. What are they?”

D’Agosta handed one of the glasses to her. “Try it and see.”

Hayward took a sip, frowned, then took a second, smaller sip. “Vinnie, what is this?”

“An Italian spritz,” he said as he sat down. “Ice, Prosecco, dash of club soda, Aperol. Garnished with a slice of some blood oranges I picked up from Greenwich Produce in Grand Central on the way home.”

She took another sip, then set the glass down. “Um.” She hesitated. “I wish I could say that I liked it.”

“You don’t?”

“It tastes like bitter almonds.” She laughed. “I feel like Socrates here. Sorry. You went to a lot of trouble.” She took his hand, gave it a squeeze.

“This is a popular drink.”

She picked up the glass again and held it out at arm’s length, examining the gauzy orange liquid. “It reminds me of Campari. You know it?”

“You kidding? My parents drank it back in the day, when they lived in Queens and were hoping to pass for Manhattan.”

“Thanks anyway, Vinnie my love, but I’ll take the usual, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” He took a sip of his own glass, decided he’d take his usual, as well. Stepping through the open door and heading into the kitchen, he put the glasses in the sink and got two more drinks: for himself, a frosty Michelob; for her, a glass of the flinty but inexpensive Pouilly-Fumé they always kept in the fridge. Carrying them back out to the balcony, he sat down again.

For several minutes, they remained in silence, taking in the heartbeat of New York City, quietly savoring each other’s company. D’Agosta shot a covert glance at Hayward. For the past ten days or so, he’d been planning this evening down to the minutest detail: the meal, the dessert, the drinks—and the question. Now that he was healthy, now that his job was on track and his divorce just an unpleasant memory, he was finally ready to ask Laura to marry him. And he was fairly confident she’d say yes.

But then things had sort of come undone. This bizarre murder, which was guaranteed to suck up all his time. And especially the freakish news about Pendergast.

He’d gone ahead with the dinner. But now was not the time for the proposal.

Hayward glanced again at the report, flipped through the pages. “How did the big meeting go this afternoon?”

“Good. Singleton seemed to like it.”

“Are the DNA results back yet?”

“No. That’s the slowest goddamn lab in town.”

“Interesting how the killer made no attempt to disguise himself or to avoid the security cameras. It’s almost like he’s daring you to find him, isn’t it?”

D’Agosta took a sip of his beer.

Hayward peered at him. “What is it, Vinnie?”

D’Agosta sighed. “It’s Pendergast. I finally reached him this afternoon on the phone. He told me his wife was dead.”

Laura put down her drink and looked at him in shock. “Dead? How?”

“The people who kidnapped her. They shot her in Mexico—apparently to distract Pendergast, to allow themselves to get away.”

“Oh, my God…” Laura sighed, shook her head.

“It’s just a horrible tragedy. And I’d never heard him like that before. He sounded like—” D’Agosta paused. “I don’t know. Like he didn’t care. Like he was dead . And then he hung up on me.”