“Name?” Miller barked.
“Carlin,” the heavyset man drawled.
“Any others?” Miller asked. There was a silence.
“Good.”
“Us ex-Transit Police, we know those tunnels,” Carlin said in a mild voice. “Too bad they didn’t think to enlist more of us for this picnic. Sir.”
“Carlin?” Miller said. “You got your gas, you got your stick, you got your piece. So don’t wet your pants. And when I want your opinion again, I’ll ask for it.” Miller looked around. “There are too many goddamn bodies in here. This action calls for a small, elite group. But what the Chief wants, the Chief gets.”
Hayward glanced around herself, estimating there were perhaps a hundred officers in the room. “There’re at least three hundred homeless beneath Columbus Circle alone,” she said evenly.
“Oh? And when did you last count them?” Miller asked.
Hayward said nothing.
“There’s one in every group,” Miller muttered to no one in particular. “Now listen up. This is a tactical operation, and we’ve got to be tight and obey orders. Is that understood?”
There were a few nods. Carlin caught Hayward’s eye and rolled his own briefly toward the ceiling, indicating his opinion of Miller.
“All right, partner up,” Miller snapped, rolling up the chart.
Hayward turned toward Carlin, and he nodded in return. “How you doing?” he asked. Hayward noticed her first impression of the officer as overweight was wrong: He was strongly built, cut like a weight lifter, not an ounce of fat anywhere. “What was your beat before the merge?”
“I had the tour under Penn Station. The name’s Hayward.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a derisive look cross Miller’s face: Carlin and the broad.
“This is really a man’s job,” Miller said, still looking at Hayward. “There’s always the chance things could turn a little ugly. We won’t hold it against you if—”
“With Sergeant Carlin here,” Hayward interrupted, “there’s enough man for the both of us.” She swept her eyes appraisingly across Carlin’s massive frame, then looked pointedly at Miller’s stomach.
Several cops erupted into laughter, and Miller frowned. “I’ll find something in the rear for you two.”
“Officers of the law!” Horlocker’s voice suddenly barked through the bullhorn. “We have less than four hours to clear the homeless from the areas beneath and surrounding Central Park. Keep in mind that precisely at midnight, millions of gallons of water will be released from the reservoir into the storm drain system. We’ll be channeling the flow precisely. But there’s no guarantee that a couple of wandering homeless won’t get caught in the downward rush of water. So it’s imperative that your work be done, and everyone within the clear zone evacuated, well before the deadline. Everyone. This is not a temporary evacuation. We’re going to use this unique opportunity to clear out, once and for all, the underground homeless from these areas. Now, you have your assignments, and you have team leaders who’ve been chosen for their experience. There is no reason why these assignments cannot be completed with an hour or two to spare.
“We’ve made arrangements to provide these people with food and shelter for the night. Explain this to them, as necessary. From the exit points marked on your maps, buses will take them to shelters in Manhattan and the other boroughs. We don’t expect resistance. But if there is resistance, you have your orders.”
He looked around at the assembled group for a moment, then raised the bullhorn again.
“Your fellow officers in the northern sections have been fully briefed and will begin their operations simultaneously with your own. I want everyone moving together. Remember, once underground, your radios will be of limited use. You may be able to communicate with each other and nearby team leaders, but aboveground communication will be intermittent at best. So keep to the plan, keep to the schedule, and do your part.”
He stepped forward. “And now, men, let’s do some good!”
The ranks of uniformed officers straightened up as Horlocker walked through them, clapping some on the back, dispensing encouraging words. As he was passing Hayward, he stopped, frowning. “You’re Hayward, right? D’Agosta’s girl?”
D’Agosta’s girl, my ass. “I work with D’Agosta, sir,” she said out loud.
Horlocker nodded. “Well, get to it, then.”
“Hey, sir, I think you’d better…” Hayward began, but an aide had run up to Horlocker’s side, babbling something about a rally in Central Park growing much larger than expected, and the Chief moved away quickly. Miller shot her a warning look.
As Horlocker left the concourse with a retinue of aides, Masters picked up the bullhorn. “Move out by squad!” he barked.
Miller turned to the group with a lopsided grin. “Okay, men. Let’s bag some moles.”
= 44 =
CAPTAIN WAXIE stepped out of the ancient puddingstone Central Park precinct station and huffed along the path that angled northward into the wooded gloom. On his left was a uniformed officer from the station. On his right was Stan Duffy, the city’s Chief Engineer of Hydraulics. Already, Duffy was trotting ahead, looking back at them impatiently.
“Slow it down a bit,” Waxie said, panting. “This isn’t a marathon.”
“I don’t like being in the Park this late,” Duffy replied in a high, reedy voice. “Especially with all these murders going on. You were supposed to be at the station half an hour ago.”
“Everything north of Forty-second is messed up,” Waxie said. “Gridlocked beyond belief. It’s all that Wisher woman’s fault. There’s some kind of march, formed out of nowhere.” He shook his head. They’d jammed up Central Park West and South, and stragglers were still wandering up Fifth Avenue, causing all kinds of chaos. They didn’t even have a damn permit. And she’d given no warning. If he were mayor, he would have clapped them all in jail.
Now the band shell loomed ahead to their right: empty and silent, festooned with impossibly dense graffiti, a haven for muggers. Duffy glanced at it nervously, hurrying past.
The three angled around the pond, following the East Drive. In the distance, beyond the shadowy borders of the Park, Waxie could hear yelling, cheering, the sounds of horns and motors. He glanced at his watch: eight-thirty. The plans called for initiating the drainage sequence by eight forty-five. He trotted a little faster. They were barely going to make it.
The Central Park Reservoir Gauging Station was housed in an old stone building a quarter mile south of the Reservoir. Now, Waxie could see the building looming through the trees, a single light glowing through a dirty window, the letters CPRGS chiseled on the doorway lintel. He slowed to a walk while Duffy unlocked the heavy metal door. It swung inwards to reveal an old, stone room sparsely decorated with map tables and dusty, long-forgotten hydrometric instruments. In one corner, in dramatic juxtaposition to the rest of the equipment, sat a computer workstation, along with several monitors, printers, and strange-looking peripherals.
Once they were inside, Duffy closed and locked the door carefully, then went over to the console. “I’ve never done this before,” he said nervously, reaching under a desk and removing a manual that weighed at least fifteen pounds.
“Don’t crap out on us now,” Waxie said.
Duffy swiveled a yellow eye in his direction. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to say something. Instead, he paged through the manual for a few minutes, then turned to the keyboard and began to type. A series of commands appeared on the larger of the monitors.
“How does this thing work?” Waxie asked, shifting from one foot to the other. The intense humidity of the room made his joints ache.
“It’s fairly simple,” Duffy said. “Water from the lower Catskills is gravity fed into the Central Park Reservoir. That Reservoir may look big, but it holds only about three days’ worth of water for Manhattan. It’s really more of a holding tank, used to smooth out rises and dips in demand.”
He
tapped at the keys. “This monitoring system is programmed to anticipate those rises and dips, and it adjusts the flow into the Reservoir accordingly. It can open and close gates as far away as Storm King Mountain, a hundred miles away. The program looks back over twenty years of water use, factors in the latest weather forecasts, and makes demand estimates.”
Safe in his locked chamber, Duffy was warming to his subject. “At times there are departures from the estimate, of course. When demand is less than expected, and too much water flows toward the Reservoir, the computer opens the Main Shunt and bleeds the excess into the storm drain and sewer system. When demand is unexpectedly high, the Main Shunt is closed and additional upstream gates are opened to increase the flow.”
“Really?” Waxie said. He’d lost interest after the second sentence.
“I’m going to do a manual override, which means I’m going to open the gates upstream and open the Main Shunt. Water will pour into the Reservoir and drain immediately into the sewer system. It’s a simple and elegant solution. All I have to do is program the system to release twenty million cubic feet—that’s about a hundred million gallons—at midnight, then revert back to automatic mode upon completion.”
“So the Reservoir isn’t going to go dry?” Waxie asked.
Duffy smiled indulgently. “Really, Captain. We don’t want to create a water emergency. Believe me, this can be done with the most minimal impact on the water supply. I doubt we’ll see the level in the Reservoir drop more than ten feet. It’s an incredible system, really. Hard to believe it was designed over a century ago, by engineers who anticipated even the needs of today.” The smile faded. “Even so, nothing on this scale has ever been done before. Are you sure you really want to do this? All the valves opening at once… well, all I can say is it’s going to make one heck of a surf.”
“You heard the man,” Waxie said, rubbing his bulbous nose with his thumb. “Just make sure it works.”
“Oh, it’ll work,” Duffy replied.
Waxie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Of course it will,” he said. “Because if it doesn’t, you’re going to find yourself a junior sluice gate operator in the Lower Hudson sewage treatment plant.”
Duffy laughed nervously. “Really, Captain,” he repeated. “There’s no need for threats.” He resumed his typing while Waxie paced the room. The uniformed cop stood soberly by the door, watching the proceedings disinterestedly.
“How long will it take to dump the water?” Waxie asked at last.
“About eight minutes.”
Waxie grunted. “Eight minutes to dump a hundred million gallons?”
“As I understand it, you want the water dumped as quickly as possible, to fill up the lowest tunnels under Central Park and sweep them clean, right?”
Waxie nodded.
“Eight minutes represents the system at one hundred percent flow. Of course, it will take almost three hours for the hydraulics to get in position. Then it will simply be a matter of draining water from the Reservoir, at the same time that we bring new water into the Reservoir from the upstate aqueducts That should keep the Reservoir’s water level from dropping excessively. It has to be done just right, because if the flow coming into the reservoir is greater than the flow going out… well, that means a major flood in Central Park.”
“Then I hope to hell you understand what you’re doing. I want this thing to proceed on schedule, no delays, no glitches.”
The sound of typing slowed.
“Stop worrying,” Duffy said, his finger poised on a key. “There won’t be any delays. Just don’t change your mind. Because once I press this key, the hydraulics take over. I can’t stop it. You see—”
“Just hit the damn key,” Waxie said impatiently.
Duffy pressed it with a melodramatic flourish. Then he turned to face Waxie. “It’s done,” he said. “Now, only a miracle can stop the flow. And in case you hadn’t heard, they don’t allow miracles in New York City.”
= 45 =
D’AGOSTA GAZED at the small pile of rubber and chromed parts, picked one up, then dropped it again in disgust. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Could these have been left there by accident?”
“I assure you, Vincent,” Pendergast said, “they were carefully arranged on the altar, almost as if they were some kind of offering.” There was a silence while he paced restlessly across the lab. “There’s another thing I’m uneasy about. Kawakita was the one who was growing the lily in tanks, after all. Why would they kill him and burn the lab? Why would they destroy their only source of the drug? The one thing an addict is most terrified of is losing his connection. And the lab was burned deliberately. You said there were trace accelerants in the ashes.”
“Unless they were growing it somewhere else,” D’Agosta said, fingering his breast pocket absently.
“Go ahead and light up,” Margo said.
D’Agosta eyed her. “Really?”
Margo smiled and nodded. “Just this once. But don’t tell Director Merriam.”
D’Agosta brightened. “It’ll be our secret.” He slipped the cigar out, jabbed a pencil into its head, and moved to the lone window, lifting the sash wide. He lit up and puffed the clouds of smoke contentedly out over Central Park.
I wish I had a vice I enjoyed half as much as that, Margo thought as she watched idly.
“I considered the possibility of an alternate supply,” Pendergast was saying. “And I kept my eyes open for signs of an underground garden. But there was no evidence of one. Such a lily farm would require still water and fresh air. I can’t imagine where they could be hiding it underground.”
D’Agosta blew another stream of blue smoke out the window, resting his elbows on the windowsill. “Look at that mess,” he said, nodding southward. “Horlocker’s going to have kittens when he sees that.”
Margo walked to the window and let her gaze fall over the rich green mantle of Central Park, shadowy and mysterious beneath the pink of the western sunset. To her right, along Central Park South, she could hear the faint sound of countless horns. A great mass of marchers was moving into Grand Army Plaza with the slow flow of molasses.
“That’s some march,” she said.
“You’re damn right it is,” D’Agosta said. “And those people vote.”
“I hope Dr. Frock’s car service didn’t get stuck in all that on his way home,” she murmured. “He hates crowds.”
She let her eyes drift northward, over the Sheep Meadow and the Bethesda fountain, toward the placid oval of the Reservoir. At midnight, that calm body of water would let loose twenty million cubic feet of death into the lowest levels of Manhattan. She felt a sudden pang for the Wrinklers caught below. It wasn’t exactly due process. But then her mind drifted back to the bloody mouse cages, to the sudden viciousness of the B. meresgerii. It was a deadly drug; one that increased a thousand-fold the natural aggressiveness that evolution had built into almost all living creatures. And Kawakita, infected himself, believed the process to be irreversible…
“I’m glad we’re up here and not down there,” D’Agosta murmured, puffing meditatively.
Margo nodded. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, Pendergast pacing the room behind her, picking up things, putting them down again.
When the sun next rises over the Park, Margo thought, the Reservoir will be twenty million cubic feet lighter. Her eyes rested on the surface of the water, its hint of internal light reflecting the oranges, reds, and greens of the sunset. It was a beautiful scene, its quiet tranquility in stark contrast to the marching and the frantic horns twenty blocks to the south.
Then she frowned. I’ve never seen a green sunset before.
She strained to make out the darkening surface of water, rapidly disappearing into shadow. In the dying glow she could clearly see dull patches of green on the surface of the water. A strange and awful thought had crept unbidden into her mind. Still water and fresh air…
It’s impossible, she thought. Some
one surely would have noticed. Or would they?
She turned from the window and glanced at Pendergast. He caught her eye, saw the look in it, and ceased his pacing.
“Margo?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
She said nothing, and Pendergast followed her gaze out toward the Reservoir, stared for a moment, then stiffened visibly. When he looked back at her, she could see the same dawning realization in his own eyes.
“I think we’d better take a look,” Pendergast said quietly.
The Central Park Reservoir was separated from the surrounding jogging path by a tall chain-link fence. D’Agosta grasped the base of the fence and tugged it violently from the ground. With Pendergast and D’Agosta close behind, Margo scrambled down the gravel service path to the water’s edge, wading out to a patch of small, oddly shaped lily pads, terrifying in their familiarity. She tore the closest one from the group and held it up, water dripping from its pulpy roots.
“Liliceae mbwunensis,” she said. “They’re growing it in the Reservoir. That’s how Kawakita planned to solve his supply problem. Aquariums are limited. So not only did he engineer the drug, but he was also hybridizing the plant to grow in a temperate climate.”
“There’s your alternative source,” D’Agosta said, still puffing on the cigar.
Pendergast waded in after her, his hands sweeping the dark waters, ripping up plants and examining them in the twilight. Several joggers stopped abruptly in their robotic courses around the water, staring wide-eyed at the bizarre sight: a young woman in a lab coat, an overweight man with a cigar glowing like a firebrand in his mouth, and a tall, strikingly blond man in an expensively tailored black suit, standing up to their chests in the Manhattan drinking supply.
Pendergast held up one of the plants, a large nut-brown pod hanging from its stem. The pod had curled open. “They’re going to seed,” Pendergast said quietly. “Flushing the Reservoir will simply dump this plant and its deadly cargo into the Hudson River—and into the ocean.”
Reliquary Page 28