The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  O’Shaughnessy knew this wasn’t an empty threat. He removed his gun and badge and dropped them one at a time on the table.

  “Is that all, sir?” he asked, as coolly as possible.

  With satisfaction, he saw Custer’s face blacken with rage yet again. “Is that all? Isn’t that enough? You better start pulling your résumé together, O’Shaughnessy. I know a McDonald’s up in the South Bronx that needs a rent-a-cop for the graveyard shift.”

  As O’Shaughnessy left, he noticed that Noyes’s eyes—brimming with wet sycophantic satisfaction—followed him out the door.

  He paused on the steps of the station house, momentarily blinded by the sunlight. He thought of the many times he’d trudged up and down these stairs, on yet another aimless patrol or pointless piece of bureaucratic busy work. It seemed a little odd that—despite his carefully groomed attitude of nonchalance—he felt more than a twinge of regret. Pendergast and the case would have to make do without him. Then he sighed, shrugged, and descended the steps. His career was over, and that was that.

  To his surprise, a familiar car—a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith—was idling silently at the curb. The door was opened by the invisible figure in the rear. O’Shaughnessy approached, leaned his head inside.

  “I’ve been put on administrative leave,” he said to the occupant of the rear seat.

  Pendergast, leaning back against the leather, nodded. “Over the report?”

  “Yup. And that mistake I made five years ago didn’t help any.”

  “How unfortunate. I apologize for my role in your misfortune. But get in, if you please. We don’t have much time.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “I did. You’re working for me now.”

  O’Shaughnessy paused.

  “It’s all arranged. The paperwork is going through as we speak. From time to time, I have need of, ah, consulting specialists.” Pendergast patted a sheaf of papers lying on the seat beside him. “It’s all spelled out in here. You can sign them in the car. We’ll stop by the FBI office downtown and get you a photo ID. It’s not a shield, unfortunately, but it should serve almost as well.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Pendergast, but you should know, they’re opening an—”

  “I know all about it. Get in, please.”

  O’Shaughnessy climbed in and closed the door behind him, feeling slightly dazed.

  Pendergast gestured toward the papers. “Read them, you won’t find any nasty surprises. Fifty dollars an hour, guaranteed minimum thirty hours a week, benefits, and the rest.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Pendergast gazed at him mildly. “Because I’ve seen you rise to the challenge. I need a man with the courage of his convictions. I’ve seen how you work. You know the streets, you can talk to the people in a way I can’t. You’re one of them. I’m not. Besides, I can’t push this case alone. I need someone who knows his way around the byzantine workings of the NYPD. And you have a certain compassion. Remember, I saw that tape. I’m going to need compassion.”

  O’Shaughnessy reached for the papers, still dazed. Then he stopped.

  “On one condition,” he said. “You know a lot more about this than you’ve let on. And I don’t like working in the dark.”

  Pendergast nodded. “You’re quite right. It’s time we had a talk. And once we’ve processed your papers, that’s the next order of business. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.” And O’Shaughnessy took the papers, scanned them quickly.

  Pendergast turned to the driver. “Federal Plaza, please, Proctor. And quickly.”

  NINE

  NORA PAUSED BEFORE THE DEEP ARCHWAY, CARVED OF sand-colored stone streaked with gray. Although it had been recently cleaned, the massive Gothic entrance looked old and forbidding. It reminded Nora of Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London. She half expected to see the iron teeth of a portcullis winking from the ceiling, defenestrating knights peering out of arrow slits above, cauldrons of boiling pitch at the ready.

  At the base of an adjoining wall, before a low iron railing, Nora could see the remains of half-burnt candles, flower petals, and old pictures in broken frames. It looked almost like a shrine. And then she realized this arch must be the doorway in which John Lennon was shot, and these trinkets the remains of offerings still left by the faithful. And Pendergast himself had been stabbed nearby, not halfway down the block. She glanced upward. The Dakota rose above her, its Gothic facade overhung with gables and stone decorations. Dark clouds scudded above the grim, shadow-haunted towers. What a place to live, she thought. She looked carefully around, studying the landscape with a caution that had become habitual since the chase in the Archives. But there was no obvious sign of danger. She moved toward the building.

  Beside the archway, a doorman stood in a large sentry box of bronze and glass, staring implacably out at Seventy-second Street, silent and erect as a Buckingham Palace guard. He seemed oblivious of her presence. But when she stepped beneath the archway, he was before her in a flash, pleasant but unsmiling.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I have an appointment to see Mr. Pendergast.”

  “Your name?”

  “Nora Kelly.”

  The guard nodded, as if expecting her. “Southeast lobby,” he said, stepping aside and pointing the way. As Nora walked through the tunnel toward the building’s interior courtyard, she saw the guard return to his sentry box and pick up a telephone.

  The elevator smelled of old leather and polished wood. It rose several floors, came to an unhurried stop. Then the doors slid open to reveal an entryway, a single oak door at its far end, standing open. Within the doorway stood Agent Pendergast, his slender figure haloed in the subdued light.

  “So glad you could come, Dr. Kelly,” he said in his mellifluous voice, stepping aside to usher her in. His words were, as always, exceedingly gracious, but there was something tired, almost grim, in his tone. Still recovering, Nora thought. He looked thin, almost cadaverous, and his face was even whiter than usual, if such a thing were possible.

  Nora stepped forward into a high-ceilinged, windowless room. She looked around curiously. Three of the walls were painted a dusky rose, framed above and below by black molding. The fourth was made up entirely of black marble, over which a continuous sheet of water ran from ceiling to floor. At the base, where the water gurgled quietly into a pool, a cluster of lotus blossoms floated. The room was filled with the soft, pleasant sound of water and the faint perfume of flowers. Two tables of dark lacquer stood nearby. One held a mossy tray in which grew a setting of bonsai trees—dwarf maples, by the look of them. On the other, inside an acrylic display cube, the skull of a cat was displayed on a spider mount. Coming closer, Nora realized that the skull was, in fact, carved from a single piece of Chinese jade. It was a work of remarkable, consummate artistry, the stone so thin it was diaphanous against the black cloth of the base.

  Sitting nearby on one of several small leather sofas was Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, in mufti. He was crossing and uncrossing his legs and looking uncomfortable.

  Pendergast closed the door and glided toward Nora, hands behind his back.

  “May I get you anything? Mineral water? Lillet? Sherry?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “Then if you will excuse me for a moment.” And Pendergast disappeared through a doorway that had been set, almost invisibly, into one of the rose-colored walls.

  “Nice place,” she said to O’Shaughnessy.

  “You don’t know the half of it. Where’d he get all the dough?”

  “Bill Smi—That is, a former acquaintance of mine said he’d heard it was old family money. Pharmaceuticals, something like that.”

  “Mmm.”

  They lapsed into silence, listening to the whispering of the water. Within a few minutes, the door opened again and Pendergast’s head reappeared.

  “If the two of you would be so kind as to come with me?” he asked.

  They fol
lowed him through the door and down a long, dim hallway. Most of the doors they passed were closed, but Nora caught glimpses of a library—full of leather- and buckram-bound volumes and what looked like a rosewood harpsichord—and a narrow room whose walls were covered with oil paintings, four or five high, in heavy gilt frames. Another, windowless, room had rice paper walls and tatami mats covering its floor. It was spare, almost stark, and—like the rest of the rooms—very dimly lit. Then Pendergast ushered them into a vast, high-ceilinged chamber of dark, exquisitely wrought mahogany. An ornate marble fireplace dominated the far end. Three large windows looked out over Central Park. To the right, a detailed map of nineteenth-century Manhattan covered an entire wall. A large table sat in the room’s center. Upon it, several objects resting atop a plastic sheet: two dozen fragments of broken glass pieces, a lump of coal, a rotten umbrella, and a punched tram car ticket.

  There was no place to sit. Nora stood back from the table while Pendergast circled it several times in silence, staring intently, like a shark circling its prey. Then he paused, glancing first at her, then at O’Shaughnessy. There was an intensity, even an obsession, in his eyes that she found disturbing.

  Pendergast turned to the large map, hands behind his back once again. For a moment, he simply stared at it. Then he began to speak, softly, almost to himself.

  “We know where Dr. Leng did his work. But now we are confronted with an even more difficult question. Where did he live? Where did the good doctor hide himself on this teeming island?

  “Thanks to Dr. Kelly, we now have some clues to narrow our search. The tram ticket you unearthed was punched for the West Side Elevated Tramway. So it’s safe to assume Dr. Leng was a West Sider.” He turned to the map, and, using a red marker, drew a line down Fifth Avenue, dividing Manhattan into two longitudinal segments.

  “Coal carries a unique chemical signature of impurities, depending on where it is mined. This coal came from a long-defunct mine near Haddonfield, New Jersey. There was only one distributor for this coal in Manhattan, Clark & Sons. They had a delivery territory that extended from 110th Street to 139th Street.”

  Pendergast drew two parallel lines across Manhattan, one at 110th Street and one at 139th Street.

  “Now we have the umbrella. The umbrella is made of silk. Silk is a fiber that is smooth to the touch, but under a microscope shows a rough, almost toothy texture. When it rains, the silk traps particles—in particular, pollen. Microscopic examination of the umbrella showed it to be heavily impregnated with pollen from a weed named Trismegistus gonfalonii, commonly known as marsh dropseed. It used to grow in bogs all over Manhattan, but by 1900 its range had been restricted to the marshy areas along the banks of the Hudson River.”

  He drew a red line down Broadway, then pointed to the small square it bordered. “Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that our Dr. Leng lived west of this line, no more than one block from the Hudson.”

  He capped the marker, then glanced back at Nora and O’Shaughnessy. “Any comments so far?”

  “Yes,” said Nora. “You said Clark & Sons delivered coal to this area uptown. But why was this coal found downtown in his laboratory?”

  “Leng ran his laboratory in secret. He couldn’t have coal delivered there. So he would have brought small amounts of coal down from his house.”

  “I see.”

  Pendergast continued to scrutinize her. “Anything else?”

  The room was silent.

  “Then we can assume our Dr. Leng lived on Riverside Drive between 110th Street and 139th Street, or on one of the side streets between Broadway and Riverside Drive. That is where we must concentrate our search.”

  “You’re still talking hundreds, maybe thousands, of apartment buildings,” said O’Shaughnessy.

  “Thirteen hundred and five, to be exact. Which brings me to the glassware.”

  Pendergast silently took another turn around the table, then reached out and picked up a fragment of glass with a pair of rubber-tipped tweezers, holding it into the light.

  “I analyzed the residue on this glass. It had been carefully washed, but with modern methods one can detect substances down to parts per trillion. There was a very curious mix of chemicals on this glassware. I found similar chemicals on the glass bits I recovered from the floor of the charnel. Quite a frightening mixture, when you begin to break it down. And there was one rare organic chemical, 1,2 alumino phosphocyanate, the ingredients for which could only be purchased in five chemists’ shops in Manhattan at the time, between 1890 and 1918, when Leng appears to have used his downtown laboratory. Sergeant O’Shaughnessy was most helpful in tracking down their locations.”

  He made five dots on the map with his marker.

  “Let us first assume Dr. Leng purchased his chemicals at the most convenient place. As you can see, there is no shop near his lab downtown, so let us postulate he purchased his chemicals near his house uptown. We can thus eliminate these two East Side shops. That leaves three on the West Side. But this one is too far downtown, so we can eliminate it as well.” He made crosses through three of the five dots. “That leaves these two others. The question is, which one?”

  Once again, his question was greeted by silence. Pendergast laid down the piece of glass and circled the table yet again, then stopped in front of the map. “He shopped at neither one.”

  He paused. “Because 1,2 alumino phosphocyanate is a dangerous poison. A person buying it might attract attention. So let us assume, instead, that he shopped at the chemist farthest from his haunts: his house, the Museum, the downtown lab. A place where he would not be recognized. Clearly, that has to be this one, here, on East Twelfth Street. New Amsterdam Chemists.” He drew a line around the dot. “This is where Leng shopped for his chemicals.”

  Pendergast spun around, pacing back and forth before the map. “In a stroke of good fortune, it turns out New Amsterdam Chemists is still in business. There may be records, even be some residual memory.” He turned to O’Shaughnessy. “I will ask you to investigate. Visit the establishment, and check their old records. Then search for old people who grew up in the neighborhood, if necessary. Treat it as you would a police investigation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Pendergast spoke again.

  “I’m convinced Dr. Leng didn’t live on any of the side streets between Broadway and Riverside Drive. He lived on Riverside Drive itself. That would narrow things down from over a thousand buildings to less than a hundred.”

  O’Shaughnessy stared at him. “How do you know Leng lived on the Drive?”

  “The grand houses were all along Riverside Drive. You can still see them, mostly broken up into tiny apartments or abandoned now, but they’re still there—some of them, anyway. Do you really think Leng would have lived on a side street, in middle-class housing? This man had a great deal of money. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. He wouldn’t want a place that could be walled in by future construction. He’d want light, a healthy flow of fresh air, and a pleasant view of the river. A view that could never be obstructed. I know he would.”

  “But how do you know?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

  Suddenly, Nora understood. “Because he expected to be there for a very, very long time.”

  There was a long silence in the cool, spacious room. A slow, and very uncharacteristic, smile gathered on Pendergast’s face. “Bravo,” he said.

  He went to the map, and drew a red line down Riverside Drive, from 139th Street to 110th. “Here is where we must look for Dr. Leng.”

  There was an abrupt, uncomfortable silence.

  “You mean, Dr. Leng’s house,” said O’Shaughnessy.

  “No,” said Pendergast, speaking very deliberately. “I mean Dr. Leng.”

  Horse’s Tail

  ONE

  WITH A HUGE SIGH, WILLIAM SMITHBACK JR. SETTLED INTO the worn wooden booth in the rear of the Blarney Stone Tavern. Situated directly across the street from the New York Museum’s southern e
ntrance, the tavern was a perennial haunt of Museum staffers. They had nicknamed the place the Bones because of the owner’s penchant for hammering bones of all sizes, shapes, and species into every available surface. Museum wags liked to speculate that, were the police to remove the bones for examination, half of the city’s missing persons cases still on the books would be solved immediately.

  Smithback had spent many long evenings here in years past, notebooks and beer-spattered laptop in attendance, working on various books: his book about the Museum murders; his follow-up book about the Subway Massacre. It had always seemed like a home away from home to him, a refuge against the troubles of the world. And yet tonight, even the Bones held no consolation for him. He recalled a line he’d read somewhere—Brendan Behan, perhaps—about having a thirst so mighty it case a shadow. That’s how he felt.

  It had been the worst week of his life—from this terrible business with Nora to his useless interview with Fairhaven. And to top it all, he’d just been scooped by the frigging Post—by his old nemesis Bryce Harriman, no less—twice. First on the tourist murder in Central Park, and then on the bones discovered down on Doyers Street. By rights, that was his story. How had that weenie Harriman gotten an exclusive? He couldn’t get an exclusive from his own girlfriend, for chrissakes. Who did he know? To think he, Smithback, had been kept outside with the milling hacks while Harriman got the royal treatment, the inside story…. Christ, he needed a drink.

  The droopy-eared waiter came over, hangdog features almost as familiar to Smithback as his own.

  “The usual, Mr. Smithback?”

  “No. You got any of the fifty-year-old Glen Grant?”

  “At thirty-six dollars,” the waiter said dolefully.

  “Bring it. I want to drink something as old as I feel.”