“Shit,” D’Agosta said. “He got through that intersection. Tenacious bastard.”
“We have what he wants,” Pendergast said. “Another reason we mustn’t let him catch up to us.”
The road narrowed as they plunged deeper into the marshy lowlands. D’Agosta kept his gaze rearward while they negotiated a long, screaming turn. As the sedan dropped out of sight behind the curve and tall marsh grass, he felt the car decelerate.
“Now’s our chance to—” he began.
All of a sudden the Rolls swerved violently to one side. Tumbled almost into the back of the car, D’Agosta fought to reseat himself. They had veered off the road onto a narrow dirt track that snaked into thick swamp. A dirty, dented sign read DESMIRAIL WILDLIFE AREA—SERVICE VEHICLES ONLY.
The car bucked fiercely from side to side as they tore down the muddy track. One moment D’Agosta felt himself thrown against the door; the next he was lifted bodily out of his seat, prevented from concussing himself against the roof only by the shoulder strap. Another minute of this, he thought grimly, and we’ll break both axles. He ventured another look in the rearview mirror, but the path was too sinuous to see more than a hundred yards behind them.
Ahead, the service path narrowed and forked. A much narrower and rougher footpath diverged from it and ran straight ahead alongside a bayou, a chain of steel links stretched across it, marked by the sign WARNING: NO VEHICLES PAST THIS POINT.
Instead of slowing for the turn, Pendergast goosed the accelerator.
“Hey, whoa!” D’Agosta cried as they headed straight for the footpath. “Jesus—!”
They broke through the chain with a sound like a rifle shot. A profusion of egrets, vultures, and wood ducks rose from the surrounding yellowtop fields and bald cypresses, honking and shrieking in protest. The big car lurched left, then right, again and again, blurring D’Agosta’s vision and making his teeth rattle in his skull. They plunged into a stand of umbrella grass, the big stems parting before them with a strange whack, whack.
D’Agosta had been in some hair-raising car chases in his day, but nothing like this. The swamp grass had grown so thick and tall they could see only a few car lengths ahead of them. Yet instead of reducing speed, Pendergast reached over and—still without decelerating—switched on the headlights.
D’Agosta hung on for dear life, afraid to tear his eyes from the view ahead even for a second. “Pendergast, slow down!” he yelled. “We’ve lost him! For chrissakes, slow—”
And then, quite suddenly, they were out of the grass. The car went over a rise of earth and they sailed, quite literally, into an open area on some high ground cut out of the deep swamp, a few gray outbuildings and fenced areas surrounded by pools. Only now, with the increased visibility and landmarks for orientation, did D’Agosta realize just how fast they’d been going. A large weather-beaten billboard to one side read:
GATORVILLE U.S.A.
100% farm-raised organic gators
Gator wrasslin, guided tours
Tannery on site—skins 8 feet & up, low low prices!
Gator meat by the pound
* CLOSED FOR THE SEASON *
The Rolls impacted the ground, bottoming out with a jarring force and hurtling forward; Pendergast suddenly braked, the car skidding across the dirt yard. D’Agosta’s eyes swiveled from the sign to a rickety wooden building directly ahead, roofed in corrugated tin, its barn-like doors open. A sign in one window read PROCESSING PLANT. He realized there was no way they could stop in time.
The Rolls slewed into the barn; a violent deceleration and semi-crash followed that smacked D’Agosta back against the leather seats; and then they were at rest. A huge cloud of dust rolled over them. As his vision slowly cleared, he saw the Rolls had ploughed into a stack of oversize plastic meat containers, tearing a dozen of them wide open. Three brined, skinned alligator corpses were splayed across the hood and windshield, pale pink with long streaks of whitish fat.
There was a moment of peculiar stasis. Pendergast gazed out of the windshield—covered with rain, bits of swamp grass, Spanish moss, and reptile ordure—and then looked over at D’Agosta. “That reminds me,” he said as the engine hissed and ticked. “One of these evenings we really must ask Maurice to make his alligator étouffée. His people come from the Atchafalaya Basin, you understand, and he has a wonderful recipe handed down in the family.”
38
Sarasota, Florida
THE SKY BEGAN TO CLEAR WITH THE COMING of evening, and soon glimmers of moonlight lay coquettishly upon the Gulf of Mexico, hiding between the restless rolls of incoming waves. Clouds, still swollen with rain, passed by quickly overhead. Combers of surf fell ceaselessly upon the beach, falling back in long, withdrawing roars.
John Woodhouse Blast heeded none of it. He paced back and forth, restlessly, stopping now and then to check his watch.
Ten thirty already. What was the holdup? It should have been a simple job: get in, take care of business, get out. The earlier call had implied things were on track, even ahead of schedule—more, in fact, than he’d dared to expect. But that had been six hours ago. And now, with his hopes raised, the wait seemed even more excruciating.
He walked over to the wet bar, pawed down a crystal tumbler from its shelf, threw in a handful of ice cubes, and poured several fingers of scotch over them. He took a big gulp; exhaled; took a smaller, more measured sip. Then he walked over to his white leather sofa, put the glass onto an abalone coaster, prepared to sit down.
The sudden ringing of the phone broke the listening silence, and he started violently. He wheeled toward the sound, almost knocking over the drink in his eagerness, and grabbed the handset.
“Well?” he said, his voice high and breathless in his own ears. “Is it done?”
There was nothing but silence on the other end.
“Hello? You got shit in your ears, pal? I said, is it done?”
More silence. And then the line went dead.
Blast stared at the phone. Just what the hell was this? A hardball play for more money? Well, he knew how to play that game. Any wise guy trying to bend his ass over a barrel was going to wish he’d never been born.
He sat down on the sofa and took another drink. The greedy son of a bitch was waiting at the other end of the line, of course he was, just waiting for him to call back and offer more. Hell would freeze over first. Blast knew what jobs like these cost—and what’s more, he knew how to hire other muscle, more experienced muscle, if certain sticky wheels needed regreasing…
The doorbell rang.
Blast allowed a smile to form on his face. He glanced at his watch again: two minutes. Only two minutes had passed since the phone call. So the son of a bitch wanted to talk. Thought he was a real wise guy. He took another sip of his drink, settled back into the couch.
The doorbell rang again.
Blast put the drink slowly back on the coaster. It was the son of a bitch’s turn to sweat now. Maybe he could even get the price down a little. It had happened before.
The doorbell rang a third time. And now Blast pulled himself up, drew a finger across his narrow mustache, strode to the door, threw it open.
He stepped back quickly in surprise. Standing in the doorway was not the slimy son of a bitch he’d expected, but a tall man with dark eyes and movie-star looks. He wore a long black trench coat, its belt tied loosely around his waist. Blast realized he had made a serious mistake in opening the door. But before he could slam it shut, the man had stepped in and shut it himself.
“Mr. Blast?” he said.
“Who the hell are you?” Blast replied.
Instead of answering, the man stepped forward again. The movement was so sudden, so decisive, that Blast found himself forced to take another step backward. Whimpering, the Pomeranians ran for the safety of the bedroom.
The tall man looked him up and down, his eyes glittering with some strong emotion—anxiety? Rage?
Blast swallowed. He hadn’t the faintest idea what this man
wanted, but some inner sense of self-preservation, some sixth sense he’d gained operating for years on the narrowest edge of lawfulness, told him he was in danger.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“My name is Esterhazy,” the man replied. “Does the name ring a bell?”
The name did ring a bell. A loud bell. That man Pendergast had mentioned it. Helen Esterhazy Pendergast.
“Never heard of it.”
With a sudden movement, the man named Esterhazy jerked the belt of his trench coat free. The coat fell aside, revealing a sawed-off shotgun.
Blast fell back. Time slowed as adrenaline kicked in. He noticed, with a kind of horrifying clarity, that the butt-stock was black wood, ornately carved.
“Now, wait,” he said. “Look, whatever it is, we can work it out. I’m a reasonable man. Tell me what you want.”
“My sister. What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. Nothing. We just talked.”
“Talked.” The man smiled. “What did you talk about?”
“Nothing. Nothing important. Did that fellow Pendergast send you? I already told him all I know.”
“And what do you know?”
“All she wanted to do was look at the painting. The Black Frame, I mean. She had a theory, she said.”
“A theory?”
“I can’t remember. Really, I can’t. It was so long ago. Please believe me.”
“No, I want to hear about the theory.”
“I’d tell you if I could remember.”
“Are you sure you don’t recall anything more?”
“That’s all I can remember. I swear, that’s all.”
“Thank you.” With an ear-shattering roar, one of the barrels vomited smoke and flame. Blast felt himself physically lifted from the ground and thrown back, hitting the floor with a violent crash. A numbness crept across his chest, remarkable in the lack of pain, and for a moment he had a crazy hope the charge had missed… And then he looked down at his ruined chest.
As if from far away, he saw the man—now a little shadowy and indistinct—approach and stand over him. The snout-like shape of the shotgun barrels detached themselves from the form and hovered over his head. Blast tried to protest, but there was now another warmth, oddly comforting, filling his throat and he couldn’t vocalize…
And then came another terrible confusion of flame and noise that this time brought oblivion.
39
New York City
IT WAS SEVEN FIFTEEN IN THE MORNING, BUT already the Fifteenth homicide division was hard at work, logging in the several potential murders and manslaughters of the night before and assembling in breakout areas to discuss the progress of open cases. Captain Laura Hayward sat behind her desk, finishing an unusually comprehensive monthly report for the commissioner. The poor fellow was new on the job—having been hired up from Texas—and Hayward knew he would appreciate a bit of bureaucratic hand-holding.
She finished the report, saved it, then took a sip of her coffee. It was barely tepid: she had already been in the office more than an hour. As she put down the cup, her cell phone rang. It was her personal phone, not her official one, and only four people knew the number: her mother, her sister, her family lawyer—and Vincent D’Agosta.
She pulled the phone from her jacket pocket and looked at it. A stickler for protocol, she normally wouldn’t answer it during working hours. This time, however, she closed the door to her office and flipped the phone open.
“Hello?” she spoke into it.
“Laura,” came D’Agosta’s voice. “It’s me.”
“Vinnie. Is everything okay? I was a little concerned when you didn’t call last night.”
“Everything’s okay, and I’m sorry about that. It’s just that things got a little… hectic.”
She sat back down behind her desk. “Tell me about it.”
There was a pause. “Well, we found the Black Frame.”
“The painting you’ve been looking for?”
“Yes. At least, I think we did.”
He didn’t sound very excited about it. If anything, he sounded irritated. “How’d you find it?”
“It was hidden behind the basement wall of a doughnut shop, if you can believe it.”
“So how did you get it?”
Another pause. “We, ah, broke in.”
“Broke in?”
“Yeah.”
Warning bells began to ring. “What’d you do, sneak in after hours?”
“No. We did it yesterday afternoon.”
“Go on.”
“Pendergast planned it. We went in pretending to be building code inspectors, and Pendergast—”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to hear anything more about that. Skip to after you got the painting.”
“Well, that’s why I couldn’t call like I normally do. As we left Baton Rouge, we noticed we were being followed. We had quite a chase through the swamps and bayous of—”
“Whoa, Vinnie! Stop a moment. Please.” This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. “I thought you promised me you’d take care of yourself, not get sucked into Pendergast’s extracurricular crap.”
“I know that, Laura. I haven’t forgotten it.” Another pause. “Once I knew we were close to the painting, really close, I felt like I’d do almost anything—if it helped solve the mystery, to get back to you.”
She sighed, shook her head. “What happened next?”
“We shook the tail. It was midnight before we finally returned to Penumbra. We carried the wooden box we’d retrieved into the library and set it on a table. Pendergast was unbelievably fussy about it. Instead of opening the damn crate with a crowbar, we had to use these tiny tools that would have made a jeweler cross-eyed. It took hours. The painting must have been exposed to damp at some point, because its back was stuck to the wood, and that took even longer to tease loose.”
“But it was the Black Frame?”
“It was in a black frame, all right. But the canvas was covered with mold and so dirty you couldn’t make anything out. Pendergast got some swabs and brushes and a bunch of solvents and cleaning agents and began to remove the dirt—wouldn’t let me touch it. After maybe fifteen minutes he got a small section of the painting clean, and then…”
“What?”
“The guy just suddenly went rigid. Before I knew it, he bundled me out of the library and locked the door.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I was standing there in the hallway. Never even got a glimpse of the painting.”
“I keep telling you, the guy’s not all there.”
“I admit, he has his ways. This was about three in the morning so I thought, the hell with it, and crashed. Next thing I knew, it was morning. He’s still in there, working away.”
Hayward felt herself doing a slow burn. “Typical Pendergast. Vinnie, he’s not your pal.”
She heard D’Agosta sigh. “I’ve been reminding myself that it’s his wife’s death we’re investigating here, that this all must be a huge shock to him… And he is my friend, even if he shows it in weird ways.” He paused. “Anything new on Constance Greene?”
“She’s under lock and key in the Bellevue Hospital prison ward. I interviewed her. She still maintains she threw her baby overboard.”
“Did she say why?”
“Yes. She said it was evil. Just like its father.”
“Jesus. I knew she was crazy, but not that crazy.”
“How did Pendergast take the news?”
“Hard to tell—like everything with Pendergast. On the surface, it barely seemed to affect him.”
There was a brief silence. Hayward wondered if she should try to pressure him to come home, but she realized she didn’t want to add to his burdens.
“There’s something else,” D’Agosta said.
“What’s that?”
“Remember the guy I told you about—Blackletter? Helen Pendergast’s old boss at Doctors With Wings?”
“What about him?”
“He was murdered in his house the night before last. Two 12-gauge shells, point blank, blew his guts right through him.”
“Good Lord.”
“And that’s not all. John Blast, the slimy guy we talked to in Sarasota? The other one interested in the Black Frame? I’d assumed he was the one tailing us. But I just heard it on the news—he was shot, too, just yesterday, not long after we snagged the painting. And guess what: once again, two 12-gauge rounds.”
“Any idea what’s going on?”
“When I heard about Blackletter being shot, I figured Blast was behind it. But now Blast’s dead, too.”
“You can thank Pendergast for that. Where he goes, trouble follows.”
“Hold on a sec.” There was a silence of perhaps twenty seconds before D’Agosta’s voice returned. “That’s Pendergast. He just knocked on my door. He says the painting is clean, and he wants my opinion. I love you, Laura. I’ll call tonight.”
And he was gone.
40
Penumbra Plantation
WHEN D’AGOSTA OPENED THE DOOR, PENDERGAST was standing outside in the plushly carpeted corridor, hands behind his back. He was still dressed in the plaid work shirt and denim trousers of their foray to Port Allen.
“I’m very sorry, Vincent,” he said. “Please forgive what must seem to you like the very height of rudeness and inconsideration on my part.”
D’Agosta did not reply.
“Perhaps things will become clearer when you see the painting. If you don’t mind—?” And he gestured toward the stairway.
D’Agosta stepped out and followed the agent down the hall toward the stairs. “Blast is dead,” he said. “Shot with the same sort of weapon that killed Blackletter.”
Pendergast paused in midstep. “Shot, you say?” Then he resumed walking—a little more slowly.
The library door stood open, yellow light from within spilling out into the front hall. Silently, Pendergast led the way down the stairs and through the arched doorway. The painting stood in the center of the room, on an easel. It was covered with a heavy velvet shroud.
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