The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(125)

Custer raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Am I?”

“Since I assume you’re asking a rhetorical question, I won’t bother to answer it.”

Custer smiled. He didn’t know what a rhetorical question was, but he could see that his questions were finding their mark. He gave the gem case another stroke, then glanced around. He’d covered the office; all that remained was the closet. He strolled over, put his hand on the handle, paused.

“But it did make you angry? Being contradicted like that, I mean.”

“No one is pleased to be countermanded,” Brisbane replied icily. “The man was an anachronism, his work habits clearly inefficient. Look at that typewriter he insisted on using for all his correspondence.”

“Yes. The typewriter. The one the murderer used to write one—make that two—notes. You knew about that typewriter, I take it?”

“Everybody did. The man was infamous for refusing to allow a computer terminal on his desk, refusing to use e-mail.”

“I see.” Custer nodded, opened the closet.

As if on cue, an old-fashioned black derby hat fell out, bounced across the floor, and rolled in circles until it finally came to rest at Custer’s feet.

Custer looked down at it in astonishment. It couldn’t have happened more perfectly if this had been an Agatha Christie murder mystery. This kind of thing just didn’t happen in real policework. He could hardly believe it.

He looked up at Brisbane, his eyebrows arching quizzically.

Brisbane looked first confounded, then flustered, then angry.

“It was for a costume party at the Museum,” the lawyer said. “You can check for yourself. Everyone saw me in it. I’ve had it for years.”

Custer poked his head into the closet, rummaged around, and removed a black umbrella, tightly furled. He brought it out, stood it up on its point, then released it. The umbrella toppled over beside the hat. He looked up again at Brisbane. The seconds ticked on.

“This is absurd!” exploded Brisbane.

“I haven’t said anything,” said Custer. He looked at Noyes. “Did you say anything?”

“No, sir, I didn’t say anything.”

“So what exactly, Mr. Brisbane, is absurd?”

“What you’re thinking—” The man could hardly get out the words. “That I’m… that, you know… Oh, this is perfectly ridiculous!”

Custer placed his hands behind his back. He came forward slowly, one step after another, until he reached the desk. And then, very deliberately, he leaned over it.

“What am I thinking, Mr. Brisbane?” he asked quietly.





THREE




THE ROLLS ROCKETED UP RIVERSIDE, THEIR DRIVER WEAVING EXPERTLY through the lines of traffic, threading the big vehicle through impossibly narrow gaps, sometimes forcing opposing cars onto the curb. It was after eleven P.M., and the traffic was beginning to thin out. But the curbs of Riverside and the side streets that led away from it remained completely jammed with parked cars.

The car swerved onto 131st Street, slowing abruptly. And almost immediately—no more than half a dozen cars in from Riverside—Nora spotted it: a silver Ford Taurus, New York plate ELI-7734.

Pendergast got out, walked over to the parked car, leaned toward the dashboard to verify the VIN. Then he moved around to the passenger door and broke the glass with an almost invisible jab. The alarm shrieked in protest while he searched the glove compartment and the rest of the interior. In a moment he returned.

“The car’s empty,” he told Nora. “He must have taken the address with him. We’ll have to hope Leng’s house is close by.”

Telling Proctor to park at Grant’s Tomb and wait for their call, Pendergast led the way down 131st in long, sweeping strides. Within moments they reached the Drive itself. Riverside Park stretched away across the street, its trees like gaunt sentinels at the edge of a vast, unknown tract of darkness. Beyond the park was the Hudson, glimmering in the vague moonlight.

Nora looked left and right, at the countless blocks of decrepit apartment buildings, old abandoned mansions, and squalid welfare hotels that stretched in both directions. “How are we going to find it?” she asked.

“It will have certain characteristics,” Pendergast replied. “It will be a private house, at least a hundred years old, not broken into apartments. It will probably look abandoned, but it will be very secure. We’ll head south first.”

But before proceeding, he stopped and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Normally, I’d never allow a civilian along on a police action.”

“But that’s my boyfriend caught—”

Pendergast raised his hand. “We have no time for discussion. I have already considered carefully what it is we face. I’m going to be as blunt as possible. If we do find Leng’s house, the chances of my succeeding without assistance are very small.”

“Good. I wouldn’t let you leave me behind, anyway.”

“I know that. I also know that, given Leng’s cunning, two people have a better chance of success than a large—and loud—official response. Even if we could get such a response in time. But I must tell you, Dr. Kelly, I am bringing you into a situation where there are an almost infinite number of unknown variables. In short, it is a situation in which it is very possible one or both of us may be killed.”