The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast #3)(23)

A wise guy. He wondered how many more assignments he’d have like this. Just because he made a mistake five years ago, they all thought he was Mister Expendable. Any time there was something funny coming down the pike, it was always: We’ve got a little problem here, O’Shaughnessy, and you’re just the man to take care of it. But it was usually just penny-ante stuff. This guy in the Rolls, he looked big-time. This was different. This looked illegal. O’Shaughnessy thought of his long-gone father and felt a stab of shame. Thank God the man wasn’t around to see him now. Five generations of O’Shaughnessys in the force, and now everything gone to shit. He wondered if he could hack the eleven more years required before an early severance package became available.

“So what’s the game?” O’Shaughnessy asked. No more sucker work: he was going to keep his eyes open and his head up on this one. He didn’t want any stray shit to fall when he wasn’t looking up.

“Sergeant?”

“What.”

“There is no game.”

“Of course not.” O’Shaughnessy let out a little snort. “There never is.” He realized the FBI agent was looking at him intently. He continued looking away.

“I can see that you’re under a misapprehension here, Sergeant,” came the drawl. “We should rectify that at once. You see, I can understand why you’d jump to that conclusion. Five years ago, you were caught on a surveillance tape taking two hundred dollars from a prostitute in exchange for releasing her. I believe they call it a ‘shakedown. ’ Have I got that right?”

O’Shaughnessy felt a sudden numbness, followed by a slow anger. Here it was again. He said nothing. What was there to say? It would have been better if they’d cashiered him.

“The tape got sent to Internal Affairs. Internal Affairs paid you a visit. But there were differing accounts of what happened, nothing was proven. Unfortunately, the damage was done, and since that time you’ve seen your career—how should I put it?—remain in stasis.”

O’Shaughnessy continued looking out the window, at the rush of buildings. Remain in stasis. You mean, go nowhere.

“And you’ve caught nothing since but a series of questionable assignments and gray-area errands. Of which you no doubt consider this one more.”

O’Shaughnessy spoke to the window, his voice deliberately tired. “Pendergast, I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t need to listen to this. I really don’t.”

“I saw that tape,” said Pendergast.

“Good for you.”

“I heard, for example, the prostitute pleading with you to let her go, saying that her pimp would beat her up if you didn’t. Then I heard her insisting you take the two hundred dollars, because if you didn’t, her pimp would assume she had betrayed him. But if you took the money, he would only think she’d bribed her way out of custody and spare her. Am I right? So you took the money.”

O’Shaughnessy had been through this in his own mind a thousand times. What difference did it make? He didn’t have to take the money. He hadn’t given it to charity, either. Pimps were beating up prostitutes every day. He should’ve left her to her fate.

“So now you’re cynical, you’re tired, you’ve come to realize that the whole idea of protect and serve is farcical, especially out there on the streets, where there doesn’t even seem to be right or wrong, nobody worth protecting, and nobody worth serving.”

There was a silence.

“Are we through with the character analysis?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

“For the moment. Except to say that, yes, this is a questionable assignment. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

The next silence stretched into minutes.

They stopped at a light, and O’Shaughnessy took an opportunity to cast a covert glance toward Pendergast. The man, as if knowing the glance was coming, caught his eye and pinned it. O’Shaughnessy almost jumped, he looked away so fast.

“Did you, by any chance, catch the show last year, Costuming History?” Pendergast asked, his voice now light and pleasant.

“What?”

“I’ll take that as a no. You missed a splendid exhibition. The Met has a fine collection of historical clothing dating back to the early Middle Ages. Most of it was in storage. But last year, they mounted an exhibition showing how clothing evolved over the last six centuries. Absolutely fascinating. Did you know that all ladies at Louis XIV’s court at Versailles were required to have a thirteen-inch waist or less? And that their dresses weighed between thirty and forty pounds?”

O’Shaughnessy realized he didn’t know how to answer. The conversation had taken such a strange and sudden tack that he found himself momentarily stunned.

“I was also interested to learn that in the fifteenth century, a man’s codpiece—”

This tidbit was mercifully interrupted by a screech of brakes as the Rolls swerved to avoid a cab cutting across three lanes of traffic.

“Yankee barbarians,”said Pendergast mildly. “Now, where was I? Ah yes, the codpiece…”

The Rolls was caught in Midtown traffic now, and O’Shaughnessy began to wonder just how much longer this ride was going to take.


The Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum was sheeted in Beaux Arts marble, decorated with vast sprays of flowers, and almost unbearably crowded. O’Shaughnessy hung back while the strange FBI agent talked to one of the harried volunteers at the information desk. She picked up a phone, called someone, then put it down again, looking highly irritated. O’Shaughnessy began to wonder what this Pendergast was up to. Throughout the extended trip uptown he’d said nothing about his intended plan of action.