Dance of Death (7 page)

D'Agosta picked up the pile, riffled through it. There was a variety of thefts, too. A pharmaceutical manufacturing company, reporting the robbery of a freezer full of experimental drugs. A collection of diamonds mysteriously vanished from a vault in Israel. A rare, fist-sized piece of amber containing a leaf from a long-extinct plant, lifted from a wealthy couple's apartment in Paris. A unique, polished T. rex coprolite, dating precisely from the K-T boundary.

He replaced the clippings on the table with a sigh.

Next his eye fell on a small sheaf of papers from Sandringham, a private school in the south of England that Diogenes attended-unknown to his family-to finish out his last year of upper school. He had managed to get himself accepted on the strength of several forged documents and a phony set of parents hired for the occasion. Despite a first- semester report card putting him in the first of every form, he was expelled a few months later. Judging from the paperwork, the school gave no reason for the expulsion and responded to Pendergast's queries with evasion, even agitation. Other papers showed that Pendergast had contacted a certain Brian Cooper on several occasions-Cooper had briefly been the roommate of Diogenes at Sandringham-but it seemed the boy refused to respond. A final letter from the youth's parents said Brian had been placed in an institution, where he was being treated for acute catatonia.

Following the expulsion, Diogenes slipped completely out of view for more than two years. And then he had surfaced to claim his inheritance. Four months later, he staged his own death in Canterbury.

After that, silence.

No-that wasn't quite true. There was one final communication. D'Agosta turned toward a folded sheet of heavy linen paper, sitting alone at one corner of the table. He reached for it, opened it thoughtfully. At the top was an embossed coat of arms, a lidless eye over two moons, a lion crouched beneath. And at the very center of the sheet was a date, written in violet ink with what D'Agosta now recognized as Diogenes's handwriting:
January 28.

Inexorably, D'Agosta's mind returned once again to the October day when he'd first held the letter-here, in this room, on the eve of their departure to Italy. Pendergast had shown it to him and spoken briefly of Diogenes's plan to commit the perfect crime.

But D'Agosta had returned from Italy alone. And now it was up to him-and nobody else-to follow through for his dead partner, to stop the crime that presumably would occur on January 28.

Less than a week away.

He felt a rising panic; there was so little time left. The roommate at Sandringham: now, there was a lead. He'd call the parents tomorrow, see if the boy was talking. Even if he struck out there, undoubtedly there were other boys at the school who had known Diogenes.

D'Agosta folded the paper carefully and returned it to the table. Beside it lay a single black-and-white photograph, scuffed and creased with age. He picked it up, held it to the light. A man, a woman, and two young boys, standing before an elaborate wrought-iron railing. An imposing mansion could be seen in the middle distance. It was a warm day: the boys were in shorts, and the woman wore a summer dress. The man stared at the camera with a patrician face. The woman was beautiful, with light hair and a mysterious smile. The boys were perhaps eight and five. The elder stood straight, arms behind his back, looking gravely into the lens. His light blond hair was carefully parted, his clothes pressed. Something about the shape of the cheekbones, the aquiline features, told D'Agosta this was Agent Pendergast.

Beside him was a younger boy with ginger hair, hands pressed together, fingers pointed skyward, as if in prayer. Unlike his older sibling, Diogenes seemed faintly disheveled. But there was nothing in his dress or his grooming to account for this. Maybe it was something in the relaxed, almost languid draping of his limbs, so out of context with the chastely positioned hands. Maybe it was the parted lips, too full and sensual for a person so young. Both eyes looked the same- this must have been before the illness.

Still, D'Agosta was drawn to the eyes. They weren't looking at the camera, but at some point past it if they were looking at anything at all. They seemed dull, almost dead, out of place in that childish little face. D'Agosta felt an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach.

There was a rustle beside him and D'Agosta jumped. Constance Greene had suddenly materialized at his side. She seemed to have Pendergast's ability to approach with almost total silence.

"I'm sorry," Constance said. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"No problem. Looking at all this stuff is enough to creep anyone out."

"Excuse me. Creep out?"

"It's just an expression."

"Have you found anything interesting? Anything at all?"

D'Agosta shook his head. "Nothing we didn't talk about earlier." He paused. "The only thing is, I didn't see anything in here about Diogenes's illness. Scarlet fever, according to Aunt Cornelia. She said it changed him."

"I wish there was more information I could give you. I've searched the collections and the family papers, just in case there was something Aloysius overlooked. But he was very thorough. There's nothing else."

Nothing else.
Diogenes's whereabouts, his appearance, his activities, even the crime he planned to commit: everything was a blank.

There was only a date-January 28. Next Monday.

"Maybe Pendergast was wrong," D'Agosta said, trying to sound hopeful. "About the date, I mean. Maybe it's not for another year. Or maybe it's something else entirely." He gestured at the documents strewn across the table. "All this seems so far away and long ago. It's hard to believe something big's about to happen."

The only response from Constance was a faint, and fleeting, smile.

EIGHT

Lorace Sawtelle passed the oversize vellum menu back to the waiter with relief. He wished that once-just once-a client would come to
him.
He hated the sprawling concrete jungles they all worked in: Chicago, Detroit, and now New York. Once you got to know it, Keokuk wasn't so bad. He knew all the best watering holes and titty bars. Some of his clients might even develop a deep admiration for certain Iowan charms.

Across the table, his client was ordering something that sounded like cough-up of veal. Horace Sawtelle wondered if the man really knew what the hell he was asking for. He himself had scanned the menu, first one side and then the other, with deep misgivings. Handwritten French script, and unpronounceable at that. He'd settled on something called steak tartare. Hell, how bad could it be? Even the French couldn't ruin steak. And he liked tartar sauce on fish sticks.

"You don't mind if I glance through them once more before signing?" the client asked, holding up the sheaf of contracts.

Sawtelle nodded. "You go right ahead." Never mind that they'd spent the last two hours going over them with a damn magnifying glass. You'd think the guy was buying a million dollars' worth of Palm Beach real estate instead of fifty grand in machine parts.

The client buried his nose in the paperwork and Sawtelle looked around, idly crunching on a breadstick. They were sitting in what looked to him like a glassed-in sidewalk cafe, protruding out into the sidewalk from the main restaurant. Every table was full: these pasty-faced New Yorkers needed all the sunlight they could get. Three women sat at the next table, black-haired and gaunt, picking at huge fruit salads. On the far side, a fat businessman was digging into a plate of something yellow and slippery.

A truck passed in a shriek of grinding gears, seemingly inches away from the glass wall, and Sawtelle's hand closed reflexively, breaking the breadstick. He wiped his hand on the tablecloth in disgust. Why the hell had the client insisted on eating out here, in the January chill? He glanced up through the glass ceiling at the pink awning,
La Vielle Ville
stitched on it in white. Above towered one of the huge cliff dwellings that passed for apartments in New York City. Sawtelle eyed the rows of identical windows rising toward the sooty sky. Like a damn high-rise prison. Probably held a thousand people. How could they stand it?

There was a flurry of activity near the entrance to the kitchen and Sawtelle glanced over disinterestedly. Maybe it was his lunch. Prepared tableside, the menu had said. And just how the hell were they going to do that: wheel a Weber grill over and fire up the charcoal? But sure enough, here they came, a whole damn procession of men in white smocks, pushing what looked like a small gurney in front of them.

The chef parked the rolling table at Sawtelle's elbow with a proud flourish. He barked a few orders in rapid-fire French and several underlings began to scurry around, one chopping onions, another frenziedly beating a raw egg. Sawtelle scanned the rolling table. There were little white toast points, a pile of round green things he guessed were capers, spices and dishes of unknown liquids, and a cupful of minced garlic. In the center, a fist-sized wad of raw hamburger. No steak or tartar sauce to be had for love or money.

With great ceremony, the chef dropped the hamburger into a stainless bowl, poured in the raw egg, the garlic, and onions, then began mashing everything together. In a few moments, he removed the sticky mass and dropped it back onto the rolling table, working it slowly between his fingers. Sawtelle glanced away, making a mental note to ask that the hamburger be cooked extra-well-done.
You never know what kinds of diseases these New Yorkers carry around.
And where was the damn grill, anyway?

At that moment, a waiter appeared at the client's side and slipped a plate onto the table. Sawtelle looked over in surprise just as another waiter darted in and slid something in between his own knife and fork. Looking down, Sawtelle saw with incredulity that the glistening patty of raw beef-now tamped down into a neat little mound-sat in front of him, surrounded by wedges of toast, chopped eggs, and capers.

Sawtelle looked up again quickly, uncomprehending. Across the table, the client was nodding approvingly.

The chef beamed at them briefly from the far side of the table, then stepped back as his flunkies began wheeling the apparatus away.

"Excuse me," Sawtelle said in a low voice. "You haven't cooked it."

The chef stopped.
"Pourquoi?"

Sawtelle jerked a finger in the direction of his plate. "I said, you haven't
cooked
it. You know, heat. Fire. Flambé."

The chef shook his head vigorously. "No,
monsieur.
Is no cook."

"You don't cook steak tartare," the client said, pausing as he was about to sign the contracts. "It's served raw. You didn't know?" A superior smile came briefly to his lips, then vanished.

Sawtelle sat back, rolling his eyes heavenward, struggling to keep his temper.
Only in New York. Twenty-five bucks for a mound of raw hamburger.

Suddenly, he stiffened. "Sweet Caesar, what the hell is that?"

Far above him, a man dangled in the sky: limbs flung wide and flailing silently in the chill air. For a moment, it seemed to Sawtelle that the man was just hovering there, as if by magic. But then he made out the thin taut line of rope that arrowed upward from the man's neck. It disappeared into a window above, black and broken. Sawtelle stared openmouthed, thunderstruck by the sight.

Others in the restaurant had followed his gaze. There were sharp intakes of breath, a sudden gasp.

The figure jerked and shuddered, its back arching in agony until the victim seemed almost bent double. Sawtelle watched, transfixed with horror.

Then, suddenly, the rope parted. The man, flapping his arms and churning his legs, dropped directly toward him.

Just as suddenly, Sawtelle found he could move again. With an inarticulate cry, he threw himself backward in his chair. A split second later, there came an explosion of glass, and a shape hurtled past in a shower of glass and landed with a deafening crash on the women and their fruit salads, which disintegrated into a strange pastel eruption of reds and yellows and greens. From his position on his back on the floor, Sawtelle felt something warm and wet slap him hard across the side of the face, followed almost immediately by a shower of broken glass, dishes, cups, forks, spoons, and flowers, all raining down from the impact.

A strange silence. And then the cries began, the screams of pain, horror, and fear, but they seemed strangely soft and far away. Then he realized that his right ear was full of an unknown substance.

As he lay on his back, the full impact of what had just happened finally registered. Disbelief and horror washed over him once again. For a minute, maybe two, he found himself unable to move. The cries and shrieks grew steadily louder.

At last, with a heroic effort, he forced his unwilling limbs to respond. He rose to his knees, then staggered to his feet. Other people were now climbing to their feet, the room filling with the muffled shrieks and moans of the damned. Glass lay everywhere. The table at his right had turned into a crumpled mound of food, gore, flowers, tablecloth, napkins, and splintered wood. His own table was covered with glass. The twenty-five-dollar mound of raw hamburger was the only thing that had been spared, and it sat in solitary splendor, fresh and gleaming, all by itself.

His eyes moved to his client, who was still sitting, motionless, his suit splattered with something indescribable.

Abruptly, involuntarily, Sawtelle's limbs went into action. He swiveled about, found the door, took a step, lost his balance, recovered, took another.