Текст книги "The Cabinet of Curiosities"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

“I’m researching the early cabinets of curiosities.”

The old lady transfixed her with a glittering eye. “An interesting subject, child. And perhaps a dangerous one.”

ELEVEN

SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST lay in the hospital bed, motionless save for his pale eyes. He watched Nora Kelly leave the room and close the door. He glanced over at the wall clock: nine P.M. precisely. A good time to begin.

He thought back over each word Nora had uttered during her visit, looking for any trivial fact or passing reference that he might have overlooked on first hearing. But there was nothing more.

Her visit to Peekskill had confirmed his darkest suspicions: Pendergast had long believed Leng killed Shottum and burned the cabinet. And he felt sure that McFadden’s disappearance was also at the hands of Leng. No doubt Shottum had challenged Leng shortly after placing his letter in the elephant’s-foot box. Leng had murdered him, and covered it up with the fire.

Yet the most pressing questions remained. Whyhad Leng chosen the cabinet as his base of operations? Why did he begin volunteering his services at the houses of industry a year before killing Shottum? And where did he relocate his laboratory after the cabinet burned?

In Pendergast’s experience, serial killers were messy: they were incautious, they left clues. But Leng was, of course, very different. He was not, strictly speaking, a serial killer. He had been remarkably clever. Leng had left a kind of negative imprint wherever he went; the man seemed defined by how little was known about him. There was more to be learned, but it was deeply hidden in the masses of information strewn about his hospital room. There was only one way to coax this information out. Research alone would not suffice.

And then there was the growing problem of his increasing lack of objectivity regarding this case, his growing emotional involvement. If he did not bring himself sharply under control, if he did not reassert his habitual discipline, he would fail. And he could not fail.

It was time to make his journey.

Pendergast’s gaze shifted to the massings of books, maps, and old periodicals that filled half a dozen surgical carts in his room. His eyes moved from surface to tottering surface. The single most important piece of paper lay on his bedside table: the plans for Shottum’s Cabinet. One last time, he picked it up and gazed at it, memorizing every detail. The seconds ticked on. He laid down the yellowing plat.

It was time.But first, something had to be done about the intolerable landscape of noise that surrounded him.

After his condition was upgraded from serious to stable, Pendergast had himself transferred from St. Luke’s–Roosevelt to Lenox Hill Hospital. The old facility on Lexington Avenue had the thickest walls of any building in the city, save for his own Dakota. Even here, however, he was assaulted by sounds: the bleat of the blood-oxygen meter above his bed; the gossiping voices at the nurses’ station; the hissings and beepings of the telemetry machines and ventilators; the adenoidal patient snoring in the adjacent room; the rumble of the forced-air ducts deep in the walls and ceiling. There was nothing he could do that would physically stop these sounds; yet they could be made to disappear through other means. It was a powerful mind game he had developed, an adaptation of Chongg Ran,an ancient Bhutanese Buddhist meditative practice.

Pendergast closed his eyes. He imagined a chessboard inside his head, on a wooden table, standing in a pool of yellow light. Then he created two players. The first player made his opening move; the second followed. A game of speed chess ensued; and then another, and another. The two players changed strategies, forming adaptive counterattacks: Inverted Hanham, Two Knights Defense, Vienna Gambit.

One by one, the more distant noises dropped away.

When the final game ended in a draw, Pendergast dissolved the chess set. Then, in the darkness of his mind’s eye, he created four players, seated around a card table. Pendergast had always found bridge a nobler and subtler game than chess, but he rarely played it with others because, outside of his late family, he had found few worthy partners. Now the game began, each player ignorant of all but his own thirteen cards, each player with his own strategies and intellectual capabilities. The game began, with ruffs and slams and deep finesses. Pendergast toyed with the players, shifting Blackwood, Gerber, and Stayman conventions, positing a forgetful declarer, misunderstood signals between East and West.

By the time the first rubber was completed, all distractions were gone. The noises had ceased. In his mind, only a profound silence reigned. Pendergast turned further inward.

It was time for the memory crossing to begin.

Several minutes of intense mental concentration passed. Finally, he felt ready.

In his mind’s eye, he rose from his bed. He felt light, airy, like a ghost. He saw himself walk through the empty hospital corridors, down the stairwell, across the arched foyer, and out onto the wide front steps of the hospital.

Only the building was no longer a hospital. A hundred and twenty years before, it had been known as the New York Rest Home for Consumptives.

Pendergast stood on the steps for a moment, glancing around in the gathering dusk. To the west, toward Central Park, the Upper East Side had become a patchwork of hog farms, wild lands, and rocky eminences. Small groups of hovels sprouted up here and there, huddled together as if for protection against the elements. Gas lamps stood along the avenue, infrequent this far north of the populous downtown, throwing small circles of light down onto the dusky macadam.

The prospect was vague, indistinct: detail at this location was unimportant. Pendergast did, however, allow himself to sample the air. It smelled strongly of coal smoke, damp earth, and horse manure.

He descended the steps, turning onto Seventy-sixth Street and walking east toward the river. Here it was more thickly settled, newer brownstones abutting old wood-and-frame structures. Carriages swayed down the straw-strewn street. People passed him silently, the men dressed in long suits with thin lapels, women in bustles and veiled hats.

At the next intersection he boarded a streetcar, paying five cents for the ride down to Forty-second Street. There, he transferred to the Bowery & Third Avenue elevated railway, paying another twenty cents. This extravagant price ensured him a palace car, with curtained windows and plush seats. The steam locomotive heading the train was named the Chauncey M. Depew.As it hurtled southward, Pendergast sat without moving in his velveteen chair. Slowly, he allowed sound to intrude once more into his world: first the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, and then the chatter of his passengers. They were engrossed with the concerns of 1881: the president’s recovery and the imminent removal of the pistol ball; the Columbia Yacht Club sailing regatta on the Hudson earlier that afternoon; the miraculous curative properties of the Wilsonia Magnetic Garment.

There were still gaps, of course—hazy dark patches, like fog—about which Pendergast had little or no information. No memory crossing was ever complete. There were details of history that had been irrevocably lost.

When the train at last reached the lower stretches of the Bowery, Pendergast disembarked. He stood on the platform a moment, looking around a little more intently now. The elevated tracks were erected over the sidewalks, rather than along the middle of the street, and the awnings below were covered in a greasy film of oil drippings and ash. The Chauncey M. Depewgave a shriek, beginning its furious dash to the next stop. Smoke and hot cinders belched from its stack, scattering into the leaden air.

He descended skeletal wooden stairs to ground level, alighting outside a small shop. He glanced at its signboard: George Washington Abacus, Physiognomic Operator and Professor of the Tonsorial Art.The broad thoroughfare before him was a sea of bobbing plug hats. Trams and horsecars went careering down the center of the road. Peddlers of all kinds jostled the narrow sidewalk, crying out their trade to all who would listen. “Pots and pans!” called a tinker. “Mend your pots and pans!” A young woman trundling a steaming cauldron on wheels cried, “Oysters! Here’s your brave, good oysters!” At Pendergast’s left elbow, a man selling hot corn out of a baby’s perambulator fished out an ear, smeared it with a butter-soaked rag, and held it out invitingly. Pendergast shook his head and eased his way into the milling crowd. He was jostled; there was a momentary fog, a loss of concentration; and then Pendergast recovered. The scene returned.

He moved south, gradually bringing all five senses fully alive to the surroundings. The noise was almost overwhelming: clattering horseshoes, countless snatches of music and song, yelling, screaming, whinnying, cursing. The air was supercharged with the odors of sweat, dung, cheap perfume, and roasting meats.

Down the street, at 43 Bowery, Buffalo Bill was playing in the Scout of the Plainsstage show at the Windsor. Several other theaters followed, huge signs advertising current performances: Fedora, Peck’s Bad Boy, The Darkness to the North, Kit, the Arkansas Traveler.A blind Civil War veteran lay between two entrances, cap held out imploringly.

Pendergast glided past with barely a glance.

At a corner, he paused to get his bearings, then turned onto East Broadway Street. After the frenzy of Bowery, he entered a more silent world. He moved past the myriad shops of the old city, shuttered and dark at this hour: saddleries, millinery shops, pawnbrokers, slaughterhouses. Some of these buildings were distinct. Others—places Pendergast had not succeeded in identifying—were vague and shadowy, shrouded in that same indistinct fog.

At Catherine Street he turned toward the river. Unlike on East Broadway, all the establishments here—grog shops, sailors’ lodging houses, oyster-cellars—were open. Lamps cast lurid red stripes out into the street. A brick building loomed at the corner, low and long, streaked with soot. Its granite cornices and arched lintels spoke of a building done in a poor imitation of the Neo-Gothic style. A wooden sign, gold letters edged in black, hung over the door:

J. C. SHOTTUM’S CABINET

OF

NATURAL PRODUCTIONS

&

CURIOSITIES

A trio of bare electric bulbs in metal cages illuminated the doorway, casting a harsh glare onto the street. Shottum’s was open for business. A hired hawker shouted at the door. Pendergast could not catch the words above the noise and bustle. A large signboard standing on the pavement in front advertised the featured attractions– See the Double-Brained Child & Visit Our New Annex Showing Bewitching Female Bathers in Real Water.

Pendergast stood on the corner, the rest of the city fading into fog as he focused his concentration on the building ahead, meticulously reconstructing every detail. Slowly, the walls came into sharper focus—the dingy windows, the interiors, the bizarre collections, the maze of exhibit halls—as his mind integrated and shaped the vast quantity of information he had amassed.

When he was ready, he stepped forward and queued up. He paid his two pennies to a man in a greasy stovepipe hat and stepped inside. A low foyer greeted his eye, dominated on the far side with a mammoth skull. Standing next to it was a moth-eaten Kodiak bear, an Indian birchbark canoe, a petrified log. His eyes traveled around the room. The large thighbone of an Antediluvian Monsterstood against the far wall, and there were other eclectic specimens laid out, helter-skelter. The better exhibits, he knew, were deeper inside the cabinet.

Corridors ran off to the left and right, leading to halls packed with teeming humanity. In a world without movies, television, or radio—and where travel was an option only for the wealthiest—the popularity of this diversion was not surprising. Pendergast bore left.

The first part of the hall consisted of a systematic collection of stuffed birds, laid out on shelves. This exhibit, a feeble attempt to insinuate a little education, held no interest to the crowd, which streamed past on the way to less edifying exhibits ahead.

The corridor debouched into a large hall, the air hot and close. In the center stood what appeared to be a stuffed man, brown and wizened, with severely bowed legs, gripping a post. The label pinned below it read: Pygmy Man of Darkest Africa, Who Lived to Be Three Hundred Fifty-Five Years of Age Before Death by Snakebite.Closer inspection revealed it to be a shaved orangutan, doctored to look human, apparently preserved through smoking. It gave off a fearful smell. Nearby was an Egyptian mummy, standing against the wall in a wooden sarcophagus. There was a mounted skeleton missing its skull, labeled Remains of the Beautiful Countess Adele de Brissac, Executed by Guillotine, Paris, 1789.Next to it was a rusty piece of iron, dabbed with red paint, marked: The Blade That Cut Her.

Pendergast stood at the center of the hall and turned his attention to the noisy audience. He found himself mildly surprised. There were many more young people than he had assumed, as well as a greater cross section of humanity, from high to low. Young bloods and fancy men strolled by, puffing on cigars, laughing condescendingly at the exhibits. A group of tough-looking youths swaggered past, sporting the red flannel firemen’s shirts, broadcloth pantaloons, and greased “soap-lock” hair that identified them as Bowery Boys. There were workhouse girls, whores, urchins, street peddlers, and barmen. It was, in short, the same kind of crowd that thronged the streets outside. Now that the workday was done for many, they came to Shottum’s for an evening’s entertainment. The two-penny admission was within reach of all.

Two doors at the far end of the hall led to more exhibits, one to the bewitching ladies, the other marked Gallery of Unnatural Monstrosities.This latter was narrow and dark, and it was the exhibit that Pendergast had come to see.

The sounds of the crowds were muffled here, and there were fewer visitors, mostly nervous, gaping youngsters. The carnival atmosphere had changed into something quieter, more eerie. The darkness, the closeness, the stillness, all conspired to create the effect of fear.

At the first turn of the gallery stood a table, on which was a large jar of thick glass, stoppered and sealed, containing a floating human baby. Two miniature, perfectly formed arms stuck out from its forehead. Pendergast peered closer and saw that, unlike many of the other exhibits, this one had not been doctored. He passed on. There was a small alcove containing a dog with a cat’s head, this one clearly fake, the sewing marks visible through the thinning hair. It stood next to a giant clam, propped open, showing a skeletonized foot inside. The label copy told the gruesome story of the hapless pearl diver. Around another corner, there was a great miscellany of objects in jars of formaldehyde: a Portuguese man-of-war, a giant rat from Sumatra, a hideous brown thing the size of a flattened watermelon, marked Liver, from a Woolly Mammoth Frozen in Siberian Ice.Next to it was a Siamese-twinned giraffe fetus. The next turn revealed a shelf with a human skull with a hideous bony growth on the forehead, labeled The Rhinoceros Man of Cincinnati.

Pendergast paused, listening. Now the sounds of the crowd were very faint, and he was alone. Beyond, the darkened hall made one last sharp turn. An elaborately stylized arrow pointed toward an unseen exhibit around the corner. A sign read: Visit Wilson One-Handed: For Those Who Dare.

Pendergast glided around the corner. Here, it was almost silent. At the moment, there were no other visitors. The hall terminated in a small alcove. In the alcove was a single exhibit: a glass case containing a desiccated head. The shriveled tongue still protruded from the mouth, looking like a cheroot clamped between the twisted lips. Next to it lay what appeared to be a dried sausage, about a foot long, with a rusty hook attached to one end by leather straps. Next to that, the frayed end of a hangman’s noose.

A label identified them:

T HE HEAD

OF THE NOTORIOUS MURDERER

AND ROBBER

W ILSON ONE-HANDED

H UNG BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD

D AKOTA TERRITORY

J ULY 4, 1868

T HE NOOSE

FROM WHICH HE SWUNG

T HE FOREARM STUMP AND HOOK OF WILSON ONE-HANDED

W HICH BROUGHT IN A BOUNTY

OF ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS

Pendergast examined the cramped room. It was isolated and very dark. It was cut off from view of the other exhibits by a sharp turn of the corridor. It would comfortably admit only one person at a time.

A cry for help here would be unheard, out in the main galleries.

The little alcove ended in a cul-de-sac. As Pendergast stared at it, pondering, the wall wavered, then disappeared, as fog once again enshrouded his memory construct and the mental image fell away. But it did not matter: he had seen enough, threaded his way through sufficient passages, to understand.

And now—at last—he knew how Leng had procured his victims.

TWELVE

PATRICK O’SHAUGHNESSY STOOD on the corner of Seventy-second and Central Park West, staring at the facade of the Dakota apartment building. There was a vast arched entrance to an inner courtyard, and beyond the entrance the building ran at least a third of the way down the block. It was there, in the darkness, that Pendergast had been attacked.

In fact, it probably looked just about like this when Pendergast was stabbed—except for the old man, of course; the one Pendergast had seen wearing a derby hat. Astonishing that the guy had almost managed to overpower the FBI agent, even factoring in the element of surprise.

O’Shaughnessy wondered again just what the hell he was doing here. He was off duty. He should be in J. W.’s hoisting a few with friends, or messing about his apartment, listening to that new recording of The Bartered Bride.They weren’t paying him: so why should he care?

But he found, strangely enough, that he did care.

Custer, naturally, had dismissed it as a simple mugging: “Friggin’ rube out-of-towner, no surprise he got his ass mugged.” Well, O’Shaughnessy knew Pendergast was no rube. The man probably played up his New Orleans roots just to keep people like Custer off guard. And he didn’t think Pendergast had gotten mugged, either. But now it was time to decide: just what was he going to do about it?

Slowly, he began to walk toward the site of the attack.

Earlier in the day, he’d visited Pendergast in the hospital. Pendergast had hinted to him that it would be useful—more than useful—to have the coroner’s report on the bones found at the construction site. To get it, O’Shaughnessy realized, he would have to go around Custer. Pendergast also wanted more information on the developer, Fairhaven—who Custer had made it clear was off-limits. It was then O’Shaughnessy realized he had crossed some invisible line, from working for Custer to working for Pendergast. It was a new, almost heady feeling: for the first time in his life, he was working with someone he respected. Someone who wasn’t going to prejudge him on old history, or treat him as a disposable, fifth-generation Irish cop. Thatwas the reason he was here, at the Dakota, on his night off. That’s what a partner did when the other one got into trouble.

Pendergast, as usual, was silent on the attack. But to O’Shaughnessy, it had none of the earmarks of a mugging. He remembered, dimly, his days at the academy, all the statistics on various types of crimes and how they were committed. Back then, he had big ideas about where he was going in the force. That was before he took two hundred bucks from a prostitute because he felt sorry for her.

And—he had to admit to himself—because he needed the money.

O’Shaughnessy stopped, coughed, spat on the sidewalk.

Back at the academy, it had been Motive, Means, Opportunity. Take motive, for starters. Why kill Pendergast?

Put the facts in order.One: the guy is investigating a 130-year-old serial killer. No motive there: killer’s dead.

Two: a copycat killer springs up. Pendergast is at the autopsy before there’s even an autopsy. Christ,thought O’Shaughnessy, he must have known what was going on even before the doctor did. Pendergast had already made the connection between the murder of the tourist and the nineteenth-century killings.

How?

Three: Pendergast gets attacked.

Those were the facts, as O’Shaughnessy saw them. So what could he conclude?

That Pendergast alreadyknew something important. And the copycat serial killer knew it, too. Whatever it was, it was important enough that this killer took a big risk in targeting him, on Seventy-second Street—not exactly deserted, even at nine o’clock in the evening—and had almost succeeded in killing him, which was the most astonishing thing of all.

O’Shaughnessy swore. The big mystery here was Pendergast himself. He wished Pendergast would level with him, share more information. The man was keeping him in the dark. Why? Now thatwas a question worth asking.

He swore again. Pendergast was asking a hell of a lot, but he wasn’t giving anything in return. Why was he wasting a fine fall evening tramping around the Dakota, looking for clues that weren’t there, for a guy who didn’t want help?

Cool it,O’Shaughnessy told himself. Pendergast was the most logical, methodical guy he’d ever met. He’d have his reasons. All in good time. Meanwhile, this was a waste. Time for dinner and the latest issue of Opera News.

O’Shaughnessy turned to head home. And that’s when he saw the tall, shadowy figure come into view at the corner.

Instinctively, O’Shaughnessy shrank into the nearest doorway. He waited. The figure stood on the corner, precisely where he himself had stood only a few minutes before, glancing around. Then it started down the street toward him, slowly and furtively.

O’Shaughnessy stiffened, receding deeper into the shadows. The figure crept down to the angle of the building, pausing right at the spot where Pendergast had been assaulted. The beam of a flashlight went on. He seemed to be inspecting the pavement, looking around. He was dressed in a long dark coat, which could easily be concealing a weapon. He was certainly no cop. And the attack had not been in the papers.

O’Shaughnessy made a quick decision. He grasped his service revolver in his right hand and pulled out his shield with his left. Then he stepped out of the shadows.

“Police officer,” he said quietly but firmly. “Don’t move. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

The figure jumped sideways with a yelp, holding up a pair of gangly arms. “Wait! Don’t shoot! I’m a reporter!”

O’Shaughnessy relaxed as he recognized the man. “So it’s you,” he said, holstering his gun, feeling disappointed.

“Yeah, and it’s you,” Smithback lowered his trembling arms. “The cop from the opening.”

“Sergeant O’Shaughnessy.”

“Right. What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, probably,” said O’Shaughnessy. Then he stopped abruptly, remembering he was speaking to a reporter. It wouldn’t be good for this to get back to Custer.

Smithback mopped his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “You scared the piss out of me.”

“Sorry. You looked suspicious.”

Smithback shook his head. “I imagine I did.” He glanced around. “Find anything?”

“No.”

There was a brief silence.

“Who do you think did it? Think it was just some mugger?”

Although Smithback was echoing the same question he’d asked himself moments before, O’Shaughnessy merely shrugged. The best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut.

“Surely the police have some kind of theory.”

O’Shaughnessy shrugged again.

Smithback stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Look, I understand if it’s confidential. I can quote you ‘not for attribution.’ ”

O’Shaughnessy wasn’t going to fall into that trap.

Smithback sighed, looking up at the buildings with an air of finality. “Well, there’s nothing much else to be seen around here. And if you’re going to clam up, I might as well go get a drink. Try to recover from that fright you gave me.” He snugged the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Night, Officer.”

He began to walk away. Then he stopped, as if struck by an idea.

“Want to come along?”

“No, thanks.”

“Come on,” the reporter said. “You don’t look like you’re on duty.”

“I said no.”

Smithback took a step closer. “You know, now that I think about it, maybe we could help each other out here. Know what I mean? I need to keep in touch with this investigation into the Surgeon.”

“The Surgeon?”

“Haven’t you heard? That’s what the Postis calling this serial killer. Cheesy, huh? Anyway, I need information, and I’ll bet you need information. Am I right?”

O’Shaughnessy said nothing. He did need information. But he wondered if Smithback really had something, or was just bullshitting.

“I’ll level with you, Sergeant. I got scooped on that tourist killing in Central Park. And now, I have to scramble to get new developments, or my editor will have my ass for brunch. A little advance notice here and there, nothing too specific, just a nod from a friend—you, for instance. That’s all.”

“What kind of information do you have?” O’Shaughnessy asked guardedly. He thought back a minute to what Pendergast had said. “Do you have anything on, say, Fairhaven?”

Smithback rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? I’ve got a sackful on him. Not that it’ll do you much good, but I’m willing to share. Let’s talk about it over a drink.”

O’Shaughnessy glanced up and down the street. Despite his better judgment, he found himself tempted. Smithback might be a hustler, but he seemed a decent sort of hustler. And he’d even worked with Pendergast in the past, though the reporter didn’t seem too eager to reminisce about it. And finally, Pendergast had asked him to put together a file on Fairhaven.

“Where?”

Smithback smiled. “Are you kidding? The best bars in New York City are just one block west, on Columbus. I know a great place, where all the Museum types go. It’s called the Bones. Come on, the first round’s on me.”

THIRTEEN

THE FOG GREW thicker for a moment. Pendergast waited, maintaining his concentration. Then through the fog came flickerings of orange and yellow. Pendergast felt heat upon his face. The fog began to clear.

He was standing outside J. C. Shottum’s Cabinet of Natural Productions and Curiosities. It was night. The cabinet was burning. Angry flames leapt from the first– and second-story windows, punching through billowing clouds of black, acrid smoke. Several firemen and a bevy of police were frantically roping off the street around the building and pushing curious onlookers back from the conflagration. Inside the rope, several knots of firefighters arced hopeless streams of water into the blaze, while others scurried to douse the gaslights along the sidewalk.

The heat was a physical force, a wall. Standing on the street corner, Pendergast’s gaze lingered appreciatively on the fire engine: a big black boiler on carriage wheels, belching steam, Amoskeag Manufacturing Companyin gold letters on its sweating sides. Then he turned toward the onlookers. Would Leng be among them, admiring his handiwork? No, he would have been long gone. Leng was no pyromaniac. He would be safely ensconced in his uptown house, location unknown.

The location of the house was a great question. But another, perhaps more pressing, question remained: where had Leng moved his laboratory?

There was a tremendous, searing crack; roof timbers collapsed inward with a roiling shower of sparks; an appreciative murmur rose from the crowd. With a final look at the doomed structure, Pendergast began threading his way through the crowd.

A little girl rushed up, no older than six, threadbare and frighteningly gaunt. She had a battered straw broom in her hand, and she swept the street corner ahead of him industriously, clearing away the dung and pestilential garbage, hoping pathetically for a coin. “Thank you,” Pendergast said, tossing her several broad copper pennies. She looked at the coins, eyes wide at her good fortune, then curtsied awkwardly.

“What’s your name, child?” Pendergast asked gently.

The girl looked up at him, as if surprised to hear an adult speak to her in a solicitous tone. “Constance Greene, sir,” she said.

“Greene?” Pendergast frowned. “Of Water Street?”

“No, sir. Not—not anymore.” Something seemed to have frightened the girl, and, with another curtsy, she turned and melted away down a crowded side street.

Pendergast stared down the foul street and its seething crowds for some time. Then, with a troubled expression on his face, he turned and slowly retraced his steps. A barker stood in the doorway of Brown’s Restaurant, delivering the bill of fare in a loud, breathless, ceaseless litany:

Biledlamancapersors.

Rosebeefrosegoorosemuttonan‌taters—

Biledamancabbage, vegetay bles—

Walkinsirtakaseatsir.

Pendergast moved on thoughtfully, listening to the City Hall bell toll the urgent fire alarm. Making his way to Park Street, he passed a chemist’s shop, closed and shuttered, an array of bottles in diverse sizes and colors decorating the window: Paine’s Celery Compound; Swamp Root; D. & A. Younce’s Indian Cure Oil (Good for Man and Beast).

Two blocks down Park, he stopped abruptly. He was fully attentive now, eyes open to every detail. He had painstakingly researched this region of old New York, and the fog of his memory construct retreated well into the distance. Here, Baxter and Worth Streets angled in sharply, creating a crazy-quilt of intersections known as the Five Points. In the bleak landscape of urban decay that stretched before him, there was none of the carefree revelry Pendergast had found earlier, along Bowery.

Thirty years before, in the 1850s, the “Points” had been the worst slum in all New York, in all America, worse even than London’s Seven Dials. It remained a miserable, squalid, dangerous place: home to fifty thousand criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes, orphans, confidence men, villains of all shape and description. The uneven streets were broken and scored into dangerous ruts, brimming with garbage and offal. Hogs wandered about, rooting and wallowing in the fouled gutters. The houses seemed prematurely aged, their windows broken, tarpaper roofs hanging free, timbers sagging. A single gas lamp threw light into the intersection. On all sides, narrow streets marched off into endless darkness. The doors of the first-floor taverns were flung wide against the summer heat. The smells of liquor and cigar smoke issued forth. Women, bare-breasted, lolled in the doorways, exchanging obscene jeers with whores in the neighboring saloons or soliciting passersby in lurid tones. Across the way, nickel-a-night flophouses, riddled with vermin and pestilence, sat between the shabby cow-sheds of fencers of stolen goods.