Текст книги "Brimstone"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston,Lincoln Child
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

{ 47 }

 

As Pendergast drove south, D'Agosta booted the laptop, accessed the Internet via a wireless cellular connection, and initiated a search on Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. Within a few minutes, he had more information than he knew what to do with, starting with the fact that Ponsonby was Lyman Professor of Art History at Princeton University.

"I thought the name was familiar," Pendergast said. "A specialist in the Italian Renaissance, I believe. Lucky for us he's still teaching-no doubt as professor emeritus by now. Bring up his curriculum vitae, if you will, Vincent."

As Pendergast merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and smoothly accelerated into the afternoon traffic, D'Agosta read off the professor's appointments, awards, and publications. It was a lengthy process, made lengthier by the numerous abstracts Pendergast insisted on hearing recited verbatim.

At last, he was done. Pendergast thanked him, then slipped out his cell phone, dialed, spoke to directory information, redialed, spoke again briefly. "Ponsonby will see us," he said as he replaced the phone. "Reluctantly. We're very close, Vincent. The photograph proves that all four of them were together at least once. Now we need to know exactly where they met, and-even more important-just what happened during that fateful encounter to somehow bind them together for the rest of their lives."

Pendergast pushed the car still faster. D'Agosta shot a surreptitious glance in his direction. The man looked positively eager, like a hound on a scent.

Ninety minutes later the Rolls was cruising down Nassau Street, quaint shops on the left and the Princeton campus on the right, Gothic buildings rising from manicured lawns. Pendergast slid the Rolls into a parking space and fed the meter, nodding to a crowd of students who stopped to gawk. They crossed the street, passed through the great iron gates, and approached the enormous facade of Firestone Library, the largest open-stack library in the world.

A small man with a thatch of untidy white hair stood before the glass doors. He was exactly what D'Agosta imagined a Professor Ponsonby would look like: fussy, tweedy, and pedantic. The only thing missing was a briar pipe.

"Professor Ponsonby?" Pendergast asked.

"You're the FBI agent?" the man replied in a reedy voice, making a show of examining his watch.

Three minutes late, D'Agosta thought.

Pendergast shook his hand. "Indeed I am."

"You didn't say anything about bringing a policeman ."

D'Agosta felt himself bristling at the way he pronounced the word.

"May I present my associate, Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta?"

The professor shook his hand with obvious reluctance. "I have to tell you, Agent Pendergast, that I don't much like being questioned by the FBI. I will not be bullied into giving out information on former students."

"Of course. Now, Professor, where may we chat?"

"We can talk right there on that bench. I would rather not bring an FBI agent and a policeman back to my office, if you don't mind."

"Of course."

The professor marched stiffly over to a bench beneath ancient sycamores and sat down, fussily cocking one knee over the other. Pendergast strolled over and took a seat beside him. There wasn't room for D'Agosta, so he stood to one side, arms folded.

Ponsonby removed a briar pipe from his pocket, knocked out the dottle, began packing it.

Now it's perfect, thought D'Agosta.

"You aren't the Charles Ponsonby who just won the Berenson Medal in Art History, are you?" asked Pendergast.

"I am." He removed a box of wooden matches from his pocket, extracted one, and lit the pipe, sucking in the flame with a low gurgle.

"Ah! Then you are the author of that new catalogue raisonné of Pontormo."

"Correct."

"A splendid book."

"Thank you."

"I shall never forget seeing The Visitation in the little church in Carmignano. The most perfect orange in all of art history. In your book-"

"May we get to the point, Mr. Pendergast?"

There was a silence. Ponsonby apparently had no interest in discussing academic subjects with gumshoes, no matter how cultivated. For once, Pendergast's usual charm offensive had failed.

"I believe you had a student named Ranier Beckmann," Pendergast went on.

"You mentioned that on the phone. I was his thesis adviser."

"I wonder if I could ask you a few questions."

"Why don't you ask him directly? I have no intention of becoming an FBI informant, thank you."

D'Agosta had run into this type before. Deeply suspicious of law enforcement, treating every question as a personal challenge. They refused to be flattered into compliance and fought you every step of the way, citing all kinds of spurious legalisms about the right to privacy, the Fifth Amendment, the usual bullshit.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Pendergast said, his voice smooth as honey. "Mr. Beckmann died. Tragically."

Silence. "No, I didn't know." More silence. "How?"

Now it was Pendergast's turn to be unforthcoming. Instead, he dropped another tantalizing nugget. "I've just come from the exhumation of his body .     But perhaps this isn't an appropriate topic of conversation, seeing as how you two weren't close."

"Whoever told you that was misinformed. Ranier was one of my best students."

"Then how is it you didn't hear about his death?"

The professor shifted uneasily. "We lost touch after he graduated."

"I see. Then perhaps you won't be able to help us, after all." And Pendergast made a show of preparing to stand.

"He was a brilliant student, one of the best I've ever had. I was-I was very disappointed he didn't want to go on to graduate school. He wanted to go to Europe, do a grand tour on his own, a sort of wandering journey without any kind of academic structure. I did not approve." Ponsonby paused. "May I ask how he died and why the body was exhumed?"

"I'm sorry, but that information can be disclosed only to Mr. Beckmann's family and friends."

"I tell you, we were very close. I gave him a book at parting. I've only done that with half a dozen students in my forty years of teaching."

"And this was in 1976?"

"No, it was in 1974." The professor was very glad to offer the correction. Then a new thought seemed to strike him. He looked at Pendergast afresh. "It wasn't homicide .     was it?"

"Really, Professor, unless you can get the permission of a family member to release this information-you do know someone in his family, I daresay?"

The professor's face fell. "No. No one."

Pendergast arched his eyebrows in surprise.

"He wasn't close to his family. I can't recall him ever mentioning them."

"Pity. And so you say that Beckmann left for Europe in 1974, right after graduation, and that was the last you heard of him?"

"No. I got a note from Scotland at the end of August of that year. He was preparing to leave some farming commune he'd joined and head to Italy. I felt it was just some stage he had to go through. To tell you the truth, these past dozen years I'd been half expecting to see his name turn up in one of the journals, or perhaps to hear of an art opening of his. I've often thought of him over the years. Really, Mr. Pendergast, I would appreciate hearing anything you might be able to tell me about him."

Pendergast paused. "It would be highly irregular .    " He let his voice trail off.

D'Agosta had to smile. Flattery hadn't worked, so Pendergast had taken another tack. And now he had the professor begging him for information.

"Surely you can at least tell me how he died."

His pipe had gone out, and Pendergast waited while the professor drew out another match. As Ponsonby struck it, Pendergast spoke. "He died an alcoholic in a flophouse in Yonkers and was buried in the local potter's field."

The professor dropped the burning match, his face a mask of horror. "Good God. I had no idea."

"Very tragic."

The professor tried to cover up his shock by opening the matchbox again, but his shaking hands spilled them over the bench.

Pendergast helped pick them up. The professor poked them back one by one into the trembling box. He put his pipe away, unlit. D'Agosta was surprised to see the old man's eyes film over. "Such a fine student," he said, almost to himself.

Pendergast let the silence grow. Then he slipped Beckmann's copy of Lives of the Painters out from his suit coat and held it out to Ponsonby.

For a moment, the old man didn't appear to recognize it. Then he started violently. "Where did you get this?" he asked, grasping it quickly.

"It was with Mr. Beckmann's effects."

"This is the book I gave him." As he opened the flyleaf to the dedication page, the photograph slipped out. "What's this?" he asked as he picked it up.

Pendergast said nothing, asked no questions.

"There he is," Ponsonby said, pointing at the photo. "That's just how I remember him. This must have been taken in Florence in the fall."

"Florence?" said Pendergast. "It could have been taken anywhere in Italy."

"No, I recognize that fountain behind them. It's the one in Piazza Santo Spirito. Always a big hangout for students. And there, behind, you can just see the portone of the Palazzo Guadagni, which is a shabby student pensione. I say the fall because they're dressed that way, although I suppose it could have also been in spring."

Pendergast retrieved the picture, then asked offhandedly, "The other students in the photograph were also from Princeton?"

"I've never seen any of them before. He must have met them in Florence. Like I said, the Piazza Santo Spirito was a gathering place for foreign students. Still is." He closed the book. His face looked very tired and his voice cracked. "Ranier .     Ranier had such promise."

"We are all born with promise, Professor." Pendergast stood up, then hesitated. "You may keep the book, if you wish."

But Ponsonby didn't seem to hear. His shoulders were bent, and he caressed the spine with a trembling hand.

As they drove back to New York in the gathering dusk, D'Agosta stirred restlessly in the front passenger seat. "Amazing how you extracted all that information from the professor without his even knowing it." And it was amazing, though also a little sad: despite the professor's arrogance and high-handedness, he'd seemed terribly moved by the death of a favorite student, even one not seen for three decades.

Pendergast nodded. "One rule, Vincent: the more unwilling the subject is to release information, the better the information is, once released. And Dr. Ponsonby's information was as good as gold." His eyes gleamed in the dark.

"It looks like they met up in Florence in the fall of '74."

"Exactly. Something happened to them there, something so extraordinary it resulted in at least two murders, thirty years later." He turned to D'Agosta. "Do you know the saying, Vincent, 'All roads lead to Rome'?"

"Shakespeare?"

"Very good. In this case, however, it appears all roads lead to Florence. And that is precisely where our road should lead."

"To Florence?"

"Precisely. No doubt Bullard himself is on his way there, if he's not there already."

"I'm glad there's not going to be any argument about my coming along," D'Agosta said.

"I wouldn't have it any other way, Vincent. Your police instincts are first-rate. Your marksmanship is astonishing. I know I can trust you in a tight spot. And the chances of ourselves ending up in just such a spot are rather good, I'm afraid. So if you wouldn't mind sliding out the laptop again, we'll book our tickets now. First class, if you don't mind, open return."

"Leaving when?"

"Tomorrow morning."

{ 48 }

 

D'Agosta let the cab drop him off at 136th Street and Riverside. After what happened on his first visit to Pendergast's crumbling old mansion, there was no way in hell he was going to trust public transportation. Still, caution prompted him to get off a block early. Somehow he felt Pendergast would prefer it that way.

He dragged the lone suitcase out of the backseat, handed fifteen dollars to the driver. "Keep the change," he said.

"Whatever." And the cabbie sped away. Seeing D'Agosta and his luggage outside the hotel, he'd clearly been hoping for an airport fare-and he hadn't been at all pleased to find out the actual destination was Harlem.

D'Agosta watched the cab take the next corner at speed and vanish from sight. Then he scanned Riverside Drive carefully, up and down, checking the windows, the stoops, the dark areas between the lampposts. Everything seemed quiet. Hefting the suitcase, he began trotting north.

It had taken about half an hour to prepare for the trip. He hadn't bothered to call his wife-as it was, the next time he heard from her would probably be through a lawyer. Chief MacCready of the Southampton P.D. was delighted to hear he'd be taking an unscheduled trip as part of his modified duty with the FBI. The chief was in increasingly hot water over the slow progress of the case, and this gave him a bone to throw the local press: SPD officer sent to Italy to follow hot lead. Given a dawn departure, Pendergast had suggested they both spend the night in New York at his place on Riverside Drive. And now here he was, luggage in hand, just hours away from standing on his family's ancestral soil. It was both an exhilarating and a sobering thought.

The one thing he'd miss, he thought as he neared the end of the block, was his blossoming relationship with Laura Hayward. Though the frantic pace of the last few days had mostly kept them apart, D'Agosta realized he'd begun to feel, for the first time in almost twenty years, that constant, low-frequency tingle of courtship. When he'd called her from the hotel to say he was accompanying Pendergast to Italy in the morning, the line had gone silent for several seconds. Then she'd said simply, "Watch your ass, Vinnie." He hoped to hell this little jaunt wouldn't throw a monkey wrench into things.

Ahead, the Beaux Arts mansion at 891 Riverside rose up, the sharp ramparts of its widow's walk pricking the night sky. He crossed the street, then slipped through the iron gate and made his way down the carriageway to the porte-cochère. His knock was answered by Proctor, who wordlessly escorted him through echoing galleries and tapestried chambers to the library. It appeared to be lit only by a large fire that blazed on the hearth. Peering into the grand, book-lined room, he made out Pendergast near the far wall. The agent had his back to the door and was standing before a long table, writing something on a sheet of cream-colored paper. D'Agosta could hear the crackling of the fire, the scratch of the pen. Constance was nowhere to be seen, but he thought he made out-just at the threshold of hearing-the distant, mournful sound of a violin.

D'Agosta cleared his throat, knocked on the door frame.

Pendergast turned quickly at the sound. "Ah, Vincent. Come in." He slipped the sheet of paper into a small wooden box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, that lay on the table. Then he closed the box carefully and pushed it to one side. It almost seemed to D'Agosta as if Pendergast was careful to shield its contents from view.

"Would you care for some refreshment?" he asked, stepping across the room. "Cognac, Calvados, Armagnac, Budweiser?" Though the voice was Pendergast's usual slow, buttery drawl, there was a strange brightness to his eyes D'Agosta had not seen before.

"No, thanks."

"Then I'll help myself, with your indulgence. Please have a seat." And moving to a sideboard, Pendergast poured two fingers of amber liquid into a large snifter.

D'Agosta watched him carefully. There was something unusual about his movements, a strange hesitancy, that-combined with Pendergast's expression-troubled D'Agosta in a way he could not quite describe.

"What's happened?" he asked instinctively.

Pendergast did not immediately respond. Instead, he replaced the decanter, picked up the snifter, and took a seat in a leather sofa across from D'Agosta. He sipped meditatively, sipped again.

"Perhaps I can tell you," he said at last in a low voice, as if arriving at a decision. "In fact, if any other living person is to know, I suppose that person should be you."

"Know what?" D'Agosta asked.

"It arrived half an hour ago," Pendergast said. "It couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. Nevertheless, it can't be helped; we've come too far with this case to change direction now."

"What arrived?"

"That." And Pendergast nodded at a folded letter on the table lying between them. "Go ahead, pick it up; I've already taken the necessary precautions."

D'Agosta didn't know exactly what was meant by that, but he leaned over, picked up the letter, and unfolded it gingerly. The paper was a beautiful linen, apparently hand-pressed. At the top of the sheet was an embossed coat of arms: a lidless eye over two moons, with a crouching lion beneath. At first, D'Agosta thought the sheet was empty. But then he made out, in a beautiful, old-fashioned script, a small date in the middle of the page: January 28 . It appeared to have been written with a goose quill.

D'Agosta put it down. "I don't understand."

"It's from my brother, Diogenes."

"Your brother?" D'Agosta said, surprised. "I thought he was dead."

"He is dead to me. At least, he has been until recently."

D'Agosta waited. He knew better than to say more. Pendergast's sentences had grown hesitant, almost broken, as if he found the subject intolerably repellent.

Pendergast took another sip of Armagnac. "Vincent, a line of madness has run through my family for many generations now. Sometimes this madness has taken a benign or even beneficial form. More frequently, I fear, it has manifested itself through astonishing cruelty and evil. Unfortunately, this darkness has reached full flower with the current generation. You see, my brother, Diogenes, is at once the most insane-most evil-and yet the most brilliant member of our family ever to walk the earth. This was clear to me from a very early age. As such, it is a blessing we two are the last of our line."

Still, D'Agosta waited.

"As a young child, Diogenes was content with certain .     experiments. He devised highly complex machines for the lure, capture, and torture of small animals. Mice, rabbits, opossums. These machines were brilliant in a horrible way. Pain factories, he proudly called them when they were ultimately discovered." Pendergast paused. "His interests soon grew more exotic. House pets began disappearing-first cats, then dogs-never to be found again. He spent days on end in the portrait gallery, staring at paintings of our ancestors .     especially those who had met untimely ends. As he grew older-and as he realized he was being watched with increasing vigilance-he abandoned these pastimes and withdrew into himself. He poured forth his black dreams and his terrible creative energies into a series of locked journals. He kept these journals well hidden. Very well hidden, in fact: it took me two years of stealthy surveillance as an adolescent to discover them. I read only one page, but that was enough. I will never forget it, not as long as I live. The world was never quite the same for me after that. Needless to say, I immediately burned all the journals. He had hated me before, but this act earned his undying rage."

Pendergast took another sip, then pushed the snifter away, unfinished.

"The last time I saw Diogenes was the day he turned twenty-one. He had just come into his fortune. He said he was planning a terrible crime."

"A single crime?" D'Agosta repeated.

"He gave no hint of the details. All I can go on is his use of the word terrible . For something to be terrible to him . ..." Pendergast's voice trailed off, and then he resumed briskly. "Suffice to say, it will be anathema to rational contemplation. Only he, in his limitless madness, could comprehend its evil. How, when, where, against whom-I have no idea. He disappeared that very day, taking his fortune with him, and I have not seen or heard from him since-until now. This is his second notice to me. The first had the same date on it. I wasn't sure what it meant. It arrived exactly six months ago-and now this. The meaning is now obvious."

"Not to me."

"I am being put on notice. The crime will occur in ninety-one days. It is his challenge to me, his hated sibling. I suspect his plans are now complete. This note is equivalent to his flinging the gauntlet at my feet, daring me to try and stop him."

D'Agosta stared at the folded letter in horror. "What are you going to do?"

"The only thing I can do. I will wrap up this current case of ours as quickly as possible. Only then can I deal with my brother."

"And if you find him? What then?"

"I must find him," Pendergast said with quiet ferocity. "And when I do-" He paused. "The situation will be addressed with appropriate finality."

The look on the agent's face was so terrible D'Agosta looked away.

For a long moment, the library was silent. Then, at last, Pendergast roused himself. One glance told D'Agosta the subject was closed.

Pendergast's voice changed back into its usual efficient, cool tone. "As liaison with the Southampton P.D., it seemed logical to suggest you as FBI liaison with the NYPD. This case began in the United States, and it may well end here. I've arranged for you, working with Captain Hayward, to be that liaison. It will require you to be in touch with her on a regular basis, via phone and e-mail."

D'Agosta gave a nod.

Pendergast was looking at him. "I trust you'll find that a satisfactory arrangement?"

"Fine with me." D'Agosta hoped he wasn't blushing. Is there anything this guy doesn't know?

"Very good." Pendergast rose. "And now I must pack for the trip and speak briefly with Constance. She'll be remaining behind, of course, to manage the collections and do any additional research we may require. Proctor will see that you're comfortable. Feel free to ring if you need anything."

He rose, offering his hand. "Buona notte.  And pleasant dreams."

The room D'Agosta was shown to was on the third floor, facing the rear. It was exactly what he'd dreaded most: dimly lit and tall-ceilinged, with dark crushed-velvet wallpaper and heavy mahogany furniture. It smelled of old fabric and wood. The walls were covered with paintings in heavy gilt frames: landscapes, still lifes, and some studies in oil that were strangely disturbing if you looked at them too closely. The wooden shutters were closed tight against the casements, and no external noise filtered through the heavy stonework. Yet the room, like the rest of the house, was spotlessly clean; the fixtures were modern; and the huge Victorian bed, when he at last turned in, was exceptionally comfortable with fresh, clean sheets. The pillows had been aired and fluffed by some invisible housekeeper; the comforter, when he drew it up, was a luxuriously thick eiderdown. Everything about the room seemed guaranteed to provide an ideal night's sleep.

And yet sleep did not come quickly to D'Agosta. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceiling, thinking of Diogenes Pendergast, for a long, long time.