“You had no idea of the truth.”
“No, none.”
“And yet Diogenes never realized that you had repressed the memory.”
Abruptly Pendergast stopped in his pacing. “No. I suppose he didn’t.”
“As a result, you never apologized to your brother, tried to make it up to him. You never even mentioned it, because you had utterly blocked out all memory of the Event.”
Pendergast looked away.
“But to Diogenes, your silence meant something else entirely. A stubborn refusal to admit your mistake, to ask forgiveness. And that would explain…”
Glinn fell silent. Slowly he pushed his wheelchair back. He did not know everything-that would await the computer analysis-but he knew enough to see it now, clearly, in its broadest brushstrokes. Almost from birth, Diogenes had been a strange, dark, and brilliant creature, as had many Pendergasts before him. He might have swung either way, if the Event had not occurred. But the person who emerged from the Doorway to Hell-ravaged emotionally as well as physically-had turned into something else entirely. Yes, it all made sense: the gruesome images of crime, of murder, that Pendergast had endured… Diogenes’s hatred of the brother who refused to speak of the ordeal he had caused… Pendergast’s own unnatural attraction to pathological crimes… Both brothers now made sense. And Glinn now knew why Pendergast had repressed the memory so utterly. It was not simply because it was so awful. No-it was because the guilt was so overwhelming it threatened his very sanity.
Remotely, Glinn became aware that Pendergast was looking at him. The agent was standing as stiff as a statue, his skin like gray marble.
“Mr. Glinn,” he said.
Glinn raised his eyebrows in silent query.
“There is nothing more I can or will say.”
“Understood.”
“I will now require five minutes alone, please. Without interruptions of any kind. And then we can… proceed.”
After a moment, Glinn nodded. Then he turned the wheelchair around, opened the door, and exited the studio without another word.
Chapter 53
With sirens shrieking, Hayward was able to get down to Greenwich Village in twenty minutes. On the way, she had tried the few other contact numbers she had for D’Agosta-none connected. She had tried to find a listing for Effective Engineering Solutions or Eli Glinn, without success. Even the NYPD telephone and Manhattan business databases didn’t have a number, although EES was registered as a legitimate business, as required by law.
She knew the company existed, and she knew its address on Little West 12th Street. Beyond that, nothing.
Sirens still blaring, she pulled off the West Side Highway onto West Street, and from there turned into a narrow lane, crowded on both sides by dingy brick buildings. She shut off her sirens and crawled along, glancing at the building numbers. Little West 12th, once the center of the meatpacking district, was a single block in length. The EES building had no number, but she deduced it must be the correct one by the numbers on either side. It was not exactly what she imagined: perhaps a dozen stories tall, with the faded name of some long-defunct meatpacking company on the side-except it betrayed itself by tiers of expensive new windows on the upper floors and a pair of metal doors at the loading dock that looked suspiciously high-tech. She double-parked in front, blocking the narrow street, and went up to the entrance.
A smaller door sat beside the loading dock, an intercom with a buzzer its only adornment. She pressed the intercom and waited, her heart racing with frustration and impatience.
Almost immediately a female voice answered. “Yes?”
She flashed her badge, not sure where the camera was but certain there was one. “Captain Laura Hayward, NYPD Homicide. I demand immediate access to these premises.”
“Do you have a warrant?” came the pleasant answer.
“No. I’m here to see Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta. I’ve got to see him immediately-it’s a matter of life and death.”
“We don’t have a Vincent D’Agosta on staff here,” came the female voice, still maintaining a tone of bureaucratic pleasantness.
Hayward took a breath. “I want you to carry a message to Eli Glinn. If this door isn’t opened within thirty seconds, here’s what’ll happen: the NYPD will stake out the entrance, we’ll photograph everyone coming in or out, and we’ll get a search warrant looking for a meth lab and bust a lot of glass. You understand me? The countdown just began.”
It took only fifteen seconds. There came a faint click and the doors sprang open noiselessly.
She stepped into a dimly lit corridor that ended in doors of polished stainless steel. They opened simultaneously, revealing a heavily muscled man in a warm-up suit emblazoned with the logo of Harvey Mudd College. “This way,” he said, and turned unceremoniously.
She followed him through a cavernous room to an industrial elevator, which led via a short ascent to a maze of white corridors, finally ending up at a pair of polished cherry doors. They opened onto a small, elegant conference room.
Standing at the far end was Vincent D’Agosta.
“Hi, Laura,” he managed after a moment.
Hayward suddenly found herself at a loss for words. She’d been so intent on getting to see him that she hadn’t thought ahead to what she would say if she succeeded. D’Agosta, too, was silent. It seemed that beyond a greeting, he was also unable to speak.
Hayward swallowed, found her voice. “Vincent, I need your help.”
Another long silence. “My help?”
“At our last meeting, you spoke about Diogenes planning something bigger. You said, ‘He’s got a plan which he’s put in motion.’”
Silence. Hayward found herself coloring; this was a lot harder than she’d thought. “That plan is tonight,” she went on. “At the museum. At the opening.”
“How do you know?”
“Let’s call it a gut feeling-a pretty damn strong gut feeling.”
D’Agosta nodded.
“I think Diogenes works at the museum, in some kind of alter ego. All the evidence shows the diamond theft had inside help, right? Well, he was the inside help.”
“That isn’t what you and Coffey and all the others concluded-”
She waved her hand impatiently. “You said Viola Maskelene and Pendergast were romantically involved. That’s why Diogenes kidnapped her. Right?”
“Right.”
“Guess who’s at the opening.”
Another silence-this one not awkward, but surprised.
“That’s right. Maskelene. Hired at the last minute to be Egyptologist for the show. To replace Wicherly, who died in the museum under very strange circumstances.”
“Oh, Jesus.” D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “It’s seven-thirty.”
“The opening’s going on as we speak. We need to go right now.”
