Reliquary

left again.” He shook his head bitterly at the memory.

“It went on like that. I kept calling the cops, complaining about the noise and the smell, but after the second visit they wouldn’t come anymore. And then one day, maybe a year ago, the guy appeared at my door. Just showed up, no warning or anything, about eleven o’clock at night.”

“What did he want?” D’Agosta asked.

“Don’t know. I think he wanted to ask me why I’d called the cops on him. All I know is, he gave me the willies. It was September, almost as hot as it is now, but he had on a bulky coat with a big hood. He stood back in the shadows, and I couldn’t see his face. He just stood there, in the darkness, and asked if he could come in. I said no, of course. Sergeant, it was all I could do not to shut the door in his face.”

“Lieutenant,” corrected D’Agosta absently, scribbling in his notebook.

“Whatever. I don’t put stock in labels. Human being is the only label worth anything.” The green dome bobbed in emphasis.

D’Agosta was still scribbling. This didn’t sound like the Greg Kawakita he’d met once in Frock’s office, after the disaster at the Superstition exhibition opening. He racked his brains, trying to remember what he could about the scientist.

“Can you describe his voice?” he asked.

“Yes. Very low, and with a lisp.”

D’Agosta frowned. “Any accent?”

“Don’t think so. But it was such a strong lisp I couldn’t really tell. Sounded almost Castilian, except it was English instead of Spanish.”

D’Agosta made a mental note to ask Pendergast what the hell ‘Castilian’ was. “When did he leave, and why?” he asked.

“A couple of weeks after he knocked on my door. Maybe October. One night I heard two big eighteen-wheelers pull up. That wasn’t so unusual. But this time, they were loading stuff out of that place, not into it. When I got up at noon, the place was totally empty. They’d even washed the black paint off the inside of the windows.”

“This was at noon?” D’Agosta asked.

“My normal sleep period is five to noon. I am not a slave to the physical rotations of the earth-sun-moon system, Sergeant.”

“Did you notice anything on the trucks? A logo, say, or the name of a firm?”

Kirtsema went silent, thinking. “Yes,” he said finally. “Scientific Precision Moving.”

D’Agosta looked at the middle-aged man with a green scalp. “You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

D’Agosta believed him. With his looks, the guy wouldn’t be worth shit on a witness stand, but he was pretty damn observant. Or maybe just nosy. “Anything else you want to add?” he said.

The green dome bobbed again. “Yes. Right after he arrived all the streetlights went out, and they never seemed to be able to fix them. They’re still out. I think he had something to do with that, though I don’t know what. I called Con Ed about that, too, but as usual the faceless corporate robots never did anything. Of course, try forgetting to pay your bill one time, and—”

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Kirtsema,” D’Agosta interrupted. “Call if anything else comes to mind.” He closed the notebook, stuck it in his pocket, and turned to leave.

At the door, he paused. “You said you’d been robbed several times. What did they take? There doesn’t seem to be much worth lifting in here.” He glanced around the warehouse again.

“Ideas, Sergeant!” Kirtsema said, head back, chin raised. “Material objects mean nothing. But ideas are priceless. Look around you. Have you ever seen so many brilliant ideas?”

= 28 =

VENT STACK TWELVE rose like a nightmare chimney above the 38th Street entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, a two-hundred-foot spire of brick and rusting metal.

Near the top of the enormous stack, a small metal observation chamber clung, barnaclelike, to the side of the orange wall. From his vantage point on the narrow access ladder, Pendergast could make out the chamber far above his head. The ladder had been bolted to the river side of the vent stack, and in several places the bolts had pulled free of their moorings. As he climbed, he could see the traffic through the corrugations in the iron steps, wrestling its way into the tunnel thirty yards beneath his feet.

The ladder fell into shadow as he approached the underside of the observation chamber. Looking up, Pendergast noticed a hatch set into the chamber’s underside. It had a circular handle, like the watertight door of a submarine, and the words PORT OF NEW YORK AUTHORITY had been stamped into it. The roar of the vent stack was like the shriek of a jet engine, and Pendergast had to bang several times on the hatch before it was raised by the person inside.

Pendergast climbed into the tiny metal room and straightened his suit while the occupant—a small, wiry man dressed in a plaid shut and coveralls—closed the hatch. Three sides of the observation chamber looked down over the Hudson, the approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel, and the massive power plant that sucked foul air out of the tunnel and channeled it up the vent stacks. Craning his neck, Pendergast could make out the spinning turbines of the tunnel’s filtration system rumbling directly beneath them.

The man stepped away from the hatch and moved to a stool behind a small draftsman’s table. There was no other chair in the tiny, cramped chamber. Pendergast watched as the man looked at him and moved his mouth as if speaking. But no sound was audible over the shriek of the huge stack vent beside them.

“What?” Pendergast shouted, moving closer. The floor hatch did little to keep out either the noise or the traffic fumes wafting up from below.