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.If the Post doesn’t go belly up again.” He laughed, dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter, and turned to go.Smithback watched Harriman’s retreating back with irritation.So the bodies had been moved from the Medical Examiner’s office.He should have learned that himself.But where? There had been no funeral arrangements, no burial.They must be in a lab somewhere, a lab with better equipment than the NYME.Someplace secure, not like Columbia or Rockefeller University, with students wandering around everywhere.After all, Lieutenant D’Agosta was in charge of the case.He was a cool customer, Smithback knew.Not the kind of guy to do something rash.Why would D’Agosta move the bodies.D’Agosta.Suddenly, Smithback guessed--no, he knew--where the bodies must be.Draining his glass, he slid off the stool and moved across the plush red carpet to a bank of phones in the front foyer.Dropping a quarter in the nearest one, he dialed a number.“Curley here,” said a voice thick with age.“Curley! It’s Bill Smithback.How you doing?”“Fine, Dr.Smithback.Haven’t seen you around for a while.” Curley, who checked badges at the staff entrance to the Museum of Natural History, called everyone Doctor.Princes lived and died; dynasties rose and fell; but Curley, Smithback knew, would remain in his ornate bronze pillbox, checking IDs forever.“Curley, what time on Wednesday night did those ambulances come in? You know, the two that drove in together?” Smithback spoke fast, praying that the ancient guard didn’t’ know he’d become a reporter after leaving his writing assignment at the Museum.“Well, let’s see,” Curley said in his unhurried way.“Can’t say I remember anything like that, Doctor.”“Really?” Smithback asked, crestfallen.He’d been absolutely sure.“Not unless you mean that one that came in with the lights and sirens off.But that was early Thursday, not Wednesday.” Smithback could hear Curley rustling through his log.“Yup, just after five A.M., it was.”“That’s right, Thursday.What was I thinking of?” Smithback thanked Curley and hung up exultantly.Grinning, he returned to the bar.With one phone call, he’d discovered what Harriman had no doubt been searching for--unsuccessfully--for days.It made perfect sense.He knew that D’Agosta had used the Museum’s laboratory on other cases, not least of all the Museum Beast murders.It was a high-security lab in a high-security museum.No doubt he’d have called in that pompous old curator, Frock.And maybe Frock’s ex-assistant, Margo Green, Smithback’s own friend from his days at the Museum.Margo Green, Smithback thought.That merited some looking into.He called the bartender over.“Paddy, I think I’ll stay on Islay, but switch distilleries.Laphroaig, please.The fifteen-year-old.”He took a sip of the marvelous whisky.Ten bucks a shot, but worth every penny.A hundred thousand might just pay your salary for the next two years, Harriman had teased.Smithback decided that, after the next front-page story, he’d have to hit Murray up for a raise.Nothing like striking while the iron was hot.= 11 =Sergeant Hayward descended a long metal staircase, opened a narrow door filmed in brown rust, and stepped out onto an abandoned railroad siding.Behind her, D’Agosta emerged from the doorway, hands in pockets.Murky sunlight filtered down through a series of gratings far above their heads, illuminating dust motes in the still air.D’Agosta looked first left, then right.In both directions, the tracks dissolved into the gloom of the tunnel.He noticed that Hayward had an unusual way of moving belowground, a kind of silent, wary step.“Where’s the Captain?” Hayward asked.“He’s coming,” said D’Agosta, scraping the underside of his heel on the metal rail of the siding.“You go ahead.” He watched Hayward move catlike down the tunnel, her flashlight throwing a narrow beam into the darkness ahead.Any hesitation he felt at letting this petite woman lead the way had evaporated as he watched the ease with which she handled herself underground.Waxie, on the other hand, had slowed considerably in the two hours since they’d visited the brownstone basement where the first body had been found more than three months before.It was a damp room, crammed with old boilers.Rotting wires dangled from the ceiling.Hayward had pointed out the mattress tucked behind a blackened furnace, littered with empty plastic water bottles and torn newspapers: the dead man’s living space.There was an old bloodstain on the mattress, three feet in diameter, heavily chewed on by rats.Above it, a pair of ragged athletic socks were draped over a pipe, covered in a furry mantle of green mold.The body found there had been Hank Jasper, Hayward said.No witnesses, no known relatives or friends.The case file had been equally useless: no photographs or scene reports, just some routine paperwork, a brief report referring to “extensive lacerations” and a badly crushed skull, and the notice of a quick burial at Potter’s Field on Hart Island.Nor had they found much of anything in the defunct Columbus Circle station bathroom, where the second body had been discovered: a lot of trash, and a half-hearted attempt to clean up the red blizzard of blood that clung to the ancient tile sinks and cracked mirrors.No ID on that one at all: the head was missing.There was a stifled curse behind him, and D’Agosta turned to see the round form of Captain Waxie emerging from the rusted door.He looked around distastefully, his pasty visage shining unnaturally in the half-light.“Jesus, Vinnie,” he said, picking his way over the tracks toward D’Agosta.“What the hell are we doing? I told you before, this isn’t any job for a police captain.Especially on a Sunday afternoon.” He nodded his head in the direction of the dark tunnel.“That cute little thing put you up to this, didn’t she? Amazing set of knockers.You know, I offered her a job as my personal assistant.Instead, she chose to stay on rousting detail, dragging bums out of holes.Go figure.”Funny thing about that, D’Agosta thought, imagining what life under Waxie would be like for a woman as attractive as Hayward.“And now my damn radio’s gone on the fritz,” Waxie said irritably.D’Agosta pointed upward.“Hayward tells me they don’t work underground.Not reliably, anyway.”“Great.How are we supposed to call for backup?”“We don’t.We’re on our own.”“Great,” Waxie repeated.D’Agosta looked at Waxie.Beads of sweat had sprung up along his upper lip, and his dough-colored jowls, usually firm, were starting to sag.“This is your jurisdiction, not mine,” D’Agosta said.“Just think how good it will make you look if this turns out to be big: taking charge right away, visiting the scene personally.For a change.” He fingered his jacket pocket for a cigar, then decided against it.“And think how bad it will look if these deaths are connected somehow, and the press starts talking about how you just looked the other way.”Waxie scowled at him.“I’m not running for mayor, Vinnie.”“I’m not talking about being mayor.All I know is, when the rain of shit begins to fall like it always does, your ass will be covered.”Waxie grunted, looking somewhat mollified.D’Agosta could see Hayward’s light playing down the tracks toward them, and soon the woman appeared again out of the gloom.“Almost there,” she said.“It’s one more down.”“Down?” said Waxie.“Sergeant, I thought this was the lowest level!”Hayward said nothing.“So how are we supposed to go down?” D’Agosta asked her.Hayward nodded in the direction from which she’d come.“North along the tracks about four hundred yards, there’s another staircase along the right wall.”“What if a train comes?” Waxie asked.“This is a deserted stem,” Hayward said.“No trains have come along here in a long time [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]