Reliquary

Pendergast immediately touched his fingertips to her lips. “Later,” he said. “There will be plenty of time for that, later.”

Margo shook her head. “How could he have done it,” she murmured. “How could he have taken that drug, built that terrible hut?” She stopped.

“It’s unsettling to learn just how little you really know about even your closest friends,” Pendergast replied. “Who can say what secret desires fuel the i

Margo winced, then took a deep breath, dropping her hands to her sides and allowing the rocking of the boat to carry her thoughts far away. They moved out of the Cloaca, through the Spuyten Dyvil, and into the fresh air of the Hudson. Already the pale light of dawn was giving way to a warm late-summer day. D’Agosta stared off silently into the creamy wake of the cutter.

Idly, Margo realized that her right hand was lying over a bulge in her pocket. She reached in and pulled out the waterlogged envelope that Mephisto had given her in the black tu

“What about the Reservoir?” she asked Pendergast in a quiet voice.

“The level hasn’t fluctuated in the last six hours,” Pendergast replied. “Apparently, the water has been contained.”

“So we did it,” she said.

Pendergast did not reply.

“Didn’t we?” she asked, her eyes suddenly sharp.

Pendergast looked away. “It would seem so,” he said at last.

“Then what is it?” she prodded. “You’re not sure, are you?”

He turned back to her, his pale eyes staring at her face. “With luck, the collapsed tu

“Then how will we ever know?” Margo asked.

D’Agosta gri

Just then, the sun broke over Washington Heights, turning the dark water to the color of beaten electrum. Smithback, looking up from patting Margo’s face dry, gazed at the scene: the tall buildings of Midtown flashing purple and gold in the morning light, the George Washington Bridge swept with silver light.

“As for myself,” Pendergast said slowly, “I think I, too, will avoid frutti del mare for the foreseeable future.” Margo looked at him quickly, trying to read the joke in his expression. But his gaze remained steady. And, eventually, she simply nodded her understanding.

AND LAST

NO ADDITIONAL Take Back Our City rallies ever took place. Mrs. Wisher was given an honorary post in the city government as community liaison, and—when a new administration was elected the following year—worked closely with it to increase civic awareness. A vest pocket park on East 53rd Street was dedicated to the memory of Pamela Wisher.

Laura Hayward turned down an offered promotion, electing instead to leave the department and complete her graduate studies at New York University.

Bill Smithback’s firsthand account of the events of that night went on to spend several months on the hardcover bestseller lists, despite heavy prepublication editing by government officials under the direction of Special Agent Pendergast. In the end, Margo persuaded Smithback—bullied might be a better word—into donating half of his earnings to various homeless missions and charity foundations.

One year to the day after the flooding of the Astor Tu

Author's Note

WHILE THE EVENTS and characters portrayed in this novel are fictitious, much of the underground setting and its population are not. It has been estimated that as many as five thousand or more homeless people have lived in the vast warren of underground tracks, subway tu

Much of what is described in Reliquary about the underground homeless—or Mole people—is true. (Some prefer to call themselves “houseless,” for they consider their underground spaces home.) In many underground areas the homeless have organized themselves into communities. Some of the Mole people who live in these communities have not been aboveground for weeks or months—or even longer—and their eyes have adjusted to the extremely low levels of light. They live on food brought down by “ru

It should also be noted that in certain important instances the authors have altered, moved, or embellished what exists under Manhattan for purposes of the story.