Dance Of Death

"You and your brother can go to hell!"

"Ah, dear Viola. Didn't you know? This is hell. Except that you are about to gain your release."

Viola leaped off the bed and rushed at him, shard raised, but in the blur of an instant she found herself pi

"Good-bye, my lively little monkey," he murmured, and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

And then, in one swift, batlike movement, he rose and was gone, the door slamming behind him. She flung herself on it but it was too late: there was the sound of oiled steel sliding into steel, and the door felt as cold and unyielding as a bank vault.

FORTY-SEVEN

D'Agosta didn't need a day to consider Hayward's offer; he didn't even need ten minutes. He walked straight out of the building, pulled out the cell phone Pendergast had given him, and asked for an emergency meeting.

A quarter of an hour later, as he stepped out of a cab at the corner of Broadway and 72nd, the memory of his encounter with Laura was still raw. But he told himself he couldn't think about that right now. He had to bury his personal feelings until the crisis was over- assuming, that is, it would ever be over.

He walked east down 72nd. Ahead, in the distance, he could see Central Park, the brown trees skeletal in the January chill. At the next intersection, he stopped and pulled out the cell phone again. Call me again once you reach Columbus and 72nd, Pendergast had said. D'Agosta was only a block away from Pendergast's apartment at the Dakota. Could he possibly be at home? It seemed outrageous, given the circumstances.

He flipped open the phone, dialed the number.

"Yes?" came the voice of Pendergast. In the background, D'Agosta could hear the tapping of keys.

"I'm at the corner," he replied.

"Very good. Make your way unobserved to 24 West 72nd. The building is mixed residential and commercial. The entrance is locked during working hours, but the receptionist habitually buzzes in anyone who looks normal. Take the stairs to the basement and locate the door marked B-14. Make sure you are alone. Then knock slowly, seven times. Have you got that?"

"Got it."

The line went dead.

Putting the phone away, D'Agosta crossed the street and continued toward the park. Up ahead, at the far corner, he could see the crenellated, sand-colored bulk of the Dakota. It looked like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon. At its base, beside a huge Gothic entrance, was a doorman's sentry box. Two cops in uniform loitered nearby, and three squad cars were parked along Central Park West.

It seemed the cavalry was already in place.

D'Agosta slowed his pace, keeping as near as he could to the building fronts, a wary eye on the police.

Twenty-four West 72nd Street was a large brownstone structure halfway down the block. He glanced around again, saw nobody suspicious, rang the buzzer, gained admittance, and quickly ducked inside.

The lobby was small and dark, the walls covered with dingy-looking gray marble. D'Agosta nodded to the receptionist, then made his way down the staircase at the rear of the lobby. There was a single basement hallway, with metal doors set into the cinder-block walls at regular intervals. It was the work of sixty seconds to find the door marked B-14. He glanced around once again, then rapped on the door seven times, as instructed.

For a moment, silence. Then, from within, the sound of a bolt being slid back. The door opened and a man wearing the black and white uniform of a doorman appeared. He glanced up and down the hall, then nodded to D'Agosta and ushered him inside.

To his surprise, D'Agosta found himself, not in a room, but in a very narrow hallway-barely more than a crawl space-that ran on ahead into darkness. The doorman switched on a flashlight, then led the way along the corridor.

It seemed to go on forever. The walls changed from cinder block, to brick, to plaster, then back to brick again. At times, the corridor widened; at others, it grew so narrow it almost brushed against D'Agosta's shoulders. It jogged left a few times, then right. At one point, they emerged into a tiny courtyard, little more than an air shaft, and D'Agosta could see a small patch of blue sky far above. It felt like being at the base of a chimney. Then they climbed a short stairway, the doorman opened another door with a large, old-fashioned key, and they entered yet another narrow corridor.

At length, the corridor dead-ended at a small service elevator. The doorman pulled back the brass grillwork, unlocked the elevator door with a different key, and motioned for D'Agosta to step in. The man stepped in behind D'Agosta, closed the grille and the elevator door, then grasped a large, circular handle in one wall. With a protesting chuff, the elevator creaked upward.

The ancient door was windowless, and D'Agosta had no idea how many floors they ascended: he guessed four or five. The elevator stopped of its own accord and the doorman opened its door. As the bronze grille was pulled back, D'Agosta saw a short passageway beyond, leading to a single door. The door was open, and Pendergast stood within it, once again clad in his habitual black suit.

D'Agosta paused, staring at him. Ever since his surprise reappearance, the man had appeared in some disguise or other-his face or clothing, or more usually both, dramatically altered-and it gave D'Agosta a strange chill to see his old friend as he really was.

"Vincent," Pendergast said. "Do come in." And he led the way into a small, almost featureless room. There was an oaken dresser and a leather sofa along one wall, and a worktable along another. Four iMac laptops were lined up on the worktable, along with some NAS devices and what looked to D'Agosta like a network hub. There were two doors in the rear of the room; one was closed, and the other opened onto a small bathroom.

"This is your Dakota apartment?" D'Agosta asked in disbelief.

A wan smile appeared on Pendergast's face, then disappeared again. "Hardly," he said, closing the door. "My apartment is on the floor above this one."

"Then what's this place?"

"Think of it as a bolt-hole. A rather high-tech bolt-hole. It was set up last year on the advice of an Ohio acquaintance of mine, in case his services were temporarily unavailable."

"Well, you can't stay here. The cops are crawling all over the entrance to the Dakota. I've just come from Laura Hayward's office, and she's got a red-hot suspect."

"Me."

"And how in hell did you learn that?"

"I've known it for some time." Pendergast's eyes darted from monitor to monitor as his hands flew over the keys. "When I came upon the murder scene of my friend Michael Decker, I found several strands of hair clutched in his hand. Blond hair. My brother's hair is not blond: it's a gingery red. Immediately, I realized that Diogenes's plan was even more 'interesting' than I'd suspected. Not only did he plan to kill everyone close to me-he pla

"But what about the notes Diogenes wrote you? Don't they indicate he's alive?"

"No. Recall the odd handwriting, the handwriting I said was strangely familiar? That was my handwriting, but altered just enough so it would appear-to a handwriting expert, anyway-that I was trying to disguise it."

D'Agosta took a moment to digest this. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I saw no reason to burden you with all this before it was necessary. When I saw those hairs, it was perfectly clear to me that Diogenes would have salted the other crime scenes with false evidence as well. I'm sure, during my convalescence in Italy, he stocked up on all the physical evidence he needed, taken from my person, including my blood. It was only a matter of time before they co