Blue Labyrinth

After fifteen minutes, he veered eastward and climbed up the rearward side of the hill. From the rocks at the summit he examined the lines of the Salton Fontainebleau, its gables and minarets looking even more spectral in the faint moonlight. Beyond lay the dark, dank, motionless surface of the Salton Sea.

Pulling the binoculars from his utility vest, Pendergast surveyed the area, from south to north, with extreme care. All was silent and still, the landscape as dead as the sea that it surrounded. To the north, he could just make out the small black declivity that led into the main entrance of the mine. Even now, unseen eyes, hidden somewhere in the ruins of Salton Palms, were probably surveilling it, awaiting his arrival.

He spent another ten minutes, concealed in the rocks, binoculars constantly roaming. Then, as clouds thickened before the moon, he crept over the crest of the hill and made his way down the far side, careful to remain in the darkness behind the ruins of the Fontainebleau, where he could not be seen by anyone watching the mine entrance. As he inched forward, black against the night-dark sand, the huge resort loomed up until it blotted out the sky.

A broad veranda ran along the rear of the resort. Pendergast flitted up to it, paused, and carefully climbed its stairs to the quiet protest of desiccated wood. With each step he took, blooms of fine dust rose in small mushroom clouds. It was like walking on the lunar surface. From the vantage point of the veranda, he glanced left and right along its length, back at the short set of stairs he had climbed, down at the railing. There was nothing to see but his own footprints. The Fontainebleau slept in undisturbed silence.

Now he approached a set of double doors leading into the resort. He trod as lightly as a cat, testing the floorboards with each step. The doors were closed, and had once been locked, but long-ago vandals had ripped one door from its hinges, and it hung open.

Beyond lay a large common room of some kind, perhaps used for afternoon tea. It was very dark. Pendergast stood motionless just within the doorway, giving his eyes time to adjust. There was a strong smell of dry rot, salt, and rat urine. A huge stone fireplace dominated one wall. Wing chairs and skeletonized sofas were arranged around the room, springs protruding from their rotten fabric. Leather banquettes with their tables ran along the far edge of the room, the once-soft seats now cracked, split, and spewing cotton. A few broken and faded photographs of the Salton Sea in its 1950s heyday — motorboats, water-skiers, fishermen in waders — adorned the walls among many empty, pale rectangles, the rest having long been stolen. Everything was covered in a fine mantle of dust.

Pendergast crossed the room, stepped beneath an archway, and emerged into a central passage. There was a huge staircase here that swept up to the floors above, where the guest rooms and suites were located. Ahead lay the dim outlines of the main lobby, with its thick wooden columns and seaside murals only partially visible. He stood for a moment in the silence, getting his bearings. The resort’s blueprints were tucked into his vest, but he did not need them — the layout was imprinted on his mind. A spacious corridor led down to the left, presumably to the spa and the ballrooms. To his right was a low archway leading into the cocktail lounge.

Set into a nearby wall was a broken glass display case, containing a single sheet of mimeographed paper, curled and faded. Pendergast approached it and — peering close in the faint moonlight — sca

Welcome to the fabulous Salton Fontainebleau!

“The In Place on the Inland Sea”

Saturday, October 5, 1962

Today’s Activities:

6 AM — Health swim with Ralph Amandero, two-time Olympic contender

10 AM — Water-skiing competition

2 PM — Inline motor boat races

4 PM — “Miss Salton Sea” pageant

8:30 PM — Dancing in the Grand Ballroom, Verne Williams Orchestra, starring Jean Jester

11 PM — “The Jungle Comes Alive” animal viewing, with free cocktail service

Pendergast turned toward the arch leading into the lounge. The windows of the lounge were shuttered, and although several slats were drooping or had fallen away, the glass shattered, the room was still very dark. Pendergast reached into a pocket of his vest, pulled out a pair of night-vision goggles with a third-generation image intensifier, fitted them to his head, and turned them on. Instantly his surroundings bloomed into clarity, chairs and walls and chandeliers all outlined in ghostly green. Pendergast turned a dial on the goggles, adjusting the brightness of the image tube, then moved across the lounge.

It was large, with a stage in one corner and a long, semicircular bar dominating the far wall. Round tables were arranged around the rest of the room. Broken cocktail glasses lay on the floor and on the tables, their contents long since evaporated into tarry deposits. The bar itself, although the liquor was gone, displayed neatly arranged rows of napkins and jars full of swizzle sticks, all covered with a fine layer of dust. The marbled mirror behind the bar had shattered, dully glittering shards lying on the bar and floor. It was a testament to the remote bleakness of the Salton Fontainebleau — or, perhaps, the vague sense of restless unease, such as a haunted house might exude — that vandals, or scavengers like Cayute, had not completely preyed upon it. Instead the old hotel remained for the most part a time capsule of the Rat Pack generation, abandoned to the vagaries of the elements.

One wall of the lounge was supplied with a picture window, which had survived the passage of time with only a few cracks in it, but so covered with a hoarfrost of salt that it was almost opaque. Pendergast walked over to it, wiped a spot clear with a paper napkin, and peered through. Beyond lay a circular enclosure, lounge chairs arranged around its circumference, as around an indoor swimming pool, except that where the pool would normally be was a yawning black hole lined with brick, surrounded by a protective iron railing. It was about fifteen feet across and looked like the maw of an oversize well. Peering closely with the night-vision goggles, Pendergast thought he could make out, within the blackness of the hole, the plastic, warped upper leaves of several fake palm trees.

The animal garden. It was not hard to imagine high rollers and Hollywood stars rubbing shoulders here half a century earlier, under the starry night, highballs in hand, laughter and the clinking of glasses mingling with the roar of wild beasts as they sipped their drinks and looked down at the animals roaming below.

Pendergast mentally reviewed the hotel blueprints and the map of the Golden Spider Mine. The animal garden was situated directly over the rear entrance to the mine, utilizing the tu

Turning away from the window, he lifted up the hinged bar and stepped into the bartender’s station. He walked past the empty shelves that had once held i

Beyond lay a warren of kitchens, storage rooms, and food preparation areas. Pendergast moved silently through them, looking this way and that with the goggles, until he located the door that opened onto a concrete stairway leading down.

The service spaces of the resort’s basement were spare and functional, like the lower decks of a passenger ship. Pendergast made his way past a boiler room and several storage areas — one full of rotting deck chairs and beach umbrellas, another with rack after rack of moth-eaten maids’ uniforms — until he reached a door of solid metal.