Blue Labyrinth

The door slid open, and D’Agosta looked up to see the dark figure of Pendergast standing in the hallway. He gave a gesture as if to say: Mind if I try?

D’Agosta picked up his notebook and stood up. Sure, his answering shrug said, knock yourself out.

He went into the observation room next door and took a seat beside Spandau. He watched as Pendergast made himself comfortable in one of the chairs opposite the suspect. He seemed to spend an interminable amount of time adjusting his tie, buttoning his jacket, examining his cufflinks, adjusting his collar. At last, he sat forward, elbows on the desk, fingertips resting lightly on the scuffed wood. For a moment the fingertips drummed a nervous tattoo, then — as if recollecting himself — he curled them into his palms. He stared across the table, gaze resting lightly on his attacker. And then — just when D’Agosta thought he would burst from pent-up impatience — Pendergast began to speak in his dulcet, gracious accent.

“In the parts I come from, it is seen as unbearably rude not to refer to somebody by his proper name,” he began. “The last time we met, you seemed unwilling to supply that name — a name that I know is not Waldron. Have you changed your mind?”

The man looked back at him but did not reply.

“Very well. Since I abhor rudeness, I shall confer on you a name of my choosing. I shall call you Nemo, which, as you may know, is Latin for ‘no one.’ ”

This did not elicit any result.

“I don’t wish to waste as much time on this visit as I did on my last, Mr. Nemo. So let us be brief. Are you willing to tell me who hired you?”

Silence.

“Are you willing to tell me why you were hired, or the purpose of that bizarre trap?”

Silence.

“If you do not wish to provide names, are you at least willing to tell me what the intended outcome of all this was to be?”

Silence.

Pendergast examined his gold watch with an idle gesture. “I hold the key to whether you will be tried in state or federal court. By talking or not talking to me, you can choose between Rikers Island or the Florence Administrative Maximum Facility in Colorado. Rikers is a hell on earth. ADX Florence is a hell that not even Dante could have imagined.” He peered at the man with a peculiar intensity. “The furniture in each cell is made of poured concrete. The shower is on a timer. It goes off three times a week, at five AM, for exactly three minutes. From the window, you can see only cement and sky. You get one hour of ‘exercise’ a day in a concrete pit. ADX Florence has fourteen hundred remote-controlled steel doors and is surrounded by pressure pads and multiple rings of twelve-foot razor-wire fences. There your very existence will vanish from the tablets of history. If you don’t talk to me right now, you truly will become ‘no one.’ ”

Pendergast stopped speaking. The man shifted in his seat. D’Agosta, watching through the one-way glass, was now convinced the guy was crazy. No sane man could have resisted that line of questioning.

“There are no lilies in ADX Florence,” Pendergast said quietly.

D’Agosta exchanged a puzzled glance with Spandau.

“Lilies,” the man said, slowly, as if tasting the word.

“Yes. Lilies. Such a lovely flower, don’t you think? With such a delicate, exquisite aroma.”

The man hunched forward. Pendergast had finally gotten his attention.

“But then, the scent is gone, isn’t it?”

The man seemed to tense. He shook his head slowly, from side to side.

“No — I’m wrong. The lilies are still there; you said as much. But something’s wrong with them. They’ve gone off.”

“They stink,” the man muttered.

“Yes,” Pendergast said, his voice a curious mixture of empathy and mockery. “Nothing smells worse than a rotting flower. What a stench it produces!”

Pendergast had suddenly raised his voice.

“Get it out of my nose!” the man screamed.

“I can’t do that,” Pendergast said, his voice abruptly dropping to a whisper. “You won’t have lilies in your cell at ADX Florence. But the stink will remain. And it will grow as the rotte

With a sudden, animal cry, the man leapt out of his chair and across the table at Pendergast, his cuffed hands like talons, his eyes wide with murderous fury, flecks of foam and spittle flying from his mouth as he screeched. With a swift dodge, like a bullfighter, Pendergast rose out of his chair and sidestepped the attack; the two guards came forward, Tasers at the ready, and zapped the man. It took three shots to subdue him. In the end he lay draped across the table, twitching spasmodically, tiny wisps of smoke rising toward the microphone and ceiling lights. Pendergast stood to one side, examining the man with a clinical eye, then turned and strolled out of the room.

A moment later Pendergast entered the observation room, flicking a piece of lint off the shoulder of his suit with a look of irritation. “Well, Vincent,” he said. “I don’t see much point in our remaining here any longer. What is the expression? I’m afraid our friend is, ah, ‘bird-shit’ crazy?”

“Bat-shit crazy.”

“Thank you.” He turned to Spandau. “Once again, Mr. Spandau, I thank you for your invaluable assistance. Please let me know if his ravings grow lucid.”

Spandau shook the proffered hand. “I will.”

As the two left the prison, Pendergast took out his cell phone and began to dial. “I’d worried we might have to take the red-eye back to New York,” he said. “But our friend proved so unforthcoming we may catch an earlier flight. I’ll just check, if you don’t mind. We aren’t going to get anything else out of him now — or, I fear, ever.”

D’Agosta took a deep breath. “Mind telling me what the hell just happened in there?”

“What do you mean?”

“All those crazy questions. About flowers, lilies. How’d you know he’d react that way?”

Pendergast stopped dialing and lowered the phone. “It was an educated guess.”

“Yeah, but how?”

There was a pause before Pendergast replied. When he did, it was in a low tone indeed. “Because, my dear Vincent, our prisoner is not the only one who has begun smelling flowers of late.”

32

Pendergast slipped into the music room of the Riverside Drive mansion so abruptly that Constance, startled, stopped playing the harpsichord. She stopped to watch as he made his way to the sideboard, put down a large sheaf of papers, removed a bulbous glass, poured himself a large measure of absinthe, fitted a slotted spoon over the glass, placed a cube of sugar within, dribbled ice water over it from a carafe, and then picked up the papers and went straight to one of the leather armchairs.

“Don’t stop playing on my account,” he said.

Constance, taken aback by his terse tone, resumed playing the Scarlatti sonata. Even though she could only see him out of the corner of her eye, she sensed something was amiss. He took a hasty gulp of the absinthe and placed the glass down with a rattle, then took another, downing a good portion of the drink. One foot tapped against the Persian carpet, unevenly, out of time with the music. He leafed through the papers — which appeared to be an extensive assortment of old scientific treatises, medical journals, and news clippings — before putting them aside. On his third gulp of the drink, Constance stopped playing — it was a fiendishly difficult piece, and demanded absolute concentration — and turned to face him.

“I assume the trip to Indio was a disappointment,” she said.

Pendergast, who was staring now at one of the framed holographs, nodded without looking at her.

“The man remained silent?”

“On the contrary, he was most prolix.”

Constance smoothed down her skirt front. “And?”

“It was all gibberish.”

“What did he say, exactly?”