Blue Labyrinth

Again, Fábio’s eyes flashed. “I do not pretend to know what was then in his head, senhor. All I can tell you is that, in very little time, he put together a clever plan for a coup of Cidade dos Anjos. But someone betrayed his plan to O Punho and his gang. The Fist knew that the Angel of the Favelas was Adler’s lover and wife. He decided to act. One night, he and his men surrounded Adler’s house and torched it. Burned to the ground. Adler himself happened to be away… but his wife and unborn child died in the blaze.”

Pendergast waited in the silence to hear the rest of the story, willing his own pain away. Alban’s wife and unborn child, burned alive…

“I have never seen a man so utterly consumed with bloodlust. But in a silent way, an i

“Naturally,” said Pendergast. “He wished to mold the favela into something infinitely greater — and infinitely worse — than it already was.”

A look of surprise came over Fábio’s face. “No. No, you do not understand at all. This is what I was getting to. Something in him changed when his wife and child were killed. I do not say I understand it myself. Something inside him changed.”

Evidently, Pendergast’s disbelief was all too clear, because Fábio continued in great earnestness. “I believe that it was the goodness of his wife, and her brutal end, that changed him. He suddenly understood what was right and what was wrong in this world.”

“No doubt,” said Pendergast sarcastically.

Fábio stood up from his desk. “It is true, rapiz! And the proof of it lies all around you. Yes, Adler took control of the City of Angels. But he remade it. All for the better! Gone are the cruelty, the drugs, the hunger, the tyra

All of a sudden Pendergast felt his force of will begin to weaken. His head suddenly swam, and pain shot through his bones. He took a deep breath. “How do you know all this?” he finally asked.

“Because I was your son’s lieutenant in the new City of Angels. I am the man who stood at his right hand. I knew him better than all but Danika.”

“And why have you told me all this?”

Fábio eased himself back into his seat and hesitated a moment before answering. “I told you, senhor—I have a duty. Three weeks ago, Adler left the favela a second time. He told me he was going to Switzerland, and then to New York.”

“Switzerland?” Pendergast said, suddenly alarmed.

“After Danika’s death, Adler — Alban — made me promise that — if something were ever to happen to him — I was to track down his father and tell him the story of his redemption.”

“Redemption!” Pendergast said.

Fábio went on. “But he never got around to telling me your name or explaining how I could get in touch with you. He was gone three weeks… I heard nothing. And now you have come, telling me he is dead.” Fábio took another long pull at the bottle of beer. “I have told you the story he wanted me to tell. I have now done my duty.”

There was a long pause in which neither man spoke.

“You do not believe me,” Fábio said.

“This house of Alban’s,” Pendergast replied. “The one that was burned. What was its address?”

“Thirty-One, Rio Paranoá.”

“Will you have your men take me there?”

Fábio frowned. “It is nothing but a ruin.”

“I ask nevertheless.”

After a moment, Fábio nodded.

“And this O Punho of whom you speak. Where did he live?”

“Why, here, of course.” Fábio shrugged as if this should have been obvious. “Anything else, senhor?”

“I would like my sidearm back.”

Fábio turned to one of his guards. “Me da a arma.” A minute later, Pendergast’s Les Baer was produced.

Pendergast slipped it into his suit jacket. Slowly — very slowly — he retrieved his wallet, passport, the photograph, and the wad of money from the desk. And then, with a final nod of thanks to Fábio, he turned and followed the armed men out of the office and down the stairs to the steamy street outside.

40

D’Agosta entered the Museum’s video security room at exactly quarter to two in the afternoon. Jimenez had asked to see him, and D’Agosta hoped the meeting wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes: he’d timed it so he arrived between planetarium shows, and he wasn’t sure he could take yet another eighty-decibel tour of the cosmos.

Jimenez and Conklin were sitting at a small table, tapping on laptops. D’Agosta walked over to them, navigating through the racks of equipment in semi-darkness.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Jimenez straightened up. “We’re done.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve run through all the security tapes covering the Museum’s entrance from June twelfth, the day of Marsala’s murder, back to April sixth. That’s a week before any eyewitnesses recall seeing the murderer in the Museum, but we went the extra week, just to be safe.” He gestured toward his laptop. “We have the sighting of him that you found initially, entering the Museum late on the afternoon of June twelfth. We have tapes of him entering and exiting the Museum on April twentieth, and another entrance and exit set on April fourteenth.”

D’Agosta nodded. The April 20 date matched with the date the Padgett skeleton had been most recently accessed. And no doubt April 14 was the date that the murderer, under the guise of a visiting scientist, first met with Marsala to arrange for the examination. June 12 was the day of the murder.

He sank into a chair beside them. “Good job,” he said. And he meant it. It was a boring slog, peering at video after grainy video, feeling your eyes slowly going dry and bleary, to the sound of the Big Bang. They’d found two prior dates on which the murderer had visited the Museum and his entrance on the day of the murder. But they still hadn’t found him leaving the Museum after the murder.

A part of him wondered why he’d even bothered having his men complete this exercise. The suspected murderer was dead — a suicide. It wasn’t like they were gathering evidence in preparation for a trial. It was the old-fashioned cop in him, he supposed: dotting every i and crossing every t.

Suicide. The image of the killer, there at the Indio Holding Facility, had stayed with him. The way he’d rambled on about the stink of rotting flowers, his agitation and incoherence. Not to mention the way he’d jumped so homicidally at Pendergast. Those weren’t easy things to forget. And Christ almighty, killing yourself by biting off your own toe and choking on it? A man would really have to want to check out to do something like that. It didn’t seem consistent with the ersatz Professor Waldron, a man who’d clearly been calm and intelligent and rational enough to fool Victor Marsala and other Museum staff into believing he was a scientist.