Blue Labyrinth

During this rant, the American’s face had fallen apart, becoming loose, haggard, and gray. Beads of sweat stood at his temples. He’d hesitated once in his tirade to pass a hand across his forehead; another time to wave the hand in front of his nose, as if to brush away some odor. Gabler noticed that the entire café, in fact the entire street, had gone silent, watching this bizarre drama play out. The man was either drunk or on drugs. Now the man moved unsteadily toward the Lamborghini, the officer quickly giving ground before him. The American reached for the door handle — pawed for it, more exactly, with a blind, flailing gesture — and missed. He took another step forward; swayed; steadied himself; swayed again, and then crumpled to the sidewalk. There were cries for help, and some rose from their tables. Gabler, too, jumped to his feet, the chair tumbling away behind him. In his surprise and consternation, he didn’t even realize he had just spilled his half-full glass of Pflümli down one leg of his well-pressed pants.

45

Lieutenant Peter Angler sat behind the desk of his office in the Twenty-Sixth Precinct. All the thick paperwork on the desk had been relegated to its four corners, and the center was bare save for three items: a silver coin, a piece of wood, and a bullet.

There were times in every investigation where he felt that things were about to reach a turning point. At such times, Angler had a little ritual he always went through: he pulled these three relics out of a locked desk drawer and examined them in turn. Each, in its own way, marked a milestone in his life — just as every case he cracked while on the force was its own milestone in miniature — and he enjoyed reflecting on their importance.

First, he picked up the coin. It was an old Roman Imperial denarius, struck in AD 37, with Caligula on its face and Agrippina Sr. on the reverse. Angler had purchased the coin after his thesis on the emperor — with its medical and psychological analysis of the changes wrought on Caligula by his serious illness of that year, and the illness’s role in transforming him from a relatively benevolent ruler to an insane tyrant — won first prize at Brown his senior year. The coin had been very expensive, but somehow he felt he had to own it.

Placing the coin back on the table, he picked up the piece of wood. Originally curled and rough, he had sanded and smoothed it himself until it was barely larger than a pencil, then varnished it so that it glowed brilliantly in the fluorescent light of the office. It had come from the first old-growth redwood that he, in his days as an environmental activist, had saved from the logging companies. He had camped in the upper canopy of the tree for almost three weeks, until the loggers finally gave up and moved elsewhere. As he descended the tree, he’d cut off a small dead branch as a memento of the triumph.

Lastly he reached for the bullet. It was bent and misshapen from the impact with his own left tibia. He never discussed, on the Job or off, the fact that he’d taken a bullet; never wore or displayed the Police Combat Cross he’d earned for extraordinary heroism. Few people who worked with him even knew he’d been shot in the line of duty. It didn’t matter. Angler turned the bullet over in his hands, then replaced it on the desk. He knew, and that was enough.

He put the items carefully back in their drawer, relocked it, then picked up the phone and dialed the number for the departmental secretary. “Have them come in,” he said.

A minute later, the door opened and three men stepped in: Sergeant Slade and two desk sergeants assigned to the Alban murder. “Report, please,” Angler said.

One stepped forward. “Sir, we’ve completed our examination of the TSA records.”

“Go on.”

“As you requested, we went back through all available records for a period of eighteen months, looking for any evidence that the victim might have made trips to the United States other than June fourth of this year. We found such evidence. The victim, using the same false name of Tapanes Landberg, entered the country from Brazil roughly one year previously, on May seventeenth, coming through JFK. Five days later, on May twenty-second, he flew back to Rio.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. Using Homeland Security documentation, we found that a man using the same name and passport took a flight from LaGuardia to Albany on May eighteenth, returning May twenty-first.”

“A false Brazilian passport,” Angler said. “It would have to be of excellent quality. I wonder where he got it?”

“No doubt such things are easier to obtain in a country like Brazil than they are here,” said Slade.

“No doubt. What else?”

“That’s it, sir. At Albany, the trail went cold. We checked all available avenues through local law enforcement, travel companies, bus terminals, regional airports and airlines, hotels, and car rental companies. There is no further record of Tapanes Landberg until he boarded the plane back to LaGuardia on May twenty-first, and thence to Brazil the following day.”

“Thank you. Excellent work. Dismissed.”

Angler waited until the two had left the office. Then he nodded at Slade and motioned the man toward a chair. From one of the piles of paperwork at the edges of his desk, he took a large stack of oversize index cards. They contained information compiled enthusiastically by Sergeant Slade over the past several days.

“Why would our friend Alban have gone to Albany?” Angler asked.

“No idea,” Slade replied. “But I’d lay odds those two trips are linked.”

“It’s a small town. The airport and central bus terminal would both fit in the Port Authority waiting room. Alban would have a hard time hiding his tracks there.”

“How do you know so much about Albany?”

“I have relatives in Colonie, to the northwest.” Angler turned his attention to the index cards. “You’ve been a busy man. In another life, you could have made a superlative muckraking journalist.”

Slade smiled.

Angler shuffled slowly through the cards. “Pendergast’s tax and property records. I can’t imagine they were easy to obtain.”

“Pendergast is a rather private individual.”

“I see he owns four properties: two in New York, one in New Orleans and another nearby. The one in New Orleans is a parking lot. Odd.”

Slade shrugged.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he owned offshore real estate, as well.”

“Neither would I. I’m afraid that would resist any further digging on my part, though, sir.”

“And it’s beside the point.” Angler put these cards down, glanced at another set. “His record of arrests made and convictions obtained.” He shuffled through them. “Impressive. Very impressive indeed.”

“The statistic that I found most interesting was the number of his perps who died in the process of being apprehended.”

Angler searched for this statistic, found it, raised his eyebrows in surprise. Then he continued his perusal. “I see that Pendergast has almost as many official censures as he has commendations.”

“My friends in the Bureau say he’s controversial. A lone wolf. He’s independently wealthy, takes a salary of one dollar a year just to keep things official. In recent years the upper echelons of the FBI have tended to take a hands-off approach, given his success rate, so long as he doesn’t do anything too egregious. He appears to have at least one powerful, invisible friend high up in the Bureau — maybe more.”

“Hmmm.” More turning of index cards. “A stint in the special forces. What’d he do?”

“Classified. All I learned was that he earned several medals for bravery under fire and completing certain high-value covert actions.”

Angler formed the cards into a pile, then squared them against his desk and put them to one side. “Does all this confuse you, Loomis?”