D’Agosta took out a book himself. There was no inscription in this one, but as he rifled through it, a photograph dropped from between the pages. He picked it off the floor. It was a faded color snapshot of four youths, all male, arms draped around each other’s necks, before what looked like a blurry marble fountain.
D’Agosta heard a sharp intake of breath from Pendergast. “May I?” the agent asked.
D’Agosta handed him the photograph. He stared at it intently, then handed it back.
“The one on the far right, I believe, is Beckmann. And do you recognize his friends?”
D’Agosta looked. Almost instantly he recognized the massive head and jutting brows of Locke Bullard. The others took a moment longer, but once recognized were unmistakable: Nigel Cutforth and Jeremy Grove.
He glanced over at Pendergast. The man’s silvery eyes were positively glittering. “There it is, Vincent: the connection we’ve been looking for.”
He turned to the man lying on the bed. D’Agosta had almost forgotten him, he had been so silent. “John, may we take these items?”
“It’s what I’ve been saving them for.”
“How so?” D’Agosta asked.
“That’s what I do. I keep the things they treasured, in trust for their families.”
“Who’s they?”
“The ones that die.”
“Do the families ever come?”
The question hung in the air. “Everybody has a family,” John finally said.
It looked to D’Agosta like some of the boxes were so rotten and discolored they’d been sitting around for twenty years. It was a long time to wait for a family member to come calling.
“Did you know Beckmann well?”
The man shook his head. “He kept to himself.”
“Did he ever have visitors?”
“No.” The man sighed. His hair was brittle and his eyes were watering. It seemed to D’Agosta that he was dying, that he knew it, and that he welcomed it.
Pendergast picked up the small box of memorabilia and tucked it under his arm. “Is there anything we can do for you, John?” he asked quietly.
The man shook his head and turned to the wall.
They left the room without speaking. At the stoop, they passed the three drunks again.
“Find what you were looking for?” Jed asked.
“Yes,” said D’Agosta. “Thanks.”
The man touched his brow with his finger. D’Agosta turned. “What will happen to all the stuff in John’s room when he dies?”
The drunk shrugged. “They’ll toss it.”
“That was a most valuable visit,” Pendergast said as they got into the car. “We now know that Ranier Beckmann lived in Italy, probably in 1974, that he spoke Italian decently, perhaps fluently.”
D’Agosta looked at him, astonished. “How did you figure that out?”
“It’s what he said when he lost at rummy. ‘Kay Biskerow.’ It’s not a name, it’s an expression. Che bischero! It’s Italian, a Florentine dialect expostulation meaning ‘What a jerk!’ Only someone who had lived in Florence would know it. The coins in that cigar box are all Italian lire, dated 1974 and before. The fountain behind the four friends, although I don’t recognize it, is clearly Italianate.”
D’Agosta shook his head. “You figured all that out just from that little box of things?”
“Sometimes the small things speak the loudest.” And as the Rolls shot from the curb and accelerated down the street, Pendergast glanced over. “Would you slide my laptop out of the dash there, Vincent? Let us find out what light Professor Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. can shed on things.”
{ 47 }
As Pendergast drove south, D’Agosta booted the laptop, accessed the Internet via a wireless cellular connection, and initiated a search on Charles F. Ponsonby Jr. Within a few minutes, he had more information than he knew what to do with, starting with the fact that Ponsonby was Lyman Professor of Art History at Princeton University.
“I thought the name was familiar,” Pendergast said. “A specialist in the Italian Renaissance, I believe. Lucky for us he’s still teaching—no doubt as professor emeritus by now. Bring up his curriculum vitae, if you will, Vincent.”
As Pendergast merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and smoothly accelerated into the afternoon traffic, D’Agosta read off the professor’s appointments, awards, and publications. It was a lengthy process, made lengthier by the numerous abstracts Pendergast insisted on hearing recited verbatim.