“The only thing I can do. I will wrap up this current case of ours as quickly as possible. Only then can I deal with my brother.”
“And if you find him? What then?”
“I must find him,” Pendergast said with quiet ferocity. “And when I do—” He paused. “The situation will be addressed with appropriate finality.”
The look on the agent’s face was so terrible D’Agosta looked away.
For a long moment, the library was silent. Then, at last, Pendergast roused himself. One glance told D’Agosta the subject was closed.
Pendergast’s voice changed back into its usual efficient, cool tone. “As liaison with the Southampton P.D., it seemed logical to suggest you as FBI liaison with the NYPD. This case began in the United States, and it may well end here. I’ve arranged for you, working with Captain Hayward, to be that liaison. It will require you to be in touch with her on a regular basis, via phone and e-mail.”
D’Agosta gave a nod.
Pendergast was looking at him. “I trust you’ll find that a satisfactory arrangement?”
“Fine with me.” D’Agosta hoped he wasn’t blushing. Is there anything this guy doesn’t know?
“Very good.” Pendergast rose. “And now I must pack for the trip and speak briefly with Constance. She’ll be remaining behind, of course, to manage the collections and do any additional research we may require. Proctor will see that you’re comfortable. Feel free to ring if you need anything.”
He rose, offering his hand. “Buona notte. And pleasant dreams.”
The room D’Agosta was shown to was on the third floor, facing the rear. It was exactly what he’d dreaded most: dimly lit and tall-ceilinged, with dark crushed-velvet wallpaper and heavy mahogany furniture. It smelled of old fabric and wood. The walls were covered with paintings in heavy gilt frames: landscapes, still lifes, and some studies in oil that were strangely disturbing if you looked at them too closely. The wooden shutters were closed tight against the casements, and no external noise filtered through the heavy stonework. Yet the room, like the rest of the house, was spotlessly clean; the fixtures were modern; and the huge Victorian bed, when he at last turned in, was exceptionally comfortable with fresh, clean sheets. The pillows had been aired and fluffed by some invisible housekeeper; the comforter, when he drew it up, was a luxuriously thick eiderdown. Everything about the room seemed guaranteed to provide an ideal night’s sleep.
And yet sleep did not come quickly to D’Agosta. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceiling, thinking of Diogenes Pendergast, for a long, long time.
{ 49 }
Locke Bullard sat in the rear of the Mercedes as it cruised along the Viale Michelangelo above Florence, the great eighteenth-century villas of the wealthiest Florentines invisible behind enormous walls and massive iron gates. As the limousine passed the Piazzale, Bullard barely glanced out at the stupendous view: the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Arno River. The car descended to the ancient gate of the Porta Romana.
“Cut through the old city,” said Bullard.
The driver flashed his permesso at the policemen on duty at the gate, and the limo eased into the crooked streets, heading first north, then west, passing back through another gate in the ancient walls surrounding the city. The Renaissance palazzi turned into modest nineteenth-century apartment houses; these in turn gave way to anonymous blocks of apartments, built midcentury; and finally to hideous projects and high-rises of gray concrete. There were no highways, just a maze of jammed streets and decaying factories, punctuated here and there by tiny kitchen gardens or a few hundred square feet of vineyard.
In half an hour, the limousine was crawling through the shabby streets of Signa, one of the ugliest of the industrial suburbs, a gray expanse of buildings spread out in the floodplains of the Arno. Laundry hung on concrete balconies in the listless, dead air. The only reminder that this was Bella Tuscany was the distant green hills of Carmignano, the tallest topped by the barest outline of a castle.
Bullard saw nothing beyond the smoked windows, said nothing to the chauffeur. His craggy face was utterly blank, his deep-set eyes cold beneath the great jutting brows. The only sign of the great turmoil within were the slowly bulging muscles of his jaw, tensing and relaxing, again and again.