D’Agosta turned north and began walking up the drive. It was probably only ten or fifteen short blocks. He slapped his gut. It would do him good, work off some of that greasy burger. Besides, he still had more than an hour to kill.
He set a brisk pace for himself, his cuffs and keys jangling. The wind was sighing through the trees along the edge of Riverside Park, and the facades of the elegant apartment buildings that faced the river were brightly lit, most sporting doormen or security guards. Even though it was almost eight, a lot of people were still coming home from work: men and women in suits, a musician carrying a cello, a couple of college professor types in tweedy jackets arguing loudly about somebody named Hegel. Once in a while someone glanced at him, smiled, nodded, glad that he was there. September 11 had changed a lot of things in New York City, and one of them was the way people looked at cops. Another reason to get himself rehired at the first opportunity.
D’Agosta hummed as he walked along, filling his lungs with the heady fragrance, that West Side perfume of salt air, car fumes, garbage, and asphalt. He caught a brief whiff of roasting coffee from some all-night delicatessen. New York City. Once it got into your blood, you could never get it out again. When the economy turned around and the city began hiring again, D’Agosta would be first in line. Christ, he’d start off as a tire-kicker in Far Rockaway if it meant working again for the NYPD.
He crossed 110th Street. The numbers were still only in the 400s, rising but not fast enough. What the hell was the cross-street rule for Riverside? Something divided by something minus 59 . . . He couldn’t even guess anymore—all he knew was it was going to be farther uptown than he thought.
At least he had plenty of time. Maybe Pendergast lived in one of those professorial brownstones up by Columbia. That must be it: Pendergast, slumming with the academics. He quickened his pace. Now the buildings were less elegant, plainer, but still neat and trim. He was getting into the Columbia University neighborhood, with its students and their baggy clothes, a kid shouting down from a window to some other kid on the sidewalk, tossing down a book. D’Agosta wondered what his life would have been like if he’d come from a family that had sent him to college. He might be a big-time writer by now. Maybe the critics would have liked his books more. You made a lot of contacts in the right college, and a hell of a lot of those New York Times critics seemed to come from Columbia. And they all reviewed each other’s books. The damn Times Book Review was like a private club.
He shook his head. As his old Italian grandfather used to say, it was acqua passata.
He paused at 122nd Street to catch his breath. He had reached the northern fringe of Columbia. Ahead was International House, standing like the last outpost on the edge of the frontier. Beyond was no-man’s-land.
And the numbers were only up to 550.
Shit. He checked his watch. Ten past eight. He’d hiked a mile. He’d done his duty for the day. He still had plenty of time, but he was no longer enjoying himself. And this far uptown, there was zero chance of getting a cab. There were still one or two students in view, but there were also crowds of kids loitering on stoops, watching him pass, sometimes giving a little hiss or muttering something. He now realized that 891 Riverside would be somewhere around 135th Street, if not a little farther. He could make it in another ten minutes—and he would still be early—but it meant walking into the heart of Harlem.
Once again he pulled the card from his pocket. There was the address, in Pendergast’s elegant script. It seemed impossible. But there could be no mistake.
He left the bright oasis of International House behind, neither hurrying nor loitering. There was no reason for him to be nervous: not in uniform and packing his Glock 9mm.
As he walked on, the neighborhood changed abruptly. Gone now were the students, the bustle of activity. The streetlights were broken, the apartment facades dim. It became quiet, almost deserted. At 130th Street, D’Agosta passed an empty mansion, one of the really old ones: the tin ripped off the empty window frames, the very frame of the building exhaling a smell of mold and urine into the street. A junkie palace. The next block contained a single-room-occupancy “hotel,” the inhabitants sitting on the stoop and drinking beer. They fell silent and watched him go by with bleary eyes. A dog barked incessantly.
Though plenty of antiquated cars lined the curb—battered, windowless, sometimes even wheelless—there were fewer cars on the road now. An ancient, microscopic Honda Accord CVCC passed by, so rusted its original color was impossible to discern. A minute or so later it was followed by a gold Impala with smoked windows. It seemed to D’Agosta that it slowed as it went past. He watched as it took the next right.