The Rolls had left Manhattan via the Willis Avenue Bridge and was now heading north through late Saturday morning traffic along the Major Deegan Expressway. Soon it left the Deegan for the Mosholu Parkway and made its way into the hard-core inner ring of suburbs that comprised the lower fringe of Westchester County. Pendergast had been his usual reticent self about where they were going. Dun-colored housing projects, aging industrial complexes, and strings of gas stations passed by in a blur. After a mile or two, they exited onto Yonkers Avenue. D’Agosta sat back with a sigh. Yonkers, the city with the ugliest name in America. What was Beckmann doing here? Maybe he had some nice place overlooking the Hudson: D’Agosta had heard talk of the city’s waterfront revitalization.
But the waterfront was not their destination. Instead, the Rolls turned east, toward Nodine Hill. D’Agosta watched the passing road signs with little interest. Prescott Street. Elm Street. Except there didn’t seem to be any elms here, only dying ginkgo trees that barely softened the dingy residential lines. As they drove on, the neighborhood grew increasingly seedy. Drunks and addicts now lounged on front stoops, watching the Rolls pass with scant interest. Every square inch of space was covered by illegible graffiti—even the tree trunks. The sky was the color of lead, and the day was becoming chilly. Here and there they passed vacant lots, reclaimed by weeds or sumac, patches of jungle in the middle of the city.
“Left here, please.”
Proctor turned into a dead-end street and glided to a stop in front of the last building. D’Agosta stepped out, Proctor staying with the car.
Instead of entering the tenement, Pendergast headed for the end of the cul-de-sac: a twelve-foot cinder-block wall covered with still more graffiti. An iron door, studded with old rivets, streaked and scaly with rust, was set into the wall.
Pendergast tried the handle, then bent to examine the lock. He removed a pencil-thin flashlight from his pocket and peered into the keyhole, probing with a small metal tool.
“Going to pick it?” D’Agosta asked.
Pendergast straightened. “Naturally.” He removed his sidearm and shot into the lock once, twice, the deafening reports rolling like thunder up the alleyway.
“Jesus, I thought you said you were going to pick it!”
“I did. With my pick of last resort.” Pendergast holstered the .45. “It’s the only way to unlock a solid block of rust. This door hasn’t been opened in years.” He raised his foot and gave the door a shove. It swung open with a groan of rusted metal.
D’Agosta peered through the doorway, astonished. Instead of a small weedy lot, the door opened on a vast overgrown meadow rising up a hill, covering at least ten acres, surrounded by decaying tenements. At the top stood a cluster of dead trees circling the ruins of what looked like a Greek temple: four Doric columns still standing, roof caved in, the whole structure shrouded in ivy. Directly before them was what once had been a small road. Now it was thick with weeds and poison sumac, rows of dead trees lining either side, their clawlike branches reaching into the gray sky.
D’Agosta shivered. “What’s this, some kind of park?”
“After a fashion.”
Pendergast began ascending the broken surface of the road, carefully stepping over chunks of frost-heaved asphalt, skirting four-foot weeds and dodging the poisonous sumac pistils. If he felt any lingering pain from the bullet graze of the day before, it did not show. On either side, beyond the dead trees, the weeds rose into a riot of overgrowth: ivy run rampant, brambles, and bushes. Everything was intensely green, growing with unnatural vigor and health.
After a few hundred feet, Pendergast paused, removed a piece of paper from his pocket, consulted it.
“This way.”
He started down a path at right angles to the road. D’Agosta scrambled to follow, pushing through the chest-high growth, his uniform becoming covered with pollen dust. Pendergast moved slowly, peering left and right, once in a while consulting the diagram in his hand. He seemed to be counting. D’Agosta gradually became aware just what it was Pendergast was counting: almost invisible in the undergrowth were rows of low, gray slabs of granite set into the ground, each with a name and a pair of dates.
“Hell, we’re in a cemetery!” said D’Agosta.
“A potter’s field, to be exact, where the indigent, the friendless, and the insane were buried. Pine coffin, six-foot hole, granite tombstone, and a two-minute eulogy, all courtesy of the state of New York. It filled up close to ten years ago.”
D’Agosta gave a whistle. “And Ranier Beckmann?”
Pendergast said nothing. He was moving through the ragweed, still counting. Suddenly he halted before a low granite stone, no different from any of the others. With a sweep of his foot, he knocked aside the weeds.
RANIER BECKMAN
1952-1995
A chill wind swept down from the hill, rippling the weeds like a field of grain. There was a distant rumble of thunder.
“Dead!” D’Agosta exclaimed.
“Exactly.” Pendergast extracted his cell phone and dialed. “Sergeant Baskin? We have located the grave in question and are ready for the exhumation. I have all the forensics paperwork here. We shall await you.”
D’Agosta laughed. “You’ve got quite a sense of theater, you know that, Pendergast?”
Pendergast shut the cell phone with a snap. “I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure myself, and for that I needed to find the grave. There was a sad paucity of records on Mr. Beckmann. Those few that we managed to uncover were suspect. As you can see, they even misspelled his name on the tombstone.”