The Book of the Dead (30 page)

O
n a cold March day, eastern Long Island did not much look like the playground of the rich and famous it was supposed to be. At least, that was Smithback’s impression as he cruised past yet another muddy, stubble-strewn potato field, a bedraggled flock of crows wheeling about overhead.

Since his meeting with Hayward, Smithback had tried everything in his journalistic bag of tricks to find out more about Diogenes. He’d written suggestive articles, hinting at imminent breakthroughs and soliciting tips. He’d poked around the museum, asking questions and sifting rumors. Nothing. Pendergast remained in prison on charges of murder. Just as bad, Diogenes remained utterly vanished, free. The image of Pendergast’s brother at large and no doubt hatching some fresh outrage both angered and frightened Smithback.

He wasn’t sure, exactly, when the idea had come to him. But come it had… and now he was driving eastward on the island, heading for a house that he hoped—rather fervently hoped—was unoccupied.

Chances were, he’d find nothing. After all, what could he find that the police hadn’t? But it was the only thing still left for him to do.

“In five hundred feet, turn right on Springs Road,” spoke a mellifluous female voice from the dashboard.

“Thanks, Lavinia darling,” Smithback said with a jauntiness he didn’t feel.

“Turn right on Springs Road.”

Smithback complied, swinging onto a cracked macadam road sandwiched between more potato fields, shuttered beach houses, and bare-limbed trees. Beyond lay a marsh of dead cattails and sawgrass. He passed a faded wooden sign in a picturesque state of dilapidation.
Welcome to the Springs
, it told him. This was an unpretentious corner of eastern Long Island, only faintly perfumed with the odor of quiet money.

“The town, my dear Lavinia, is small and unremarkable, but not wholly without atmosphere,” said Smithback. “Wish you could see it.”

“In five hundred feet, turn right on Glover’s Box Road.”

“Very well.”

“Turn right on Glover’s Box Road,” came the smooth response.

“With a voice like that, you could make a fortune in the phone sex business, you know that?” Smithback was glad Lavinia was only a voice in his dashboard. The GPS navigation system couldn’t know just how nervous he felt.

He now found himself on a broad sandy spit of land, beach houses on either side among scraggly pines, cattail marshes, and scrub. A gray sheet of water lay to his left: Gardiners Bay. On his right was a bedraggled harbor, shut up for the winter, the yachts gone into tender.

“In three hundred feet, you will arrive at your destination.”

Smithback slowed. Ahead, he could see a sandy driveway leading through a sparse scattering of oaks to end at a gray, shingled house. Police sawhorses had been placed across the driveway, but there was no sign of a police presence. The house was shut up and dark.

The road curved past a few more houses, then ended in a loop where the spit came to an end. A sign to one side announced a public beach. Smithback pulled the car onto the side of the loop—he was the only one there—and stepped out, inhaling the fresh cold air. He zipped his jacket against the damp wind, shrugged his arms into a backpack, picked up a rock from the ground, placed it in his pocket, and strolled out onto the beach. The small waves slopped and hissed up the strand in a regular cadence. Strolling along, he picked up a few shells, tossed them back again, scuffed his sneakers along the sand, all the time making his way down the beach.

The houses stood just beyond the beginning of the sawgrass and dunes: gray shingles and white trim, silent and boarded up for the winter. The house he wanted was easy to identify: pieces of yellow crime scene tape still fluttered from stakes driven into the unkempt yard. It was a large house from the twenties, weather-beaten, with pitched roofs, a deep sea-facing porch, and two gables. Smithback continued past the house, but still there was no sign of any official presence. Still kicking sand nonchalantly, he strolled up through the dunes and sawgrass, hopped over a split rail fence, ducked under the police tape, and scooted across the yard into the lee of the house.

He pressed himself against the wall, hidden from sight behind a half-dead yew, and slipped on a pair of leather gloves. The house would be locked, of course. He edged around until he came to a side door, then peered inside. He made out a tidy, old-fashioned kitchen, devoid of the usual utensils.

Smithback removed the rock from his pocket, along with a handkerchief. He wrapped the handkerchief around the rock, gave the window a smart rap.

Nothing happened. He struck harder, this time making a fairly audible thump, but still it did not break.

He took a closer look at the glass and noticed something unusual: it was thick and blue-green in color, and the light dividers were of painted metal, not wood.

Bulletproof glass?

Somehow, Smithback wasn’t surprised. Diogenes would have retrofitted the house to be impregnable from the outside as well as escape-proof from the inside.

He paused, hoping he hadn’t just wasted a three-hour drive. Certainly Diogenes would have thought of everything—how could he have forgotten that? There was no point in probing for weaknesses: there would be none.

On the other hand, the police might have left a door open.

Keeping hidden in the shrubbery, he crept around to the front porch. The door had crime scene tape stretched across it. He hopped onto the porch, glanced up and down the road, then turned to examine the door. This was how the cops had broken in—the door frame had been bent by crowbars and the door itself was bowed, the lock shattered. It appeared as if a remarkable amount of force had been necessary. Having destroyed the door lock, the police had affixed a padlock of their own, and this Smithback examined carefully. It was of case-hardened steel, too thick to cut with bolt cutters; but the fasteners had been screwed into fresh holes drilled in the metal door.

Smithback dipped into the leather backpack and pulled out a Phillips-head screwdriver. In five minutes, he had unscrewed one side. He pulled the fastener back and eased open the badly warped metal door. In a moment, he was inside, the door shut behind him.

He paused for a moment, rubbing his hands together. It was warm in the house—the heat was still on. He was standing in a typical beach-house living room, with comfortable wicker furniture, braided and hooked rugs scattered about the floor, a gaming table set for chess, a grand piano in one corner, and a huge fireplace built from beach stones in the far wall. The light in the house was a curious green from the thick-glassed windows.

What was he looking for? He wasn’t sure. Some clue to where Diogenes might be, perhaps, or under what other identity or identities he might be hiding. He had a moment’s feeling of dismay, wondering how he could possibly find something that the police had missed or that—even more improbably—Diogenes himself had overlooked. Of course, the man had left in a hurry, leaving behind a slew of equipment and material, enough for the police to positively identify him as the museum diamond thief. Even so, he had proved himself to be not only exceptionally intelligent but also exceptionally careful. Diogenes wasn’t the type to make mistakes.

Walking noiselessly, Smithback moved through an archway into a dining room beautifully paneled in oak, with a heavy table and Chippendale chairs. Paintings and prints hung on the dark red walls. A door in the far wall led to the tiny kitchen, also spotless. The police would not have cleaned the house: he figured this was the way Diogenes habitually kept it.

Back in the living room, Smithback wandered to the piano, hit a few keys. It was beautifully in tune, the hammers working smoothly.

Okay, that was one thing: Diogenes played the piano.

He looked at the music open on the stand: Schubert’s Impromptus, opus 90. Under that, sheet music for Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” a book of Chopin’s nocturnes. A relatively accomplished pianist at that, but probably not at the concert level.

Next to the piano was another archway, leading into the library. This room was unaccountably disordered. Books lay on the floor, some open, with gaps on the shelves. The rug was rumpled and turned up at one end, and a table lamp lay broken on the floor. A large table dominated the middle of the space, covered with black velvet; above stood a row of bright spotlights.

In one corner, Smithback saw something that sent a shiver down his spine: a large, finely machined, stainless-steel anvil. Next to it lay some rumpled rags and a strange kind of hammer made out of a gray, gleaming metal—titanium, perhaps?

Smithback backed out of the library, turned, and ascended the wooden stairs. At the top was a landing with a long hall, paintings of seascapes on both walls. A small, stuffed capuchin monkey crouched on a table, next to a glass dome under which stood a fake tree festooned with butterflies.

The doors to the rooms were all open.

Walking into the room directly at the top of the stairs, Smithback realized it must have been the one where Viola Maskelene was held prisoner. The bed was in disarray, there was a broken glass on the floor, and someone had scraped off the wallpaper on one wall, revealing metal underneath.

Metal
. Smithback went over and carefully peeled off some more wallpaper. The walls were made of solid steel.

He shivered again, feeling a creeping sensation of alarm. The window was of the same thick blue-green glass as downstairs, and was barred. The door, which he examined next, was extremely heavy, also of steel, and it moved noiselessly on oversize hinges. He peered at the lock—superheavy machined brass and stainless steel.

Smithback’s feeling of nervousness increased. What if Diogenes came back? But of course he wouldn’t come back—that would be crazy. Unless there was something in the house he had forgotten…

He made a quick tour of the other bedrooms. On a hunch, he took his screwdriver and poked the wall of another room. It, too, was steel.

Did Diogenes plan to imprison more than one person? Or was the whole house fortified like this as a matter of course?

He skipped downstairs, heart pounding in his chest. The whole place was giving him the creeps. The day had proved a total waste: he’d come out there without a real plan, without looking for anything specific. He wondered if he should take notes—but of what? Maybe he should just forget it and go visit Margo Green. He was already out of the city. But that would be an equally useless journey—she had taken an abrupt turn for the worse, he understood, and was now comatose and unresponsive…

Suddenly he froze. Soft footsteps were moving across the porch.

With a sudden feeling of terror, he ducked into the coat closet at the bottom of the stairs. He pushed his way toward the back, nestling himself behind the row of cashmere, camel’s-hair, and tweed coats. He could hear the rattle of the door, and then the groan as it slowly opened.

Diogenes?

The closet was thick with the smell of wool. He could hardly breathe from fear.

Footsteps moved quietly across the carpeted entry and into the living room, then stopped. Silence.

Smithback waited.

Next, the footsteps moved into the dining room, then faded away into the kitchen.

Should he run for it?

But even before he could consider, the steps returned: slow, soft, deliberate steps. Now they moved toward the library, back out, and up the stairs.

Now. Smithback flitted out of the closet, scurried across the living room, and dashed out the open door. As he rounded the corner of the porch, he saw that a cop car was standing in the driveway, engine running, door open.

He skipped through the backyard of the house next door and ran down onto the beach, almost laughing with relief. What he had assumed was Diogenes was only a cop, coming to check on the place.

He got back in his car and spent a moment recovering his breath. A wasted day. But at least he’d exited the house in one piece.

He started the car, turned on the navigator.

“Where would you like to go?” came the smooth, sexy voice. “Please enter the address.”

Smithback punched up the menu and chose the “Office” option. He knew his way back, but he liked listening to Lavinia.

“We are going to the location called Office,” came the voice. “Proceed north on Glover’s Box Road.”

“Righty-o, darling.”

He drove slowly and nonchalantly past the house. The cop was now outside, standing next to his cruiser with a mike in his hand. He watched Smithback drive by but made no move to stop him.

“In five hundred feet, turn left on Springs Road.”

Smithback nodded. He raised a hand to brush away a wisp of tweed wool from his face. As he did so, he stiffened with an almost electric shock.

“That’s it, Lavinia!” he cried. “The coats in the closet!”

“Turn left on Springs Road.”

“There were two kinds of coats! Super-expensive cashmere and mohair, and then a bunch of heavy, hairy, itchy tweed coats. Do you know of anyone who wears both? Hell, no!”

“Proceed for one mile on Springs Road.”

“Diogenes is the cashmere-and-mohair type, for sure. That means his alter ego wears tweeds. He’s disguised as a professorial type. It’s perfect, Lavinia, it feels right. He’s a professor. No, wait!
Not
a professor, not exactly. After all, he knows the museum so well… The police are saying the diamond heist had to have had inside help—but can you imagine Diogenes enlisting help? Hell, it’s staring us right in the face. Holy shit, Lavinia: we nailed it!
I
nailed it!”