The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Let us first assume Dr. Leng purchased his chemicals at the most convenient place. As you can see, there is no shop near his lab downtown, so let us postulate he purchased his chemicals near his house uptown. We can thus eliminate these two East Side shops. That leaves three on the West Side. But this one is too far downtown, so we can eliminate it as well.” He made crosses through three of the five dots. “That leaves these two others. The question is, which one?”

Once again, his question was greeted by silence. Pendergast laid down the piece of glass and circled the table yet again, then stopped in front of the map. “He shopped at neither one.”

He paused. “Because 1,2 alumino phosphocyanate is a dangerous poison. A person buying it might attract attention. So let us assume, instead, that he shopped at the chemist farthest from his haunts: his house, the Museum, the downtown lab. A place where he would not be recognized. Clearly, that has to be this one, here, on East Twelfth Street. New Amsterdam Chemists.” He drew a line around the dot. “This is where Leng shopped for his chemicals.”

Pendergast spun around, pacing back and forth before the map. “In a stroke of good fortune, it turns out New Amsterdam Chemists is still in business. There may be records, even be some residual memory.” He turned to O’Shaughnessy. “I will ask you to investigate. Visit the establishment, and check their old records. Then search for old people who grew up in the neighborhood, if necessary. Treat it as you would a police investigation.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a brief silence. Then Pendergast spoke again.

“I’m convinced Dr. Leng didn’t live on any of the side streets between Broadway and Riverside Drive. He lived on Riverside Drive itself. That would narrow things down from over a thousand buildings to less than a hundred.”

O’Shaughnessy stared at him. “How do you know Leng lived on the Drive?”

“The grand houses were all along Riverside Drive. You can still see them, mostly broken up into tiny apartments or abandoned now, but they’re still there—some of them, anyway. Do you really think Leng would have lived on a side street, in middle-class housing? This man had a great deal of money. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. He wouldn’t want a place that could be walled in by future construction. He’d want light, a healthy flow of fresh air, and a pleasant view of the river. A view that could never be obstructed. I know

he would.”

“But how do you know?” O’Shaughnessy asked.

Suddenly, Nora understood. “Because he expected to be there for a very, very long time.”

There was a long silence in the cool, spacious room. A slow, and very uncharacteristic, smile gathered on Pendergast’s face. “Bravo,” he said.

He went to the map, and drew a red line down Riverside Drive, from 139th Street to 110th. “Here is where we must look for Dr. Leng.”

There was an abrupt, uncomfortable silence.

“You mean, Dr. Leng’s house,” said O’Shaughnessy.

“No,” said Pendergast, speaking very deliberately. “I mean Dr. Leng.”

Horse’s Tail

ONE

WITH A HUGE sigh, William Smithback Jr. settled into the worn wooden booth in the rear of the Blarney Stone Tavern. Situated directly across the street from the New York Museum’s southern entrance, the tavern was a perennial haunt of Museum staffers. They had nicknamed the place the Bones because of the owner’s penchant for hammering bones of all sizes, shapes, and species into every available surface. Museum wags liked to speculate that, were the police to remove the bones for examination, half of the city’s missing persons cases still on the books would be solved immediately.

Smithback had spent many long evenings here in years past, notebooks and beer-spattered laptop in attendance, working on various books: his book about the Museum murders; his follow-up book about the Subway Massacre. It had always seemed like a home away from home to him, a refuge against the troubles of the world. And yet tonight, even the Bones held no consolation for him. He recalled a line he’d read somewhere—Brendan Behan, perhaps—about having a thirst so mighty it cast a shadow. That’s how he felt.

It had been the worst week of his life—from this terrible business with Nora to his useless interview with Fairhaven. And to top it all, he’d just been scooped by the frigging Post—by his old nemesis Bryce Harriman, no less—twice. First on the tourist murder in Central Park, and then on the bones discovered down on Doyers Street. By rights, that was his story. How had that weenie Harriman gotten an exclusive? He couldn’t get an exclusive from his own girlfriend, for chrissakes. Who did he know? To think he, Smithback, had been kept outside with the milling hacks while Harriman got the royal treatment, the inside story . . . Christ, he needed a drink.

The droopy-eared waiter came over, hangdog features almost as familiar to Smithback as his own.

“The usual, Mr. Smithback?”