The Cabinet of Curiosities (31 page)

“Kitchen and bedroom in back,” said Lee, not bothering to point.

Nora walked to the rear of the apartment. Here was a cramped kitchen, leading into two dark bedrooms and a bath. There were no closets. A window in the rear wall, below grade, allowed feeble brown light from an air shaft to enter between thick steel bars.

Nora emerged. Lee was examining the lock on the front door. “Have to fix lock,” he said in a portentous tone. “Many robber try to get in.”

“You have a lot of break-ins?”

Lee nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes. Many robber. Very dangerous.”

“Really?”

“Many robber. Many mugger.” He shook his head sadly.

“The apartment looks safe, at least.” Nora listened. The ceiling seemed fairly soundproof—at least, she could hear nothing from above.

“Neighborhood not safe for girl. Every day, murder, mugging, robber. Rape.”

Nora knew that, despite its shabby appearance, Chinatown was one of the safest neighborhoods in the city. “I’m not worried,” she said.

“Many rule for apartment,” said Lee, trying another tack.

“Is that right?”

“No music. No noise. No man at night.” Lee seemed to be searching his mind for other strictures a young woman would find objectionable. “No smoke. No drink. Keep clean every day.”

Nora listened, nodding her agreement. “Good. That sounds perfect. I like a neat, quiet place. And I have no boyfriend.” With a renewed flash of anger she thought of Smithback and how he had dragged her into this mess by publishing that article. To a certain extent Smithback
had
been responsible for these copycat killings. Just yesterday, he’d had the nerve to bring up her name at the mayor’s news conference, for the whole city to hear. She felt certain that, after what happened in the Archives, her long-term prospects at the Museum were even more questionable than before.

“Utility not include.”

“Of course.”

“No air-condition.”

Nora nodded.

Lee seemed at a loss, then his face brightened with a fresh idea. “After suicide, no allow gun in apartment.”

“Suicide?”

“Young woman hang herself. Same age as you.”

“A hanging? I thought you mentioned a gun.”

The man looked confused for a moment. Then his face brightened again. “She hang, but it no work. Then shoot herself.”

“I see. She favored the comprehensive approach.”

“Like you, she no have boyfriend. Very sad.”

“How terrible.”

“It happen right in there,” said Lee, pointing into the kitchen. “Not find body for three day. Bad smell.” He rolled his eyes and added, in a dramatic undertone:
“Many worm.”

“How dreadful,” Nora said. Then she smiled. “But the apartment is just perfect. I’ll take it.”

Lee’s look of depression deepened, but he said nothing.

She followed him back up to his apartment. Nora sat back down at the sofa, uninvited. The wife was still there, a formidable presence in the kitchen doorway. Her face was screwed into an expression of suspicion and displeasure. Her crossed arms looked like balsa-colored hams.

The man sat down unhappily.

“So,” said Nora, “let’s get this over with. I want to rent the apartment. I need it immediately. Today. Right now.”

“Have to check reference,” Lee replied feebly.

“There’s no time and I’m prepared to pay cash. I need the apartment tonight, or I won’t have a place to sleep.” As she spoke, she removed Pendergast’s envelope. She reached in and took out a brick of hundred-dollar bills.

The appearance of the money brought a loud expostulation from the wife. Lee did not respond. His eyes were on the cash.

“I have here first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a month’s deposit.” Nora thumped the roll on the tabletop. “Six thousand six hundred dollars. Cash. Bring out the lease.”

The apartment was dismal and the rent bordered on outrageous, which was probably why it wasn’t gone already. She hoped that hard cash was something Lee could not afford to ignore.

There was another sharp comment from the wife. Lee ignored her. He went into the back, and returned a few minutes later, laying two leases in front of her. They were in Chinese. There was a silence.

“Need reference,” said the wife stolidly, switching to English for Nora’s benefit. “Need credit check.”

Nora ignored her. “Where do I sign?”

“There,” the man pointed.

Nora signed
Betsy Winchell
with a flourish on both leases, and then handwrote on each lease a crude receipt:
$6,600 received by Mr. Ling Lee.
“My Uncle Huang will translate it for me. I hope for your sake there’s nothing illegal in it. Now you sign. Initial the receipt.”

There was a sharp noise from the wife.

Lee signed his name in Chinese; emboldened, it seemed, by the opposition of his wife.

“Now give me the keys and we’re done.”

“Have to make copy of keys.”

“You give me those keys. It’s my apartment now. I’ll make the copies for you at my own expense. I need to start moving in right away.”

Lee reluctantly handed her the keys. Nora took them, folded one of the leases into her pocket, and stood up. “Thank you very much,” she said cheerfully, holding out her hand.

Lee shook it limply. As the door closed, Nora heard another sharp irruption of displeasure from the wife. This one sounded as if it might go on for a long time.

N
ORA IMMEDIATELY RETURNED TO THE APARTMENT BELOW.
O’S
HAUGHNESSY
appeared by her side as she unlocked the door. Together, they slipped into the living room, and Nora secured the door with deadbolts and chains. Then she moved to the barred window. Two nails stuck out from either side of the lintel, on which someone had once hung a makeshift curtain. She removed her coat and hung it across the nails, blocking the view from outside.

“Cozy place,” O’Shaughnessy said, sniffing. “Smells like a crime scene.”

Nora didn’t answer. She was staring at the floor, already working out the dig in her mind.

While O’Shaughnessy cased the apartment, Nora made a circuit of the living room, examining the floor, gridding it off, plotting her lines of attack. Then she knelt and, taking a penknife from her pocket—a knife her brother, Skip, had given her for her sixteenth birthday and which she never traveled without—eased it between the edges of two bricks. Slowly, deliberately, she cut her way through the crust of grime and old floor wax. She rocked the knife back and forth between the bricks, gently loosening the stonework. Then, bit by bit, she began to work the closest brick from its socket. In a moment it was free. She pulled it out.

Earth. The damp smell rose toward her nostrils. She poked her finger into it: cool, moist, a little slimy. She probed with the penknife, found it compact but yielding, with little gravel or rocks.
Perfect.

She straightened up, looked around. O’Shaughnessy was standing behind her, looking down curiously.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Checking the subflooring.”

“And?”

“It’s old fill, not cement.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s outstanding.”

“If you say so.”

She tapped the brick back into place, then stood. She checked her watch. Three o’clock, Friday afternoon. The Museum would close in two hours.

She turned to O’Shaughnessy. “Look, Patrick, I need you to get up to my office at the Museum, plunder my field locker for some tools and equipment I’ll need.”

O’Shaughnessy shook his head. “Nothing doing. Pendergast said I was to stay with you.”

“I remember. But I’m here now, safe. There must be five locks on that door, I won’t be going anywhere. I’ll be a lot safer here than walking the streets. Besides, the killer knows where I work. Would you rather
I
went uptown and
you
waited here?”

“Why go anywhere? What’s the hurry? Can’t we wait until Pendergast is out of the hospital?”

She stared at him. “The clock’s ticking, Patrick. There’s a killer out there.”

O’Shaughnessy looked at her. Hesitated.

“We can’t afford to just sit around. I hope you’re not going to give me a hard time. I need those tools, and I need them now.”

Still, hesitation.

Nora felt her anger rise. “Just do it. Okay?”

O’Shaughnessy sighed. “Double-lock the door behind me, and don’t open it for anybody. Not the landlord, not the fire department, not Santa Claus. Only me. Promise?”

Nora nodded. “I promise.”

“Good, I’ll be back ASAP.”

She drew up a quick list of items, gave O’Shaughnessy directions, and locked the door carefully behind him, shutting out the sound of the growing storm. Slowly, she stepped away from the door, her eyes swiveling around the room, coming to rest at last on the brickwork beneath her feet. One hundred years before, Leng, for all his genius, could not have anticipated the reach of modern archaeology. She would excavate this site with the greatest care, sifting through his old laboratory layer by layer, bringing all her skills to bear in order to capture even the smallest piece of evidence. And there
would
be evidence, she knew that. There was no such thing as a barren archaeological site. People—wherever they went, whatever they did—always left a record.

Taking out her penknife, she knelt and, once again, began easing the blade between the old bricks. There was a sudden peal of thunder, louder than any that had come before; she paused, heart beating wildly with terror. She forced her feelings back under control, shaking her head ruefully. No killer was going to stop her from finding out what was beneath this floor. She wondered briefly what Brisbane would say to this work.
The hell with him,
she thought.

She turned the penknife over in her hands, closed it with a sigh. All her professional life, she had unearthed and catalogued human bones without emotion—with no connection to the ancient skeletons beyond a shared humanity. But Mary Greene had proven utterly different. There, outside the girl’s house, Pendergast had thrown Mary Greene’s short life and awful death into sharp relief. For the first time, Nora realized she had excavated,
handled,
the bones of someone that she could understand, grieve for. More and more, Pendergast’s tale of Mary Greene was sinking in, despite her attempts to keep a professional distance. And now, she had almost become another Mary Greene.

That made it personal. Very personal.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the rattle of wind at the door, and another, fainter, rumble of thunder. Nora rose to her knees, opened the penknife again, and began scraping vigorously at the brickwork beneath her feet. It was going to be a long night.

T
HE WIND SHOOK THE BARRED DOOR, AND OCCASIONAL FLICKERS OF
lightning and grumblings of thunder penetrated the room. Now that O’Shaughnessy had returned, the two worked together, the policeman moving the dirt, Nora focusing on uncovering the details. They labored by the light of a single yellow bulb. The room smelled strongly of decaying earth. The air was close, humid, and stifling.

She had opened a four-square-meter dig in the living room floor. It had been carefully gridded off, and she had stepped down the excavation, each meter grid to a different level, allowing her to climb in and out of the deepening hole. The floor bricks were neatly piled against the far wall. The door leading to the kitchen was open, and through it a large pile of brown dirt was visible, piled in the center of the room atop a sheet of heavy plastic. Beside it was a smaller sheet of plastic, containing bagged items recovered from the digsite.

At last Nora paused, putting her trowel aside to take stock. She removed her safety helmet, drew the back of her hand across her brow, replaced the helmet on her head. It was well past midnight, and she felt exhausted. The excavation at its deepest point had gone down more than four feet below grade: a lot of work. It was difficult, also, to work this rapidly while maintaining a professional excavation.

She turned to O’Shaughnessy. “Take five. I’d like to examine this soil profile.”

“About time.” He straightened up, resting on his shovel. His brow was streaming with sweat.

Nora shone her flashlight along the carefully exposed wall of dirt, reading it as one might read a book. Occasionally she would shave off a little with a trowel to get a clearer view.

There was a layer of clean fill on the top going down six inches—laid, no doubt, as a base for the more recent brick floor. Below was about three feet of coarser fill, laced with bits of post-1910 crockery and china. But she could see nothing from Leng’s laboratory—at least, nothing obvious. Still, she had flagged and bagged everything, by the book.

Beneath the coarse fell, they had struck a layer containing bits of trash, rotting weeds, pieces of mold-blown bottles, soup bones, and the skeleton of a dog: ground debris from the days when the site had been a vacant lot. Under that was a layer of bricks.

O’Shaughnessy stretched, rubbed his back. “Why do we have to dig so far down?”

“In most old cities, the ground level rises at a fixed rate over time: in New York it’s about three quarters of a meter every hundred years.” She pointed toward the bottom of the hole. “Back then, that
was
ground level.”

“So these old bricks below are the original basement flooring?”

“I think so. The floor of the laboratory.”
Leng’s laboratory.

And yet it had yielded few clues. There was a remarkable lack of debris, as if the floor had been swept clean. She had found some broken glassware wedged into the cracks of the brick; an old fire grate with some coal; a button; a rotten trolley ticket, a few other odds and ends. It seemed that Leng had wanted to leave nothing behind.

Outside, a fresh flash of lightning penetrated the coat Nora had hung over the window. A second later, thunder rumbled. The single bulb flickered, browned, then brightened once again.

She continued staring thoughtfully at the floor. At last, she spoke. “First, we need to widen the excavation. And then, I think we’ll have to go deeper.”