The Cabinet of Curiosities

“Think of the poor starving children.”

“Think of the poor thirsty journalists. Next time, you pay. Especially if you come armed with a story that crazy.”

“I told you so. And I hope you won’t mind drinking Powers. No Irishman would be caught dead paying a tab like that. Only a Scotsman would dare charge that much for a drink.”

Smithback turned onto Columbus Avenue, thinking. Suddenly, he stopped. While Pendergast’s theory was ridiculous, it had given him an idea. With all the excitement about the copycat killings and the Doyers Street find, no one had really followed up on Leng himself. Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he get his medical degree? What was his connection to the Museum? Where had he lived?

Now this was good.

A story on Dr. Enoch Leng, mass murderer. Yes, yes, this was it. This might just be the thing to save his ass at the Times.

Come to think of it, this was better than good. This guy antedated Jack the Ripper. Enoch Leng: A Portrait of America’s First Serial Killer. This could be a cover story for the Times Sunday Magazine. He’d kill two birds with one stone: do the research he’d promised O’Shaughnessy, while getting background on Leng. And he wouldn’t be betraying any confidences, of course—because once he’d determined when the man died, that would be the end of Pendergast’s crazy theory.

He felt a sudden shiver of fear. What if Harriman was already pursuing the story of Leng? He’d better get to work right away. At least he had one big advantage over Harriman: he was a hell of a researcher. He’d start with the newspaper morgue—look for little notes, mentions of Leng or Shottum or McFadden. And he’d look for more killings with the Leng modus operandi: the signature dissection of the spinal cord. Surely Leng had killed more people than had been found at Catherine and Doyers Streets. Perhaps some of those other killings had come to light and made the papers.

And then there were the Museum’s archives. From his earlier book projects, he’d come to know them backward and forward. Leng had been associated with the Museum. There would be a gold mine of information in there, if only one knew where to find it.

And there would be a side benefit: he might just be able to pass along to Nora the information she wanted about where Leng lived. A little gesture like that might get their relationship back on track. And who knows? It might get Pendergast’s investigation back on track, as well.

His meeting with O’Shaughnessy hadn’t been a total loss, after all.

TWO

EAST TWELFTH STREET was a typical East Village street, O’Shaughnessy thought as he turned the corner from Third Avenue: a mixture of punks, would-be poets, ’60s relics, and old-timers who just didn’t have the energy or money to move. The street had improved a bit in recent years, but there was still a superfluity of beaten-down tenements among the head shops, wheat-grass bars, and used-record vendors. He slowed his pace, watching the people passing by: slumming tourists trying to look cool; aging punk rockers with very dated spiked purple hair; artists in paint-splattered jeans lugging canvases; drugged-out skinheads in leather with dangling chrome doohickeys. They seemed to give him a wide berth: nothing stood out on a New York City street quite like a plainclothes police officer, even one on administrative leave and under investigation.

Up ahead now, he could make out the shop. It was a little hole-in-the-wall of black-painted brick, shoehorned between brownstones that seemed to sag under the weight of innumerable layers of graffiti. The windows of the shop were thick with dust, and stacked high with ancient boxes and displays, so faded with age and sun that their labels were indecipherable. Small greasy letters above the windows spelled out New Amsterdam Chemists.

O’Shaughnessy paused, examining the shopfront. It seemed hard to believe that an old relic like this could survive, what with a Duane Reade on the very next corner. Nobody seemed to be going in or out. The place looked dead.

He stepped forward again, approaching the door. There was a buzzer, and a small sign that read Cash Only. He pressed the buzzer, hearing it rasp far, far within. For what seemed a long time, there was no other noise. Then he heard the approach of shuffling footsteps. A lock turned, the door opened, and a man stood before him. At least, O’Shaughnessy thought it was a man: the head was as bald as a billiard ball, and the clothes were masculine, but the face had a kind of strange neutrality that made sex hard to determine.