Free Dance of Death by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page B

D'Agosta liked it. He chose a stool, pulled it up to the bar.
    Patrick, the bartender, caught sight of him and came over. "Hey, Lieutenant," he said, sliding a coaster in front of him. "How's it going?"
    "It's going."
    "The usual?"
    "No, Paddy, a black and tan, please. And a cheeseburger, rare.'
    A pint appeared a moment later and D'Agosta sank his upper lip meditatively into the mocha-colored foam. He almost never allowed himself this kind of indulgence anymore-he had lost twenty pounds in the last few months and didn't intend to gain them back- but tonight he'd make an exception. Laura Hayward wouldn't be home until late: she was working the bizarre hanging that had taken place on the Upper West Side at lunchtime.
    He'd spent a fruitless morning chasing leads. There was nothing in the public records office on Ravenscry, Great-Aunt Cornelia's estate in Dutchess County. He'd made inquiries with the NOPD about the long-burned Pendergast residence in New Orleans, with similar results. In both cases, there was nothing about Diogenes Pendergast.
    From headquarters, he'd journeyed back to 891 Riverside to reexamine Pendergast's scanty collection of evidence. He'd called the London bank to which, according to Pendergast's records, Diogenes had requested money be deposited years before. The account had been closed for twenty years, no forwarding information available. Inquiries at the banks in Heidelberg and Zurich brought the same answer. He spoke with the family in England whose son had briefly been Diogenes's roommate at Sandringham, only to learn the youth had killed himself one day after being removed from protective restraints.
    Next, he called the firm of lawyers that had acted as intermediaries in the correspondence between Diogenes and his family. This time the red tape was almost interminable: he was transferred from one legal secretary to another, each requiring a repetition of his request. At long last, an attorney who would not identify himself came on the line and informed D'Agosta that Diogenes Pendergast was no longer a client; that attorney-client privilege forbade giving out further information; and that, besides, all relevant files had long been destroyed at said person's request.
    Five hours and at least thirty phone calls later, D'Agosta had learned precisely zip.
    Next, he turned to the newspaper clippings Pendergast had collected of various odd crimes. He'd considered calling the case officers involved but decided against it. Pendergast had no doubt done this already; if there had been any information worth sharing, he would have put it in the files. Anyway, D'Agosta still had no clue what Pendergast thought important about these clippings, scattered as they were across the globe, the crimes they reported bizarre yet seemingly unconnected.
    It was now past two o'clock. D'Agosta knew his boss, Captain Singleton, would be out: he invariably spent his afternoons in the field, following up personally on the important cases. So D'Agosta left 891 Riverside and made his way down to the precinct house, where he slunk to his desk, turned on his computer terminal, and punched in his password. For the rest of the afternoon, he had moused his way through every law enforcement and governmental database he could access: NYPD, state, federal, WICAPS, Interpol, even the Social Security Administration. Nothing. Despite all the crushing, endless documentation generated by the interlocking tangle of government bureaucracies, Diogenes walked through it all like a wraith, leaving no impression behind him. It was almost as if the guy were really dead, after all.
    That was when he gave up and went to McFeeley's.
    His cheeseburger arrived and he began to eat, barely tasting it. His investigation wasn't even forty-eight hours old, and already he'd just about run out of leads. Pendergast's vast resources seemed of little use against a ghost.
    He took a few more halfhearted bites from his burger, finished his drink, dropped some bills on