Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [100]
Corrie leaned forward. This was more interesting than she’d expected.
“Not long before their reappearance, Pendergast arrived in Malfourche with an NYPD captain—a woman—in tow.”
Corrie nodded. That would be Hayward.
“No one can tell me what they were doing there, or why. It seems he was curious about a place deep in the adjoining swamp—a place called Spanish Island.” He proceeded to tell Corrie about all he had learned and his suspicions that it involved a major drug refining and smuggling operation.
Corrie nodded. So this was what Pendergast was working on so secretively.
“Just short of two weeks ago, a man with a German accent showed up in Malfourche. The Brodies were brutally murdered. I traced the man back here to New York. He was using a fake address, but I managed to link him to a small brownstone at Four Twenty-eight East End Avenue. I did a little poking around. The building is in the heart of the old German-speaking area of Yorkville, and it’s been owned by the same company since 1940. A real estate holding company. And it appears he’s got a yacht moored at the Boat Basin—a huge one. I followed him from the brownstone to the yacht.”
Another nod from Corrie. She wondered when he was going to want some information from her in return. “So?” she said.
“So I believe this Pendergast, whom you seem to know so much about, is the key to the whole thing.”
“No doubt. This is the big case he’s been working on.”
An awkward pause. “That doesn’t seem likely to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“An FBI agent working a case doesn’t blow up a bar and sink a bunch of boats, not to mention burn down a drug lab in the swamp. No—this is extracurricular.”
“That’s possible. He often investigates on a… freelance basis.”
“This was not an investigation. This was… retribution. Reckoning. This man Pendergast, I believe he’s the mastermind behind the whole operation.”
She stared at him. “Mastermind of what?”
“The Brodie killings. The drug smuggling operation—if that’s what it is. Something big and highly illegal is going on here—that much is obvious.”
“Now, hold on. You’re calling Pendergast a drug lord, or maybe even a murderer?”
“Let us say I strongly suspect his involvement. Everything that’s happened looks to me like drugs, and this FBI agent is up to his neck in it—”
Corrie stood up abruptly, her chair clattering to the floor. “Are you some kind of nutcase?” she said in a loud voice.
“Sit down, please—”
“I will not sit down! Pendergast, selling drugs?” Her tone of disgust and disbelief was turning heads in the crowded restaurant. She didn’t care.
Betterton cringed under this outburst. “Will you be quiet—”
“Pendergast is one of the most honest men you’ll ever meet. You aren’t even fit to lick his shoes!”
She saw Betterton flushing with mortification. Now she had the riveted attention of the entire restaurant. Several waiters and waitresses were hurrying over. There was something almost gratifying about it.
Her long frustration at Pendergast’s disappearance, her anger at being led to believe he was dead, seemed to coalesce and find a target in Betterton. “You call yourself a reporter?” she cried. “You couldn’t report your way out of a douche bag! Pendergast saved my life! He’s been putting me through college, for your information—and don’t think there’s anything between us, either, because he’s the most decent man alive, you asswipe.”
“Excuse me, miss!” A waiter was flapping his hands in a panic as if to wave her away by magic.
“Don’t ‘miss’ me, I’m on my way out.” She turned and looked at the horrified crowd in the restaurant. “What, you don’t like foul language? Go back to Dubuque.”
She flounced out of the restaurant, exited onto Seventh Avenue, and there, amid the lunchtime crowds, managed to regain her breath and her equilibrium.
This was serious. It seemed Pendergast was in some kind of trouble—maybe deep trouble. But he’d always handled trouble before, she knew. She had made him a promise—a promise to leave