The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [54]
I brightened up. “Pinkie?” I asked, jumping out of the windowsill. “Sure thing!”
Marcus looked from me to Dr. Kreizler. “‘Pinkie’? ‘The Reverend’?”
“A friend of mine,” the Doctor said. “Albert Pinkham Ryder. He has many nicknames. As do most eccentrics.”
“Ryder?” Mr. Moore wasn’t buying this idea, either. “Ryder’s no portrait painter—and it takes him years to finish a canvas.”
“True, but he has a keen psychological instinct. He’ll be able to recommend someone, I’ve no doubt. If you’d care to come along, Moore—you, too, Sara.”
“Very much,” Miss Howard answered. “His work is fascinating.”
“Hmm, yes,” the Doctor said uncertainly. “You may find his rooms and studio less so, I’m afraid.”
“That’s the truth,” Mr. Moore threw in. “You can count me out—that place makes my skin crawl.”
The Doctor shrugged. “As you wish. Detective Sergeants—I dislike asking you to perform what I fear is a useless task, but it may be worth—how did you put it?”
“Rousting the Cubans,” Lucius answered, sounding like there weren’t many things he’d like to do less. “Oh, this’ll be a treat… Black beans, garlic, and dogma. Well, at least I don’t speak Spanish, so I won’t know what they’re saying.”
“I do apologize,” the Doctor said, “but we must, as you know, cover as many possibilities as we can. And as quickly as possible.”
We all began to move for the door, Marcus bringing up the rear at a slow pace. “There’s just one thing, Doctor,” he murmured, taking deliberate steps as he turned something over in his head. “Señor Linares. What we’re assuming—and I agree with the assumption completely—is that this is an abduction committed by someone who didn’t know the identity of the baby.”
“Yes, Marcus?” the Doctor said.
“In that case, why is Linares trying to conceal it?” The detective sergeant’s face was full of concern. “The fact is that the woman we’re describing, whatever her psychological peculiarities, is in all probability American. That would be just as useful to the Spanish government as a politically motivated kidnapping. So why aren’t they using it?”
Mr. Moore turned a somewhat smug face to the Doctor. “Well, Kreizler?”
The Doctor looked at the floor and nodded a few times, smiling. “I might’ve known it would be you who would ask, Marcus.”
“Sorry,” the detective sergeant answered. “But as you say, we’ve got to cover all the angles.”
“No need to apologize,” the Doctor answered. “I was simply hoping to avoid that question. Because it’s the only one I can’t begin to answer. And should we find the answer, I fear, we will also find some rather unpleasant—and dangerous—facts. But I don’t think we can allow that consideration to delay our actions.”
Marcus weighed this, then signaled agreement with a small nod. “It’s something we ought to keep in mind, though.”
“As we shall, Marcus. As we shall…” The Doctor allowed himself one more slow, thoughtful lap around the room, coming to a rest at the window. “Somewhere out there, even as we speak, is a woman who unwittingly holds in her arms a child who could prove an instrument of terrible destruction—as devastating, in her innocence, as an assassin’s bullet or a madman’s bomb. Yet for all of that, I fear the devastation that has already occurred in the kidnapper’s mind most of all. Yes, we shall be alert for the dangers of the larger world, Marcus—but we must, once again, place our greatest efforts behind knowing the mind and the identity of our antagonist. Who is she? What created her? And above all—will the savage fury that drove her to this act eventually be turned against the child? I suspect so—and sooner, rather than later.” He turned to the rest of us. “Sooner, rather than later …”
CHAPTER 10
It’s always seemed to me that there’s two types of people in this life, them what get a kick out of what might be called your odder types and them what don’t; and I suppose that I, unlike Mr. Moore, have always been in the first bunch. You’d have to’ve been, I think, to have really enjoyed living in Dr. Kreizler’s house, for the folks he had in and out of