Thriller (71 page)

a triangle. A square of triangles creates a pyramid of fire. The conflagration is coming. We’ve already lit the match! Now, come join

our colleagues—and may the god Mars protect us all!”

Franklin headed with Mme Helvetius down the stone steps to

the pier, but he added to Jefferson, “When you yourself are Sun

King, which may be sooner than you think, you must not pause

while crossing that fiery river Styx. Just remember, you can always call upon friends, as long as you can hum a tune!”

And Franklin and Mme Helvetius went off down the steps in

front of the others, singing “Frère Jacques,” all the way.

Gone Fishing
features one of Douglas Preston and Lincoln

Child’s favorite characters, Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta, of

the New York City Police Department: a working-class cop

from Queens with a heart as big as the ocean. D’Agosta made

his debut in the team’s first thriller,
The Relic,
alongside their

famous Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. In the Paramount film made from that novel, Pendergast was cut from

the story entirely, leaving Vincent D’Agosta (played by Tom

Sizemore) as the unrivaled star. It was the character’s fifteen

minutes of fame, so to speak—and events in D’Agosta’s life

seemed to go downhill from there.

After reappearing in
Reliquary
, the sequel to
The Relic,

D’Agosta disappeared for six years (and five novels). Disappointed at not making precinct captain, D’Agosta quit the

force and moved with his family to a small town in British

Columbia to live his dream: writing crime fiction. He published two highly regarded novels that didn’t sell. Desperate,

broke, and separated from his wife, he moved back to New

York to reclaim his old job, only to discover the NYPD was

under a hiring freeze. He ended up a lowly sergeant in the

Southampton, Long Island, police department, chasing beer-
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swilling teenagers and loose dogs in a dune buggy. His break

came when the sleazy art critic Jeremy Grove was found

burned to death in his Southampton mansion. D’Agosta’s

work on the case, alongside his old friend Agent Pendergast,

won him back his position in the ranks of the NYPD—a

story recounted in Preston and Child’s thriller,
Brimstone
.

Gone Fishing
is the first short story Preston and Child have

written together, and the first time D’Agosta appears without Pendergast. The story begins with the theft of a priceless

Inca sacrificial knife from the Museum of Natural History and

ends twenty-four hours later in a clearing in the woods of

northern New Hampshire, amidst a scene of transcendental

horror.

The Ford Taurus hissed along the slick road, topped the hill and

emerged from the woods. A sudden panorama of farms and green

fields spread out below, a cluster of white houses and a church

steeple along a dark river.

“Speed limit’s forty-five,” said Woffler, voice tense.

“Don’t get your undies in a bunch,” Perotta replied. “I was

born driving a car.” He glanced over at the carpenter: the man’s

face was white, and the faggoty earring he wore in his left ear—

a gold ring with a red stone on it—was practically trembling with

agitation. Woffler and his whining was starting to get on his

nerves.

“I’m not worried about your driving,” Woffler said. “I’m worried about getting stopped. You know, as in
cops?
” And he nodded pointedly at the velvet bag on the seat between them.

“Yeah, yeah.” Perotta slowed to fifty as the car descended the

hill toward the town. “Need a potty break, guy?”

“I could use something to eat. It’s dinnertime.”

A diner lay at the near end of town in what looked like a converted gas station. Six pickup trucks sat in the dirt parking lot.

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“Welcome to Buttcrack, New Hampshire,” said Perotta.

They got out of the car and approached the diner. Perotta

paused in the doorway, surveying the clientele.

“They grow ’em big up here, don’t they?” he said. “Or do you

think it’s inbreeding?”

They took a booth next to the window, where they could keep

an eye on the car. The waitress came waddling over. “What can

I get you folks?” she said, smiling.

“How about menus?” Perotta said.

The smile disappeared. She nodded toward the wall. “It’s all

up there.”

Perotta scanned the board. “Gimme a cheeseburger, fries and

a side of grilled onions. Make it rare. Coffee.”

“Same for me,” said Woffler. “Except I’ll take my burger well

done. And no onions.”

The waitress waddled off and Perotta followed her with his

eyes. As she passed a far booth he saw a man with tats and a tank

top staring at him. He was a big man, pumped up. Something

about him made Perotta think of prison.

He considered staring the scumbag down, then decided

against it. This wasn’t the time. He turned back to his partner.

“We did it, Woffler,” he said in a low voice. “We freaking did it.”

“We haven’t done anything yet,” Woffler replied. “Don’t talk

about it in here. And don’t call me by name.”

“Who’s listening? Anyway, we’re hundreds of miles from New

York City—and nobody’s even noticed it’s missing yet.”

“You don’t know that.”

They sat in silence. The man with the tats lit up a cigarette and

no one told him to put it out. Within minutes the waitress came

out with their burgers, slid them on the table.

Perotta checked, as he always did. “I said rare. R-A-R-E. This

is well done.”

Without a word the waitress picked up his plate, took it back

into the kitchen. Perotta noticed the guy with the tats was staring at him again.

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The plate came back out and Perotta checked. Still not rare

enough. He began to signal the waitress when Woffler stopped him.

“Will you just eat your burger?”

“But it’s not rare.”

Woffler leaned forward. “Do you really want to make a big

scene right now, so everyone’ll remember us?”

Perotta thought about that for a moment and decided that

Woffler might be right. He ate the burger in silence, drank the

coffee. He was hungry. They’d been driving since before dawn,

stopping only for gas and candy bars.

They paid, and Perotta stiffed the waitress. It was the least he

could do, a matter of principle. What was so hard about making

a hamburger rare?

As they got in the car, the tattooed man emerged from the diner

and walked over. He leaned an arm into Perotta’s open window.

“What the hell do you want?” Perotta asked.

The man smiled. Up close, Perotta could see the guy had an

old tracheotomy scar right below his Adam’s apple. His teeth

were the color of urine.

“Just wishing you a nice trip. And offering a piece of advice.”

He spoke pleasantly, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth.

“And what advice might that be?”

“Don’t come back to our town again. Ever.”

“No chance of that. You can keep your Shitville, or whatever

you call this dump.”

He jammed his foot down on the accelerator, fishtailing out

of the parking lot and pelting the man with dust and gravel. He

glanced in the rearview mirror: the guy was slapping dust from

his arms but didn’t seem to be making a move to follow them.

“Why do you always have to make a spectacle of yourself?”

Woffler asked. “You just left two people in that town who’ll have

no problem identifying us in a lineup, even months from now.”

“How’s anyone going to know we ever came through here?”

Woffler just shook his head.

The road entered another forest, the damp asphalt shining like

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blued steel in the dying light. With one hand on the wheel, Perotta reached over with the other and tipped up the velvet bag,

letting the object slide out. Even in the dim light, the glow of the

artifact seemed to fill the car. Perotta had read the label on the

case at the museum a dozen times; he could practically quote it

by heart. It was an Inca Tumi knife, used in human sacrifices to

cut through the breastbone of the victim. The blade itself was

made of copper and badly corroded; but the elaborate handle,

cast in massive gold, was as fresh as the day it was hammered.

It depicted the Sican Lord, the god of death, with staring ruby

eyes and a grimace of turquoise teeth.

“Will you look at that?” he said, chuckling. “Two million

bucks.”

“If we can fence it.”

“There’s gotta be some Arab sheikh or Japanese businessman

out there who collects this stuff. And even if we can’t, we can always pry the stones out and melt the thing down. Those rubies

are probably twenty carats each. I bet we could get fifty grand

for them, plus a shitload for the gold.”

“Fifty grand’s a lot less than two million.”

“Woffler, I’m getting a little tired of your negativity. No one

made you do it.”

Woffler looked out the window at the blur of dark woods. “I

don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And it
was
a good idea. A freaking brilliant idea! We saw our

chance and took it. You liked building cases at the museum for

twenty bucks an hour? As for me, I got tired of shaking doors

and checking IDs.”

“You aren’t worried about Lipski?”

“Screw him. He’s just a middleman. The real buyer’s that guy

in Peru.”

“What about him? How’s he going to react?”

“What’s he gonna do? Fly up here and comb America for us?

Nah, he’s going to assume Lipski ripped him off and put a cap

in his ass.”

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“He sounds like somebody important.”

“If you want my opinion, the guy’s a psychopath. Probably

wants the knife back so he can rip out a few more hearts, just

like his ancestors. I bet he doesn’t even know we exist.”

“Even if he doesn’t, Lipski does. And he’s going to be looking

for us.”

“You think he’ll find us at Passumkeag Lake? I’d like to see

him, with his Armani suits and handmade shoes, stomping

around the New Hampshire woods trying to find two guys bass

fishing in the middle of nowhere.” Perotta laughed. “I really

would.”

“Slow down, we’re coming to another town.”

They flashed past a sign that said Waldo Falls. Just to shut

Woffler up, Perotta eased down to the speed limit.

They passed a row of white farmhouses, a church, a firehouse, a

neat town square with a Civil War monument and a rusted cannon.

“Welcome to beautiful downtown Dildo Falls,” Perotta said.

“Can you believe people live in a place like this?”

“As a matter of fact, I can.”

In a moment they had left the town behind them and were

back in the endless north woods. Perotta started to accelerate,

then abruptly slowed again. “Jesus, will you look at that,” he said,

pointing. “It’s like a time warp.”

A battered VW bus was pulled off the road in a muddy turnout.

It was covered with peace signs, feminist symbols, painted pot

leaves and psychedelic flowers. A man with long greasy hair sat

smoking in the driver’s seat. He watched them go by.

Perotta gave a couple of honks as he passed.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Didn’t you see the bumper sticker?
Honk If You’re Pro-Choice.

Hey, I’m pro-choice. Line the girls up and let me choose,” he

cackled.

“Why don’t you just hang a sign out the window, saying, ‘Obnoxious museum thief on his way to cabin hideout?’”

“Whaddya mean?”

548

“What I mean is, every town we go through, Perotta, you do

something to attract attention.”

“Look, will you lighten up? In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s

over. We did it. Quit worrying and enjoy the vacation. When the

heat’s off, we can figure out how to fence it, or melt it down, or

whatever. In the meantime, we’ve gone fishing.”

Woffler sighed heavily. His face looked gray. “I’m no good at this.”

“You’ll do better next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

The side road wound through the dark trees and then suddenly they were at the lake, walled in on all sides by hemlocks.

Perotta eased off the gas. The rented cabin stood off to the right,

with a sloping wooden porch. A needle-strewn path led to a

crooked dock on the bouldered shore. The pond was deathly still

in the falling twilight and the water was black.

Perotta shut off the car and turned off the headlights, and they

sat there in silence a moment while the engine ticked and cooled.

There was no other sound save for the steady drone of insects.

After a moment they got out of the car and took their luggage

and bags of groceries inside.

The cabin was cool and musty, all the furniture draped in

sheets dotted with dead flies. Woffler cleaned up while Perotta

cooked up a pot of pasta with tomato sauce and fresh basil. After

dinner they started a fire and sipped from snifters full of Chivas.

The Tumi knife lay on the coffee table, gleaming in the reflected

firelight, the ruby eyes flashing and jumping.

“Feeling better?” Perotta asked.

“I’m getting there.”

He nodded at the knife. “How many beating human hearts you