Fever Dream by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page B

the free wine and cheese.”
    “You know women, sir. They like their little secrets.”
    “So it would seem,” Pendergast replied, very quietly.

15
    Rockland, Maine
    U NDER ORDINARY CONDITIONS, THE SALTY DOG Tavern would have been just the kind of bar Vincent D’Agosta liked: honest, unassuming, working class, and cheap. But these
     were not ordinary conditions. He had flown or driven among four cities in as many days; he missed Laura Hayward; and he was
     tired, bone-tired. Maine in February was not exactly charming. The last thing he felt like doing at the moment was hoisting
     beers with a bunch of fishermen.
    But he was becoming a little desperate. Rockland had turned out to be a dead end. The old Esterhazy house had changed hands
     numerous times since the family moved out twenty years ago. Of all the neighbors, only one old spinster seemed to remember
     the family—and she had shut the door in his face. Newspapers in the public library had no mention of the Esterhazys, and the
     public records office held nothing pertinent but tax rolls. So much for small-town gossip and nosiness.
    And so D’Agosta found himself resorting to the Salty Dog Tavern, a waterfront dive where—he was informed—the oldest of the
     old salts hung out. It proved to be a shabby shingled building tucked between two warehouses on the landward end of the commercial
     fishing wharf. A squall was fast approaching, a few preliminaryflakes of snow whirling in from the sea, the wind lashing
     up spume from the ocean and sending abandoned newspapers tumbling across the rocky strand.
Why the hell am I here, anyway?
he wondered. But he knew the reason—Pendergast had explained it himself.
I’m afraid you’ll have to go
, he’d said.
I’m too close to the subject. I lack the requisite investigative distance and objectivity
.
    Inside the bar it was dark, and the close air smelled of deep-fried fish and stale beer. As D’Agosta’s eyes adjusted to the
     gloom, he saw that the bar’s denizens—a bartender and four patrons in peacoats and sou’westers—had stopped talking and were
     staring at him. Clearly, this was an establishment that catered to regulars. At least it was warm, heat radiating from a woodstove
     in the middle of the room.
    Taking a seat at the far end of the bar, he nodded to the bartender and asked for a Bud. He made himself inconspicuous, and
     the conversation gradually resumed. From it, he quickly learned that the four patrons were all fishermen; that the fishing
     was currently bad; that the fishing was, in fact, always bad.
    He took in the bar as he sipped his beer. The decor was, unsurprisingly, early nautical: shark jaws, huge lobster claws, and
     photos of fishing boats covered the walls, and nets with colored glass balls hung from the ceiling. A heavy patina of age,
     smoke, and grime coated every surface.
    He downed one beer, then a second, before deciding it was time to make his move. “Mike,” he said—using the bartender’s Christian
     name, which he had earlier gleaned from listening to the conversation—“let me buy a round for the house. Have one yourself,
     while you’re at it.”
    Mike stared at him a moment, then with a gruff word of thanks he complied. There were nods and grunts from the patrons as
     the drinks were handed out.
    D’Agosta took a big swig of his beer. It was important, he knew, to seem like a regular guy—and in the Salty Dog, that meant
     not being a piker when it came to drinking. He cleared his throat. “I was wondering,” he said out loud, “if maybe some of
     you men could help me.”
    The stares returned, some curious, some suspicious. “Help you with what?” said a grizzled man the others had referred to as
     Hector.
    “There’s a family used to live around here. Name of Esterhazy. I’m trying to track them down.”
    “What’s your name, mister?” asked a fisherman called Ned. He was about five feet tall, with a wind-and sun-wizened face and
     forearms thick as