The Central Park Reservoir Gauging Station was housed in an old stone building a quarter mile south of the Reservoir. Now, Waxie could see the building looming through the trees, a single light glowing through a dirty window, the letters CPRGS chiseled on the doorway lintel. He slowed to a walk while Duffy unlocked the heavy metal door. It swung inwards to reveal an old, stone room sparsely decorated with map tables and dusty, long-forgotten hydrometric instruments. In one corner, in dramatic juxtaposition to the rest of the equipment, sat a computer workstation, along with several monitors, printers, and strange-looking peripherals.
Once they were inside, Duffy closed and locked the door carefully, then went over to the console. “I’ve never done this before,” he said nervously, reaching under a desk and removing a manual that weighed at least fifteen pounds.
“Don’t crap out on us now,” Waxie said.
Duffy swiveled a yellow eye in his direction. For a moment, he looked as if he were going to say something. Instead, he paged through the manual for a few minutes, then turned to the keyboard and began to type. A series of commands appeared on the larger of the monitors.
“How does this thing work?” Waxie asked, shifting from one foot to the other. The intense humidity of the room made his joints ache.
“It’s fairly simple,” Duffy said. “Water from the lower Catskills is gravity fed into the Central Park Reservoir. That Reservoir may look big, but it holds only about three days’ worth of water for Manhattan. It’s really more of a holding tank, used to smooth out rises and dips in demand.”
He tapped at the keys. “This monitoring system is programmed to anticipate those rises and dips, and it adjusts the flow into the Reservoir accordingly. It can open and close gates as far away as Storm King Mountain, a hundred miles away. The program looks back over twenty years of water use, factors in the latest weather forecasts, and makes demand estimates.”
Safe in his locked chamber, Duffy was warming to his subject. “At times there are departures from the estimate, of course. When demand is less than expected, and too much water flows toward the Reservoir, the computer opens the Main Shunt and bleeds the excess into the storm drain and sewer system. When demand is unexpectedly high, the Main Shunt is closed and additional upstream gates are opened to increase the flow.”
“Really?” Waxie said. He’d lost interest after the second sentence.
“I’m going to do a manual override, which means I’m going to open the gates upstream and open the Main Shunt. Water will pour into the Reservoir and drain immediately into the sewer system. It’s a simple and elegant solution. All I have to do is program the system to release twenty million cubic feet—that’s about a hundred million gallons—at midnight, then revert back to automatic mode upon completion.”
“So the Reservoir isn’t going to go dry?” Waxie asked.
Duffy smiled indulgently. “Really, Captain. We don’t want to create a water emergency. Believe me, this can be done with the most minimal impact on the water supply. I doubt we’ll see the level in the Reservoir drop more than ten feet. It’s an incredible system, really. Hard to believe it was designed over a century ago, by engineers who anticipated even the needs of today.” The smile faded. “Even so, nothing on this scale has ever been done before. Are you sure you really want to do this? All the valves opening at once… well, all I can say is it’s going to make one heck of a surf.”
“You heard the man,” Waxie said, rubbing his bulbous nose with his thumb. “Just make sure it works.”
“Oh, it’ll work,” Duffy replied.
Waxie laid a hand on his shoulder. “Of course it will,” he said. “Because if it doesn’t, you’re going to find yourself a junior sluice gate operator in the Lower Hudson sewage treatment plant.”
Duffy laughed nervously. “Really, Captain,” he repeated. “There’s no need for threats.” He resumed his typing while Waxie paced the room. The uniformed cop stood soberly by the door, watching the proceedings disinterestedly.
“How long will it take to dump the water?” Waxie asked at last.
“About eight minutes.”
Waxie grunted. “Eight minutes to dump a hundred million gallons?”
“As I understand it, you want the water dumped as quickly as possible, to fill up the lowest tunnels under Central Park and sweep them clean, right?”
Waxie nodded.
“Eight minutes represents the system at one hundred percent flow. Of course, it will take almost three hours for the hydraulics to get in position. Then it will simply be a matter of draining water from the Reservoir, at the same time that we bring new water into the Reservoir from the upstate aqueducts That should keep the Reservoir’s water level from dropping excessively. It has to be done just right, because if the flow coming into the reservoir is greater than the flow going out… well, that means a major flood in Central Park.”
“Then I hope to hell you understand what you’re doing. I want this thing to proceed on schedule, no delays, no glitches.”
The sound of typing slowed.
“Stop worrying,” Duffy said, his finger poised on a key. “There won’t be any delays. Just don’t change your mind. Because once I press this key, the hydraulics take over. I can’t stop it. You see—”
“Just hit the damn key,” Waxie said impatiently.
Duffy pressed it with a melodramatic flourish. Then he turned to face Waxie. “It’s done,” he said. “Now, only a miracle can stop the flow. And in case you hadn’t heard, they don’t allow miracles in New York City.”
= 45 =
D’AGOSTA GAZED at the small pile of rubber and chromed parts, picked one up, then dropped it again in disgust. “It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Could these have been left there by accident?”
“I assure you, Vincent,” Pendergast said, “they were carefully arranged on the altar, almost as if they were some kind of offering.” There was a silence while he paced restlessly across the lab. “There’s another thing I’m uneasy about. Kawakita was the one who was growing the lily in tanks, after all. Why would they kill him and burn the lab? Why would they destroy their only source of the drug? The one thing an addict is most terrified of is losing his connection. And the lab was burned deliberately. You said there were trace accelerants in the ashes.”
“Unless they were growing it somewhere else,” D’Agosta said, fingering his breast pocket absently.
“Go ahead and light up,” Margo said.
D’Agosta eyed her. “Really?”
Margo smiled and nodded. “Just this once. But don’t tell Director Merriam.”
D’Agosta brightened. “It’ll be our secret.” He slipped the cigar out, jabbed a pencil into its head, and moved to the lone window, lifting the sash wide. He lit up and puffed the clouds of smoke contentedly out over Central Park.
I wish I had a vice I enjoyed half as much as that, Margo thought as she watched idly.
“I considered the possibility of an alternate supply,” Pendergast was saying. “And I kept my eyes open for signs of an underground garden. But there was no evidence of one. Such a lily farm would require still water and fresh air. I can’t imagine where they could be hiding it underground.”
D’Agosta blew another stream of blue smoke out the window, resting his elbows on the windowsill. “Look at that mess,” he said, nodding southward. “Horlocker’s going to have kittens when he sees that.”
Margo walked to the window and let her gaze fall over the rich green mantle of Central Park, shadowy and mysterious beneath the pink of the western sunset. To her right, along Central Park South, she could hear the faint sound of countless horns. A great mass of marchers was moving into Grand Army Plaza with the slow flow of molasses.