PENDERGAST: The Beginning (Excerpt)
August 10, 1994
Dwight D. Chambers pulled his Impala SS into a free spot, put the vehicle in park, and sat for a moment staring at the building in front of him: a monolithic slab a dozen floors high, like a giant checkerboard stood on end. A quarter century earlier, this skinny piece of concrete—unvexed by architectural flourishes—had looked like the future. Now it just looked like a prison. A new building had broken ground across Pontchartrain Park, but chances were good he wouldn’t be around to see it completed.
He unbuckled his seat belt as the news continued its background drone on the radio. He turned it up, hoping the blare would help drown his thoughts.
Strange how six months ago—a time when he’d been happy, when he’d enjoyed his work—now felt so far away. He’d never taken a supervisory path, being content to remain a field agent. New Orleans was low-key as far as FOs went. He had eighteen years under his belt and didn’t mind the idea of another two, until he made his twenty.
Then his longtime partner and buddy, Fenton, got badly winged trying to stop a restaurant holdup while off duty. In return for his bravery, he’d been reassigned to a desk job in the Fed Building on Maestri Street. Chambers, who loved his partner like a brother, had been looking forward to a final two years of bad jokes and bourbon chicken wings. Now he was abruptly in line for a new partner, fast-tracked out of Quantico, whom he was to ghost. Chambers knew the FBI had relaxed some of its standards, but he’d met the new jack and wasn’t sure he liked either him or his pretentions one bit. In fact, he was half convinced the guy had lost control of his vertical hold.
Then, one week before the new partnership was to officially begin, Chambers’s wife had been killed in a collision with an eighteen-wheeler driven by a methed‑up son of a bitch on I‑610. And that had pretty much given him a fresh perspective on the entire fucking world.
He didn’t remember much of the days that immediately followed. He had no kids or siblings, and his parents were dead. Only after she was gone and the numbness started to fade did he realize just how much of his life was invested in two things: Janice and his job. After losing her and reporting back to the office two weeks later to mentor his new partner, he learned that the second didn’t matter much to him, either. Years of complex cases; the occasional close call; commendations—she’d been there with him every step of the way. They’d finally put the money together for the down payment on the Miramar Beach condo they planned for their retirement.
Now the thought of sitting in the surf alone, with broken dreams for company . . . no way.
He’d basically sleepwalked through the last two months. Instead of pulling his weight as senior agent and doing the mentoring thing, he gave his peculiar new partner his pick of cases to cull through on his own—he’d seemed particularly interested in a stale, six-years-cold case involving a freighter washing up in Bayou Grove with the entire crew dead—while the stack of paperwork on Chambers’s own desk had grown higher and higher.
“. . . meanwhile, the fallout from the genocide in the Central African nation of Rwanda continues to grow. President Clinton has stated—”
Chambers cut off the radio announcer in mid-sentence and forced himself out of the car and toward the checkerboard monstrosity, practically swimming through the heat. It was quarter to ten. He’d been an early riser all his life, but not anymore. Now, instead of sleeping, he sat in bed wide awake, service piece on one bedstand and a bottle of Tanqueray on the other, trying to decide which way to go. So far, he’d chosen neither.
At first, a lot of his colleagues at the Bureau had been sympathetic. They told him it would get easier with time—which was, clearly, bullshit. But over the last several weeks, as his apathy showed no signs of dwindling, they’d started dropping by his office less and less often. He couldn’t blame them; he was exhibiting all the signs of being— in FBI parlance—a “broke-dick.”
Nothing had made this clearer than his reaction to the new assistant special agent in charge, installed just a month before Janice’s accident: Gerald G. Urbanski. Chambers had seen his share of petty tyrants, but Urbanski took the cake. Estevez, the special agent in charge of the office, was a decent enough guy, but within a few years he was in line to be kicked upstairs to Washington. It was already clear Urbanski was gunning for his job. Urbanski was a tin Hitler, constantly issuing edicts for agents and administrative staff alike, usually concerning things that were glaringly obvious.
Estevez was no dummy; he had to realize what was going on, how morale was suffering, and what a dick the ASAC was. Chambers guessed he was simply unwilling to rock the boat so close to the shores of his own promotion. There was an old Bureau saying: Better a prick on the most wanted than a prick with seniority. But while the rest of the agents muttered around the watercooler, pining for the good old days, or gathered for gripe sessions after hours, Chambers just couldn’t bring himself to give a shit. Just like he couldn’t decide between the Glock or the gin.
He entered the building, passed through the sleepy security screening, and got on the elevator. He reached his floor, stepped out, and stopped. A fresh notice had been tacked to the Agony Board.
The “Agony Board,” as it had quickly become known, was Urbanski’s brilliant idea. He’d had it installed right outside the main investigative office a week after arriving, and he used it to post scoldings, mini-manifestos, or edicts for the edification of his subordinates.
Chambers stepped closer, idly squinting at the laser printing. He realized it was the same one Urbanski had put up the week before: the ASAC must really like his own prose, or perhaps he felt it hadn’t been given the consideration it deserved, because he’d reprinted it on different-colored paper and stuck it up in place of the old one.
The main FO of the NO division is looked up to by our six resident agencies, and the city of New Orleans itself, to maintain discipline and enforce its own strict codes of conduct. There are twelve separate parishes under our jurisdiction, and if we are not seen to act professionally, whether in the office or in the field, whether on duty or off, we will not command—or deserve—the respect necessary to do our jobs. Toward that end, internal assessments are authorized and in fact encouraged, as long as they do not compromise security or interfere with day‑to‑day operations of the field office. In short: all rules for conduct, security, and professionalism in its many aspects are to be strictly followed. This includes the stated guidelines for grooming. . .
Chambers stopped reading. It was, indeed, the same rant as the week before, except Urbanski had added the sentence about “internal assessments”—in other words, encouraging people to rat each other out.
He made his way into the crowded central office, desks lined with folders, the air thrumming to countless fingers hammering away at word processors. His own semi-private office was near the front entrance—good because it meant a short walk, bad because it put him near Urbanski and the man’s loud, endless bullshit. Estevez, as SAC, had his own office down the hall and thus was spared.
Chambers was halfway through his office doorway, jacket already off, when he stopped. His new partner was not there—and by the looks of things, he hadn’t clocked in yet. His desk was as neat as Chambers’s was messy. He glanced at his watch: almost ten. Was he sick?
“Hey,” sounded a voice behind him. “Where’s your junior?”
Chambers glanced over. It was Win Malone, office wit and scourge of newly whelped agents.
“Good question,” Chambers replied.
“Well, make sure he gets this.” Malone dropped a sealed envelope on the chair by the empty desk. “It’s for his scrapbook.” And he chuckled cynically.
His laugh was cut short by the sounds of Urbanski’s boisterous chatter coming from the direction of the elevators. Malone immediately made himself scarce. A minute later, the conquering hero appeared in person, accompanied by two gentlemen. Chambers recognized one immediately: T. J. Fulsom, president of New Orleans’s second-largest bank and a big wheel around town, supposedly harboring mayoral aspirations. The other was a stranger: a plump man in a dark-blue Baracuta with prematurely graying hair, glasses thick as Coke bottles, and a straw hat so blue it would have made Bing Crosby envious. Chambers guessed he was a lawyer. The three stepped from the elevators into the lobby, accompanied by much camaraderie and backslapping.
“Fascinating, fascinating,” the bank president was saying. “Clearly, our great city is in capable hands.”
“Thank you, T. J.,” Urbanski said as he gestured down the corridor. “If you’ll please make yourself and your associate comfortable in my office. I’ll be along in a moment.” And as the banker headed down the hall in one direction, Urbanski went in the opposite direction, toward the evidence room, the armory, and most important, the john—where, no doubt, he planned to drain the main vein.
Chambers felt his lip curl. Urbanski had already made a practice of sucking up to bigwigs. He showered civic leaders, commissioners, and wealthy donors with FBI merchandise, courtesy cards, and especially private tours.
A couple of minutes later he came back into view, headed toward his office while simultaneously smoothing down the front of his jacket. As he passed the central workplace, he gazed over at the researchers and stenographers, his expression assuming a martial sternness. Chambers rolled around the doorframe and into his office to escape it.
Like all petty dictators, Urbanski was also a hypocrite. He knew tours of headquarters had to be vetted weeks in advance—and they were not supposed to include sensitive work areas.
Chambers hung up his jacket, sat down at his desk, turned on his Gateway 2000, and unlocked the drawers of his desk. He’d reached the GS‑13 salary cap, netted a nice set of commendations over his years with the Criminal Investigative Division—but now that meant fuckall. He pulled a three-and‑a‑half-inch floppy from a drawer and stuck it into the computer’s empty drive. Since his wife’s death, he’d been going through the motions of cleaning up the Shattered Shield case involving a dozen corrupt cops running a protection racket. The case had been so big, and generated so much paperwork, that it was easy to look busy. Staring at the amber letters on the dark screen was better than what awaited him later: a silent house full of memories, a frozen dinner—and then another night spent trying to decide between the Glock and the gin. The lady, he thought bitterly, or the tiger.
These musings were interrupted by a flurry of raised voices, so loud that all other conversation in the central office ceased. Chambers rose from his desk, leaving the floppy grinding away in its drive, and stuck his head out the door.
The same three men were again standing near the exit to the elevator bank: Urbanski, Fulsom, and the guy in the hat. But instead of engaging in courtly farewells, the ASAC seemed to be angry—very angry—with the man in the hat, gesticulating and making accusations while the man was busily taking photos with a Polaroid camera. It made no sense: Urbanski had invited these two into HQ to curry favor—not piss them off.
It didn’t take long for Estevez, roused out of his office by the commotion, to appear. He stepped between the men. “What’s going on here?” he shouted at Urbanski. Then he glanced around the office and its staring crowd. “All of you, get back to work.”
Chambers had never heard Estevez raise his voice before. Neither had anyone else, it seemed, because the vast room went silent. But nobody went back to work.
“Sir, this, this man—” Urbanski, red-faced, gestured at the man in the blue hat—“has just made the most outrageous accusation . . .”
“Allow me,” the man said in a strangely familiar voice, “to introduce a certain item of evidence into the conversation.” With a movement so quick Chambers wasn’t sure he’d seen it, the man darted his fingers into the suit jacket of T. J. Fulsom and whipped out a manila packet that had been tucked in an inside breast pocket.
“What the devil—!” Fulsom cried furiously, but fell silent as the blue-hatted man handed the packet to the SAC.
Estevez took it, his face a mixture of confusion and suspicion. “What’s this?”
“Now that’s in your possession,” the blue-hatted man said, “I shall remove these thalian trappings and explain.”
The man then proceeded, in his own sweet time, to remove first the hat, then the thick spectacles, and then a wig. He removed the windbreaker—which had been artificially padded—subtracting at least thirty pounds from his frame and revealing a black suit underneath. He then plucked a tissue from a box on a nearby desk and gave his face a quick swipe, revealing remarkably pale skin.
Chambers, recognizing the man, was stunned. This was not some mucky-muck New Orleans citizen after all . . . but his own partner. The man stood there, smiling faintly, his silvery eyes glittering in marked contrast to his somber black suit.
______
What the hell?” Urbanski raged, as surprised as anyone else. “That belongs to Mr. Fulsom!”
“Mr. Estevez, sir,” came the honeyed drawl of Chambers’s junior partner, “I would suggest examining the contents of that envelope in private.”
“This is outrageous!” Urbanski cried, reaching for the envelope.
Estevez pulled it back and gave everyone a hard stare, which seemed to shut them all up. “All of you, in my office.” And then, while the shocked silence still held, Estevez turned and looked at Chambers. “You too, Agent Chambers.”
Then he walked briskly down the hallway.
“I protest this in the most vehement terms!” said Fulsom. Nevertheless, he and the others followed Estevez down the hall. Chambers threaded the maze of desks and followed in their wake, aware that all eyes were turned in their direction.
Estevez opened the door and ushered everyone in. He strode past his secretary to his inner office, the others following, and shut that door hard. Then he moved behind his desk and sat down. The rest remained standing, and he made no effort to invite them to sit.
“All right, Agent Pendergast,” he said. “Mike Decker’s a personal friend of mine, and he strongly recommended you—and with FBI star power like that, I’m going to give you a little slack here. But just a little. So before I apologize to one of our leading citizens, from whom you just snatched what looks like personal property, I’d like to hear your explanation.”
“No explanation necessary,” said Fulsom hastily. “I demand that it be returned to me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of denying Mr. Fulsom the opportunity to hear why I picked his pocket,” said Pendergast. And with that he put his camera—a Polaroid 600 Impulse— on a nearby desk, along with its still-developing pictures.
Chambers had known from the jump his new partner played by his own rule book. He’d also heard rumors he had a guardian angel high up in the Bureau. But coming into the office in disguise like that, creating a bizarre spectacle in front of the entire CID—it made absolutely no sense, unless Pendergast was not just eccentric but crazy, and . . .
Pendergast turned to Estevez. “May I continue?”
“Just hurry up.”
“Gladly. Agent Urbanski here,” Pendergast resumed in a honeyed voice, “has made the vital point that security in this building is to be maintained at the highest level. In his latest posting he states, and I quote: Internal assessments are authorized and in fact encouraged. Or, to put it colloquially: snitch on your fellow workers if they stray.”
“Get to it,” Estevez said.
“In my admittedly short time here, I’ve noticed one particularly egregious lapse: Urbanski’s penchant for bringing men and women of wealth or authority into this secure area for private tours. A clear violation of protocol.”
“You little prick!” Urbanski began. “I have every right to bring important city officials in here—!”
“Quiet,” Estevez said, eyes still on Pendergast. “Continue.”
“Several evenings ago, while I was in the parking garage beneath the building, I happened to see a figure—whom I recognized as the distinguished Mr. Fulsom now standing before us—approach Agent Urbanski as he was getting into his car. From the body language, I gathered that our banker wanted something, perhaps a favor—and not necessarily an altruistic one. I managed to hear only the tail end of the hushed conversation, but enough to understand they would discuss the issue more fully at a restaurant in LaPlace at lunch the next day.”
Urbanski stared at Pendergast, eyes narrowed, face the color of day-old liver. “I was troubled by this conspiratorial exchange. And so, with Agent Urbanski’s own admonitions regarding ‘internal assessments’ ringing in my head, I, too, went to LaPlace the next day, arriving at the rendezvous point a few minutes early—in the guise you saw just now—in order to have a few private words with Mr. Fulsom. I mentioned I’d overheard the discussion in the garage the night before. I told him that Urbanski was not a man to be trusted in such dealings; that I myself was an agent on the take and in disguise; and that if he let me pretend to be a shady lawyer employed in his service, I would see that—for a small cut—he got what he wanted. I hinted that repulsing my offer would not result in a good outcome for him. He accepted.
“Soon afterward, Urbanski joined us. Naturally, he did not recognize me, and he swallowed Fulsom’s explanation that I was his attorney and must be part of the discussion. And then, over lunch, I learned of Mr. Fulsom’s concern about Operation Pink Champagne.”
This, Chambers knew, had been a sting operation the FBI had recently conducted in a French Quarter mansion involving sex traffickers, wealthy patrons, and underage prostitutes. Cameras had been installed, and female agents had impersonated ladies of the night.
“Sir!” Urbanski cried. “Are we really going to listen to this rookie talk such—!”
“Urbanski!” Estevez said sharply. “You’ll get your turn. Now stay quiet.”
Chambers could see Fulsom was white-faced, but at least he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Regarding Operation Pink Champagne, it seems Mr. Fulsom was on the premises the night before the raid. It was only after the raid that he learned about the cameras—and, according to rumor, one of the videotapes incriminated him. That videotape was duly deposited in our secure evidence room. For a consideration of fifty thousand dollars, Fulsom proposed to Special Agent Urbanski that, under the guise of a tour, he might retrieve said videotape and put the original into Fulsom’s hands.”
This is crazy, Chambers thought—more than crazy.
“You will find the videotape in that envelope,” Pendergast said. “You will also find, among the pictures I took, the envelope being handed from Urbanski to Fulsom—I intentionally used a Polaroid so that the photos would develop in real time, and I could not be accused of doctoring them.”
He fell silent. Urbanski and Fulsom were themselves mute, as stricken as statues.
Estevez, still holding the envelope, stared at Pendergast. “Let me get this straight. You undertook, on your own, without any authorization whatsoever, to set up a sting operation— right here, in my field office? Without letting me know? And then you pickpocketed this man?”
Pendergast said nothing.
“I’m not even sure I have the legal right to open this envelope. We don’t have a warrant to search his person—and it was improperly obtained.”
“Not so, sir,” Pendergast said coolly. “We are in a high-security area on federal property, and I had direct evidence that a crime had been committed. If you check with legal, you will find that this evidence was properly obtained and will stand up in court. And of course, when you open that envelope you will find it is not his property, but the property of the FBI.”
Estevez turned red. “You have some nerve, Pendergast. Pulling a stunt like this is bad enough—but not informing your superiors makes your actions unprecedented in all my experience.”
Suddenly— without even realizing he was doing it—Chambers heard himself speak up. “Sir, before you say anything else, I think it’s important to get the facts straight here.”
Slowly, with the precision of a machine, Estevez’s eyes swiveled toward him.
“You know my record, sir—and you know my service.”
“Go on,” said Estevez, his voice with a menacing undertone.
“Agent Pendergast and I discussed this sting operation. And I—I approved it.”
Excerpted from PENDERGAST: The Beginning. Copyright © 2026 Preston & Child published by Grand Central Publishing, a Hachette Book Group company. All rights reserved.
It only took six months for the life of Special Agent Dwight Chambers to crumble around him. First, he lost his partner, and then, tragically, his wife. Returning to work at the New Orleans Field Office, Chambers is dismayed to find himself saddled with mentoring a brand new FBI agent—a certain A. X. L. Pendergast. As Chambers tries to pull himself together, his enigmatic and exasperating junior partner pulls an outrageous stunt that gets both of them suspended.
Pendergast welcomes the banishment, because it gives him the opportunity to investigate a peculiar murder in Mississippi that has captured his fancy. Chambers grudgingly goes along. What starts off as a whimsical quest swiftly turns into a terrifying pursuit, as Chambers and Pendergast uncover a string of grisly, ritualistic killings that defy any known serial killer profile.
Thanks in large part to Pendergast’s brilliance and unorthodox methods, they solve the case and find the killer… and that is when the true horror begins.