Carlucci's Heart

by Richard Paul Russo

  “Do you know why we’ve got extra teams called in on this one?” Tran asked. “It’s only one victim, isn’t it?”

  Carlucci shook his head. “Ruben just said it was a hot one, and to get two extra teams down here as soon as possible. He wouldn’t say why. I think Hong and LaPlace are already here. Yeah, there’s Hong.” The tall, thin detective was apart from the others, crouched at the edge of the old foundation, gazing into the leaf-covered water. His glasses were misted over, and Carlucci wondered how he could see anything.

  The ground leveled out as they neared the old foundations, covered by large patches of ocean grasses and succulents, and walking became easier. A narrow path had been marked out along the beds of ice plant and concrete slabs, a futile attempt to preserve the integrity of the crime scene. They stayed on the path and made their way to the group of cops huddled under the tarp. There were two uniforms, who kept back, only partly out of the rain, and three detectives Santos, Weathers, and LaPlace. Several feet away, still crouched by the water, Hong looked up and nodded at Carlucci. At the feet of the cops was a covered form laid out along the edge of the concrete foundation.

  “I’m sure as hell glad you’re here,” Santos said as Carlucci and Tran squeezed in under the tarp. “I was afraid you’d be too late.”

  “Too late for what?” Carlucci asked.

  “Someone’s going to try to take this case away from us.” He stared hard at Carlucci. “I don’t want that to happen. You might be able to hold on to it for us.”

  “Who’s going to try to take it?”

  Santos shrugged. “Someone.” He shifted to the side and looked up the slope to the road and fence at the edge of the cliff. Carlucci followed his gaze, but didn’t see anything. Tran lit a cigarette, and almost immediately Toni Weathers and one of the uniforms followed suit. The falling drizzle on all sides kept the smoke contained, and it built up under the tarp, hovered around them.

  “Morgan,” Santos finally said.

  Morgan was homicide lieutenant for the Financial District, which had its own separate department within the force. But the ruins of the Sutro Baths weren’t anywhere near the Financial District.

  “Do we have an ID?” Carlucci asked. That had to be what had Santos spooked.

  “Oh yeah,” Santos said. “She was chipped, and we got an instant hit, complete with goddamn flares and alarms.”

  “Who is she?”

  “It’s not who she is. It’s who her father is.”

  “Who is she, Ruben?”

  Santos shrugged again. “Naomi Katsuda.”

  Carlucci didn’t say anything, just looked down at the covered form at their feet.

  “You know her?” LaPlace asked.

  Carlucci stepped toward the head, the other cops making room for him. He knelt beside the body and pulled the dark nylon cloth away from the face. Her skin was gray and cold and lifeless, the lips a smeared silver now, the eyes closed and bruised, but he recognized her. The initials “CC” had been neatly carved into her forehead. He stared at her for a minute, feeling almost dizzy. Then he covered her face and stood. A cold tremor of fear rattled through him, settling in his stomach where it continued to tremble.

  “I met her once,” he finally said.

  “Cancer Cell,” said Tran. When the others looked at him, he pointed at the body. “The letters carved in her forehead. Cancer Cell.”

  Only Carlucci knew why it had occurred to Tran, but he didn’t want to explain now. He turned to Santos. “Why all the flares and alarms? And why are you worried about Morgan?”

  “Her father, Yoshi Katsuda, is the CEO of Mishima Investments. And Mishima Investments is New Hong Kong.”

  Carlucci nodded, trying to work things out. Martin Kelly had never mentioned Naomi’s father. Didn’t he know? She hadn’t mentioned it either. But Santos was right. Morgan would try to suck this case in, take it for his own, into Financial District jurisdiction where it would be investigated in complete secrecy, investigated in whatever way Mishima Investments and Yoshi Katsuda, and maybe even New Hong Kong, wanted it investigated.

  “I won’t let him take this case,” Carlucci said. He looked up the slope, understanding now why Santos had been looking up there earlier. When Santos and Weathers had locked onto the identity chip in Naomi Katsuda’s shoulder, and her identity had been confirmed, a bolt would have been transmitted directly to Morgan. It was surprising he wasn’t here yet.

  “Coroner’s crew and crime scene techs should be here any minute,” said Weathers. She looked at her cigarette, which was almost gone, then flicked the butt away, toward the ocean. Tran did the same. It probably didn’t matter much, Carlucci thought. With all this rain and mud the crime scene was a mess anyway.

  “Any idea how she was killed?” Carlucci asked.

  Santos and Weathers both shook their heads. “You could almost wonder if it was accidental, except for the letters carved into her forehead. I’m pretty sure the carving was postmortem.”

  “She wasn’t in the water, was she?” What he’d seen of Naomi Katsuda’s face hadn’t looked like a floater, unless she’d been in the water a very short time.

  Santos shook his head again. “We found her just where she is now.”

  Carlucci glanced at the two uniforms, but they both shook their heads as well. The older of the two, a woman in her forties, said, “We didn’t touch her, Lieutenant. We were just a few blocks away when the call came through, we flashed over here and marked off the path, then waited for the detectives.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Manager of the Cliff House restaurant,” Weathers said. “A customer spotted it.” She smiled. “I guess it spoiled their lunch.”

  Hong joined them under the tarp, his hair soaked, water dripping down his face. He wiped his glasses with a handkerchief.

  “You find something over there?” Carlucci asked.

  “No. I was primarily thinking about the job the crime scene techs are going to have.” His mouth worked into the faintest of smiles. “They’re going to have to drag all that, aren’t they? Can you imagine the crap they’re going to find in there? And probably none of it will have any connection to this.”

  “Oh, fuck,” LaPlace said. “They’re here.”

  They all looked up at the road that curved its way along the edge of the cliff. Two cars were just coming to a stop, pulling up over the curb and onto the sidewalk—a gray BMW, which was probably Morgan’s, and behind it a black, medium-sized limousine. Two men got out of the BMW, Blaise Morgan and Alex Warsinske, Morgan’s flunky. They approached the chain-link fence and looked down through the misting rain at the group of men looking back up at them. They wore slickcoats over their suits, but no hats, and they didn’t look too happy to be standing out in the rain.

  No one emerged from the limousine.

  “Is Morgan waiting for us to come up there after him?” Santos wondered aloud.

  “You don’t want him to get his shoes muddy, do you?” LaPlace said. “Fucking thousand-dollar Italian shoes.”

  “Watch it,” Carlucci said. “Italians make the best shoes.”

  LaPlace snorted. “Yeah, but who can afford them? Where the fuck were your shoes made?”

  “Probably Guatemala,” Carlucci said, smiling. The other cops laughed.

  “Fuck him,” LaPlace said. “He wants this case, let him climb on down here.”

  “Yeah,” Weathers added, “and maybe that ferret Warsinske will end up on his ass.”

  Two more vehicles pulled up behind the limousine the coroner’s van and an old department junker with crime scene techs. Men and women climbed out of the two vehicles and, loaded with equipment and cases and a jacked-up stretcher, headed toward the break in the fencing. Morgan and Warsinske remained where they were, looking down at the ruins.

  Carlucci turned back to Santos and Weathers. “All right, Ruben, Toni. This is your case. You’ve got Hong and LaPlace, and Tran and Jefferson. You need more help, just ask. You get any flak from Morgan o
r anyone else, send them to me. I’ll run interference.” He glanced at Tran. “Binh might be right about Cancer Cell. I’ll let him explain. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but there’s more involved than just Naomi Katsuda’s death. We’re keeping this goddamn case.”

  “Here he comes.” LaPlace pointed up the slope.

  Carlucci turned around and saw Morgan and Warsinske taking the first cautious steps through the break in the fence. The coroner’s assistants and the techs were about halfway down the slope. Carlucci breathed in deeply once, let it out. “All right.”

  He stepped out from the shelter of the tarp; the drizzle was even heavier now, though he still wouldn’t call it rain, exactly, and it was still fairly warm. The salt smell had grown stronger. He worked his way along the marked pathway, eyes to the ground.

  Just before he reached the foot of the slope, he met the crews coming down and stepped to the side to let them pass. Most of the men and women nodded to him as they went by, and he nodded in return. When they were by him, he took a few more steps, then sat on the remains of a cinderblock wall, his slickcoat protecting his ass from the wet, and waited for Morgan and Warsinske. They were still only halfway down the slope, struggling with their footing, slipping on the mud, and Carlucci could hear Morgan swearing.

  He looked back at the raised tarp. The body was no longer even partially visible, surrounded now by close to a dozen people. It was going to be a long and miserable afternoon for everyone. Maybe he didn’t want to go back onto the streets. Maybe it was time for him to get out.

  Morgan and Warsinske finally reached the bottom of the slope and approached. Warsinske hung back, as though trying to hide behind his boss.

  “I want this fucking case,” Morgan said.

  Blaise Morgan was a handsome man, an inch or two taller than Carlucci, but probably five or ten pounds lighter. Even with his dark hair soaked by the drizzle, he looked slick and polished he was the perfect man to run Homicide in the Financial District. He was also a good cop, though Carlucci thought that politics held way too high a priority for him. He looked down at Morgan’s shoes; they probably were expensive Italian leather, but it was hard to tell with all the mud smeared over them.

  “What are you looking at, Frank?”

  Carlucci looked up. “Your shoes.”

  Morgan made a snorting sound. “They’re probably ruined.” Then, voice hard, “I want this case, Frank.”

  Carlucci shook his head firmly. “It’s not your jurisdiction, B.J. It’s not even close.”

  “You know who the victim is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her father is head of Mishima Investments, for Christ’s sake. She worked for them, too. Mishima is my jurisdiction.”

  “If she’d been killed in the Mishima building, I’d agree completely. But she wasn’t. We’re miles from the Financial District, B.J.”

  “Maybe she was killed in the district, and her body dumped here.”

  Carlucci just shook his head, not bothering to respond. Morgan pointed back up the slope at the limousine parked above them. “You know who’s in that limo?”

  “Yoshi Katsuda, would be my guess.”

  “Damn fucking right, Frank. He’s her father, and he wants me to run the investigation. He knows me, he knows the teams that work in the Financial District, he knows we’ll be discreet.”

  “I don’t care,” Carlucci said. “And I won’t even be insulted by that. It’s not your jurisdiction.”

  “You afraid I’ll ghost the case? Find out who did it and let Katsuda work his own family justice?”

  “It’s not yours to ghost, B.J., so I don’t think anything.”

  “You want to tell that to Yoshi Katsuda? Tell him you’re ignoring his wishes?”

  “If I have to.”

  “He’s a powerful man, Frank, you know that. He could make your job a misery.”

  “I just don’t give a shit.”

  Morgan didn’t say anything for a minute, staring hard at Carlucci. Warsinske had come out from behind Morgan, but still hung back, waiting to see how all this was going to play out.

  “And what if I go to Vaughn?” Morgan asked.

  “He might give you the case. And he might not. Either way I’ll raise a big fucking stink about it, and what will Yoshi Katsuda think about that?”

  Morgan went silent again. He looked away from Carlucci, gazed at the people clustered around the body, then slowly turned to look up the hill at the limousine. Still no one had emerged from the limo, and Carlucci wondered if exactly, and it was still fairly warm. The salt smell had grown stronger. He worked his way along the marked pathway, eyes to the ground.

  Yoshi Katsuda was staring down at them right now through the smoked windows. Or was he sitting calmly in the rear seat, eyes straight ahead, not really seeing anything, just waiting for Morgan to come and talk to him? Carlucci almost felt sorry for Morgan.

  “We can work out some kind of cooperative arrangement,” Carlucci finally said. He could play some politics, too, when he had to. He was probably going to need Morgan’s help with this.

  Morgan turned back to him. “In what sense?”

  “Santos and Weather have caught this one. They’ll need to do interviews with people at Mishima, maybe other people in the Financial District. If you help slick the way for them, I’ll keep you regularly informed of the progress on the case. And then if you want, you can keep Katsuda up to date.”

  Morgan hesitated for a few moments, then sighed. “Sure, that could work. And you won’t hold anything back from me?”

  “Of course I will,” Carlucci replied. “If I think it’s necessary. But I’ll give you enough.”

  Morgan smiled, shaking his head. “You know, Frank, it’s a fucking miracle they made you lieutenant. I wish I knew what you had on the bastards.”

  “It’s not like that, B.J.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He sighed again. “Okay, I guess that’s about as good as it’s going to get, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Carlucci tipped his head toward the limousine. “You want me to talk to Katsuda?”

  “No. I’ll explain our ‘cooperative arrangement.’ I’ll be able to do a better job of selling it to him than you would.” They shook hands. “I’ll be in touch, Frank. You too, all right?”

  “I will, B.J.”

  Morgan turned and started up the hill, Warsinske just a few steps behind, scrambling after his boss like a sycophant. Warsinske would get his one day, Carlucci thought. Karma would catch up to the little ferret and bury him.

  Carlucci turned and headed back toward the body.

  That night, after dinner, Andrea made a pot of decaf and poured cups for both of them. Carlucci took his to the stove, opened the upper cabinet, and took out a bottle of Irish whiskey. He poured a good slug into his coffee, trying not to look at Andrea, who was almost certainly watching him. He sipped at the coffee, savoring both kinds of heat as they slid down his throat and into his stomach, like soothing liquid fire. He took one more long swallow, and finally turned around. Andrea was already gone from the kitchen; he followed her into the front room.

  She was sitting in her chair, table lamp on beside her, a book open in her lap, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Carlucci crossed the room to his ancient recliner, set his cup on the book stand beside the chair, and sat. The chair had been his father’s, and the leather was as dark and worn as his father’s face had been the last years of his life. Sitting in the chair always made him think of his father, and gave him a sense of comfort and security.

  “Rough day?” Andrea was looking at him over the top of her glasses.

  “Yeah. I’m beat.” He took another sip of the coffee. “I was out at the Sutro Baths this afternoon. There was a dead woman down in the ruins.” He paused, revisualizing the scene, the heavy drizzle and gray skies and the cops working around the body. Andrea didn’t say anything; she’d been through this so many times, and years ago she had stopped saying things like, “How awf
ul.” Now she just listened and waited, let him talk about what he needed to get out. It was something he greatly appreciated.

  “I’ve got a real bad feeling about this one,” he continued. “I had just talked to the woman a couple of weeks ago.” He decided not to mention Caroline’s part in the story. “I had asked her about a group of people I was looking into for a small thing at work, a missing persons I was checking out for a friend. But she wouldn’t tell me anything, though it was obvious she knew something about this group.” He paused, thinking back to the conversation, trying to remember her words. “She told me to come back and talk to her when people started dying.”

  Andrea took off her glasses and laid them on her book. “What did she mean by that?”

  “I have no idea. She said I’d know what she was talking about when it happened. But I don’t think she meant this. I can’t exactly talk to her again now, can I?”

  Neither of them spoke for a while. He took another long drink, but the whiskey didn’t really seem to be helping much.

  “While I was out there,” he resumed, “I was standing up on the road, and I looked over at the Cliff House, and I couldn’t help thinking about that day.”

  Andrea didn’t reply immediately. She seemed almost frozen, staring at him, not even blinking. She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at him again. “Frank, that was nine years ago.”

  “I know. But do you think I’ll ever forget?” She didn’t answer, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m giving you the wrong idea. It was a bad day. I mean, today was a bad day, and I want you to know I’d have a harder time getting through days like this without you. I’m doing a lousy job of it, but what I’m trying to tell you is, I love you, Andrea, and I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  She sighed and gave him a soft, warm smile. But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Neither of them did.

  CHAPTER 9

  This night, Caroline entered the DMZ well after dark. Not a smart thing to do, but she didn’t care. Let the street scavengers swoop down on her and pick her clean. What the hell did it matter?