Carlucci's Heart

by Richard Paul Russo

  He closed his eyes, wanting desperately to go there right now, rent out a room for a day or two, and slide into oblivion. But that was just as useless as the Plague Parades, just as futile. And he had made a promise to himself to put an end to that.

  Nikki.

  CHAPTER 24

  Carlucci stood at an open fifth-floor window and looked down on the Tenderloin as dusk fell. Activity was increasing, the streets and sidewalks filling despite the heat. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, dripped down his sides from under his arms, and formed a sticky, itching band around his waist. The weather service had been predicting a break in the heat wave for three days now, and each day it just got hotter.

  Carlucci didn’t give a damn. Right now he didn’t give a damn about much, not even his job. Two weeks since he’d been shot, and still there was no sign of Caroline, no hint of what had happened to her or where she was, or even if she was still alive. A few days earlier a letter had arrived at the house, mailed from the Sunset Post Office, saying that Caroline was all right, she was just away for a while, she was not being held anywhere against her will, and everything was fine, so they shouldn’t worry. The letter was worthless; if it was meant to reassure him and Andrea, it failed completely. And as time went on, he had become more convinced that she was here somewhere, in the Tenderloin, and that it had something to do with Cancer Cell. So now, because he had nothing else to do, he was about to go into the Tenderloin himself and look for her, despite what he knew to be the futility of his task. If nothing else, maybe he’d stir something up. What was the worst that could happen? Someone would take a shot at him?

  He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly, and that later he would probably regret this, but right now that didn’t matter. So he stood at the window, looking down at the street lighting up as darkness fell, and waited to descend. He rotated his arm and shoulder, slowly but steadily to keep it from getting stiff. No more sling, and not much left in the way of bandages, but he had to be careful so he didn’t rip the wound back open. The pain wasn’t bad, just a constant, annoying reminder to him of what had happened.

  “Lieutenant? You’re cleared.”

  Carlucci turned around. The cop was young, hardly more than a rookie, and Carlucci wondered why he’d been assigned here, to one of the police department’s “gates” into the Tenderloin. This was usually a post for more experienced officers, where strange things came up and there was often a need for improvising, where the rule book sometimes had to be distorted or ignored altogether. Either someone had a lot of faith in the young man and was already grooming him for quick advancement, or someone had it in for the guy and was setting him up for a shitcan. He seemed like a nice kid, and Carlucci silently wished him well.

  “Thanks,” he said to the kid. Then he walked past him, through the door, and into the stairwell, and started down the steps.

  After three flights, the steps ended at a locked door. Carlucci waited, hearing a thumping bass through the walls. There was nowhere for him to go, except back up. He had to wait nearly five minutes until finally the door unlocked and swung quickly open. A short, skinny, old man grabbed his arm and pulled him through. “Chop chop!” the man said in a loud whisper. The man slammed the door shut, jammed home the locks, then pulled down a large tapestry that completely hid the door.

  The music was louder here, a wild and swinging reggae. He was in a corridor now deserted except for himself and the old man, who pulled at his arm again, urging him down the corridor away from the music. “Go downstairs.”

  “I know,” Carlucci said. “I’ been through here before.”

  But the man just shook his head, pointing with one hand and now pushing with the other. “Go now, downstairs and out the back.”

  Carlucci gave up trying to convince the man he already knew where to go. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going.” He walked down to the end of the corridor, then through a screen door to the outside and zigzagging wooden steps that went down into an alley.

  He hesitated at the top of the stairs, his heart suddenly beating hard and fast and his ears ringing, thinking about the last time he’d gone into an alley. This was different, he knew that, but he couldn’t completely stop that clutching at his chest and gut. He scanned the alley, which was short, a dead end only ten feet to his left where metal and stone and wood barriers had been erected as a wall between buildings and forming a part of the Tenderloin perimeter no way in or out. The rest of the alley, maybe fifty feet out to the street, was empty except for trash bins and the scattered remains of an old motorcycle.

  What the hell was he doing here? He shook his head and went down the steps. Then he hurried along the alley, turned the corner of the building, and plunged into the Tenderloin crowds.

  At ten o’clock he was in the back of a pachinko parlor in the Asian Quarter, massaging his temples, trying to ease the headache he had from the constant clatter of balls and ringing of bells, the flashing lights and the dense clouds of cigarette smoke. He was sitting on a stool with his back against the wall, and he’d been here for fifteen minutes, waiting for a woman called Amy Otani. Amy Otani was a weasel for one of the department’s undercover narcotics officers. Carlucci had spent most of the day calling in favors and promising more of his own to get the names of weasels and leeches in the Tenderloin, anyone he could contact and ask about Caroline or Cancer Cell. So far he’d come up empty, and he didn’t really expect to do any better the rest of the night.

  A short, round woman in a black skirt and flowered blouse came toward him, expression stern. She stopped only a couple of feet away, frowning.

  “You Carlucci?”

  “Yes. You’re Amy Otani?”

  She blew air between her lips and shook her head, frown deepening, then nodded quickly once. “Yes, yes. Come with me, quickly.” She turned and walked away.

  He scrambled off the stool and hurried after her. She barreled around a corner and down a dark narrow corridor, then up a flight of steps and into a small room on the second floor. There was a desk and a couple of chairs, and the rest of the room was filled with wooden and plastic crates. When he entered, she closed the door behind him, then pointed to a chair, her arm and finger stiff and demanding. He sat in the chair, then she moved around behind the desk and sat, still glowering at him.

  “You’re a crazy man,” she said. “You don’t even have to tell me why you’re here. I already know, because the word is out. You’re trying to find Cancer Cell.”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head again. “Yes, you’re a crazy man. Always dangerous to ask about Cancer Cell, even when you’re being careful. And when you’re not being careful…” She made a kind of growling sound in her throat. “And you’re not being careful, Lieutenant. Not at all. You were almost killed once, now you’re trying again, looks like. Trying to make a success this time, yes.”

  “No.”

  She snorted. “Yes. Same thing, what you’re doing.”

  “Can you help me contact Cancer Cell?”

  “You don’t understand, do you? Anyone who tries to help you find Cancer Cell now is as crazy as you.” Now she was almost smiling, as if she couldn’t believe he was serious. “This is my help, to warn you. To tell you. You make things too difficult now. Cancer Cell knows, unless they are blind and deaf and stupid. And they are not blind and deaf and stupid. No, Lieutenant. No one will help you.”

  “I’m trying to find my daughter.”

  Her expression became sorrowful. “If she is with Cancer Cell, the best thing for you is to stop right now. Go home, forget it.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Then no one can help you.” She pointed to the door. “Go, Lieutenant. Don’t make problems for me.”

  He nodded, then got up and left.

  Three o’clock in the morning, exhausted and depressed, Carlucci stopped by the RadioLand Street Clinic a third time, hoping Cage had showed up. The first two times, Cage hadn’t been there, and the doctors and staff didn’t know when he would be.
Apparently he’d become unreliable the past few days, not following the schedule they had worked out for the week, showing up at odd times, not showing up when he was supposed to. Dr. Samione, the woman Carlucci had met the day he’d come by looking for Tito, remembered him. She didn’t seem upset by Cage’s behavior; she said they had adjusted. It was a stretch for all of them, but they just didn’t count on him, so when he did show up it was a bonus. He was going through a very difficult time, she said; it would pass. Nikki? Carlucci had asked her. She had nodded, but didn’t say anything else.

  Now he was back, and surprisingly Cage was here. But he didn’t seem to be working. He was sitting in one of the waiting-room chairs, drinking a bottle of Black Orbit beer. Haggard and drawn, he hadn’t shaved in several days. As Carlucci approached him, Cage looked up and saluted him with the bottle.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant. I am told you’ve been looking for me.”

  “Hello, Cage.” He wondered if Cage was drunk. “Are you all right?”

  “No. But I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re really asking. Are you looking for me?”

  “Indirectly. I’m looking for my daughter. Caroline.” Cage nodded. “She’s still missing.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sighed. “But why do you want me?”

  Carlucci gave him a half smile. “I’m desperate.”

  Cage laughed. “You’d have to be. Look at me, I’m a fuckin’ mess.”

  “Nikki?”

  Cage nodded, then shook his head from side to side. He finished off his beer.

  “No improvement?”

  “She’s dying, Lieutenant. Your daughter’s still missing, and Nikki’s still dying. I don’t know how she’s managed to stay alive as long as she has, but it won’t be long now. A day or two, maybe.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know where your daughter is.”

  “I want you to help me find her.”

  Cage laughed again, then nodded. “Let’s go talk somewhere. Get something cold to drink.”

  “Back in your ‘staff lounge’?” Carlucci asked, smiling. “Christ, no. Not unless you want your brains boiled. But let me go get a couple of beers.”

  “All right.”

  He waited while Cage went into the back room at the end of the hall. The waiting room was half full, and it was hard to tell whether the people waiting were sick or just wiped out by the heat. Everyone was listless and quiet, the loudest noise in the room coming from the fans.

  Cage came out from the back with two bottles in each hand. “It’s hot,” he said, shrugging. He gave Carlucci two of the bottles.

  They went outside, and Cage gestured toward a bench half a block away, unoccupied for the moment. They walked down to it and sat, the extra bottles between them. Carlucci twisted off the cap and drank deeply. A sharp pain from the cold drove up into his sinuses, but the beer tasted awfully good right now.

  “How’s the arm?” Cage asked.

  “It’s all right. It aches quite a bit right now, but that’s because I’ve been wandering around in this godforsaken place since dusk.”

  -Looking for your daughter?”

  “Christ, Carlucci. If she’s been missing all this time, what the hell are the chances you’re going to see her walking around in here?”

  “Pretty much zero.” He looked at Cage. “But what would you do? Stay at home and wait to hear something? I’ve done enough of that.”

  “I understand,” Cage said. “But what the hell do you want from me? I haven’t seen her.”

  Carlucci took a folded photo of Caroline from his pocket and handed it to Cage. “Just in case,” he said. “Keep an eye out for her. Ask around.”

  “Here? In the Tenderloin? Walk around and show people this picture and ask them if they’ve seen her? Are you out of your mind?”

  “No. I don’t really expect you to do that. What I really want you to do is put me in touch with Cancer Cell.”

  “Jesus, you are out of your mind.”

  “No. The first time we talked, you said you might be able to do it.”

  “Yeah, I said might, and it turned out I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Besides, that was then, this is now, and they’re not the same.” He cocked his head. “Do you have any idea what’s going on in this city right now, with this goddamn disease, whatever it is? The one that killed Stinger and Tito, the one that’s killing Nikki?” Without waiting for Carlucci to answer, he went on. “Of course you don’t. No one does. But this thing is spreading. It’s starting to pop up all over, but no one knows what it is, no one knows where it’s come from. No one knows there are other cases out there. But this thing has probably come from the Core, somehow, and Cancer Cell has to know that. And the last thing they’re going to want to do is talk to anyone. I think they’ve pulled in tight and closed the hatch over themselves.”

  Carlucci thought about that for a while. Then he said, “And if Caroline did try to contact them, what would they have done?”

  “Who knows? But she probably didn’t. How would she know how to do that?”

  Carlucci just shook his head. None of it made much sense, but he didn’t know where else she could be. “Are you sure you can’t get in touch with them?”

  Cage shook his head in exasperation. “Christ, Carlucci, I’ve been trying. I’ve got a bad feeling about this disease. I’ve been trying to get in touch with them for days now, and it’s been a goddamn stone wall. They might as well not exist.”

  Carlucci didn’t know what else to say. He had felt as if Cage was his last chance. “What the hell am I going to do?” he said.

  But Cage didn’t have an answer for him.

  CHAPTER 25

  Caroline had been in this room for well over a week. She was surprisingly comfortable in it, despite the locked door and the lack of windows. Two or three times a day she was taken to some exam room or lab, where Dr. Mike asked her questions, examined her, and ran her through batteries of tests. Dr. Mike was tall and emaciated, with wire-rim glasses and short, unkempt hair. He probably wasn’t much older than thirty, but he acted as if he’d been a doctor all his life. Other than the questions he asked, he didn’t talk much; Caroline wasn’t sure that he really thought of her as another person. He was in a world of his own.

  Rashida confirmed her impressions of Dr. Mike. Caroline and Rashida liad talked a lot in the past week, and Caroline thought they were becoming friends. Rashida came by at least once a day, and often twice. In the evenings she would sometimes stay for hours. They would drink tea, talk, and listen to music on Rashida’s disc player.

  She almost felt she could tell Rashida the real reason she was here. One way or another, though, she was going to have to do something soon. She was learning nothing, really, about Cancer Cell, about what they were doing, what their facilities were like, or anything else. She had to admit that she knew no more about Cancer Cell or the disease that had killed Tito than she had known before coming here.

  One evening Caroline was sitting on her bed, reading an older novel by Alana Wysocki, when she heard the door being unlocked. She looked up to see Rashida walk into the room and close the door behind her, then lean back against the door, looking at Caroline with an almost dead expression.

  “What is it?” Caroline said, setting down her book.

  “I believed you,” Rashida said, her tone even and neutral. “More than that, I thought we were becoming friends.”

  “We are,” Caroline replied. What had happened? She thought she should be frightened, but she wasn’t.

  “I don’t think so.” She remained at the door, watching Caroline.

  “What is it?” Caroline asked again.

  “Why are you here?” Rashida shook her head, as if she didn’t expect a truthful answer.

  Caroline decided not to give her any answer at all. She wasn’t afraid, but she felt she had to be careful. She had the distinct feeling she didn’t quite know what this was about.

  “You do have Gould’s S
yndrome, don’t you? There’s no way you could have faked that, is there?”

  “Of course I have Gould’s.”

  “But this sad story about your friend’s daughter with the leukemia, all a crock to suck me in.”

  “No,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “Mink really does have leukemia. She and Lily are living in a death house in the DMZ, and without a bone marrow transplant, Mink is going to die.”

  “If you’re not lying, that’s even worse. Using them like this, to get close to us.”

  “I just want to help them,” Caroline insisted.

  “I should have known when it turned out your father was a cop. But we thought, hell, a cop’s daughter isn’t immune to things like Gould’s. And you do have Gould’s. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Rashida leaned forward, getting angrier. “You’re really starting to piss me off,” she said. “We’ve found out.”

  “Found out what?”

  Rashida shook her head, smiling unpleasantly. “The daughter of some New Hong Kong big shot has been murdered, and the murder is being blamed on us. Nothing official yet, but it’s clear. Someone carved ‘CC’ into her forehead, and the cops have made the connection they’re supposed to make. And guess what? Your father is in charge of the investigation. Not only that, but he’s been digging around the Tenderloin, trying to get somebody to give us to him. I’m not sure why, though. He’s got you in here. What more does he need?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Caroline said. Rashida stepped forward, fists clenched, eyes wide. “You expect me to believe that?”