Carlucci's Edge

by Richard Paul Russo

  Carlucci shrugged. “Don’t thank me yet.”

  They sat at a small window table on the second floor of a place called The Bright Spot, a café just a few blocks from police headquarters. It was too late for afternoon coffee breaks, too early for dinner, so while the first floor was half full, the second-floor section was nearly empty—exactly what Carlucci had expected.

  Neither said anything while they waited for their coffee. Carlucci’s attention alternated between the street below and the woman across from him.

  Paula Asgard. He liked the name. She was attractive, he thought, in a real earthy way. Somewhere in her thirties, about five-seven, five-eight, a few strands of gray in her dark hair. Almost but not quite slender. She looked strong, like she worked out.

  Not much was happening on the street. A man with only one arm and one eye walked a string of three pit bulls leashed together with wire muzzles. Two thrashers on motorized boards ran the gutter directly below the café. A woman stood in front of an electronics store across the street, hiking her products and wearing a set of bone boomers; Carlucci got a headache just watching her. Then three teenage girls strolled past wearing rag vests, no bras, budding breasts appearing and disappearing among the strips. Christ, Carlucci thought. He watched until they were gone from sight, but nothing happened to them.

  Margitta brought their coffees—iced for Paula Asgard, hot for Carlucci—and asked Carlucci how his wife was.

  “Fine,” Carlucci said, smiling. He knew what Margitta’s game was: trying to guilt him just in case he was even thinking something funny about the woman across the table from him. Margitta and Andrea were good friends. “It’s just business,” he told Margitta. She shrugged and left.

  Carlucci turned back to Paula Asgard. “So tell me.”

  “Mixer says you can be trusted.” She turned her glass mug around and around, but didn’t drink. “He said you’re a cop who does what a cop is supposed to do.”

  “As opposed to all the cops who don’t do what cops are supposed to do?”

  A hint of a smile appeared on Paula’s mouth. “You said it.”

  “Mixer.” Carlucci shook his head and frowned. “That guy.”

  Paula’s mouth moved into a full smile. “Yeah, that guy.” She drank from her iced coffee, cubes rattling against glass. “He said you don’t like spikeheads.”

  “I don’t I think they’re fucking nuts. Self-mutilation doesn’t do it for me.” He shook his head again, picturing Mixer with the crusted, twisted spikes of skin all over his forehead. “But Mixer, well, we have an understanding of sorts. We get along all right.”

  “He told me you caught the Chain Killer.”

  “Not really,” Carlucci said. “I was there, I was ‘in charge,’ but it was other people who were really responsible.” He remembered sitting with Tanner at the Carousel Club three years earlier, telling him about the Chain Killer’s faked death, “justice” taking it in the ass again—almost no one knew the Chain Killer was still alive, locked away in some military compound. And he thought of a poor thirteen-year-old girl they had pulled out of a lagoon: Sookie. “One of them got killed,” he said.

  “A friend of mine’s been killed,” Paula said.

  Carlucci looked at her, bringing himself back to the present, then slowly nodded. “Who was it?”

  “A friend,” she repeated, more quietly.

  Carlucci watched her, wanting to look away, not wanting to see what he saw in her eyes. She might be a hardass on the outside, but he could see hints of what was happening inside her, the way she was fighting to keep it inside. Someone she loved had died, been killed. He knew that look, because he had seen it too many times.

  And then he thought of his older daughter, Caroline, and he wondered if he would have that look in his eyes when she died. One day he would be grieving over her death, a day that would be way too soon in coming.

  “His name was Chick Roberts,” Paula finally managed. She looked out the window, swirling the ice cubes and coffee.

  “A friend,” Carlucci prompted. The name wasn’t familiar. Should he have come across it? Maybe not. He wanted to get straight to it—when was he killed, how, why, whatever—but he knew he’d have to take it slow, at her pace, ease into it.

  “Yeah, a friend. More than a friend. I don’t know, boyfriend?” Paula turned back to him and shook her head. “Doesn’t seem the right word.” She drank from her coffee. “Lover?” Then she tried to smile. “Never liked that word, either, but I guess that’s as close as I’m going to come. We’d known each other a long time. Sixteen, seventeen years.”

  “Did you live together?”

  “No,” she said, almost laughing. “Tried once. Didn’t last a year.” She didn’t offer any explanation, and Carlucci wasn’t going to ask her for one.

  “When was he killed?”

  “A week and a half ago. I stopped by his place after a gig, found him dead. Shot three times in the head.”

  She didn’t go on, and Carlucci let the silence hang between them for a bit. He was tempted to ask her for more details, but this wasn’t his investigation, probably never would be. But there was one question he had to ask if she wasn’t going to get to it herself.

  “Why me?” Carlucci asked. “Why are we here?” Something in her expression changed, hardened. The grief was gone, replaced by anger.

  “I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  Yeah, Carlucci thought, we all do.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I’ve been trying to keep on top of it, the investigation, the case, whatever it’s called.” Paula finished off her iced coffee, set the mug down, shook the ice cubes. “I want to know who killed him, and why. I want to see whoever did it pay.” She pushed her mug to the side, and Carlucci could see the anger burning inside her. “His parents don’t give a damn, but I do.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I call the cop who’s supposed to be in charge, see what’s going on, and he gives me the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. First, he tells me the investigation has been a dead end, no leads, nothing. Fine, I can sort of accept that, though I don’t really buy it.” Paula grabbed her mug again, tried to drink coffee that wasn’t there, then put it back down. She looked hard at Carlucci. “But then the guy tells me the case is closed. Now, you tell me how the case can be closed if the cops have no idea who killed him?”

  “Well,” Carlucci said, “there’s closed and there’s closed.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Technically the case won’t be closed. What he meant is that they think they’ve gotten as far as they can, which apparently is nowhere. They don’t think they’ll be able to solve it, and they probably won’t be putting much more time into it.”

  “They haven’t put jack into it yet.”

  “You don’t know that,” Carlucci started. “I’m sure...”

  “Bullshit!” Paula was getting angrier; her neck muscles had tightened and her fists were clenched. “As far as I can tell, they haven’t talked to any of Chick’s friends about it, they haven’t asked anyone anything. That’s why I can’t buy this dead-end crap.” She leaned forward. “They haven’t even asked me a damn thing, and I found him.”

  Carlucci was starting to get a bad feeling about this. He was beginning to wish he had never agreed to talk to her. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “One of the investigating officers interviewed you, right?”

  “Wrong.” Paula shook her head. “They asked me about five questions when they first showed up that night, sent me home, and told me they’d get back to me. No one did.”

  “No one?”

  “That’s what I said. I found out who was in charge of the case, talked to him, but all I got was the runaround. Said he didn’t need to talk to me, that they had all the information they needed. I even volunteered to come in and talk to him, but he said no. That’s when I started checking with people Chick knew. Cops didn’t interview
any of them. Now, you tell me what that’s all about.”

  He had no answer for her. He signaled to Margitta for more coffee. She came over, refilled his cup, then poured some over what remained of the ice cubes in Paula’s mug. Carlucci could see the ice cubes melting from the hot coffee. “Want some more ice, hon?” Margitta asked. Paula shook her head, not looking at the waitress, holding her stare on Carlucci. Margitta took the hint and left without another word.

  “Who was the investigating officer?” He had to ask. He didn’t want to hear her answer, but he had to ask.

  “Ruben Santos.”

  Not a name Carlucci expected to hear. Two or three other names, sure, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But Ruben?

  “Ruben Santos,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. How do you think I came up with the name? Picked one at random?”

  Christ, the whole thing was turning on him. He had been prepared to take Paula Asgard pretty much at her word—he’d seen this kind of thing often enough—but now he began to doubt her. Ruben was about as straight a player as cops came. Carlucci really didn’t know what to think.

  “It gets better,” Paula said.

  “How?”

  “Last time I talked to this guy Santos, he said they were looking into the possibility that it was suicide.”

  Sure, Carlucci thought, a kind of backdoor way out, even if it was bullshit. “Could it have been?”

  Paula let out a chopped laugh. “Right. Three bullet holes in the face, half the back of his head blown off, and no gun in the apartment. The most amazing goddamn suicide in history.”

  Yeah, but Carlucci could see how they’d play it. The girlfriend, wanting to avoid the stigma of suicide, pops him a couple extra shots in the face to make it look like murder, then dumps the gun. All bullshit, but the cops just might make that case to close it up, and the coroner could be depended on not to shut the door completely on it.

  “Why would the cops want to let this case go?” Carlucci asked. “Laziness? Maybe they just think it’s unimportant?” Her eyes got real hard again. “Unimportant to who?” Great. That hadn’t been the most sensitive thing he’d ever said.

  “Point taken,” Carlucci said.

  “Besides,” Paula went on, “they’re not just letting it go, they’re trying to bury it.”

  “Maybe so.” Probably so, he thought. But Ruben? He couldn’t shake his doubts. “But why? Do you have any idea why they’d want to cover it up, or not find out who killed him? There must be some reason; they wouldn’t do something like this just to be assholes.”

  “You tell me. That’s why I’m here.” Paula sighed, looked away from him. She picked up her coffee mug, drank absently from it. There was no ice left. She turned back to him.

  “Chick—” she began. She gave him a half smile. “Chick made a living his own way, and most of the time his own way wasn’t exactly legal. Low-end stuff, really. Deal a little bit, run a scam on a jack lawyer, middle-man something hot, things like that. Nothing too big, nothing that would catch the attention of the sharks. You know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Carlucci. Said. A bottom feeder, picking up the crumbs and the crap.

  “That was the biggest reason we didn’t live together. I couldn’t tell him how to run his life, but I didn’t want to be a part of that shit, not even on the edges.”

  “I understand.”

  Paula looked away, out the window. “Theory is one thing, the real world is another. Trying to stay small-time, out of the way of the sharks, well, impossible to do all the time.” She turned back to Carlucci. “Every so often he’d get himself in over his head, riding, on the edge, but he always managed to slip out of it. My guess is he got in over his head again, and this time he couldn’t get out. In with the sharks, chewed up and spit out.” She paused. “And the cops don’t want to touch it. I don’t know, you tell me why.”

  Carlucci looked down at his coffee cup, didn’t drink, then looked back at Paula. “What do you expect me to do? I can’I go in and take over the case. I can’t interfere in the investigation without damn good cause.”

  “What investigation?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Paula nodded. The anger was gone from her expression, replaced by exhaustion and a return of the grief. “I don’t know. Something should be done. Mixer said you could help. Do you like it when your fellow cops try to bury something? Don’t you want to know why?” She shook her head slowly. “Somebody should be trying to find out who killed him.” She paused, and Carlucci thought he saw tears welling in her eyes, but she managed to keep them back. “Chick deserves better than this. Anybody does. He wasn’t a saint, but he never hurt anyone if he could help it. This may sound weird, but for all his fuckups, Chick was a good person. Do you have any idea what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “And he deserves better. He deserves something.”

  Carlucci didn’t say anything for a while. Not everyone gets what they deserve, he wanted to tell her, good or bad. But he realized she already knew that. Still.

  “All right,” he finally said. “I’ll look into it. No promises, though. Understand? I’ll have to be careful, and I don’t know how much I can push it.”

  Paula nodded. Her expression didn’t hold out much hope. She wasn’t naive.

  “I may not be able to do much at all,” he said.

  Paula nodded again, but didn’t say anything.

  “Where can I reach you tomorrow? Afternoon or evening?”

  She blinked, as if she’d been thinking of something else. “Um, at Chick’s place, actually. His parents don’t want any of his things, so I’m going to go through his stuff, clean out his apartment.” She smiled sadly. “He was such a fucking slob.” She shook her head. “You have something to write with?”

  Carlucci took two of his cards and handed them to her along with a pen. “Keep one for yourself. Write Chick’s number and your number on the other.”

  She wrote the numbers on the card and handed it back to him.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, or the next day. And when you go through Chick’s things tomorrow?”

  “Yes?”

  “Make a note of anything you think is missing.”

  “And if there is, who will have taken it?” Paula asked. “His killer, or the cops?”

  Carlucci didn’t answer. “No promises, remember?” he said again.

  Paula nodded. “I understand.”

  Carlucci got up from the table. “You coming?”

  “No. I think I’ll stay here a while.”

  Carlucci wanted to say something to her, something that would be comforting, or reassuring. But there wasn’t anything. He stood for a few moments, watching her, then turned away and left.

  TWO

  LONG AFTER DARK, Paula and Sheela were still out on the fire escape outside Sheela’s apartment, drinking beer. A hot, muggy night, no rain in the air. Sheela was smoking the longest, skinniest cigarettes Paula had ever seen—Silver Needles. Paula was sitting on a crate, her back against the building; Sheela sat on the metal grating, legs and arms and head dangling through the railing and over the edge. A block and a half away, a vacant lot served as the neighborhood dump, and a methane fire burned on the street-side slope of the huge mound of garbage.

  “Pilate Error was supposed to play at The Black Hole tonight,” Paula said. She’d gone through seven or eight beers, and she was fairly drunk, but it didn’t seem to do much to blunt the pain inside her.

  “Chick was a pretty good guitar player,” Sheela said. “Not as good as Bonita, but pretty good.” Sheela had dropped three melters about fifteen minutes ago, but they hadn’t kicked in yet, so she was still coherent. Still, Paula knew she would lose her soon.

  “Bonita never liked Chick much,” Paula said.

  Sheela giggled. “She hated his guts.”

  Paula smiled, brought her beer up to her mouth, and drank.Cold and bitter and smooth, biting her throat. “Yeah, I g
uess she did.”

  “I liked him okay,” Sheela said. “Even if he did try to prong me that one time.” She turned and looked at Paula, her blonde hair covering one eye. “He didn’t know I don’t go for guys.”

  Oh, God, Paula thought, let’s not go through this again, not tonight. When Sheela got drunk...

  “You want to stay here tonight?” Sheela asked.

  “No. I want to be in my own place, sleep in my own bed.” She also had to meet Mixer at midnight, but she wasn’t going to tell Sheela that. Sheela would misunderstand. “But thanks.”

  “I could always ...” Sheela started. Then she turned away and stuck her head back between the railing bars, looking down at the street. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Paula said. And it was. They’d been close friends for too many years.

  A corporate recruiter van appeared on the street a few blocks away and headed toward them. The van, lights flashing and rolling, moved slowly, at little more than a crawl. White text and images flowed along the side of the van, but it was too far away and the angle was wrong, so Paula couldn’t make out the words or the pictures.

  “I wonder what they’re trolling for tonight,” Sheela said. She drank from her bottle, shook it, then set it down. She coughed violently, whacking her head against the metal railing. She’d had a terrible, hacking cough for years, and never seemed able to shake it. When the coughing let up, she said, “Have you ever thought about going for one of those deals?”

  “No,” Paula said. “You?”

  Sheela nodded. “Once, a few years ago. I was broke, I was living in the cab of an old truck, and I was sicker than shit. Thought I had brain fever, even though I didn’t have the rash. Turned out to be some bad flu, but I didn’t know it then.”

  She held her beer bottle up to the light from the street lamp across the way. “I need another.” She set the bottle on the grate beside her. “A recruiter for the New Hong Kong orbital rolled down the street one night while I was out trying to scrounge up some food cash. I watched it roll past, all those pictures of outer space, gleaming apartments, clean air and healthy’plants, glittering lights and fancy restaurants, tables filled with food.” She shook her head. “I almost went for it. I knew what it would really be like for someone like me—scut work, a tiny hole to live in, institutional food. But I almost went for it. Actually got the van to pull over for me. But as soon as it stopped, and the side doors opened, I freaked. Ran like hell. I thought they were going to come after me and force me to go.” She paused, gripped the railing bars tightly and pressed her head against them. “I told a friend of mine about it the next day, and that night she went out looking for the van herself.”