More clunking sounds, then, “Frank?” Santos’s voice.
“Yeah, Ruben.”
“What’s up?”
“Got a half hour? Buy you a cup of coffee.”
Santos didn’t answer at first. Carlucci could hear his deep, raspy breath over the phone.
“There something you need to talk to me about?” Santos asked.
“Oh, just this and that, get your thoughts on the mayor’s nephew.”
Another hesitation, then, “You want to come by here and talk to me while I write up these interviews?”
“I thought we’d take a walk. Get out of this damn hot box. Get some fresh air.”
This time the pause was even longer. Santos probably had a good idea what Carlucci really wanted to talk about, and didn’t want to touch it. But he would also know he couldn’t avoid it for long.
“Sure, Frank,” Santos finally answered. “I’m suffocating in here anyway. Meet you downstairs in, say, fifteen minutes.”
“Fine,” Carlucci said. He hung up.
They met in the station lobby, and immediately left the building. Santos was thin and wiry, with curly hair the color of rust, and was growing a beard again. Carlucci figured it was about two weeks along, and there was more gray in it than there was the last time around.
It was late afternoon, and hot. It looked like it might finally rain for the first time in days, orange-brown clouds moving across the hazy sun, the air heavy and charged and damp. Carlucci stopped at the Cuban bakery on the corner and bought two large cups of coffee, then he and Santos continued down the street, sipping at it through openings torn in the lids. The coffee was strong, and so hot it burned Carlucci’s tongue and lips.
“Chick Roberts,” Carlucci said when they were several blocks from the station.
“Fuck the Virgin Mary,” Santos said. “I knew you were going to ask me about that goddamn case. Mayor’s nephew, my ass. God damn!” He turned to glare at Carlucci. “I’m not saying a fucking word about it.”
“Come on, Ruben. This isn’t like you. What the hell’s going on?”
“Frank, I’m not screwing around. I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Ruben, shit, it’s me you’re talking to. Why are you burying this thing?”
Santos didn’t answer. He led the way across the street and down half a block to a vacant lot that had only recently started filling up with garbage. Five kids around nine or ten years old sat in a shallow cave dug out of the side of the garbage mound, playing some kind of game with a batch of dead green neurotubes.
“Hey!” Santos called to the kids. “Why aren’t you in school?” They looked up at him but didn’t respond. Santos repeated his question in Spanish. Still no response. Santos shrugged. “Hell, they probably don’t even know what school is.”
“Why, Ruben?” Carlucci asked again.
Santos drank some more of his coffee, then suddenly threw the cup at the mound of trash. The lid flipped off and coffee sprayed in twisting arcs through the air. Santos turned to Carlucci, eyes glaring.
“How the hell do I know why I’m burying it? Jesus Christ, Frank, you think they tell me why? You know better than that. ‘Bury it, Ruben.’ That’s all they said. So I’m fucking burying it.”
“Ruben... Christ, Ruben, why not demand reassignment?” Automatic reassignment was an option that had always been available, to allow any cop to stay as straight as he wanted. The vast majority of investigations proceeded on regular tracks, but there were always a few that the top hogs, for whatever political or financial reasons, wanted buried, or fouled up, or just ghosted, and anyone involved in one of those cases had the option of being reassigned so they wouldn’t have to be a part of it. It was an informal arrangement that had worked well over the years. Any cop could get off a dirty case, and in return they agreed not to raise a stink—they let it go. A clean cop could stay a clean cop.
Santos seemed to sag, and he slowly shook his head. “You think I didn’t ask, Frank?”
“They turned you down?” Carlucci could hardly believe it. The reassignment option was one of the few things cops counted on.
“They fucked me, Frank. That shit McCuller, he’d bend over for anyone above him who said ‘asshole’ in his hearing. Called me before I even got to the scene, asked me if I wanted my job and my pension and my health benefits. I asked for reassignment right then, before he had a chance to tell me what he wanted done. I didn’t even want to know.” He stopped, gazing at the mound of garbage and the kids playing in their cave. “McCuller said there would be no reassignment on this case, unless I wanted to resign and forfeit all my pension and benefits.” Santos turned to Carlucci. “I’ve got twenty-three years in, Frank. I’d never get another job as a cop, you know that. What the hell am I supposed to do, start all over again someplace? Doing what? At my age? With Consuela and the kids?” He paused, breathing deeply, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, Frank, they’re not supposed to be able to do this to us.” He stopped again, ran his hand through his hair, then rubbed at his neck. “I had about thirty seconds to make my decision. I thought about fighting it, bringing it to the Association, threaten to go public, whatever, but I didn’t think about it long.” He looked at Carlucci. “I couldn’t afford to lose that one, Frank. So I made the decision, and I’m stuck with it.”
They started walking again, slowly, neither speaking. When they came to a liquor store, Santos went in, then came back out with a pack of cigarettes. He opened it, shook one out and lit it.
“I’ve been trying to quit,” he said. “I’d been doing all right until you called. God damn you, Frank.” He dragged in deep on the cigarette, and they continued along the street.
“How’s Toni feel about it?” Carlucci asked.
“The same. She hasn’t said anything, but I think she’s going along with it mostly for me. She’s younger, she’s got no kids. I think she’d have been willing to fight it, try to blow these fuckers out of the water, if it wasn’t for me. Which only makes me feel worse about the whole fucking mess.”
“But why wouldn’t they let you and Toni off the case?” Santos shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about that. Two possibilities. One, they want clean cops on the file so it looks like nothing funny’s going on. Or two, they just don’t want more people to know about the case.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know, Frank. I think someone panicked on this thing.”
“Why?”
“You know anything about this Chick Roberts? A part-time rocker, part-time two-bit petty thief, ex-junkie who probably still popped too much shit. If nobody says anything to us, how much time and effort were we going to put into the case? Not a hell of a lot. We’d have written it off to a drug deal gone to shit, something like that. Probably would have just faded away all on its own. Now? Who knows, it might stay buried. But it just might blow up in somebody’s goddamn face.”
A shimmering flash of light appeared in the clouds, followed a few moments later by a roll of thunder. The first drops fell on the two men. They hurried around the corner and under the shelter of an abandoned bus stop just as the rain poured full force from above. Santos dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushed it with his shoe, then turned to Carlucci. “This isn’t some kind of official inquiry, is it, Frank?”
“Ruben. You know me better than that.”
Santos shrugged. “I had to ask.” He lit another cigarette, dragged on it. “How the hell did you find out about this thing? The files and reports were supposed to bypass you completely.”
“They did,” Carlucci replied, but he didn’t say any more. “Then ... ?” Santos cocked his head, then nodded to himself. “The girlfriend, right?” Carlucci didn’t answer. “Yeah, has to be; she’d been dogging me about it. I thought she’d finally gotten the message and dropped it.” He shook his head. “You talk to anyone else about this, Frank?”
“Of course not. I came to you first, Ruben.”
“Then leave it that way, for Christ’s sake. And tell the girlfriend the s
ame thing. I don’t know why they want this thing buried, and I don’t want to know. You don’t either, Frank. Go find out who killed the mayor’s nephew, get a citation, and leave this case the fuck alone.”
“You really don’t know why it’s being buried, Ruben? Not even a hint?”
“Shit, Frank, if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Forget this goddamn case. Vm trying to. And forget we even talked about it.”
They stood under the shelter, the rain pouring down all around them. Another flash, then rolling thunder. It pissed Carlucci off, what McCuller and Vaughn had done to Santos. It just wasn’t fair. Well, shit, he told himself, not much was fair. Santos knew that, and Paula Asgard probably knew that as well. He was going to have to talk to her soon, and what the hell was he going to say?
Carlucci turned to Santos and nodded. “You’re right, Ruben. We haven’t talked about this.”
Santos nodded back, but didn’t say anything. They remained in the shelter, silent, waiting for the rain to stop.
FIVE
WHAT A FUCKED day. Paula lay back on Chick’s bed and closed her eyes, incredibly tired. Her arms and legs felt heavy, and the heat seemed to drain all the energy from her; the air was so still and quiet, and she didn’t want to move. So don’t move, she told herself. Why bother?
First there had been the horrible stench of the place after being closed up for almost two weeks. Then, seeing the bloodstains all over the rug. She’d almost walked away and left everything, but in the end she just couldn’t do that. So she’d stayed, and spent the day going through all Chick’s stuff, trying to decide what to keep, what to get rid of.
There were surprises. Like tens and twenties stashed all over the apartment, in books, wedged onto shelves; she must have found over three hundred dollars so far. A collection of twentieth-century Hungarian postage stamps. A complete set of Torelli’s fifteen vortex novels. And finally, she’d found a box of all the letters she’d ever written to Chick over the years. She’d had no idea he’d saved them, no idea that they would be important to him, and that had made her even more tired and depressed.
Paula was nodding off, almost asleep, when someone pounded on the front door. Before she could get up and out of the bedroom, the pounding was repeated, louder this time.
“I’m coming!” she called as she came into the entryway. At the door, she looked through the peephole. It was Graumann, the building manager. Paula unlocked the door and opened it.
Graumann was huge; not much taller than she, but at least three hundred and fifty pounds, large arms and legs and an enormous gut. His puffy face glistened with sweat and he was breathing heavily.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “I gotta rent this place.”
Good afternoon to you, too, asshole, Paula thought. “I’m going through Chick’s things now,” she said. “I need some time to sort through it all, pack it up, and move it.”
“You haven’t got time,” Graumann said. “You want me to call the cops? The owner’s on my butt. You’ve gotta get out, unless you wanna make up all the back rent. Chick was behind again.”
Of course he was. Chick was always getting behind on his rent, and then he’d pop something, catch up, maybe even pay a little ahead, and slip Graumann three or four hundred dollars for letting it go so long. It had worked out fine for both of them.
“Give me a fucking break,” Paula said. “I’ve got a lot of shit to go through.”
“No one’s paying rent,” Graumann said.
“Chick’s dead, for Christ’s sake!”
Graumann looked down at the floor for a moment, but then returned his gaze to her. A bead of sweat hung from his chin. He shrugged, knocking the bead free, but didn’t say anything.
The telephone rang. Oh, terrific. Graumann looked over her shoulder. What did he expect to see, Chick appearing to answer the phone? It rang again. Okay, okay. Paula dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out the wad of bills she’d collected. She shoved it all into Graumann’s hand and said, “I need three or four days.” A third ring. Fuck.
Graumann shrugged again. “Okay,” he said and Paula slammed the door in his face. The phone rang once more and Chick’s answering machine clicked on. Shit, she’d forgotten about that. Chick’s voice spoke from the machine, and she felt like crying again. Or laughing.
“This is Chick, and you can suck my dick. Or leave a message. Your choice.” A high beep sounded, followed by another click.
“Ah... this is Lieutenant Frank Carlucci, calling for Paula Asgard. I’ll try to...”
Paula hurried into the bedroom and looked around for the phone.
“...this message you can...”
She spotted it under the edge of the overstuffed chair, crossed the room, dropped to the floor and picked it up, interrupting Carlucci’s message.
“Hi, this is Paula.”
“What? Oh, yes, this is Lieutenant Carlucci. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve checked into the case.”
Jesus, he sounded so damn formal. “And?”
“And, well, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can tell you. Everything possible has been done, but unfortunately without much success. Despite a thorough investigation, there have been no leads. Although the case is not technically closed, for all practical purposes it is pretty much over.”
Paula was speechless. It was Carlucci’s voice, she was sure she recognized it, but it hardly sounded like him, spouting all this crap.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Asgard,” Carlucci went on, “that I couldn’t have been more help.”
God damn, the bastard was caving with the rest of them. “That’s all you’ve got to say?” she asked him.
“No, there is one more thing, Ms. Asgard. I know this has been difficult for you, and that it’s especially frustrating when the person or persons responsible for the death of your friend have not been apprehended, or even identified. But I think it would be best if you put this whole thing behind you.” He paused. “Let this go, Ms. Asgard.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“I know it won’t be easy, but yes. Forget about it, Ms. Asgard. Believe me, it will be better if you do.”
All right, I’ve got the message. “Fine,” she said to Carlucci. “I get the picture. Thanks a lot for nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Asgard.” There was another long pause, and when Paula didn’t reply, Carlucci said, “Goodbye, Ms. Asgard,” then hung up.
“Yeah, goodbye, asshole.” Paula sat on the floor for a minute, holding the receiver, listening to the dial tone. Terrific. Carlucci, the wonder cop. Mixer didn’t know his ass from a gravity well. She hung up the phone, then pulled herself up off the floor and into the overstuffed chair.
She’d been right here that night, sitting in this chair and staring at Chick’s body on the floor, what was left of his head surrounded by thick, dark blood. All that remained now were the stains in the rug. She shouldn’t have bothered going to Carlucci in the first place. What did it matter in the end? Chick was dead, and he was going to stay dead no matter what happened.
But she had thought it was important, important that somebody at least try to find out who had killed him and why. It still was important, she decided, but it obviously wasn’t going to happen. And since it wasn’t, Carlucci was right. She should just forget about it. Mixer said he could “nudge” Carlucci into it, but she would tell him not to bother. If Carlucci wouldn’t do it on his own, then fuck him. Just fuck ’em all.
Half an hour later, Paula decided to pack it in for the day. She was hungry and tired and depressed. She’d had enough. She would take the box of letters and a few other things with her, and leave the rest for later; tomorrow or the next day she would call Nikky and see if she could borrow her van.
Before she could pull everything together, she heard knocking at the door. Oh, God, not Graumann again. What the hell would he want this time? Paula went to the front door, looked through the peephole, and was surprised to see Carlucci.
She didn’t know
whether to be pissed, or just more depressed; whether to open the door, or scream at him to leave. When Carlucci knocked again, Paula threw back the bolts and pulled the door open.
“Hello, Ms. Asgard.” He looked uncomfortable, which was fine with her. .
“Why are you here, Lieutenant Carlucci?”
“I want to apologize for what I said on the phone.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Look, I need to talk to you. You can forget everything I said on the phone, all that... well, that was just to cover my ass, and yours.” He scratched behind his ear. “This case is making me paranoid, and I’m trying not to take any chances.”
Paula’s anger and depression lifted a little, but she remained wary. “Are you saying you are going to look into Chick’s death?”
Carlucci scratched again, frowning, then nodded. “I think so. That’s why I want to talk to you.”
“But the phone call. You think your own phone is bugged?”
Carlucci shrugged. “I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Look, have you had dinner yet?” When Paula shook her head, Carlucci said, “Why don’t we go get something to eat, then, and talk about this?”
Did she really want to? Did she really want to get worked up again, maybe get shot down one more time? Or should she just let it go? Paula finally nodded. “Sure. I was just getting ready to lock up here. I’ve had it for today. Let me get my jacket.”
Carlucci waited in the hall while she walked back to the bedroom, got her jacket, checked to make sure her wallet was secured inside, then rejoined him. She closed the door, locked the dead-bolts.
“You know a good place around here?” Carlucci said. “I’ll buy.”
Paula nodded, throwing her jacket over her shoulder. She should give him a choice. “Thai, or Mex?” Hoping he would say Mex; she had a real yen for chile rellenos and black beans.
“Mexican,” Carlucci said.
Paula smiled. Maybe things were picking up. “Great,” she said. “I know just the place.”
Christiano’s was small and colorful, noisy and crowded, with brightly painted dolls and masks and pictures hanging on the walls and from the ceiling. Traditional cantina played through tinny speakers mounted in the corners. Isabel met them as they came in, and Paula spoke with her in Spanish. They exchanged hellos, and Isabel hugged her, offered condolences for Chick. Carlucci surprised her when he introduced himself to Isabel, also in Spanish. Isabel said they would have a table cleared in a few minutes, and left.
Carlucci's Edge Page 5
