“I didn’t get the names from the feeds. I haven’t had a chance to look at any of them except the Prime and first sub.”
“Then where ... ?”
“A different case,” Carlucci said. “Something completely unconnected to the mayor’s nephew. At least that’s what I thought” He leaned forward. “Which names—?” he started, but the waiter came by with the satay, cutting him off. When the waiter was gone, Carlucci started again. “Which names on that list are in the sublevel feeds?”
“Hell, I can’t tell you for sure, Frank. My memory’s good, but not that good.” She looked down at the list. “Not all of them, probably, but at least half. The ones I mentioned, plus, oh, Poppy Chandler, I think... Ahmed Mrabet... maybe Rossom.” She looked back at him. “I can take these back and check for you, Frank, but you can do it yourself. You’ve got all the feeds, right?”
Carlucci just nodded, staring at the sheet of yellow paper. He reached across the table and picked it up, stared at the names for a minute, then folded the sheet and put it back in his wallet.
“If you want,” Diane said, “after you’ve checked those against the feeds, I can arrange a demon run for the names that aren’t in the feeds.”
Carlucci shook his head. “Thanks, but... I’ve got a feeling the ones I want are in the feeds.”
“What’s this mean, Frank? About what you’re doing?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Nothing good.” He shook his head again, then gave her a half smile. “Let’s eat.”
Carlucci picked up one of the skewers, dipped the meat in hot mustard sauce, and bit into it. The satay was good, but he was no longer hungry, and eating was nothing more than something to keep his hands occupied. He chewed, swallowed, then dipped the meat again.
What did this mean? Carlucci tried to organize his thoughts and work it all through logically. It was possible, barely, that the overlap of names was just coincidence—strange coincidences were more common in this job than most people thought. But Carlucci didn’t believe it. Not this time, not with so many names overlapping the two cases. There had to be a connection.
Pressure was coming down through Vaughn and McCuller on both cases. But the pressure was to solve the one case, and bury the other. That didn’t make sense, did it? If there was a connection, solving the one was liable to blow open whatever was involved in the other. So what was going on?
A couple of possibilities, it seemed to him. One: the pressure was coming from two different sources, down through the same conduit of Vaughn and McCuller, unknown to each other and, presumably, for different reasons. Or: the pressure was coming from the same source, but whoever it was didn’t realize the two cases were connected; they wanted the one case solved, for one reason, and the other buried, for a completely different reason, unaware that the one could screw up the other.
The soup and noodles arrived. Carlucci continued to eat mechanically, hardly noticing the food, hardly noticing Diane. She knew him; she would let him alone as he ate and thought, and she wouldn’t take offense.
So, two possibilities, and Carlucci didn’t like either one. And of course there might be a third, or even a fourth possibility that hadn’t yet occurred to him. And there was always the fallback position, which he liked even less: that nothing was what it seemed.
Fuck. This whole thing was far messier than he’d ever imagined. Until he had a better idea of who was applying the pressure on the cases, and why, he’d be stumbling blind, and there were too many ways to sink into deep shit.
“The food’s not that bad,” Diane said.
Carlucci looked up at her. “Oh, you still here?” he said, smiling. Her plate was empty, the serving plates were empty, but his own plate was still half full. Only the soup was gone. Carlucci put down his chopsticks. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“How bad is it?” Diane asked.
“Bad,” Carlucci said. “Bad enough I’d really like to walk away from it all.”
“But you can’t.”
Carlucci shook his head. “I can’t.”
“There’s something else, Frank. Might be unimportant, but it probably won’t make you feel any better.”
“Great. What is it?”
“Tremaine’s been digging around in the nephew’s case. He’s requested interviews with you, which we’ve turned down, of course. And he’s been asking about the Butler case, wanted to know who was in charge of that one.”
Terrific. What the hell was Tremaine after?
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Diane asked.
“No. Well, yeah. Forget you saw that sheet of paper. Forget we talked about anything except Lissa and the damn weather.”
The waiter came by, raised an eyebrow at Carlucci, and, when Carlucci nodded, picked up the plates and took them away. Carlucci finished off his tea and chewed on what little ice remained.
“You’ll crack your teeth,” Diane said.
“Nag.” He crunched twice more on the ice, then swallowed the tiny pieces.
“Frank?”
“Yeah?”
“If there’s anything I can do ...”
There won’t be, Carlucci thought. He wouldn’t allow it, he wasn’t going to get her mixed up in all this. He would get himself out of it if he could.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll let you know.”
He looked up at the shadow puppets on the wall. Fighting or embracing? Making love or war? He could see it now. He knew: they were preparing to do both.
ELEVEN
THE ONLY REASON Paula saw him come in was because the place was half empty. It was Dead Wednesday at The Final Transit and the Black Angels were playing the ten o’clock slot, filler until the hip-lit crowd arrived and the Deconstruction Poets took over the stage for another of their shouting fests—poetry reading as primal scream therapy. Or was it the other way around?
The Black Angels were halfway through “The Dead Drive Better Than You,” Paula backfilling with her bass for Bonita’s solo, when Tremaine came into the club. Paula nearly missed a beat when she saw him standing in the doorway, staring at her and smiling, but she kept it together and moved farther back from the spots on Bonita, wishing for a moment that she could disappear from the stage altogether. What was it about Tremaine that made her feel so weird? She watched him work his way to a table against the side wall, maybe thirty feet back from the stage.
Then it was her time, and she moved up to the microphone, hot red light glaring down on her, and began to sing:
“There you go again,
Driving the wrong side of the road,
Forgetting all your Zen,
Flashing along in hit-and-run mode.
There you go again,
Swerving and skidding and sliding,
Scattering women and men,
You at the wheel, but no longer driving.
So never make fun of that Haitian Voodoo,
’Cuz the walking dead drive better than you do.”
As always when she sang those last two lines, Paula had to work hard to keep from laughing. Stupid lyrics. Worst of all, she’d written them herself.
She glanced over at Tremaine, who was shaking his head and smiling; he held up his glass and tipped it toward her, then drank. Christ, Paula thought, she’d hardly met the guy, and she had to admit she was attracted to him, somehow, despite the fact that he wanted to talk to her about Chick. It was all too weird. She looked away from him, backed off from the mike, and dug into her guitar as if she were trying to rip the strings from her heart.
When the set was over, Paula put her guitar in its case, set it by the drum kit, then asked Sheela and Bonita if they could get by without her, loading up all their equipment.
“Sure,” Bonita said, shrugging. “Fergus and Dolph are here tonight.”
Fergus and Dolph were Bonita’s two inseparable, six-and-a-half-foot-tall boyfriends. Huge men. Paula got the shivers whenever she thought about the three of them in bed together. Fergus and Dolph could handle all the loading by themselves, and wo
uld enjoy it.
“What’s up?” Sheela asked.
“A friend dropped by during the set.”
“Oh, yeah? Who?” Sheela stood on her toes to look past Paula and Bonita, searching the tables.
“Just a friend.” Paula turned to Bonita. “Take my bass home with you?”
Bonita nodded. Fergus and Dolph came out of the club’s back door, stepped onto the stage, and started unplugging the sound equipment. Bonita turned away and joined them.
“Who is it?” Sheela asked again. “That guy by the wall?”
Paula turned to see who Sheela was looking at, sure that somehow Sheela had picked out the right guy. Yeah, she had. She was looking right at Tremaine, who was calmly returning her gaze.
“Yes,” Paula said. “That’s him.”
“Jesus, Paula, Chick’s hardly been dead a couple of weeks.”
Paula grabbed Sheela’s arm, jerked at it until Sheela turned to face her. “Hey, back off, Sheela. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. He’s just a friend. Besides, anything like that, I don’t answer to anyone but myself and Chick. And, as you so delicately pointed out, Chick’s dead. Got it?”
Sheela pulled her arm out of Paula’s grasp and looked down at the floor. She nodded slowly and walked back to her drum kit. Dolph was breaking it down, but Sheela pushed him away and set to work on it herself.
Christ, Paula thought, what’s going on around here? She grabbed her jacket, stepped down from the stage and made her way to Tremaine’s table. She leaned on the back of the empty chair across from him, but didn’t sit down.
“Hello, Paula Asgard.”
“Hello, Tremaine. You’re not going to tell me this is a coincidence, are you?”
Tremaine smiled. “Of course not. I came here looking for you.” He gestured at the chair. “Please, have a seat. Let me buy you a drink.”
Paula looked at her watch. “A short one,” she said. She pulled out the chair, hung her jacket over it, and sat. “The poets are set to go on in twenty minutes, and I want to be out of here when they start.”
“The poets?”
Paula shook her head. “Don’t even ask. Take my word for it, you don’t want to be here either, unless you can get into two hours of incoherent screaming.”
“Sounds lovely,” Tremaine said.
“Yeah.” Paula flagged down a waiter and ordered a Beck’s; Tremaine ordered another warm ale.
The club was filling up. The Black Angels audience was almost gone, but the hip-lit crowd was pouring in; flowing in, Paula thought, with their capes and longcoats, several men and women draped in window-silk, the shiny fabric projecting television shows in shimmering color.
The waiter came by with their drinks. “Maybe we can go somewhere else,” Tremaine suggested. “Where it’s quieter.”
“Maybe,” Paula said. “I’ll think about it.” She still wasn’t sure what to do about Tremaine. She drank deeply from her beer. Damn, it was good; she hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. “You caught about half our set,” she said. “How’d you like it?”
Tremaine shrugged. “It was all right. Good energy. But I guess I like my music slower and quieter.”
Paula laughed. “Most people do. Fast and loud is the whole point of slash-and-burn. Like a shot of speed to your heart and head.”
“You like it, don’t you?” Tremaine said.
“I love it. It keeps me alive.” Paula turned the bottle around and around in the ring of moisture that had formed beneath it. “So tell me,” she said, cocking her head at him. “What keeps you alive?”
Tremaine didn’t say anything for a minute. “The stories I do,” he finally said.
“I can’t talk about Chick,” she told him.
“Why not?”
“Look, I don’t know why he was killed, and I don’t want to know why.”
“Yes you do,” Tremaine said.
Paula drank from her beer. “All right, sure. I want to know who killed him. But the whole thing scares me a little.”
“It should.”
“Thanks. That’s reassuring.”
He gazed steadily at her without speaking for a minute, then said, “Okay, we won’t talk about Chick. Let’s go someplace quiet and just talk, have a drink. No business, just personal, the two of us.”
Paula smiled. “Bullshit. I got a feeling that with you, everything’s business.”
Tremaine smiled back. “That’s probably true. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be personal at the same time. I’d like to know you better.”
Paula drank again from her beer. She still didn’t know what to think about him. She wanted to get to know Tremaine better, too, but she didn’t know how much he could be trusted. Still, she thought it might be worth finding out, and she was about to suggest they go to a nearby pub, when Amy Trinh walked up to the table.
Amy Trinh was half-Vietnamese, half-Cambodian, and beautiful. Tonight she was wearing black jeans tucked into knee-high black leather boots, and an open, worn leather jacket over an incredibly bright white T-shirt. On her face was heavy eye shadow and liner, dark red lipstick, and an expression Paula didn’t like one bit.
“Aw shit, Amy, you don’t look like you’ve got good news.”
Amy Trinh shook her head. “I don’t, my good friend.” She glanced at Tremaine, then looked back at Paula. “It’s Mixer. Word on the nets is he got picked up by Saint Katherine a few days ago.”
Paula stared at her, unable to speak for a minute. Her breathing had stopped, and she wondered if her heart had, too. Then, “Jesus Christ. How the hell did that happen?”
“Don’t know. Something about a wham-wham. No details. But... He’s due to go through the trial tonight. At least that’s the hard-core guess. Midnight, probably. But definitely tonight.”
Paula felt something heavy and cold drop in her stomach, a dull vibration rippling out from it and through her body. Oh, Mixer.
“We’ll never find him before the trial, will we?” Paula said.
Amy shook her head.
Word always went out about the trials, flexing along the nets, but unless you were a part of the Saints inner circle you’d never learn the actual location. “You free tonight?” Paula asked. “Got your scoot?”
“Yes, and yes,” Amy said, nodding twice.
“We can try anyway, can’t we?” The dull, sick vibration was still thrumming through Paula.
“Sure.”
“If nothing else, maybe we find him after, when they let him go.” An ache was sinking into Paula’s bones. “Pull him off the streets before the scavengers rip out whatever’s left of him.”
“Sure,” Amy said again. She almost smiled.
A slow, steady grinding worked through Paula, cut through now with a demanding surge of adrenaline. She turned to Tremaine. “Gotta go. Another time, maybe.”
“Who is—?” Tremaine started, but he cut himself off with a shake of the head. “Like you said, another time.” As Paula was getting up from the chair, he said, “You still have my card?” When she nodded, Tremaine smiled. “Do what you have to do. I hope things work out.” He paused. “And I’d like to see you again.”
“Could be.” Paula picked up her jacket and punched her arms through the sleeves. A strange thought flashed through her mind: Sheela would be glad to see her bailing on Tremaine. She turned to Amy. “Let’s go.” With one final glance at Tremaine, she said, “Bye and thanks for the beer,” then she and Amy headed for the street.
Amy’s scoot was half a block up from the club, plugged into a charger, and a teenage boy was squatting beside it, yowling. He’d tried to take the scoot, or rip something off it, and got juiced. Amy chuckled, then yelled “Asshole!” at the kid. “Leave my bike the fuck alone!”
The kid scrambled away, still howling, while people around them laughed. Amy de-commed the defense system, unlocked the two helmets and handed one to Paula. Amy climbed on first, then Paula got on behind her. The scoot was small, just big enough for the two of the
m, but it was jazz. Amy put everything she had into it—time and money and sweat—and it had all the power and cool she could ever want. She punched the scoot to life, the engine humming so quietly Paula wasn’t sure she even heard it; then Amy flicked it into gear and they shot out into traffic.
The scoot was smooth and quick, and Amy maneuvered it gracefully in and out of traffic, shooting narrow gaps between moving and parked vehicles, leapfrogging around cars and vans, even riding the curb once to get past a city bus. Paula hung on tight as they headed for the Tenderloin.
The Saints. God damn, Mixer, what the hell happened? Crazy women living in the Tenderloin who had taken on the names and characteristics of historical saints—St. Lucy, St. Apollonia, St. Christina the Astonishing. The worst of them was a woman who sounded completely insane to Paula, the “head” Saint: St. Katherine. The Saints held periodic “trials” of other men and women, the trials based on what their namesakes had been put through, and St. Katherine’s trials were the worst. Paula didn’t know exactly what was done to the victims, but they emerged from St. Katherine’s trials as complete neurological wrecks, with their language capacities pretty much shot to hell. Those that lived. The survivors of St. Katherine’s trials made the net zombies look functional.
Jesus Christ, Mixer; how the hell did you let yourself get taken by her?
The Tenderloin rose before them, growing as Amy weaved through traffic, headed straight for it. Then, as they reached the edge of the district, Amy swung the scoot around and they moved along the perimeter, slower now. A nearly solid wall of buildings loomed ten and twelve stories above them, marking the border of the Tenderloin; the wall of buildings, broken only by hidden, narrow alleys, enclosed something like sixty square blocks of a city within the city. A city that ran full speed through the night, slowing only when the sun rose. Paula had lived here once.
Amy braked, jumped the curb, Paula grabbing her harder; then they crossed the sidewalk and plunged down a flight of concrete steps, the scoot bouncing and jerking its way to basement level. At the bottom of the steps was an opening into a weirdly lit, covered alley. Amy headed the scoot into the dim alley, even slower now, her boots out and brushing the concrete for balance. The alley walls and ceiling were covered with what appeared to be patternless stretches of phosphorescent molds, which gave the alley a shimmering look.
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