“About your family? Whichever you would prefer. With or without.”
“Then it’s not really a choice, is it?”
The mayor smiled and shook his head. “You’re right, Frank. It’s not.” A brief pause, then, “Good night, Frank.” Carlucci turned away from the mayor and continued down the stone walk toward the limo.
It was nearly midnight by the time they met at Hong’s family flat in Chinatown. Carlucci arrived first, LaPlace less than five minutes later. All of Hong’s family—wife, father, three kids, and his two widowed sisters—were still awake, talking and playing cards and drinking tea in the enormous kitchen. Kim, Joseph’s wife, offered to cook for them, but they declined, and after a few minutes of obligatory visiting, Carlucci, Hong, and LaPlace left.
They walked two blocks through the heart of the Chinatown night, nearly as bright and colorful and loud as the Tenderloin after dark. The smells of cooking food and incense, cigarette smoke and spiced perfume filled the air as they passed restaurants and stores, groceries and herb shops, gambling clubs and bars. They entered Madame Chow’s Mahjongg Parlor and climbed four flights of stairs in the back to a small room with a single window, a table and four chairs, and an overhead light. Carlucci could barely get his breath. An ancient uncle of Hong’s served them tea, then left them in private. Carlucci, Hong, and LaPlace sat at the table, just a few feet from the window, which let in the flashing and blinking colors of the street.
“Bet we’re not going to like this,” LaPlace said, breaking the silence. Hong lit a cigarette and stared at Carlucci, but didn’t say anything.
“You’d win that bet,” Carlucci finally said. He stared out the window, watching the colors shift and flicker, reflecting off glass and metal across the way. He thought about opening the window, letting in fresh air, but decided against it. He looked back at Hong and LaPlace.
“McCuller came by my house this morning with a message. A car would show up to take me to the mayor’s house for a meeting. It did, and I went, and we had the meeting. Just me and the mayor and his million-dollar view.”
“Fuck,” LaPlace said. “More pressure to solve his nephew’s case. Just what we need.”
Hong shook his head slowly, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. “No,” he said, speaking through the smoke. “It’s worse than that, isn’t it? Something different.”
Carlucci nodded. “Yes, it’s worse than that.” He paused, glancing from one to the other. “He wants us to bury it.”
“What the fuck?” LaPlace took off his glasses as if he could hear better without them, and stared at Carlucci. “He said what?”
“Not directly. He’s not about to stick his ass out like that. But he made it clear. He apologized for all the pressure that’s come down from him and McCuller and Vaughn, said it would stop, that he knew we were all good cops doing our best, that he got carried away because it was his nephew, but he knows his nephew was a scumbag who probably just got what he deserved.”
“And he wants us to bury it?” LaPlace asked.
“He said we should treat it like any other case. No extra measures, no extra time, no more spending a fortune on expensive lab work, all that. He said we shouldn’t kill ourselves over it.”
“Oh, terrific,” LaPlace said. “That’s subtle.”
“Yes. He even told me to cancel my session with the slug.”
“That would be a little obvious, wouldn’t it?” Hong said.
“I told him that. He agreed, suggested I go through the motions, ask a couple of pointless questions and burn out. Private session, no one would know.”
No one spoke for a minute or two. Hong finished his cigarette and lit another.
“So if we catch the guy who whacked his nephew,” LaPlace finally said, “it causes big problems for the mayor.”
“Apparently,” Carlucci agreed.
“So why the fuck did he come down so hard on us to solve the damn thing in the first place? Two weeks with this shit.”
“He didn’t know,” Hong said.
“What?”
“That’s my guess, too,” Carlucci said. “The mayor didn’t know that solving his nephew’s murder could dump him in the shit. He was doing the political thing, for PR, his family and all that.”
“But somebody’s clued him in,” LaPlace said, nodding. “So what the fuck is going on, and what the fuck are we going to do about it?”
They were all silent again for a while, drinking their tea and thinking. None of them had any immediate answers, and it wasn’t going to be easy to come up with the right ones.
“So what the fuck has that goddamn mayor got into?” LaPlace said. Then he shook his head. “We’re probably better off not knowing. But what happens if we tank this case, after all the screaming about it from the mayor himself, all over the papers and the tube? Demotions? Or we just look like fucking morons?”
Carlucci shook his head. “Probably the mayor will make some kind of statement; he’s checked into it, we’ve done a superb job on an impossible case, praise for the department, praise for us, probably citations, he’s disappointed but understanding. We’d be fine.”
“All right. More important, what happens we catch the guy, and the mayor takes it in the balls because of it? They can’t fire us for doing our jobs—so what happens, somebody cuts off our legs or kills us?”
Carlucci didn’t answer. What the hell could he say? He didn’t know what would happen. But he was damn sure the mayor wouldn’t go down without taking as many people with him as he could, one way or another.
Hong started to light another cigarette—though his last one was only half gone—then stopped, looked at Carlucci. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Some other thing happening in the middle of all this that Pete and I don’t know about. Something you know.”
Carlucci nodded. They had a right to know. Maybe not what it was, but at least that it was out there waiting to blow up in their faces.
“There’s another case,” Carlucci said. “Someone killed about a week before the mayor’s nephew. The case got buried but good. There didn’t seem to be any connection to the nephew, but now it looks like there is.”
LaPlace put his glasses back on and looked at Carlucci. “You buried a case, Frank?”
“No. Someone else did. It doesn’t matter who, someone who had no choice. I only found out about it by accident.”
“And you’ve been poking at it,” Hong said.
Carlucci nodded. “This whole thing is a lot messier than it looks. I don’t know who’s involved, or why all this shit is happening, but it’s turning into a fucking nightmare.” He paused, then said, “One other joker in this deck. Tremaine’s been digging around in all this. I have no idea why. Frankly, I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
Again there was a fairly long silence, broken only by the clinking of tea cups on saucers and the muted sounds from the street outside.
“I’ve never tanked a case before,” LaPlace said.
Hong said nothing, just stared at the window, smoking.
“I know,” Carlucci said. “Probably the smartest thing for us to do is let the nephew’s case slide, go through the motions, don’t follow up shit, and let the case die from lack of oxygen. It wouldn’t really be burying it.”
“And what about that other case, the one you’re poking at?” Hong asked.
“I’d have to let that go, too. They’re too damn connected. Anything I did might blow open the nephew’s case.”
“Why are you poking at this other case?”
“Personal reasons.”
“But you would drop it?”
“Yes.” It was one thing to risk his own career, another thing to risk theirs as well unless they were with him on it.
“Fuck.” LaPlace got up from the table and went to the window; the colored lights flickered across his face.
“If we don’t tank the case,” Hong began, “we’d need to make it look like we were. Nothing obvious, nothing anyone else would
notice, but something for the mayor to see. He wouldn’t want us to be obvious. Maybe back off a little, make a statement or two about the case bogging down, something like that. Frank has his session with the slug, says nothing came out of it, even if the slug gives him gold.” He put out his cigarette, breathing deeply. “We need to look like we’re still working on the case, so we do it for real, and we keep everything we come up with to ourselves.”
LaPlace remained at the window, but now he was looking at Hong, listening to his partner. “And what about Frank’s other case?” he said.
Hong turned to Carlucci. “You’d have to bring us in on that one, too, Frank. If they’re connected, it’s got to be both, or none.”
Carlucci looked back and forth between the two men. He hadn’t been sure which way they would go on this, and he wasn’t completely sure he was happy with the way it appeared to be headed. But it made him feel good, somehow; these two men, no matter how this all worked out, pumped him with something like hope.
“You’re saying you’re willing to jack the mayor on this and go after the case? Both cases?”
Hong turned to look at LaPlace, who shrugged. “We’re not stupid, Frank. If it gets too scorched, we can always back off and pull out, can’t we? None of us wants to get killed.”
“Maybe,” Carlucci said. “That’s what I keep telling myself with this other case. But we can make mistakes.”
No one spoke for a while. There was a strange tension in the air, a feeling they were on the edge. If they went ahead with the two cases, they would remain on the edge, an edge that would get narrower, and sharper.
“Ruben,” LaPlace said, breaking the silence. “He’s the one who buried this other case, isn’t he? He’s looked like shit for almost a month.”
Carlucci didn’t answer. He didn’t really need to.
“I don’t want to tank anything,” Hong said.
LaPlace breathed in deeply once, then slowly let it out and nodded. “I’m with Joseph.”
Carlucci sat thinking. He didn’t want to back away from any of this either, but he was afraid of what they were letting themselves in for. They still didn’t know what was at stake here, so it was hard to guess how far the mayor and whoever else would be willing to go.
“All right,” Carlucci said. “I’ll bring you in on this other case. But. I’ll tell you all about it, I’ll let you know everything I find out, and I’ll ask for your advice, your judgment. But I’ve got to keep digging into it on my own. Just me. With the mayor’s nephew, all three of us are supposed to be working on it. This other case is supposed to be buried. Nobody should be looking into it. If all three of us start screwing around with it, somebody’s going to notice something. I’ve got to stay solo on it.”
Hong and LaPlace looked at each other, then both briefly nodded and turned back to Carlucci. “We’re in,” Hong said. He took out one more cigarette and lit it. “So tell us about this other murder.”
“All right.” Carlucci ran his hand through his hair. “Just some guy,” he began, recalling Ruben Santos’s words. “Some part-time rocker, petty thief, ex-junkie. His name was Chick Roberts.”
SEVENTEEN
MIXER’S ARM WAS on fire. He twisted his body, tried opening his eyes, but they seemed welded shut. Red and orange flares erupted behind his eyes—the flames consuming his arm? Mixer opened his mouth, tried to cry out, but no sound emerged.
Then he felt something cool and wet on his forehead, cool fingers brushing at his face, something pressed against his neck. A patch? Finally, a whisper in his ear.
“Ssssshhhh, ssssshhhhh. You’re fine, Minor Danzig, you’re just fine. Now sleep.”
Mixer thought he could feel the sleep pulsing into him, into his neck, and he had no choice, and it was fine with him; he had no objections at all....
The next time he woke, his arm was still on fire, but it wasn’t so bad. There was other pain, though, in his face, his back, a tremendous pounding in his head. He still couldn’t open his eyes. His mouth, too, was stuck closed, but he managed to pry his lips apart. A short, harsh, coughing sound, scratching at his throat. He tried swallowing, tried again, finally got it. Then, “Is... is anyone th-th—?” Another cough.
“Sssshhhh, Minor Danzig.” The same voice as before.
Cool, dry lips were pressed to his forehead, his cheek, his lips. His right arm was aflame, impossible to move, but his left was free and he moved it, brought it up near his face. The lips pulled back, but his hand met hair, an ear, soft skin. Then other fingers locked with his.
“Soon, Minor Danzig.” Was that St. Katherine’s voice? “You are healing well.”
“My... eyes,” he whispered.
“Your eyes are fine. The lids were badly burned. They’re healing now. Tomorrow the bandages come off.” The fingers squeezed his, massaging, reassuring. “Tomorrow you will see.”
“My arm,” he said.
There was a long silence, another squeeze of fingers. “Your arm,” the woman’s voice said. “Tomorrow you will see.”
He woke again. Everything seemed darker, quieter. Night? Strangely, he was almost completely without pain. Even stranger, he was afraid. The world seemed to have disappeared.
“Saint Katherine?” He barely managed a whisper. “Saint Katherine?” Louder this time. Then, one final time, straining. “Saint Katherine?” He reached out with his left hand, moved it from side to side, feeling nothing, panic ratcheting up inside him. “Where are you?”
Then he heard a rustling, felt fingers taking his hand again, two hands taking his.
“I’m here,” she said, voice sleepy. “It’s all right, I’m here.”
Mixer sank back, relaxing, the panic sliding away.
He felt a patch being pressed against his neck. “I...” he started, then forgot what he wanted to say. He squeezed the fingers holding him. Everything was fine.
Awake once more. The pain back, but easier now. St. Katherine at his side—he was certain now that it was she. The bandages still covered his eyes, but he saw a bright flash of light through them. A few moments later he heard thunder crash and roll, shaking glass. Then he noticed the sound of rain, heavy and steady.
“Hot thunderstorm,” St. Katherine said. “It’s pouring outside.” A slight pause. A sliding sound, the room growing dimmer still. “Now, keep your eyes closed, let me take off the bandage.”
She raised his head with one hand, worked at the bandage with the other. Mixer fought the urge to open his eyes, kept them shut until he felt the last of the bandage come away, the air cool and soothing on his eyelids.
“Beautiful,” St. Katherine said. “They’ve healed beautifully. Go ahead, Minor Danzig. Open your eyes.”
Mixer did, blinking. The light in the room was dim, a heavily shaded lamp in the corner. Window blinds closed.
The room was small, sparsely furnished. His bed, medical equipment, two small tables, two chairs. Bare walls that hadn’t been painted in years. The only person in the room was St. Katherine, standing on his left. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.
He looked at his right arm and hand. He expected them to be heavily bandaged, but he couldn’t be sure—plain white cloth was tented over them. The arm felt heavy. He could just see a patch of metal around his shoulder. The exo?
Mixer turned to St. Katherine. “My arm,” he said.
St. Katherine stood, came around the bed to the other side. “We did everything we could,” she said. “We saved it. Remember that, Minor Danzig. We saved it.” She lifted the tented cloth, revealing his arm.
Mixer’s arm was a confused mash of metal and scarred flesh and a few small, still-healing sections of raw skin. He could not believe that it didn’t hurt more than it did, and he wondered what they’d pumped into him to keep the pain bearable.
“The exoskeleton fused to the arm,” St. Katherine said. “To the skin, the muscle, in some places even the bone. Impossible to remove it without taking too much of the arm with it. Maybe up in New Hong Kong or som
e rich hospital they could do something else, but not here.”
Mixer tried to lift the arm, managed it a few inches. Tried flexing his fingers, strange digits of metal and flesh. They, too, moved slightly.
“We had a choice med-tech work on the arm, the exo. You’ll have movement, fingers, wrist, elbow, but it will be restricted.” She reached for his face, turned it gently toward her own and gazed into his eyes. “A stiff, awkward arm, Minor Danzig, but you still have it.”
Mixer lowered the arm, his shoulder exhausted from the effort of holding it up, and smiled at St. Katherine. “Got no complaints about the arm,” he said. “Looks pretty fucking rabid to me.”
She cocked her head, not quite smiling. “Is that good?”
Mixer gave a short laugh and closed his eyes. “Yes, that’s good.”
“How long has it been?” Mixer asked later that day.
“More than a week,” St. Katherine replied. She handed him a strawed glass of ice water. Mixer held it in his left hand, got the straw in his mouth, and sucked hard. He was so thirsty, constantly thirsty. A med tech had come in and taken out the IV’s and catheter. Solid food was on its way, St. Katherine promised.
“We kept you completely sedated to aid the healing, and to let us work on the arm.”
“Why did you save me?” Mixer asked. “Why didn’t you just let me die?”
St. Katherine turned away, and didn’t speak for a long time. When she turned back around, there were tears in her eyes.
Real tears, Mixer realized. Which made him feel strange.
“Because you survived the trial,” she finally said. “Because you broke the Wheel. And because I love you.”
Mixer slept, woke, slept some more. During his waking periods he began moving about, working out the stiffness in his limbs, his neck, everything. He ate and drank, used the toilet across the hall from his room. He stood at the barred window and looked out at the Tenderloin, the alleys and streets six or seven floors below him; at night there were drum fires in the alley, flames casting shadows up the building walls. Off to the right, he could just see the edge of the Core, the four square blocks of hell in the center of the Tenderloin, which reminded him of Sookie again. She’d had metal fused to her own arms and legs by the Chain Killer before he’d murdered her. The pain came and went, and he asked St. Katherine to cut back on the meds. She did.
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