Carlucci's Edge

by Richard Paul Russo

  Samuel shook his head. “And I’m the only child of his still alive. Sometimes I think I’d like to go back to the Sudan. A simpler life.”

  “Starvation’s always a simpler life,” Paula said. “That doesn’t make it better.”

  Samuel shrugged. “I know. I know it’s fantasy. But I tell you, Paula Asgard, sometimes I need a little fantasy just to get through the day.”

  “I understand, Samuel.”

  They approached the Asian-Afram boundary. Most of the Quarters merged gradually into one another, with transitional areas of a block or two. Not here, though. The demarcation was sharp and obvious, as if a line had been painted in the street. Paula half expected to see checkpoints, with armed border guards. Maybe someday.

  They stopped at the boundary and Samuel hugged her again. “Take care, Paula. You’re rooting around in something risky, I can tell.”

  “Yeah? You a psychic, now?”

  Samuel smiled. “You’ve got the feel.”

  “I’ll be careful, Samuel.”

  “And, Paula? Best if you don’t come back to the Afram Quarter for a while. Maybe a long while.”

  Paula breathed deeply, and nodded. “Goodbye, Samuel.” She turned and strode into the Asian Quarter night.

  Paula was more at ease on the streets of the Asian Quarter, and within minutes of saying goodbye to Samuel Eko she felt almost normal again, though still keyed up. As always, the streets and sidewalks were crowded, the vehicles hardly moving faster than people on foot. It was so bright that only by looking up, through the message streamers and strings of light, up past the balconies and hanging plants and signs, only by staring up at the dark and heavy clouds overhead, could she convince herself that it was night and not midday.

  It took her four hours to find Jenny Woo, and then Paula almost walked right into her. First, Paula had tried Jenny’s apartment above Hiep Quan’s Tattoo Heaven, then a couple of nearby clubs, then the Foil Arcade, followed by run-throughs at a dozen sleazy bars and pits, finishing up at Master Hawk’s Orgone Parlor. No Jenny Woo. She went back to Hiep Quan’s, and almost walked into Jenny as she came out the door next to the shop.

  Paula spun around and walked quickly away and into the crowd moving along the sidewalk, not looking back, then swung around the corner and pressed herself against the building wall.

  Paula worked her way back to the corner, came around it, and looked toward Hiep Quan’s. Jenny Woo wasn’t in sight. She must have gone the other way. Paula pushed out into the crowd and hurried through it, searching for Jenny.

  A pocket of foil dealers surrounded her, scattered when she growled at them. Club barkers reached for her, gesturing into shifting lights and dark shadows. A rat pack streamed past, keeping to the gutter, the leader chanting. Paula squeezed between people, jostled others, sidestepped a quartet of gooners.

  Half a block ahead, she saw Jenny Woo dart into the street, zigzagging through traffic, shoving her way through two pop-sellers to reach the opposite sidewalk. Paula hurried forward, but stayed on this side of the road. Another block, and Jenny turned the corner, forcing Paula to cross the street. But she caught a light, used the crosswalk, and almost immediately picked her up again.

  Two more blocks, another turn, and they were edging the Core, which made Paula nervous. She had to stay further back, because the crowds had thinned, and now they were moving along an alley half a block from the Core itself. Twice, when she crossed another alley, she could see the ruins of the Core over the barriers: the quiet, collapsing buildings, the crumbling brick and twisted metal, the broken glass and the dark holes. She shivered despite the warmth of the night.

  Ahead, Jenny Woo ducked through a doorway. Paula stopped for a minute, then slowly moved forward, past plated-over windows, bricked-in doorways, until she reached the spot where Jenny had disappeared. A deep alcove, and an unmarked, heavy wooden door. Paula was feeling reckless, but she didn’t feel stupid. She didn’t try the door. Instead, she backed away, and looked around the alley, searching for a place where she could hole up and watch the doorway.

  There was none, so she had to retreat to the end of the alley and the street. She stationed herself at the corner of the building across the alley, which gave her a view not only of the doorway, but of the Core barrier and the upper reaches of the Core itself, half a block away. She kept her hands in her jacket pockets; the feel of the gravity knife didn’t give her much comfort.

  Paula knew she was safe, but part of her kept imagining some subhuman monster emerging from the Core, clearing the barrier and sweeping down on her, capturing her and hauling her back over the barrier and into the depths of the Core, where unimaginable things would be done to her. She’d never been in the Core, didn’t know anyone who had, but the stories were always there, too damn many for all of them to be false.

  The side of the building across the alley seemed to open up, a huge section of metal and brick and wood sliding to the side with a tremendous rumble and creaking. A van worked its way out of the opening, shifting back and forth twice before it could get into the narrow alley, pointed toward Paula. Once it was clear of the opening, the section of wall slid back into place. The van came slowly up the alley, with just enough side clearance to allow people to press up against the building walls on either side of it. Paula hung back and watched the unmarked van. As it neared, she recognized the driver—Jenny Woo. Paula pulled back farther, back into the crowd. The van inched out of the alley, then forced its way into the slow traffic and moved down the street, headed away from the Core. Paula followed.

  Following the van was almost easier than following Jenny Woo on foot had been. Paula could stay farther back and still keep the van in sight, and in the crowded streets of the Asian Quarter the van didn’t make any better time than Paula did. It was only two in the morning, so the sidewalks were still jammed, and sometimes she had to push her way through knots of people, but it wasn’t much of a problem.

  Just five blocks from the alley, near the fringes of the Asian Quarter and along the perimeter of the Tenderloin, the van pulled off the road and dipped down a concrete ramp leading to the basement level of a brick building. Paula ran forward, then cautiously leaned over a pipe railing to look down. A wide metal door rolled up into the wall, and when there was just enough room, the van shot forward and into shadowed darkness. The door immediately reversed direction, and seconds later clanged shut.

  Paula had lost Jenny Woo. The van would emerge from the other side of the building, outside the Tenderloin, and there was no way Paula could get to one of the Tenderloin exits she knew and get out to catch the van as it appeared. Even if she could, outside the Tenderloin she’d never be able to follow on foot.

  A hand gripped her shoulder. Paula spun around and pulled away in one motion, hand going into her jacket and pulling out the gravity knife, charging it with a squeeze.

  It was Tremaine.

  Her heart was pounding, and strange feelings swirled around in her stomach. She didn’t know what the hell to think or feel.

  “I wasn’t following you,” Tremaine said.

  Paula wasn’t sure whether or not she believed him.

  “We’re both following the same person,” he added.

  “Who?” she asked, still not sure.

  “Jenny Woo.”

  “Then we’ve both lost the same person.”

  Tremaine shook his head. “Not if we move now. I know where she’s coming out. Are you with me?”

  A bang decision. Why not? She had nothing to lose, did she? “Sure,” Paula said. She cut the knife’s charge and tucked it back into her jacket pocket.

  Tremaine had a way out of the Tenderloin in the building next door, through a bubble courier office and a travel agency. His battered Plymouth was parked at the curb just a few feet away. Half a block down, Paula could see the van coming up another ramp, then turning away from them and heading down the street. The night was much darker outside the Tenderloin, the streets nearly deserted.

  Tremain
e seemed to be in no hurry. “I’m pretty sure I know where she’s headed,” he said. He unlocked the passenger door for Paula, then got in the driver’s side, started the engine, and pulled out into the street. Two blocks ahead, the taillights of the van turned a corner and were gone from sight.

  “So where’s she going?” Paula asked.

  “Hunter’s Point.”

  The spaceport. Which almost certainly meant New Hong Kong. “She going up herself?” Paula asked. “Or delivering?”

  “Delivering.”

  “Delivering what?”

  Tremaine gave Paula a half smile without looking at her. “I don’t know everything.”

  They turned briefly onto Market, then swung onto Fourth. The Marriott was a blaze of colored lights, surrounded by security guards and the shimmer of portable Kronenhauer Fields. But just past it, long abandoned, was Moscone Center, a low, dark shadow on their left, broken windows reflecting jagged strips of light. Paula thought she could still see the taillights of the van ahead of them, but she wasn’t sure.

  “What do you know?” she asked.

  Tremaine didn’t answer immediately. Rain started falling, light at first. Tremaine raised the windows, leaving small gaps for fresh air. They drove under the freeway, barrel fires burning against the concrete supports. The roadway was cracked and potholed, and the Plymouth bounced and creaked across it. When they emerged from under the freeway, the rain was a torrent.

  “Before we talk about that,” Tremaine said, “I want to be clear about something. The other night, what I did, what we did, had nothing to do with this.” He looked at her a moment, then returned his attention to the road. “That was personal, not business. That was between you and me, and nothing to do with my story, or Chick Roberts.” He twisted his head and neck and Paula could hear bones cracking, like knuckles. “I’m not saying this very well, am I? I’m having a lot of trouble with this.” He glanced at her again, then looked away. “I like you, Paula. I think I like you a lot, and I want to spend more time with you, so I don’t want you to think that all that the other night was just trying to get to you about this story.”

  They were crossing Mission Creek now, and Paula could smell the stench of stagnant water through the narrow openings in the windows. She wanted to believe him. Of course she wanted to believe him. And, she guessed, she mostly did.

  “Okay,” she said. But she didn’t know what else to say.

  They drove along slowly, in silence. Dark warehouses, small, low buildings on either side, a few street lights, everything streaked with the heavy rain. More barrel fires under shelter. Paula hoped the Plymouth was in good shape; this wasn’t a part of the city she wanted to break down in.

  “Then tell me,” she said to him. “What is all this about?” Tremaine shook his head. “You won’t like this, but I can’t really say much about it. It’s a story I’m working on. I don’t talk about my stories, not until they’re done. It’s pretty much all one way. I ask a lot of questions, but I don’t answer many. I want to ask you about Chick Roberts. You can talk to me about him or not. I can tell you a few things, but you won’t think it’s enough.”

  “Tell me what you can, then,” Paula said.

  “Will you talk to me about Chick?”

  “I don’t know.” She was lying. She would tell Tremaine what little she knew, but she didn’t want him to know that yet.

  Tremaine nodded once. He slowed, swung around a huge pothole, then picked up speed. They crossed water again, Islais Creek Channel. Two enormous ships were docked nearby, and their lights reflected like flashing, multicolored scales off the water. Paula wondered what it would be like to board one of those freighters and head out onto the open sea.

  Tremaine took a hard left, and Paula looked ahead. There were no taillights, no signs of the van. “Did we lose her?”

  “No. I’m taking a different way in. Too easy to be spotted following her this time of night.”

  There were small houses on either side now, interspersed among warehouses and other commercial buildings. Almost everything was dark. Then suddenly, as they got closer to the spaceport, more lights appeared, on the street and in buildings, and people were out. Shops were open, and the sound of machinery grew louder. Trucks and vans and cars moved along the road.

  At the gates to Hunter’s Point proper, Tremaine showed the guards a pass, and they let the car through. Just ahead, moving slowly in and out of the bright cones of light from overhead lamps, was Jenny Woo’s van. The rain stopped, like a dam closing, leaving a bright sheen on the ground and dripping from all the vehicles around them.

  “There it is,” Paula said.

  Tremaine nodded. He didn’t follow the van. He swung around the perimeter of the large parking lot, then drove along the high, shielded fence. Paula kept her gaze on the van, which approached another gate, this one in the shielded fence and leading out onto the tarmac.

  “We’d never get through the gate,” Tremaine said. He pulled the Plymouth right up to the fence so they were facing the tarmac, turned off the lights, and cut the engine.

  Far out on the tarmac, a ship stood in its gantry, outlined by bright lights. Other than that, the tarmac was bare. Paula looked over at the gate. Jenny Woo’s van pulled away and drove out across the open pavement. It came to a stop about two hundred feet from the ship.

  The ground opened up beside the van, and four people in gray overalls, standing on a platform, rose up from the opening, the platform stopping at ground level. Jenny Woo got out of the van, went around to the back and opened the rear doors. The four people stepped off the platform and began unloading the van.

  They unloaded a huge, long crate shaped almost like a coffin, all four of them lifting the crate at the same time, then carrying it to the loading platform. They returned to the van, unloaded a second crate, then two more. Jenny Woo closed the van doors, got back in, and headed back to the gate. The four people and four crates on the platform descended slowly back into the ground, which then closed over them.

  “What the hell is in those crates?” Paula asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tremaine said.

  She looked at him. “But you have an idea, don’t you?” He nodded. “I think people are in those crates.”

  “People?”

  Tremaine nodded again.

  “Alive, or dead?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  Jenny Woo’s van reached the gate, quickly passed through, and headed out of Hunter’s Point.

  “Are we going to keep following her?” Paula asked.

  “No. She’ll take the van back to the Tenderloin, then go home.” He shrugged. “I have someone here, just outside Hunter’s Point, who’ll be picking her up in case she doesn’t. And someone back in the Tenderloin. But she’s done for the night.” He paused, staring out at the tarmac. “I need to see what’s inside those crates. I’ve seen the manifests, but they’re identified as hydroponic equipment.” He looked at Paula, then reached under the seat and pulled out a thermos and a ceramic mug. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  Paula smiled and nodded. “Sure.”

  Tremaine poured coffee into the mug and handed it to her. Apparently he was going to drink straight from the thermos. Paula sipped at the coffee, which was hot and surprisingly good, though stronger than she liked. She imagined it eating away at her stomach.

  “Are we waiting for something?” she asked.

  “No. I just want to talk.” He drank from the thermos, looked out at the tarmac and the ship again. “There’s something happening here, and it’s got to do with the recruiting vans, some of them, anyway, and New Hong Kong, and medical research they’re doing up there. And there’s something to do with the mayor, and the mayor’s nephew getting himself killed. And, I’m pretty sure, something to do with Chick.”

  “I don’t know why he was killed,” Paula said, shaking her head. “I really don’t.”

  Tremaine nodded. “I thought maybe you didn’t. But you might
know something, what he was up to, who he was working with, anything like that.”

  Paula shook her head again. “He was bootlegging body-bags. With Jenny Woo, and Mixer. Some other people I didn’t know. But he’d been doing that a long time. And it wasn’t something to get killed over.”

  “Probably not. But something was.”

  “I don’t know. Chick didn’t tell me about his ‘business dealings,’ and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know, because I didn’t like any of it. Last couple of weeks before he was killed, hell, he didn’t seem any different. I hadn’t seen too much of him because he had so much going, but Chick did that a lot.” She paused, looking at Tremaine. “He’d been fucking Jenny Woo, but that was over, months ago.” She sighed, looking out the windshield, sipping her coffee. “Christ, what else? He was always fucking up, and this time it got him shot in the head.” She turned back to Tremaine. “Why do you think he was killed?”

  Tremaine shrugged. “I think he stumbled across something, and whatever it was, I think he was trying to sell it. And someone killed him for it, either the people he was trying to sell it to, or the people he’d taken it from. That’s my best guess. I was hoping you’d know more.”

  Paula leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, the ache starting up in her chest again. Why had she loved the goddamn fuck-up all these years? Screwing other women until the guilts twisted him up. Periodic bouts of abusing one drug or another. The smoking and the filthy bathroom and kitchen, and the irresponsibility he’d never grown out of.

  But Chick had saved all the letters she’d ever written to him. And when she and Chick were together and they were ramped and on, they were something out of this fucking world—on stage, in bed, or just sitting together listening to music with the rain pouring outside. The best times of her life had been spent with Chick.

  Paula opened her eyes and sat up, staring out at the tarmac and the gantry. “Take me home,” she said.