Mixer nodded. “Yeah.”
“What happened?” she asked, knowing he hadn’t told her everything while Tremaine had been there.
“Saint Katherine was contracted to kill me through her trial,” Mixer said. “By Mayor Kashen.”
“That’s why you asked Tremaine.”
“Yeah. Do you believe him? That he doesn’t know? That he’d tell me if he did?”
Paula hesitated, feeling awkward. “Yes,” she finally said.
“Yeah, I do too.” He took a sip of the vodka, twisting his face. “Maybe you get used to this,” he said, refilling his glass. “The trial scorched my arm and face instead of my brain, and I’m alive, and most of the time my head’s all there. Saint Katherine and Saint Lucy took me away, and I guess I looked dead, because all the other Saints think the trial killed me. Saint Katherine and Saint Lucy took care of me. They brought in a doctor, they stayed with me night and day, Saint Katherine in particular. They saved my life.”
“But Saint Katherine was supposed to kill you.”
Mixer nodded. “Yeah. But I survived, and she believes I’ve been chosen. Chosen to be her consort.” He paused. “She says she loves me.”
Paula looked at him, watched his eyes blinking at her, his chest moving with each breath. “Does she?”
Mixer smiled. “Yes. I know it sounds crazy, and hell, it probably is crazy, but the woman loves me.”
“And how do you feel about her?” Paula asked.
Mixer’s smile faded, and he shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“What are you going to do now?” Paula asked.
“I don’t know. Stay dead for a while, that’s for sure. Try to find out why the mayor wanted me dead. It’s all tied up with Chick, somehow. And Tremaine probably knows more about what’s going on than anyone else right now. I’ll try talking to him again.”
They sat at the table a while longer without talking. Paula finished off her orange juice, and Mixer drank one more glass of the vodka. He slid the glass back and forth, then stood. “I’ve gotta use the head.”
While Mixer was in the bathroom, Paula cleared off the table, leaving the vodka and Mixer’s glass in case he wanted more. She drank Tremaine’s vodka, slowly, steadily, savoring it going down her throat cold and hot at the same time, melting its way down into her stomach. Then she put the glass in the sink and stood with her hips against the counter, looking at nothing. She was exhausted, drained.
She should be feeling ecstatic, seeing Mixer alive when she’d thought he was dead, when she’d spent days grieving for him, combining it with her continuing grief for Chick. And she was happy, she was, but she was anxious, too, worried about what was still to come. Mixer being alive didn’t end things. In a sense, it only added to her worry.
Mixer came out of the bathroom stretching and grimacing. He looked at the vodka and glass, shook his head. “I don’t need any more,” he said.
Paula put the glass in the sink with the others, put the bottle back in the freezer. There wasn’t much left.
“Would it be all right if I stayed here tonight?” Mixer asked. “I can hardly walk, and I’m not up to going back to the Tenderloin right now. The booze cuts the pain, but puts me out. I can sleep on the floor, on some blankets.”
“Of course you can stay. And you don’t have to sleep on the floor, Mixer. There’s plenty of room in the bed.”
“Are you sure?”
Paula nodded, smiling. “I’m sure.” She walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go.”
She went into the bedroom, turned on the nightstand lamp, thinking about the night Tremaine had stayed. It had been a night too mixed up with other things and there was no way to judge it, no way to know if it meant anything. She turned to Mixer. “You need help getting undressed?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Paula went into the bathroom, peed, then washed up, filling her hands over and over with water, splashing it across her face, rubbing at her eyes. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, at the dark patches under her eyes, at the tiny crow’s-feet that were just developing, at the narrow crease in her forehead, thinking about Mixer’s ruined face. She shook her head to herself.
Back in the bedroom, Mixer was stripped down to his boxers, sitting on the edge of the bed. Paula undressed, put on a light nightshirt that hung to her knees, then sat in her overstuffed chair, facing Mixer.
“You look awful, Mixer. Your hair looks like shit, the beard’s a disaster, and your arm, well, you know what the arm is like.” She smiled at him. “And you look just wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I’m so happy to see you alive.”
Mixer smiled back at her. “I do look pretty bad, don’t I?”
Paula nodded. “And that Saint Katherine woman loves you, anyway. Amazing.”
“Yeah. She doesn’t call me Mixer, by the way. She calls me by my birth name.”
“And what’s that?”
“Minor Danzig.”
“Minor Danzig. It’s a good name. Fits you. But I gotta tell you, you’ll always be Mixer to me.”
“I hope so,” he said.
Paula got up from the chair and approached the bed. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Mixer nodded. It took them a few minutes to work it out so Mixer would be comfortable. Paula was afraid of rolling onto his arm in the middle of the night, but Mixer said it would be fine. Finally they were both settled in, and Paula turned off the lamp.
Paula lay on her side, gazing into the darkness of the room, slashes of light coming in through the window blinds. She could hear Mixer breathing, could feel the warmth of his body even though they were not touching.
“I slept with him once,” she said.
There was a long pause, and Paula wondered if Mixer had fallen asleep. But finally he said, “Tremaine?”
“Yeah.”
“And you were going to sleep with him tonight?”
“Probably.”
Another long pause. “Do you love him?”
Paula almost laughed, shaking her head. “It’s way too early for that, Mixer.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“But I like him.” She felt she should say something more, but she didn’t know what it would be.
She felt Mixer’s hand rest for a moment on her hip, squeeze gently. “I hope it works out,” he said. Then the hand was gone.
“Thanks, Mixer.” Paula suddenly felt like crying, and she had no idea why. “Good night,” she whispered.
“Good night, Paula.”
Paula closed her eyes, and squeezed them tight against the tears.
TWENTY-TWO
THE INDIVIDUAL SLUG quarters were all different from one another. Some had a solid barrier between the small interrogator’s cubicle and the slug’s main quarters, with microphones and speakers so the police interrogator would never actually see the slug. Others had a glass barrier with a removable screen, so the slug could be seen if it wished.
Monk’s quarters, however, were entirely different: there was no barrier, no separation of any kind. When Carlucci stepped through the door and into the dim, large room atop police headquarters, his first impression was of a constantly shifting maze. Wide, shiny black panels hung from the ceiling throughout the room, the bottom of each panel no more than a foot above the carpeted floor. All the panels were slowly turning, not in unison, creating and closing off ever-changing pathways through them. Pieces of furniture were placed among the panels—a couch, several chairs, small tables. Carlucci only saw the furniture in glimpses as the panels turned, could only see portions of the huge picture windows with their view of the city, got only hints of the information center far in the back.
The second thing that struck him was the heat—warmer than anywhere else in the building, as warm as outdoors at midday, but far, far drier. Already there was a scratchy feeling with each breath, the air was so dry.
The panels stopped turning. “Have a seat,” a voice said,
seeming to come from all around him. The voice was deep, booming. The lights dimmed a step or two. Small table lamps came on beside the chairs, then two more came on beside the couch, which was further back in the room, the lamps providing pockets of green-tinted light and casting new, sharper shadows. Carlucci smiled to himself, and sat in the nearest chair, setting his notebook and pen on the table beside it. Did Monk really think he would be awed by this show?
“Something to drink?” the voice asked. A man’s voice, Carlucci decided, now with an echo effect. What crap.
“Coffee,” Carlucci said. “Black.”
Almost immediately a short, thin, elderly Asian man in a black suit appeared, zigzagging his way through the panels, carrying a tray with a clear glass cup of dark, steaming coffee. The man stopped just in front of Carlucci and held the tray out before him. Carlucci took the coffee and said, “Thank you.” The man did not respond, only retreated two steps, then turned and walked back the way he had come.
“Don’t worry,” Monk’s voice said. “He’ll be going to his own room directly. We will have our privacy.”
“I’m not worried,” Carlucci said.
“No, I don’t imagine you are.”
There was nothing for a while, and Carlucci sipped at the coffee, studying the room. Two of the panels to his right, near the windows, began turning again, alternately narrowing and widening his view, but he was too far from the windows to really see much anyway.
Then all the panels began turning again, some more slowly than others, and Carlucci glimpsed movement far in the back, in the information center, a form lurching toward him. He saw two canes, two black-coated limbs half stepping, half dragging between the canes. Glimpses of a bloated torso, shoulders and arms strangely both muscular and bloated, all coated in a glistening black, like some luminescent wetsuit. A bloated and goggled face, head encased in a gleaming, studded helmet. The slug. Monk.
The slug staggered to the small couch flanked by console tables, and dropped heavily into it. The panels slowed, then stopped. He was perhaps twenty feet away, almost completely blocked from Carlucci’s view by the panels; all Carlucci could see as the slug settled in was a gloved hand gripping both canes, swinging them up and over to set them behind the couch.
There was only labored breathing for some time, which gradually eased. Then the slug said, “Good evening, Lieutenant Carlucci.” No more echo effect.
“Monk.”
“You have not done this often,” Monk said. Even without the amplification, Monk’s voice was deep, authoritative.
“Just twice,” Carlucci replied.
“Your friend Brendan McConnel talked with us quite a lot, until he resigned. How is Mr. McConnel?”
“He’s fine.”
Monk laughed. “No he’s not. He’s a drunk, and he’s fucking a mouthless Screamer. We know what kind of sex he’s not getting.” A pause. “He shouldn’t have resigned, he should have stuck with it. He understood us, I believe. I liked talking with him.”
Carlucci wanted to respond, wanted to defend Brendan, wanted to tell Monk that he didn’t know Brendan at all, couldn’t know him, and had no right to judge what Brendan did or didn’t do. But Carlucci kept it in. He needed things from Monk.
“Ask your questions,” Monk said. “That’s what we are both here for.”
Carlucci wasn’t sure where to start. He opened his notebook and stared at the questions he’d jotted on the tan, lined pages, but somehow they didn’t seem right anymore.
“Are you concerned about our privacy?” Monk asked. “You needn’t be. I have more detection equipment in here ... Well, be assured, there is absolutely no way anyone will ever know what is said in here. And we both know Mayor Kashen would very much like to be hearing every word.” Monk made a sound something like a laugh. “And they did try to infiltrate with listening devices. You do not need to worry.”
All right, Carlucci thought, just ask a question. “You’ve seen all the feeds. A simple question. Who killed William Kashen, and why?”
“Two questions,” Monk corrected, “and neither of them simple.” He paused, the fingers of his finely sheathed hand waving like drowsy snakes. “The answer to ‘who’ is probably irrelevant. An uninvolved professional hired for the purpose, most likely. Apprehending and arresting the man or woman who killed William Kashen would, presumably, close the case, but would not provide you with justice. Would not be able to lead you back to whoever did the hiring. And that, of course, is whom you really want. Answering the ‘why’ would probably give you the answers you are looking for. But not, once again, justice. You might learn who is responsible, and why, but you probably would not be able to convict, or even bring them to court.”
“I’m aware of all the flaws in our justice system,” Carlucci said, cutting in at Monk’s first pause. “I don’t give a shit about them at the moment. I asked you a simple... no, change that. I asked you a direct question. Can you help me with that or not? Can you help me with anything concrete related to the case?”
Another laughing sound from Monk, then silence. His fingers, all Carlucci could see of him, had stopped moving.
“Robert Butler,” Monk said. “An obvious connection. Too obvious. Did Collier ever get the safe open? I never saw a report.”
“Yes. The safe was empty.”
“And so is the Butler-Kashen connection. Butler was killed, I believe, simply to misdirect. A surmise on my part, understand, with nothing concrete, really, to substantiate it. William Kashen was attempting to jack Butler just as he was attempting to jack his uncle, the mayor of this beautiful city, His Honor Terrance Kashen.”
“Kashen was trying to jack his uncle,” Carlucci repeated, hoping for some clarification.
“Oh, yes. Something which the mayor has only recently learned for himself. Which is why he’s now called you off the case.”
“I haven’t been called off the case.”
“Not officially, no. But he’s asked you to bury the case nonetheless, hasn’t he?”
Carlucci didn’t answer. He felt he was on shaky ground, unsure where to step next. Too many dynamics he still didn’t understand. What was Monk’s role in all this? He seemed more involved, somehow, than Carlucci would have expected.
More of that strangled laughter. “The mayor, His Honor, will get his in the end,” Monk said. “You just watch. He’s not as crucial to things as he believes, and he will be hung out to dry.”
“Hung out to dry by who?” Carlucci asked.
“By whom” Monk corrected. “That’s a good question. But I don’t have an answer to it for you.”
Carlucci was certain Monk was lying. But what the hell could he do about it? Nothing. Nothing but wait, dig around, ask more questions, and hope for some inadvertent clue.
“How was Kashen trying to screw over his uncle and Butler?”
“That’s far less clear,” Monk said. “He was trying to sell something. Information of some kind. Now. Either the buyer got what he wanted and then killed Kashen—perhaps to shut him up, perhaps to avoid a very high payment—or Kashen’s source for the information discovered that Kashen had ‘borrowed’ it from them, and called in the loan. With Kashen’s life as interest.”
“Very clever,” Carlucci said.
“Sarcasm is more effective if it’s subtler,” Monk said. “It doesn’t sink in immediately, and then the subject is never quite sure about the intent. Much more disturbing that way.”
“Anything else?” Carlucci asked.
“Much more. We have hardly begun.”
There was another long silence. Carlucci tried to remember what Brendan had told him. Let Monk go, let him wander around. Try not to guide him. Shit, not much chance of that. “Your daughter,” Monk said.
“What?”
“Caroline. She has Gould’s, yes?”
“What the fuck does that have to do with this?”
“Nothing,” Monk admitted. “I’m just talking, trying to get to know you better. It will make the sessi
on more productive.”
“More productive for who?”
There was a slight hesitation, then, “For both of us. Gould’s, yes?”
Carlucci sank back in the chair, closed his eyes. Christ, he was tired. “Yes, she has Gould’s Syndrome.”
“A drastically shortened life,” Monk said. “A terrible shame. A terrible waste.” There was a pause. “Would it help, to compensate, if you could greatly extend the life spans of the rest of your family?”
Carlucci opened his eyes and sat up. “What is all this?” he asked. “Someone else asked me something like that a few days ago.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’ll bet you don’t. It doesn’t matter, it’s nothing. It’s in the air. A universal fantasy, a twenty-first century Grail. That’s all. It was just a question.”
No, Carlucci thought, there’s something more than that. But what? Monk wasn’t going to tell him.
“The Tenderloin,” Monk said. “Part of the answer is there. With the Saints.”
“The Saints?”
“You know who they are?”
“A little.”
“Insane women,” Monk said. “They can’t have any answers. I don’t know why I said it.” Monk’s voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “Perhaps they do, somewhere. But you won’t be able to talk to them, you can’t reach those women.”
“You’re a lot of help,” Carlucci said.
Panels moved, turned edge on so he had a full view of Monk. Monk shifted on the couch, and the glistening black coating seemed to undulate over him. His goggled, helmeted head rose, craned forward. Pale, fleshy lips moved. “You want some real help?”
It sounded like a challenge. Carlucci nodded. “Yes, I want some real help.”
Monk seemed to weave slightly, as though he had difficulty remaining upright. The lips formed an unpleasant smile. “Chick Roberts,” Monk said. “How’s that for real help?” Carlucci hesitated a moment, then asked, “Who’s Chick Roberts?”
“You called up the case,” Monk said. “A case that bypassed you, but you called it up. Came across the roadblock, and let it go. You didn’t pursue it. Not officially. Later that day, you contacted Sergeant Ruben Santos, the officer in charge of the case, arranged to meet him outside the department building.”
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