Carlucci
Page 1
PRAISE FOR RICHARD PAUL RUSSO
The Carlucci novels
“Russo has an excellent eye for the urban landscape [and] the crime writer’s well-tuned ear for vernacular…from street punks right up to the high-level officials.”
—Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
“Truly gripping…A lot more realistic than most near-future SF, as well as being just plain better written than most of it.”
—Science Fiction Chronicle
“Lean, mean, and compelling.”
—Deseret News
“The characters are well-crafted, the setting interesting and vivid, and the pacing is brisk.”
—Uncle Hugo’s Newsletter
“A tough, down and dirty story that will appeal to fans of police novels as well as science fiction fans…An excellent piece of writing.”
—Dead Trees Review
“Russo skillfully blends high-tech concepts and hard-boiled prose in a novel that will keep you turning pages late into the night. Carlucci is a Chandleresque hero…This is classic crime fiction as well as classic speculative fiction, and a thorough pleasure to read.”
—Contra Costa Times
Ship of Fools
“[Russo] is not afraid to take on the question of evil in a divinely ordered universe…This is an ambitious novel of ideas that generates considerable suspense while respecting its sources, its characters, and most important, the reader.”
—The New York Times
“A tale of high adventure and personal drama in the far future.”
—Library Journal
“Relentlessly suspenseful…full of mystery…very exciting.”
—Science Fiction Chronicle
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CARLUCCI
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Ace trade paperback edition / September 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Richard Paul Russo.
Destroying Angel copyright © 1992 by Richard Paul Russo.
Carlucci’s Edge copyright © 1995 by Richard Paul Russo.
Carlucci’s Heart copyright © 1997 by Richard Paul Russo.
Cover art by Viktor Koen.
Cover design by Rita Frangie.
Text design by Julie Rogers.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Russo, Richard Paul.
Carlucci / Richard Paul Russo,
p. cm
Contents: Destroying angel—Carlucci’s edge—Carlucci’s heart.
ISBN 0-441-01054-7 (alk. paper)
1. Carlucci, Frank (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—California—San Francisco—Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories, American. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction. 5. Science fiction, American. I. Russo, Richard Paul. Destroying angel. II. Russo, Richard Paul. Carlucci’s edge. III. Russo, Richard Paul. Carlucci’s heart. IV. Title.
PS3568.U8122C37 2003
813'.54—dc2l 2003051952
ACE®
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks
belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Candace
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are two people who have worked with me over the course of more than ten years and four novels (and hopefully many more to come), and I take this opportunity to express my appreciation to them.
My thanks to Susan Allison, my editor, for her support over the years, for her critical input (which has always helped improve my books), and for her faith in me as a writer.
My thanks, also, to Martha Millard, my agent, for her support, her advocacy on my behalf, and for her counsel.
Contents
Destroying Angel
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40
Carlucci’s Edge
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15
Part Three
Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27
Epilogue
Carlucci’s Heart
Isabel
Part One - Exposure
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Isabel
Part Two - Infection
Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16
Isabel
Part Three - Epidemiology
Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27
Isabel
Part Four - Quarantine
Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36
Isabel
Part Five - Plague
Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50
Isabel
1
TANNER WATCHED THE children playing among the methane fires of the neighborhood dump. Overhead, a sick green and orange haze muted the late-afternoon sun, the green curdling through the orange. It was hot, and Tanner was sweating.
The children chased one another, stumbling through the garbage, weaving in and out of the fires. Soot stained their faces, their tattered clothes. One of the girls periodically barked a patterned sequence of noises; each time she did, all the children abruptly changed direction.
Tanner walked on, away from the children. He skirted the dump and headed down a crowded, narrow street. Stone buildings rose on either side, radiating the damp heat of the day, echoing the sounds of car engines, shouts and laughter, bicycle bells, hammering, and the distant wail of a Black Rhino.
Half a block further on, Tanner entered the Carousel Club, which was hot and smoky, and dark except for several globes of emerald light that drifted randomly near the ceiling. He walked to the back of the main room, along a narrow corridor, then up a flight of stairs to the second floor.
There were a dozen tables in the second-floor room, most of them occupied, and another
three outside on the small balcony overlooking a slough that fingered in from the bay. Paul sat at one of the balcony tables, gazing down at the slough, and Tanner walked over to the table. Paul looked up, his face gaunt and sallow, dark crescents under his eyes.
“You look like shit,” Tanner said, sitting across from him. There was no breeze, so it wasn’t any cooler than inside, and a faint stench drifted up from the stagnant water.
Paul smiled. “Thanks.” He shook his head. “Just got off twelve hours in ER.”
That was where Tanner had met Paul several years before—in the emergency room of S.F. General, back when Tanner had still been an undercover cop, bringing in the casualties of drug and gang wars for Paul and other doctors to patch up. Tanner wasn’t any kind of cop anymore.
Tanner looked out from the balcony. Directly across the slough was a junkyard with several hundred wrecks piled four and five high. Atop one of the highest piles, a young girl sat cross-legged on the caved-in roof of a rusted blue sedan, smoking. Tanner had the impression she was looking at him.
A waitress wearing a bird mask came to their table, took their order, and left. Paul took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, and lit it.
“I thought you quit,” Tanner said.
“I’ve unquit.”
“And you’re a doctor.”
Paul shrugged. “Hell, I figure it can’t be much worse than breathing this air.”
Tanner looked up at the orange and green sky, decided Paul was probably right. He turned back to Paul, but he was gazing down at the dark, still water of the slough. Long shadows lay across its surface, with a few small, bright patches where the sun broke through between the buildings and reflected off the water.
“So what’s wrong?” Tanner asked.
Paul shrugged. “I’m thinking about giving it up.”
“What?”
“The clinic, the ER work, all of it.” He paused, shook his head. “I’m burning out.”
Yeah, no shit, Tanner thought. And I’m not far behind you. Quitting the force had only given him a temporary postponement. “What will you do?” he asked.
Paul smiled. “Hang out my shingle. Do nose jobs and liposuctions and neuro-genital enhancements. Make myself a goddamn fortune.”
Tanner laughed.
Drinks came. Tanner sipped at his, gazing across the slough at the girl in the junkyard. A pang went through him. There was something painfully familiar about the girl. He did not think he knew her, but she reminded him of someone. Who? He did not know. Her cigarette was gone, and now she was moving her hands and arms through the air in slow, complex patterns. Tanner still thought she was looking at him, and wondered if she was trying to send him a message. A cosmic bulletin. A spiritual communiqué snaking through the wrecked automobiles and the stinking water. Whatever it was, he wasn’t getting it.
The girl stopped moving. She remained completely motionless for a few moments, then turned her head, looking toward the bay. The girl glanced back at Tanner, then scrambled down from the pile and disappeared into the heart of the junkyard.
Tanner leaned over the balcony rail, looked toward the bay, but didn’t see anything unusual.
“What is it?” Paul asked.
“Don’t know.”
Then he heard the sound of a boat motor, and a few moments later a Bay Security boat appeared, headed slowly up the slough. Its lights were not flashing, but several Bay Soldiers stood on deck.
On the opposite bank, several men and women emerged one at a time through a gap in the chain-link fence just down from the junkyard. The first two were uniformed cops, the others in street clothes. Tanner recognized the fifth one through—Carlucci, from Homicide. Tanner had always respected him, though they had hardly ever worked together and never got along well enough to become friends. Carlucci was sharp, and you could depend on him. Tanner wondered if he’d made lieutenant yet.
One of the uniforms stopped, turned back, and said something. Carlucci shrugged, shook his head. Then all six spread out along the bank and began searching the water’s edge.
Tanner felt sick. He knew, suddenly, what they were looking for, and what they would find.
The Bay Security cutter had dropped anchor in the middle of the slough, and all the soldiers were watching the cops search. Bay Security didn’t have any authority here, but they wanted in on it. It was their territory, if not jurisdiction, and if bodies had been planted in the water, it affected their reputation. Tanner didn’t feel any sympathy for them. They were parasites.
One of the plainclothes cops called out. He squatted at the edge of the water, looking down. The others came over, all looking down now, then the plainclothes cops moved away to make room for the two uniforms. The uniforms got the shit work as usual, Tanner thought.
The two men bent over, reached into the water, and pulled up a section of rope attached at one end to something just underwater—probably a metal stake embedded in the bank—and at the other end to something heavy and deep in the slough. They began to pull in the rope.
It was slow going. Twice, whatever was at the other end of the rope caught rocks or debris on the bottom, and the cops had to work it free. Then, as it neared shore, flashes of white skin broke the surface of the water.
Soon they had the bodies laid out on the muddy graveled bank. The cops surrounded them, trying to block them from the view of the Bay Soldiers. Tanner, though, had already seen enough.
There were two bodies, a man and a woman, both naked, back to back and chained together at the wrists and ankles.
“Jesus Christ,” Paul said. “I thought that was all over with.”
Tanner did not reply. He watched Carlucci and the others shifting their feet, smoking cigarettes, trying not to look at the bodies as they waited for the coroner’s assistants to arrive. They should have had the coroner’s men with them, Tanner thought, they should have known what they were going to find. Probably they hadn’t wanted to believe it.
It had been two and a half years since the last set of chained bodies had been pulled out of water somewhere in the city. Working Narcotics, Tanner had never been directly involved with any of the investigations, but he’d pulled up a pair of bodies himself—two women he’d dragged out of Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park—and he was glad that now he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Now it was someone else’s nightmare. Wasn’t it?
He looked away from the cops, finished off his drink.
“I could use another,” he said.
Paul nodded. Tanner looked for the woman in the bird mask, signaled to her for two more drinks. She bobbed her feathered head and moved out of sight, deeper into the club.
Tanner looked back at the cops standing on the opposite bank. One of them tossed his cigarette into the water, where it sizzled for a second and sent up a tiny puff of smoke. No, Tanner thought, he didn’t miss that work one bit.
2
SOOKIE WATCHED FROM the front seat of a two-door Sony, the middle wreck in a pile of five. She had a view of the water, the men, the naked bodies they had pulled from the slough. Drive-in movie, she thought. Sound turned low. She wished she had popcorn.
I’m thirteen, she thought. I’m not old enough to see this. She smiled, squirmed in the seat. Sit still, she told herself. She wanted a cigarette, but the smoke would give her away. Or they’d think the junkyard was on fire. She imagined sirens, giant streams of water, a helicopter dropping water bombs.
The men weren’t doing anything. Talking, but she couldn’t really hear it. Sookie looked at the bodies. Their skin was gray; no, white; no, gray-white. A strange color. She wondered if they were real bodies. Maybe it was a movie. But she didn’t see any cameras. Didn’t you need cameras to make a movie? Sookie wasn’t sure.
The chains on the wrists and ankles were beautiful. Bright silver, shining brighter than the sun now. She couldn’t see the sun, it was hidden by the buildings. Sookie closed her eyes, tried to imagine what the chains would look like on her own wrists and an
kles. Pretty.
She opened her eyes, looked across the water and up at the people on the balcony. The man who had been looking at her. What a strange place! A giant bird wearing a short skirt served them drinks.
Some other men came through the fence, and then she couldn’t see the bodies anymore. Flashes of light, someone was taking pictures, but they weren’t movie cameras.
Sookie felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She was thinking about being dead and naked and people taking pictures of her like that. She closed her eyes, sighed, and lay back in the seat. She didn’t want to watch anymore.
3
A FEW MINUTES after Tanner left the Carousel Club, a hot rain began. He ducked into a bakery to wait it out, knowing it wouldn’t last more than half an hour. The bakery was hot and crowded and noisy. Tanner felt quite comfortable in the midst of it all, lulled by the heat, the smells of baked goods and strong coffee, and the rush of Spanish voices surrounding him. In the back of the bakery, a parrot squawked incessantly, producing an occasional word or phrase in Spanish.
He bought a cup of coffee and sat by the window, watching the rain spatter against the glass. Middle of July, highs regularly in the upper nineties, and rain every morning and afternoon—it was going to be one hell of a summer. Most of the country in extreme drought, and San Francisco was turning into a goddamn tropical rain forest. He missed the fog, the real fog, which he hadn’t seen in ten years.
Eyes half-closed, Tanner sipped at the coffee and gazed out the window. Across the way, the narrow alley between two buildings was choked with green ferns streaked with brown and rust, the leaves shaking violently as a girl chased a dog through them. Bromeliads filled the air above the ferns, dangling in colorful clusters from windows and makeshift trellises crafted from scrap metal and plastic pipe.
He thought about the two chained bodies that had been pulled from the slough. Chained bodies in water. How many had there been? Thirty-seven over a two-year period. But none in two and a half years. And now…had it begun again? He did not want to think about what that meant for him.