Tanner returned to his table. The waiter was sitting in the second chair, sipping one of the coffees.
“You on a break or what?” Tanner asked.
“Max says he’ll meet you after the show. Wait for him at this table.” The waiter finished off the coffee and stood. “You let me know if you need a refill.” He held out his hand, palm up. Tanner paid him, and he left.
Tanner sat and looked at the remaining coffee, thinking about Dobler. Just what he needed, something else to worry about. Dobler probably wouldn’t do anything, but you never knew with that lunatic. Tanner drank from the coffee, grimacing as it hit his stomach. He didn’t need the coffee, either. The lights went out, the spots came up, and the second set began.
17
MIXER WASN’T HOME. Sookie climbed into his place through the bathroom window, almost falling headfirst into the toilet. Her arm went in to the elbow, and she bumped her head on the rim of the bowl. After drying off, she wandered around the rooms for a while, checking for signs of new girlfriends, but she didn’t see any. Looked like Mixer was alone again.
She left, out the way she came in, and caught a ride with a transplant man. She unhooked around the corner from The Open Gate, the nightclub Mixer ran. But he wasn’t at the club, either.
Sookie sat in Mixer’s office, face pressed against the one-way glass. She shivered, seeing the stage below her. Max and Uwe were performing. She didn’t like either one of them, Max especially. She’d seen them do some things. Torch a pair of mating dogs. Torch each other. Do four-way foamers for a private audience of mondo pervs. And she’d heard a lot worse.
She looked around at the audience. Faces were hard to see except the ones close to the stage. Winnie and Rice were here, but it looked like they were mad at each other again—Rice was wearing ear cones focused on the stage so he could hear the show while blocking out Winnie’s voice; and Winnie was wearing polarized blinders. So what’s new, Sookie thought, smiling to herself.
Near the back, alone at a table—something familiar about that guy. Sookie shifted her position, cutting out some of the reflective glare. It looked like the man on the balcony that day, when the bodies were dragged out of the water. He’d been watching her. She’d waved goof signals at him. Was it the same guy? She couldn’t be sure.
Sookie slid open the one-way glass and carefully crawled out onto the strings of dark spider lights. The webbed strings sagged under her weight, and she froze a moment. If she got any bigger she wasn’t going to be able to do this.
The swaying stopped, she started forward. The sag and sway resumed immediately, but there was nothing she could do about it. Hope. Move slow and careful. She smiled, imagining the strings breaking, herself swinging down and crashing into the tables and people below. It wasn’t that far, she wouldn’t get hurt. Or not much. Scare the noodles out of some people. Get Max and Uwe mad at her. Oh, maybe not such a good idea.
It was slow going, but Sookie was having fun. The spider light strings were like a circus safety net, but with bigger holes. She could slip through if she wasn’t careful. That was part of the fun.
She was two-thirds of the way across the club when she spotted Froggle directly beneath her. Sookie almost burst out laughing at the crazy head mask he was wearing. Then, looking more closely, she realized it wasn’t a mask. A square patch of his hair and skull was gone, replaced by a metal panel with knobs and sockets, glowing lights. Over the sounds of Max and Uwe she could just hear an electronic buzz coming from the panel; Froggle’s head twitched, tiny vibrations going through him. Feeling queasy, Sookie looked away and moved on.
A few minutes later she was almost directly above the man, in front enough to see his face. It was the man on the balcony. She wondered if he remembered her.
Sookie felt among the strings until she found the links, then unhooked several so a section of the lights swung down, dangling like a rope ladder. Halfway to the table. She clambered down. Legs dangling free, down a few more strings to the end of the section, hanging by her hands. Shoes only two or three feet above the table. Looking down between her arms, she could see the man looking up at her. Sookie let go the lights, and dropped.
18
THE GIRL CRASHED to the table from above and the coffee cups went flying. Tanner put out his hands to keep her from sprawling to the floor. Red Giant and White Dwarf continued without pause. The girl smiled at him, and scrambled off the table. She picked up the two coffee cups, both amazingly unbroken, set them on the table, then sat in the other chair and stared at Tanner.
It was the girl from the junkyard across the slough. A pang went through him, that sense of painful familiarity again. This time it did not fade. Instead, the pain grew, and he felt close to recognizing the source, but it still eluded him. He felt flush, and a sweat broke out under his arms. What was this?
“Do you remember me?” the girl asked, voice barely above a whisper.
More than you know, Tanner thought. More than I know yet. He nodded.
“It wasn’t a movie, was it?” the girl asked.
“What?”
“That day. They weren’t making a movie, were they? Those bodies, they were real.”
The brief images came back to him, the two dead white bodies being pulled from the slough. “The bodies were real,” he said.
The girl nodded. She glanced at the stage, then turned back to Tanner, but did not say any more.
“What’s your name?” Tanner asked.
She started to say something, stopped, then started again. “Sookie,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Tanner.”
She glanced at the stage again, then grimaced at Tanner. “You like this kind of stuff?”
“It’s all right.”
“They’re sleazebugs.”
“Red Giant and White Dwarf?”
“Max and Uwe, yeah.”
“You know them?”
“I know who they are.” She turned her chair so she could watch the show, and that did it.
Carla.
The pain blossomed again, expanding in his chest. It was Sookie’s profile that made the final connection. She looked just like a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Carla. Jesus.
He had not known Carla at that age, but she had given him pictures—photos of her as a baby, a young kid, a teenager. He still had them, along with dozens of pictures of her taken during their few years together. He had not looked at any of them in a long time. Christ, she had been dead almost fifteen years now.
Tanner turned away from Sookie; he just could not keep looking at her. Carla. Jesus. Twenty-six and dead. He picked up one of the empty coffee cups, wishing he had a double scotch right now. Twenty-six and…
He tried to concentrate on the stage. Max was frantically pounding at the bongos, and Red Giant was grunting explosively between unintelligible words. The pounding and grunting crescendoed, then ceased abruptly. Red Giant raised his arms, shouted, “Devolution of the species!” and the lights went out.
Applause filled the club. It faded gradually as the spider lights slowly came back up, revealing an empty stage. Cocktail jazz began playing once again over the speakers.
“That’s their closer,” Sookie said. “Show’s over.” She turned the chair around to face him. “So where you going now?”
It took Tanner a few moments to realize she had asked a question. “Nowhere,” he said.
Sookie grinned. “Everybody’s going nowhere. That’s what Mixer says, and I think he’s right.”
Carla.
“Who’s Mixer?” he asked.
“A friend. So where?”
Where the hell was he going? Staring at her, he had to force himself to concentrate on the reasons he was here. Rattan, the Chain Killer. Max. “I’m staying right here,” he finally said. “Waiting to talk to Max.”
“Max? He’s coming here?” She sprang to her feet, looking around the club. Max wasn’t in sight. “He’s not a good person.”
“I know that.”
“He’s the wors
t, you should stay away from him.” She kept looking around the club. Max came out from the back of the stage and headed for Tanner’s table. “Oh no, here he comes.” Sookie grabbed her chair, lifted it onto the table, and clambered up beside it.
“What are you doing?” Tanner asked.
“I’m getting out of here.” She climbed onto the chair and stood, crouching slightly, hands stretched upward.
“Wait, why don’t you just…?”
Sookie jumped, caught the hanging panel of lights. Tanner heard something tear, and thought the whole thing was going to come down. But the lights held, Sookie swinging back and forth. Tanner thought of Carla again, the ache rising in his chest. “Bye,” Sookie called down. She hooked a leg onto the panel, pulled herself up, and climbed. When she reached the main web of lights, she started crawling along them. He soon lost sight of her behind the glare, but he could follow her progress by the sag and sway of the lights. She was halfway across the club when Max reached the table.
“Who the hell was that?” Max asked.
“I don’t know.”
Max watched the movement of the lights for another minute, then turned his gaze toward Tanner. Tanner could not see Max’s eyes through the grafted mirrorshades; all he could see was his own reduced and distorted reflection duplicated, one in each lens. Max took the chair down from the table, brushed off the seat, and sat in it. Sookie was right, of course. Max was not a good person. One hell of an understatement. But he was the way to Rattan.
Neither of them said anything. The club slowly emptied, and a crew came out on stage, setting up electrical equipment: microphones, floor lights, wrack boxes, and other things Tanner did not recognize. The waiter appeared with a large scotch for Tanner and a stein of beer for Max. The waiter’s eye patch was gone, revealing a metal and glass eye embedded in his forehead. The glass was clouded, and did look blind.
“On the house,” the waiter said, and immediately left.
Max drank half his beer, belched long and loud, then drained the other half and belched twice more. He sat back in the chair and stared at Tanner without a word, waiting.
“I need to talk to Rattan,” Tanner finally said.
Another long silence followed. Tanner did not like being unable to see Max’s eyes.
“I’m not a cop anymore,” Tanner said.
Max snorted. “I know that.”
“I don’t expect you to take me to him. Just let him know I’m looking for him. It’s an old matter, and all I want to do is talk. He will want to talk to me, Max.” He paused. “Tell him it concerns angel wings.”
Max did not respond. Tanner sipped at his scotch, resisting the urge to down it all at once. Max wasn’t a hell of a lot more predictable or stable than Dobler. And he was far more dangerous.
Max turned away from him and watched the crew at work on the stage. “You’re fucking crazy, Tanner, you know that?”
“Will you talk to him?”
Max turned back. “Got a pen?”
Tanner gave him his pen, and Max wrote on the back of the beer coaster. He slid the pen and coaster across the table.
“Tomorrow night, at exactly the time and place written there, you show up. Follow the damn instructions. You won’t be talking to Rattan, but I’ll be there to let you know if it’s possible.”
Tanner pocketed the pen and coaster. “Fair enough.”
Max shook his head and stood. “Tomorrow, then.” He walked down to the stage, around it, and through the back door.
Carla. He could not stop thinking about her now. Tanner finished his drink, then got up to leave. A bar, he thought, a real bar. That’s what he needed now. He headed for the street.
Tanner was drunk, and it wasn’t helping. Why am I doing this? he asked himself. It wasn’t making him feel any better, and it wasn’t making him forget. Hell, he wasn’t really sure he wanted to forget.
He was in a drinker’s bar—no glowing ferns, no doo-wop neon, no lounge show entertainment. The place was dark and quiet except for the occasional clink of glass and vague muttering. The television set above the counter was on without sound, showing an old black-and-white sports movie. Taped to the corner juke was a sign: PLAY THIS ON PENALTY OF DEATH. A recurring theme, he thought. And the place was full. Every seat at the bar was taken, and most of the tables and booths were occupied. Tanner was sitting at the bar between a bald old man who stank and a middle-aged woman wearing lederhosen. He had not spoken to either one.
The bartender came by and looked into Tanner’s eyes. “Another,” he said. Statement, not question. Tanner nodded, and the bartender refilled his glass.
Tanner looked down at the scotch, but wasn’t sure if he could drink any more. Carla. Carla never drank, but she had no problem putting anything else into her body: pills, needles, smoke, inhalers, injectors. Whenever he was with her, Tanner had felt helpless, unable to do anything except watch her, try to keep her from lurching in front of cars, crashing through plate glass, or taking a header down a flight of stairs.
And then the day came when she pumped too much of the shit into herself and stopped her own heart. Dead. Twenty-six and dead. Accident or deliberate, he never knew. It was, he came to believe, an irrelevant distinction. She was fucked up, and she was dead.
That was why he had become a cop, and why he had gone into Narcotics. A personal crusade, save the world, save people like Carla from themselves. What a dumbfuck. It had not taken long for him to realize the absurdity and hopelessness of it. But it had taken years of swimming in the shit, and Freeman’s death, to finally give it up.
But Carla. Late morning, early afternoon, that had been the best time. After she worked through her hangover but before she started in again. Her eyes clear and smile bright, her laughter clean and real. Her skin warm and firm, with color. Her tongue and lips delicious. Her body wrapped around him, her arms and hands and thighs and breasts…
Christ.
The bartender came by again, looked at Tanner, and said, “Another?” This time there was some question.
Tanner looked down, saw he’d emptied his glass without realizing it, then looked back at the bartender. “I’m not unconscious yet, am I?”
The bartender refilled his glass.
Tanner woke with cotton-mouth and a clouded head. He lay on the futon in Rachel’s extra room, fully clothed, with no clear memory of getting here from the bar. He thought he remembered some kind of bouncing ride, sprawled out on the back of a cart, something like that. Surprisingly, he had no headache.
He got up and wandered through the apartment. It was one in the afternoon, and the place was empty. Rachel was either gone or locked in her bedroom.
Tanner shaved and showered and put on clean clothes. In the kitchen he ate two pieces of dry toast while making coffee. The heat was oppressive, the humidity so high there was a sheen of moisture on his arms and face. Breathing was like being in a sauna.
When the coffee was done he poured a cup and took it out onto the platform and sat on the bench. The narrow strip of shade wasn’t any comfort. He drank the coffee steadily, not really thinking about anything, in the window across the way he could see two naked women dancing together, holding each other tightly. Street sounds, floating down from over the building, were muted.
He finished the coffee, went back inside for another cup, then returned to the bench. The women were still dancing. His head felt clearer now and he let himself think about the night before. Stupid, he told himself. Get completely drunk like that in the Tenderloin. And for what? It didn’t change anything. All that was over, years ago. Fifteen years. She was dead. She was dead yesterday, and she would still be dead tomorrow. Nothing new.
Tanner set down the coffee, put his head in his hands, and quietly wept.
19
TANNER DID NOT like the feel of the place. He stood at the end of a long, windowless corridor of concrete. Pale blue fluorescents hummed and flickered overhead. The door behind him, solid metal, had locked automatically when he closed it
, so there was no way back.
Just after midnight, as instructed, Tanner had entered the Dutch East India Company, a store specializing in exotic electronic imports: head juicers, spastic vibrators, mind tuners, orgone generators, spitzers, spinal frequencers, bone boomers. The sales clerk, wearing electronic wrist and neck collars, led Tanner through the back rooms, then pointed him to the door, which was now locked behind him. Nothing else to do, he thought. He moved forward.
His footsteps echoed off the concrete walls. There were no doors, nothing to break the surface of the walls except an occasional featureless panel of shiny metal. No one appeared, and he could hear nothing but the hum of the lights and the echoes of his own footsteps.
At the end of the corridor was a narrow opening in the left wall. Tanner stepped through it into a tiny cubicle as featureless as the corridor. A metal panel slid across the opening, slamming tightly shut. He tried pushing and pulling at it, though he knew it would not open. Nothing. Tanner stood and waited.
Then he heard the quiet hiss of gas. He looked down and saw the faint signs of air movement—eddying dust—near tiny vents, though the gas itself was invisible. He did not move. His lungs quit working for a few moments, connections broken. He wanted to shout at Max that he was being absurd and melodramatic. He also wanted to bang and kick at the door. He fought down both urges. Breath came finally, halting, then regular, taking the odorless gas into his lungs. There was nothing he could do, except hope that the gas was meant to put him to sleep, not death.
A few more deep breaths, struggling for calm. Tanner sat on the floor and waited, wanting nothing more now than to awaken from sleep one more time.
And he did awaken. Tied to a chair. The glare and heat of the sun in his face. Max seated in another chair a few feet away, mirrorshades brightly reflecting the light.
“Good morning,” Max said.
Tanner turned his head from the glare, blinking rapidly. They had him next to the window, directly in the sunlight. Eyes turned away from it, his vision adjusted and he could see the rest of his surroundings. The room was small and unfurnished; Red Giant stood in the middle of the room, head and upper body in shadow, mirrorshades directed at Tanner. He did not say a word. Tanner had the feeling the duo’s roles were now reversed—here, Red Giant would remain silent, and Max would do all the talking.
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