Carlucci

by Richard Paul Russo

  “You’re another way up,” Rattan continued. “But like I said, I had nothing but money, and I knew that wouldn’t buy you. Then a stroke of luck. A few weeks ago I start hearing things about…well, some things, and then three weeks ago, it starts up again. A stroke of luck for me, not for the poor bastards being killed by this guy. And suddenly, I have something to offer you.”

  “Who is it?” Tanner finally asked. He just could not keep it back any longer. Rattan was capable of stretching this out for hours.

  “Will you find me a way up to New Hong Kong?”

  Tanner did not have to think about it, not after everything he had gone through to get here. “If I can, yes. And you tell me who the Chain Killer is, this Destroying Angel.”

  “When it’s set,” Rattan said. “When I’m about to get loaded up onto a shuttle headed for New Hong Kong.” He paused, as if waiting for Tanner to object, but Tanner remained silent. “I told you,” Rattan went on, “I’m an honorable man. I will tell you who it is, and where to find him. You can trust me. Just as I’ll have to trust you, trust you won’t fuck me over, have things set up to haul me off as soon as I’ve told you. We both have to trust each other. And we can, can’t we?” Rattan paused, his expression serious and intent. “Do we have a deal?”

  Again there was no hesitation, no need to consider. Rattan was right, they had to trust each other. He nodded. “Yes, Rattan, we have a deal.”

  31

  THE FIRST CALL he made was to Alexandra. It was early morning, and he was back at Hannah and Rossi’s. He was exhausted from his encounter with Rattan, which had continued until dawn—working out details, putting up with Rattan’s rambling. Tanner wanted to sleep, but he needed to talk to people first, get things going.

  There were two real options for getting Rattan up to New Hong Kong. The first, which was what Rattan expected from Tanner, was to actually crate up Rattan like cargo and smuggle him aboard the cargo holds. A doctor would have to be crated with him; he was going to need medical attention just to survive the trip, and going this way would be riskier from that perspective than going as a passenger. Which was the second option. As a passenger. Rattan was convinced that going as a passenger was impossible, but Tanner was not. It was by far the better way to go, so it was worth exploring fully. Which was why he called Alexandra.

  When he got her on the phone, he explained what he needed, and asked her if she could do it. “You’re the hotshot computer demon, right?” he said.

  “Right,” Alexandra said. “First time you ever ask me to do something, and you ask the near impossible.”

  “But you did just say near impossible.”

  “Yes. Very little in this business is truly impossible, but that doesn’t mean I can do it. I do know that I can’t do it on my own. I’ll need to talk to one or two other people, maybe even bring somebody in to actually make the run. That a problem?”

  “Yeah, but acceptable, if you can trust the person.”

  “I won’t use anybody I can’t.”

  “All right. How long will it take you to find out if it can be done?”

  “I should know by tonight. You at the same number?”

  “I am now, but I may go home today, so you could try me there.”

  “I’ll call you, then, one place or another. Or drop by.”

  “Thanks, Alexandra. I appreciate it.”

  “Sure. Ciao.”

  “Bye.”

  He broke the connection, then punched up Paul’s number. There was no answer—Paul refused to get an answering machine—so Tanner tried the hospital. The receptionist told him that Paul was with a patient, so Tanner left his name and both phone numbers.

  He hung up the phone and sank back in the overstuffed chair, thinking. He was not sure what to do about Carlucci. He did not know how far Carlucci would be willing to go. Carlucci would do almost anything to find the Chain Killer, Tanner knew that, but would he let a cop killer escape to New Hong Kong where he would be free and untouchable? Tanner could imagine Carlucci promising Rattan anything, and then, as soon as Rattan told them what he knew, coming down on him and hauling him in.

  Tanner could not allow that to happen. He understood Carlucci, but he had given his word to Rattan. He could not take the chance. No, he could not tell Carlucci what he was going to do.

  Hannah appeared at the doorway in her T-shirt, hair mussed, eyes half-closed.

  “Good morning,” she said. Her voice was harsh and gravelly.

  “Morning, Hannah.”

  She remained in the doorway without saying any more, looking at him. Tanner did not know what to say, either, so they stared at each other in silence until Hannah finally turned away and went into the bathroom. He listened to her morning noises—toilet seat dropping, streaming liquid, the toilet flushing, then the spitting of the shower.

  There was no reason to stay here any longer. With Max and Red Giant dead, there should be no problem going back home. He missed his apartment, the quiet warm comfort of familiarity. He missed his own bed. It struck him as absurd, but it was true.

  The phone rang and Tanner picked it up. It was Paul. Again Tanner explained the situation, as briefly as he could. He emphasized Rattan’s physical condition, why he was going to New Hong Kong.

  “He’s going to need a doctor with him either way,” Paul said. “Even as a passenger. He’ll be lucky to survive liftoff.”

  “Can he survive it?”

  “Oh, yeah. If he’s got a good doctor with him who knows what he’s doing and watches him every second.”

  “You willing to be that doctor?” Tanner asked.

  “Figured you were getting to that,” Paul said. He did not say anything else for a while, and Tanner listened to his regular breathing over the phone. In the background he could hear the faint sound of someone screaming, then a crash, and then laughter.

  “Yes or no,” Tanner said. What were his options if Paul said no? Leo, the junkie doctor?

  “Let me think about it. How soon you need an answer?”

  “Soon. Today.”

  “Give me an hour or so. You be there?”

  “I hope I’ll be home.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know. Talk to you then.”

  “Good-bye.”

  He set the phone down but did not move. He remained motionless, listening to the shower until it stopped. A couple of minutes later Hannah emerged from the bathroom wearing a thin robe, her hair half-wrapped in a towel. She sat on the sofa, facing him.

  “Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  Tanner shook his head. “I’m leaving. I’m going back to my apartment.”

  “I thought it wasn’t safe.”

  “It should be all right now.”

  “You get what you were looking for?”

  “I think so.”

  Hannah nodded. She rubbed at her hair with the towel, then pulled it away from her head and let it drop into her lap. “We’re a lot better at figuring out other people’s lives than we are at figuring out our own.” When Tanner did not say anything in response, Hannah said, “I hope you think about it, Louis, what I said about Valerie.” Tanner still did not respond, and Hannah shook her head. “Fine.” She got up, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. “Good-bye, Louis.” She walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Tanner got up from the chair and began packing.

  Tanner splurged and took a cab. He still had most of the money from Carlucci, and he figured he had earned it. Inside the cab, he punched up the intercom, gave the driver his address, then told her to take a longer route, up and through the Marina along Marina Drive. The driver, an Arab woman wearing a black flash suit, confirmed, and turned up the radio. Ether jazz rolled smoothly through the cab.

  Tanner could hardly stay awake during the trip. It was not just exhaustion. Tense situations and nervous anticipation tended to make him sleepy. When he had been a cop he had often fallen asleep during the tensest moments of waiting before some action was to begin. Once things start
ed, the adrenaline kicked in and he was fine, but until then he could hardly keep his eyes open. Freeman had spent a lot of energy kicking Tanner in the shins trying to keep him awake.

  The cab came over the top of a hill and dropped down toward the Marina and the bay. The water was steel gray, overlaid with bits of color: streaks of dark orange, splotches of yellow foam, patches of red, all bobbing in the waves whipped up by a stiff breeze. Two Bay Security cutters were anchored close to shore, almost touching each other, and the Bay Soldiers, jumping back and forth between the boats, seemed to be having a party.

  At the bottom of the hill, the driver swung the cab along Marina Drive, between the abandoned art colony at Fort Mason and the cyclone fence surrounding the twenty-four-hour Safeway. Tanner punched up the intercom again, said, “Stop here a minute.” The driver pulled over and parked, engine and meter still running.

  Tanner gazed at the Safeway parking lot, which was filled with cars, carriages, shopping carts, and people moving between the vehicles and the store, many of them with armed escorts. It was here his father had been killed, seven years ago. Two in the morning, decided he had to have some ice cream, drove to the Safeway. He had gotten the ice cream. When Tanner had arrived, called in by someone he knew in Homicide, the melted ice cream had formed a puddle beside his father’s body, leaking out of the carton, mixing with the blood from a torch wound in his father’s belly. Häagen-Dazs. Vanilla fudge ripple. His father should have known better.

  “Go on,” he told the driver. The driver pulled back out into traffic; Tanner laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, listening to the ether jazz, drifting again toward sleep.

  The cab stopped abruptly, jolting him awake. The driver’s voice rattled through the intercom. “We’re here.”

  Tanner put money in the metal box, told the driver to keep the change. The driver slotted the money through, counted it, then released the door locks, tapping at the partition with her knuckles. Tanner got out, closed the door, and the cab pulled away.

  A woman who lived on the second floor was in the front courtyard cutting back the overgrown foliage. She and Tanner nodded their greetings as he walked along the path and entered the building. His mailbox was full, jammed with crushed and mangled envelopes—the carrier had managed to cram a week’s worth of mail into the narrow box. Tanner sorted through it, but there wasn’t anything of interest. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

  His apartment was quiet and stuffy. There was a strange, abandoned feel to the place, and he felt as if he had been away for several weeks. He walked through the apartment and opened all the windows. It was hot outside, but a slight breath of wind came in, which helped a little.

  Tanner went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t much inside, and half of it had gone bad since he had left. He knew he should clean it out, but he was too tired. He opened a half-empty bottle of apple juice, smelled it, then drank deeply from the bottle. The cold, sweet liquid hit him hard; it made him a little dizzy, and the cold sent a shot of pain through his sinuses, right behind his left eye. But the pain and dizziness passed, and he felt much better, even refreshed.

  The phone rang. He put the juice away and went into the hall to answer it. It was Paul.

  “I’ll do it,” Paul said. “But I’d like to see if you can set something up for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to stay up in New Hong Kong for a few months and work with the regeneration teams up there. I told you I’ve been getting burned out, and this sounds like the kind of thing I need. Something positive, for a change. Beat the hell out of the ER night after night.”

  Tanner could actually hear the renewed interest in Paul’s voice. He had not felt that from Paul in years.

  “I’ll see what I can do. My guess is I’ll be able to work something out.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. You’re helping me a lot with this. I’ll let you know.”

  When he hung up, he dialed the number Rattan had given him. Britta answered the phone. Tanner told her he needed to talk to Rattan, and Britta said she would pass on the message. Rattan would return the call sometime later in the day.

  Tanner could not decide whether or not to go to sleep. He was tired, but it was only noon, and now that he was out of the Tenderloin he wanted to go back to something like a normal schedule. He was afraid that if he slept now he would be unable to get to sleep tonight. But he did not know if he could stay awake.

  He went into the front room and turned on the television. He could not remember the last time he had watched it. Three, four weeks, maybe longer. He flipped through the channels until he came to a video call-in show; only callers with videophones and willing to appear on-screen were allowed. The host was the only participant not on camera. The topic was universal health insurance, which was up in Congress again this session. A man on the screen was ranting about the poor getting better health care than they deserved, punctuating each statement with a thrust of his fist. He had just launched into an incomprehensible analysis of the connection between economic status and the desire to be diseased, when Tanner fell asleep.

  Tanner woke to the ringing of the telephone. The TV was still on, now showing a soaper. Still half-asleep, he staggered into the hall and picked up the receiver, expecting either Alexandra or Rattan. It was Carlucci.

  “You’re back home,” Carlucci said.

  “Yes.”

  “You sound awful.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “I talked to Hannah. She said you told her you thought it was safe now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Tanner hesitated, trying to decide what to tell Carlucci. Lying was no good. “Max is dead.”

  There was a slight pause, then, “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Tanner said. Technically that was true. He did not know who had thrown Max and Red Giant out the window. He did know that Rattan himself could not have done it.

  “How do you know? You see this one happen, too?”

  “Yes. A kind of show was arranged for me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was told to go to a place, and then Max was thrown out of a tenth-floor window.” He paused. “I think Rattan is responsible.”

  “What, did you find him?”

  “No.” He found me, Tanner thought. “But I’ll be talking to him soon. I’m close, Carlucci. He knows I’ve been looking for him.”

  “Then he’s contacted you.”

  “Yes. And I’ll be talking to him.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  There was another silence, longer this time. “What aren’t you telling me?” Carlucci finally asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit, Tanner. What is it?”

  Tanner started to say “nothing” again, but held back. There was no point saying it when Carlucci knew it wasn’t true. But he didn’t know what to say instead of that, so he did not answer Carlucci’s question at all. “Don’t worry about it,” he eventually said. “There’s no problem. When I get anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “We’d better meet somewhere and talk. Now.”

  “No,” Tanner said. “I’ve got too much to do, and I’ve got to get some sleep. There just isn’t time.”

  “God damn you, Tanner, don’t go solo on me now. I don’t want to be calling in the coroner for you.”

  “It’s okay, Carlucci, it’s nothing like that.”

  “Shit, Tanner.” But he did not say anything else.

  “I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” Tanner said again.

  After a short silence, Carlucci said, “Yeah, all right.” Resigned and pissed. “Shit, just don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t.” Tanner smiled to himself. “I’ll talk to you.” He hung up the phone before Carlucci could start in again
.

  He walked back into the front room. On the soaper, a man with a cyborged leg, an eye patch, and several days’ growth of beard, held a gun and was threatening a woman with it. They were on the balcony of a resort hotel, a swimming pool visible far below them.

  Tanner turned off the TV. He felt more tired now than before he had fallen asleep. Maybe he should just give in, crawl into bed, and sleep. Maybe he would sleep all the way through to morning.

  Except he had two calls coming in. Rattan and Alexandra. He had to stay awake. Tanner walked into the kitchen and put the teakettle on to boil. Coffee might help. Probably not. He had noticed that, as he got older, drinking coffee when he was tired often would just about put him under. So why was he making coffee now? Something to do. And maybe it would help.

  He was halfway through his second cup, his stomach souring, when the phone rang again. He answered it, and a harsh voice said, “Tanner, it’s me.” Rattan.

  “I’ve got a doctor to go with you,” Tanner said. “But there’s a condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “He wants to stay in New Hong Kong for a while and work with the regen teams up there. Can you set that up?”

  “Fuck, I’m paying those bastards enough, I sure as hell hope so. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Don’t know for sure yet, but I think you’ll be going as a passenger. It’ll be a lot less dangerous for you, a lot easier for the doctor.”

  “And the security checks?”

  “I’m working on that right now. Tonight or tomorrow I should know if we can pull it off.”

  “There’s a shuttle leaving in two days,” Rattan said. “I want to be on it.”

  “We’ll see,” Tanner replied.

  “I want to be on it,” Rattan said again.

  “I’ll talk to you.” Tanner hung up. He stood by the phone, half expecting it to ring again, Rattan calling him back. But the telephone remained silent.

  Tanner was half-asleep, listening to Taj Larsen, a wild trumpet player from the late nineties, when he realized someone was pounding on his front door. Not buzzing from the street, but banging at the door. He got up from his easy chair, turned down the stereo, and went to the door. “Who is it?” he called.