“Volunteered to have who do this?”
Rattan nodded and grinned. “Yeah, that’s a question, isn’t it? He’s a fucking military project.” He snorted. “Yeah, those bastards. Trying to see what kind of killing machines they can make out of human beings.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I had a long conversation with the guy. A couple, actually. He liked to talk.” Rattan shrugged. “I don’t make a habit of seeing all my customers personal, but this guy, he was buying quantity. He was a good customer, I want to give a little personal service, right? Besides, I want to see what’s going on with him. I mean, he’s buying a lot of expensive shit, hard to believe he’s doing it all himself. He’s paying my prices, why should I care, right? Except I like to know what he’s doing with it all, if anything weird’s going on. Good business. So I go see him.”
“What was he doing with the stuff?” Tanner asked.
“Shit, the guy’s using it all himself. I mean, here I go see this guy, turns out he’s half machine, and it turns out he’s pumping all this stuff into himself. He’s living in a flat in the Euro Quarter, which is where I go see him. First time, he won’t let me into the back rooms, and the front room and kitchen are practically empty. Front room’s got a couple chairs, and a bunch of electronic shit, which he tells me he hooks up to his cyborged parts.
“I get the feeling right off he doesn’t have any friends, and he wants to talk, but he’s got no one to talk to, and maybe it makes him crazy, I don’t know, but he wants to talk to me. Doesn’t hardly shut up, which is when he tells me about volunteering to be cyborged, how he’s a big military project trying to see about making killing machines. Could be a load of shit, but he looks the part, right? So I ask him where are they now, the military, why isn’t he on some army base somewhere, in some lab or whatever. He says he changed his mind, he didn’t want to be a killing machine for the army, he didn’t want to work for anyone. He was special now, he said. He said a lot of stuff like that, being special and powerful, and he wasn’t going to take orders from anyone, he wasn’t going to do anything he didn’t want to do himself. So he escaped from wherever it was they had him. He didn’t say where.”
Rattan paused, adjusted his position in the chair. Tanner asked if he could do anything, but Rattan shook his head. He popped open the chair cabinet, took out a container of water, and drank deeply from it.
“Like I said,” he continued, “could be a lot of crap, but I believe him. He says he hooks up a lot of this electronic stuff to himself, it does all kind of weird things to his body and his head, and then he pumps in the drugs, and he’s like in another universe. I don’t know, I hear that, it makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t want to try it myself, but I can see it could be the ultimate rush.
“Still, something’s off with this guy, I’m not sure what it is. I believe him about being a military project, and that he’s using all the drugs himself, but there’s something else, I have this gut feeling. So I ask can I come see him again, next time he needs a delivery, and he says sure. I think he likes the company, someone to talk to. So I go see him again, and this time I bring a few tick-ears, you know?”
“Listening bugs.”
“Right. This time he trusts me some more, I guess, he takes me into one of the back rooms and shows me his special things. Now I know there’s something weird about this guy. The room’s full of angels and wings. Pictures of angels, some sculpture things. Lots of paintings and drawings, even a couple of things that look like photographs. And on the back wall is an actual set of wings, damned if they don’t look like real angel wings. Made of something like feathers, but not real feathers, something else. I don’t know if I can describe them, except they really looked like angel wings. As unreal as angel wings must be. I mean, I’ve never actually seen an angel, right, but…
“Now, here’s where it gets good. He’s showing me all this stuff, and then he takes off his shirt. His body’s all crisscrossed with bands of metal, and he turns around so I can see his back. His back’s all metal, from his neck down to his waist, real flexible and segmented or whatever, and up around his shoulder blades is some special device, all the way across his shoulders, with all kinds of slots and flanges and things, I don’t know. What he does then, he goes to the back wall, where the angel wings are. I see now they have something that looks like it might hook up with what’s on his back. He backs up to them, and I hear these clicking sounds, and then he steps away from the wall. The angel wings come with him, they’re attached now. Somehow he’s able to control the wings, they spread out, I don’t know, maybe nine or ten feet across. Big fuckin’ wings. He stands in the middle of the room, holding out his hands and arms, one metal, one human, remember, with the wings spread out behind him, rising a little. And then he says, ‘When I’m wearing my wings, I am an angel. Destroying Angel.’
“So he’s standing there, and he’s smiling. He says the wings were his price for letting the military turn him into a cyborg. They had to give him wings.” Rattan paused, shook his head. “That point, I’m glad I brought the tick-ears and dropped them around the place. This guy seems pretty fucking psycho to me now, and I’d like to know what’s going on in his head.”
Rattan stopped again, shook his head. “The next few days I listen to the tick-ears whenever I can. I mean, turns out I’m right about he has no friends or anything, no one comes to see him. But the guy likes to talk, right? So he talks to himself a lot. Most of the time he doesn’t make any sense, I can’t understand what the fuck he’s talking about. But it’s all pretty weird, and enough of it does make sense that after a few days I’m getting a pretty good idea that this guy’s the fucking Chain Killer. I keep at it, I spend a lot of time listening, and when I’m pretty sure, I send you the message. I figure this is going to make me a lot of money.”
“How did you know about the angel wings on the victims?”
Rattan smiled. “I didn’t, really. It was a guess. He kept saying so much weird shit about angel wings, after a while I had the feeling he was doing something with angel wings to the bodies. So I was right?”
Tanner nodded. “He tattoos angel wings inside the nostrils of the victims.”
“The nostrils? Why the hell does he do that?”
Tanner shook his head. “No idea.” He paused. “So then what?”
“Then nothing. After a few days, I don’t hear anything more. I think maybe he’s found the tick-ears, so I send someone around to check on the building, see if she can pick up the guy and follow him around, see what he does, where he goes. Nothing. Do some more checking, the guy’s gone. The flat’s empty, and I mean stripped and cleaned out, not a damn thing left. I sort of bide my time, put out some feelers, see if this guy’s showing up anywhere else, buying from my competitors, maybe. Nothing. After a while I realize the killings have stopped. I’m wondering what the hell’s going on, the guy’s gone, the killings stopped, I haven’t heard a word from you or Freeman. I wonder has he been caught, but no, there’s no way you guys wouldn’t make a big deal catching that guy. Then I heard about Freeman being killed and you in the hospital, I realize why I haven’t heard from you. Time goes on, the guy never shows, the killings never start again. I wonder if he’s moved to some other city, but the killings don’t start up anywhere else, near as I can figure. He’s just gone.”
“What do you think happened?”
“He didn’t die, right, we know that now.” Rattan nodded slowly to himself. “I think the military found him. They figured out he was the Chain Killer, and they found him and his angel shit, and they hauled him off and locked him up, and covered up everything.” He turned to look at Tanner. “You don’t think they were going to let anyone know that one of their pet projects had been running around killing people?”
Tanner shook his head. “No, I guess not. So what’s happened now? He escape again?”
Rattan nodded. “Escaped, and picked up right where he left off two and a half years ago.”
&nb
sp; “And you know where he is.”
Rattan nodded again, but did not say anything.
“Where?” Tanner said. “That’s part of the deal.”
“Yeah. Just remember, when there’s bad news there’s no use killing the messenger.”
Great, Tanner thought. “All right, so what’s the bad news?”
“He’s in the Core.”
The Core. Jesus. “You’ve seen him?”
“Oh no,” Rattan said. “I don’t go in there. Besides, I’ve been in this damn chair since he showed up again. But I’ve got a business, right, and I’ve got a few customers in the Core. I hear things from inside. Most things I don’t care about, and most of what comes out of there you can’t believe anyway. But when I started hearing that some half-metal freak with wings had shown up in the Core, I knew. I knew.”
“Jesus,” Tanner said. “Why the Core?”
“Hey, his kind of place, way I see it. Besides, he got found in the Tenderloin. He’s trying to stay hidden from the military guys. How much deeper can you go than the Core? And who knows what the hell he’s been doing in there? I heard about him several weeks before the first bodies showed up. Setting up shop, maybe. Who the fuck knows?”
Tanner did not say anything for a long time. The Core. Christ. They were going to have to go into the Core to find the bastard.
Rattan had come through. Tanner did not doubt his story at all, did not doubt that this man, Albert Cromwell, was the Chain Killer. The Destroying Angel.
“Now do you understand?” Rattan asked.
“Understand what?”
He wiggled his left arm stump. “Why I won’t get cyborged prosthetics. I want to stay human. Look at that bastard, he’s half-machine and look what he’s doing, killing all these people.”
“There have been serial killers before,” Tanner said, “and they’ve all been completely human.”
Rattan shook his head. “I don’t care, I’ve seen this guy, and getting cyborged, shit, that’s done something to him. Destroying Angel, complete with the fuckin’ wings. I mean, just look at what he does to them, fusing metal chains to their bodies, to their skin. I mean, what is that?”
“You think it’s connected to him being cyborged.”
“Shit, don’t you?”
“How? Why do you think he’s doing it?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“You’ve talked to him.”
“He didn’t tell me he was killing people. He didn’t tell me why. But I tell you, I’ve been dealing drugs for a lot of years, and as far as I can see, wanting to turn yourself into a machine is a lot worse than taking drugs. At least when you’re doing drugs you’re still human. Bad shit, this cyborg crap. And it’s not just this bastard. It’s the fucking future, Tanner, and I don’t like it at all.”
There was another silence, Tanner trying to decide what else he should ask Rattan. He could not think of anything. He knew who it was, and where he was.
“I gave you what you wanted, didn’t I?” Rattan asked.
Tanner nodded. Neither spoke for a long time. Tanner gazed at the lights of the shuttle and the gantry, the moving lights of vehicles snaking across the tarmac. Rattan would soon be going into space, leaving all this behind. Leaving it for Tanner.
Was Rattan right, that being cyborged had turned Albert Cromwell into the Destroying Angel? A madman, a monster, a killer? He could not believe it was that simple, but that did not mean there was nothing to it. And what about Rattan’s other comment, that a transition from human to machine was the future? What the hell did that mean, if there was any truth in it?
“What would you have done?” Rattan asked. “If I hadn’t actually known who it was? If I hadn’t known a damn thing?”
Tanner looked down at Rattan’s unrecognizable face, at the strange sacks over unhealed stumps. “I probably would have let you go anyway.” He paused, thinking about it a minute, then smiled and shook his head. “No, actually, I wouldn’t have. I probably would have ripped every goddamn tube out of your miserable body.”
Rattan laughed. “What I like about you, Tanner. You’re an honest man. Could use a few more like you in the drug trade.”
“Which you’re getting out of.”
Rattan laughed again, and nodded. “And which you’re already into in your own way. Smuggling from the rich and giving to the poor.” He shook his head. “Let’s go back inside. It’s time.”
Tanner followed him back around the corner of the building, up the ramp and through the automatic doors and back into the station. The processing teams had already run Paul and Britta through the system and were waiting for Rattan. Tanner kept back and watched as they put him through.
First was the most important—identity confirmation. Rattan laid his right hand over the reading plate and put his head into the retinal scanner. The security man punched it through, Rattan pulled out of the scanner, and they all waited. A minute later the confirm came up on the screens, and they moved Rattan down the line.
The security inspection took the longest as the teams worked over Rattan’s wheelchair, running scanners over and through it, opening accesses, taking sections of it apart. No one really thought he was smuggling anything aboard, no one thought he was bringing weapons or explosives, but they were thorough nonetheless.
When they were done, the teams escorted Rattan, Britta, and Paul out of the station and onto a loading van, which then headed out toward the shuttle.
There was still a long time until liftoff, so Tanner went to the viewing lounge in the upper floor and sat at a table beside the dome window. He drank a beer and watched the activity on the field. He tried not to think about much, tried to empty his mind. The final stage, he hoped, was about to begin. With the information from Rattan, they finally had a direction to go, a place to look. He thought he should feel happy and excited, but instead he only felt vaguely depressed. He did not know why.
Sirens blasted, announcing imminent launch. Tanner turned his attention to the shuttle. Wisps of smoke, strangely illuminated by the gantry lights, curled away from the ship, disappearing into the night. The countdown began, broadcast throughout the station.
First came the rush of smoke pouring out and away from the shuttle, along with silent explosions of flame, quickly followed by the muted roar and the vibrations rumbling through the station. The shuttle began to rise, quite slowly at first, then picking up speed, rising above the gantry, trailing smoke and flame, climbing into the night. Tanner watched it rise, fading into the darkness so that only the flame itself was visible, and he continued to watch the flame as it rose and grew smaller and smaller until it was only a star moving slowly across the night sky. Rattan was gone.
Footsteps approached the table, and Tanner turned to see Carlucci. Carlucci hesitated a moment, then sat across from him. Tanner did not know what to say.
“Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?” Carlucci said.
“No.” He was half-tempted to ask Carlucci if this was just a coincidence, but he knew Carlucci had been following him. How much did he know? Did it matter?
“Who was that guy in the wheelchair?” Carlucci asked.
There was no point avoiding it now, Tanner decided. It was too late for Carlucci to do anything. “Rattan,” he said.
Carlucci nodded. “I was afraid of that. But I didn’t know,” he said, staring at Tanner. “It could have been anybody.”
He had deliberately waited until it was too late, Tanner realized. Carlucci must have been here since Tanner and the others had arrived.
Carlucci looked out the window and up at the night sky as if he could still see the shuttle carrying Rattan up to New Hong Kong. “This the price for the info?”
“Yes,” Tanner said.
“Was it worth it?”
“Yes.”
Carlucci nodded, then stood. “Then let’s go get the motherfucker.”
It was not going to be that easy, Tanner thought. But telling Carlucci could wait. He nodded, st
ood, and they headed out of the station.
34
THEY DROVE BACK into the heart of the city in Carlucci’s car, headed for the Tenderloin. On the way, Tanner related everything Rattan had told him. Carlucci asked only a few minor questions for clarification, and did not ask Tanner why he had not told him about any of the arrangements with Rattan. Neither of them even mentioned it.
When Tanner was finished, Carlucci pulled off to the side of the road and parked. He called into the department, got patched through to Info-Services, and a woman’s voice came over the speakers.
“Diane?” Carlucci said.
“Yes. That you, Frank?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I need two things. First, get someone to make a formal request to the Defense Department for information on Albert Cromwell. My guess is that’ll draw zeroes, so get one of the free-lance demons to make ‘informal inquiries.’”
“You want to wait for a response from DOD before sending out the demon?”
“No, get the demon started right away.”
“Sure thing. Frank, this have anything to do with…?”
“Not a word, Diane. Not a word.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Thanks.”
Carlucci replaced the comm unit and stared out the windshield for a minute, silent. The car’s headlights lit up a metal drum lying on its side, liquid leaking through two holes onto the concrete. Tanner waited, also silent. He had nothing more to say at the moment.
“Do we go in now, or wait until morning?” Carlucci eventually said. It did not really sound like a question he expected Tanner to answer.
“Into the Core?” Tanner asked.
Carlucci nodded. “That’s something we ask Koto.” He looked at Tanner. “Now we use him.”
“Yeah?”
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