She looked back at Chick, his skinny arms with all those fucking tracks, none of them fresh, but still…His blue eyes, cool and pale, now wide and staring. The tiny green snake tattooed on his neck. And those goddamn headphones socketed into his ears, cord trailing in the blood, along the floor, then up to the sound system, which was still on, the bright green peak meters spiking back and forth. Paula wondered what his destroyed dead brain was listening to.
“Oh, Chick,” she whispered. She pushed herself off the chair, onto her knees, then moved across the floor and sat next to him, taking his cold hand in hers. “You stupid shit. What am I going to do now?”
Call the police, the practical side of her said. Yeah, yeah, in a minute. What’s the hurry? No one’s going anywhere.
Paula sat motionless on the floor, holding Chick’s hand, and waited for the energy and will to move again.
PART ONE
1
CHRIST, DAYS LIKE this, Carlucci wanted to resign. And why not? He had more than his twenty-five years in, and at lieutenant he wasn’t going any higher, he knew that—he’d pissed off too many of the wrong people over the years. Sometimes he was amazed he’d ever made lieutenant; the only reason he had was the capture of the Chain Killer three years earlier, and the fact that the higher-ups wanted him to keep his mouth shut.
He pushed his chair back from his desk, rolled it sideways until his face was directly in the wash of the fan. Sweat streamed down his sides, ran from his forehead and neck. Carlucci closed his eyes, letting the fan blow across his face and hair, and tried to imagine he was somewhere else, somewhere cool and breezy.
Carlucci was a stocky man, just over six feet, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, not much fat, really; he carried it well. His hair was short and black, heavily streaked with gray, and though he’d shaved this morning, he looked like he needed another. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and it itched, stuck to his skin. Carlucci opened his eyes, dismayed. No miracles. He was still here.
He pulled himself back to his desk and stared at the dead computer screen. He picked up his coffee cup, looked down into it, saw a miniature oil slick on top of the coffee, and drank it anyway. Cold and bitter, just the way he liked it.
The day had started off badly, and then had just gone to shit. First thing, five minutes after he’d arrived, Harker and Fuentes came in, demanding to be split up. Carlucci knew immediately that it was serious, not just the typical bitching that cropped up with regularity around here. Neither would say what the problem was, but both insisted they couldn’t partner together anymore. Which probably meant that Harker had gone back hard and heavy to the booze, and Fuentes didn’t want a drunk as a partner. Carlucci couldn’t blame her; he’d feel the same way. He had told them he would work something out as soon as he could. It was going to be a pain in the ass trying to figure new partners, shift things around again. God damn.
Later in the morning the air conditioning had crapped out, the sixth or seventh time this summer. Summer, shit, it was late September, it was supposed to be fall. Once again they’d hauled out the fans, but the building’s ventilation wasn’t worth a damn, so the fans could only do so much—mostly they just stirred around the hot, sticky air, kept it from being completely intolerable.
Then the mayor’s nephew was found dead in his penthouse apartment, throat cut, belly slit open. What a fuckin’ mess. The mayor’s nephew had been an asshole—a lot like the mayor, actually—and word was already on the street that he had tried to scam some black-market data sharks, and paid for it. But the mayor, ignorant bastard, was jumping all over the Chief, and the Chief was jumping all over Carlucci, and would keep on jumping until something broke. The mayor wanted justice. Sure thing, Your Honor. Carlucci was going to be wasting an awful lot of time on this bullshit, and it probably wouldn’t go anywhere.
And finally this, Carlucci thought, still staring at the dead screen. The system had crashed. Again. He looked out the glass wall of his small office, watching the other men and women sitting around, sweating and swearing, talking on phones or to each other, everyone miserable. He glanced at the clock on his desk. Almost three-thirty. Fuck it, he wasn’t going to get anything else done today. Go home. He nodded to himself, and prepared to leave.
Carlucci walked out of headquarters and stood in front of the building, trying to decide whether to take the bus or the streetcar. It didn’t make much difference, he just liked to switch around a lot, try to keep the commute from being routine. The sky was a rust-brown haze hanging over the city. It hadn’t rained at all for five or six days, and Carlucci wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. Probably bad. He thought he could feel the hot, filthy air turning his sweat into some putrid, oily substance.
He had just decided on the streetcar and started down the block, when a woman approached and stood directly in his path, forcing him to stop. She was wearing boots and jeans and a black T-shirt. There was a hard look to her, a sharp and dark edge.
“Frank Carlucci?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Homicide, right?”
Carlucci nodded, wondering where this one was headed.
“My name’s Paula Asgard. I need to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“A murder.”
Carlucci smiled. “Hey, there’s a surprise. Look, I’m off-duty. Why don’t you go inside the station”—he waved back at the building—“talk to someone who’s on.” He had a feeling she hasn’t going to go for that, but he had to try. “I’m sure they can help you.”
The woman shook her head. “I need to talk to you. And privately, not in your office. Why do you think I waited out here for you?”
“Look,” Carlucci tried again, laying it on thick. “I’m a homicide detective, a lieutenant, we’ve got procedures…”
“Mixer said you were the one I should talk to,” Paula Asgard said.
“Mixer.”
“He’s a friend of mine.”
Terrific, Carlucci thought. He started to shake his head, then turned it into a nod. “All right, I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee, and we’ll talk. I know a place nearby.”
“I appreciate it,” the woman said.
Carlucci shrugged. “Don’t thank me yet.”
They sat at a small window table on the second floor of a place called The Bright Spot, a cafe just a few blocks from police headquarters. It was too late for afternoon coffee breaks, too early for dinner, so while the first floor was half full, the second-floor section was nearly empty—exactly what Carlucci had expected.
Neither said anything while they waited for their coffee. Carlucci’s attention alternated between the street below and the woman across from him.
Paula Asgard. He liked the name. She was attractive, he thought, in a real earthy way. Somewhere in her thirties, about five-seven, five-eight, a few strands of gray in her dark hair. Almost but not quite slender. She looked strong, like she worked out.
Not much was happening on the street. A man with only one arm and one eye walked a string of three pit bulls leashed together with wire muzzles. Two thrashers on motorized boards ran the gutter directly below the cafe. A woman stood in front of an electronics store across the street, hiking her products and wearing a set of bone boomers; Carlucci got a headache just watching her. Then three teenage girls strolled past wearing rag vests, no bras, budding breasts appearing and disappearing among the strips. Christ, Carlucci thought. He watched until they were gone from sight, but nothing happened to them.
Margitta brought their coffees—iced for Paula Asgard, hot for Carlucci—and asked Carlucci how his wife was.
“Fine,” Carlucci said, smiling. He knew what Margitta’s game was: trying to guilt him just in case he was even thinking something funny about the woman across the table from him. Margitta and Andrea were good friends. “It’s just business,” he told Margitta. She shrugged and left.
Carlucci turned back to Paula Asgard. “So tell me.”
“Mixer says you can be trusted.�
� She turned her glass mug around and around, but didn’t drink. “He said you’re a cop who does what a cop is supposed to do.”
“As opposed to all the cops who don’t do what cops are supposed to do?”
A hint of a smile appeared on Paula’s mouth. “You said it.”
“Mixer.” Carlucci shook his head and frowned. “That guy.”
Paula’s mouth moved into a full smile. “Yeah, that guy.” She drank from her iced coffee, cubes rattling against glass. “He said you don’t like spikeheads.”
“I don’t I think they’re fucking nuts. Self-mutilation doesn’t do it for me.” He shook his head again, picturing Mixer with the crusted, twisted spikes of skin all over his forehead. “But Mixer, well, we have an understanding of sorts. We get along all right.”
“He told me you caught the Chain Killer.”
“Not really,” Carlucci said. “I was there, I was ‘in charge,’ but it was other people who were really responsible.” He remembered sitting with Tanner at the Carousel Club three years earlier, telling him about the Chain Killer’s faked death, “justice” taking it in the ass again—almost no one knew the Chain Killer was still alive, locked away in some military compound. And he thought of a poor thirteen-year-old girl they had pulled out of a lagoon: Sookie. “One of them got killed,” he said.
“A friend of mine’s been killed,” Paula said.
Carlucci looked at her, bringing himself back to the present, then slowly nodded. “Who was it?”
“A friend,” she repeated, more quietly.
Carlucci watched her, wanting to look away, not wanting to see what he saw in her eyes. She might be a hardass on the outside, but he could see hints of what was happening inside her, the way she was fighting to keep it inside. Someone she loved had died, been killed. He knew that look, because he had seen it too many times.
And then he thought of his older daughter, Caroline, and he wondered if he would have that look in his eyes when she died. One day he would be grieving over her death, a day that would be way too soon in coming.
“His name was Chick Roberts,” Paula finally managed. She looked out the window, swirling the ice cubes and coffee.
“A friend,” Carlucci prompted. The name wasn’t familiar. Should he have come across it? Maybe not. He wanted to get straight to it—when was he killed, how, why, whatever—but he knew he’d have to take it slow, at her pace, ease into it.
“Yeah, a friend. More than a friend. I don’t know, boyfriend?” Paula turned back to him and shook her head. “Doesn’t seem the right word.” She drank from her coffee. “Lover?” Then she tried to smile. “Never liked that word, either, but I guess that’s as close as I’m going to come. We’d known each other a long time. Sixteen, seventeen years.”
“Did you live together?”
“No,” she said, almost laughing. “Tried once. Didn’t last a year.” She didn’t offer any explanation, and Carlucci wasn’t going to ask her for one.
“When was he killed?”
“A week and a half ago. I stopped by his place after a gig, found him dead. Shot three times in the head.”
She didn’t go on, and Carlucci let the silence hang between them for a bit. He was tempted to ask her for more details, but this wasn’t his investigation, probably never would be. But there was one question he had to ask if she wasn’t going to get to it herself.
“Why me?” Carlucci asked. “Why are we here?”
Something in her expression changed, hardened. The grief was gone, replaced by anger.
“I want to know what the hell is going on.”
Yeah, Carlucci thought, we all do.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I’ve been trying to keep on top of it, the investigation, the case, whatever it’s called.” Paula finished off her iced coffee, set the mug down, shook the ice cubes. “I want to know who killed him, and why. I want to see whoever did it pay.” She pushed her mug to the side, and Carlucci could see the anger burning inside her. “His parents don’t give a damn, but I do.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I call the cop who’s supposed to be in charge, see what’s going on, and he gives me the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. First, he tells me the investigation has been a dead end, no leads, nothing. Fine, I can sort of accept that, though I don’t really buy it.” Paula grabbed her mug again, tried to drink coffee that wasn’t there, then put it back down. She looked hard at Carlucci. “But then the guy tells me the case is closed. Now, you tell me how the case can be closed if the cops have no idea who killed him?”
“Well,” Carlucci said, “there’s closed and there’s closed.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Technically the case won’t be closed. What he meant is that they think they’ve gotten as far as they can, which apparently is nowhere. They don’t think they’ll be able to solve it, and they probably won’t be putting much more time into it.”
“They haven’t put jack into it yet.”
“You don’t know that,” Carlucci started. “I’m sure…”
“Bullshit!” Paula was getting angrier; her neck muscles had tightened and her fists were clenched. “As far as I can tell, they haven’t talked to any of Chick’s friends about it, they haven’t asked anyone anything. That’s why I can’t buy this dead-end crap.” She leaned forward. “They haven’t even asked me a damn thing, and I found him.”
Carlucci was starting to get a bad feeling about this. He was beginning to wish he had never agreed to talk to her. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “One of the investigating officers interviewed you, right?”
“Wrong.” Paula shook her head. “They asked me about five questions when they first showed up that night, sent me home, and told me they’d get back to me. No one did.”
“No one?”
“That’s what I said. I found out who was in charge of the case, talked to him, but all I got was the runaround. Said he didn’t need to talk to me, that they had all the information they needed. I even volunteered to come in and talk to him, but he said no. That’s when I started checking with people Chick knew. Cops didn’t interview any of them. Now, you tell me what that’s all about.”
He had no answer for her. He signaled to Margitta for more coffee. She came over, refilled his cup, then poured some over what remained of the ice cubes in Paula’s mug. Carlucci could see the ice cubes melting from the hot coffee. “Want some more ice, hon?” Margitta asked. Paula shook her head, not looking at the waitress, holding her stare on Carlucci. Margitta took the hint and left without another word.
“Who was the investigating officer?” He had to ask. He didn’t want to hear her answer, but he had to ask.
“Ruben Santos.”
Not a name Carlucci expected to hear. Two or three other names, sure, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But Ruben?
“Ruben Santos,” he said. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. How do you think I came up with the name? Picked one at random?”
Christ, the whole thing was turning on him. He had been prepared to take Paula Asgard pretty much at her word—he’d seen this kind of thing often enough—but now he began to doubt her. Ruben was about as straight a player as cops came. Carlucci really didn’t know what to think.
“It gets better,” Paula said.
“How?”
“Last time I talked to this guy Santos, he said they were looking into the possibility that it was suicide.”
Sure, Carlucci thought, a kind of backdoor way out, even if it was bullshit. “Could it have been?”
Paula let out a chopped laugh. “Right. Three bullet holes in the face, half the back of his head blown off, and no gun in the apartment. The most amazing goddamn suicide in history.”
Yeah, but Carlucci could see how they’d play it. The girlfriend, wanting to avoid the stigma of suicide, pops him a couple extra shots in the face to make it look like murder, then dumps the gun. A
ll bullshit, but the cops just might make that case to close it up, and the coroner could be depended on not to shut the door completely on it.
“Why would the cops want to let this case go?” Carlucci asked. “Laziness? Maybe they just think it’s unimportant?”
Her eyes got real hard again. “Unimportant to who?”
Great. That hadn’t been the most sensitive thing he’d ever said. “Point taken,” Carlucci said.
“Besides,” Paula went on, “they’re not just letting it go, they’re trying to bury it.”
“Maybe so.” Probably so, he thought. But Ruben? He couldn’t shake his doubts. “But why? Do you have any idea why they’d want to cover it up, or not find out who killed him? There must be some reason; they wouldn’t do something like this just to be assholes.”
“You tell me. That’s why I’m here.” Paula sighed, looked away from him. She picked up her coffee mug, drank absently from it. There was no ice left. She turned back to him.
“Chick—” she began. She gave him a half smile. “Chick made a living his own way, and most of the time his own way wasn’t exactly legal. Low-end stuff, really. Deal a little bit, run a scam on a jack lawyer, middle-man something hot, things like that. Nothing too big, nothing that would catch the attention of the sharks. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Carlucci. Said. A bottom feeder, picking up the crumbs and the crap.
“That was the biggest reason we didn’t live together. I couldn’t tell him how to run his life, but I didn’t want to be a part of that shit, not even on the edges.”
“I understand.”
Paula looked away, out the window. “Theory is one thing, the real world is another. Trying to stay small-time, out of the way of the sharks, well, impossible to do all the time.” She turned back to Carlucci. “Every so often he’d get himself in over his head, riding, on the edge, but he always managed to slip out of it. My guess is he got in over his head again, and this time he couldn’t get out. In with the sharks, chewed up and spit out.” She paused. “And the cops don’t want to touch it. I don’t know, you tell me why.”
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