Mixer stopped in front of a crasher shop and lit a cigarette. He had a little trouble flicking the lighter with the exoskeleton, but he managed it. He still hadn’t decided whether to keep the exo on around the clock, or just put it on for special occasions. For now he’d leave it on, see how awkward it was. Might be worth any hassles, it was pretty fucking rabid.
Mixer checked his watch. Ten minutes to his meet with Chandler. Better move it. He started down the street, thinking how Chandler would be impressed with the exo. But, impressed enough to tell him something about Chick?
Two blocks, walking fast, he tossed the cigarette, then shot across the street, darting through traffic. He bumped into a patchwork beggar who was stumbling along the sidewalk with eyeblinds and a fingerless stub for a hand. The beggar cried out, swung his good fist blindly toward Mixer, but Mixer blocked it with his right arm, and the beggar’s fist banged into the exoskeleton. The beggar yowled and staggered away. The exo was good for something, Mixer thought.
He pulled open the lobby door of the Caterwaul Building, twelve stories of ugly, and stepped inside. Gunther, the beefy security guard with a hole in his face where his nose should have been, looked up from his chess game, recognized Mixer, and waved him through to the elevator. The chessboard spat a bishop at Gunther’s face, but he caught it inches away from his forehead, grinned at Mixer, and put the bishop back on the board.
The elevator doors were already open and waiting; and Mixer entered. He hesitated, breathed deeply, and pushed the twelfth-floor button. As the doors closed, his chest tightened. There was a click, then the elevator lurched upward. Mixer started to sweat.
Mixer hated elevators. Something like claustrophobia, he guessed. He had an irrational fear that the elevator would get stuck between floors and he would be hopelessly trapped for hours. But to meet Chandler he didn’t have a choice; Chandler had blocked off the stairs at the tenth floor, making the elevator the only access.
Mixer stood in the middle of the elevator as it slowly rose, listening to the double ca-click ca-click at each floor, counting silently…five…six…He realized he had stopped breathing, and forced himself to start again, slowly in and out…ten…eleven…The elevator ground to a halt with a terrible groan. The doors slid open. Mixer stepped out.
Chandler had gutted the entire twelfth floor several years back, turning it into a single, enormous room. Chandler traded in almost anything, and usually there were crates and cartons and foam-pack bundles stacked against the walls, several tables and chairs scattered throughout the room with computers, printers, and various kinds of analyzers and measurement devices, a dozen or more people, half of them security, and the whole place lit with lamps strung from the ceiling. Now, though, the room was nearly empty, silent, and dimly lit by a single overhead light. A few boxes against the right wall, under a window. A single folding chair in the middle of the room. Two wadded pieces of paper on the floor. Dust rolls.
No Chandler. Nobody at all.
Something was very wrong.
The elevator doors started to close behind him. Mixer turned, watching them close and seal. He could have reached them in time, kept them open, but his gut said to let them go. Might not be a good idea to be in the elevator when it reached the ground floor. A groan sounded, and the elevator began its descent.
On the other hand, if someone—Chandler?—wanted him, why hadn’t they been waiting when he stepped out of the elevator? Mixer scanned the shadows of the vast, empty room, half expecting someone to appear, lights to go on, or some explosion to go off. Nothing happened.
Mixer felt calm and unafraid. There was no way to know what was going on here, no way to know if it even had anything to do with him. Chandler was into all kinds of shit, with all kinds of people, even New Hong Kong. The body-bags were only a sideline for him. This could be anything.
Mixer walked around a little, listening to his own echoing footsteps. He could search the place, maybe find something. A clue. Right. What he should do is get out. Now. Stupid to take chances.
But how? He still didn’t like the elevator. And the fire escape was out. Chandler had ripped it off the side of the building years ago. Elevator shaft, maybe. Force open the door, climb down the shaft to the tenth floor, force that door open, and he’d be able to reach the stairs, maybe find a way out on one of the other floors.
He went back to the elevator, tried to force open the outer door. There was nothing to grip; the edge of the door went too far into the wall, and the door didn’t budge. The exo would give him extra strength, but it wasn’t any help if he couldn’t get a grip on anything.
He gave up on the elevator shaft, and stood gazing around the huge, empty room, thinking. He still wasn’t much worried, but he didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to. Shadows, pillars, barred windows. Ventilation shafts way too small.
Stairs. The stairwell was in the corner, now deep in shadow. They were blocked at the tenth floor, but there might be a window in the stairwell, or…something. Mixer walked to the corner, slowing as the darkness increased, letting his eyes adjust. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, looking down, unable to clearly see more than a few steps in front of him. No sign of a window. Hell, just go. What else was there? He started down.
Halfway to the next floor the stairs cornered and switched back, actually got a little bit brighter, light coming in from the door opening onto the eleventh floor. He stopped on the landing and stuck his head into the hallway. There was a window at the far end of the corridor, and open doors on both sides, light emerging in angled bands from most of them. He didn’t see or hear anything, but there was a mild stench coming from somewhere. He’d never been allowed on this floor, never known what Chandler used it for.
Mixer looked down the stairwell. It got darker again. No window, and access to the tenth floor was blocked by brick and concrete; he’d seen the barrier the one time he’d tried using the stairs in defiance of Chandler’s instructions. No choice, then. He had to see if there was a way out on this floor.
The window at the end of the hall was probably his best shot. He took a few steps into the hall, then stopped, listening for voices or other sounds. Nothing. He continued slowly along the hall, trying to keep his footsteps silent.
The door to the first room on his left was open, and light emerged through it. No sounds. Mixer stopped, then leaned forward and looked inside. Empty. The stench was worse; he could almost feel it wafting out of the room, but he couldn’t see anything that would cause it. What the fuck had Chandler been doing in here? Bare walls, bare floor, boarded windows, an overhead fluorescent light. Nothing else.
Mixer moved on. The next room was on his right; it, too, was open. When he looked inside, he again saw bare walls, bare floor, a fluorescent light. Once more he felt and smelled the stench, heavy and warm and cloying.
Bad, bad, bad. He hadn’t been afraid on the floor above, standing in that vast, empty room. But here? Something was wrong, seriously wrong, and Mixer was damn sure he didn’t want to be here.
He moved quickly now, not quite jogging, a fast walk, still trying to stay quiet. No more looking into the rooms as he passed them; he hoped there wasn’t anyone or anything inside. Just get to the window, he told himself, and get out.
Mixer reached the end of the hall and looked out the window. Good and bad luck. The next building was no more than eight feet away, but the roof was at least a full floor below, maybe more. The gap would be easy, the drop a bitch. At the far end of the roof was a rat-pack hut with a few soldiers moving in and out of the lights. Mixer knew the building, knew the head rat. He wouldn’t get free passage, but he’d be able to buy his way down.
The window was old, counterweight and pulley. Mixer grabbed the bottom handle and pulled up. The window rose smoothly, surprising the hell out of him. He opened it all the way, put his head through and looked down. A cement ledge ran along the wall about two feet below the window. Narrow, but wide enough to use as a launch pad.
Mixer pu
lled his head back in and was just about to put his leg through the open window when he sensed something approaching from behind. He spun and crouched, preparing himself, but the hall was empty. The sensation remained, however, the feel of some presence there in the hall with him. There were no sounds, no signs of movement, just the steadily increasing stench and the eerie, prickly feeling that flowed over him. Fuck me, Mixer thought. I’ve got to get the hell out of here.
He worked his way backward through the window, feeling his way with his shoes to the ledge below, never taking his eyes off the hallway. When his footing was secure, he eased his chest and head through, keeping hold of the sill, watching the hall. Still nothing.
He didn’t want to turn his back to the hall, not for more than a few seconds, anyway, so he geared himself up to turn and jump at the same time. He ran through it in his head, glancing back and forth from the hall to the roof below. He’d jump, land feet first, buckling his legs and doing a tuck and roll to absorb the impact. Okay. One last look down the hall, and go.
Mixer turned, let go of the windowsill, and pushed off the ledge, leaping across the gap and down. Almost immediately he hit the roof hard, pain flaring in his ankles as he pitched forward and sprawled across the rough surface, scraping his arms and hands and face. Shit, so much for the tuck and roll theory.
He pushed himself up to hands and knees, then slowly to his feet. Both ankles hurt, the left worse than the right, but he’d be able to walk. The exo had protected his right hand and arm, but the other was badly scraped and bleeding in several places.
Mixer turned around and looked up at the eleventh-floor window. Nothing. He was about to turn away, when he thought he saw something, a shadow, a shimmer of movement. He stared hard, but didn’t see anything else. A minute passed. Nothing. Then the window slowly, steadily, slid down and closed.
Fuck me, Mixer said to himself again.
He kept watching the window, listening to the rat-pack soldiers coming toward him, but he saw nothing more. One hard, long shiver rolled through his body. Mixer turned away and limped across the roof to the rat-pack soldiers waiting for him.
4
CARLUCCI WAS ALREADY exhausted by the time he got to his office and dropped into his chair. His morning coffee-hash at Spade’s had gone almost three hours, most of that time spent trying to organize the murder investigation of the mayor’s nephew with LaPlace and Hong, who were in charge of the case. They were getting almost as much heat as he was, and so far they were getting nowhere. They’d arranged to meet later that afternoon at the nephew’s penthouse for another look-through. Then, after dropping him off at the station, LaPlace and Hong had gone off to talk to people they knew weren’t going to tell them a damn thing.
The air conditioning was still out, but the fans had been left on all night, and it was early, so the air wasn’t too bad yet. Carlucci cleared a spot on his desk, piling files and notepads on top of other piles, then turned on his computer terminal. To his surprise, the system was back up and running. He logged on, then called up his file on the nephew—William Kashen. There wasn’t much in it, and there wasn’t much to add—the official report would be done by LaPlace and Hong, since it was their case—but with all the political pressure on this thing he had to keep a kind of management file to show he was staying on top of it.
Carlucci spent a half hour working on the file, most of that time staring at the screen and doing nothing, not even thinking about the case. When he thought he’d done enough, he printed out a hard copy, grabbed the sheets from the printer on the side of his desk, and stuffed them in the blue case folder. Then he sat staring at the monitor for a while longer, thinking about Paula Asgard and Chick Roberts.
Gotta start sometime, he thought. Carlucci called up the case file for Chick Roberts. The cover sheet came up on the screen, which gave the most basic information: case number, date, first officers on the scene, investigating officers (Santos and Weathers, Santos senior-in-charge), and status (open, pending). When Carlucci tried to call up the rest of the case file, he got “the message.”
FILE ACCESS RESTRICTED
CAPTAIN MCCULLER/CHIEF VAUGHN FOR AUTHORIZATION
Pretty much what he had expected. A temporary dead end. There was no way he could go to McCuller or Vaughn for authorization. At this point he didn’t want either of them to know he was at all interested in the case.
Carlucci exited the case file and logged off, then picked up the phone and punched in Ruben Santos’s number. There was no answer, and after three rings Carlucci heard the click as he was transferred through to the front desk.
“I’m looking for Ruben Santos,” he told the clerk.
“Ah, let’s see…he’s out with Weathers, interviews, probably back this afternoon. Page or message?”
“No.” Carlucci hung up.
One step at a time, no hurry, Carlucci told himself. Chick Roberts wasn’t going anywhere, and he had to be careful. But it nagged at him, and he had a crappy feeling about the whole thing. He wanted to move on it, or forget about it completely. Forgetting about it, though, wasn’t something he could do. So…patience. There was nothing more he could do until he talked to Santos. For now, just muck around at the desk, grab a bite to eat, then go out to the nephew’s. Chick Roberts would have to wait.
The nephew’s apartment was still a mess. The only thing missing was the body. Even the stink of death remained, if only a trace. Blood was spattered everywhere in the front room, dark and dry now. Deep, solid patches on the white carpet radiated from the vague outline of a body, interspersed with wide, fanning streaks. Everything in the room was white—carpet, walls, furniture, lampshades, even the entertainment system and picture phone—and in the bright lights the blood stood out like phosphor. There were even a few splatters on the white textured ceiling.
“We should rip up the carpet,” LaPlace said. “Frame it, and put it up in a gallery. Post-neo-industrial-modern-slasher art, or something like that.”
Peter LaPlace, a heavy, balding man, removed his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then replaced them. Joseph Hong, who was taller and much thinner than LaPlace, also wore glasses, and a lot of the homicide cops called them the Spec Twins.
LaPlace turned slowly, gazing around the room and through the doorways into the rest of the apartment. “Fuckin’ weird place to live,” he said.
“Weird guy,” Hong said, shrugging.
Carlucci just nodded. They’d been through the apartment pretty thoroughly the day before while the coroner’s men worked on the body. Most of the rooms were monochrome, like this one, furnishings matching the wall paint and carpeting. The two enormous bedrooms were all black, an office room was blue, the bathrooms bright red, the kitchen white. The dining room was the exception, a combination of white and black and chrome.
None of them were quite sure what they were looking for. The crime scene techs had already gone through it with all their sophisticated detection equipment, slicking up prints, hairs, fibers, skin flakes, and various other particles which they were now analyzing with a fortune in lab machinery. With the mayor on their asses, no expense would be spared. And plenty would be wasted. Additionally, the three detectives had already tagged and bagged several boxes of articles from the apartment, which were now back at the station and which they would go through again and again later on, along with the dozens of photographs that had been taken. They were here now hoping to see something they’d missed, or think of something, or get kicked off into a line of thought that none of them had come up with before. They were searching for intangibles and gut feelings. Anything.
And Carlucci wanted to talk to Hong and LaPlace alone, where they wouldn’t be overheard by department squeakers, the way they might have been at Spade’s this morning. Carlucci hadn’t seen anybody suspicious, but he hardly trusted anyone these days.
“Pete, Joseph,” Carlucci said. The two men looked at him. “I’ve got something I want to say. Didn’t want to talk about it at Spade’s.”
&
nbsp; “Squeakers?” LaPlace said.
“Yeah, Pete, you just never know.”
Hong slid a cigarette from his shirt pocket, stuck it in his mouth, dug out a lighter from his pants, and lit the cigarette, all his motions slow and deliberate. Hong thought they were about to get ragged on, Carlucci realized.
“Look, this is your case,” Carlucci said. “You two are in charge, you make all the decisions, handle it the way you think best. The only reason I’m here is because of all the heat from the mayor and the chief. I’m not trying to butt in on the case, I’ve just got to do this for appearances. It’s all bullshit, but I’ve got no choice. As much as possible, we do this like we would any other case—it’s yours, and you report to me. I’ll be around more, I’ll be on the streets with you once in a while, but I’ll try to stay out of your way.” Carlucci shrugged. “I don’t like this arrangement any more than you do.”
Hong and LaPlace looked at each other, Hong nodded, then LaPlace turned back to Carlucci. “Joseph and I have already talked about it,” LaPlace said. He half smiled. “We can see what’s going on. We just didn’t know how you were going to be about it. Hell, Frank, you might have decided to jump all over our asses. We didn’t think you would, but who the fuck knows? We figured if you did, we were going to be assholes about it. But hell, since you’re not, we’d just as soon you actually worked with us as much as you can. This is going to be a bitch investigation, for a lot of reasons.”
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