Why did he want to know about Chick? What story was he working on? Christ, she had a feeling she was going to end up talking to the bastard. Paula turned and climbed the stairs.
Mixer was waiting in the lobby when she came down from the projectionist’s booth as the last film was ending. Leah was opening the front doors, and the coffee bar was closed up, but Mixer had managed to get a cup for himself anyway; he was holding it with the exoskeleton.
“Hey,” Paula said. “What are you doing here?”
“You saw Carlucci this morning, yeah?” When Paula nodded, he said, “I want to talk. I’m hitting a wham-wham tonight, and I want to hear about your Carlucci talk before I go.”
People began to filter out of the theater as the closing credits ran, and Paula and Mixer moved out of the way, behind the coffee bar. “Leah can lock up for me,” Paula said, “but let’s hold off until we empty out here.”
The crowd coming out into the lobby grew, moved past them before narrowing as it squeezed through the front doors and out onto the street, loud and noisy. People who knew Paula waved or nodded to her as they passed, and Paula nodded back. The crowd eventually thinned, and then there were only a few stragglers as the credits finished and the theater went silent.
Tremaine was one of the last people out, and he stopped in front of the coffee bar. He smiled, glanced at Mixer, nodded, and said, “Good night, Paula Asgard.”
“Good night.”
Tremaine strolled out the doors, moved into the street traffic, and was immediately gone from sight.
“Who was that?”
Mixer’s voice had a testy edge to it and Paula looked at him, but his face was almost expressionless. “What?”
“I’m just asking who that guy was.”
“Tremaine. Why?”
“The reporter?”
“Yeah.”
“You know him?”
“No. He wanted to talk to me about Chick.”
“Chick?”
“Yeah, Chick. He said he’s trying to find out why Chick was killed.”
“Tremaine? Why the fuck is he digging into this?”
“I don’t know, Mixer. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“You’re not going to talk to him, are you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Hell, I don’t know. He worries me, that guy.”
Paula sighed and nodded. “Yeah, well, he worries me, too.” She smiled at Mixer. “No, I’m not going to talk to him.”
Mixer shook his head, but didn’t say any more. Paula checked the theater to make sure it was empty, then asked Leah to lock up after Pietro, the projectionist, left. She got her jacket from the locked cabinet under the coffee bar and left the theater with Mixer.
They walked down to the corner, then swung right and headed up Polk. Sunday night, the street was full but low-key, people thinking about actually getting some sleep or heading off into dreamland of one kind or another. Mixer stopped at the street window of Sasha’s Bad Eats.
“Let’s get some coffee,” he said.
“You want to go inside?”
“Not a chance. I’m going to be cooped up for hours with the wham-wham, I’d better stock up on fresh air.” He turned to the purple-eyed kid at the window. “Large coffee and”—he glanced back at Paula—“large decaf, right?”
Paula nodded at the kid, who was bobbing to music Paula couldn’t hear. The kid drew the coffee, then handed the cups out through the window after taking Mixer’s money. Mixer and Paula sat on one of the concrete benches built along the front of Sasha’s.
“So what did you and Carlucci talk about?” Mixer asked.
“Not much, really.” She sipped at the coffee, which was almost as good as it was hot—she burned her tongue and nearly enjoyed it. “I told him what I know about what Chick had been up to lately, which is damn little. You know Chick, he didn’t tell me shit, which was always fine with me. I gave him some names of people Chick ran with, his ‘business’ contacts.”
Mixer cocked his head at her. “You think that’s wise?”
“Jesus, Mix, you’re the one who told me to go to Carlucci, what a great guy and honest cop he was. What’s the point if I don’t tell him what I know?” She shook her head, blowing on her coffee, sipping it. “Carlucci’s already told me the whole thing could be risky. I’m willing to chance it for now. It’s either that or drop it.”
“What did you tell him about me?”
Paula turned to look hard at him. “Oh, I see. That’s what you’re worried about. Well, he does want to talk to you, Mixer, that’s clear. If you don’t go to him soon, he’ll come looking for you, count on it.” She sighed. “What was I going to tell him, Mix? He knows you knew Chick.”
“Does he know Chick and I…did business?”
“Yes. But I didn’t tell him what kind of business. And I didn’t tell him about you talking to me the other night like you might have some idea why Chick got himself killed.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Not right out, you didn’t.”
Mixer didn’t respond to that. He drank from his coffee, looking away from her. Paula put her hand on his knee, and he tensed for a moment, staring down at it.
“What is it?” Paula asked.
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. He laid his free hand across hers, wrapping his fingers around it.
Paula felt cold sweat from his hand, and she could have sworn she felt his heart pounding hard now through his leg and wrist. What was going on? God, don’t tell me Mixer’s got it for me, too. Jesus, what was it today, was she secreting some kind of pumped-up pheromones? First Boniface, and what, now Mixer?
Mixer sighed heavily, then let her hand go and drank more of his coffee. “So Carlucci wants to see me,” he finally said.
“Of course, Mixer.” Paula took her hand off his knee and stuck it in her jacket pocket. Maybe she was just imagining things. “You going to tell him what kind of business you and Chick did?”
Mixer shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. What’s he going to do, arrest me? Arrest Chick?” He shrugged again. He finished off his coffee, crushed his cup, then looked at his watch. “Gotta go. Checking out my own lines tonight on Chick.”
“In a wham-wham?”
Mixer nodded.
“Careful,” Paula said.
Mixer looked at her, smiled. “Always.” He leaned forward, kissed her warmly on the cheek, then stood. “I’ll be in touch. And don’t talk to Tremaine.” Before she could say a word, he was off and walking away, his right hand still working at the crushed coffee cup.
Paula watched him stride up the street, slipping in and out of the crowds until he turned a corner and was gone. She looked down at her own coffee cup, which was still half full and steaming. Some days, she thought, life is just one fucking mess after another. She set the coffee on the ground beside her, got up, and headed for home.
9
WHAM-WHAM, ALL right. Mixer hadn’t been stupid, he’d pumped himself full of neutralizers before coming in, but the air in here was so gassed he felt like he was swimming through it, and the neutralizers were barely holding their own. He kept getting these sharp, intense flashes of desire, but the desire never locked onto anything specific; the neutralizers were doing their job. Mixer wondered what the gases were targeted for: booze, fireweed, gambling, booth time, smoke, heavy tipping. Probably all of the above. Without the neutralizers he’d be broke, fucked up, and out on the street in less than an hour. Which was, of course, just what some of the people in here wanted.
The wham-wham was underground in a Tenderloin subbasement warren. Mixer worked his way through the crowd in a maze of ion poles, cubicles and booths, tables and minibars, music pounding through dim colored phosphor lights. Close to capacity. There was just enough room to move from one spot to another without having to touch someone if you didn’t want to.
Mixer was looking for Chandler, or if not him, then his proxies, Karl and Skeez, the freakoid twins. One or mor
e of them were supposed to be here tonight, but Mixer almost hoped that if Chandler himself wasn’t around, he wouldn’t find the freaks. Bad news, those two.
The music was a loud, heavy machine dub, maxed out on the bass, and Mixer felt like he had bone boomers strapped all over his body. He should have taken aspirin along with the neutralizers; he was going to have a hell of a headache before too long.
Mixer moved over to one of the minibars, bought a bottle of Beck’s, then wandered through the crowd, watching faces, latching onto snatches of conversation.
“…something burning inside his head…”
“Style, man, kicks and style…”
“…and he was taking his clothes off, enough to make you lose your breakfast.”
“…blood rushing up his neck…”
“Yeah, give me your slots, I’ll bang your head…”
“…rush…”
“…slide, baby, into that body-bag…”
“…rush…”
“Give. Give me those kicks, you…”
“…RUSH…”
Rush, all right. Mixer stopped listening, letting the words wash through him with the pounding of the dub. A slow, high guitar was cutting through the heavy bass now, fine, fine stuff; he could just grab a seat somewhere, drink his beer, and listen. But he needed to find Chandler.
Chick got himself offed, and Chandler disappeared at the same time. Could be coincidence, but Mixer didn’t believe it. Not when Chick had been trying to set up a deal of some kind with Chandler—wouldn’t say what, just that it was big. Mixer didn’t think Chandler had killed Chick, but there had to be a connection.
He passed a booth with its door still open. Inside was a naked man wrapped in a body-bag—a full body neural net—twitching and shaking on a cot, mouth open and drooling as the net sparked and sputtered. Fuck me, Mixer thought, no one should have to see that. He pulled the curtain shut and moved on.
Next to the booth was a gambling alcove, all the spots occupied. One woman was winning big, but she looked sick—apparently she was here to lose, maybe even go broke; she sure wasn’t happy winning. The others were a mix, some of them pleased, some as sick as the woman. All of them appeared to be losing. That was one of the things that made a wham-wham interesting to Mixer—you never knew who would want what, and watching them was always a discovery.
“Hey, spikehead!”
The voice came at him from out of the noise and crowd and lights, and Mixer wasn’t sure he wanted to find the source. The voice was vaguely familiar.
“Spiiiiiiikehead!”
From his left. Mixer stepped around an ion pole, static raising his hair for a moment, and saw the two freaks in an open booth, drinking from tall, fluted glasses. Karl, who leaned back against the booth wall, was six and a half feet tall; when he’d lost his right arm, he’d replaced it with a batch of three-foot-long metal chains that hung from his shoulder. Like Hook’s croc, you always knew when Karl was getting close—clink, clink, clink. Skeez was shorter and stockier, with one eye that was a bright green glow-globe. Lots of stories about how that happened. He was sitting forward, saluting Mixer with his glass.
“Hey, spikehead, have a seat,” Skeez said.
Mixer tossed his half-full beer into a trash barrel and moved forward to within a few feet of them, but remained standing. “I’m looking for Chandler,” he said.
Skeez laughed, and Mixer swore the green globe in his eye got brighter.
“Chandler doesn’t want to be found,” Karl said. He shrugged his right shoulder and rattled his chains. “He’s gone to ground, says you should have gotten the message.”
“When?”
“At the Caterwaul. A ghost message.”
Mixer shivered inside, remembering that freaky, invisible presence on the eleventh floor, the window being pulled shut after he jumped. Ghost messages. He wouldn’t be surprised.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got the message.”
“But here you are looking for Chandler,” Skeez said.
“I got the message. I just didn’t know what it was. Now I do.”
Skeez slowly shook his head. “Not good enough.”
Mixer started to back away, but Karl was too fast, on his feet and rushing forward, dipping and swinging the chains up and around, across Mixer’s shoulders, wrapping around his right arm. Which was the exo. The chains clanked on the exoskeleton and Mixer grabbed them in his augmented fingers, twisting out and away from Karl, unwinding himself, but hanging onto the chains. Then he jerked the chains with everything he had, which sent streaks of pain down his back, but also pulled Karl off his feet and sent him sprawling across the floor.
Mixer still had hold of the ends of Karl’s chains, was getting ready to drag the guy into a wall, when he glanced at Skeez. Skeez had a cattle prod out, pointed at Mixer.
“Drop the chains,” he said. Mixer did. “We’re going to have to make sure you’ve got the message,” Skeez said. “Chandler insists.”
“I told you,” Mixer said. “I’ve got the message.”
Skeez shook his head again, smiling. “Chandler’s given us free rein.” Karl struggled to his feet, hand on the table, and rattled his chains a few times. “We can have all the fun we want,” Skeez went on. “As long as there’s no permanent damage, nothing that can’t be surgically corrected.”
Karl started toward Mixer again, grinning, then abruptly stopped. The grin vanished, along with Skeez’s smile, and they were both looking past Mixer.
“He’s mine,” a voice said.
Mixer turned to see a tall, stunningly beautiful woman standing just a foot behind him. Her hair was a glistening auburn, and her clothes were a dark, deep blood-red. “You’ll come with me,” she said, looking at Mixer.
Mixer looked back at Karl and Skeez. Both looked pissed as hell, but they didn’t object, they didn’t say a word. Skeez even sheathed the cattle prod and laid it across his lap. Mixer turned back to the woman.
“I can go with you?” he said.
“You will go with me.”
Mixer didn’t like the sound of that, and he had no idea who this woman was, but going with her had to be better than having the shit pounded out of him by the two freaks.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The woman hooked her arm through his and led him away from the freaks. They worked their way through the wham-wham, and people moved to make way for them. Uh-oh, Mixer thought, what didn’t he know about this woman?
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Saint Katherine,” she replied.
“Oh, shit.”
“Exactly,” St. Katherine said, smiling.
Before Mixer could move, he felt the collar whip around his neck and lock up. A jolt went up into his head, white lights exploding behind his eyes. Oh, fuck me, Mixer thought. Then there was another jolt, harder, his vision blacked out…and then there was nothing.
10
LATE TUESDAY MORNING, the air conditioning kicked back on. Carlucci looked up from his desk and stared at the wall vent; he watched the bits of whirling dust, listened to the clicks and whirs and squeals of obsolete machinery trying desperately to come back to life. He sat without moving, waiting for a cool wash of air, some relief from the heat and stagnation, but all he really noticed was the stench of burning oil, a smell the air conditioning always seemed to have in this building. The relief would come eventually, he knew that, but for now all he got was the stink. Everything back to normal. He left the fan running.
Carlucci looked down at the crumpled sheet of yellow paper on the desk—the list of names Paula Asgard had given to him. He should be working on the other two murders, Butler and the mayor’s nephew, the two “real” cases at the top of his list. But he couldn’t get the Chick Roberts case out of his mind. Fuck it, he thought. He picked up the phone and punched up Diane’s number.
“Info-Services, Diane Wanamaker.” That wonderful, throaty voice.
“Diane, this is Frank.”
�
��Frank. The man of my dreams.”
“Right,” Carlucci said. “There’s never been a man in your dreams.”
Diane laughed. “True enough. What can I do for you?”
“Let me buy you lunch.”
“That I can do, man o’ mine. I’m scheduled for twelve-thirty. That all right with you?”
“Sure,” Carlucci said. “Want me to come by?”
“No, I won’t put you through all that. I’ll meet you out front. And Frank?”
“Yeah?”
“Take me somewhere nice.”
“Of course.”
“Ah, yes.” She sighed. He could almost see her shaking her head. “I don’t think you even know any nice places.”
“Twelve-thirty, in front of the building.”
“Okay. See you then.”
Carlucci put the phone down and picked up the sheet of yellow paper. He read over the names again, waiting for one of them to emerge from the others, carrying with it some special meaning, setting off a flash of memory or insight. Nothing happened. He took a pen and added Chick Roberts and Paula Asgard to the top of the list, then folded the sheet and put it in his wallet.
Carlucci sat on the concrete steps in front of the station, waiting for Diane. The sidewalks were swarming with the midday crowds, every bench and available seat occupied by men and women eating their lunches. The air was heavy with the heat and damp, the sun glaring through thin, mustard-colored clouds overhead. The city was still waiting for the first cool-down that was supposed to come with autumn; sometimes Carlucci wondered if one year the fall and winter wouldn’t even arrive, and the stifling heat and humidity of summer would just continue on without relief, relentlessly baking them all until everyone in the city went mad.
Carlucci closed his eyes, and for a few, brief moments imagined himself at Pine Crest, on the shore of the lake high in the Sierras. He could feel the cool, clean air washing over him, could even smell the pungent aroma of pine needles and wood smoke. It had been years since he’d been there, far too many years since he and Andrea and the kids had stayed at Tony and Imogene’s cabin. Too many years since he and Tony had gone out on the lake before sunrise, the boat purring through the deep, cold water, surrounded by the dark green of trees as they headed for one of their secret spots for a few hours of fishing.
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