Carlucci

by Richard Paul Russo

  When he saw a break in the traffic, he dashed out into the rain and across the street, horns blaring at him as he juked in and out of the cars. Up the curb, across the sidewalk; then he ducked under the hood of the phone. He shook off the worst of the water, ran his card through the box, then punched in his code and Brendan’s number.

  Brendan answered almost immediately. “Chez Prosthétique,” he said, a joke almost no one but Carlucci would understand.

  “Brendan. This is Frank.”

  Brendan coughed, then said, “Funny, I thought you’d be calling soon.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Brendan hesitated, muffled the phone, and said something to someone else in his apartment. He came back on. “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  “Is it all right?”

  “It’s fine, Frank.”

  “See you in a bit, then.”

  “Right.” Brendan hung up.

  Carlucci put the phone back in the slot and looked out at the rain. If he walked, it would take about fifteen minutes, just right, but he would be drenched. Or he could stand here under the hood for ten minutes, then hope to flag down a cab or bus. Fuck it, he decided. He stepped out into the downpour and started walking.

  When he reached Brendan’s apartment building, Carlucci wasn’t as wet as he’d expected. His raincoat had kept off the worst, and the rain had lightened up, though it had never quite stopped. Biggest rainstorm in weeks, and the gutters were flooding. Carlucci took the few steps up to the building entrance and pushed Brendan’s bell. He identified himself, and Brendan buzzed him into the building.

  Brendan lived on the second floor, his apartment in the back with views of the neighboring brick buildings, thick bushes, and the airwell. Carlucci knocked on the door, and Brendan pulled it open. Brendan and a young woman were standing barefoot in the front room, both wearing jeans and both naked from the waist up. A strange sight. The woman, who was probably in her thirties, was a Screamer; her lips had been fused together, and Carlucci caught a glimpse of the nasal tube in one nostril. He also couldn’t help thinking that she had damn nice breasts. And of course Brendan had only an eight-inch stub protruding from his left shoulder where an arm should be.

  “Frank, this is Mia. Mia, Frank.”

  Carlucci nodded. Mia nodded in return, then pulled a sweatshirt on over her head. She sat on the edge of a chair and buckled sandals onto her feet.

  “Something to drink?” Brendan asked.

  “No thanks, I’ve had enough.”

  “I haven’t.” Brendan padded out of the room and into the kitchen.

  Carlucci took off his raincoat, looked around for someplace to hang it, but Mia got up from the chair to take it from him. She carried it down the hall and into the bathroom; Carlucci watched her hang it from the shower. “Thanks,” he said when she returned. She smiled at him and nodded. At least he thought it was a smile.

  Brendan came out of the kitchen with a tall glass of vodka over ice in his hand, and a towel draped over his stub. “Dry yourself off,” he said. Carlucci took the towel from him and started with his hair. Mia came up to Brendan, took a deep sniff of the vodka, brushed her fused mouth against Brendan’s lips. Then she nodded one more time at Carlucci and walked out of the apartment.

  “Sit down,” Brendan said. He carried his drink to the recliner across the room and dropped into the chair, splashing the vodka without quite spilling any. Carlucci took the only other seat in the room, a worn, overstuffed chair beside a table stacked with books; on top of one of the stacks was an old telephone. The front room had the view of the building next door: cracked brick and crumbling cement and metal grilles and shaded, glowing windows. Dusk was falling early with the clouds and the rain.

  “She’s a Screamer,” Carlucci finally said.

  “What clued you in?”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

  “You don’t have to state the obvious.” Brendan paused, drank deeply from the vodka; it would be the cheapest he could find. “She doesn’t talk much, she doesn’t smoke, and she doesn’t mind fucking a gimp,” Brendan concluded.

  Carlucci didn’t say anything. He’d had this kind of conversation with Brendan too many times, and it never went anywhere. They had known each other for twenty years, and they were still good friends of a sort, but Brendan had never been the same after he’d lost his arm. He had lost it five years earlier because of a fuck-up by his partner, Rossi, who was drunk at the time. Brendan began drinking too much himself, afterwards, and it wasn’t long before his wife left him. He hadn’t seen her in two or three years, hardly saw his two sons. He could have had the best artificial arm available, but he refused any kind of prosthetic, taking a perverse pride in his stump. He’d stayed on the force a while, behind a desk, and soon became a liaison to the slugs, doing most of the main interviews himself. No one liked the job, but Brendan was good at it, which was why Carlucci was here. Even that, though, hadn’t lasted, and two years ago Brendan had resigned. Between disability and pension payments, he had enough money to keep himself in his cheap apartment and a steady supply of even cheaper vodka. Carlucci saw him once or twice a month. Miserable evenings, every one, but Carlucci couldn’t abandon him.

  “You’ve got a session with a slug,” Brendan said.

  Carlucci nodded. “I want your advice,” he said. “I haven’t had a session with a slug in over ten years.” He shook his head. “Only had a couple, back when we were first bringing them into the department. Disasters, both of them. Then we got the liaison position going, and I’ve managed to avoid them ever since.”

  “You had people like me to do the scut work,” Brendan said with a faint smile.

  Carlucci nodded.

  “But you can’t do it this time.”

  “No,” Carlucci said. “I need a private session.”

  Brendan nodded. “The mayor’s nephew.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Sort of,” Carlucci said. “You up on the case?”

  Brendan finished off his drink. “I’m a drunk, not an illiterate,” he said. “Yes, I’m up on the case. Or as much as I can be from the news, and we both know how that is.” He reached down beside his chair and brought up a half-full vodka bottle, refilled his glass. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?”

  “There’s more involved than just the mayor’s nephew.”

  Brendan shrugged. “Robert Butler, sure. That was an easy connection to make. Partners in sleaze. I’m surprised none of the reporters have seen it yet.”

  “A couple have,” Carlucci said. “We’ve killed it.” He didn’t see any reason to mention Tremaine’s interest. “But there’s more to it than Robert Butler.”

  “What, then?”

  Carlucci shook his head. “I can’t, Brendan.”

  Brendan studied him, sipping thoughtfully at his vodka.

  “I just want your advice for dealing with the slug,” Carlucci said.

  Brendan remained silent, watching him. Carlucci finally looked away and stared out the window. Shadows moved behind a window shade in the building next door, two large shadows that seemed to be dancing with each other.

  “Don’t do it,” Brendan said. Carlucci turned to look back at him, and Brendan was shaking his head. “You’re roguing it, aren’t you? Chasing ghosts.” He continued to shake his head. “It’s not worth it, Frank. Anything goes wrong, they’ll bury you, they’ll fucking launch you into the sun.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Oh fuck, it never is.”

  “Just help me with the slug, Brendan.”

  Brendan drank again from his vodka, then set it beside him. “Shit, I know you. Frank Carlucci, bull moose, bull elephant, bull whatever. Bullshit. I can’t talk you out of it, can I?”

  “Nothing’s decided yet,” Carlucci told him.

  Brendan smiled. “That’s what you say. Hell, might even be what you think.” He breathed deeply once, and the smile disappeared. “Al
l right, Frank. I can’t help you much, but what I can…Which slug you seeing?”

  “Monk. He was the first slug put on the case.”

  Brendan nodded. “Good. He’s one of the best.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jesus, Frank, you too? Man, everyone thinks the slugs are all the same, a bunch of freaks who mainline all that brain juice and sit around all day doing nothing but think. I mean, yeah, that’s what they are, but they’re not interchangeable. Some are better than others. Monk is fucking acute. He makes intuitive leaps that are just incredible. Sometimes they’re insane leaps that are dead wrong. Most times, though, he’s razored right in on it, and you have no idea how the hell he got there.” He paused. “When’s the session?”

  “Tonight.” Carlucci was fascinated, listening to Brendan. He hadn’t noticed so much excitement and life in the man in months. Years.

  “All right,” Brendan said. “First thing you want to do is cancel the session, reschedule it for tomorrow. Or better yet, if time isn’t that critical, wait a few days.”

  “Why?”

  “Monk’ll be pushing to get everything he can and be ready for you with his best analysis. Cramming himself full of every bit of information he can scrounge up. An extra push for the scheduled session. Which is good. But if you cancel and reschedule, he’ll have a day or two free of pressure to swim around in all that info, maybe pull in a little something extra from here or there. Time to allow other possibilities to emerge, different connections to make themselves known. A chance for Monk’s real strengths to manifest. Trust me, it’s the smartest thing you can do.”

  Carlucci nodded. “All right. That’s why I’m here. What else?”

  Brendan shrugged. “It’s hard, Frank. When you actually get in there and start talking to him, there’s no formula, you just have to go with your gut. But don’t try to guide Monk. Let him take you where he’s going. That’s what he’s there for. Don’t be surprised if his questions and replies don’t seem to track. They don’t, at first, if ever, because he’ll be jumping all over the place, and you won’t have any idea how he’s getting from one thing to another. Just go with it.”

  He paused, looking at his drink, but didn’t pick it up. He turned to Carlucci. “One last thing, Frank. Don’t expect any pat answers. You may get answers that don’t seem to mean anything at all. He might give you some names, or places, or just a few phrases that don’t make sense. It won’t do you any good to ask Monk to explain them, because he won’t know what they mean, either. The intuitive leaps I was talking about. He’ll give you as much explanation as he can. You’ll just have to follow up whatever he gives you, fucking run it down, and hope it pays off.” He shrugged. “With Monk, it probably will. It may not be what you want, it may not go where you want to go, but it’ll take you to the heart of things.” One final shrug. “That’s all the advice I can give you, Frank. It’s not much, but there it is. You’ll do fine.”

  Carlucci nodded, thinking Brendan should still be on the force, working with the slugs, doing something with his life besides drinking it away. “Thanks, Brendan. I appreciate it.” He stood. “I should get going.”

  “Wait,” Brendan said. His expression fell. “Don’t go yet, Frank.” He pointed at the telephone beside Carlucci. “Call the station and cancel the session. Then stick around, have a drink with me. Just a little while.”

  Carlucci stood looking at Brendan for a few moments. Another drink wasn’t what either of them needed. Christ. He finally nodded. “All right, Brendan. For a little while.” He sat down again and picked up the phone.

  14

  THREE NIGHTS, AND nothing. Paula was exhausted, but she couldn’t stop. She’d canceled one gig with the Black Angels, and she’d left the theater early last night and tonight. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep this up. Amy had helped her when she could, but most of the time Paula had been on her own, skimming the streets of the Tenderloin at night, searching for Mixer.

  She was halfway through night four and doing no better; what little hope remained was fading rapidly. She had strayed a few blocks into the Asian Quarter for a break, and now stood in front of one of her old haunts, Misha’s Donuts and Espresso. Amy was supposed to meet her here at two. Paula punched the door aside and walked in.

  Misha’s hadn’t changed. Haunting metallic echoes and tones washed through the room from the sound system—“ambient industrial,” Misha called it. Ion poles sparked among the tables; booths around the edges were on platforms about four feet above the floor. Plasma tubes provided the lighting, deep reds and oranges glowing and flowing through them.

  The place was nearly full. Paula worked her way to the counter, picked out two sour-cream-filled donuts, got a large black coffee, and sat at a small empty table set between anion pole and a metallic stick tree. Sparks from the ion pole jumped across the table to the tips of the tree branches. The ion pole activity was supposed to make her feel better. It didn’t.

  She had taken only two bites from the first donut and a sip from the coffee when Jenny Woo slid onto the chair across the table from her, banging her elbows onto the tabletop. Her long, straight black hair was woven through with silver metal strands, which caught some of the sparks from the ion pole.

  “Hey, Asgard.” Jenny Woo flashed a split-second smile, but her expression was hard.

  “Hello, Jenny.” They didn’t like each other at all, and neither tried to hide it. Jenny and Chick had had a brief but intense affair about a year ago, which ended when Chick got hit by another of his periodic bouts of impotence. All of Chick’s affairs ended in impotence. Karma. Paula almost smiled, thinking about it.

  “Why is it,” Jenny Woo asked, “that I keep seeing you lately? Three, four times the last few days. You following me, dinko?”

  “Why would I be following you?” Paula had seen Jenny a couple of times herself, and had assumed Jenny was following her. She pushed the plate toward Jenny. “Have a donut.”

  Jenny Woo leaned back in her chair. “What I asked myself,” she said. “I come up with only one answer, and I don’t like it. Chick.”

  “Chick.”

  “Yeah.” Another flashing smile. “You know. The dead guy.”

  “I see you’re torn up about it,” Paula said.

  “He was a good fuck, until he couldn’t. After that, he wasn’t good for anything.” She raised a single eyebrow at Paula. “Which is what got him killed, really.”

  Jenny leaned forward, and Paula could see she was about to say something else, when Amy came up to the table.

  “Hey,” Amy said. “Am I interrupting anything?”

  “Yes,” Jenny Woo said. “Come back in five minutes.”

  Amy glanced at Paula, then turned back to Jenny Woo. “I know you, don’t I?”

  “Not like you think you do,” Jenny said.

  “And I don’t like you,” Amy concluded.

  “No, you don’t.” Jenny smiled again, this time holding it for several beats. “Now flash, and leave us alone for five minutes, like I said.”

  When Amy looked at her, Paula nodded. Amy shoved her hands into her jeans pockets, then walked away.

  “She with you on this?” Jenny asked.

  “There is no ‘this,’” Paula said. “She’s helping me look for someone. It’s got nothing to do with you or Chick.”

  Jenny Woo leaned forward again. When she spoke, her voice was quiet but firm. “Chick was an ambitious little shit who thought he had a lot more shine than he did. He didn’t know his limitations. He didn’t understand how dark things were until someone put a few holes in his head. Too late, then.” Jenny shook her head. “Don’t make the same mistake, Asgard. Leave it. Chick’s dead, you can’t change that, and getting dead yourself won’t help anyone.” She stood up. “I don’t want to see you again.”

  Paula pretty much felt the same, but she didn’t say anything. Jenny Woo started to turn away, then quickly swung back to face Paula.

  “You are looking for so
meone,” Jenny said. “Mixer. The trial of Saint Katherine, that frigid bitch.”

  “You know something,” Paula said, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.

  “Oh yes,” Jenny Woo said. “I know something.”

  “What?”

  Jenny Woo shook her head, this time with the first genuine smile Paula had seen on her face. A nasty smile. “I never give information away, sweetheart. There’s always a price. And there’s not a thing you’ve got that I want.” She paused, still smiling. “I like it this way, knowing that you don’t know.”

  Paula wanted to get up and strangle Jenny Woo, or smash a chair over her head. She remained seated, silent. Karma would get Jenny Woo one day, she told herself. Except Paula didn’t really believe in Karma. How could she, in this goddamn world?

  “Goodbye, Asgard.” Jenny was still smiling. She turned and marched away, pushing out the door and onto the street.

  Paula sat without moving, staring at her coffee and donuts. No fantasies of Jenny Woo coming back and telling her what she knew about Mixer, no fucking chance of that. Shit. Paula just didn’t know what to do.

  Amy reappeared in front of her. Paula had forgotten. Amy sat in the chair, frowning. “Jenny Woo, right?”

  Paula nodded.

  “You know what she does?” Amy asked. “What she bootlegs?”

  Paula nodded again. “Yeah, I know. Body-bags. Chick was in on it, too.” She paused. “So was Mixer, at the ‘retail’ end.” She shook her head.

  “Great,” said Amy. “And you’re killing yourself looking for him.”

  Paula shrugged. “What can I do? He’s my friend.” She sighed. “Jenny Woo said she knew something about Mixer, about the trial. She refused to say what.”

  “I’ve heard something, too.”

  “You have?” Paula felt a tightening inside her chest. “What?”

  “Nothing too specific. A contact on the nets says something went wrong with the trial. He didn’t know what happened, didn’t know if Mixer was alive or dead or what. The Saints are trying to keep a lid on, but he got the impression there was going to be some kind of public announcement in a day or two. And they never, never go public about their trials.”