“What happened?” Paula asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Mixer said, nodding. He laughed. “What happened? I’ll tell you.” He took a drink, stared into the small glass. “Chick used to drink this stuff, didn’t he?” He looked at Paula, who nodded. “Well. I’m sure it’ll do the job.” He set the glass down, glanced at Tremaine, then turned back to Paula.
“I went to a wham-wham, remember? I’d pumped myself full of neutralizers, and they kept me from caving in to whatever they’d gassed into the place, but they made me a little misted, too, I think. I don’t know. I was looking for someone, and I got into a little trouble with two freaks, and someone bailed me out. A woman. I wasn’t thinking straight, like why were the two freaks afraid of her? By the time I figured it out, it was too late. She’d collared me, and I was gone.”
“Saint Katherine,” Paula said.
Mixer nodded. “That was her. There was this and that, a few days, and then the trial.” He polished off his vodka, coughed, and poured some more. “Let’s just say I survived, and this is what it did to me.” He held up his right arm, rotated it. “Still pretty fucking rabid, isn’t it?”
“But the Saints announced over the nets that you had died.”
Mixer dropped his arm to the table with a thump. “It’s complicated. But if I want to stay alive, I’d better stay dead. You can’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, you can’t tell anyone you know I’m alive.” He turned to Tremaine. “You too.”
“I understand,” Tremaine said.
“Do you?”
“Who knows you’re alive, then?” Paula asked.
“Two of the Saints. The rest think I’m dead. You and Tremaine.” He paused, staring at Tremaine. “And Carlucci.”
“You’ve seen him?” Paula asked, wondering why he was looking so intently at Tremaine.
“Last night.” Still staring at Tremaine.
“Frank Carlucci?” Tremaine asked.
Mixer nodded. “Yeah, that Carlucci. And he wants to talk to you.”
Tremaine smiled. “Really? I’ve made several interview requests, but I’ve always been turned down. And now he wants to talk to me. What about?”
“Something about the mayor’s nephew. Bill Kashen.”
“He thinks I know something about the murder?”
“Apparently.”
Paula watched the two men, feeling there was some kind of strange contest in progress, some cat-and-mousing. But what was it all about?
“How do you know Carlucci?” Tremaine asked, glancing back and forth between Paula and Mixer.
Paula didn’t say anything, remembering Carlucci’s warning. No one was supposed to know he was digging into Chick’s murder.
“Remember the Chain Killer a few years ago?” Mixer said.
Tremaine nodded.
“I got mixed up in that whole mess. By accident. I got to know Carlucci through a friend of his.”
“Louis Tanner.”
Mixer nodded. “That’s the guy. See, you always know more than anyone expects. That’s why Carlucci wants to talk to you. He knows you’ve been digging into stuff with the mayor, the mayor’s nephew.”
There was a long silence, and Paula was still afraid to say anything, afraid to give anything away. She didn’t think anything bad would happen if Tremaine knew everything, but she couldn’t know for sure. And she had made promises to Carlucci.
“Does Carlucci…?” Tremaine paused, as if unsure he should say anything. The reporter, trying not to give away more than he had to. “Does Carlucci know there’s a connection between the mayor’s nephew’s killing, and Chick Roberts’s killing?”
“Is there?” Mixer asked.
“I think so.”
Mixer shrugged. “He didn’t say anything about it. You’ll have to ask him.”
There was another silence, and Paula felt extremely uncomfortable. She wanted them both to leave.
“I don’t suppose,” Mixer began, “that you’d be willing to tell me everything you know about all this.”
Tremaine shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know why the mayor would want me dead, do you?”
“What?” Paula asked. “What is this?”
“Do you?” Mixer said again.
“No,” Tremaine said. “Are you sure he does?”
“Not anymore,” Mixer said, smiling. “He thinks it’s done.” Then, “Would you tell me if you knew?”
Tremaine nodded. “Yes.” He paused. “Maybe you and I should talk sometime. Maybe we can help each other.”
“Maybe.”
Tremaine stood. Paula noticed that he hadn’t touched the vodka. “I think I’d better go.”
This time Mixer didn’t object. He just said, “Don’t forget. Carlucci wants to talk to you.”
“I won’t.” Tremaine turned to Paula. “I don’t know what to say. This is going to be difficult for a while, I guess. I’ll call you soon, all right?”
Paula nodded, relieved that Tremaine was leaving, and feeling guilty about it.
Tremaine walked to the apartment door, opened it, and left, closing the door behind him.
“Are you sleeping with him?” Mixer asked.
“It’s none of your fucking business,” Paula said, furious with him. “That’s the first thing out of your mouth, now that we’re alone? I’ve been thinking you were dead, all these days, and that’s what you’ve got to say to me?”
Mixer looked down at his glass. “Sorry,” he said. He poured himself another drink, sucked some of it down. He looked up at Paula. “I am sorry, for Christ’s sake.”
Paula put her head into her hands, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s all right.” She reached out, took his right hand gently in hers, feeling the metal, the alternately smooth and ridged, scarred flesh. “Are you really okay?”
Mixer nodded. “Yeah.”
“What happened?” she asked, knowing he hadn’t told her everything while Tremaine had been there.
“Saint Katherine was contracted to kill me through her trial,” Mixer said. “By Mayor Kashen.”
“That’s why you asked Tremaine.”
“Yeah. Do you believe him? That he doesn’t know? That he’d tell me if he did?”
Paula hesitated, feeling awkward. “Yes,” she finally said.
“Yeah, I do too.” He took a sip of the vodka, twisting his face. “Maybe you get used to this,” he said, refilling his glass. “The trial scorched my arm and face instead of my brain, and I’m alive, and most of the time my head’s all there. Saint Katherine and Saint Lucy took me away, and I guess I looked dead, because all the other Saints think the trial killed me. Saint Katherine and Saint Lucy took care of me. They brought in a doctor, they stayed with me night and day, Saint Katherine in particular. They saved my life.”
“But Saint Katherine was supposed to kill you.”
Mixer nodded. “Yeah. But I survived, and she believes I’ve been chosen. Chosen to be her consort.” He paused. “She says she loves me.”
Paula looked at him, watched his eyes blinking at her, his chest moving with each breath. “Does she?”
Mixer smiled. “Yes. I know it sounds crazy, and hell, it probably is crazy, but the woman loves me.”
“And how do you feel about her?” Paula asked.
Mixer’s smile faded, and he shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“What are you going to do now?” Paula asked.
“I don’t know. Stay dead for a while, that’s for sure. Try to find out why the mayor wanted me dead. It’s all tied up with Chick, somehow. And Tremaine probably knows more about what’s going on than anyone else right now. I’ll try talking to him again.”
They sat at the table a while longer without talking. Paula finished off her orange juice, and Mixer drank one more glass of the vodka. He slid the glass back and forth, then stood. “I’ve gotta use the head.”
While Mixer was in the bathroom, Paula cleared off the table, leaving
the vodka and Mixer’s glass in case he wanted more. She drank Tremaine’s vodka, slowly, steadily, savoring it going down her throat cold and hot at the same time, melting its way down into her stomach. Then she put the glass in the sink and stood with her hips against the counter, looking at nothing. She was exhausted, drained.
She should be feeling ecstatic, seeing Mixer alive when she’d thought he was dead, when she’d spent days grieving for him, combining it with her continuing grief for Chick. And she was happy, she was, but she was anxious, too, worried about what was still to come. Mixer being alive didn’t end things. In a sense, it only added to her worry.
Mixer came out of the bathroom stretching and grimacing. He looked at the vodka and glass, shook his head. “I don’t need any more,” he said.
Paula put the glass in the sink with the others, put the bottle back in the freezer. There wasn’t much left.
“Would it be all right if I stayed here tonight?” Mixer asked. “I can hardly walk, and I’m not up to going back to the Tenderloin right now. The booze cuts the pain, but puts me out. I can sleep on the floor, on some blankets.”
“Of course you can stay. And you don’t have to sleep on the floor, Mixer. There’s plenty of room in the bed.”
“Are you sure?”
Paula nodded, smiling. “I’m sure.” She walked up to him and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go.”
She went into the bedroom, turned on the nightstand lamp, thinking about the night Tremaine had stayed. It had been a night too mixed up with other things and there was no way to judge it, no way to know if it meant anything. She turned to Mixer. “You need help getting undressed?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Paula went into the bathroom, peed, then washed up, filling her hands over and over with water, splashing it across her face, rubbing at her eyes. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, at the dark patches under her eyes, at the tiny crow’s-feet that were just developing, at the narrow crease in her forehead, thinking about Mixer’s ruined face. She shook her head to herself.
Back in the bedroom, Mixer was stripped down to his boxers, sitting on the edge of the bed. Paula undressed, put on a light nightshirt that hung to her knees, then sat in her overstuffed chair, facing Mixer.
“You look awful, Mixer. Your hair looks like shit, the beard’s a disaster, and your arm, well, you know what the arm is like.” She smiled at him. “And you look just wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I’m so happy to see you alive.”
Mixer smiled back at her. “I do look pretty bad, don’t I?”
Paula nodded. “And that Saint Katherine woman loves you, anyway. Amazing.”
“Yeah. She doesn’t call me Mixer, by the way. She calls me by my birth name.”
“And what’s that?”
“Minor Danzig.”
“Minor Danzig. It’s a good name. Fits you. But I gotta tell you, you’ll always be Mixer to me.”
“I hope so,” he said.
Paula got up from the chair and approached the bed. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Mixer nodded. It took them a few minutes to work it out so Mixer would be comfortable. Paula was afraid of rolling onto his arm in the middle of the night, but Mixer said it would be fine. Finally they were both settled in, and Paula turned off the lamp.
Paula lay on her side, gazing into the darkness of the room, slashes of light coming in through the window blinds. She could hear Mixer breathing, could feel the warmth of his body even though they were not touching.
“I slept with him once,” she said.
There was a long pause, and Paula wondered if Mixer had fallen asleep. But finally he said, “Tremaine?”
“Yeah.”
“And you were going to sleep with him tonight?”
“Probably.”
Another long pause. “Do you love him?”
Paula almost laughed, shaking her head. “It’s way too early for that, Mixer.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“But I like him.” She felt she should say something more, but she didn’t know what it would be.
She felt Mixer’s hand rest for a moment on her hip, squeeze gently. “I hope it works out,” he said. Then the hand was gone.
“Thanks, Mixer.” Paula suddenly felt like crying, and she had no idea why. “Good night,” she whispered.
“Good night, Paula.”
Paula closed her eyes, and squeezed them tight against the tears.
22
THE INDIVIDUAL SLUG quarters were all different from one another. Some had a solid barrier between the small interrogator’s cubicle and the slug’s main quarters, with microphones and speakers so the police interrogator would never actually see the slug. Others had a glass barrier with a removable screen, so the slug could be seen if it wished.
Monk’s quarters, however, were entirely different: there was no barrier, no separation of any kind. When Carlucci stepped through the door and into the dim, large room atop police headquarters, his first impression was of a constantly shifting maze. Wide, shiny black panels hung from the ceiling throughout the room, the bottom of each panel no more than a foot above the carpeted floor. All the panels were slowly turning, not in unison, creating and closing off ever-changing pathways through them. Pieces of furniture were placed among the panels—a couch, several chairs, small tables. Carlucci only saw the furniture in glimpses as the panels turned, could only see portions of the huge picture windows with their view of the city, got only hints of the information center far in the back.
The second thing that struck him was the heat—warmer than anywhere else in the building, as warm as outdoors at midday, but far, far drier. Already there was a scratchy feeling with each breath, the air was so dry.
The panels stopped turning. “Have a seat,” a voice said, seeming to come from all around him. The voice was deep, booming. The lights dimmed a step or two. Small table lamps came on beside the chairs, then two more came on beside the couch, which was further back in the room, the lamps providing pockets of green-tinted light and casting new, sharper shadows. Carlucci smiled to himself, and sat in the nearest chair, setting his notebook and pen on the table beside it. Did Monk really think he would be awed by this show?
“Something to drink?” the voice asked. A man’s voice, Carlucci decided, now with an echo effect. What crap.
“Coffee,” Carlucci said. “Black.”
Almost immediately a short, thin, elderly Asian man in a black suit appeared, zigzagging his way through the panels, carrying a tray with a clear glass cup of dark, steaming coffee. The man stopped just in front of Carlucci and held the tray out before him. Carlucci took the coffee and said, “Thank you.” The man did not respond, only retreated two steps, then turned and walked back the way he had come.
“Don’t worry,” Monk’s voice said. “He’ll be going to his own room directly. We will have our privacy.”
“I’m not worried,” Carlucci said.
“No, I don’t imagine you are.”
There was nothing for a while, and Carlucci sipped at the coffee, studying the room. Two of the panels to his right, near the windows, began turning again, alternately narrowing and widening his view, but he was too far from the windows to really see much anyway.
Then all the panels began turning again, some more slowly than others, and Carlucci glimpsed movement far in the back, in the information center, a form lurching toward him. He saw two canes, two black-coated limbs half stepping, half dragging between the canes. Glimpses of a bloated torso, shoulders and arms strangely both muscular and bloated, all coated in a glistening black, like some luminescent wetsuit. A bloated and goggled face, head encased in a gleaming, studded helmet. The slug. Monk.
The slug staggered to the small couch flanked by console tables, and dropped heavily into it. The panels slowed, then stopped. He was perhaps twenty feet away, almost completely blocked from Carlucci’s view by the panels; all Carlucci could see as the slug
settled in was a gloved hand gripping both canes, swinging them up and over to set them behind the couch.
There was only labored breathing for some time, which gradually eased. Then the slug said, “Good evening, Lieutenant Carlucci.” No more echo effect.
“Monk.”
“You have not done this often,” Monk said. Even without the amplification, Monk’s voice was deep, authoritative.
“Just twice,” Carlucci replied.
“Your friend Brendan McConnel talked with us quite a lot, until he resigned. How is Mr. McConnel?”
“He’s fine.”
Monk laughed. “No he’s not. He’s a drunk, and he’s fucking a mouthless Screamer. We know what kind of sex he’s not getting.” A pause. “He shouldn’t have resigned, he should have stuck with it. He understood us, I believe. I liked talking with him.”
Carlucci wanted to respond, wanted to defend Brendan, wanted to tell Monk that he didn’t know Brendan at all, couldn’t know him, and had no right to judge what Brendan did or didn’t do. But Carlucci kept it in. He needed things from Monk.
“Ask your questions,” Monk said. “That’s what we are both here for.”
Carlucci wasn’t sure where to start. He opened his notebook and stared at the questions he’d jotted on the tan, lined pages, but somehow they didn’t seem right anymore.
“Are you concerned about our privacy?” Monk asked. “You needn’t be. I have more detection equipment in here…Well, be assured, there is absolutely no way anyone will ever know what is said in here. And we both know Mayor Kashen would very much like to be hearing every word.” Monk made a sound something like a laugh. “And they did try to infiltrate with listening devices. You do not need to worry.”
All right, Carlucci thought, just ask a question. “You’ve seen all the feeds. A simple question. Who killed William Kashen, and why?”
“Two questions,” Monk corrected, “and neither of them simple.” He paused, the fingers of his finely sheathed hand waving like drowsy snakes. “The answer to ‘who’ is probably irrelevant. An uninvolved professional hired for the purpose, most likely. Apprehending and arresting the man or woman who killed William Kashen would, presumably, close the case, but would not provide you with justice. Would not be able to lead you back to whoever did the hiring. And that, of course, is whom you really want. Answering the ‘why’ would probably give you the answers you are looking for. But not, once again, justice. You might learn who is responsible, and why, but you probably would not be able to convict, or even bring them to court.”
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