“I’m aware of all the flaws in our justice system,” Carlucci said, cutting in at Monk’s first pause. “I don’t give a shit about them at the moment. I asked you a simple…no, change that. I asked you a direct question. Can you help me with that or not? Can you help me with anything concrete related to the case?”
Another laughing sound from Monk, then silence. His fingers, all Carlucci could see of him, had stopped moving.
“Robert Butler,” Monk said. “An obvious connection. Too obvious. Did Collier ever get the safe open? I never saw a report.”
“Yes. The safe was empty.”
“And so is the Butler-Kashen connection. Butler was killed, I believe, simply to misdirect. A surmise on my part, understand, with nothing concrete, really, to substantiate it. William Kashen was attempting to jack Butler just as he was attempting to jack his uncle, the mayor of this beautiful city, His Honor Terrance Kashen.”
“Kashen was trying to jack his uncle,” Carlucci repeated, hoping for some clarification.
“Oh, yes. Something which the mayor has only recently learned for himself. Which is why he’s now called you off the case.”
“I haven’t been called off the case.”
“Not officially, no. But he’s asked you to bury the case nonetheless, hasn’t he?”
Carlucci didn’t answer. He felt he was on shaky ground, unsure where to step next. Too many dynamics he still didn’t understand. What was Monk’s role in all this? He seemed more involved, somehow, than Carlucci would have expected.
More of that strangled laughter. “The mayor, His Honor, will get his in the end,” Monk said. “You just watch. He’s not as crucial to things as he believes, and he will be hung out to dry.”
“Hung out to dry by who?” Carlucci asked.
“By whom,” Monk corrected. “That’s a good question. But I don’t have an answer to it for you.”
Carlucci was certain Monk was lying. But what the hell could he do about it? Nothing. Nothing but wait, dig around, ask more questions, and hope for some inadvertent clue.
“How was Kashen trying to screw over his uncle and Butler?”
“That’s far less clear,” Monk said. “He was trying to sell something. Information of some kind. Now. Either the buyer got what he wanted and then killed Kashen—perhaps to shut him up, perhaps to avoid a very high payment—or Kashen’s source for the information discovered that Kashen had ‘borrowed’ it from them, and called in the loan. With Kashen’s life as interest.”
“Very clever,” Carlucci said.
“Sarcasm is more effective if it’s subtler,” Monk said. “It doesn’t sink in immediately, and then the subject is never quite sure about the intent. Much more disturbing that way.”
“Anything else?” Carlucci asked.
“Much more. We have hardly begun.”
There was another long silence. Carlucci tried to remember what Brendan had told him. Let Monk go, let him wander around. Try not to guide him. Shit, not much chance of that.
“Your daughter,” Monk said.
“What?”
“Caroline. She has Gould’s, yes?”
“What the fuck does that have to do with this?”
“Nothing,” Monk admitted. “I’m just talking, trying to get to know you better. It will make the session more productive.”
“More productive for who?”
There was a slight hesitation, then, “For both of us. Gould’s, yes?”
Carlucci sank back in the chair, closed his eyes. Christ, he was tired. “Yes, she has Gould’s Syndrome.”
“A drastically shortened life,” Monk said. “A terrible shame. A terrible waste.” There was a pause. “Would it help, to compensate, if you could greatly extend the life spans of the rest of your family?”
Carlucci opened his eyes and sat up. “What is all this?” he asked. “Someone else asked me something like that a few days ago.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’ll bet you don’t. It doesn’t matter, it’s nothing. It’s in the air. A universal fantasy, a twenty-first century Grail. That’s all. It was just a question.”
No, Carlucci thought, there’s something more than that. But what? Monk wasn’t going to tell him.
“The Tenderloin,” Monk said. “Part of the answer is there. With the Saints.”
“The Saints?”
“You know who they are?”
“A little.”
“Insane women,” Monk said. “They can’t have any answers. I don’t know why I said it.” Monk’s voice sounded genuinely puzzled. “Perhaps they do, somewhere. But you won’t be able to talk to them, you can’t reach those women.”
“You’re a lot of help,” Carlucci said.
Panels moved, turned edge on so he had a full view of Monk. Monk shifted on the couch, and the glistening black coating seemed to undulate over him. His goggled, helmeted head rose, craned forward. Pale, fleshy lips moved. “You want some real help?”
It sounded like a challenge. Carlucci nodded. “Yes, I want some real help.”
Monk seemed to weave slightly, as though he had difficulty remaining upright. The lips formed an unpleasant smile.
“Chick Roberts,” Monk said. “How’s that for real help?”
Carlucci hesitated a moment, then asked, “Who’s Chick Roberts?”
“You called up the case,” Monk said. “A case that bypassed you, but you called it up. Came across the roadblock, and let it go. You didn’t pursue it. Not officially. Later that day, you contacted Sergeant Ruben Santos, the officer in charge of the case, arranged to meet him outside the department building.”
“We talked about the mayor’s nephew.”
Monk laughed. “You talked about Chick Roberts. No, I could never prove it, but I know you talked about Chick Roberts. You later called Paula Asgard, told her you checked into the case, that it was dead-ended, and that she should forget about it.”
“Yes,” Carlucci said. “The case was a dead end.”
“The case was being buried.”
“That’s your interpretation.”
“Yours, too,” Monk insisted. “You told the girlfriend to forget about it, but you didn’t, did you? You’ve been investigating it on your own, haven’t you?”
“No,” Carlucci said, trying to remain calm and assured. “I let it go. It wasn’t my case.”
Monk shook his head. “No, no, no, Lieutenant Carlucci. You kept investigating, you discovered that the Chick Roberts case is connected to William Kashen’s.”
“It is?”
Monk sighed heavily. “This obstinance does not help the session,” he said. “We make far better progress if we work together. If we are completely open and honest.”
“What a crock,” Carlucci said. “This is supposed to be my interrogation, my investigation.”
“You think so?” Monk said, smiling.
“What the hell are you after?”
Monk slowly shook his head and lay back on the couch, the bloated limbs and body sliding and shifting. Carlucci wished he could see the thing’s eyes, not just those damn goggles. Monk’s fingers flicked across something on the console beside him and the panels turned back, once more obscuring him from view. The panels weren’t in exactly the same position, though, and Carlucci could see a strip of his body, another of his neck and face. He wondered if it was intentional. He watched Monk’s gloved fingers pull some of the coating away from his neck, the fingers of his other hand applying a series of dermal patches to the bare skin. Then the coating was worked back.
“I’m just trying to help you,” Monk eventually said.
“Then tell me, what’s the connection between the Chick Roberts and the William Kashen killings?”
“The mayor wants them both buried,” Monk said. “That’s a hell of a connection.”
“I don’t know that that’s true.”
“It’s true. You know it’s true.”
Carlucci rubbed at his e
yes, his temple. He felt like the entire interrogation had gotten away from him. He didn’t know what questions to ask. “What else?” he finally said. “What’s the real connection?” When Monk did not immediately reply, Carlucci said, “What the hell is all this about? Why are these people killing each other? What is at stake here?”
Nothing from Monk. Gloved fingers tapped at the console. What was he doing? His head shifted, goggles and helmet, staring at something.
“The spikehead might have known,” Monk said. “But the spikehead is dead.”
“Mixer,” Carlucci said.
“Yes, Mixer. There’s the connection to the Saints.”
“I don’t understand,” Carlucci said, though he understood perfectly well. “Mixer’s dead?”
“The Saints put him on trial. And he died. They killed him. Yes, Mixer’s dead.”
So the slug didn’t know everything. Carlucci wanted to tell him, wanted to rub that freakish face in it, but he said nothing. “Why was Chick Roberts killed?” he asked.
“I don’t have the answer to that, either,” Monk said.
Again, Carlucci felt certain the slug was lying. He wanted to order all the feeds sent to one of the other slugs, and set up another session, see if one of the other slugs would be able to give him something else, but he knew it was impossible. That would be pushing the mayor too far. He wished he understood where Monk stood in all this. There was something crucial there, something Carlucci didn’t know.
He picked up his coffee, started to drink it, but it was lukewarm. A bad temperature. What had Monk given him so far? Nothing. A couple of small things. Butler’s murder as diversion. Something about this longer life stuff. Nothing particularly useful, not even in a cryptic way. The entire session had gone nothing like Brendan had led him to expect. Monk had been far more active, far more aggressive, than he would ever have guessed.
“Why did you decide to become a slug?” he asked Monk.
No answer. Panels moved, revealing Monk again, and he gave that twisted, thick-lipped smile. “To get laid,” he said. The panels shifted, cut him completely from view.
“Do you have any answers?” Carlucci asked.
“You haven’t asked the right questions. And don’t ask me what the right questions are. If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Carlucci pushed the coffee cup away, picked up his notebook, and stared at the questions he’d written, stared at the blank spaces between them.
“You haven’t given me anything I didn’t already know, or had at least guessed at,” Carlucci said. It was a small lie, mostly true. He felt certain Monk had given him a lot of lies, most of them quite big.
The panels shifted, revealing Monk’s face and one arm.
“I’ll clue you on something,” Monk said. “A big secret.” He paused, as though unsure whether or not to continue. “You think we’re here for you, don’t you? That we slugs are ensconced here in this building for you, pumping ourselves full of reason enhancers and metabolic juicers, deforming our bodies so we can help you solve difficult cases.” Monk shook his head, smiling again. “You are here for us.”
Monk pushed himself up, reached behind the couch, and pulled out his canes. “The session is over,” he said. He punched something into the console and the panels all began turning again, shifting back and forth as Monk worked up to his feet. Then he lurched away from the couch and headed toward the back of the room. Carlucci kept waiting for him to stop and turn around to say one more thing, take one more shot, but he never did. Monk staggered through the information center, around a corner, and was gone from sight. Then all but two small lights went out, and the room was filled with shifting, leaping shadows.
Carlucci stood, picked up his notebook. He watched the whipping, slashing shadows for a minute, then turned and walked toward the door. As he reached for the handle, he heard an echoing whisper roll through the air. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought the whisper said, “Your life, Carlucci.” Carlucci waited, but there was nothing else. He pulled the door open and left.
23
PAULA ALMOST MISSED it. Of course, she hadn’t been looking for it. She hadn’t been looking for anything.
It was close to midnight, and she’d just come home after closing up at the Lumiere. Once again, when she walked into her apartment and turned on the light, she stared at the stacks of Chick’s things, thinking she had to do something with them. But not tonight. She was too damn tired.
She did open one of the boxes filled with Chick’s home-studio discs, some of them just audio, some with video as well. Flipping through the cases, she took out one called Aphasia Sciatica, which she didn’t recognize. She brought it into the bedroom, powered up system and monitor, put the disc into the player, and sat back in her overstuffed chair to watch.
The disc was filled with speeded-out images of what appeared to be neural surgery, both brain and spinal, backed by lots of atonal screeching industrial music. Twenty minutes into the disc Paula was starting to nod off, kind of bored by the whole thing, when there was a brief blip in the picture and sound. She kept watching for a few moments; then her head jerked and she sat up, realizing something odd had happened. She grabbed the remote and stopped the disc, freeze-framing on the image of a hunchbacked woman, spinal cord exposed, her head twisted around, mouth open, eyes wide and staring at metal strands emerging from her spine. Paula reversed the playback, saw the electrified metal strands whipping about, coiling and uncoiling from the woman’s spine as she silently screamed. The blip came and went again. Stop, then play, slow motion now. The blip was longer this time, a clean break in the video. Back again, frame advance, then freeze the blip.
On the screen was an incredibly complex, detailed drawing, something like the interior topography of a huge insect. At the top of the screen, above a line of ideographs, were the words PART THREE. On both sides of the drawing were columns of dense, tiny text, all ideographs. She guessed the ideographs were Chinese. Not because she knew Chinese, but because she suspected New Hong Kong. Paula dropped to her knees and crawled forward, studying the text, but there was no other English anywhere. Was this what Chick had died for?
Paula got back in the chair and let the disc play at normal speed again. She watched intently for another fifteen minutes, listening carefully to the soundtrack, but there were no other breaks in either the audio or the video on the rest of the disc.
When it ended, Paula stared at the empty blue screen, thinking. “Part Three” sure as hell implied at least two other parts. Where were they? On other discs, of course. They had to be. But which ones? Or were the others taken when Chick was killed? But if they were, how was this one missed?
She went back into the front room, took another of Chick’s homemade discs from the box, brought it into the bedroom, and popped it on. She watched it carefully, but when it ended half an hour later, she’d found nothing.
She returned to the front room and stared at the boxes and crates. There were hundreds of discs and tapes in various formats, some commercial, others homemade by Chick or other people. If there were more parts to this, how could she possibly find them without spending weeks searching through everything? She tried to think like Chick, tried to put herself in his place and figure out how he would have decided which discs or tapes to put this stuff on, figure out a key, but she quickly realized it was absurd. There was no way to find the other pieces without going through everything, disc by disc, tape by tape. And she’d need help for that.
Then what? Even if she found all the parts to whatever this was, what then? What the hell would she do with it? Who could she take it to?
Carlucci? He was digging into Chick’s death, he was a cop, a good cop. That made a kind of sense.
Tremaine? He was doing this story, he was trying to find answers, too. No, not Tremaine. She didn’t know him well enough yet, didn’t know what kind of trust she could put in him. And Carlucci, she wasn’t sure about him either, for some reason. There were too many funny things with the
cops and Chick.
Mixer.
She went into the bedroom, put the Aphasia Sciatica disc in its case. Mixer was the only person she trusted completely.
One in the morning. But Mixer was in the Tenderloin, and in there it was Prime Time. Paula put on her jacket, put the disc in one of the inner pockets, and left.
The Euro Quarter was chaos. A train of Caged Men crawled through the streets, completely jamming up traffic. Chicken-wire cages on wheels were pulled by women in crash suits, two cables over each shoulder, two women to a cage. Inside each cage was a squatting, naked man, fingers gripping the chicken-wire walls. There must have been thirty cages in the train. Thumping drum music pounded from speakers in each cage. The men yelped, they scratched their genitals, they grinned. The women pulling the cages were faceless, features hidden by masks of bone. Horns and sirens blared in futile frustration; if anyone actually tried to get the Caged Men off the street, the women would start shooting.
Movement on the sidewalks wasn’t much better. Paula didn’t fight the crowds; she moved along with them as they shifted around the Caged Men and the string of dancing foot-followers in their wake. Everyone seemed angry. Paula ducked into Mr. Pink’s Bookstop, just to get out of the crush. She hated Mr. Pink’s. Perv heaven. Porn never seemed to change much. Paula wandered among the shelves, ignoring the stares of the men, the snickers of other women. How did they know? The cover photos on books and magazines made her queasy; she tried not to look at them, but as she walked along they kept clutching at her gaze. Finally, deciding this was worse than the crush outside, she pushed her way out of the store.
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