Ten minutes later, the crush eased as the last of the Caged Men rolled past. Paula was sweating, still feeling a little sick from Mr. Pink’s. She had to make way for a band of the Daughters of Zion. They were obviously on the prowl, probably hoping to run into a pack of Heydrich’s Fists and have a bang-out. Blood and gore and smashed faces. Great.
Eventually Paula found the alley Mixer had directed her to. Not quite as crowded, but hardly empty. Three or four drum fires burned; several people clustered around one, roasting an unrecognizable animal on a spit. A family of Screamers lurched past, two adults and two children all bound together at the wrists and ankles with rope. Paula located the door, pressed the intercom. There was a burst of static, which immediately cleared. “Yes?” A neutral voice, could have been a man or a woman.
“Paula Asgard,” she said. “I’m here to see…” She caught herself. “To see Minor Danzig.”
A long pause, then, “Wait.” Another burst of static, then dead air.
“Wait for what?”
No response.
Paula waited, staring at the door. Were they trying to check her out? There were no windows in the door, nothing that looked like a screener. She looked up the wall, but didn’t see anyone looking down at her.
“Paula.”
The voice came from behind her. She turned to see Mixer smiling.
“Just had to make sure,” he said. “Paranoia’s our survival strategy right now.” He came forward, kissed her cheek, then banged twice on the door. The door swung open, and a tall, stunning woman in long, blood-red robes stepped aside to let them in. The woman closed the door behind them and secured it.
“Paula, this is Saint Katherine. Paula Asgard.”
St. Katherine smiled, took Paula’s hand. Her fingers were smooth and warm; Paula had expected them to be cold.
“Why are you here?” Mixer asked.
Paula looked at St. Katherine. She didn’t know this woman at all. She didn’t care if St. Katherine had saved Mixer’s life. But she felt awkward saying anything. No, not just awkward. Almost afraid. This was the woman who had nearly killed Mixer, who had killed or wrecked others.
“What is it, Paula?” Mixer said.
Paula turned back to him. “Can I talk to you alone?” She paused. “It’s about Chick.”
There was a long silence, Mixer looking at her; almost smiling, Paula thought. She glanced at St. Katherine, who showed no signs of leaving, and no signs of discomfort. There was something here, Paula realized, something she didn’t quite understand, something between Mixer and St. Katherine.
Finally Mixer shook his head. “Saint Katherine and I are together in all this,” he said. “Chick, the mayor, the mayor’s nephew, all of it.”
“I don’t know her,” Paula said. She turned to St. Katherine. “I don’t know you. And so I don’t trust you.”
St. Katherine smiled. “It’s all right. I understand.” But she still did not make a move to leave.
“Do you trust me?” Mixer asked.
“I came to you with this. Not Carlucci, not Tremaine,” she said, half wishing now she had gone to Carlucci instead.
“Then trust Saint Katherine,” Mixer said. “Whatever you tell me, if she wasn’t here, I’d tell her later.”
Yes, Paula thought, something more had happened between them, something since Mixer had come to see her, telling her he was alive. His doubts and fears about St. Katherine were gone.
Paula nodded. She trusted Mixer, more than anyone else. She would trust St. Katherine, too. She took the disc from inside her jacket, held it up. “I’ve got something to show you.”
A basement room, dark except for the colored lights of electronic displays on computers, sound and video systems, communication consoles. Paula sat on a small, hard chair; Mixer and St. Katherine were seated on her right, St. Lucy on her left. They stared at the image on the large-screen monitor. The text was sharp and clear, the ideographs quite beautiful; the diagram was still incomprehensible to Paula.
“The text is Chinese,” St. Lucy said.
Paula had met St. Lucy only a few minutes earlier, but already she liked the woman. St. Lucy seemed so normal, so intelligent and grounded; Paula wondered how she could ever have joined the Saints.
“You read Chinese?” Paula asked.
“No. Only a few words and phrases. But I recognize it.”
“What about the drawing, diagram, whatever the fuck it is?” Mixer asked, leaning forward.
“It looks medical to me,” St. Katherine said.
St. Lucy nodded. “To me also. But…” She left it there. Then, “We know someone who should look at the diagram, who might know what it is. And someone who reads Chinese. Unfortunately, not the same person.” She turned to Paula and smiled, shrugging gently.
“We need to go through all of Chick’s tapes and discs,” Mixer said. “You still have them?” he asked Paula. “You didn’t sell or give any of them away?”
“No. Other things, yeah, but I kept all the music and video. I wanted to go through it, decide what to keep. Which probably would have been most of it. But…” Here was one of the things that bothered her. “If this is what Chick was killed over, why is it still here? Why didn’t they take everything of Chick’s when they killed him?”
“I wonder, too,” Mixer said, “but I can make some guesses. Chick had this stuff, which he was trying to sell. Diagrams and text, apparently. Something big. Maybe we’ll find out what. He found it by accident, or stole it.” Mixer grinned in the light of the displays. “We know which was more likely. Now, Chick’s not too smart, but he’s not completely stupid, either. So he makes an extra copy, splitting it up and scattering the pieces around in his discs. When somebody comes after him, he’s still got the original to hand over, trying to save his ass. But they kill him anyway.” Mixer sighed. “So what do they do? They’ve got what they came for. They don’t know if there’s another copy. Hauling everything out of that place would take a lot of time and be damn conspicuous, and remember, this is a murder that’s being buried, someone’s trying to keep it quiet. And probably the original was in some encrypted format that would be damn hard to copy into readable text like this,” he said, pointing at the screen. “But you know Chick, he was a fucking wizard with that kind of stuff. Looking at him, though, you’d never have a clue.” Mixer shrugged. “Hell, it’s all a guess. But we’ve got to look through everything and see if there’s more.”
“There’s a lot to go through,” Paula said.
“Yeah, I know. But we can get the Saints working on it, some of the novitiates. No one will know what it is; hell, we don’t. They’ll just be looking for pieces. Everything will be ice.”
“And we’ll get someone to come in and translate the text,” St. Katherine said. “And someone to check out the diagrams. They will be people we can trust, of course.”
“And then what?” Paula asked. “If we find the rest of it and figure out what it is, then what do we do?”
No one answered her. No one had any idea.
Paula sat at her kitchen table, drinking the last of Chick’s Stolichnaya and staring at what remained of Chick’s things. Most of the boxes were gone now, hauled away in several trips on foot by Mixer, St. Katherine, and St. Lucy. His home-studio equipment was still there, along with some books and a couple of boxes of miscellaneous crap, but the music was all gone. Paula was depressed.
She felt like she was losing Chick, losing her memories of him. She’d get everything back from Mixer, but still…Chick and his music had turned into something else—murder and money and cover-ups and something big and secret going on up in New Hong Kong. Chick was disappearing.
The hole in her heart seemed to be getting bigger, somehow, and the vodka wasn’t filling it. She drank off the rest of the glass and picked up the bottle. Empty.
She got up and walked into her bedroom, dug around in her discs, found the one she’d played over and over since Chick had died, the music video with the footage of the two o
f them making love here in this room, on this bed. “Love at Ground Zero.” She put it on, sank back in her chair, and watched it once again.
As it played, the bluesy music surrounding the slow-motion images of their lovemaking in orange and yellow light, Paula pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, pulling them in tight against her chest, jamming her chin into them. And when the song ended, and she watched the close-up of Chick’s face silently saying “I love you,” the open pit in her heart expanded, engulfed her, and swallowed her whole.
24
MIXER AND ST. KATHERINE stood in the darkness of the basement room, surrounded by electronics and boxes of Chick’s discs and tapes, lit by shafts of pulsing display lights. Faint ether music played on the sound system, whispering from the speakers scattered around the room.
“It’s in here,” Mixer said. “I know it.”
St. Katherine nodded. Her face was ghostlike in the pale amber light. Mixer wanted to breathe his life into it, into her. He didn’t know when the change had occurred, but it definitely had. He would do almost anything for her.
“What do we do with it when we find it?” St. Katherine asked. “When we learn what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked directly at him, and he thought she might be close to smiling. Or smirking.
“It must be worth a fortune,” she said.
Mixer shook his head, trying to read her voice.
“We could give Paula a piece of it. A large piece.”
Was she serious? She seemed even closer to a smile now, but he wasn’t certain.
“We’ll do whatever Paula wants,” he told her. “Chick paid for this with his life. I nearly paid with mine. We’ll do whatever’s right.” He paused, still trying to read her expression. “When we know what it is, we’ll know what’s right. Paula will know what’s right.”
Now St. Katherine finally did smile, touched his scarred right arm lightly with her fingers. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was only giving you a bad time.”
Mixer nodded once. He could read her voice. He did know her, somehow, knew she was telling the truth. Knew he could trust her. When had this happened? He wasn’t sure, but he was glad it had.
“You loved her,” St. Katherine said. “Paula Asgard.”
“I still do. She’s probably the best friend I’ve ever had.” Sookie might have become the same kind of friend, Mixer thought, but she’d been killed before she’d reached fourteen. She’d never had a chance.
“I mean more than that,” St. Katherine said. “You loved her more than as a close friend.”
Mixer nodded, feeling that ache in his chest again. But it was more bearable now, like he could almost take pleasure in it. He watched the volume meters shifting slowly back and forth on the display in front of him.
“Yes, I did. For years. But there was always Chick. He got killed, but there hadn’t been enough time. Maybe there never would have been, I don’t know. Probably not. Then there was my own ‘death.’ Now, apparently, there’s Tremaine.” He turned back to St. Katherine, her eyes open and gazing back at him. “And now there’s you.”
“Me.”
Mixer nodded. “You.”
“Are you sure?”
Mixer shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever be sure about anything again.”
St. Katherine touched his arm again, his shoulder, his cheek.
“This can wait a couple of hours, can’t it?”
Mixer nodded.
Naked, St. Katherine was just as beautiful, just as stunning. Naked, her age showed, which made her more real to Mixer, and even more attractive.
They lay together on St. Katherine’s bed, lightly touching, brushing one another. Gray dawn light came in through the blinds, slicing them with shadow. Mixer’s breath was ragged, and he could feel his heartbeat pounding up his neck. In the heat of the morning, he was sweating.
“It’s been a long time,” he said. Trying to explain his anxiety, his awkwardness. “Several years.”
“For me, too,” St. Katherine said. “Twelve years. Since becoming a Saint.” She smiled at him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Twelve years. Mixer could hardly imagine that much time anymore. Yet she seemed calm, self-assured. I’m glad one of us is, he thought.
She kissed his arm, nipped at his scarred flesh, and a faint scratch of pleasure shot up his arm, down his body. She seemed to sense it, and nipped him again, gently scraped her teeth along the ridged skin. Mixer closed his eyes, let the pleasure shoot through him, and his nervousness seemed to disappear.
They pulled at each other, kissed and licked and bit and tugged; they clung to one another in the growing heat of the day, their skin slick with sweat. Her taste was bitter and sweet, her smell sharp and biting; she grabbed his hair, pressed his face into her so he could hardly breathe. She shuddered, quaked against him.
Mixer lost himself in her, in her wet, salty skin, her taste and smell and her harsh gasping cries. Struggling for breath, he became dizzy. He was wrapped around her, she was wrapped around him, and they generated heat and sweat and maybe even love. He kissed her deeply, then stared into her golden eyes until she pulled him tight against her once more. Yes, he thought, maybe even love.
25
CARLUCCI FINALLY HEARD from Sparks. On his way into work, on the sidewalk just outside the building, a teenage bubble courier came up to him, stuck a bubble in his hand and popped it. The courier shot off as the message formed in the remains spread across Carlucci’s palm: “Home. S.” Then the bubble material disintegrated, turning to powder, and Carlucci wiped it from his hand, scattering the particles to the ground.
Carlucci walked into the building, checked in at the front desk, then left through the basement garage, on foot. House call to Sparks.
Home for Sparks was in the DMZ along the western edge of the Tenderloin. Eight-thirty in the morning was way too early for people in the DMZ; the street was quiet, the sidewalks nearly empty. The weather had finally cooled down a bit. Not cool, exactly, but not as hot as it had been; for a change, Carlucci wasn’t sweating. The sky was clear, with no sign of rain.
Carlucci walked past a sidewalk cafe, half a dozen puffy-eyed troubadours sucking down coffee, trying to wake up. One of the three women reached out and plucked at Carlucci’s arm. She was young, but missing some teeth. Coughing badly, breath foul. A moniker sewed to her jacket: Sister Ray.
“Want your ding-dong sucked?” she asked between coughs. “Twenty bucks. You can’t get it any cheaper.”
Carlucci shook his head. It was a horrifying thought. The woman’s friends laughed. At him or her, he couldn’t tell. He walked on.
He stepped through an open doorway between a cone counter and a music store. Brick walls, metal grating, and plaster high overhead, but plenty of light. Halfway along the corridor, on the left, was another doorway. Carlucci ducked through, then descended concrete steps to basement level and a maze of corridors, not so well lit. The smell, too, was worse. The brick and concrete walls were covered with layers of graffiti and artwork. Doors every twenty feet or so. So early in the morning, it was fairly quiet. Faint Indian music came from behind one door as he passed by; muted laughter came from behind another.
The door to Spark’s place was wood, painted solid black. No other decoration. Carlucci knocked. A minute later he knocked again. He stood a little ways back from the peephole, so Sparks could see him. No sound for a minute, then the clicks of locks and bolts. The door opened, and Sparks gestured him inside.
Inside was a single room, with a tiny, one-square-foot window up near the ceiling in the rear wall, too small for anything but a cat or a rat to come through. There was a mattress on the floor, piled with blankets; a hot plate plugged into a cracked wall socket. Two lamps, shaded dirty-white; two bag chairs, and a television; on the screen were two talking heads, but there was no sound. In a narrow alcove carved out of the concrete, a toilet and sink. No tub, no shower. Sparks probably wouldn’
t use one anyway.
Sparks coughed as he crossed the room toward the bed. He looked worse than ever. Carlucci knew it wasn’t just the bad light. The man was dying.
“Have you found a slot in a hospice for me?” Sparks asked.
Carlucci shook his head, feeling guilty. He’d asked a few people, but he hadn’t really looked that hard. “I’ve checked around,” he said, “but I haven’t found anything yet.”
Sparks nodded, sat stiffly on the mattress, bones audibly creaking. A box of disposable syringes lay open next to the bed, inches away from the hot plate. “Take a seat.”
Carlucci sat in the closest of the bag chairs, sinking awkwardly into it. Sparks picked up a bowl, cradled it in his lap. Inside the bowl was a spoon and dark brown goop. Sparks ate a few mouthfuls, then held the bowl and spoon out to Carlucci.
“Want some?”
Carlucci shook his head.
“It’s chocolate pudding,” Sparks said.
Carlucci shook his head again, and Sparks put the bowl back on the floor.
“The whisper you asked for,” Sparks said. “Almost impossible to get.”
“But you got it.”
“I got something. It was a fuckin’ bitch.” He stared hard at Carlucci. “You’d better watch your ass. Mistakes could get you dead. Just ask Chick Roberts or the mayor’s nephew or Rosa Weeks.”
“Who’s Rosa Weeks?” Carlucci asked. The name wasn’t at all familiar.
“Better you don’t know, then.” Sparks said. “Too much gnosis is bad for you.”
“Tell me who Rosa Weeks is.”
Sparks shook his head, making something like a smile with his pale, thin lips. “You’re a stubborn bastard.”
“Yeah,” Carlucci said. “Testa dura. What my father used to call me.”
Sparks coughed, spat brown-green phlegm onto the floor. “Rosa Weeks was a doctor. She gave physicals.”
“Yeah? And so?”
“It will become clear, I think. Patience, Lieutenant.”
Patience. Patience was something Carlucci had always had plenty of. Sometimes too much. He nodded and waited for Sparks to tell it in his own way.
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