“Here’s the key,” Sparks said. “Mixer and Chick and Jenny Woo were bootlegging body-bags. You know that?” Carlucci nodded, and Sparks went on. “You knew Mixer, right?” Carlucci nodded again, and Sparks said, “Another guy who got himself dead. Okay. Body-bags. One out of every ten body-bags was rigged. When they were switched on, a paralytic agent was patched into the wearer’s body, and a location beacon activated. Jenny Woo would lock onto the signal, and go pick up herself a live, but quite immobile body. Box it up, and take it home. Well, not home. But someplace private. There, Dr. Rosa Weeks did a complete physical and work-up, then crated them up.”
“Crated them up for what?”
Sparks grinned. “A trip to New Hong Kong.”
New Hong Kong again. Damn that place. Not much was illegal up there, and no one on Earth could touch them. But there was plenty that was illegal here on Earth, here in San Francisco, and he could do something about that. Maybe.
“Why were they being shipped to New Hong Kong?”
Sparks shook his head. “No idea. You’ll have to find that on your own. Course, my advice is, leave it the fuck alone. Forget about it, Lieutenant.”
“Did Mixer and Chick know the body-bags were rigged?”
“No. I don’t think so. The body-bags were one thing. Jenny Woo had her own separate deal going. But I think Chick found out, through Jenny Woo. From there I think he found out a lot more. Enough to get himself dead. That’s what I mean. Ignorance is a lot safer.”
“And Rosa Weeks?”
“She’s dead, too. Yesterday morning. Probably won’t show up on-line for a couple days. It’ll come up accidental OD.” Sparks nodded to himself. “You just watch.”
“Why is she dead?” Carlucci asked.
“Mouth too big, I think. She had a pet to feed that was costing her a fortune, and she tried buying it with something she knew.”
More dead people, Carlucci thought. Which was why he couldn’t take Sparks’s advice and forget about it all. He had to try to figure out what was going on. And he felt he was closing in on it.
“Anything else?”
Sparks nodded. “Yeah. The Saints killed Mixer in one of their fucking trials. Sounds like nothing to do with this, but I got a feeling it ties in somehow. Also, a lot of people picked up in Kashen’s recruiting vans end up in the same place as the body-baggers, getting prepped for a trip to New Hong Kong. Some of them, and some of the body-baggers, maybe go up to New Hong Kong in pieces.” Sparks coughed, shaking his head. “Not so sure about that info, but it sounds real.”
“But you’re sure about the body-bags being rigged.”
Sparks nodded.
“And you’re sure Mixer didn’t know.”
“Pretty sure. You can’t expect much more than that. I’d tell you to ask him yourself, but he’s dead. You wouldn’t get much of an answer.”
I will ask him, Carlucci said to himself. He’s not that dead.
“One more thing,” Sparks said. He leaned forward, picked up a syringe from a tray. Carlucci could see that it was already loaded, ready to go. Sparks held the syringe in his right hand, then reached with his other hand for a piece of mirrored glass propped against the wall. “Hold this for me,” he said.
Carlucci shifted in the bag chair, crouched forward, and took the mirror from Sparks.
“Hold it up,” Sparks said. “So I can see myself, damn it.”
Carlucci held the mirror up. Sparks stared into it, stretched his neck, then began tapping at his skin with his left hand. He squinted, pressed his neck, tapped some more. Carlucci kept glancing at the syringe in his other hand. Was he going to have to watch this? Christ.
More tapping, more squinting and grimacing, then suddenly Sparks brought his right hand up and plunged the needle into his neck. He switched his grip, eased back the plunger. Dark blood came back into the syringe and Carlucci turned away.
“Hold still, God damn you!”
Carlucci steadied his hands, the mirror, but didn’t look back at Sparks. He was glad there were still some things that made him queasy.
Sparks broke into a coughing fit and Carlucci brought his gaze back around. The needle was out of his neck. Sparks was nodding, waving feebly at him.
“Okay, okay,” he whispered. He tossed the empty syringe a few feet away, then took the mirror from Carlucci with slow, steady hands and placed it carefully against the wall. Then he lay back on the mattress, closing his eyes.
Carlucci worked himself out of the bag chair and stood, looking down at Sparks. He took the wad of cash from his pocket, set it on the blanket beside Sparks.
“Frank?” His voice was soft.
“Yes.”
“Don’t bother about the hospice.” Sparks briefly opened one eye, then closed it. “It’s too late.”
Carlucci nodded, though Sparks couldn’t see him. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Sparks slowly rolled his head from side to side. “It’s all right, Frank. It doesn’t matter.”
But it does, Carlucci thought. It does.
Later that day, near noon, Carlucci met Tremaine at the Civic Center muck pond, almost exactly where he’d met Paula two weeks earlier. They bought Polish sausages with sauerkraut from a vendor set up near the edge of the pond, and sat on a bench facing away from the scum-covered water. They’d met once or twice before, Carlucci couldn’t remember exactly when. Some story Tremaine was working on, some case of Carlucci’s.
The Polish sausage was hot, spicy, and greasy; Carlucci was glad he hadn’t loaded up on the onions. They didn’t talk much as they ate, just a word or two, about nothing, really: the cooling trend, the rat pack asleep in a pile across the plaza. When they were done, Carlucci took the scraps, wrappers, and napkins to a trash can, then returned to the bench. They sat several feet apart, not really looking at each other.
“I’ve been requesting an interview for two weeks,” Tremaine said. “I wonder why you agree to one now.”
“I haven’t,” Carlucci said. “You won’t be asking the questions. You’ll be answering mine.”
“Will I?”
“Yes. This is a police investigation.”
“An official investigation?”
Carlucci looked at him, but didn’t say anything.
“I think I’ll just wait for the subpoena,” Tremaine said.
“That’s a crappy attitude, Tremaine.”
“It’s a crappy business.”
“What, murder? Or journalism?”
“Both. And being a cop,” Tremaine said. “All of it.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. The sky was still clear, and the sun was shining down on them, not quite hot. The break in the heat was a good change. It brought the crazies out into the open, though, and they were filling the plaza as they woke up, stumbling and wandering around.
“Want some coffee?” Carlucci asked.
Tremaine smiled. “Add some acid to the grease congealing in my stomach? Sure, sounds terrific.”
They got up, walked back to the pond and bought coffee from the pregnant teenager. They circled the pond, and stopped near another bench, but didn’t sit. Someone had puked all over it.
“Which murder are you investigating?” Tremaine asked.
“This is all off the record,” Carlucci said. “Every fucking word. Got it?”
“Got it.” Tremaine sipped at his coffee, grimaced. “So, which murder?”
“The mayor’s nephew. William Kashen. What did you think?”
“Not Chick Roberts?”
“No. Should I be?”
“You know about Chick Roberts being killed, don’t you?”
Carlucci shrugged. “Something. Wasn’t my case. Some punk. A drug killing.”
Tremaine shook his head. “You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t?”
“No. He was Paula Asgard’s boyfriend.”
“I don’t really know Paula Asgard. Only because she’s a friend of Mixer’s.”
“Yes, Mi
xer. A dead guy who’s still alive.”
“Are you trying to tell me the two murders are connected?”
Tremaine shook his head. “No. You already know that. I know you do.”
“The Chick Roberts case is closed.”
“Buried, you mean.”
Carlucci started to put his foot up on the bench, then remembered the vomit. He found a clean spot for his shoe and leaned forward, stretching his other leg.
“Why don’t you tell me what the connection is between the two?” Carlucci said.
“Why don’t we make a deal, an information trade?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Carlucci said. “No deals. I’m a cop.”
Tremaine laughed. “Cops are always making deals.”
“What’s the connection?” Carlucci asked again.
“You do know it’s there, don’t you?”
Carlucci nodded. He guessed he had to give Tremaine something. “I know it’s there. I just don’t know what it is.”
Tremaine drank some more of his coffee, then dumped the rest of it in the trash can next to the bench, shuddering. “Awful stuff.” He paused, then went on. “I can’t be sure of any of this, you understand. Not completely. But I believe it.”
A few feet away, a trio of trance walkers formed a circle, arms linked, and began humming. The plaza was filling with people on lunch break, but the crowds avoided the trance walkers, giving them plenty of space.
“Chick, Mixer, a woman named Jenny Woo, and the mayor’s nephew were all spliced together. They had business. Body-bags. I don’t think the body-bags had anything to do with this, that’s just how they knew each other.”
So he doesn’t know everything, Carlucci thought. But then, none of us do.
“Something’s going on up in New Hong Kong,” Tremaine continued. “That’s the real missing piece. And the mayor’s tied up with it, the mayor’s wrapped up tight inside whatever it is. He was doing something with his nephew, connected to all this somehow. But the nephew got hold of something he shouldn’t have had, and was getting ready to sell it. He was getting ready to fuck over his uncle and New Hong Kong both. Now, what I believe happened is this. Chick Roberts got hold of the same thing, probably from the nephew. And Chick tried to cash in. Kashen wasn’t stupid, and he’d managed to be discreet. No one knew what he had, except his potential customers. But Chick Roberts was not so smart, and he was not so discreet, and it wasn’t long after he put out the word that he got himself three bullets in the head.”
Tremaine paused, sighing heavily. “Here it gets more speculative. My sources are pretty weak and incomplete, but this is the picture I’ve put together, and it makes a kind of sense. I think the New Hong Kong people had Chick killed. As soon as they scented their property in the wrong hands and up for sale, they took care of the problem. The first problem. The second problem was finding out where Chick had gotten his stuff. They traced it back to the nephew, and then did him. But…they didn’t tell the mayor, because they didn’t know whether or not the mayor was in on it with the nephew. So you had the mayor putting on the squeeze to solve his nephew’s murder. Politics, family loyalty, whatever.
“But New Hong Kong stays on this thing, tracing everything back. They’ve got to find the hole in their security and plug it up, and they have to be certain about it. I think they found it, and it wasn’t the mayor. Probably someone up in New Hong Kong who is now a piece of space debris. When they were sure the mayor wasn’t a part of it, they told him what had happened, and told him to take the pressure off the case. You have been asked to bury the nephew’s case, haven’t you?”
Carlucci didn’t answer, and Tremaine nodded.
“Anything else?” Carlucci asked.
“Isn’t that enough?”
“It’s all speculation,” Carlucci said. “I can’t do a goddamn thing with it.”
“I won’t give you my sources,” Tremaine said. “Even if I did, they’d never testify in court, they’d never even give you a statement.”
“I’m not asking for your sources,” Carlucci said in disgust. He pushed off the bench with his foot, walked over to the trash can, and shoved his empty coffee cup into it. “It does make a kind of sense,” he said to Tremaine. “But I’m not going to get any names, am I? The name of the guy who put three bullets in Chick’s head. The name of the guy who gutted the mayor’s nephew. The names of any of the people who are responsible for this goddamn mess.”
“I don’t think so,” Tremaine said.
“And what the hell is it you want from me?”
“Any information you have about these cases that I don’t have.”
“There isn’t anything,” Carlucci said. He was lying, but not much. “You know more than anyone. Christ.”
“Confirmation that the Chick Roberts case was buried. Confirmation that the mayor has asked you to bury his nephew’s case.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve got to ask.”
Carlucci had to laugh. “Christ, you’re something else.”
“Is that a ‘no comment,’ or a denial?” Tremaine asked.
“It’s jack shit, is what it is. I told you, not a fucking word is on the record. There is no response to your questions.”
“They weren’t questions. They were statements. I’m just asking for confirmation.”
Carlucci shook his head. “You’ve been a lot of fucking help,” he told Tremaine. Actually, Tremaine had been a help, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “We’re done.” He turned and started walking away. “See you.”
“Wait. Lieutenant.”
Carlucci just shook his head and kept on walking.
One last meeting, this one at night with Hong and LaPlace. Carlucci felt they were getting close, so close to the answers, but he was afraid they wouldn’t be able to make it all the way. They sat at the table in the Hong family kitchen; Hong’s entire family had gone to the cinema to see Ghost Lover of Station 13 for the second time.
Carlucci told them everything he’d learned from Tremaine, from Sparks, the odd bits of information he’d gleaned from Monk. And he told them about Mixer.
Hong smiled. “So the spikehead’s still alive, stirring up the shit.”
“Yeah, except he’s not a spikehead anymore. It all got burned away.”
“Well, we have something, too,” LaPlace said. “Monk may have been wrong about Butler.”
“What do you mean?”
“Joseph and I found this guy. You know, a guy who knew a guy. Name’s Little Johnny. Wanted to buy his way out of an intent-to-distribute bust. Kanter had him, called us in to see the guy. Little Johnny seemed to think Butler had killed the nephew. Didn’t know why. Little Johnny doesn’t know Butler himself. He knows a guy. The guy he knows is Totem the Pole.”
“The porno star?” Carlucci asked.
“That’s him. King of prong. Little Johnny says Totem the Pole told him that Butler had killed Kashen. According to Little Johnny, our man Totem the Pole, in contrast to his screen persona as the great humper of women, in real life, well, he likes men, too. Robert Butler, for one. Butler did something for Totem. Apparently Little Johnny did, too, which is why Totem got so confessional with him. Little Johnny tried to get specific about what they did for each other, but I didn’t think we needed those kinds of details. The details we needed, though, he wasn’t so good with. How did Totem know? Was Butler as confessional as Totem? Little Johnny doesn’t know. Little Johnny says Totem heard something the night Butler got killed, that Totem was in the building when it happened, he was downstairs with the woman who lived under Butler. What he was doing with the woman, no one knows. Changing orientation again, maybe. But Totem seemed to think Butler was killed as his reward for killing Kashen. Yeah, to shut his mouth, permanently. We went around and around with Little Johnny, he said this, he said that, cha cha cha. It doesn’t all make sense. But some, maybe. We kept Little Johnny in a holding cell, with a promise for release, and tried to track down Totem the Pol
e.”
“You didn’t find him, did you?”
LaPlace shook his head.
“We got to his agent,” Hong put in. “She said Totem the Pole was shooting a new movie, he was on location.”
“Let me guess,” Carlucci said. “New Hong Kong.”
Hong nodded. “New Hong Kong.”
“I don’t think we’ll be seeing Totem or his Pole in San Francisco any time soon,” LaPlace said.
“What about the woman who lived under Butler?”
“She’s gone too,” Hong said. “We can’t find her.”
“Shit,” Carlucci said, his voice little more than a whisper. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his neck. “What do you think, Joseph?”
“Like Pete says, it makes a kind of sense, but we can’t do much with it. Butler’s dead, Totem’s gone and probably wouldn’t be much help anyway, and Little Johnny is useless. It just doesn’t lead us anywhere.”
LaPlace got up from the table, shaking his head and pacing. “This whole thing is going to shit on us,” he said. “I mean, I’m not worried that we’re in trouble, but everything goes nowhere. We know more, but where does it get us? We’re never going to get anything to go to court with, are we? Are we going to get the guy who put holes in the punk’s face? We don’t know for sure that Butler killed the nephew, but even if he did, he’s dead, and are we going to get the guy who put a meat hook through his neck? And the mayor? We can’t touch him, and we sure as hell aren’t going to be able to get to anyone up in New Hong Kong, are we?” LaPlace shook his head. “Not fucking likely.”
Carlucci couldn’t disagree with LaPlace. He’d been thinking pretty much the same thing himself. The closer they got, the worse things looked.
“The one thing we can get out of this,” Hong said, “is knowing what happened, and why. That’s worth something. Sometimes it’s worth a lot.”
Carlucci nodded. “Yes, Joseph, that can be worth a lot. But we don’t even have that yet, do we? We’re close to knowing what happened, but we sure as hell don’t know why.” Carlucci shook his head. “What is it? What is worth killing all these people for?”
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