As if noticing the sling and bandages for the first time, Katsuda said, “I see you’ve been injured.”
“Someone tried to kill me,” Carlucci said.
“But I see they did not succeed. Are you recovering well from it?”
“Oh, sure. I’m doing just fine.”
“I am pleased to hear it.”
“Thanks for asking.” Carlucci took a deep breath. “Mr. Katsuda, I want to talk to you about a murder attempt that was more successful.”
“My daughter.”
“Yes, your daughter.”
“You met with my daughter a few weeks ago.”
Carlucci was taken by surprise, and didn’t immediately reply, wondering how Katsuda had known. Had his daughter told him about the meeting? Unlikely. Naomi Katsuda had been so circumspect about everything.
“Yes, I did meet with her. How did you know?”
“I could say that she told me about the meeting,” Katsuda said, “but that would not be the truth.” He gestured with his hand toward the two chairs near the other glass wall. “I think we’ll be more comfortable if we sit,” he said. “We will still have the view.”
They walked over to the chairs and sat. “Can I get you anything to drink?” Katsuda asked. “I am sure we can provide you with whatever you like.”
Carlucci smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure you can. But I don’t want anything.”
Katsuda nodded. “I, too, will pass.” Then, resuming their discussion, he said, “We are a very influential and powerful family, which makes us the targets for any number of people radical groups, criminals, even business competitors. Our security personnel have a directive to know where any of us are at any time, so that protection can be provided if it becomes necessary.”
“I see.” Carlucci paused, feeling a tiny rush of tension. “Is the surveillance around the clock?”
Katsuda hesitated before answering. “Yes,” he finally said. “Why do you ask?”
“Where were the security personnel when your daughter was killed?”
Katsuda closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Trying to find her. Naomi didn’t like being followed, even if it was for her own protection. That was the main reason she moved out of our home. And she became quite good at losing the surveillance. That night, she had again been successful. And it cost her her life.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Carlucci said, trying very hard to sound sincere. He did not like Yoshi Katsuda, and he had trouble believing the man was grieving over the death of his daughter.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Now, shall we proceed with the official interview?”
Carlucci shrugged. “This is all a part of the interview,” he said. “But before we go any farther, I want to know something. Why have you refused to talk to the investigating officers?”
Katsuda waved his right hand, a gesture of dismissal. “It was inconvenient. I did not want to talk to them.”
“But they were investigating the death of your daughter.”
“I could not help them. There was no point.”
“You can’t know that, Mr. Katsuda.”
“Yes, Lieutenant Carlucci, I can know that. My security personnel had lost her that night, and I did not know where she was. I have no idea why anyone would want to kill her. There is no way I could help in the murder investigation of my daughter. And as I said earlier, it was inconvenient. I did not want to speak with them, and so I didn’t.” He paused. “I will be frank with you, Lieutenant. I have no faith in this city’s police department. I do not believe they will solve my daughter’s murder. I do not believe they will even come close. I did not want to waste my time with them.” He paused again. “Power and influence can be extremely useful, and I use both freely.”
Well, at least there’s no bullshit from Katsuda about that. But that didn’t mean the man wasn’t hiding something about the case.
“Why are you talking to me, then?” Carlucci asked.
“I have been advised that it was in my best interest to speak with someone about the case. I have been advised that unless I did, the constant and rather annoying requests for interviews would not cease. Eventually, I was told, I might even become the subject of a subpoena. You are the supervising officer of the case. You are a lieutenant, a superior officer in the department. I prefer to speak with you.”
Too good to deal with the peons, Carlucci thought, wanting very much to come out and say it. But it wouldn’t be helpful.
“Do you know why your daughter met with me?” he asked.
Katsuda shrugged. “You asked her to.” Telling him that the Mishima phone lines, too, were under surveillance, although that didn’t come as a surprise.
“Do you know what we talked about?”
“No, but I can guess. My daughter had an obsession with a group of medical terrorists called Cancer Cell. I can think of nothing else she was involved with that would be of any interest to the police.”
“She was involved with Cancer Cell?”
Katsuda shook his head. “Poor choice of words. The earlier phrasing is more accurate. An obsession. She was fascinated by them, and did what she could to learn about them. I tried to discourage her in this, but she was quite stubborn.”
“What do you know about Cancer Cell?”
Katsuda gave a sigh of exasperation. A warning, Carlucci guessed. “I don’t know anything about them. They were my daughter’s obsession, not mine. They seemed dangerous. I avoid danger whenever possible.”
Carlucci didn’t push it. He didn’t think he was going to come away from this interview with much, but he wanted every chance he had, and he wanted it to go as far as possible. He took a copy of the sketch artist image from his coat pocket, awkwardly unfolded it with his right hand, then leaned forward and held it out to Katsuda. Katsuda took the picture and studied it for a few moments, then looked up.
“Do you recognize her?”
Katsuda handed the picture back to Carlucci. “She looks vaguely familiar. Who is she?”
“We think a friend of your daughter’s. A close friend.”
Katsuda stared at him for a minute, his gaze unblinking. “My daughter was not a lesbian.”
“I didn’t say she was.” Toni Weathers was right. There was something odd about this.
“You certainly implied it, Lieutenant.”
“It’s a possibility, that’s all.”
“No.” Katsuda crisply shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed. “It is not a possibility.”
He held up the picture again, moved it closer to Katsuda. “You don’t know her.”
“No. As I said, the picture is familiar. If she was a friend of my daughter’s, I may have met her, or seen her at some time. But I do not know her.”
Carlucci refolded the picture and stuck it back in his jacket. “So you don’t think we can solve your daughter’s murder?”
“No.”
“Is it just your daughter’s murder, or do you think the police are generally incapable of solving crimes?”
“I believe they are generally ineffective.” Katsuda smiled. “I am just being frank, Lieutenant. If a major crime is committed on camera, or in front of numerous witness, or you have a confession, the police do an adequate job of following through. But when something is difficult and motives are obscure, as in my daughter’s case, you are hopelessly lost. You simply do not have the resources, financial and otherwise, and the world has become much too complex.”
“Are you undertaking your own investigation?” Carlucci asked. “With your own resources, ‘financial and otherwise’?”
“That is my business, Lieutenant, not yours.”
“It is very much my business, Mr. Katsuda.”
Katsuda shook his head. “Not if I say it isn’t. You are forgetting who has the power here, Lieutenant. It is not you.”
“You might be surprised.”
Katsuda smiled, amused. “I don’t think so.” He stood up. “I would say our interview is at an end.”
> Carlucci remained seated for a few moments, angry with himself for responding that way. Katsuda was right about the power, on a surface level. But there were other kinds of power, and Katsuda didn’t know everything. He finally got up and shook Katsuda’s hand.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he said.
“I doubt if I was much help.”
“That’s all right. I guess neither of us expected much.” He started walking toward the wall he had come through, though at the moment there was no opening. He stopped a few feet from it and waited.
“Lieutenant.”
“Yes.”
“Why did someone try to kill you?”
Carlucci turned back to look at him. “I don’t know.”
“Were you chasing rats?” Katsuda asked, smiling slightly.
Carlucci’s breath caught for a moment. His heart beat hard against his chest, somehow noticeable right now. He was surprised—by what Katsuda had just revealed, and by the fact that he had revealed it at all. It told him something important about the man.
“Yes,” Carlucci said. “I was.”
“A dangerous occupation.”
“So it seems,” he agreed.
“Perhaps you should give it up.”
“The rat is dead.”
“No great loss for the world, I imagine. But no great gain, either. Nothing changed.” Katsuda touched his hair with his fingertips. “Good night, Lieutenant.”
Carlucci started to turn, then stopped. “The woman out front, at the desk.”
“My assistant. Yes?”
“What happened to her?”
“What happened? To her face, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. She did not like the face she was born with, so she changed it. I’m certain I can arrange the same thing for you, if you wish.”
Carlucci shook his head. “I’ll pass.”
This time when he turned around, the wall was opening, and he walked through.
23
CAGE WANDERED THE streets of the Tenderloin in a kind of trance. Nikki was dying. He knew that, and he couldn’t get away from it. He had been back to see her twice more, but each time she’d been worse; neither time had she been coherent enough to talk. Neither time had she known he was there. She was dying.
It was midafternoon and the heat was intense. The air was heavy and muggy, but he hardly noticed it. The heat kept the street and sidewalk traffic light, which was just fine with him.
He bought a beer from a young woman caged into a tiny kiosk out on the edge of the sidewalk. Money went into one slot, the beer emerged from another, cold and wet. Cage could barely make out her features behind the narrow, thin bars, back in the darkness. She must be baking in there.
He sat on the curb in the shadow of a delivery truck and drank his beer. There was a sense in the street of people waiting—waiting for darkness, waiting for the temperature to drop, waiting for energy to return. Waiting for Nikki to die.
Jesus. And how many other people were going to die? In the days since his talk with Dr. Sodhi, Cage had made a few calls to other doctors and street medicos both in and out of the Tenderloin. Nothing explosive was happening yet, but cases were cropping up everywhere, many of the people already dead. Most inside the Tenderloin, but a few outside. No one thought too much about it yet, because no one was seeing more than one or two, and some none at all. Just another mystery disease or toxin attack. But the symptoms were too damn close to what Tito, Stinger, and Nikki all had.
Cage knew. Something was happening out there. Something was about to break out.
And he had helped Caroline work her way into Cancer Cell and the Core, right into the middle of it.
The street got suddenly quiet. There was a long break in the traffic, and Cage stood, stepped out from behind the truck, and looked out into the street. Nothing at first, and then he heard the first cries and moans, and he knew what was coming—a Plague Parade.
Christ, that’s just what he needed now. He almost walked away, almost hurried in the opposite direction where he could try to find a bar or a café, anyplace inside where he could avoid seeing it. But he remained where he was, and waited for it to reach him.
Once a month or so a Plague Parade would appear on the streets of the Tenderloin. The name wasn’t really accurate; none of the people in the parades were dying of diseases that were truly plagues unless you considered life in the twenty-first century a plague. But that didn’t stop them from using the name; it sounded better. Or worse.
The street was completely clear now. Groups of plague hierodules would have gone ahead and set up human barricades on the planned route—men and women in hooded robes and carrying censers, legless men on motorized wheeled platforms, Screamers with their mouths surgically sealed, humming through metal nose tubes. And here, people were clearing out from the sidewalks without any help, ducking into buildings and alleys, shops and cafés; those who remained waited for the parade with exhausted acceptance or morbid interest.
An extremely tall woman led the parade. She wore a black and white body-stocking skeleton costume, a grinning skull mask over her head. Arms and legs movingly nimbly, the skeleton woman danced from side to side as she led the parade down the street. But her dancing and grinning mask were the last vestiges of gaiety in the Plague Parade.
Following the dancing skeleton came two rows of four-wheeled carts pulled by barefoot men naked except for tattered loincloths. Each row consisted of six carts, and sitting in each cart were two or three people. Hand-painted signs hung from the sides of the carts, announcing the diseases within: ANKYLOSING SPONDYLITIS; LUPUS; EPSTEIN-BARR; HEPATITIS G; MALARIA; MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS;…and so on. Cage picked up the pattern right away: They were all chronic illnesses.
Next in the parade, on foot or wheeled platform, came the physical birth deformities section. People hobbled along on clubfeet, or with one leg noticeably shorter than the other, some walked by with short, flippered arms or deformed heads, and a small group of legless men pulled themselves along on wheeled platforms, digging spiked knuckles into the pavement with each swing of their arms. Two women led by children walked with clouded white eyes gazing up at the sky, wearing signs that said “Blind from Birth.”
Then came the strangest part of the parade, something Cage had never seen before. Two lines of hooded figures moved slowly past, bodies swaying in unison to a subtly shifting, deep, and penetrating hum. He could not tell if the hum came from the marchers, or if it was being generated by some electrical device. Stranger still, even though it was midday and the sun was shining directly onto the street, the hooded figures were surrounded by a pulsing, dark blue glow that obscured the figures and the air around them; as they walked past, even people standing on the opposite side of the street became distorted and weirdly shadowed. And most disturbing of all, when Cage looked at the heads of the hooded figures, he could see nothing within the hoods, only a darker blue glow and darker shifting shadows, as if there were no heads or faces within. A terrible, cold shudder went through him, and he wanted to turn away, but he was transfixed, and could not tear his gaze from them until they were completely past him and nearly half a block away.
Dizzy and buzzing inside, he finally turned his head and stared down at the ground, trying to regain his equilibrium. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just witnessed something terrifying. The rest of the Plague Parade moved past him, but he hardly noticed any more of it, hardly saw the caged wagon of half-naked and completely insane people leaping and shouting and shaking the bars, or the pedalcarts loaded with people in the late stages of terminal diseases. He was barely aware of where he was.
But by the time the tail end of the parade approached, he was feeling almost normal. He watched the last of the stragglers limp and drag past him—a young man with no hair, no left hand, and no left eye, and half a dozen surgical scars across his chest and abdomen; and a woman and child, both blond, apparently mother and daughter, walking hand in hand. Around the girl’s n
eck hung a cardboard sign lettered in black marker:
LEUKEMIA
NO MONEY
The girl was listless, her feet dragging. The mother was angry and defiant.
Half a block farther on was the rear guard of the hierodules, walking backward, facing the vehicle traffic that inched along in their wake, filling the street once again. Cage remained where he was until all signs of the parade were gone, and the streets and sidewalks were back to normal.
Back to normal. And what good was that? A hopeless, deteriorating state of affairs.
He looked down at the empty beer bottle in his hand. He wanted to throw it through a window, or smash it over someone’s head, smash it over his own head. Instead, he tossed it into a trash bin, crossed the street, walked down to the end of the block, and entered a phone bank. Time to try calling Eric Ralston again.
The bank was a narrow, dark aisle lined with small, cramped private booths. Signs above each booth declared, in all seriousness, that the phone lines within were guaranteed to be cleared and clean. No one believed the signs.
He ran his phone card through the reader, and punched in the number for the CDC in Atlanta, which he’d now memorized after half a dozen calls in the past two days. Half a dozen calls to Ralston, half a dozen messages left, and no calls returned.
Cage had gone to medical school in San Francisco with Eric Ralston, and they had become friends, despite being headed in different directions afterward—Cage had gone to Southern California to do image enhancements and make money, while Ralston had joined the CDC. Cage’s life and career had changed drastically since then, but Ralston had remained at the CDC, where he was now some kind of research director. They had stayed in touch over the years, talking by phone every few months, seeing each other maybe once or twice a year.
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