Carlucci

by Richard Paul Russo

  The crowds thickened and slowed as he got within sight of the main Hunter’s Point gate. Security forces lined the fences, with a large contingent at the gates holding the crowd back. The main parking lot was nearly empty; the guards weren’t letting any vehicles through. Several guards were directing vehicles away before they even reached the gate.

  He thought he could talk his way into the parking lot, but decided it wasn’t worth it. Hell, he might never get out. He swung the car away from the gates, drove a block, then turned a corner and pulled over to the curb. He locked up the car, then pushed into the crowd, forcing his way toward the main gate.

  It took him nearly ten minutes to go the one block and the extra hundred yards to the gate itself. People shouted all around him, mostly things he couldn’t make out. There were signs, though, held up above the crowd that let him know what this was all about: VACCINE NOW!! CORE FEVER KILLERS…NO MORE PHONY VACCINE! FREE VACCINE FOR EVERYONE!! The smell of the crowd, too, was bad—sweat and anger and fear. When he finally reached one of the guards, still twenty feet from the gate, he showed his badge and ID plates.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” the guard said. “The launch grounds are closed to everyone except authorized parties, and those going up on the next ship.”

  “I don’t want to go onto the launch grounds,” Carlucci said, almost shouting to be heard above the crowd noise. “I just want onto the parking lot. I’ve got official business with one of the people you will be letting through.”

  The guard opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. He seemed unsure. “You don’t have jurisdiction in Hunter’s Point,” he finally said.

  “I know,” Carlucci replied. “Let’s call this cooperation between agencies. I’m not going to cause you any problems. I just need to talk to someone for a few minutes before he goes.” The guard still seemed unsure, so Carlucci went on. “I need to talk to Monk. Monk is approved access, isn’t he?”

  The guard nodded. “All right,” he said. “Come on through. But check in with Captain Reynoso at the Security building, all right?”

  Carlucci nodded. The guard gestured toward one of his colleagues, and the two men walked Carlucci to the gate, clearing a path through the crowd. After a brief talk to the gatekeepers, several guards formed a shield of sorts against the crowd, the gate opened, and Carlucci squeezed through, the gate and shield closing behind him.

  He stood in the nearly empty lot and gazed out through the second line of chain-link fence to the tarmac and the lighted gantry and ship in the distance. The gantry lights sparkled, isolated out on the black tarmac, like they had no connection to the noise and smell of the crowd behind him. He glanced back at the crowd, then walked to the Security building by the gates leading onto the launch grounds.

  Captain Reynoso was big, an inch or two taller than Carlucci, and she looked to be in a lot better shape. He showed her his ID and explained why he was here.

  “Lieutenant, do I have your word that you won’t be causing any trouble? That you won’t be trying to arrest anyone, or prevent anyone with authorization from boarding?”

  “You have my word,” he said. “I just want to talk to Monk.”

  Reynoso seemed satisfied. She offered him coffee. He’d already had too much, but he accepted anyway. Reynoso went into another room and came back with two cups, handed one to him. The coffee was better than what he’d made at home.

  They stood by the main window, looking out at the parking lot, the outer gates, and the growing crowds.

  “It could get ugly out there,” Carlucci said.

  Reynoso nodded, but didn’t seem concerned. “They’ve been out there for days.”

  “Can you handle it all right?” he asked. “I can call in help from the city.”

  She shook her head. “We’ll be fine. Once we get our parties through, we can pull everyone inside, lock up the gates, and activate the fences. Fry anyone who tries to force their way inside.” She turned to look at him. “My job is security, nothing else. I plan to keep my job.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  He stayed by the window and watched, waiting for Monk to arrive.

  49

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER he saw a large van working its way through the crowd. The van’s emergency lights flashed steadily, and the horn blared, barely audible over the noise of the crowd surrounding it.

  “This will be what we’re waiting for,” Reynoso said.

  The van finally reached the main gate. People pounded on it and rocked it from side to side, though they could have no idea who was inside, or what they were doing here. Then the gate swung open and the van drove through. The crowd surged forward behind it and the Security guards pushed in on them, forcing them slowly back, struggling for a couple of minutes before they were able to get the gate shut again. By then, the van had pulled up next to the Security building and stopped.

  “Normally we’d bring them all inside,” Reynoso said. “But we’ve got unusual circumstances.”

  “You’ve got a slug,” Carlucci said.

  Reynoso sighed. “Yes, we’ve got a slug. Let’s go.” She signaled to the processing crew at the other end of the building, then walked out the door and toward the van. Carlucci followed.

  The driver got out of the van and handed Reynoso a packet of documents. She glanced at them, then looked at the driver. “You and the attendants will have to wait here,” she said. “My people will drive the van, take the passenger out to the ship, then bring the van back.”

  The driver nodded. “That’s what we were told.”

  “You can wait inside.” She nodded toward the building. “There are chairs. Coffee, other things to drink.”

  Reynoso approached the open side door, leaned inside. “Mr. Monk?”

  “It’s just Monk,” said a voice from inside the darkness of the van.

  “Okay. Monk. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you. Now, you are on Hunter’s Point grounds, under our jurisdiction, so you don’t have to talk to him. It’s up to you.”

  “Who the hell is it?”

  “Lieutenant Frank Carlucci of the San Francisco Police Department.”

  A deep rolling laugh sounded from inside the van. “Of course I’ll talk to him. I was more than half expecting him. Send him in. There’s plenty of room.”

  Reynoso stepped back. “Go ahead,” she said to Carlucci. “But don’t take too long. We’ve got to get him processed and loaded up. We’ve got a launch time to meet.”

  Carlucci nodded. He approached the van, ducked his head, and stepped up, standing bent over just inside the panel door. There wasn’t much light inside the van. Monk was ensconced in something like a wheelchair surrounded by displays, fluid containers, and medical equipment. He looked just the same: a bloated, deformed body enveloped by shiny black rubber, head encased in a helmet, eyes hidden by goggles.

  Monk smiled at him, the thick, distorted lips shiny with moisture. Carlucci stared at the slug, his mind blank, unable to remember what he’d wanted to ask.

  “Well, Lieutenant?”

  “You lied to me,” Carlucci finally said.

  “Of course,” Monk replied. “Many times.” He licked his lips, the tongue as thick and bloated as the rest of him. “Three years ago, at our first session, I offered you a chance at New Hong Kong. A chance at a very long life. Real life extension. A hundred and fifty years or more.”

  “You were so subtle about it, I didn’t even know it was an offer at the time. I didn’t figure it out until later.”

  “Yes, that was a problem. But you wouldn’t have accepted the offer anyway.”

  “No.”

  “See, that’s when so many of your difficulties began.” He shook his head. “You were never very cooperative, and you’ve paid a high price for that.”

  “Tell me now, Monk. What is going on? What has been happening all this time?”

  Monk laughed. “I will tell you, Lieutenant Francesco Carlucci, and you’ll be sorry when I’m done.”

&nbs
p; Maybe so, Carlucci thought. He could feel the weight of the case against his ribs. But they would both be sorry. He looked around for a place to sit, his back already sore from standing bent over, and finally settled on a metal crate behind the driver’s seat. He could just sit upright without hitting his head on the van ceiling.

  “All right,” he said to Monk. “Tell it.”

  Monk made a sound that might have been a chuckle. He made an adjustment to one of the control panels attached to the seat, and a panel began blinking green. Monk finally turned his goggled eyes directly toward him.

  “Just confirming that you are not employing any recording devices,” he said.

  Carlucci just shook his head.

  “Okay,” Monk said, shifting his position. “I’ll start with the main thing.” He stared at Carlucci. “You ready for this?” And he paused again for effect. “New Hong Kong is responsible for Core Fever. Not Cancer Cell. Not nature. But New Hong Kong.”

  He paused, as though waiting to let it sink in, or waiting from some response from Carlucci, but Carlucci didn’t say a thing. It was one of those statements that you immediately realize isn’t at all surprising, that you half knew already because it fit with so many other things. New questions started swirling around in his mind, but for now he said nothing, just waited for Monk to go on.

  And Monk did. “It all flows out of that,” he said. “Once they were certain that it had fully taken hold in the Core and had begun to spread outward from it, presenting an undeniable health threat, they stepped forward to help. They were able to identify it as a virus—not difficult, since they had provided it—and they advised the CDC on containment measures.”

  “The quarantines.”

  “Yes, the quarantines. Particularly the quarantine of the Core. That was the real goal from the beginning. Sterilization of the Core. The Tenderloin quarantine was camouflage.” He waved a hand toward Carlucci. “Once that was accomplished, and enough time had passed to lend things a certain credibility, New Hong Kong announced the development of a vaccine for Core Fever.”

  “A vaccine they’d had all along.”

  Monk shrugged his bloated shoulders and nodded. “Yes, a vaccine they’d had all along. They would never have released a virus like that one unless they had a vaccine for it.”

  “That’s real fucking humane of them,” Carlucci said, barely able to keep his anger in check, along with all of the other questions that still waited to be asked and answered. “But the vaccine is only fifty percent effective.”

  “Probably closer to forty,” Monk said. He might have winced; with so little of his face exposed, it was difficult to tell. “That was a slight complication. It should have been close to one hundred percent effective. But somehow, probably through the use of the vector that introduced it into the Core, mutations occurred in the virus. There seem to be three major strains of Core Fever now, and the vaccine is only effective against one of them. Fortunately it is the dominant strain.”

  “You call forty percent dominant?”

  “It’s a little over forty percent of all cases, the other two each are responsible for less than thirty percent. And they’re working on developing a combination vaccine. The numbers should get better.”

  “That’s just terrific. It’s insane, is what it is.” Carlucci could hardly sit still; he wanted to stand up and pace, or just get up and smash something. He could hardly believe he was having this conversation.

  “Why?” he finally asked. It was the question he had been dying to ask, the most important question of all, and it seemed unbelievable to him right now that Monk could give him anything resembling a reasonable answer.

  “Several reasons, actually. It began with the need to eliminate Cancer Cell, and they came up with a way to do it that accomplished other desirable results as well.”

  “Cancer Cell?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t really sterilization of the Core that was the ultimate goal. It was the sterilization of Cancer Cell.”

  “Why?” Carlucci asked again.

  “Business.” Monk left it like that for a while, as if that answer explained everything.

  “Business,” Carlucci said.

  Monk laughed. “Yes, of course. Cancer Cell was competition. It’s that simple. Well, maybe it’s not that simple, but that’s the core of the matter.” He laughed again.

  “Competition,” Carlucci said, prodding, trying to understand.

  “Oh, yes, competition. One of New Hong Kong’s most profitable businesses is the manufacture of high-grade, specialized, very expensive pharmaceuticals. They’ve got the patents all locked up here on Earth, in pretty much any country that could produce them.”

  “I know all about that,” Carlucci said. “They ignore laws they don’t like, and exploit those laws that are useful to them.”

  “They are a practical bunch,” Monk said. “But Cancer Cell paid no attention to patent laws. Not only were they manufacturing many of these high-grade pharmaceuticals not quite to the standard of New Hong Kong, of course, but close enough they were selling them on the street at drastically reduced prices. Now, that didn’t have too much effect on the legitimate sales, but New Hong Kong’s profits on the black market, on the streets, are actually greater than those on the legitimate end. And Cancer Cell was cutting way into those. They were trying to make these otherwise expensive and difficult-to-obtain drugs moderately priced and readily accessible. And the people in Cancer Cell didn’t have very high standards of living. That made it easy to keep prices artificially low.” Monk shrugged. “A noble ambition, certainly, but one quite at odds with New Hong Kong’s own philosophy, and one increasingly at odds with their business plans.”

  He paused and licked his lips several times. He reached up for a piece of flexible tubing hooked up to a fluid bag, put it in his mouth, twisted a valve, and sucked on it. He offered some to Carlucci, but he refused.

  “There was one more thing, which clinched the deal for New Hong Kong. It appeared that Cancer Cell’s researchers were making significant progress in the life extension area. New Hong Kong simply could not abide that. New Hong Kong is going to have absolute and complete control of any life extension treatments that are ultimately developed. In the coming years, control of that will be control of just about everything in life.”

  “All of this, Core Fever, the quarantines, all these people dead and dying, all this was to eliminate a business competitor?” Even as he said it, it sounded incredible.

  “Essentially, yes,” Monk answered. “As I said, it also was to have other positive benefits.”

  “Like what?”

  “The people in New Hong Kong thought the population could do with a bit of culling, if properly directed. A fatal disease epidemic that began in the Core and spread to the Tenderloin would pretty much target the kinds of people New Hong Kong wanted. Especially when a vaccine soon became available, in limited quantities, to the right people. You probably noticed the vaccine still hasn’t become widely available, although that will change fairly soon.”

  “I noticed,” Carlucci replied. He shook his head, still having trouble believing what he was hearing. “Except the vaccine isn’t as effective as it’s supposed to be, so a lot of the ‘right people’ will end up getting Core Fever and dying.”

  Monk nodded. “I’m afraid so. As I said, that was a complication.”

  “That’s not a complication,” Carlucci said. “It’s a major fuckup.”

  “That, too,” Monk agreed, smiling. “One of the other benefits was supposed to be good public relations from a successful vaccine. New Hong Kong seen as the world’s savior. Well, not now.”

  Carlucci continued to shake his head. He turned away from Monk and looked out the open door of the van. From this vantage point he could see part of the mob pressing against the outer perimeter fencing, and he could just hear a generalized noise from them. “This is incredible. And how many people are going to die before this is all over?”

  “Over the next five yea
rs,” Monk said, “about seventy million people in this country alone.”

  Carlucci swung back around and stared at him. He hadn’t expected an answer, and he was stunned into silence.

  “That’s a worst-case scenario,” Monk continued. “If the vaccine never gets any better. Approximately twenty percent of the population. There will be similar numbers in other countries, though it will vary greatly. In undeveloped countries, the percentages will end up much higher. In industrialized countries, probably lower, because they are already starting to take preventative measures.” He paused. “But if they improve the vaccine, especially if they can get it close to one hundred percent effective, those numbers will greatly drop. Not soon enough for San Francisco, of course, or most of California. Or, to be honest, for a lot of the country.”

  “And they may not be able to improve the vaccine at all.”

  “That’s a possibility, yes. But the researchers up in New Hong Kong are very good at what they do.”

  Carlucci hung his head in his hands and stared at the floor. He felt sick, and dizzy. And then, one final thing fell into place. He raised his head to look at Monk.

  “What was Yoshi Katsuda’s part in all this?”

  “He was a liaison of sorts. All plans were made in New Hong Kong, and Katsuda’s task was implementation of those plans here on Earth. He was to make sure everything went smoothly, make sure everything was done.”

  “But his daughter found out about it.”

  “Apparently. That was another complication, and he made it worse by killing her himself. He should have kept himself completely apart from that. He should not have spent the past two weeks in jail. He should not have caused New Hong Kong to expend so much in the way of resources to get him out.” Monk cocked his head. “You know he’s out, don’t you?”

  Carlucci nodded. “So he took care of everything here in San Francisco,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did that include my daughter?” he asked. “Christina.”

  Monk hesitated. “What about her?”