Carlucci followed Tran into the room. Sliding back and forth on the edge of a two-burner hot plate was a large blue parrot with just a few traces of yellow on its face. The parrot bobbed up and down, then cocked its head and squawked out something like, “I bow to you, o master.”
There was no way this parrot had been here when Caroline had locked up the room. She would not have forgotten to mention it; more than that, she would never have left the parrot in the first place; she would have taken the bird with her, made sure it would be cared for.
Carlucci looked at the window. Closed. What other way could the parrot have used to get in? No fireplace, no open vents. Nothing that he could see. The parrot must have been deliberately placed in this room. But why? Then, looking back at the window, he noticed a rectangular piece of cardboard taped to the bottom of the glass. He crossed the room, inspected it more closely. Handwritten in blue marker were the words:
ALL CONTRACTS
“What’s it say?” Tran asked.
“ ‘All Contracts.’ ‘All’ is underlined.”
“Somebody’s sending a message. With the parrot, too.” Carlucci nodded, then said, “Any ideas?”
“This Cancer Cell?” Tran turned back to the parrot, observing it without getting close enough for the parrot to lean forward and take a bite. The parrot weaved from side to side, never taking its eyes off Tran. “Maybe the parrot has the message,” Tran said. “Maybe the parrot says something.”
“ ‘I bow to you, o master’?”
Tran made a sound that might have been a laugh. “No. Something else.” He straightened, took a few steps back from the parrot.
The two men spent ten or fifteen minutes going through the room, searching the cabinets and shelves, under the sofa, the blankets and sheets, the refrigerator. Carlucci opened a cabinet above the sink and saw dozens of pill bottles. He picked up a few, but they all seemed to be empty. Other than that, neither of them found anything of real interest.
Tran stood in front of the parrot again, watching it bob and weave, shifting back and forth with tiny clicks of its claws.
“What do we have?” Tran said. “No crime, right? Just a missing persons?”
“That’s right.”
“Give it to CID.” He turned to Carlucci. “The room, the two notices, the parrot. Have them come in, do the room, take the parrot in. There’s something funny here. That Cancer Cell business. They can put someone on the bird, or have recorders going, see if it says anything. If it does, they let you know.”
It wasn’t a bad idea. Normally CID would have to be talked into it, be convinced there was something of real interest and substance here, the work of some group or gang or organization they might have to deal with; under normal circumstances, they probably wouldn’t go for it. But he could call Martin Kelly in on it, and because it might have something to do with Cancer Cell, he would want it. He’d want it bad.
The parrot took off from the hot plate, flew around the room twice, then landed on top of the television set by the window. It rocked from side to side, then screeched out, “Asshole! Asshole!”
Carlucci sat on the arm of the sofa, half watching the parrot and half gazing out the window at the bricks and boarded windows of the next building just a few feet away. His nose itched and he raised a gloved hand toward his face, stopped, then scratched his nose with the cuff of his jacket sleeve.
There was something more going on here than just a missing persons case. He could feel it, deep in his gut. He peeled off his surgical gloves, tossed them onto the sofa, then took his phone out of his jacket pocket. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll call in CID.”
Six hours later, Carlucci was processing himself through one of the Financial District checkpoints, on his way to meeting Naomi Katsuda. Even though he was a cop, he had to put up with the processing since he wasn’t chipped for the Financial District, and he had to submit to a body search before going through an array of detectors.
He hated the Financial District. Gleaming metal and smooth concrete and polished stone and glass, shining towers rising from-.more concrete and asphalt the Financial District was like an island in time. It was just about the only part of San Francisco that looked as if it existed in the twenty-first century, that seemed to belong in its own time. Walled off from the rest of the city, surrounded by huge subterranean vehicle parks for the tens of thousands of daily commuters, its own streets were relatively traffic-free, served by frequent clean-shuttles, bicycles, and pedalcarts. All freight deliveries were made between midnight and 5:00 A.M., and all the cleaning crews, inside and out, worked the same shift.
Clean and sterile and morally dead that was the only way Carlucci could see it anymore. Money and data producing only more money and data, while the rest of the city went to shit.
Once through the checkpoint, he looked back across the barriers to the buildings of the Chinatown Corridor, which ran smack up against the Financial District border. The buildings were older, darker, dirtier, but that was real life out there; in here was something else altogether.
He walked the several blocks to the Embarcadero Centers, thirty- and forty-story office buildings perched atop three floors of interconnected retail space shops and restaurants that only those who worked inside the district could afford. The morning’s rain had stopped several hours earlier, but dark clouds overhead threatened new showers. The air had a warm and damp and electric feel to it.
Carlucci had liked the Financial District when he was in his late teens, early twenties, more than thirty years ago. It hadn’t been cordoned off from the rest of the city then, there had been no checkpoints, no body searches, no arrays of detectors to pass through before entering. It wasn’t his favorite part of the city the goals of the businesses and law firms weren’t any more high-minded back then but he had liked the sense of motion and purpose that filled the streets.
He would take a bus downtown from the Richmond and wander the streets, walking in and out of the shadows of buildings anywhere from five or six stories high to more than fifty. Normal people worked here, coming in by car, bus, and streetcar from all parts of the city. Men and women who stank of weeks-old body odor and stale booze sat on benches and barked incoherently at passersby, or hunkered against stone steps, sticking their hands or cups out toward men and women in business suits. It wasn’t always pleasant, but it was real.
He would buy a Polish sausage from a cart vendor for a couple of bucks, including all the onions he could scoop onto the thing. Now there were no street vendors of any kind. And there certainly weren’t any stinking men or women asleep on the benches they’d all been moved out.
At Embarcadero 2, he took the escalator to the second level, then wandered about until he found the open-air café where he was supposed to meet Naomi Katsuda. He stood by a mortared stone planter near the outer ring and looked out over the tables, all of which were sheltered by white umbrellas in case it rained; he had no idea what she looked like, but he assumed she was Japanese, and he assumed she would be alone. Fewer than half the tables were occupied—it was well past lunchtime and well before the dinner hour—and most of them by two or more people.
His gaze stopped on an attractive, dark-haired woman in her thirties who looked only vaguely Asian. But she stared back at him, nodded once, then looked away and casually lit a cigarette.
Carlucci worked his way through the tables and stopped by the woman. She looked up at him with dark brown eyes. She smoked with her left hand, and kept her other hand on her lap. Her fingernails were painted a pale pink and her lips were silver.
“Naomi Katsuda?”
She gave him another crisp nod, then put out her right hand. “Lieutenant.”
He took her hand, which was warm and dry, like the smoothest sandpaper.
“Please, Lieutenant, have a seat.” She took one more quick, deep drag on the cigarette, then delicately crushed it out in the crystal ashtray that held two other butts. She’d either been here a while, or she was quite a smoker. Or maybe
just nervous. But she didn’t appear to be nervous, not in the least.
He sat down in the lightly cushioned plastic chair, which was surprisingly comfortable. Naomi Katsuda leaned forward and pressed a button on the umbrella pole.
“It will be just a moment,” she said, settling back in her chair.
She didn’t say anything more, and it was clear she wasn’t going to right away. Carlucci studied her, and changed his guess about her age, raising it by a decade forties, yes, not thirties. She probably colored her hair, but it looked quite natural, long and dark and straight. She wore a white linen jacket over a light blue blouse; he could no longer see her skirt or legs, but he remembered the skirt being short, the legs long and slim, like her arms.
A woman rolled a cart up to the edge of the table, the cart loaded with steaming coffee, teas, and trays of pastries.
“Tea,” Naomi Katsuda said. “Darjeeling. And…” She pointed at a long, thin pastry traced with delicate lines of chocolate.
The waitress poured hot water into a small ceramic pot, added a tea bag to it, then set it along with a cup and saucer in front of Naomi. Then she used tongs to move the pastry onto a small plate, and set that beside the cup and saucer. She looked at Carlucci, waiting.
“Just coffee,” he said. All of the pastries looked far too rich, and he really had no idea what most of them would taste like. “Black,” he added.
The woman poured coffee into a cup, set it in front of him on a saucer, then said, “Will there be anything else?”
Naomi Katsuda shook her head, a short, quick gesture. “We will not want to be disturbed.”
The waitress nodded, and rolled the cart away.
A flicker of light flashed through the dark clouds above them, and several seconds later came a dull rumbling. The air felt even heavier now, but there was still no rain.
“I’m only half Japanese,” Naomi Katsuda said. “You were wondering, weren’t you?”
“Something.”
She smiled, started to light another cigarette, then stopped and looked at Carlucci. “Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Do you smoke? No? I thought all policemen smoked.” She smiled in a way that seemed both self-amused and condescending at the same time.
He was going to tell her that he’d quit a few years earlier, but suddenly he realized he did not want to tell her even the smallest personal detail about himself. Already he didn’t like her. “No,” was all he eventually said. “I don’t smoke.”
Neither spoke for a couple of minutes. Carlucci sipped at his coffee, and when Naomi finished her cigarette, she poured herself a cup of tea. She took a sip, then looked at him and said, “All right.”
“Cancer Cell,” he said. “Martin Kelly says you know something about them.”
“Why are you interested?”
“My daughter has a friend who’s been abducted by two men. A witness seemed to think the two men were involved with Cancer Cell. I’m trying to find out what happened to my daughter’s friend.”
Naomi Katsuda smiled, and raised one eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s what all this is about?” As if she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes.”
She shook her head, laughing quietly. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’m sorry about your daughter’s friend. But I can’t help you.”
“You know something about Cancer Cell, though, don’t you?”
Her smile shifted into a frown. “I would rather you didn’t mention that name again,” she said. “It’s not a good idea.”
“What the hell is all the goddamn mystery about these people?”
“If you knew anything about them, Lieutenant, you would not ask that question.”
“That’s just the point, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about them. That’s why I’m here. I’ve known Martin Kelly a long time, and if he says you know something substantial, then I’m sure you do.”
“I’m not denying anything, Lieutenant.” She paused. “There’s an old expression, I’m not sure I have it precisely, but it’s something like, ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’”
“I’m familiar with the expression,” Carlucci said. “I’m a cop, my job involves dealing with both knowledge and danger. I’ve been doing it a long time.”
Naomi shook her head. “I’m not concerned about you, Lieutenant. I’m concerned about my own safety. Revealing knowledge to others can be even more dangerous than just having it.”
“Kelly said you told him that if he needed to know more, for a case, you would help him.”
Her expression had grown hard and unyielding. “I made no promises to him. But I agreed to meet you. And when I asked you what this was all about, you told me it’s about some unimportant abduction. I am not about to take any risks for that.”
“What if it had been my daughter who had been abducted, and not her friend?”
“I would have expressed greater sympathy for your loss, but my answer would have been the same. I would tell you nothing.”
“And if my daughter’s friend turns up dead, and abduction becomes murder, will you help then?”
She sighed with exasperation, smiling faintly. “There’s something fundamental about this you just don’t understand, Lieutenant. One insignificant murder would change nothing.”
“Then what the hell would it take to get you to talk to me about these people?”
“Much more, Lieutenant.” All traces of the smile hardened away. -You can come back to me when people are dying. Maybe I’ll talk to you then.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Carlucci asked, angry now. “People are dying all the time. People are dying right now while we’re sitting here talking about bullshit.”
“You’ll know what I mean when it happens, Lieutenant. You’ll know exactly what I mean.” She shifted her gaze away from him, brought her teacup to her mouth, and drank. “We’re done talking, Lieutenant. You can go now.” She glanced back at him, the corner of her silver-painted lips turning up into a kind of smile. “I’ll cover the check. I doubt you can afford it.”
Coffee, tea, a pastry, how much could that be? But she was probably right, in here it would cost a fortune. Everything here was out of reach, including Naomi Katsuda.
He got up from the table, started to thank her, then thought, screw it, why should he? “Good-bye, Ms. Katsuda.” She didn’t reply, and she didn’t look at him. Fuck you, too, he thought. He pushed the chair back in against the table and walked away from her.
ISABEL
There was blood everywhere. Monkey blood.
Isabel watched from the shadows of an old heat duct high above the floor, the grating long gone, her view unobstructed. A woman was skinning a dead monkey, and making a terrible mess of it.
The room was small, with plaster walls and a wood floor partially covered by cracked, stained linoleum and scraps of thin carpeting. The windows were boarded and papered over, and the door was barred shut; light came from a lamp on a wooden crate. Isabel could smell the blood and the stench of fuel from the makeshift stove against the far wall, burners lit beneath an enormous pot filled with water.
The lamp cast jerking, distorted shadows across the floor as the woman moved, but it brightly illuminated the monkey’s face, which was as yet untouched.
Henry. Isabel thought it was Henry, who had been in a cage across the aisle from her in her old home; she thought she recognized the odd tuft of gray above his right eyebrow. She had a vague memory of Henry being sick, too, at the same time she was; a memory of Henry lying on the floor of his cage and looking at her, eyes blinking slowly. Now his eyes weren’t blinking at all.
Isabel closed her own eyes, feeling sick, down inside her belly. She wanted to stop the smells, the images. But she couldn’t, and she opened her eyes again and stared at the scene beneath her.
The woman was awash in blood, and she was breathing hard, swearing as she worked at the dead monkey. Blood covered her hands, streaked her arms, soaked into her c
lothes; some had splashed across her face. She rested a moment, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and smeared more blood across her cheek and eye. She swore again, blinking crazily. Then she breathed in deeply, dropped the knife to the ground and picked up a larger one, gripped it tightly. Staring into the dead monkey’s face, she began sawing at the neck, trying to cut off its head.
Henry, Isabel thought.
She couldn’t look anymore. She was feeling sicker, her throat burning now, something coming up from her stomach.
Isabel closed her eyes, then inched her way slowly and silently back along the heat duct, getting away from the room, away from the images and smells, just getting away…
PART TWO
INFECTION
CHAPTER 7
Nikki guided the pedalcart around the corner and into the alley; Cage sat beside her, pumping his foot pedals, providing half the power. The gray early morning light darkened as they moved deeper into the alley, blocked by the buildings rising high on either side, the fire escapes, and the shaky planked walkways that crisscrossed the alley several floors above them. Cage was exhausted, working on two hours of sleep and half a pot of coffee; Nikki didn’t look much better.
There was a lot of activity in the alley people loading and unloading merchandise into and from carts and pinky-vans and scat trucks, other people standing around talking and drinking coffee, or walking across the creaking, sagging wooden planks, people and vehicles squeezing past each other in both directions but it all was relatively low-key this time of day, not like the amphetamine buzz of the Tenderloin at night. The smell of bacon and frying butter was strong, filling the alley, and Cage’s stomach burned with acids of morning hunger and coffee. Maybe he’d take Nikki out for breakfast when they were done here.
They let the cart roll to a stop on the right-hand side of the alley, ten feet short of a wide blue metal door set in the brick wall. The first- and second-floor windows of the building were painted over in dark brown and covered by rusting spiked metal grilles.
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