“It’s not that good,” Cage said, grinning, “but it’s cheap.”
Carlucci sipped at the beer, watching the young man across the table from him. Dr. Cage. Cage. He wasn’t sure why it surprised him. Appearances had never meant that much to him. Cage was probably a good doctor; his heart was in the right place if he worked here, and the people who came to this clinic were probably damn lucky to have him.
“Why did he die?” Carlucci finally asked.
Cage shrugged. “No idea. But I’d sure like to know. It worries me. I was hoping you knew him. I don’t suppose you have any idea where he’s been the past couple of weeks, do you?”
Carlucci shook his head. “I’ve been looking for him all that time.”
“Why?”
“I told you. He was a friend of my daughter’s. He was living in a death house in the DMZ. She went to see him one day, and he was gone. There were indications he’d been abducted.”
Cage sat back in his chair, staring at him. “By whom?” Carlucci hesitated, then said, “No one knows.”
“So your daughter doesn’t know where he’s been, either.”
“No.”
Cage shook his head. “Shit,” he said, so quietly Carlucci barely heard him.—I’d d like to find out what killed him, and where the hell he picked it up.”
“Can’t you do tests?” Carlucci asked. “An autopsy.”
Cage snorted. “Look at this place. We’ve got a half-assed lab in back where we can do simple blood work, and simple almost certainly isn’t going to tell us what killed Tito. We could send the work out to a real lab, but we don’t have the money for that, and even that might not do shit anyway it’s all a goddamn shot in the dark. We’ve got no facilities to do an autopsy, there’s absolutely no way we could get anyone else to do it, and we’ve got no way to keep the body here. Unless we find some relative or friend willing to foot the bill in the next few hours, we’ll have to haul him to one of the crematoriums.” He took a long drink from his beer, shaking his head; as he swallowed, the tattooed snakes seemed to writhe around the staff. “We will keep the blood and other samples in case anyone else turns up dead like him, but that’s all we can do for now.”
Carlucci felt like he was being invited to ask the question, and so he did. “You think someone else will die like Tito?”
“Oh, sure, somewhere, someday. I’ve heard something about a similar case around here a while ago. But f probably won’t see another one. It’ll probably remain a mystery, like a lot of other deaths. People die all the time in this city from unknown causes, just like they die all the time from conditions or diseases we can prevent or easily treat. It’s a disgrace, but that’s the reality.”
Carlucci nodded, more to himself than to Cage. There was something disingenuous about what Cage had just said, about the way he’d said it. And Carlucci thought about what he would tell Caroline. She would want to know more. She would want to know who had taken Tito, and why, and she would want to know what it was that had killed him.
He looked across the table at Cage. The man was a doctor working in a street clinic in the heart of the Tenderloin, close to the streets. No, a part of the streets, out on the edges. And Carlucci was certain Cage was holding something back from him. He wondered if this was a kind of game they were playing, sending out feelers, testing for responses. He hesitated, reluctant to take the next step, but wondered what the hell he had to lose.
“You ever hear of Cancer Cell?” he finally asked.
Cage didn’t move, but Carlucci saw something in the man’s eyes, a brief widening of the pupils, a slight tensing of muscles, and he felt a shiver of satisfaction, knowing he’d been right.
Cage’s mouth worked into just a touch of a smile. “Now why the hell do you ask me that?”
“You have heard of them.”
“Let’s say I have. Why are you asking?”
Carlucci hesitated again, then almost laughed at himself, at the absurdity. “Caroline, my daughter, said there was someone who saw Tito’s abduction, and this guy thought Cancer Cell had something to do with it. That’s all I know. I’ve heard of Cancer Cell, but I don’t really know anything about them.”
This time it was Cage who seemed to be evaluating Carlucci, trying to make a judgment. He pushed back from the table, stood, and grabbed his bottle of Black Orbit, then walked over to the counter and leaned against it, looking at him. Carlucci returned the gaze, waiting for the man to speak. Suddenly his stomach churned, and he knew Cage was going to say something that would change how he saw Tito’s death, something that would change the coming weeks of his life. He wanted to stand up right now and walk out of the room and leave all this behind him. But he stayed.
Cage brought the bottle to his mouth, tipped it back, and drained the rest of the beer. He set the bottle on the counter and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I saw a guy two and half weeks ago,” he said. “He looked and smelled sick. I haven’t seen him since, but I just talked to someone who said this guy was in real bad shape, probably dying. Symptoms sounded a lot like Tito here.” He paused, almost smiling, though Carlucci was sure it wasn’t from amusement. “Thing is this,” Cage continued. “This guy who’s dying, who’s probably dead by now, this guy worked for Cancer Cell.”
Neither of them spoke for a while. The connection was obvious, but what did it really mean? Anything? Even if Tito and this other guy died from the same thing, did Carlucci have any business pursuing it? Tito was dead, and Carlucci’s search for him was over. There was no evidence of a crime other than the original abduction, and even that was pretty shaky. Besides, it was just a dead Mexican who’d been living in a death house and would have died of AIDS pretty soon anyway, right? Who gave a shit?
Carlucci gave a shit, that was who, and so did Caroline. And then there was Naomi Katsuda, who definitely had been murdered and had the initials “CC” carved into her forehead, who had been a potential source of information about Cancer Cell and had told him to come back to her when people started dying.
It was all too much to walk away from. Carlucci felt a great weariness wash over him, settling in his bones. Whatever this all was, it was going to be a long, long haul, and none of it was going to be easy.
It was Cage, though, who broke the silence.
“I watch for disease,” he said. “We’ve got so much of it these days. I look for patterns and strange occurrences and the signs of something deadly about to break out into the population.” He shrugged. “I’m a doctor. It’s not such a great time being a doctor. Or maybe the best time of all, there’s so much work to do, so many people sick and dying with so many things, and getting worse all the time. I’ve given up much hope for reasonable large-scale prevention in this city, this country no one in power is willing to spend the money. The wealthy, of course, are okay, but they’ve always been good at taking care of themselves. But for the rest of us, prevention’s becoming a lost cause, with water and air quality steadily deteriorating, increasing malnutrition, decreasing health care resources… shit, I could go on and on. Treatment’s not a hell of a lot better anymore, with the same caveat for the rich. Though even if you’re rich and you get Chingala Fever or X-TB or Lassa 3 or half a dozen others, you’re just as dead as the poor. But the rich have a lot less exposure, and they’re generally healthier to begin with, and… and blah blah blah.” Cage laughed. “Yeah, I know, I’m getting dangerously close to making a speech here. The point is, I watch and worry about shit like this, about two people dying from the same awful disease I’ve never seen before, especially when there’s a connection to an outfit that does medical experimentation. And I worry that two is going to turn into a much bigger number and it’ll get out of control and there will be dead people everywhere.”
You can come back to me when people are dying, Naomi Katsuda had said.
“It’s happened before in other countries,” Cage went on, “and it’s come close to happening here a few times. It is going to happen in t
his country someday, and it will probably come out of an area like this, like the Tenderloin, or the DMZ, or the Mission, where there are so many poor people crammed together with lousy health and lousy sanitation. And so I worry when something like this happens. It’ll probably be nothing this time, but…” He left it there with a shrug.
“All right,” Carlucci said. “Then tell me about Cancer Cell. Who the hell they are and why they worry you.”
Cage shook his head. “They don’t worry me, not exactly. It’s the connection to them that worries me, and that’s not quite the same thing.” He looked at the empty Black Orbit bottle, then at Carlucci. “You want another?”
Carlucci thought about it for a minute. It was stifling in here, and the fans didn’t seem to be helping much anymore, and his day hadn’t gone well at all. He could do with several beers. “Sure,” he said, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his shirt and pulling the knot of his tie halfway down his chest.
Cage walked over to the refrigerator for two more bottles. Carlucci had already revised his opinion of Cage a couple of times since he’d first seen him, and wondered if he would have to revise it again. Probably. Cage handed him a bottle, but didn’t sit down again. He returned to his previous spot, leaning against the counter.
“First,” Cage began, “I’ve got to say I don’t know that I’d call Cancer Cell good or bad. I don’t know enough about them, and I don’t think even if I did that I’d make that kind of judgment. They’re probably some of both, like most of us. I try not to make too many judgments about anyone.” Then Cage laughed. “Well, I try.” He drank deeply from the bottle, then stared at the label as if he was trying to decipher something. Finally he looked back at Carlucci.
“We get a lot of high-grade black-market pharmaceuticals from Cancer Cell. For the clinic. Now, no one we deal with ever actually says the words ‘Cancer Cell,’ but we know that’s where it’s all coming from. It has to be. Typical street stuff is just shit, and getting lab quality out of the domestic companies is just about impossible the profits on it are so good they’ve got the best inventory control around. You can get the same stuff black-marketed down from New Hong Kong itself, but that’s a lot more expensive, more than we can handle.”
Carlucci knew. A friend of his, Louis Tanner, an ex-cop, used to barter black-market pharmaceuticals from New Hong Kong a few years ago. Some of it he sold, and some of it he gave away to clinics like this one.
“Most of what I know about Cancer Cell is distillation of rumors,” Cage continued. “Working the essence of probable truth out of a mass of stories, guesses, wild speculation, street gossip, and wish fulfillment. What I do know is this: They do cutting-edge medical research. That’s their main purpose. Everything else is in aid of that. And they do their research without any restrictions imposed by laws or regulations.”
“Or ethics,” Carlucci put in.
Cage shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Like New Hong Kong.”
Cage shrugged again. “I don’t even know what their end purpose is. New Hong Kong’s goal is profit, but I don’t think that’s true for Cancer Cell. I do know that if you have an incurable disease, or an irreversible, debilitating condition, you can volunteer for experimental treatments from them. It’s a risk some people are more than willing to take.”
“You make it sound like they have signs up somewhere. ‘VOLUNTEERS NEEDED. EXPERIMENTAL SUBJECTS. INCURABLE DISEASE? CALL THIS NUMBER TO APPLY.’”
Cage laughed. “No, that’s New Hong Kong’s style, not Cancer Cell’s. Cancer Cell is discreet. But you work street medicine long enough, you hear things, and the picture comes together. Besides, just like they’re a source for us, we’re a source for them.”
“A source of experimental subjects, you mean.”
“Something like that.”
“Have you ever sent anyone to them?”
Cage sighed. “It’s not that simple. I have mentioned them to some of my patients over the years. Not by name, more the idea. Let the patient know the option was available.”
“Any of them exercise that option?”
“I don’t know. Probably. If any did, I never heard from them.”
Of course not, Carlucci thought, because they’re dead. He drank from his beer, which was no longer very cold. In the peak of summer, this room must be a goddamn hotbox. He watched Cage, the hip young clinic doctor, medic of the streets. He felt certain Cage wasn’t telling him everything he knew about Cancer Cell. But that was okay. He sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Cage everything he knew about Naomi Katsuda and her New Hong Kong connections. But he was probably going to have to tell Cage something. Cage was the only solid potential source of information about Cancer Cell he had, and he was going to need Cage’s help.
“So all this worries me,” Cage said. “I wonder what Cancer Cell is doing. Some kind of viral or bacterial research that’s gone out of control? Or something worse, like deliberately infecting people? No idea why they would do that, but then I don’t know them very well, do I? Most of all I worry about how contagious this crap is.” Cage rubbed at his nose, then pinched the bridge, as if he were trying to massage away a growing headache. “Probably it all ends right here,” he finished up. “With Tito. Just a fluke, a couple of dead people, nothing further. Unsolved mystery.” He smiled.
“Maybe not,” Carlucci said with a heavy sigh.
“What do you mean by that?” Cage asked, suddenly wary.
Carlucci was still trying to decide how much to tell Cage. He’d spent his career developing a deep reluctance to divulge more information than was absolutely necessary, except with other cops, and even then he had to be careful. But you couldn’t always hold back everything; keeping other people too much in the dark could sometimes have all kinds of unintended consequences, a lot of them bad.
“Another case I have,” he finally replied. “A woman was killed a few days ago. She had the initials ‘CC’ carved into her head.”
“Could stand for a lot of things,” Cage said. “Christian Coalition. I hear they’re back in business, ranting and raving and preaching and putting on mass self-flagellations. Or Canadian Club. Maybe whoever killed her had way too much to drink. Blamed the booze.”
This was a game Carlucci didn’t feel like playing. Not in this stifling room with two dead people to think about, one of them definitely murdered.
“I had talked with her about two weeks before she was killed,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. “I was trying to find out something about Tito, and her name was given to me as a possible source of information about Cancer Cell.” He paused, staring at Cage, wanting to make damn sure the man was listening to him, paying close attention. “She wouldn’t tell me anything. She told me Tito’s abduction wasn’t even close to being important enough for her to take any risks.” One more pause, deliberately for effect. “She told me to come back and talk to her when people started dying.”
Cage was silent for a few moments. Then, quietly, he said, “Shit.”
Carlucci nodded. “Yeah, shit is right. I want your help, Cage.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. Not exactly. I’d like to talk to someone who’s a part of Cancer Cell. Could you arrange that?”
Cage’s mouth twisted into a kind of frown. “It might be possible. It would take time, and it would be risky. They don’t like anyone weaseling around in their business. And a cop? Jesus. But maybe I can find out something.”
“I’ll arrange for Tito Moraleja to be taken to one of the police morgues, maybe even get an autopsy done. I’ll call it a connection to this other case I have.”
“You’re willing to do that?”
“Sure. Can you make arrangements for Tito’s body to get to the Tenderloin perimeter? If I give you the name of a business, an address?”
“Of course. Even if I have to rent a cart and haul him there myself. Then you can get him out of the Tenderloin?”
“Yes.” Carlucci took one of his cards a
nd wrote an address on the back. It was an import/export shop in one of the perimeter buildings, with ways both in and out of the Tenderloin. The police department had an arrangement with the owner, Nanos Spyrodakis. For a price, they could move almost anything or anyone into or out of the Tenderloin. A dead body? Carlucci sighed to himself. Getting Tito Moraleja’ s body out was going to be expensive.
He handed the card to Cage. “Can you have him there in two hours?”
“Yeah, no problem,” Cage said, looking at the address. He turned the card over. “I guess I’ll need this card if I want to get in touch with you.”
“Yes. And be discreet over the phone.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant.” He tucked the card into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll let you know if I find out something.”
Carlucci got up from the chair, finished off the warm Black Orbit. “Thanks for the beer.” He set the empty bottle on the table.
The two men shook hands and Carlucci turned to go. “Lieutenant?”
“Yeah?”
Cage was smiling, but it was a fearful smile. “Whoever does the autopsy on Tito? Tell them to be damn careful.”
CHAPTER 12
The playground was enclosed by metal-sheet fencing topped by razor wire and rusted saw blades, the fencing broken only by two narrow gates. The gates were manned by street soldiers from the Polk Corridor in full battle colors: dark red ankle scarves wrapped tightly around black leather boots; khakis spattered with what appeared to be bloodstains; shining silver serpent belts loaded with hand ammo; arms wired with coils of jolt-tubing; shielded glasses and dark green bush hats.
Caroline slowed as she approached the east gate with Lily and Mink, the mother and daughter who were now living in Tito’s old room in the death house, waiting for Mink to die. They had walked the several blocks from the DMZ, Caroline acting as escort and guide. In fact, she felt more like a bodyguard, watching out for Lily and Mink because they didn’t have much street smarts yet, and they gave off an aura of being ripe for the street scavs.
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