Destroying Angel

by Richard Paul Russo

  The bright orange flame of the rocket launch appeared in the southern sky, followed a few seconds later by a barely audible rumble as the ship, carrying his load of contraband, rose into the night. Tanner watched the flame rise, growing small and faint, until it disappeared far above him.

  He remained on the roof another hour, motionless, watching the night sky, thinking, trying not to think. Then he picked up his chair and returned to his apartment.

  Tanner dreamed:

  He climbs the hot, dark stairwell, Freeman just in front of him. His heart beats hard, and he sweats, smells mildew from rotting hall carpets. He feels for the knife in his boot, but isn’t reassured by its touch. He wishes they could have risked carrying guns, but these assholes will surely search them before running the deal. Tanner feels like his ass is hanging out a window. Even knowing they have backup out on the street below isn’t much help. Backup in the Tenderloin? A joke.

  At the top of the stairs, Freeman stops, looking at Tanner through dreadlocks hanging over his eyes. The building’s too damn quiet, Tanner thinks. Too damn hot. And too damn dark. A single bare bulb glows at the other end of the hall.

  “You ready?” Freeman whispers.

  Tanner nods. His throat is dry.

  “Let’s nail these fuckers,” Freeman says.

  They walk down the hall, stop in front of a cracked wooden door with a huge black number nine painted across it. Freeman knocks once, once again, then quickly three times.

  The door opens, and a big bearded guy looks out at them from a room almost as dark as the hall. He doesn’t let them in. Tanner smells tuna, and something thick and sweet.

  “Money?” the guy says.

  Freeman takes a wad of bills from his jacket pocket, holds it up long enough for the guy to get a good look, then puts it back. The bearded guy nods, opens the door a little wider, then brings up a gun and sticks it against Freeman’s forehead.

  Jesus.

  “Eat this, nigger.” He pulls the trigger and blows away Freeman’s face, spraying blood and flesh and bone all over Tanner.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  Tanner runs.

  He nearly reaches the stairwell when another explosion sounds. Something hard and compact slams into him, knocks him off balance, still running, he doesn’t know what it is. Then he does know, and hot pain erupts in his side, sends him flying blindly around the corner and crashing down the stairs...

  And Tanner wakes:

  He sat up with a sharp intake of breath. Sweat rolled down his sides, the base of his spine. The adrenaline rush left a tingling in its wake.

  It was not the first time. The dream, the nightmare, had repeated over the years—not regularly, not often, but often enough. A nearly exact replay of what had happened two and a half years ago, of a drug bust gone completely to shit. A replay of the way Freeman had been killed.

  Tanner got out of bed, went to the open window, and looked out, rubbing at the thick scar on his side. He could see the flicker of flames a few blocks away—dump fires or burning cars. Not a neighborhood cookout.

  He hadn’t had the dream in several months, and he knew why he had tonight—those fucking bodies. And Tanner knew he wasn’t going to be the only one with nightmares.

  A few cops would, at first. Then, as the news spread through the city, and especially when other bodies were found—and Tanner knew there would be other bodies—the nightmares, too, would spread. And what would make the situation worse was the unknown. Years ago, the cops never had a clue. Never an idea who was doing the killing, or why. When the killings had stopped, the hope had been that the killer himself had bought it. Now, though, it didn’t seem that way. There was the possibility of a copycat, but Tanner doubted it. Carlucci would know. Maybe Tanner should track him down, ask.

  Christ, he thought, just forget it. It wasn’t his problem. Except for that damn two-and-a-half-year-old message. He did not want to think about it, but unless this was just a fluke, it was going to be his problem. And he knew he wasn’t going to forget it.

  Tanner looked at the clock—12:53. He wondered if he could stay awake until dawn. Better than dreaming again. He stood at the window and watched the flickering glow of flames in the night.

  FOUR

  TANNER PUT IT off for three days. Then, all it took was a phone call to Lucy Chen, who told him where Carlucci held his morning coffee-hashes.

  It was a place called Spade’s, a spice and espresso bar in the Tundra run by Jamie Kingston, a black ex-cop who’d had half his left leg blown off by his partner during a race riot outside City Hall. Tanner walked in just after six in the morning, and the place was packed. A dozen sparking ion poles stood among the small tables, adding a clean burn odor to the heavy smell of espresso. A deep, thumping bass line pounded beneath the babble of voices.

  Tanner worked his way through the tables and ion poles, then spotted Carlucci in a booth against the back wall. Two women uniforms sat across from him, drinking green-tinted iced tea from clear glasses. Carlucci had a coffee cup in his hand and several stacks of paper laid out on the table.

  Carlucci saw Tanner approach, stared at him for a few moments, then nodded toward an empty stool at the end of the main bar. Tanner sat on the stool, ordered a double espresso, and waited.

  He was half through the espresso, and already regretting it—a burning pain had begun in his stomach—when Kingston emerged from the steaming kitchen and headed along the bar, smiling at Tanner. It had been more than a year since Tanner had last seen him, but Kingston still wore black leather knickers that revealed the scarred flesh of his right leg, and the gleaming metal of his cyborged left. On his feet, both the real and the artificial, were leather sandals.

  Kingston took a pastry bar from under the counter and set it in front of Tanner.

  “On the house.” Kingston leaned against the counter. “Been a long time, Tanner.”

  Tanner nodded. “How’s the leg?”

  Kingston’s smile broadened into a grin. “Same as always. Better than the real thing.”

  Kingston’s leg was a legend in the Tundra. Rumor was he could disconnect the leg and convert it into a scattergun in less than ten seconds.

  But Kingston’s grin vanished, and he leaned forward, his face just a few inches from Tanner’s.

  “You’re waiting to see Carlucci.”

  More statement than question. Tanner nodded again.

  “What the hell for?” Kingston was angry now, and Tanner had no idea why. “You aren’t a cop anymore.”

  Tanner wondered what he was missing, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to justify himself to Kingston.

  “Tanner.” Carlucci’s voice.

  Tanner turned, looked at him. The two uniforms were gone. Tanner looked back at Kingston. “Go,” Kingston whispered. Tanner picked up his espresso, brought it to Carlucci’s booth, and sat. Carlucci was looking through one of the stacks of paper.

  “What’s eating Kingston?” Tanner asked.

  “None of your business. Got nothing to do with you.” He looked up. “Tanner the civilian. How’s life out in the hive?”

  “Buzzing.”

  Carlucci snorted. “Yeah. I hear stories about you. Most of them good, I guess.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Your leaking heart is the reason you couldn’t ice it as a cop.”

  Tanner didn’t respond. Probably there was some truth to what Carlucci said. But only some. Besides, Carlucci wasn’t exactly a cold-hearted bastard himself, and he was still a cop.

  “All right,” Carlucci said, “so why are you here?”

  “I was on the Carousel Club balcony Thursday. I saw you pull them out of the slough.”

  Carlucci suddenly looked more tired, worn down, and he didn’t say anything for a while. He finished his coffee, waved at the barman for another. He rubbed his eyes, then looked back at Tanner.

  “Yeah, and so? You here to give me some lunatic theory?”

  Tanner shook his head. “Been getting theories again?” />
  “Up the fucking ass. Mannon thinks it’s more than one guy. Fuentes is convinced the guy’s a Roller gone over the edge. Tinka believes it’s a woman. And Harker still thinks the killer’s a fucking alien. And those are cop theories. You should hear the shit we’re picking up on the street. The newshawkers are having a fucking feast.” His pager beeped beside him; he glanced at the readout, then reached down and touched something to silence it. “No theory, then why?”

  “I pulled two of them out of Stowe Lake myself, remember? I just want to know if it’s the same guy.”

  Carlucci slowly nodded. “Oh yeah, it’s the same guy, it’s the same motherfucker. Strangled. Chained together with the bands fused to the skin. A benign virus injected into Homicide’s computers that froze the system and then gave the location of the bodies.” He paused. “And the angel wings.”

  Tanner nodded to himself, picturing the tiny, silver-blue angel wings tattooed inside the nostrils of the victims. “Any progress?” Tanner wasn’t sure why he asked the question. He knew the answer.

  Carlucci gave a bitter laugh. “Progress, shit. There wasn’t any progress for two years, you expect something in three days?” He shook his head. “They’ve got two of the slugs upstairs working on it full time, but that’s not going to do any good.” Tanner shuddered, thinking of the slugs, imagining them in their cubicles above the station, hardly human anymore, their bodies distended and distorted by the constant injections of reason enhancers. They were supposed to be able to solve almost any problem, but they’d been useless with this one. “That’s all you want? To know if it’s the same guy?”

  Tanner shrugged.

  “You want to come in on this from the outside?”

  Tanner firmly shook his head, knowing he should be nodding, that almost certainly he was going to have to come in at some point. “No. But do you mind if I stay in touch on it?”

  Carlucci sighed. “All right. Just let me know if you pick up anything substantial on the street, and don’t bug me every other day about it. It’s not going to move any faster than it did before, even if the mayor doesn’t want to hear that.” He glanced at the main bar. “I’ve got more people to talk to, so if there isn’t anything else...”

  Tanner looked at the bar, saw Deke the Geek on a stool, staring at him. Deke flipped him off, grabbing his crotch with his other hand.

  “Old friends?” Carlucci said.

  “Yeah.” He turned back to Carlucci, slid out of the booth, and stood. “Thanks. See you around.”

  Carlucci nodded, then said, “Hey, Tanner.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have to use a police van to make your shipments?”

  So, Carlucci knew. “Makes things a lot easier,” Tanner said.

  “I’m sure it does. It’s a damn good thing you’re discreet.” Carlucci shrugged. “All right. See you.”

  Without looking back at Deke, Tanner left.

  Outside, it was already hot, though it was still early. The sky, however, was clear, and almost blue. Tanner crossed the street to the Tundra’s open space park. There were no trees in the park, only stunted clumps of mutated plants that had managed to emerge after the defoliants had been dropped onto the Tundra two years before.

  Tanner sat on a stone bench that was still slightly damp from an early-morning rain. He didn’t feel like moving, didn’t want to do anything but sit in the growing heat and let it work through him. His shipment from the orbitals wasn’t coming down until the next day, and he had nothing else going until then. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, directly facing the sun.

  A burst of shouts and the roar of board motors brought Tanner upright, eyes open. From the other end of the park, a girl was racing toward him on a motorized board, hand working the rear control line, weaving along the concrete path. Fifty feet behind her was a pack of thrashers in pursuit. The girl was grinning.

  As she got closer, Tanner recognized her—it was the girl from the junkyard. Once again a pang of familiarity went through him, then faded when he could not lock it down. People moved out of the girl’s path, and she swung wide around him, throttle full open, then shot out of the park and into the street, moving skillfully among the cars.

  The thrasher pack went past, following her into the street. Two of them crashed into cars, tumbling to the ground, the boards spinning their wheels. Brakes squealed, people yelled, the thrashers yelled back. The girl, two blocks past the park, turned a corner and was gone from sight. Those thrashers still on their boards, seven or eight of them, followed her around the corner, and they, too, were gone.

  Tanner watched and listened, but nothing happened. He tilted his head back, and closed his eyes once more.

  FIVE

  SOOKIE WAS FLYING. Chase scene. The stolen board hummed along slick and smooth. She’d picked a good one. She laughed, thinking of the thrasher she’d tumbled to get the board.

  The other thrashers. She didn’t look around, but she knew they were behind her, she could hear the motors. The shouts. The swearing. Wind lifted her hair, flapped her shirt. Sookie took another corner, wheels skidding across the pavement, fishtailing. She leaned, throttled up and straightened, then jumped the curb and shot along the sidewalk. Clattering wheels. Zoom!

  People on the sidewalk scattered, some yelling at her, arms waving. They didn’t know. Zap. Sookie swerved, went off the curb, hit the street. She angled across, wheels caught for a moment in a drain grate, then jarred loose as she tumbled from the board. She rolled back onto her feet, righted the board, and jumped back onto it. Sookie throttled up, flying again.

  She shot down an alley. Holes and rocks. Broken windows, splintered wood. The thrashers were closer now, at least a couple of them. Sookie weaved in and out of piles of trash, emerged from the alley and turned onto the street, bouncing between a parked car and one in motion. Halfway down the block, she heard one of the thrashers go down, screaming.

  Underground. She had to get underground. She looked ahead. Two more blocks, a few more turns. Sure.

  She wanted a cigarette. She laughed. What a crazy idea! She flew. One block. Then two. She turned hard right, swung an arcing left through traffic and into another alley. She twisted the throttle, hoping to get just a little more speed. She felt terrific, terrific! Yow. The alley was clear, the ground almost smooth. She ducked under a loading platform, veered to the left.

  At the mouth of the alley, Sookie cut back right, grazing the brick corner as she jumped the curb, shot down the sidewalk. Almost immediately she cut hard right again, into a narrow gap between buildings, toward concrete stairs going down. Sookie cut the engine, squatted, and grabbed the board as she flew off the top step and dropped. She hung on as she hit the lower steps and rolled, tumbling, sprawling across the bottom. Ignoring the pain, Sookie scrambled to her feet and pushed through the broken vent screen, into the darkness of the building.

  The basement was quiet and black. She couldn’t see a thing, but she knew where she was. She coiled the control line and attached it to the board, tucked the board by feel onto a shelf above the screen, then set off across the basement. On the far side of the basement floor was a hatch leading to underground rail tunnels. As she approached the far wall, still unable to see anything, Sookie dropped to hands and knees, moved forward until she felt the hatch.

  It wouldn’t open. She adjusted her grip, pulled harder. Nothing. What was going on? Once more, on her haunches, pushing with her legs. Still nothing.

  Sookie released the handle, stood. She wondered if something was happening down in the tunnels. Belly races? Subterranean barbecue? It made her hungry, thinking about food. Why hadn’t anyone told her?

  There had to be another way out. She didn’t want to go back through the screen; not yet, anyway. Thrashers. She got out matches, used one for a light.

  The basement was nearly empty. A few shelves on the walls, the floor hatch, a cabinet, a pile of broken glass. And a wooden door in the corner. Was it there before? She couldn’t remember. Anot
her match, and Sookie approached the door, pulled at it. Solid but unlocked. A cracking sound, and the door jerked loose, swung open. Behind the door was a short, narrow passage, another door. Sookie smiled, thinking of secret passages, hidden treasures. Electric ghosts and wailing mutants.

  She proceeded along the passage, lit a third match, pushed open the far door, stepped through.

  She stood in a much larger room, ceiling above ground level, grimy windows high above her letting in just enough light for her to see. Strange, old, tall machines filled the room. Cables snaked along the floor between the machines, huge pipes hung from the upper walls and ceiling. And then she saw them, glinting in the feeble light—silver chains.

  Hanging from hooks driven into the concrete walls were dozens of sets of silver chains attached to wide silver bands. Sookie stepped toward a set, reached out and touched the cold, smooth metal. Just like on the naked bodies. Beautiful. And again she wondered what they would look like on her own wrists and ankles.

  A thrum, a rumble, a high, oscillating whine. Sookie turned, stared at machines coming to life. All of them? She couldn’t tell. She saw wheels spinning, belts rolling, rods moving up and down. The floor vibrated beneath her feet, the pipes above her shook and hissed. The vibration increased, joined by a steady pounding.

  Then, in the back of the chamber, obscured by all the machines, a deep blue glow appeared. It grew, spread across the back wall, cast wavering shadows among the machines. The glow brightened and moved forward.

  Sookie went stiff, unable to move. She wanted to run, toward it or away from it, she wasn’t quite sure.

  The glow moved through the machines, like gliding on air, and as it approached, Sookie could make out a huge, vague form within it. She caught a glimpse of a hairless scalp half metal and light. Other flashes of metal. And, she thought, feathers. The edge of a wing. A voice emerged.

  “You, girl.” Man or woman? She couldn’t tell. It was smooth, sounded like it came from a machine. “Girl.”