Destroying Angel

by Richard Paul Russo

  “She sings every Saturday at dawn,” Lyuda said. “Started about three and a half months ago.”

  “Who is she?”

  “No one really knows. I’ve heard of people who say they recognize her voice, who say it’s Elisabetta Machiotti.”

  “Name sounds familiar,” Tanner said. “But...” He shrugged.

  “A highly acclaimed soprano with the Berlin Opera who disappeared a year ago. But like I said, no one really knows. Whoever she is, though, she’s really quite good.” She looked at her watch again. “Arkady should be here any minute now.”

  They waited without speaking for several minutes, watching the morning sky brighten. Tanner could see the first reflections of the rising sun glint off glass and metal on building roofs in the Core.

  The office door opened, closed, and a moment later a tall, young blond man walked into the room. Lyuda shook the man’s hand.

  “Arkady... Tanner,” she said. “Tanner... Arkady.”

  Tanner nodded at Arkady and they shook hands. Arkady nodded back, then turned to Lyuda and began speaking in Russian. She replied, also in Russian, and Tanner realized their entire conversation was going to proceed in a language he did not understand. At first he watched them, watched their faces and listened to their voices, hoping to get some sense of the conversation. But their expressions told him nothing, nor did their voices, and soon he stopped even trying to understand.

  Tanner turned back to the window and looked out onto the Core. Although he could not see anyone in or around any of the buildings, did not directly detect any motion, he was struck by a vague sense of movement from within the ruins, a shifting of atmospheric patterns. Something. An alien place. Though the heat of the day was growing, the sweat already filming across his skin, he could somehow imagine a light dusting of snow laid over the Core, cold and silent.

  Elisabetta Machiotti. In a way it did not matter who the woman was. What mattered was that she was in the Core, and that she sang. Tanner was certain that most people would be dumbfounded at the idea of a world-famous opera singer living in the Core; but, amazed and awed as he was by the woman’s performance in that hellhole, Tanner was not any more surprised at her presence in the Core than he was at the presence of anyone in that place. Given that the Core existed, why not a world-famous opera singer?

  The conversation stopped, and Tanner turned away from the window. Arkady nodded once at him, shook hands with Lyuda again, then walked out of the room. A few moments later Tanner heard the outer door open and close. He looked at Lyuda, who shook her head.

  “I don’t have a damn thing for you,” she said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. No one has any idea where he is, and no one wants to know. Something’s in the air with Rattan, but nobody knows what. Something more than Max, though Max doesn’t make the situation any easier. People don’t want to deal with Max, and people don’t even want to talk about Rattan.” She shook her head. “You’re going up against thick walls, Tanner. You want, I can keep asking around, put out a few sensors, but Arkady was my best shot, and to be honest I’m not wild about the idea of pushing it any further. I’ve got myself to watch for.”

  “No,” Tanner said. “It’s not worth the risk. I have some other lines to try. I appreciate what you did, and let’s leave it there.” He turned to the window once more, looking out at the Core as if it somehow had the answers he was searching for. He knew it did not have the answers to anything, but he gazed at it all the same.

  Lyuda joined him at the window. “You know what she is?” Lyuda asked.

  “The woman who sang?”

  Lyuda nodded. “You’ll think I’m crazy, but...” There was a long pause, and Tanner waited silently for her to continue. “Hope,” Lyuda said. “That’s what I think of when I hear her sing.”

  Tanner stared at the Core. Hope. Not even close to what he now felt. Standing at the edge of the Core, with no leads to Rattan, no leads to a psycho who was going to keep on killing again and again and again, all Tanner felt was despair.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SOOKIE KNEW THAT voice. Hearing those songs made her want to cry. She didn’t understand any of the words, but the tears came anyway. It was the third time she’d heard the woman sing. Who was she? Sookie thought the woman must be trapped in the Core, chained to a wall, unable to do anything but sing.

  Two songs, then the woman stopped. Sookie closed her eyes, still crying a little, listening, hoping for another song. But there wasn’t any more.

  She wiped away the tears, looked into the Core. It was filled with long shadows from the rising sun. Sookie sat on top of one of the street barricades at the edge of the Core. Mixer would think she was crazy, but she wasn’t afraid, as long as she was outside.

  She’d been inside the Core once, by accident. Not far inside. A couple of years ago, when she’d been younger and kind of stupid. She’d been running away from someone, middle of the night, she didn’t remember who or why. She’d climbed one of the barricades to get away, dropped down to the other side, then run across the street and into the closest wrecked building. She hadn’t really known what the Core was, not then. She didn’t really know what it was now, either, but now she knew enough to stay out.

  No one had followed her over the barrier or across the street. Sookie had figured she was safe. She was inside a dark and dusty room, with a couple windows looking out on the street. Silver light from across the road came in through the windows, lighting up the dust. Something brushed her foot and she jumped away. A huge rat as big as a small dog scampered through one of the light beams and Sookie squealed. Rats didn’t bother her too much, but she’d never seen one that big.

  Then she heard a moaning laugh from the corner of the room. A click, then a pale light came on overhead. Sookie saw a young woman dressed in a white body suit crouched at the edge of a pit in the floor. The woman, head shaved, held a metal pipe in one hand and a hammer in the other. Her mouth was open, making the moaning laugh. Then the laugh stopped.

  The woman leaped across the pit and ran at Sookie, pipe and hammer held high. Sookie turned and ran, stumbled, fell. The woman couldn’t stop, tripped over Sookie, yowling. Sookie scrambled to her feet, headed for the door. Something hit her arm—the hammer. She made it to the door, out, onto the street, and dashed for the barricade. The woman did not follow her out of the building. Her arm hurt, but she clambered up the barricade. Someone grabbed her, helped her up and over and back into the Tenderloin. It was a spikehead who had helped her up. That was how she had met Mixer, escaping from the Core.

  Sookie shivered, remembering. Sometimes she dreamed about that woman. In her dreams, the woman sometimes shouted “Dinner!” just before leaping across the pit at Sookie. In her dreams, the woman always caught her.

  Clouds started to fill the sky. It was going to rain soon. Sookie climbed down from the barricade and returned to the head of the alley. She stood and watched the store entrances, waiting for Tanner to reappear.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TANNER WAS SOAKED by the time he reached Hannah and Rossi’s, drenched by a second and unexpected cloudburst. He dripped water on the carpets as he climbed the stairs, walked down the hall, then entered the apartment. The place was quiet. There was no sign of Hannah, and Rossi was asleep in the bedroom, lying faceup on the bed. In the bathroom, Tanner undressed, hung everything on hooks and racks. He took a short, cool shower, then put on clean, dry clothes.

  He stretched out on the couch and tried to sleep. He was hot, exhausted, and depressed, and sleep would not come. A clock ticked weakly in the bedroom. Someone in the building was playing loud music, and Tanner could feel the beat gently thumping up from the floor and through the sofa. He looked up at the blue-painted cracks in the ceiling and imagined water dripping from them, splashing across his face, cooling him. Sweat trickled under his arms, down his neck.

  He was nowhere. Things were slipping away from him. He and Carlucci knew no more now than they had several days before, w
hich meant they were losing ground. And tonight he would head back into the Tenderloin and go through it all again. Flying blind, that’s what it felt like. How long could he keep it going without making a mistake? It did not matter how careful he was, eventually there would come a night when he would ask the wrong person the wrong question, like he had with Max, or simply be in the wrong place. Tanner wondered again if he would survive the summer.

  Unable to sleep, he got up from the couch and walked into the kitchen. It was still a mess of food and filthy plates and stained glasses. Hannah, too, had given up on a lot. Well, it gave him something to do.

  Tanner spent the next hour washing dishes and glasses and silverware, cleaning counters, putting some of the food away while dumping most of it into the garbage. He swept the floors and washed the table. Then he dug through the cupboards, looking for something to drink. There was plenty of gin, but he couldn’t stand the stuff. In the back of a cupboard, behind some jars of Hungarian preserves, he found a dusty pint of cheap scotch.

  He fixed himself a drink, drank it slowly, then fixed another. It had been a long time since he had needed alcohol to sleep. His thoughts were scattered, but they kept moving through his head at wild speeds, and he needed something to slow them down, ease them back, put them away for a little while. So he sat at the table and drank.

  When he finished his third drink he returned to the front room. A pleasant warmth had settled in his limbs, and his thoughts had slowed and fuzzed over. He lay out on the couch, staring at the blue cracks once more, then closed his eyes. Heat of the day, warmth of the scotch. It was enough. Tanner slid slowly and softly into sleep.

  O O O O

  Tanner woke to the sensation of being watched. He lay facing the back of the sofa, and he slowly turned over to see Hannah in the overstuffed chair, gazing at him. The room was stuffy and hot, late-afternoon sun slashing in through the window. Hannah’s face was in shadow from her nose up, her mouth and chin brightly lit.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  “About a half hour,” Hannah said. “Couldn’t think of anything better to do.” She looked beat, as usual.

  Tanner sat up, stretched cramped muscles, popping neck and shoulder bones. He felt as tired as Hannah looked.

  “Where’s Rossi?”

  “Down at the Lucky Nines having a few beers with the guys. It’s a daily ritual.” She ran her hand slowly through her hair, watching him. “Make love to me, Louis.”

  Tanner stared at her a few moments without answering, then said quietly, “No, Hannah.”

  “Louis…”

  “No, Hannah.”

  She looked away from him. The sun was dropping quickly now, and the stream of light had worked up to the bridge of her nose, just below her eyes.

  “You did a hell of a job in the kitchen,” she said. “You’d make someone a good wife.” She turned back to him. “I just don’t care about much anymore.”

  Tanner did not know what to say. He did not want to be sucked down into the pit of Hannah and Rossi’s life; he had enough problems of his own. But he had known them both a long time, Hannah for more than twenty years. Hannah had known Carla, had been there to help him through all the shit when Carla had died.

  “I know,” Hannah said. “You want to know why I don’t leave him.”

  “I’m not going to ask that anymore,” Tanner said. “I know it’s not that simple.”

  Hannah sank back slowly into the chair. Now her entire face was bathed in the deep red glow of the setting sun, and she squinted against the glare.

  “Look at us,” Hannah said. “I should leave Rossi, and you should never have left Valerie. You and Valerie are both still paying for Carla’s death.”

  “She died fifteen years ago,” Tanner said. “They don’t have anything to do with each other.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  Tanner shook his head. “No.”

  Hannah slowly shook her head in return, a sad smile working its way onto her face, but she did not say anything. She closed her eyes for a few moments, then opened them slightly, still squinting in the sun. Tanner waited for her to speak, but she remained silent.

  “I’ll buy you dinner,” he finally said.

  Hannah sighed and nodded. “All right.” She stood up from the chair and went to the front door. Tanner got to his feet, joined her, and they left.

  O O O O

  When they got back from dinner, Tanner called Carlucci. He suggested meeting at the apartment, but Carlucci refused; he did not want to take the chance of seeing Rossi. Instead, they agreed to meet at a coffee shop down the street.

  Tanner arrived first and sat at a booth by the front window. He ordered coffee from the sour-looking waitress, and while he waited for it he looked around the restaurant. The place was dirty and run down, which matched most of the customers at the tables and counter. A pall of despair hung over the place, cut through with the smells of charred toast and frying fat. A thin layer of grease on the window blurred his view of the street.

  When the coffee arrived, Tanner looked at it with concern. It was too dark, and a burnt smell drifted up from the cup. He sipped it tentatively and burned the tip of his tongue; the coffee was so hot he could not really taste it, which was probably just as well.

  He could not stop thinking about what Hannah had said about Valerie and Carla. Carla had died fifteen years ago, he must have let that go by now. Right? But Hannah’s words stuck hard somewhere inside him, almost painful, and he could not shake them loose. Which made him think there was something to them. He did not want to think about it, though, he could not afford to right now. There were too many other, more immediate, concerns. Like the Chain Killer. So why couldn’t he stop thinking about it?

  He pushed the coffee cup from him in disgust. The coffee was just too much; he had managed less than half a cup. He signaled the waitress, told her to take the coffee away, and asked for tea. She glared sullenly at him, but took away the cup.

  Carlucci slid into the booth, across from him, just as the waitress brought Tanner’s tea.

  “Stay away from the coffee,” Tanner said.

  Carlucci grunted, ordered coffee anyway, and the waitress smirked at Tanner. It was the closest thing to a smile he had seen from her. She was probably in her thirties, and in a few more years, Tanner thought, she was going to look like Hannah. Or worse.

  “I hope you’re not going to tell me more bodies have been found,” he said to Carlucci.

  Carlucci shook his head. “No new bodies, not a damn thing new on this son of a bitch. What about you, any luck?”

  “No,” Tanner said. “Nobody wants to even talk about Rattan. Lot of people seem to think something’s on the move with him, but no one knows what. And they don’t want to know. The more people I ask, the greater the chance that someone’s going to end up dead. I don’t like it at all.” Tanner sighed. “But what the hell else are we going to do?” He gave Carlucci a half smile. “Tell you, though, I’m going to be real pissed if I find Rattan and it turns out he doesn’t know shit. A three-year-old message. Christ.”

  “I’ve been looking into things, digging around trying to find out if something’s going down between Rattan and some of our ‘fellow officers.’ ”

  “Your fellow officers.”

  “Fine, whatever. I haven’t got a whole lot, and I doubt I’m ever going to get much more. Any cop actually dealing with Rattan in any way is going to keep it real tight, or find himself either out of a job or dumped dead in an alley somewhere. Hardly anyone liked the two cops he killed, they were bad cops, but they were still cops. Hell, it’s the same thing you’re running into. A lot of cops have heard about something shaking out with Rattan, but they don’t know what it is, and they don’t want to know.”

  Tanner nodded. “We’re both hitting walls.” He shook his head. “I’ve been on this for a week, but it feels like a fucking month.”

  “ ‘Fucking’? I don’t usually hear you use that word,” Carl
ucci said, smiling.

  “Yeah, well, this is the fucking time for it.”

  Someone on the street banged at the window. It was Rossi. He pointed at Tanner and Carlucci, then at himself, then hurried away. A few moments later he came through the front door and walked up to the booth. He did not sit down, and neither Tanner nor Carlucci asked him to.

  “Hey, Carlucci,” Rossi said. He stuck out his hand. “It’s been a long time, yeah?”

  Carlucci would not shake Rossi’s hand. Tanner could smell the alcohol on Rossi, mixed with the heavy odor of sweat. Rossi continued to hold out his hand, which shook slightly. Tanner watched Rossi’s smile fade, his expression tighten.

  Carlucci stared back at Rossi, his face blank. Finally, Rossi pulled his hand back, made a fist, and pounded the table.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Rossi said. “Can’t you ever forget? Can’t you ever forgive?”

  “Not you,” Carlucci said. His face remained expressionless, his voice quiet.

  The two men stared at each other for a minute, and Rossi finally pushed back from the table. He turned to Tanner, arms shaking, lips quivering. Tanner felt he could actually see Rossi breaking apart inside.

  “I’ll see you later,” he said, voice cracked and hoarse. He turned and walked out, crashing loudly through the front entrance. Tanner watched him run awkwardly across the street and into the apartment building.

  “You’re awfully hard on him,” he said to Carlucci.

  “Shouldn’t I be? He cost my best friend an arm.”

  “That was six years ago.”

  “Six years, ten years, what difference? Brendan still doesn’t have an arm. When it grows back, I’ll ease up on Rossi.”

  Which meant never, of course. Tanner had heard about experimental work on full limb regeneration being done up in New Hong Kong, yet as far as he knew there had been no successes. But he nodded to Carlucci. He did understand. Brendan had never adjusted to the loss of his arm; he would not even consider a prosthesis. His marriage had disintegrated, and he had lost most of his friends. Carlucci blamed Rossi for more than the loss of Brendan’s arm; he blamed him for the loss of Brendan’s life.