Destroying Angel

by Richard Paul Russo

  Tanner could not allow that to happen. He understood Carlucci, but he had given his word to Rattan. He could not take the chance. No, he could not tell Carlucci what he was going to do.

  Hannah appeared at the doorway in her T-shirt, hair mussed, eyes half-closed.

  “Good morning,” she said. Her voice was harsh and gravelly.

  “Morning, Hannah.”

  She remained in the doorway without saying any more, looking at him. Tanner did not know what to say, either, so they stared at each other in silence until Hannah finally turned away and went into the bathroom. He listened to her morning noises—toilet seat dropping, streaming liquid, the toilet flushing, then the spitting of the shower.

  There was no reason to stay here any longer. With Max and Red Giant dead, there should be no problem going back home. He missed his apartment, the quiet warm comfort of familiarity. He missed his own bed. It struck him as absurd, but it was true.

  The phone rang and Tanner picked it up. It was Paul. Again Tanner explained the situation, as briefly as he could. He emphasized Rattan’s physical condition, why he was going to New Hong Kong.

  “He’s going to need a doctor with him either way,” Paul said. “Even as a passenger. He’ll be lucky to survive liftoff.”

  “Can he survive it?”

  “Oh, yeah. If he’s got a good doctor with him who knows what he’s doing and watches him every second.”

  “You willing to be that doctor?” Tanner asked.

  “Figured you were getting to that,” Paul said. He did not say anything else for a while, and Tanner listened to his regular breathing over the phone. In the background he could hear the faint sound of someone screaming, then a crash, and then laughter.

  “Yes or no,” Tanner said. What were his options if Paul said no? Leo, the junkie doctor?

  “Let me think about it. How soon you need an answer?”

  “Soon. Today.”

  “Give me an hour or so. You be there?”

  “I hope I’ll be home.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know. Talk to you then.”

  “Good-bye.”

  He set the phone down but did not move. He remained motionless, listening to the shower until it stopped. A couple of minutes later Hannah emerged from the bathroom wearing a thin robe, her hair half-wrapped in a towel. She sat on the sofa, facing him.

  “Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  Tanner shook his head. “I’m leaving. I’m going back to my apartment.”

  “I thought it wasn’t safe.”

  “It should be all right now.”

  “You get what you were looking for?”

  “I think so.”

  Hannah nodded. She rubbed at her hair with the towel, then pulled it away from her head and let it drop into her lap. “We’re a lot better at figuring out other people’s lives than we are at figuring out our own.” When Tanner did not say anything in response, Hannah said, “I hope you think about it, Louis, what I said about Valerie.” Tanner still did not respond, and Hannah shook her head. “Fine.” She got up, wrapping the towel around her shoulders. “Good-bye, Louis.” She walked into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Tanner got up from the chair and began packing.

  O O O O

  Tanner splurged and took a cab. He still had most of the money from Carlucci, and he figured he had earned it. Inside the cab, he punched up the intercom, gave the driver his address, then told her to take a longer route, up and through the Marina along Marina Drive. The driver, an Arab woman wearing a black flash suit, confirmed, and turned up the radio. Ether jazz rolled smoothly through the cab.

  Tanner could hardly stay awake during the trip. It was not just exhaustion. Tense situations and nervous anticipation tended to make him sleepy. When he had been a cop he had often fallen asleep during the tensest moments of waiting before some action was to begin. Once things started, the adrenaline kicked in and he was fine, but until then he could hardly keep his eyes open. Freeman had spent a lot of energy kicking Tanner in the shins trying to keep him awake.

  The cab came over the top of a hill and dropped down toward the Marina and the bay. The water was steel gray, overlaid with bits of color: streaks of dark orange, splotches of yellow foam, patches of red, all bobbing in the waves whipped up by a stiff breeze. Two Bay Security cutters were anchored close to shore, almost touching each other, and the Bay Soldiers, jumping back and forth between the boats, seemed to be having a party.

  At the bottom of the hill, the driver swung the cab along Marina Drive, between the abandoned art colony at Fort Mason and the cyclone fence surrounding the twenty-four-hour Safeway. Tanner punched up the intercom again, said, “Stop here a minute.” The driver pulled over and parked, engine and meter still running.

  Tanner gazed at the Safeway parking lot, which was filled with cars, carriages, shopping carts, and people moving between the vehicles and the store, many of them with armed escorts. It was here his father had been killed, seven years ago. Two in the morning, decided he had to have some ice cream, drove to the Safeway. He had gotten the ice cream. When Tanner had arrived, called in by someone he knew in Homicide, the melted ice cream had formed a puddle beside his father’s body, leaking out of the carton, mixing with the blood from a torch wound in his father’s belly. Haagen-Dazs. Vanilla fudge ripple. His father should have known better.

  “Go on,” he told the driver. The driver pulled back out into traffic; Tanner laid his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, listening to the ether jazz, drifting again toward sleep.

  O O O O

  The cab stopped abruptly, jolting him awake. The driver’s voice rattled through the intercom. “We’re here.”

  Tanner put money in the metal box, told the driver to keep the change. The driver slotted the money through, counted it, then released the door locks, tapping at the partition with her knuckles. Tanner got out, closed the door, and the cab pulled away.

  A woman who lived on the second floor was in the front courtyard cutting back the overgrown foliage. She and Tanner nodded their greetings as he walked along the path and entered the building. His mailbox was full, jammed with crushed and mangled envelopes—the carrier had managed to cram a week’s worth of mail into the narrow box. Tanner sorted through it, but there wasn’t anything of interest. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.

  His apartment was quiet and stuffy. There was a strange, abandoned feel to the place, and he felt as if he had been away for several weeks. He walked through the apartment and opened all the windows. It was hot outside, but a slight breath of wind came in, which helped a little.

  Tanner went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t much inside, and half of it had gone bad since he had left. He knew he should clean it out, but he was too tired. He opened a half-empty bottle of apple juice, smelled it, then drank deeply from the bottle. The cold, sweet liquid hit him hard; it made him a little dizzy, and the cold sent a shot of pain through his sinuses, right behind his left eye. But the pain and dizziness passed, and he felt much better, even refreshed.

  The phone rang. He put the juice away and went into the hall to answer it. It was Paul.

  “I’ll do it,” Paul said. “But I’d like to see if you can set something up for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d like to stay up in New Hong Kong for a few months and work with the regeneration teams up there. I told you I’ve been getting burned out, and this sounds like the kind of thing I need. Something positive, for a change. Beat the hell out of the ER night after night.”

  Tanner could actually hear the renewed interest in Paul’s voice. He had not felt that from Paul in years.

  “I’ll see what I can do. My guess is I’ll be able to work something out.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. You’re helping me a lot with this. I’ll let you know.”

  When he hung up, he dialed the number Rattan had given him. Britta answered the
phone. Tanner told her he needed to talk to Rattan, and Britta said she would pass on the message. Rattan would return the call sometime later in the day.

  Tanner could not decide whether or not to go to sleep. He was tired, but it was only noon, and now that he was out of the Tenderloin he wanted to go back to something like a normal schedule. He was afraid that if he slept now he would be unable to get to sleep tonight. But he did not know if he could stay awake.

  He went into the front room and turned on the television. He could not remember the last time he had watched it. Three, four weeks, maybe longer. He flipped through the channels until he came to a video call-in show; only callers with videophones and willing to appear on-screen were allowed. The host was the only participant not on camera. The topic was universal health insurance, which was up in Congress again this session. A man on the screen was ranting about the poor getting better health care than they deserved, punctuating each statement with a thrust of his fist. He had just launched into an incomprehensible analysis of the connection between economic status and the desire to be diseased, when Tanner fell asleep.

  O O O O

  Tanner woke to the ringing of the telephone. The TV was still on, now showing a soaper. Still half-asleep, he staggered into the hall and picked up the receiver, expecting either Alexandra or Rattan. It was Carlucci.

  “You’re back home,” Carlucci said.

  “Yes.”

  “You sound awful.”

  “I was asleep.”

  “I talked to Hannah. She said you told her you thought it was safe now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Tanner hesitated, trying to decide what to tell Carlucci. Lying was no good. “Max is dead.”

  There was a slight pause, then, “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know,” Tanner said. Technically that was true. He did not know who had thrown Max and Red Giant out the window. He did know that Rattan himself could not have done it.

  “How do you know? You see this one happen, too?”

  “Yes. A kind of show was arranged for me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was told to go to a place, and then Max was thrown out of a tenth-floor window.” He paused. “I think Rattan is responsible.”

  “What, did you find him?”

  “No.” He found me, Tanner thought. “But I’ll be talking to him soon. I’m close, Carlucci. He knows I’ve been looking for him.”

  “Then he’s contacted you.”

  “Yes. And I’ll be talking to him.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Soon.”

  There was another silence, longer this time. “What aren’t you telling me?” Carlucci finally asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bull shit, Tanner. What is it?”

  Tanner started to say “nothing” again, but held back. There was no point saying it when Carlucci knew it wasn’t true. But he didn’t know what to say instead of that, so he did not answer Carlucci’s question at all. “Don’t worry about it,” he eventually said. “There’s no problem. When I get anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “We’d better meet somewhere and talk. Now.”

  “No,” Tanner said. “I’ve got too much to do, and I’ve got to get some sleep. There just isn’t time.”

  “God damn you, Tanner, don’t go solo on me now. I don’t want to be calling in the coroner for you.”

  “It’s okay, Carlucci, it’s nothing like that.”

  “Shit, Tanner.” But he did not say anything else.

  “I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” Tanner said again.

  After a short silence, Carlucci said, “Yeah, all right.” Resigned and pissed. “Shit, just don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t.” Tanner smiled to himself. “I’ll talk to you.” He hung up the phone before Carlucci could start in again.

  He walked back into the front room. On the soaper, a man with a cyborged leg, an eye patch, and several days’ growth of beard, held a gun and was threatening a woman with it. They were on the balcony of a resort hotel, a swimming pool visible far below them.

  Tanner turned off the TV. He felt more tired now than before he had fallen asleep. Maybe he should just give in, crawl into bed, and sleep. Maybe he would sleep all the way through to morning.

  Except he had two calls coming in. Rattan and Alexandra. He had to stay awake. Tanner walked into the kitchen and put the teakettle on to boil. Coffee might help. Probably not. He had noticed that, as he got older, drinking coffee when he was tired often would just about put him under. So why was he making coffee now? Something to do. And maybe it would help.

  He was halfway through his second cup, his stomach souring, when the phone rang again. He answered it, and a harsh voice said, “Tanner, it’s me.” Rattan.

  “I’ve got a doctor to go with you,” Tanner said. “But there’s a condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “He wants to stay in New Hong Kong for a while and work with the regen teams up there. Can you set that up?”

  “Fuck, I’m paying those bastards enough, I sure as hell hope so. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Don’t know for sure yet, but I think you’ll be going as a passenger. It’ll be a lot less dangerous for you, a lot easier for the doctor.”

  “And the security checks?”

  “I’m working on that right now. Tonight or tomorrow I should know if we can pull it off.”

  “There’s a shuttle leaving in two days,” Rattan said. “I want to be on it.”

  “We’ll see,” Tanner replied.

  “I want to be on it,” Rattan said again.

  “I’ll talk to you.” Tanner hung up. He stood by the phone, half expecting it to ring again, Rattan calling him back. But the telephone remained silent.

  O O O O

  Tanner was half-asleep, listening to Taj Larsen, a wild trumpet player from the late nineties, when he realized someone was pounding on his front door. Not buzzing from the street, but banging at the door. He got up from his easy chair, turned down the stereo, and went to the door. “Who is it?” he called.

  “Me.”

  Alexandra. He opened the door and let her in.

  “I think we’ve got a way to do it,” she said. Then she cocked her head at him. “You growing a beard?”

  “Only until I find the energy to shave it off.”

  They went into the kitchen. Alexandra took a couple of beers from the refrigerator, opened them, handed one to Tanner, then they walked into the front room. Alexandra sat on the small sofa, Tanner in the easy chair.

  “So there’s a way,” Tanner said.

  Alexandra nodded. “Getting into those kinds of records is a bitch,” she said. “So many walls, so many alarms, and traps ready to suck you right in and bury you.” She shook her head, smiling. “But we got in.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “Me and Kaufman. You wouldn’t believe this guy, looks nothing like a computer demon, but man is he good. Mid-forties, bit of a potbelly, wears nice tailored suits, runs a very conservative business distributing toilet-seat liners to office buildings downtown. But sit him down at a keyboard and he just goes nuts. Sometimes I think maybe he’s a little schizoid. A functional schizoid.”

  “So you and Kaufman got in.”

  “We got in, but getting in’s not the same as doing anything. And there’s no way to change anything in there without blowing off a dozen alarms and leaving traces. But...” She shrugged, drank from her beer. “Kaufman thinks there’s a way to take care of your problem. It’s only good for one shot, but it should cover you. You only need one clearance and confirmation, right?”

  “Far as I know. Just the boarding.”

  “Well, here it is. What Kaufman does is create a mimic. Kind of a program overlay right at the access point of Rattan’s ID data. It’ll only work once, and it’ll only work with Rattan once he sets it
up. Rattan will have to make arrangements for the shuttle trip, and get basic document ID for someone else who’s already in the data base. It’s got to be someone clean, of course, who will get approval for all the initial arrangements. But it’s also got to be someone no one at Hunter’s Point will know. You don’t want some freak coincidence of pulling a name at random and it turns out to be the upstairs neighbor of the guy running the confirmation check. Rattan’s got to choose the name, he’s going to be in the best position to know what’s safe.

  “So what happens is this, without getting too damn technical. Actually, I can’t be too technical, because I don’t really understand it all myself, but Kaufman says it’ll go, and I trust him. So. Rattan goes through security at the launch field, they check the documents, then hook him up. All his fingerprint and retinal data go into the system and search for the matchup, right? Finds the match, and Rattan’s name and status come off and head back out. This is where the mimic kicks in. It rides piggyback on the confirmation all the way out to the Hunter’s Point field terminals. Just after it enters the system, before it comes up on the screens, it does a dump of Rattan’s name and status and substitutes this other guy’s info, which then comes up on their screens. Identity and status confirmed. Then it all does a self-destruct, program and data, and there’s not a trace anywhere. No traps, no alarms go off, Kaufman says, because nothing in the data base or programming is changed, nothing even touched, really. All basically passive until the final step.” She paused, drank the rest of the beer, and breathed deeply. “Anyway, Kaufman says it’ll work.”

  “Can it be set up in two days?”

  “Probably. Kaufman’s working on the mimic right now. He’ll just need a name from Rattan to complete it.”

  Tanner slowly nodded, more to himself than to Alexandra. That’s what he needed from Rattan as well. A name.

  “Why are you doing this for him?” Alexandra asked. “You must be getting something from Rattan.”

  “Yes, I am.”