Tanner shrugged. “There are always doubts, but in this case, not really. I’m convinced. This guy is the Chain Killer, and he’s living in the Core.”
Koto nodded. “And you think that’s the best way to find him, go into the Core.”
“Far as I can tell,” Carlucci said, “it’s the only way.”
“I don’t suppose we could set up posts on all the ways in or out of the Core?” Tanner asked. “Then just wait for him?”
Koto smiled and shook his head. “No one knows all the ways in and out. I only know a few. And even if you did, everyone in the Core and anywhere around it would know what was happening within hours. He wouldn’t come near you.”
“Then what do you think?” Carlucci said.
“How many to go in?”
“Just the three of us.”
Koto nodded. “That’s a max. Any more causes real logistical problems. Also, you shouldn’t tell anyone what we’re doing. Not even Boicelli.” Boicelli was a deputy chief, Carlucci’s immediate superior, and his longtime friend.
“Fine with me.”
Koto looked away from them, out the window. Some kind of flashing lights were going off in the distance, bursts of white and blue.
“I’m willing to do it,” Koto said. “But you should both understand, it’s a real risk. The Core is a funny place. It’s not really quite as bad as most people think, but it can be a disaster. You don’t watch it, it’s easy to get killed or worse. I don’t go inside much myself, and only when I’m convinced everything’s right for it. Call it superstition, whatever you want, but different ways apply in there. I’m willing to push it a bit for this, but not much, which means maybe we don’t even go in right away. Or maybe not far. Once inside, we go by my gut feelings. If I have the slightest doubts, we get back out fast, no matter where we are. You have to be willing to be patient, move at my pace. Maybe it’ll take several trips in to find this guy, maybe more. I know you want to find him before he kills anyone else, but you can’t push it or you’re likely to end up dead. You have to accept those conditions, or I won’t go.”
Carlucci shrugged. “Hey, whatever, let’s just do it. So when’s the best time to go?”
“Dawn or dusk,” Koto said. “It’s a transition time, day and night people shifting, starting up or running down.”
“Can we go at dawn, then? Today?”
Koto smiled. “I love your patience, Carlucci.” Then he nodded. “We can try, feel things out. I won’t promise any more than that.”
“Good enough.” Carlucci turned to Tanner. “This time, I want no arguments. You’ll carry a gun.”
“I’ll insist on something,” Koto added. “Even if it’s only a blade or handjet.”
Tanner nodded. “I’ll carry a gun.”
O O O O
An hour before dawn, they left Koto’s apartment. Koto had come up with several weapons for Tanner to choose from, and he had selected a nine-millimeter Browning. The gun felt cold and hard against his side.
Koto led them out of the building and onto the street. He carried a small knapsack over his shoulder. The sky was still dark, and the street was noisy and crowded and brightly lit. They walked one block closer to the Core, then Koto led them into a restaurant called Mama Choy’s. The restaurant was packed, noisy and hot and smoky; the aroma of Chinese food hung thickly in the air. Koto spoke a few words in Chinese to the head waiter, then headed toward the back of the restaurant. Tanner and Carlucci followed him, working their way in a zigzagging path through the tables.
In the rear of the restaurant was a narrow extension with a single row of half a dozen booths, the seats covered in bright red vinyl. Most of the booths were empty. Koto continued on to the last booth, right up against the back wall. An old woman sat in the booth. She was small and thin, and looked quite dignified, Tanner thought, until she grinned at Koto with a mouth empty of teeth. Koto made introductions. The woman was Mama Choy, and she invited them all to sit with her. Koto sat beside her, while Tanner and Carlucci sat on the opposite bench.
After the initial introductions, Koto and Mama Choy pretty much ignored Tanner and Carlucci. They spoke to each other in Chinese, laughing and nodding, Mama Choy occasionally slapping Koto’s hand with a loud smack. Tea was brought—a pot and four cups—and then a few minutes later four small bowls of egg flower soup. The laughter and talk between Koto and Mama Choy continued as all four drank tea and soup.
Tanner tried to relax, tried to block out the sounds around him. The soup was good, and he tried concentrating on that, on the heat and flavor. He could sense Carlucci’s impatience. He did not know what they were doing here with Mama Choy, but he did not care. He trusted Koto, even though he didn’t know him.
When the tea and soup were gone, the laughing and talk ceased, and Mama Choy got very serious. She pulled the teapot close to her, and a waitress took away the cups and bowls. Mama Choy and Koto spoke a few more words, softly now, without laughter. Then Mama Choy removed the lid from the teapot and, grinning widely, looked inside. She studied the bottom of the pot, tapping at the sides a few times with her silver fingernails.
The grin faded and she pushed the pot away with a gesture of dismissal. Then she took Koto’s hands in hers and closed her eyes. She and Koto remained silent and unmoving for a minute. Tanner looked at Carlucci, who just shrugged. Then Mama Choy smiled, released Koto’s hands, and opened her eyes. She and Koto talked a little more, then Koto nodded. He said something, Mama Choy laughed, then he leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She slapped his hand again, and Koto, smiling broadly, slid out of the booth and stood.
Koto nodded to Tanner and Carlucci, and they got up from the booth, thanking Mama Choy, who smiled and nodded, clicking her silver nails on the table. Koto said a few more words, then headed toward the front. Tanner and Carlucci followed him out of the restaurant and onto the street.
“I never go without Mama Choy’s blessing,” Koto told them when they were outside. “If she says I shouldn’t go, then I don’t go.” He shrugged, smiled. “She says we will have good fortune this morning.”
“What?” Carlucci said. “She reads tea leaves?”
“No, she doesn’t believe in that nonsense. She just does that with the teapot as a kind of personal joke.”
“Then what does she do?”
Koto shook his head, but would not say any more.
Just down the street from Mama Choy’s, Koto went into a store and bought three large packages of cheese and put them in his pack. He did not explain that, either, but no one asked him about it. Tanner was content now to just follow and wait. Patience, Koto had said. Wise counsel, Tanner decided.
They continued down the block, went left at the corner, then entered an alley halfway down the next block. The alley was narrower than most, the air filled with fire escapes and metal balconies jammed together, the ground filled with trash cans, wooden platforms, and deep potholes. A few people wandered through the alley, most with faces turned to the ground.
Not far along the alley was a flight of concrete steps descending to a basement door. They went down the steps and Koto opened the door, which was not locked. They entered and closed the door behind them. The basement was dark. A bright, narrow beam from a flashlight in Koto’s hand appeared. He had the pack open, and took out two other flashlights, handing one each to Tanner and Carlucci.
The basement was empty. Koto led the way to the far corner and another door, also unlocked. “The Core doesn’t exactly need any security,” Koto said. Behind the door was another flight of steps, descending one more level. At the bottom of the steps, a long corridor—walls of stone, floor of dirt—stretched out before them. A metal sign hung from the ceiling a few feet away, big letters etched into it with color acid pens.
ABANDON ALL HOPE
ABANDON EVERYTHING
WE ARE ALL SUCH SORRY
MOTHERFUCKERS
“Someone’s a philosopher,” Carlucci said.
Koto turned to face them. Thei
r lights crisscrossed one another, shining in three directions, creating a strange web of light and shadow on their faces.
Carlucci nodded. Koto nodded back, then said, “Let’s go.”
They started forward.
THIRTY-FIVE
SOOKIE LOST THEM almost immediately. She blundered around in the darkness for a while, no idea where she was, where she was going. Then she stopped, tried to figure out what to do. She was kind of scared.
She’d had no trouble following them to Mama Choy’s, then around the corner and down the alley. She’d seen them go down the stairs. Through a small, grimy window she’d seen flashlight beams and shadowy figures moving around the basement, going through another door.
She’d almost backed off going into the basement, it was so dark, too much like that other basement. But she’d gone in, felt around and found the door in the back, and gone down more stairs in darkness. Up ahead in the corridor she could see the thin, moving lights and the dark forms walking along. Easy to follow, she’d thought. But somehow, after making a few turns, taking a couple of side passages, the lights disappeared, and she’d lost them.
It was dark. Silent. Sookie lit a cigarette, used the match to look around. Nothing except stone walls. She kept the match going until the flame burned her fingertips, then dropped it to the floor. Dark again. She had to work hard to keep herself from breathing too fast. Where was she? She had the bad feeling she was under the Core. Or was that the same as being in the Core?
Think, think, think. Light another match? What was the point? She pressed herself back against the cold stone wall. Dragged in deep on the cigarette. Which direction? Forward or back? Back, but would that really get her out? She was lost, turned around. Now she just wanted to find the basement again, get out of here. Mixer was right. Following Tanner was a bad idea.
Sookie crushed out the butt and breathed in slowly, deeply. She had to do something. She didn’t know where she was, so any way was as good as any other. Staying put was pointless. Just move.
Sookie started walking, keeping her right hand on the wall for guidance. Whenever she came to a break in the wall she lit a match to see the choices. She gave herself just until the match went out to make a decision, then went with it.
An hour passed. She was running out of matches. She was tired. Sometimes she felt real calm about everything, but sometimes she got real scared. She went up and down like that, and didn’t have much control over it. If she didn’t find a way out soon, she thought, she was going to be a mess. She kept on.
Gray light ahead. She hurried forward, came to a low, slanting passage leading up toward dim light. Sookie squeezed into the passage and started up the slope on her hands and knees. Strange noises grew louder as she climbed: slapping sounds, choked cries, gurgling.
Sookie slowed down as she got close to the end of the passage. She crept forward real slow, listening to the sounds. Then she was at the end. It came out about six feet above the floor of a room with half a dozen windows letting in the morning light. But what she saw made her sick. Sick, and scared again.
A man and a woman, both naked, circled each other, each holding leather whips, which they periodically swung at one another. Their bodies were covered with huge red marks and streaks of blood. On the floor nearby was a small, crushed form, so mashed Sookie could not tell if it was human or not. From the smell, though, she knew it had been dead a long time.
Sookie could see only one way out of the room, a doorway on the opposite side. She’d have to go past the man and woman, around the crushed body. The windows were too high. No, she decided. She was not going into the room with those two people. She flinched as the woman struck the man hard and loud across the face, knocking him to the ground. The woman stopped moving, waited until the man got back to his feet, then they began circling each other again. Sookie, feeling dizzy and sick, started crawling backward down the passage.
Back into the dark. Sookie staggered along for a while, no longer using matches, just bumping from wall to wall, down one passage or another. She felt kind of numb, hardly even scared anymore.
She came to a passage lit by coils of fuzzy green light. The walls were covered with graffiti, but the passage was a dead end. She didn’t read the graffiti, she didn’t want to know what any of it said. She just pushed on, leaving it behind.
She thought she heard footsteps behind her. She stopped, listened hard, but didn’t hear anything. It might be anything, it might be nothing, she was so tired. When she resumed walking, though, she thought she could hear them again. Sookie stopped again, and this time they kept on, getting closer. Someone was following her.
The numbness left her, and she was getting scared again. She kept thinking about the woman in white who had tried to get her before. Someone was after her, somebody was trying to catch her.
Sookie ran. She was blind in the dark, and she crashed into walls, but she kept running. She tripped over stones and chunks of wood, scraping her skin, bashing her elbows and knees. She splashed through water, slipped on mud, fell over a ditch, got to her feet, ran on.
She ran headlong into a wall and crashed backward to the ground, stunned. She didn’t move for a minute, unsure of what had happened. Then she scrambled awkwardly to her feet, and a metal hand grabbed her shoulder.
Sookie tried to scream, but another hand, flesh, clamped over her mouth. She struggled, kicked and squirmed as the hands and arms pulled her back, crushed her against the hard chest and legs of her pursuer.
“I know you, girl.”
No! It was that voice, the thing from the basement with all the machines. Sookie went crazy, flailing legs and arms, but the thing was too strong, it kept wrapping her tighter, cutting off her movement. She tried to bite the hand over her mouth, but its grip was too strong, she couldn’t move her jaw.
“Don’t struggle, girl. It changes nothing.”
The metal hand let go of her shoulder, then the lingers dug into her neck. A funny pain went up into her head, sharp and cold and hard, and she started to feel very strange. She stopped moving, just hung there. Things were getting even darker, but spotted with glittering lights, and she suddenly wondered if she was going to die.
“Sleep now,” the machine said.
Sleep or die, Sookie wondered. Sleep or...
Then nothing.
THIRTY-SIX
UNDERGROUND TO GET into the Core,” Koto said, “and to move between blocks. But it’s not a good idea to stay down here any longer than necessary.”
They were still underground, though they had switched passages several times through nearly invisible doors and light baffles. So far they had encountered few people: a group of three men wearing shocker suits and carrying flaming torches, the men sweating profusely, their bodies giving off electric blue sparks; a woman with two parrots on her shoulder and two cats on leashes; a man who charged them with a pair of handjets until he got close enough to recognize Koto, then gave Koto a tremendous hug and ran off screaming.
Soon after they encountered the man with the handjets they passed a lighted alcove dug out of the rock. Inside, seated on a folding chair and working a laptop, was a man wearing a tattered business suit, including a striped tie; thick-rimmed glasses reflected the flashlight beams as he glanced up at them. But he did not say anything, and he turned his attention back to his laptop. The man’s fingers frantically worked the keyboard, but there was nothing at all on the screen, no power hook-up, and Tanner wondered how long ago the batteries had gone dead. Days? Weeks?
Just past the alcove, Koto led the way up a metal ladder mounted in the stone. Several feet above the passage ceiling, Koto leaned away from the ladder and stepped across the gap, as if into the stone itself, to the floor of another passage that Tanner figured must be near ground level. He and Carlucci followed, flashlight beams showing the way. The passage curled to the right, slanting steeply upward, then opened into a concrete stairwell.
They continued upward, climbing one flight of stairs after another. Th
ere were no windows, no illumination except for their flashlights, and the doors at each floor appeared to be welded shut.
Tanner had not counted, but he thought they were seven or eight floors up when the stairwell ended at a small platform with a door. Koto took out the cheese packages, unwrapped them, and handed one each to Tanner and Carlucci.
“When the rats appear, just feed them. You’ll be fine.”
Koto turned off his flashlight, and Tanner and Carlucci did the same. Then Koto pushed open the door, letting in light from the room on the other side. Tanner heard scurrying sounds, glimpsed large dark shapes moving across the floor. Koto broke off several chunks of cheese and tossed them far into the room. More scurrying, and hisses. Tanner did not realize rats could hiss.
Koto moved into the room, followed by Carlucci, and finally by Tanner. Tanner blinked at the harsh light, but he could see several dozen rats swarming over the floor, sticking close to shadow whenever possible. Tanner and Carlucci broke their cheese into chunks and tossed them into the room, and watched the rats scramble.
The room was empty except for the rats. Light came in through several large windows in one wall and from an opening in the ceiling. A makeshift ladder of wood and plastic and metal led up to the opening.
“Hey! Sunrat!” Koto called. “It’s Ricky Toy.”
Scuffling noises came through the opening in the ceiling, then a few moments later a long, thin face appeared, eyes covered by tiny plastic goggle-shades. The man’s skin was deeply tanned, his black hair short but wild and streaked with gray.
“Hey, Sunrat,” Koto said.
“Who’s that with you?” Sunrat asked.
“Two friends. We want to talk to you.”
Sunrat squinted, looking back and forth between Tanner and Carlucci. “You two look like cops,” he said.
“I am,” Carlucci said. He pointed at Tanner. “He’s not.”
Sunrat turned his face toward Tanner, cocking his head. “You look like a cop.”
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