Carlucci's Edge Read online

  This is for Dianne, with love

  And for my parents, with thanks for all their support

  Table of Contents

  Carlucci's Edge

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  PART TWO SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  PART THREE SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Ace Books by Richard Paul Russo

  copyright

  PROLOGUE

  SMOKE AND SWEAT and hot lights and the smell of beer filled the club, all cut through with the ripping wail and thunder of the slash-and-burn band on stage. Three women—drummer in tank top and blue jeans, bleached hair whipping up and down with the beat; guitarist in dark emerald-green shimmer pants and silver rag vest, black on black hair falling across her face; and Paula, in black jeans and boots and white T-shirt, tearing at the bass and shouting and howling out the vocals. Black Angels.

  Paula sang and rocked in a kind of cocoon, earplugs protecting her from the worst of the sound. But she felt the bass pounding through her, driving into her bones, moving her. She was soaked with sweat, filled with fire. She was flying.

  The Palms was jammed. It was a tiny club, more of a bar, really, but there must have been seventy or eighty people squeezed inside to see the Black Angels. Beer seemed to be the drink of choice, bottles and glasses everywhere; the smoke was a mix of cigarettes, pot, and fireweed. A few people up near the stage were trying to dance, jumping up and down in place. If she reached out, Paula could touch them.

  She backed away from the mike and Bonita ripped into her solo, fingers clawing at the strings. Sheela lost a drumstick; it flew forward, bounced off the back of Bonita’s head, but she didn’t notice. This was their last song, they were too deep into it. Paula kicked the stick out of the way, pounding at her bass.

  Too old for this? That’s what Pietro had told her. Because she was pushing forty. Shit. The fucker didn’t have a clue.

  The screech of Bonita’s solo cut through the earplugs, not painful, just enough to pump her up even more. The crowd was into it, too; Paula could see it in their faces—eyes clamped shut or wide open, necks, cheeks, and lips clenched tight. Bonita was burning tonight, and Paula hoped someone was getting it on-line. Damn, she wished Chick could have been here.

  Bonita took it longer and further than usual, but eventually swung it back around and down, turning to Paula and Sheela, and then it was time for Paula to come back with the final rep of the chorus. She moved up to the mike, waited for it, then sang:

  Yes, the night will drown us

  And the stars will burn us

  If we step out on the ledge.

  Oh, the fear will take us

  And it just might break us

  When we live out on the edge.

  Then back from the mike, Paula and Sheela and Bonita all facing each other, closing it down with the final strokes, all of them smiling. They knew they’d been burning tonight, they knew. A crash of drums and guitars, then another. Two beats of silence. One final crash. Lights out.

  Paula felt good. Wrung out, but good. They were playing The Palms the next night as well, and they had all their equipment packed away and locked up in back. Bonita and Sheela were already gone. Time to go home, wind down, get some sleep. Or maybe go see Chick. It was only two-thirty, he was probably still up.

  The Palms was nearly empty now. Recorded music played softly in the background. A few stragglers sat at tables and the bar, nursing their last-call drinks. Randy and Carmela and the new kid (what was her name, Laurel?) were cleaning up, trying to close. A guy at the bar tried to wheedle another drink out of Carmela, but she just ignored him.

  Jacket over her shoulder, Paula headed for the front door, waving good night to Carmela and Randy.

  “Hey, babe, need a lift?” It was a guy she didn’t know, at the table closest to the door, so drunk he could hardly keep his head up. He wasn’t going to be any trouble.

  “No, thanks, Ace. You’d better get a ride of your own.” The guy didn’t look like he could drive five blocks without crashing.

  The drunk gave her a sloppy grin, then pointed his finger at her like a gun, made a kind of shooting noise. Asshole.

  Paula stepped through the front door and out onto Polk Street. The air was warm, muggy. San Francisco nights. She put on her jacket anyway, left it unzipped. There were still people out, wandering, or lost, and a few street soldiers were in sight. She smiled, shaking her head. The Polk was such a half-assed Corridor. The street soldiers always had their hands out, and a lot of them were as likely to try to nail you on your doorstep as give you safe conduct. Still, they kept the street itself relatively safe, and Paula could take care of herself.

  So, home or Chick’s place. Shit, she was too wound up to sleep. It had been a great set. Chick’s place, then. It was closer, anyway.

  She started up the street, headed uphill and west. There wasn’t much traffic—a few cars, pedalcarts, and scooters. An electric bus heaved down the street, flashes of blue sparking off the overhead wires; it was almost half full. On the opposite sidewalk, a street medico was working on someone lying half in the gutter, two street soldiers standing over them. Paula watched, trying to figure if something shifty was going down, but she couldn’t tell. She let it go.

  She passed a stunner arcade that was still open, but it was mostly dark inside, and she could see only a single jerking figure within. A scooter cab swung to the curb alongside her, the old, long-haired driver lifting an eyebrow. Paula smiled and shook her head, and the cabby pulled away. Two men, hardly more than boys, staggered in tandem along the sidewalk, and Paula had to step into the street to avoid them. She could see it in their eyes, and their twitching—net zombies. Poor bastards.

  Most places were closed, but a couple of eateries were still open, and Margo’s Spice and Espresso Bar, a video parlor, Sherry’s Shock Shop. Paula stopped in front of Tiny’s, a twenty-four-hour donut house, seriously thought about going in. She had a real weakness for the damn things; all that fat and sugar, she knew they were bad for her, but she loved them. But the Mulavey twins were inside, the two women pouring coffee all over their donuts and the table, burning the cups with their cigarettes; coffee and ash and melted plastic dripped onto the floor. No, she didn’t want to deal with that shit tonight.

  She walked up two more blocks, still energized. She was starting to sweat under her jacket. Two street soldiers offered to escort her home, but she declined. Neither followed her.

  She turned a corner and headed away from Polk. Chick’s place was just two blocks down, but it was a creepy two blocks at night, not really a part of the Corridor. The street lights seemed to cast more shadows than light and the building windows were mostly dark. Paula didn’t see anyone on either sidewalk, which was just as bad as seeing someone coming toward her. She put her hands in her jacket pockets and gripped the charged gravity knife with her right hand. She wasn’t scared, but she wasn’t completely comfortable either.

  Nothing happened, no one jumped out from behind a parked car or out of a doorway. When she reached Chick’s apartment building—a seven-story brick monstrosity called The Monarch—she unlocked the porch gate, went through, then climbed the half d
ozen steps and unlocked the building door. The lobby was well-lit for a change, but the elevator was still out of order.

  She started up the stairs. Five flights. Good thing she was in shape. The building was quiet, though she did hear the faint sounds of a television as she passed the third floor, and saw the two Stortren kids sleeping in the hall on the fourth. Who knew what their parents were doing inside their apartment. Paula figured she probably didn’t want to know.

  The sixth floor was just as quiet. Only ragged strips of the carpet remained intact, huge sections worn through to the wooden floor. Her footsteps were a mixture of soft and hard sounds. Chick’s apartment was at the far end of the hall, on the right. Nightclub notices for Pilate Error, the band Paula and Chick played in together, were tacked all over the door.

  Paula knocked. No answer. She didn’t hear any sounds, which meant he was asleep or had his headphones jacked in. Before she dug out her keys again, she tried the door. Unlocked, as usual. Dumbshit. The couple next door had been cleaned out just last week.

  She pushed open the door and stepped into the tiny entryway. All three rooms led off from it, and lights were on in all of them. Jesus, the place smelled worse than usual. She pictured rotting food leaking out of his fridge.

  “Chick?”

  She stuck her head in the kitchen first. The usual piles of dishes and crap on the table and counters, but otherwise empty.

  “Chick?”

  She checked the front room, which, as always, was a mess, books and discs and tapes scattered everywhere, half a dozen overflowing ashtrays. Chick was a chain-smoker and a slob: two of the reasons they didn’t live together.

  She said his name once more, then walked into the bedroom.

  Oh, Jesus Christ, no.

  Paula stood just inside the room, looking down at Chick. He was sprawled face-up on the floor, headphones plugged into his ears, and three holes in his head—one under each eye and one in the middle of his forehead. She couldn’t move, just stared at him, at the blood and the bits of flesh and bone and hair sprayed out on the floor around his head.

  No, Chick, no...

  She closed her eyes, nearly lost her balance, opened them and reached back for the doorjamb to steady herself. Her heart was beating hard and fast, pounding up her neck, pulsing her vision.

  “Jesus, Chick, I told you,” she whispered. “I told you, one day...”

  She took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped, shaking her head. She looked around the room, still dazed, not quite remembering it. The overstuffed chair, she could reach that without getting too close to him, without stepping in the blood.

  She worked her way through the piles of clothes and books and scattered pieces of music, then dropped into the chair. Perfect spot, she could stare at Chick without moving her head. Jesus.

  It occurred to her then that whoever had killed him might still be in the apartment. A shot of adrenaline arced through her and her heartbeat jumped up again. No, she told herself, she’d been in all the rooms; she couldn’t believe someone was hiding in a closet or somewhere. Besides. Paula looked at the blood around Chick’s head, the pieces of bone and flesh and, yes, Chick’s brain, that were stuck in it. She wasn’t an expert, but too much had dried; she could tell it must be hours old.

  She tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling so she wouldn’t have to look at Chick. Flyers and posters covered the cracked plaster, yellowed and wrinkled notices for Pilate Error, Black Angels, his old band Tab Rasa, and even a couple for Sister’s Machine, the first band they’d played in together, more than fifteen years ago.

  She wasn’t going to cry now, she knew that. She thought she should, and she knew she would later, but right now she just didn’t have it in her. She was too damn numb, too wiped out.

  She looked back at Chick, his skinny arms with all those fucking tracks, none of them fresh, but still... His blue eyes, cool and pale, now wide and staring. The tiny green snake tattooed on his neck. And those goddamn headphones socketed into his ears, cord trailing in the blood, along the floor, then up to the sound system, which was still on, the bright green peak meters spiking back and forth. Paula wondered what his destroyed dead brain was listening to.

  “Oh, Chick,” she whispered. She pushed herself off the chair, onto her knees, then moved across the floor and sat next to him, taking his cold hand in hers. “You stupid shit. What am I going to do now?”

  Call the police, the practical side of her said.

  Yeah, yeah, in a minute. What’s the hurry? No one’s going anywhere.

  Paula sat motionless on the floor, holding Chick’s hand, and waited for the energy and will to move again.

  PART ONE

  ONE

  CHRIST, DAYS LIKE this, Carlucci wanted to resign. And why not? He had more than his twenty-five years in, and at lieutenant he wasn’t going any higher, he knew that—he’d pissed off too many of the wrong people over the years. Sometimes he was amazed he’d ever made lieutenant; the only reason he had was the capture of the Chain Killer three years earlier, and the fact that the higher-ups wanted him to keep his mouth shut.

  He pushed his chair back from his desk, rolled it sideways until his face was directly in the wash of the fan. Sweat streamed down his sides, ran from his forehead and neck. Carlucci closed his eyes, letting the fan blow across his face and hair, and tried to imagine he was somewhere else, somewhere cool and breezy.

  Carlucci was a stocky man, just over six feet, maybe fifteen pounds overweight, not much fat, really; he carried it well. His hair was short and black, heavily streaked with gray, and though he’d shaved this morning, he looked like he needed another. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and it itched, stuck to his skin. Carlucci opened his eyes, dismayed. No miracles. He was still here.

  He pulled himself back to his desk and stared at the dead computer screen. He picked up his coffee cup, looked down into it, saw a miniature oil-slick on top of the coffee, and drank it anyway. Cold and bitter, just the way he liked it.

  The day had started off badly, and then had just gone to shit. First thing, five minutes after he’d arrived, Harker and Fuentes came in, demanding to be split up. Carlucci knew immediately that it was serious, not just the typical bitching that cropped up with regularity around here. Neither would say what the problem was, but both insisted they couldn’t partner together anymore. Which probably meant that Harker had gone back hard and heavy to the booze, and Fuentes didn’t want a drunk as a partner. Carlucci couldn’t blame her; he’d feel the same way. He had told them he would work something out as soon as he could. It was going to be a pain in the ass trying to figure new partners, shift things around again. God damn.

  Later in the morning the air conditioning had crapped out, the sixth or seventh time this summer. Summer, shit, it was late September, it was supposed to be fall. Once again they’d hauled out the fans, but the building’s ventilation wasn’t worth a damn, so the fans could only do so much—mostly they just stirred around the hot, sticky air, kept it from being completely intolerable.

  Then the mayor’s nephew was found dead in his penthouse apartment, throat cut, belly slit open. What a fuckin’ mess. The mayor’s nephew had been an asshole—a lot like the mayor, actually—and word was already on the street that he had tried to scam some black-market data sharks, and paid for it. But the mayor, ignorant bastard, was jumping all over the Chief, and the Chief was jumping all over Carlucci, and would keep on jumping until something broke. The mayor wanted justice. Sure thing, Your Honor. Carlucci was going to be wasting an awful lot of time on this bullshit, and it probably wouldn’t go anywhere.

  And finally this, Carlucci thought, still staring at the dead screen. The system had crashed. Again. He looked out the glass wall of his small office, watching the other men and women sitting around, sweating and swearing, talking on phones or to each other, everyone miserable. He glanced at the clock on his desk. Almost three-thirty. Fuck it, he wasn’t going to get anything else done today. Go home. He nodded
to himself, and prepared to leave.

  Carlucci walked out of headquarters and stood in front of the building, trying to decide whether to take the bus or the streetcar. It didn’t make much difference, he just liked to switch around a lot, try to keep the commute from being routine. The sky was a rust-brown haze hanging over the city. It hadn’t rained at all for five or six days, and Carlucci wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. Probably bad. He thought he could feel the hot, filthy air turning his sweat into some putrid, oily substance.

  He had just decided on the streetcar and started down the block, when a woman approached and stood directly in his path, forcing him to stop. She was wearing boots and jeans and a black T-shirt. There was a hard look to her, a sharp and dark edge.

  “Frank Carlucci?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Homicide, right?”

  Carlucci nodded, wondering where this one was headed.

  “My name’s Paula Asgard. I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “A murder.”

  Carlucci smiled. “Hey, there’s a surprise. Look, I’m off-duty. Why don’t you go inside the station”—he waved back at the building—“talk to someone who’s on.” He had a feeling she hasn’t going to go for that, but he had to try. “I’m sure they can help you.”

  The woman shook her head. “I need to talk to you. And privately, not in your office. Why do you think I waited out here for you?”

  “Look,” Carlucci tried again, laying it on thick. “I’m a homicide detective, a lieutenant, we’ve got procedures....”

  “Mixer said you were the one I should talk to,” Paula Asgard said.

  “Mixer.”

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  Terrific, Carlucci thought. He started to shake his head, then turned it into a nod. “All right, I’ll let you buy me a cup of coffee, and we’ll talk. I know a place nearby.”

  “I appreciate it,” the woman said.