Destroying Angel Read online

  For Karen, Lee, and Patty;

  friends who helped through rough times

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  Acknowledgments

  copyright

  ONE

  TANNER WATCHED THE children playing among the methane fires of the neighborhood dump. Overhead, a sick green and orange haze muted the late-afternoon sun, the green curdling through the orange. It was hot, and Tanner was sweating.

  The children chased one another, stumbling through the garbage, weaving in and out of the fires. Soot stained their faces, their tattered clothes. One of the girls periodically barked a patterned sequence of noises; each time she did, all the children abruptly changed direction.

  Tanner walked on, away from the children. He skirted the dump and headed down a crowded, narrow street. Stone buildings rose on either side, radiating the damp heat of the day, echoing the sounds of car engines, shouts and laughter, bicycle bells, hammering, and the distant wail of a Black Rhino.

  Half a block further on, Tanner entered the Carousel Club, which was hot and smoky, and dark except for several globes of emerald light that drifted randomly near the ceiling. He walked to the back of the main room, along a narrow corridor, then up a flight of stairs to the second floor.

  There were a dozen tables in the second-floor room, most of them occupied, and another three outside on the small balcony overlooking a slough that fingered in from the bay. Paul sat at one of the balcony tables, gazing down at the slough, and Tanner walked over to the table. Paul looked up, his face gaunt and sallow, dark crescents under his eyes.

  “You look like shit,” Tanner said, sitting across from him. There was no breeze, so it wasn’t any cooler than inside, and a faint stench drifted up from the stagnant water.

  Paul smiled. “Thanks.” He shook his head. “Just got off twelve hours in ER.”

  That was where Tanner had met Paul several years before—in the emergency room of S.F. General, back when Tanner had still been an undercover cop, bringing in the casualties of drug and gang wars for Paul and other doctors to patch up. Tanner wasn’t any kind of cop anymore.

  Tanner looked out from the balcony. Directly across the slough was a junkyard with several hundred wrecks piled four and five high. Atop one of the highest piles, a young girl sat cross-legged on the caved-in roof of a rusted blue sedan, smoking. Tanner had the impression she was looking at him.

  A waitress wearing a bird mask came to their table, took their order, and left. Paul took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, pulled one out, and lit it.

  “I thought you quit,” Tanner said.

  “I’ve unquit.”

  “And you a doctor.”

  Paul shrugged. “Hell, I figure it can’t be much worse than breathing this air.”

  Tanner looked up at the orange and green sky, decided Paul was probably right. He turned back to Paul, but he was gazing down at the dark, still water of the slough. Long shadows lay across its surface, with a few small, bright patches where the sun broke through between the buildings and reflected off the water.

  “So what’s wrong?” Tanner asked.

  Paul shrugged. “I’m thinking about giving it up.”

  “What?”

  “The clinic, the ER work, all of it.” He paused, shook his head. “I’m burning out.”

  Yeah, no shit, Tanner thought. And I’m not far behind you. Quitting the force had only given him a temporary postponement. “What will you do?” he asked.

  Paul smiled. “Hang out my shingle. Do nose jobs and liposuctions and neuro-genital enhancements. Make myself a god damn fortune.”

  Tanner laughed.

  Drinks came. Tanner sipped at his, gazing across the slough at the girl in the junkyard. A pang went through him. There was something painfully familiar about the girl. He did not think he knew her, but she reminded him of someone. Who? He did not know. Her cigarette was gone, and now she was moving her hands and arms through the air in slow, complex patterns. Tanner still thought she was looking at him, and wondered if she was trying to send him a message. A cosmic bulletin. A spiritual communiqué snaking through the wrecked automobiles and the stinking water. Whatever it was, he wasn’t getting it.

  The girl stopped moving. She remained completely motionless for a few moments, then turned her head, looking toward the bay. The girl glanced back at Tanner, then scrambled down from the pile and disappeared into the heart of the junkyard.

  Tanner leaned over the balcony rail, looked toward the bay, but didn’t see anything unusual.

  “What is it?” Paul asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  Then he heard the sound of a boat motor, and a few moments later a Bay Security boat appeared, headed slowly up the slough. Its lights were not flashing, but several Bay Soldiers stood on deck.

  On the opposite bank, several men and women emerged one at a time through a gap in the chain-link fence just down from the junkyard. The first two were uniformed cops, the others in street clothes. Tanner recognized the fifth one through—Carlucci, from Homicide. Tanner had always respected him, though they had hardly ever worked together and never got along well enough to become friends. Carlucci was sharp, and you could depend on him. Tanner wondered if he’d made lieutenant yet.

  One of the uniforms stopped, turned back, and said something. Carlucci shrugged, shook his head. Then all six spread out along the bank and began searching the water’s edge.

  Tanner felt sick. He knew, suddenly, what they were looking for, and what they would find.

  The Bay Security cutter had dropped anchor in the middle of the slough, and all the soldiers were watching the cops search. Bay Security didn’t have any authority here, but they wanted in on it. It was their territory, if not jurisdiction, and if bodies had been planted in the water, it affected their reputation. Tanner didn’t feel any sympathy for them. They were parasites.

  One of the plainclothes cops called out. He squatted at the edge of the water, looking down. The others came over, all looking down now, then the plainclothes cops moved away to make room for the two uniforms. The uniforms got the shit work as usual, Tanner thought.

  The two men bent over, reached into the water, and pulled up a section of rope attached at one end to something just underwater—probably a metal stake embedded in the bank—and at the other end to something heavy and deep in the slough. They began to pull in the rope.

  It was slow going. Twice, whatever was at the other end of the rope caught rocks or debris on the bottom, and the cops had to work it free. Then, as it neared shore, flashes of white skin broke the surface of the water.

  Soon they had the bodies laid out on the muddy graveled bank. The cops surrounded them, trying to block them from the view of the Bay Soldiers. Tanner, though, had
already seen enough.

  There were two bodies, a man and a woman, both naked, back to back and chained together at the wrists and ankles.

  “Jesus Christ,” Paul said. “I thought that was all over with.”

  Tanner did not reply. He watched Carlucci and the others shifting their feet, smoking cigarettes, trying not to look at the bodies as they waited for the coroner’s assistants to arrive. They should have had the coroner’s men with them, Tanner thought, they should have known what they were going to find. Probably they hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  It had been two and a half years since the last set of chained bodies had been pulled out of water somewhere in the city. Working Narcotics, Tanner had never been directly involved with any of the investigations, but he’d pulled up a pair of bodies himself—two women he’d dragged out of Stowe Lake in Golden Gate Park—and he was glad that now he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Now it was someone else’s nightmare. Wasn’t it?

  He looked away from the cops, finished off his drink.

  “I could use another,” he said.

  Paul nodded. Tanner looked for the woman in the bird mask, signaled to her for two more drinks. She bobbed her feathered head and moved out of sight, deeper into the club.

  Tanner looked back at the cops standing on the opposite bank. One of them tossed his cigarette into the water, where it sizzled for a second and sent up a tiny puff of smoke. No, Tanner thought, he didn’t miss that work one bit.

  TWO

  SOOKIE WATCHED FROM the front seat of a two-door Sony, the middle wreck in a pile of five. She had a view of the water, the men, the naked bodies they had pulled from the slough. Drive-in movie, she thought. Sound turned low. She wished she had popcorn.

  I’m thirteen, she thought. I’m not old enough to see this. She smiled, squirmed in the seat. Sit still, she told herself. She wanted a cigarette, but the smoke would give her away. Or they’d think the junkyard was on fire. She imagined sirens, giant streams of water, a helicopter dropping water bombs.

  The men weren’t doing anything. Talking, but she couldn’t really hear it. Sookie looked at the bodies. Their skin was gray; no, white; no, gray-white. A strange color. She wondered if they were real bodies. Maybe it was a movie. But she didn’t see any cameras. Didn’t you need cameras to make a movie? Sookie wasn’t sure.

  The chains on the wrists and ankles were beautiful. Bright silver, shining brighter than the sun now. She couldn’t see the sun, it was hidden by the buildings. Sookie closed her eyes, tried to imagine what the chains would look like on her own wrists and ankles. Pretty.

  She opened her eyes, looked across the water and up at the people on the balcony. The man who had been looking at her. What a strange place! A giant bird wearing a short skirt served them drinks.

  Some other men came through the fence, and then she couldn’t see the bodies anymore. Flashes of light, someone was taking pictures, but they weren’t movie cameras.

  Sookie felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She was thinking about being dead and naked and people taking pictures of her like that. She closed her eyes, sighed, and lay back in the seat. She didn’t want to watch anymore.

  THREE

  A FEW MINUTES after Tanner left the Carousel Club, a hot rain began. He ducked into a bakery to wait it out, knowing it wouldn’t last more than half an hour. The bakery was hot and crowded and noisy. Tanner felt quite comfortable in the midst of it all, lulled by the heat, the smells of baked goods and strong coffee, and the rush of Spanish voices surrounding him. In the back of the bakery, a parrot squawked incessantly, producing an occasional word or phrase in Spanish.

  He bought a cup of coffee and sat by the window, watching the rain spatter against the glass. Middle of July, highs regularly in the upper nineties, and rain every morning and afternoon—it was going to be one hell of a summer. Most of the country in extreme drought, and San Francisco was turning into a goddamn tropical rain forest. He missed the fog, the real fog, which he hadn’t seen in ten years.

  Eyes half-closed, Tanner sipped at the coffee and gazed out the window. Across the way, the narrow alley between two buildings was choked with green ferns streaked with brown and rust, the leaves shaking violently as a girl chased a dog through them. Bromeliads filled the air above the ferns, dangling in colorful clusters from windows and makeshift trellises crafted from scrap metal and plastic pipe.

  He thought about the two chained bodies that had been pulled from the slough. Chained bodies in water. How many had there been? Thirty-seven over a two-year period. But none in two and a half years. And now... had it begun again? He did not want to think about what that meant for him.

  Lights came on up and down the street as night fell. Tanner finished his coffee when the rain stopped, and went back out onto the street. Time to go home.

  He caught a bus and rode it to Market Street, getting off at one of the border checkpoints for the Financial District. The bus, with no access authority, turned around and headed back south.

  Tanner stood at the edge of the checkpoint, looking at the bright glow of the Financial District. An enclave of towering structures of gleaming metal, bleached stone, and mirrored glass, the Financial District was the only part of the city that looked like it belonged in its own time. The rest of the city was still back in the twentieth century, or worse.

  The shortest and safest route back to his apartment was through the District, but Tanner was in no mood for the ID checks and body searches. Instead, he took a more circuitous route that was almost as safe, and a lot more alive.

  He walked a few blocks west along Market, then turned right into one of the city’s three Cuban corridors. The street was crowded and noisy, brightly lit and filled with the smells of curry, black bean soup, bacon, and Cuban bread. Street soldiers wearing green and red scarves and armbands stood on the corners or walked casually through the crowds.

  Several blocks from Market, the Cuban Corridor linked with the Chinese Corridor. Here, Tanner had a choice of streets, the Corridor encompassing nearly all of Chinatown. He cut over to Stockton, and the smells changed, shifted to seafood and incense. The street was even more crowded than the Cuban Corridor, pedestrians, cars, scooters, and bicycles moving in chaotic, halting patterns.

  On the other side of Columbus, as Tanner neared the edges of the Corridor and Chinatown proper, the crowds thinned. The noise level dropped; fewer street soldiers were visible. And then the Corridor ended.

  Tanner lived just a block and a half off the Corridor, but that block and a half was nearly silent, and much darker, without a single street soldier in sight. He walked quickly, but without fear, and he thought of what his father used to tell him: Don’t look like a victim. He sometimes wondered if his father had forgotten his own advice.

  He unlocked the outer gate to the grounds of the six-story apartment building, made sure it was securely latched, then walked through the overgrown garden to the building entrance. The plants were out of control again, damp leaves and branches crowding the walkway, streaking his clothes with moisture. Tiny insects whirled silently through the misty halo of the porch light.

  Tanner keyed in the building code, his personal code, then unlocked the door bolts with his key. He stepped into the lobby, door and alarm locking automatically behind him.

  The lobby was dimly lit, the air still and warm. Tanner stood motionless for a minute, listening to the building sounds filter to him from above—a faint, low hum; whispers of deeply pitched voices; a muffled rattle of glass; the whistle of a teakettle.

  He opened his mailbox, but it was empty. Third day in a row. He wondered if it meant anything.

  Tired, he climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, seeing no one in either the stairwell or hall. His apartment was at the far end of the hall, on the right; the door had a dozen boarded window frames without a single bit of glass. Occasionally he thought about replacing the glass, but not often enough to actually do anything about it.

  The apartment was fairly good-sized for
one person—front room, den, hall, bedroom, and kitchen—but more and more often recently it felt too large, and half-empty. He wandered from room to room, the empty feeling washing over him again, leaving a dull throb in its wake. It had always seemed the right size, warm and comfortable, whenever Valerie and Connie had spent time here. But that was long over, and they had not been here in more than a year. Well, hell, that had been his own choice, hadn’t it?

  He stopped at the den window, looked down at the street. Cones of light from the street lamps cast blurred shadows of trees and old cars. Apartment lights glowed dim and orange, dull rectangular eyes in the night. Oscar, the blind neighborhood cat, incredibly still alive after two years without sight, stumbled along the opposite sidewalk, head weaving stiffly from side to side. He bumped into a garbage can, hesitated for a moment, then turned into a narrow alley.

  Bodies.

  Another rain began.

  O O O O

  After he ate, Tanner climbed to the roof, carrying an aluminum lawn chair. He hoped Alexandra would be there, but the roof was empty. The rain had stopped and the moon, three-quarters full, shone through the night haze with an amber cast.

  Tanner set the chair at the roof’s edge and sat. The night was unusually quiet. Traffic sounds were light, and he could hear the breeze rustle through the dense foliage that grew between the buildings and in the yards of the neighborhood. A damp earth smell, laced through with the odor of rotting fruit, rose to the roof, drifted across him.

  Tanner gazed toward the south and the Hunter’s Point launch fields, though he could not see even the tops of the rocket gantries from here. There was a freighter scheduled to go up tonight, and a part of its cargo was a contraband load of gourmet foods—primarily swiftlet nests—for one of the big investment firms in the New Hong Kong orbital. Tanner had brokered the deal, with most of his commission going to small packets of cash pressed into half a dozen different hands to make sure the shipment got through. In return, he was getting a shipment of prime, zero-gee pharmaceuticals. After a small sell-down—he had to make a living—the rest of the pharmaceuticals would be going to free clinics like Paul’s.