Kop

seventeen

SEPTEMBER 30, 2762

Natasha and I sat at a window table. The restaurant bobbed with the flow of the Koba. Boats lights skimmed by, dimmed by a haze of falling rain. I’d been seeing her for months now. Things were going well, real well, but not tonight. Tonight she had something on her mind.

I offered the last mussel to Natasha. She refused, so I sucked it down and returned the shell to its plate.

Natasha had her hair pulled up. An open-backed black dress made me wish I was sitting behind her, getting lost in neck shadows and nape hair. She dabbed her mouth with a napkin for the third time. “Juno, can I ask you something?”

Here it comes, what she’s been stewing about all night. “Yeah.”

“Are you really going to arrest my father?”

“Yes. Why? Don’t you want me to?”

“Yes, I want you to. I just don’t understand why you haven’t done it yet.”

“I told you. We’re still collecting evidence. We’ll do it as soon as we can.”

“It’s just that you’ve been saying that for a long time.”

“And you’re starting to wonder if I’ve been honest with you?”

She looked down at her empty plate and nodded.

“I swear to you, Natasha; I’m going to arrest him myself. He’ll spend the rest of his life in the Zoo.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

I reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m not.”

She nodded again, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced.

“Listen, maybe it would help if I knew why you hate him so much.”

She pulled her hand away and looked out the window. There was a gecko hanging on the other side of the glass, his pale underbelly exposed to me. I put my napkin on the table and unintentionally scared him away.

Natasha said, “It’s the way he treats my mother. He doesn’t love her…and she deserves better than that.”

“How do you know he doesn’t love her?”

“He sleeps around.”

“Does your mother know?”

“He doesn’t do it in front of her, but she knows. She has to know.”

“Maybe your mother should leave him.”

“She can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

She was starting to raise her voice. “Because he controls her, Juno. She’s afraid of him.”

“Why is she afraid?”

“She just is.”

“Does he threaten her?”

She looked out the window.

“Is she worried about money? Doesn’t she think she can make it on her own?”

Nothing.

“Why is she so afraid?”

“You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. He rapes her! I hear him at night yelling at her, telling her it’s time to give him a son. She begs him to stop, but he forces her. I can hear her crying while he grunts away.”

I looked away-wrong thing to do.

“You just had to make me say it, didn’t you!? You treat me like one of your snitches. You push and push, wear me down until you break me. Well, you broke me. Now you know why I hate my father. Does that make you feel big? What are you going to do about it, cop? Have enough evidence now?”

She hurried to her feet, bumping the table and making the plates jump. She took the napkin with her, using it to wipe at her eyes as she stomped out of the restaurant.

I wanted to chase after her, but I couldn’t move. I felt like there was a giant ball of lead in my stomach, holding me down like a paperweight. What the fuck was I doing? I was spying on her. Spying on her family. Leading her on while Paul cooked up his bullshit schemes. It needed to stop. If we were going to have a future, it needed to stop.

I found Paul watching channel F. Natasha was lying on her bed, bawling. She hadn’t bothered to take off her dress or let her hair down. My eyes stung with salt.

Paul said, “What do you think happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I managed to rasp out. I felt sick.

She began to moan when it took too much energy to wail. I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned down the volume.

Paul asked, “How was your date?” He still didn’t know about Natasha and me.

“Not so good. We had a fight.”

“Really. What about?”

I didn’t answer. Pavel Yashin was at Natasha’s door. What is he doing? Natasha didn’t see him; her back was to the door. He came into the room and crossed over to her bed. Her face was buried deep in her pillow. Yashin slowly, tentatively set his hand on her shoulder, where my hand should be. Natasha’s body went rigid. He started to rub her shoulder, moving toward her neck. She jerked away.

I could see it now. She had lied about her mother.

Yashin stood still for a moment with his hand outstretched. She stopped crying; she stopped breathing. She had the pillow gripped like a life preserver. He withdrew his hand and walked out.

I finally understood. He’d never raped her mother. I’d seen how he never even touched her; he had a thing for young girls, substitutes for his grown-up daughter. Natasha was the one he’d raped.

I went red. In my mind, my father’s face superimposed itself over Pavel Yashin’s. The rage boiled over.

“Hey. Are you okay, Juno?”

I knocked the display over.

“It’s okay, Juno! Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

I ran outside into the stinging rain. Lizard eyes mocked me. I stomped a gecko, kicked at a too-fast-for-me iguana. I pulled my piece, took two shots at the iguana. The second one blew it apart. People came out of their houses. Paul badge-flashed them back in.

I counted breaths, bringing myself down from memories of frenzied struggles against my father’s wrist restraints. I tucked my piece away. I ran my fingers into my hair and squeezed, the pain nudging me back toward center.

Paul tried to lead me inside. “Are you okay?”

I stayed where I was, letting the rainwater cool my overheated body. “We have to talk, Paul.”

“Let’s go have a drink.” Paul didn’t ask what my blowup was about. He knew I’d tell him when I was ready.

Paul and I walked into the first bar we could find, the Jungle Juice. Fake trees lined the back wall, and fake vines hung down from the ceiling, nothing more than ropes with paper leaves stapled on. The bartenders were in Tarzan garb, the waitresses sporting zebra-stripe dresses.

We nabbed a couple seats at the bar. Bar noise invaded my thoughts. I teetered on the edge. I slugged down a shot of brandy, warming the skin under my wet clothes. My nerves dulled. A security blanket of logical thought wrapped itself around me. “It’s time to move on Yashin.”

“Not yet, let’s give it a little more time.”

What the hell was his problem? We’d been having this argument for months. The lieutenant had reached the end of his rope with us. He was threatening to split us up as partners, but Paul still wouldn’t let it go. The guy was obsessed.

I wasn’t going to let Paul talk me out of it, not this time. “We have all we need. All we have to do is call Judge Saydak, and get our warrant. I want this to be over, Paul. We’ve had those cameras up for months. I’m sick of us sitting on our asses when we could have dropped the bastard a long time ago.”

Our case against Natasha’s father was airtight. We had more vids than a jury could watch-Yashin making flashlit pickups on the river; Yashin cutting piles of brown sugar on his kitchen table; bowtied waiters coming to the door and exchanging cash for butcher-paper wrapped packages.

The only thing we needed was witness statements. My plan was to run a sweep-Paul and I would pick up Yashin. We’d get vice officers to pick up all his dealers. The whole thing would be coordinated, so it all happened at the same time. We’d make their heads spin. We had vids of all his dealers making midnight buys from Yashin. We’d use the vids to turn two dealers on Yashin-first come, first served on two reduced sentences; fuck the rest of them. The first two to take our deal would authenticate our surveillance.

But Paul was still hooked on the bigger fish-Ram Bandur. Pavel Yashin and Bandur were still negotiating the sale of Yashin’s overstock from the busted Nguyen deal. Paul swore that the deal would eventually go through, and when it did, we could get Bandur.

Paul tried to disarm me with one of his smiles. “I’m telling you, we can get Bandur. Just give it a little longer.”

“We don’t have anything to pin on Bandur. You’ve been waiting for months for this deal to go down, and you don’t have shit. Even if he and Yashin come to terms, and we get the whole deal on vid, it still won’t matter. Bandur is out of our reach. He’s not a small-time drug peddler like Yashin. The guy’s a fucking kingpin. I wish we could bag the guy, but we can’t. He can buy his way out of anything we get on him. The vids we take will go missing, and we’ll go missing with them.”

Paul took a hit of his drink. He talked without looking at me. “We don’t have to arrest Bandur.”

“What are you talking about, Paul?”

“We can use the vid as an in. I’ll take it to him and offer to hand it over to him.”

“I don’t get it.”

He looked at me. “We’ve got Yashin whether we move now or later, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So we wait and maybe score some evidence on Bandur. Nothing he can’t beat on his own, but if we turned it over to him, he’d be appreciative; wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe so,” I admitted. “Where the fuck are you going with this?”

“We should make a deal with him. Bandur can rat out his competition to us, and we’ll arrest them. Think about it, we’ll make so many busts that we’ll be stars in KOP.”

Was he serious with this? “You’re talking about teaming up with a murderer, Paul. He had his initials burned into those dealers’ balls. How can you think of making a deal with a guy like that?”

“Don’t give me the goody-good bullshit, Juno. Crime isn’t the real enemy. It’s poverty. Why pretend that we can beat crime when we’d be better off partnering with it, controlling it? I’m sick of these college-educated pinhead politicians riding their fucking white horses, telling us cops to clean up the city. Who are they to deny people the right to gamble or take a few hits of O? It’s the only thing that’s keeping them all sane. It takes their minds off how hopeless their lives are. The only thing we achieve by arresting them is filling up the Zoo with prisoners-just more people living off the government peso. In the meantime, the people keep gambling, whoring, and drugging as much as ever.”

I couldn’t believe he was seriously thinking about this. “And you think that you can change things by giving our evidence away?”

“Why not? I’ll go to Bandur and tell him that I can make him the most successful crime boss Lagarto’s ever seen. We’ll arrest all his competition. The whole city will be his. Who would turn down a deal like that?”

“And what do you get in exchange?”

“Some rules, that’s all. Just some rules. We’ll carve the city up into zones-areas where illegal activity is accepted and areas where it’s not. Maybe we can get some more tourists to come down here if they know there are areas where it’s safe to go. We’ll be able to regulate the illegal areas. Whores won’t have to hide out in alleys anymore. We’ll have whorehouses as classy as anywhere. We can even run honest games. That way offworlders won’t be afraid to play, because they’d know they wouldn’t be cheated. You know the mines are doing well. There’s going to be more and more people up there. They all need to take a vacation somewhere. What do you think?”

I was shaking my head. Was he insane?

Paul grinned at me. “It comes down to this. We need offworld money; that’s the best thing we can do for Lagarto.”

“This is too far out for me, Paul.”

“Hey, man, I wouldn’t ask you to do this with me. I’m okay doing it alone. Just let me do it if you don’t want to be part of it.”

I was tempted. Despite it all, I was tempted. Crime-free zones could actually work. Paul’s ideas, no matter how fucked up, could be infectious. Then Natasha’s picture came front and center. “I can’t let you do it, Paul. If you don’t want to arrest Yashin, I’ll do it myself.”

Paul clenched his drink. “You would do that to me? We’re supposed to be partners. You can’t just go and take a collar for yourself. We’ve been working Yashin together.”

“I’m going to do it tomorrow. I’m going to walk in there and arrest the fucker. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Why are you so hot to do this? We’ve got Yashin sewn up. Why the rush?”

“I’m sick of waiting. I don’t want to watch that family anymore.”

“What are you talking about? You love to watch them. What are you going to do if we arrest Yashin, and you can’t watch Natasha anymore? I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

“It’s weird to watch them like that-in their own home.”

“You didn’t think it was weird when we started. You told me yourself that you liked it. You said that watching them made you feel invisible. You could move from room to room, and they couldn’t see you.”

“That was at the beginning. I don’t feel that way now.” Let it go, Paul.

Paul downed his drink and held up two fingers for the bartender. An overweight Tarzan filled our glasses halfway and hurried back down the bar to keep up with the late-night rush. Paul looked like he was going to say something. He took a couple long pulls on his brandy before he spoke up. “There’s something you’re not telling me. What made you have a change of heart?”

He was going to find out anyway. “I’ve been seeing Natasha.”

Paul just about busted a vein. “What? How long?”

“Since April.”

“Is that who you’ve been seeing all this time? Shit, what are you thinking? Does she know you’re a cop?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know we’re after her father?”

“Yeah. She knows, but she won’t tell him.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“She hates him.”

“Does she know about the cameras?”

“No.”

Paul rubbed his face with his hands. “How could you do this? We put too much effort into this case for you to risk it all for some tail.”

“It’s not like that.”

“What is it like?”

“We’re serious about each other.”

Paul finished off his drink with a gulp and put two fingers back up. The bartender came and filled Paul’s glass then gave me an irritated look when he had to wait for me to empty mine.

Paul frowned. “How serious?”

“Serious.”

Paul took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Is that why you’re so gung ho on getting Yashin? You feel guilty about those cameras, about watching her without her knowing.”

I didn’t have to answer. I just took another drink. The brandy burned all the way down to my stomach.

“Why did you go off on those lizards?”

I told him about the fight I had with Natasha and how I thought her father abused her. I told him about the suicide scars on her wrists that she wouldn’t admit to. Her father put them there-like my father put scars on my wrists. I was going to arrest that asshole. He had to pay for what he did to her. I hoped he’d resist arrest. Any excuse to get a few licks in would suit me fine.

We sat for a long time without talking. Finally, I said, “So are you coming with me when I arrest the bastard or not?”

“You’re really serious about her?”

I nodded.

“You love her?”

I nodded again.

Paul put his true-friend hand over mine. “Okay, Juno. I guess Bandur can wait. We’ll pinch Yashin tomorrow.”

SEPTEMBER 31, 2762

I pounded on the door. “Get up, Josephs!”

After two minutes of continued pounding, Mark Josephs finally opened the door, heavy lidded with cowlicked hair. His voice was a half-awake croak. “What the fuck are you guys doin’ here?”

“You going to let us in or what?” Paul challenged.

Josephs let us through. We didn’t bother wiping our shoes. The stone floor was already covered in muddy footprints. We settled in his living room. Dried up tea bags were stuck to the walls-he’d do the same shit at the office, make his tea and whip the tea bag at a wall to see if it stuck. I had to move an empty liquor bottle to make room on the sofa. A gecko scuttled out from underneath. A poof of moldy air came up out of the cushions as I sat down, making me sneeze.

Josephs sat on a chair that looked ready to collapse. “It’s too early for this. What do you two want?”

Paul said, “We’re going to make a sweep this morning. We need your help.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, it can’t. You know that morning is the best time to catch drug dealers, when they’re still sleeping.”

“Shit. I wish I was still sleepin’. Who are you bringin’ down?”

“Pavel Yashin. He sells O to a high-class crowd. You know him?”

“I don’t know him, but I know who he is. What do you need me for?”

“You’re just our first stop. We’re going to wake up Reyna, Cheng, and Banks next. We have names and addresses of the top guys that work under Yashin. Juno and I are going to arrest Yashin in two hours, and we want all of you to pick up the scraps.”

“You have evidence?”

“We have a bundle. Convictions will be a cinch.”

“Damn. Who would have thought you two could put together a bust like this?”

A female voice came from the back. “Are you talking to somebody?”

Josephs yelled back, “Yeah, it’s just some guys from work. Go back to sleep.”

“Are my clothes out there?”

Josephs ignored her, spoke to us. “How do you want to do it?”

I could see a bra on the floor. I handed Josephs a name and address. “When you get set in position, you call me or Paul. When everbody’s set, we’ll call and tell you to move in. It’ll be synchronized.”

“Did you find my clothes?” The woman came out from the bedroom with a dingy-gray sheet as a wraparound. She snatched up her clothes from the floor. When Josephs turned her way, she said, “Thanks a lot, asshole. Some gentleman you are.”

Josephs turned back to us and spoke in a voice that didn’t care if she heard. “Don’t mind her, guys. She’s just a roundheels I picked up last night.”

She was gone to the back-I couldn’t tell if she heard him or not.

“I never should’ve brought her home,” Josephs said. “If I didn’t work vice, I would just pay for a pro. Sure it costs some money, but by the time I bought that skank enough drinks to get in her pants, I just about could have paid for a hooker, and then I wouldn’t have to deal with this broad’s attitude.”

A door slammed. Josephs grinned. “Good, she’s gone. Hey, speakin’ of hookers, are you gonna to nab Yashin’s daughter while you’re at it?”

Did I hear that right? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Yashin’s daughter, I can’t remember her name.”

“Natasha.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Natasha. She’s a high-class hooker and a hot one at that. When I leave vice, I think I’ll look her up. I’ll probably have to save up two months’ pay, but it’d be worth-”

My world turned red. I was on top of him in a flash. I socked him in the face once, twice. Paul grabbed me from behind. “LET ME GO!” I shouted. I fought against the arms holding me back. “LET ME GO!”

I was wrestled to the floor from behind. Paul buried my face into the mildewed rug. My nose tickled uncontrollably. I went into a sneezing fit. Can’t BREATHE. I turned my face to the side and heaved as much air into my lungs as I could with Paul on top of me.

Josephs was yelling at Paul, “Let him go! I’m gonna fuck him up!” Josephs started trying to pull Paul off me. “Let him go!”

Paul managed to stay on top, his hands clasped under my stomach in a bear hug. As Josephs’s rants petered out, Paul’s pythonlike hold began to loosen. Once Paul was sure we’d both calmed, he whispered in my ear, “Are you all right? Can I let you up?”

I nodded, my cheek scraping carpet.

Paul let up superslow. I stayed still. When he let go, I rolled over, sat against the wall, and blew my nose into a dirty napkin.

Josephs was on the couch, nursing a bloody lip.

I said, “Natasha’s not a hooker.”

“She sure as hell is a hooker,” he said. “I arrested her myself. Check the fuckin’ books if you don’t believe me.”

My insides went to jelly. “Tell me about it.”

“Apologize first.”

I gritted my teeth. “You’re right, Josephs. I shouldn’t have come at you like that.”

Josephs thought it over, deciding whether or not I was sincere. I wasn’t. He said, “Okay, Juno. I’ll tell you, but only because we go back a few years.”

“Thanks.”

“Why are you so interested in her? You seein’ her?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have said those things about her if I knew you were pokin’ her. You know I’m not the kind of guy that talks about another guy’s woman.”

“I know. I just lost it, okay? I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“You can say that again. You were like some kind of fuckin’ animal, man. You were flashin’ your teeth. I was afraid you were gonna bite me.”

“Sorry, Josephs.”

“Hey, man, that’s okay.” He wiped his lip with a towel.

“Tell me about Natasha.”

“It must have been a year ago. Back then I was all jazzed to arrest an offworlder. I’d only arrested Lagartans up to that point, and I thought it would look good on my record to have a few offworld collars. I got all dressed up, got my clothes ironed and everything. Then I hit some of the nice restaurants near the Town Square, you know, the touristy places. I’d hang out in the bar and wait for an offworlder to proposition a hooker. Didn’t have to wait long.”

Josephs wiped his lip again. This time it came away clean, and he tossed it on the floor. “You ever been in a restaurant called Afrie’s?”

“Yeah.” That’s where I’d met her.

“Your Natasha was there with two other hookers. They didn’t look like hookers though. I thought they were just out partyin’ together. There was also this group of five miners there. The two groups were makin’ eyes at each other, then the miners started sendin’ drinks over. One of the miners went over and sat with Natasha and her friends. You should’ve seen this dude. He had this fish skin-you know, scales and shit. They was all into touchin’ it, seein’ how it felt. He was turnin’ it on and off. One second he’s a fuckin’ fish, and the next, he’s a normal person. Natasha and her friends were oohin’ and ahin’ like schoolgirls. At this point, I wasn’t suspicious at all. I’m thinkin’ it’s just some innocent flirtin’, but then he goes back to his table, and the five of them pool together a bundle of cash. Then the guy goes back over to Natasha’s table and leaves the money with a hotel key. I followed them to the hotel and busted the whole lot. All eight of them.”

“You’re sure we’re talking about the same Natasha?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. When I booked her, she said her name was Yashin. I asked her if she was related to Pavel Yashin, and she said he was her father. I just about shit when I heard that. I asked her why she was hookin’. She’s got all the money she needs. She wouldn’t answer.”

I went for the door-had to get out of there.

Josephs stayed seated. “Sorry to break it to you. You were gonna dump her anyway, weren’t you?”

I stopped, my hand on the doorknob. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re about to arrest her father. Aren’t you gonna sting him? Give him a line like, ‘You’re under arrest, and I’ve been fuckin’ your daughter.’ Shit, that’s cold! That would sting him good, Juno. You could even dress it up a little-”

Paul put his hand on my shoulder and guided me out.

I couldn’t think straight. All this time she’d been with me, she’d been…

Paul yelled over the rattle of rain on the aluminum overhang. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I have to talk to her.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No.”

“Can you keep that temper under wraps?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“What good would that do?”

“I can watch while you talk. The second I see your switch go off, I’ll stop you before you hurt her.”

“You think you can stop me?”

“I just did.”

I called Natasha, told her to come down to my place right away. Paul and I sat together wordlessly waiting. My emotions cycled with alarming speed-anger, hatred, disgust, grief, resentment, hostility…They all burned through me-their combined combustion nearing a flash point. A knock on the door launched me from my seat. Paul went in the bedroom, leaving the door cracked.

I opened the front.

Natasha’s gray dress matched the sheeting downpour. The smile on her face didn’t last long. “What’s wrong?”

I let her in and led her into the living room, into Paul’s view. “I talked to Officer Josephs today.”

Her defenses snapped into place. “So?”

“He told me he arrested you a year ago.”

“So what if he did?”

“You’re a prostitute. That’s what you do when you say you’re going out with your friends.”

She looked away.

“How could you do that to me?”

When she turned back, her eyes had ignited. “How could I do what? Open my legs for money?”

My vision started to blur. “Yes. How could you do that?”

“Because they fucking paid me.”

“I don’t pay you.”

“Yes you do. You’ll pay me when you arrest my father-a onetime fee!”

“Is that all I am to you? A means of getting rid of your father?” I was pacing now.

“Yes. That’s all you are, just a cop that can get me what I want. And I’m getting sick of you stringing me along!”

I could feel my pulse in my temples.

Natasha unleashed. “I came here expecting you to tell me you were going to arrest him today. For months, you’ve been leading me on. A real man wouldn’t be so chickenshit scared of my father!”

My head pounded; my stomach churned. My whole body ached for release.

She kept at me. “I’ll tell you another thing. I didn’t have to fake it with my johns!”

I wanted to lose control. The only thing holding me back was the fact that I knew she was deliberately provoking me. She wanted me to strike her…punish her.

I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. I just hit her with the truth. “You hurt me, Natasha.”

She was positively fuming. My emotions suddenly shut down, like they’d overloaded. I watched her with a strange detachment. It finally occurred to me why I was so attracted to her in the first place. She was the only person I knew who was filled with more rage than me.

Nothing left to say, we stared at each other for long minutes. I saw her expression move from bitter to smoldering, then from smoldering to little-kid scared.

Questions ran through my head… How long has your father been raping you?…Is your shame so great that you punish yourself by selling your body?…Would you stop if I took your father away?

Instead I said, “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out. I don’t want to see you.” I wanted her to pay for how I felt.

“Please, Juno. I didn’t mean those things I said.” She was misting up now.

“Get out.”

“But I quit. I quit! I quit after I met you.” Tears rolled down her brown cheeks. “Don’t do this, Juno. You can’t do this to me. Don’t leave me!”

I went to the door and opened it.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I quit. I didn’t think it mattered. Don’t do this!”

She stepped out the door where elongated raindrops were stabbing the ground like glass pencils driven into the mud. She slipped and just managed to catch herself by dropping her hands to the ground. She pushed herself back up and pulled her hands free from the wet earth, her fingers coated with mud. She flicked her hands in an effort to get the clumps off but just wound up spraying the front of her dress with muddy water. She looked at me. Her eyes imploring.

You can’t do this to her, Juno, Don’t be an asshole.

I closed the door in her face.

Paul and I were still at my place. I called off the Yashin arrest. “Wait and see if we can get Bandur,” I said.

Paul tried to talk me out of it. “Are you sure? It’s going to kill your chances with Natasha. If we nab her father, you’ll still have a chance to patch things up.”

“After what she did to me? She can go to hell.”

“You know what her father did to her. She’s been carrying all that guilt. She hooked to punish herself, Juno. We work vice. How many hookers do we know that have the same story? Besides, the way Josephs told it, she didn’t sound like a serious hooker. Maybe she was just experimenting. Maybe it was peer pressure. You don’t know. She did quit. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“She’s been lying to me, Paul.”

“And you’ve been honest with her? How do you think she’d feel if she found about you spying on her?”

“That isn’t the same.”

“It isn’t?”

“Dammit, Paul, you’re supposed to be on my side. Quit making me feel like a shit.”

He grinned. “But it’s so easy.”

“Fuck you.”

“Listen, Juno, I’ve never see you like this. You must love her, right?”

I begrudgingly nodded.

“Do you think she loves you?”

I nodded again.

“Then at least give it a couple days. You need to cool down first, so you can think straight. Will you at least do that?”

I gave him a reluctant yes.

“Good. Now let’s go get drunk.”

SEPTEMBER 32, 2762

PM became AM and Paul slowed the drinks down. My buzz started to fade. Paul and I had been living large since we’d left my place-a two-person bar-hopping blowout. I’d been knocking back drinks with forget-Natasha abandon the whole night.

The crowd was thinning out. Where there’d only been standing room, there were now open tables. I hadn’t had a drink in at least an hour, and I was beginning to see straight. I wasn’t liking the idea of being sober one bit. The same strippers that I thought were hot an hour ago were now playing ordinary in my eyes-bad dancing, bad thighs, and bad sags were suddenly coming through strong. I wasn’t ready to shift from drunk-and-happy to depressed hangover. “You know where we should go, Paul?”

“C’mon, Juno, it’s late. The sun will be up in a few hours.”

“You haven’t even heard my suggestion yet.”

“All right, what is it?”

My phone rang. “Yeah.”

I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the late-night hubbub, but Natasha’s smiling hologram was blocking the stage. I read her holo-lips. “Juno,” she said.

Her sweet face soured in my mind, yet I couldn’t keep myself from cranking up the call’s volume. “Yeah?”

“I need you to come over. Something happened.” Her voice rang an alarming note over the go-go music.

“Be right there.” I clicked off. “We have to go to Natasha’s.”

Paul asked, “What do you think she wants?”

“I don’t know, but there’s something wrong.”

We went to the back door and knocked. Natasha opened up and let us into the kitchen. It was my first time inside the house that I had spent so much time spying on. I turned on the lights-knew right where they were. “Oh god, Natasha. Are you okay?”

Her shirt was covered in blood. There were spatters on her face, in her hair.

“Somebody broke in…my parents…”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m okay.”

Paul and I sprinted through the house. We bounded upstairs like we lived there. We found her parents in the bedroom. There was blood on the walls, the carpet, the lamp. Pavel Yashin was lying in bed, stab wounds all over his body. His blood had run through the mattress and puddled to the floor underneath. Blood spatters doused geckos drinking their fill. Flies were already bouncing around the room. We waved our hands in a futile attempt to keep them away. Pavel’s wife, Gloria, was huddled in a defenseless ball under her Virgin Mary shrine; white candles were spotted red. A lase-blade handle protruded from her back and smoke rose from her charring flesh as the blade burned an ever-widening hole. Half the hilt was already sunken into her back. I flicked it off before it burned through to the floor and set the house ablaze.

Paul said, “Go take care of Natasha. I’ll scope the place out.”

I returned to the kitchen. Natasha was sitting at the table, blood-smeared Formica under her hands.

“Tell me what happened.”

Her face was unreadable. “I’m sorry I called you. I know you don’t want to hear from me, but I didn’t know who else…”

“It’s okay, Natasha. I’m here now. Tell me.”

“I went out with my friends…and no, I wasn’t hooking. When I came back, I saw that my parents’ door was open. I peeked in to see if they were home, and I found…” She couldn’t finish. Tears began to stream.

“Then what?”

“I checked to see if they were still alive, but they weren’t breathing. That’s when I called you.”

“Do you know who did this?”

“No. Somebody must have broken in and sneaked back out. There was nobody here when I came home.”

Paul came around the corner. He checked the kitchen window then asked for a key to the basement. Natasha told him to look in the silverware drawer. He ran down to the basement for a minute, came back up, and waved for me to follow him to the living room.

“Excuse me, Natasha; I have to talk to Paul for a minute.”

Paul and I went into the living room. Paul spoke in whispers. “They’re both dead.”

“Do you think Bandur could have done this?”

“Is that what she said?”

“No. She said that somebody must have broken in.”

“I checked all the windows and doors, Juno. There are no signs of forced entry. The basement is fucking packed with O. He’s also got a couple cases of money down there. Nobody touched any of it.”

I couldn’t purge brandy-buzzed go-go tunes out of my mind. “What are you saying?”

Paul scratched his head. “You know what I’m saying.”

I dropped onto the couch. What had I done? She needed my help; she begged me for it. She asked me to deliver her from her home, and I shut the door in her face. “It’s my fault. I knew how desperate she was to get rid of her father. I made her do this. I left her no other choice.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it is.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “What do you want to do? Nobody knows about the cameras but us. We can play it however you want.”

“You want to take the opium and the money, don’t you?”

“It’s your call on this one, Juno. I’ll do whatever you say.”

I dropped my face into my hands and tried to concentrate. The upstairs massacre scene dominated my internal vision. A film of Natasha murdering her parents set to go-go music looped continuously before my eyes. I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, creating kaleidoscopic color patterns that drowned out the butchery.

Two paths emerged in my head. One path promised a life free of Paul and his cooked-up schemes. I could live free of Natasha and her wounded psyche. All I had to do was walk out that door. I could leave it all behind- adios.

The second path was risky. I’d have to break all the rules. I’d have to sacrifice my conscience…

I didn’t have to think long. “What time is it?”

Paul checked his bargain-basement watch. “We have two hours until sunrise.”

“Let’s do it.”

I put Natasha in the shower and bagged her clothes. I made her scour her body. I even got in with her to scrape under her nails. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Natasha. When the sun comes up, you are going to call the police. You’ll tell them that when you woke up, you saw your parents’ door was open, and you peeked in-just like you told me except you’ll say you found them when you woke up in the morning. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t hear anything last night. You’re a sound sleeper, and you like to fall asleep watching vids. You were watching vids last night. Think up a couple titles that you could’ve downloaded last night, in case they ask.”

“Why do you want me to lie? Don’t you believe me?” Natasha’s coffee skin was flushed from the steamy water. Her smoldering eyes burned less fiercely; vulnerability was seeping through.

“I believe you, Natasha. But the people that did this might try to blame you. They might say that you’re the one that did it. I’m going to protect you. I’m going to take you away from this. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You have to be strong for this, Natasha. Paul and I will come right after the police get here. We’ll say we were investigating your father, which is true. But we won’t be the ones interviewing you. They’ll have homicide cops talk to you. Paul and I know most of those guys, so we’ll soften them up a little. We’ll let them know you and I are dating. They’ll take it easy on you. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Did you finish your hair?”

“Yes.”

“Scrub it again.” I continued giving instructions. “You don’t have any idea who would do this to your parents. You don’t know anything about your father’s business.”

“Okay.”

“Stay in here and keep washing. I’ll come get you when it’s time to stop.”

“Okay.” Her eyes were dull.

I went downstairs and went to work on the kitchen, cleaning the table and chairs. I remembered to wipe down the undersides, where you put your fingers when you slide your chair in. I worked my way down the hall and then moved upstairs, erasing her bloody tracks.

Paul came up the steps dripping wet. “I got the last of the cameras. They’re a bitch to take down. I’m gonna start in the basement.”

“Yeah, I’ll come down as soon as I’m done here.”

I moved into the Yashins’ bedroom. Natasha had left bloody footprints on the carpet. I didn’t have time to clean them out. I found a pair of Yashin’s shoes in the closet. I shooed geckos away and dipped the soles into his blood. I tied them on my feet and walked in Natasha’s footsteps, superimposing my tracks.

I finished my clean-up job. I got Natasha out of the shower and had her get in bed. “Try to take a nap if you can. That way the bed will look natural.” I bleached the shower walls and poured the rest of the bottle down the drain. I bagged the towels, Yashin’s shoes, and the cleaning supplies.

By the time I made it to the basement, Paul had already worked up a lathery sweat running opium out to Yashin’s car. It took four carloads to get it all over to our stakeout pad. Paul gave the car a thorough wipe-down. I went to check on Natasha. She was sound asleep-at peace.

I took the murder weapon, put it in a separate bag, and threw it in with everything else. I scraped under the corpses’ fingernails just in case one of them had gotten a scratch in on Natasha. I went out the back door, locked myself out, and broke back in, putting my elbow through a windowpane and popping the lock.

Once inside, I made one last run through the place, wiping fingerprints everywhere I went. The sky was starting to lighten. I dashed back into Natasha’s room and stopped by her bed. “Natasha.”

“Mmm.”

“The sun will be up in about fifteen minutes. Do you remember everything I told you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to leave now. Everything’s set. Just remember what I told you.” I kissed her forehead and then left to go meet Paul at the stakeout pad.

We had opium stacked to the ceiling. Paul was counting the money into neat piles on the table.

Paul looked up. “Hey. How’re you holding up?”

“This is quite a stash.”

“You can say that again. What do you want to do with the vids?” He motioned toward the monitor.

“Did you watch it?”

“No. Should I destroy it?”

“No…I have to watch it.”

“You don’t have to do that to yourself.”

I voice-activated the monitor.

Paul sighed and said, “I’ll leave you alone. I’m going to listen to the police bands. I’ll let you know when Natasha calls it in.”

I sat in front of the screen, skipping backward through time until I found the right spot. The camera brought the dark room into perfect focus. The Yashins were sleeping on far sides of the bed, careful not to touch each other. The door opened. Natasha stood in the doorway with a blade in hand. She crept over to the bed, slow high steps, like she was walking on eggs. She hovered over her father, lase-blade raised in a two-handed grip. She held that position for a full minute before she flicked it on.

She wanted him to know who it was-let him die with the knowledge that his own daughter did this.

She waited for him to open his eyes. “Natasha?” he said. Then he jerked back-too late. She plunged the blade down; Gloria Yashin leapt out of bed; Natasha struck her father again; blood fountained from an artery. Gloria made a frantic dash to her Virgin Mary altar. Pavel Yashin held his hands up in defense. Natasha stabbed through them. He stopped struggling, then he stopped breathing. Natasha continued to stick him, motoring back and forth from chest to groin. She moved off him, staring at his corpse, his flesh bleeding and burning, her smoking eyes in full brilliance.

She wheeled on her mother, who was rubbing her rosaries, whispering to herself with closed eyes. Natasha stalked across the room, crying, “You make me sick! You knew!” Gloria rosary-rubbed right up until the moment Natasha plunged the blade into her back-up to the hilt. Two more violent stabs and the rosaries fell from her mother’s fingers.

Natasha left the blade in its flesh-scorching place. She paced the floor, surveying her handiwork. Pavel was dead still. Gloria kept breathing for a few moments then slouched into her final resting position.

Natasha strode out of the room. I flipped channels until I found her in the kitchen. I watched her call me and talk to my holo. She reached out for my cheek, touching nothing but air. After she hung up, she grabbed a soda from the fridge. She stayed at the table and nursed the soda, wearing a disturbingly flat affect.

I moved the vid forward. She heard the knock-put the partly finished soda back in the fridge and let Paul and me in. When the kitchen lights came on, the camera momentarily went into light overload then compensated swiftly for the brightness, bringing back a clear image.

It hit me like a fucking bolt of lightning. OH SHIT!

Paul and I raced up to Natasha’s house. The call went out twenty minutes ago. There were already cops fucking all over. Paul and I badge-flashed our way in.

Natasha was sitting on the couch with homicide dick Yuan Chen. She ran into my arms, laying on the waterworks. “Juno!”

Paul made quick business telling them how she and I had been dating and how he and I were investigating her father’s drug business.

Yuan Chen caught us up to speed on his investigation so far. “Intruder or intruders, we don’t know which, busted the kitchen window and unlocked the door, then proceeded upstairs and committed the crime, then exited through the kitchen.”

My heart beat at unprecedented speed. “You didn’t hear anything, Natasha?”

“No, nothing. I was sleeping.”

Chen said, “It’s a good thing she didn’t wake up. Who knows what would have happened if she walked in on them.”

Natasha sobbed. “But I could have saved them.”

Chen calmed her. “You can’t let yourself think that. If you had tried anything, they would have killed you, too.” Chen looked at me. “I know you two probably want some alone time, but is it okay if I ask her a few more questions?”

“Natasha,” I said, “can you do that?”

She nodded a watery-eyed yes.

Paul leaned in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Chen, but did you check the basement yet?”

Chen blinked through his glasses. “No. The door was locked.”

“They say Yashin keeps a stash in the cellar.”

Natasha chimed in. “My father is not a drug dealer.” Playing the clueless daughter bona fide.

Even though he already knew the way, Paul thought to ask Natasha, “Where is the door to the basement?”

She gave directions to the door and the key. Chen and Paul headed through the kitchen to the basement door.

Natasha and I were alone-coast clear. “Let me get you something to drink, Natasha.”

I went into the kitchen, my nerves on edge. My eyes sought out the refrigerator. Damn-two uniforms were in the kitchen. Neither of them paid much attention to me, so I opened the fridge with my shirtsleeve over my hand. I ran it up and down the handle then I pulled open the door, trying to look natural. I saw Natasha’s half-empty soda bottle on the top shelf-bloody fingerprints all over the glass.

I reached for it. SHIT! I heard one of the unis slide his chair. Is he watching me? I panicked and took out a different bottle. I rummaged through the drawers, found a bottle opener, and flipped off the cap.

Paul and Chen entered the kitchen through the basement door, Chen saying, “We have our motive. The basement’s been picked clean. Looks like a robbery/homicide.”

Paul gave me a questioning look. I frowned a negative; the bottle was still in there. They moved back into the living room. I followed with a sparkling clean soda bottle in hand.

Chen went back to questioning Natasha. She did great-had him feeling sorry for her. My heart reached for her. I knew she was putting on that act for me as much as for Chen. She started off wanting me to save her from her father, and now that she had saved herself, she wanted me to save her from the police and the make-pretend monsters that did this to her parents. She needed me to be her rescuer one way or the other.

Chen said to Natasha, “The coroners are here. It would be best if you waited outside while they work. I’ll come out and check on you.” He brought her out through the rain to sit in one of the cars.

I stayed on the sofa. One of my knees bounced up and down with telltale jitters. I crossed my legs to keep it still. Cops were all over the damn place. I tallied up our violations: illegal surveillance, evidence tampering, accessory to murder, and add a robbery to top it off. That soda bottle would land all three of us in the Zoo.

Hommy dick Yuan Chen was directing traffic from the living room. “Dust every fucking inch of that basement…search the alley for our murder weapon…nobody talks to a reporter-anybody talks, they answer to me.”

I made three trips to the kitchen-always somebody there. I needed that bottle. I sat still, mortified through and through. The lab techs were already moving away from the bedroom, working their way downstairs. They’d be all over the kitchen soon.

Paul caught my attention with a subtle wave. He winked and went upstairs.

Paul had a plan! I leaned forward in my seat, primed to leap into action. I eyeballed the kitchen door, anticipating Paul’s upcoming distraction.

He jogged back down and shouted, “You guys gotta see this! Yashin’s got vids up there of himself doing two girls at a time.” Cops started up the stairs, men and women alike. Paul yelled into the kitchen. “You guys gotta come check this out, come upstairs.”

The unis filed out of the kitchen and followed the crowd up to the bedroom. Paul, you’re a fucking genius!

I went for the kitchen-just nab the soda bottle and take it to the sink for a quick rinse. I speed-walked through the door and stopped in my tracks. The refrigerator door was open and Deputy Coroner Abdul Salaam was putting the soda bottle into a bag. “I found something,” he said, blinking through his glasses.

OCTOBER 3, 2762- OCTOBER 7, 2762

I leaned over the rust-eaten rail of Koba’s tallest bridge. My eyes strained to see through the dead of night to the black water below. I pulled one very expensive soda bottle from its evidence bag and held it tight as I looked down into the blackness, my gut heavy with the realization that I was a criminal.

I wondered how far I was willing to go for Paul and his plans. He wanted to change Lagarto, and he was willing to do anything to achieve it, including getting in bed with Ram Bandur. Paul had made his intentions clear to me after we’d bought off the deputy coroner. He was going to take over KOP, and he wanted my help. He was going to need somebody to help with the dirty work.

Were we really that bad off that saving this planet required such desperate measures? I scanned the riverbanks, taking in the city lights. I could see the capitol building with its well-lit marble facade and golden dome. It was there, inside that building that they sold us out, making the decision to sell off the Orbital and the mining rights, dooming this planet to economic isolation. Fuck the rich politicians and their picture-perfect lives.

I could smell the mold that was growing thick on the bridge rails. Try as you might, you couldn’t ever get away from that smell. Fuck this lizard-infested jungle planet.

I looked over at Tenttown. Its tents looked like lanterns when they were lit up at night. I couldn’t believe I used to live in one of those things. My skin reflexively itched as I remembered how the mosquitoes would swarm through holes you could never seem to find. Fuck that fucking place.

I watched the tangle of Floodbank lights shimmering on the river, each one bobbing independently of the others. There was a carnival going in the Old Town Square. A Ferris wheel was spinning slowly in front of the cathedral’s steeples. The city would’ve looked beautiful if I didn’t know better. Fuck the drunks that piss and vomit all over the street. Screw the O-heads hiding in their cardboard boxes. To hell with the unemployed, the lazy fucks. Fuck the wife beaters and the wives who keep going back for more. Fuck the pimps and whores, and the kiddie rapers. Fuck those tech-hoarding offworlders. Double-fuck Nguyen and her bug-zapper skin. Fuck everyone!

If any of them got in our way, they’d deserve what they got.

I held the soda bottle up to the beam of a street lamp, the glass reflecting back sharp points of light. I heaved the fucking thing into the darkness.

When I made it back to the stakeout pad, Paul had holo-mugs of Yashin’s dealers lined up against the wall. We went through them together, methodically evaluating their records. We discarded the holo-heads one by one, tossing them into a pile like stones until there was only one left: drug dealer and stick-up artist Elvin Abramson. His history of armed robbery would go well with the fact that as one of Yashin’s dealers, Abramson would know about the basement stash. The perfect fall guy for our first frame job.

We concocted a plausible line for lead-dick Yuan Chen. We told him about an imaginary snitch who worked for Yashin. We said that we leaned on him hard, made him spill everything he knew. According to our fake snitch, Elvin Abramson dropped by and started acting like he was the new O supplier. When our pseudo-snitch asked him where he came up with an O supply, Elvin responded with a sham story about some cousin who put him in touch with a high-grade but low-cost supplier. Elvin even tossed our snitch a quarter-kilo free sample.

The implication was clear. Elvin Abramson killed the Yashins, took the dope, and was now trying to take over the business. Yuan Chen fell for our ruse and elevated Elvin Abramson to suspect number one.

Chen set up a raid on Elvin’s place. He wanted to run it by the book, but I talked him out of it when I laid on the let-me-take-this-one routine. “He may be the guy who killed my girlfriend’s parents,” I said. Chen was thinking, sure, why not? Let hothead Mozambe go in and knock him around a little, see if he can get anything out of him.

Paul and I smashed through the front. We charged the bed, our weapons drawn. Elvin Abramson and his lover rolled out from under the sheets and fell to the floor. It was early morning-always the best time to make arrests. The two of them froze, lase-pistols in their faces. We cuffed Elvin naked.

The lover was on his knees, begging. “Please, I didn’t do anything. I don’t even know him. We just met last night. I have a wife and kids at home…”

I said, “Get dressed and get out.”

Paul shoved the warrant in Elvin’s face. “Can you read this? It says you’re fucked.”

The apartment was a one-room. I scanned for possible stash locations. Kitchenette cabinets held dishes only. Dust bunnies under the bed. I went into the closet. Glitzy shirts hung on hangers, and hats hung on the back of the door-all fedoras and panamas. I shoved the clothes aside, pulled out a trunk. “Where’s the key?”

Elvin said, “In my pants.”

I snatched up a pair of white pants draped over a chair and retrieved the key. I opened the trunk-brown sugar, spoons, scale, plastic bags, and rubber bands. I cinched up my trouser leg, plastic bag tied to my calf.

Elvin saw me. “HEY! What the fuck are you doing?”

Paul stomped on his foot and shushed.

I untied the bag from my calf and emptied it into the trunk, adding one bloodied lase-blade to the contents.

I closed the trunk, closing the case along with it. Natasha was safe. It wasn’t her fault that she did what she did. The fault was all mine. To set things right for her, I had to frame a man innocent of the crime. The price was cheap. What was the conscience of a flatfoot like me worth?

“It’s over,” I said. “Detective Chen probably called to tell you we got the guy.”

Natasha’s eyes were staring off into nothingness. I leaned back in my seat, the back of the iron bench chilling my skin. I looked at the lilies. There were all kinds, orange, pink, purple. It had taken me a while to find her. She’d told me to meet her here at the Koba Gardens. I’d wandered around for a good ten minutes before I thought to ask somebody where the lilies were.

Natasha’s voice was barely a whisper. “How did he end up with the blade?”

I knew what she meant. It was in her mother’s back that last time she saw it. “Paul and I had to plant it on him,” I admitted. “But we know he did it. This wasn’t the first time he’s killed somebody.” That was a total lie. I didn’t want Natasha to feel guilty about somebody else getting punished for her crime. She’d have enough guilt to deal with. This way she could tell herself that Abramson deserved his fate.

“He’s killed other people?”

“Yes. Two that we know of, but his lawyer got him off both times.”

She stayed silent for a few minutes. I sat quietly, wondering what she was thinking.

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“We don’t have to do anything. It’s over.”

“No. So what do we do now?”

“You mean us?”

She nodded.

I knew what a regular guy would think. He’d think she’s a fucking psycho. Did you see what she did to her parents? But I wasn’t a regular guy. I rubbed at the scars on my wrists. I understood what she did. I understood.

I said, “I’m sorry I closed the door on you.”

She shrugged. “I should’ve told you.”

“It’s none of my business what you did before we met.”

She looked into my eyes. “You mean that?”

“I do,” I said.

“So you think it’s possible to have a fresh start in life?”

I could see the hope in her eyes. I said, “I do.”

“Do you think we could have a fresh start? You and me?”

I wanted to ask her for forgiveness. I wanted her to forgive me for spying on her. I wanted her to forgive me for failing her when she needed me most. But I couldn’t ask. Not without her learning that I knew the truth about her father, about how her parents died. Maybe a fresh start was the best I could do. It wouldn’t be easy to put all this behind. But I didn’t want easy. I wanted her. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.

I said, “I do.”

She squeezed me in her arms. I squeezed her back. I kissed the top of her head. “I love you, Natasha.”

I felt her tense in my arms.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“No, tell me. What’s wrong?”

She kept her face buried in my chest. “You said my name. I don’t like my name. I never liked it.”

“What’s wrong with Natasha?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t like it. I don’t like it when you call me that.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer.

Her father used to call her Natasha. I pictured him on top of her, saying her name, whispering it in her ear…

I shivered. I could feel my face flushing with anger. Now I hated the name, too.

I thought about how she’d been Natasha for her whole life. A life she hated. A life she desperately wanted to leave behind. I thought about her father’s final word, a second before the lase-blade stabbed down into his chest. I wondered if the memory of that moment would come back to her every time somebody said her name.

“Change it,” I said.

“Change what?”

“Change your name.”

I could feel her head shaking left and right against my chest. “I can’t do that. People would think I’m strange.”

I didn’t think there was anything strange about it. “Who cares what they think? You can pick whatever name you want. That’s what fresh starts are all about.”

She squeezed me tighter. “Maybe you’re right.”

Minutes passed, and we stayed in that position, holding each other.

She asked, “Remember how I had a brother who died before I was born?”

“Of course I do.”

“Remember how my parents gave me his name as my middle name?”

“You want to be called Nikita? That was you’re brother’s name, right?”

“How about just Niki?”

JUNE 31, 2787

Midnight had passed. The men had gambled their last pesos and drunk their last cups of shine. The women’s cliques were long since gabbed out and had moved inside. Lights were flicking out from behind taped-over windows.

Maggie and I sat on Pedro’s stoop. She knew the whole story. How Paul approached Ram Bandur using Yashin’s opium as a good-faith offering. How Bandur took Paul’s deal and how they helped each other take over the city. She knew how Paul used Yashin’s money as a bribe fund and that the first person he put on the payroll was Deputy Coroner Abdul Salaam, who became his numero uno evidence tamperer and star witness.

She had listened to how Paul and I tore through the city. How criminals had two choices: work for Bandur, or go to jail. Paul ran the evidence room and the Office of the Coroner. He could trump up anything he wanted. He arrested his way to the top.

I’d told her how Paul seized control of KOP with his plata o plomo policy. The choice was yours: silver or lead. Paul dished Bandur money to anybody who would take it, and for those who didn’t, I dished out the lead. I was the enforcer in a skull-cracking, reputation-smearing rampage through KOP. I learned how to turn my temper on in an instant. I wreaked vengeance on all who opposed Paul. Everybody feared me.

She’d learned how Paul picked tourist neighborhoods that Bandur had to keep crime free. In exchange, Bandur was permitted to war with his enemies, immune to prosecution. Paul molded the city to his vision of what was best for Lagarto. So what if he got rich along the way? You couldn’t expect him to do a job without getting paid. What did it matter that crime never dropped? Who cared that Paul’s attempt to bring more tourists to Lagarto only resulted in a boom of offworld-operated resorts that kept all the big money in offworld hands? At least he did something.

I’d unloaded twenty-five years of sin on Maggie, only holding one thing back: that Niki murdered her parents. Niki still hadn’t even admitted it to me. Some secrets are best left buried. I let Maggie think our patsy really did it. The poor bastard didn’t even survive the first week of his incarceration before he was tortured to death by some inmates who were trying to make him spill where he’d hidden Yashin’s stash.

We sat quiet for a while. Maggie looked at me, her features hard to read in the dark. She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned in close. My skin tingled; my heart raced. She kissed my cheek. I turned to her lips, but they were already gone. I wanted to put my arms around her, but I held back as my brain struggled to interpret her gesture. I wanted to believe she was attracted to me, but…

Could be she was just delirious-she hadn’t slept for two days. Could be she just felt sorry for me. Could be she was thanking me for making her feel less guilty about Pedro’s death by dwarfing her error with the quarter-century of broken dreams, broken lives, and broken skulls I’d left behind. Then again, it could be she wanted me to kiss her. I was on the verge…

She stood before I got the chance. “Let’s get going. We have work to do,” she said.

Maggie followed me into the Floodbank bar. The place was empty except for the bartender, who was sweeping up after closing. “We’re closed,” he said.

Maggie held up the bar bill with Pedro’s address written on the back. “You passed this note to one of your customers. Who told you to do it?”

He stopped sweeping and leaned on the broomstick handle in a belligerent fashion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t pass no note.”

I ran at him. He reflexively swung the broom. The handle bounced off my arm. I drove my shoulder into his chest, and brought him down hard to the floor. I was on top of him. Years of pent-up enforcer rage drove my piston fists, my right doing as much damage as my left. My blood pumped through my veins, while his pumped from nose and mouth. He gave up the struggle and covered his face, submitting to the beating.

I started taking my time, a cat playing with its prey. I picked and chose shots through his guarding hands. I felt better than I had in years. The enforcer was back. So what if I couldn’t shoot anymore?

Maggie strode forward. She stood over us, her legs spread wide, hands on hips, her face pure cool. She held out the bar bill. He moved his hands off his face and looked at it through teary eyes. She spoke slow and deliberate, enunciating every syllable. “Who told you to give this note to Ali Zorno?”

I was primed for the words Mayor Samir.

He sobbed through a wrecked mouth. He said, “Mdoba, Sanders Mdoba.”

Maggie gave me a look that said, “I told you so.”

Son of a bitch! Sanders Mdoba: I knew him. He ran the East Side O dealers for the Bandur cartel. They were supposed to be on our side.

My eyes stung when I forced them open. Fuck me-it was early. The sky hadn’t even begun to brighten with the coming dawn. Ali Zorno had come to me in my dreams, wearing a lip mask and charging with a butcher knife while my father held me down. Two sweaty wake-ups later, I’d used a triple-shot of brandy to put myself under.

I sat up; Niki stirred. I imagined a lip mask strung over her face. A shake of my head couldn’t dispel the image. I labored my aching body out of bed. The brandy fog made me wonder if two hours of uninterrupted sleep was worth going to bed at all. I bumped my way into the shower and let the warm water massage me awake.

In a perverse attempt to shake the image of Niki wearing a lip mask, I recalled Pedro’s death, his hands to his throat in a futile attempt to keep his blood from spilling. If only I’d gotten there a minute earlier…What good would that have done? I would’ve burnt the whole place down before I hit Zorno. I looked at my hand shaking under the trickling water-fucking useless.

I rubbed soap into my scraped fists, relishing the sting. I found a deep cut on one of my knuckles. I hadn’t realized I’d cut myself so badly. With so much of the bartender’s blood on my hands last night, I hadn’t noticed. The cut was only a couple centimeters long, but an open wound was an open wound. Taking a close look, I could see the tiny wriggling shapes of maggots. Shit, I’d have to get it cleaned out.

Last night’s events ran through my mind. When had I turned into such a joke? Zorno killed our witness while we were following him. How could I have let that happen? It had been my idea to follow him. I should’ve arrested him the first time I’d seen him. I could’ve crossed the street with my gun under the bag of potatoes. I could’ve made up some shit to say to him like, “Helluva downpour.” I could’ve walked right up to him, real close, then dropped the bag, my piece right in his face, close enough that I couldn’t miss if he tried anything, shaking hand or not.

If I had just arrested the fishhook-faced asshole, I could’ve beat the truth out of him. I used to strong-arm all the time. I was a first-rate expert with over two decades of experience. I probably didn’t even need to torture him. I bet I even could’ve gotten him talking with some sick game like showing him holos of his mommy with the lips cut out, or maybe pasting a holo of Zorno’s own fubar lips on top of hers. Instead, I had pushed Maggie into following him.

Maggie was blaming herself for the kid’s death, but the fault was pure Juno. She was going to carry that guilt for the rest of her life. It would eat her up. I knew what it was like, a hundred times over.

Dammit, all of that was in the past. Nothing to be done about it now. I hit the brakes on my thoughts and changed gears from reverse to drive. Where do we go from here? I was supposed to find a link to the mayor, and instead I’d found Sanders Mdoba. He was the one who passed Zorno the skinny on our witness, and he was a high-ranking member of the Bandur organization, the same outfit that Paul and I had been conspiring with for all these years. Hell, Paul made the Bandur organization what it was. Without Paul, they’d still be just a neighborhood outfit.

Reluctantly, I turned off the faucet and watched the ankle-deep water swirl down the rusted drain before I got out and dried off with a towel that smelled like mildew. I needed to tend to the cut on my knuckle. I rummaged under the sink, trying to find the fly gel.

“Juno, what are you doing?”

I looked up from my kneeling position to see Niki in the bathroom doorway. My first instinct told me to hide my hands, but I could see it was already too late. Niki was looking at my hands with a resigned look on her face. She gestured at the toilet, and I took a seat while she took my hands in hers. “You have to be more careful.” She didn’t say it as a nag. She said it like she meant it.

“I know,” I said.

She opened a drawer and pulled out a tube of fly gel that hadn’t been opened in a long time. She parted the skin around the cut. Blood oozed out as she squeezed a bead of the yellow gel into the cut. She walked out, coming back a minute later with a magnifying glass. She moved my hand under the faucet, rinsing the gel free along with the now dead maggots and eggs.

Niki asked, “Who did you…?”

“A bartender.” I remembered what he looked like, lying on his back, one of his popped-out teeth stuck to his forehead. Did I really do that? “He wouldn’t talk. He passed on some information that got our witness killed.”

“Hold still.” I held my hand steady. Luckily it was my left hand that had been cut. Niki was looking through the magnifying glass, using a pair of tweezers to pull the maggot corpses out. “Sounds like he deserved it,” she said.

How many times had we had this same conversation, with me sitting here on this same toilet while Niki nursed my damaged fists? The conversation always ended with that same line about how whoever it was deserved it. For over two decades, I’d beaten down anybody that opposed Paul. I’d destroyed countless lives with these fists, and no matter how lame the reasoning, Niki always told me I was doing the right thing. We were increasing tourism. We were bringing offworld money into the economy. We were serving the greater good. And it was true…at first.

The great upsurge in tourist money eventually plateaued as offworld businessmen began to take over the industry, effectively erasing any progress Paul had made. Over the years, Paul became less worried about Lagarto and more worried about holding on to his power. I no longer knew what purpose I served, yet I kept up my enforcer’s ways, demolishing Paul’s opposition and collaborating with a murderous crime lord, the flames of hell licking at my feet. It was Niki who saved me, pulling me out of the fire, telling me I had to quit enforcing. Niki always took the right side, my side.

I rested my head on her hip as she stood over the sink, squeezing a fresh bead of gel into the cleaned wound. She placed a bandage on it and declared me good as new. I knew I could never leave her.

Maggie wasn’t interested in me anyway. I was deluding myself if I thought any different. Maggie was young, smart, honest, good-looking. I wasn’t any of those things. There was absolutely no way a woman like that would ever be interested in a guy like me. I remembered how she’d kissed my cheek. I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but it wasn’t romantic. That was just wishful thinking on my part. Some kind of midlife crisis-induced hallucination. Hell, even if she were interested in me, what were we going to do? Go out on a date? Go dancing? Go meet her high-society mother? Give me a fucking break.

I stood up and embraced my wife. I kissed the top of her head. I dropped my nose into her pillow-head hair and kept it there, breathing her in. I held her tight as I said, “Thank you.”

Benazir Bandur’s home sat on a rise, no neighbors within a hundred meters. The surrounding jungle was immaculately controlled. The house was ivy free, and the walk was mossless. Shrubs were formed into topiary animals, a bird on the left with a goat behind. Check out the two rabbits and a chicken just over the little brook. The former Kingpin of Koba, Ram Bandur, used to love his garden. He’d rave about it all the time. The way plants grew around here, he must’ve had to get the shrubs trimmed every day to keep their shape. Today they looked a bit shaggy, like they all needed haircuts.

Detecting my DNA, the door opened on its own. A bodiless voice welcomed Maggie and me, then instructed us to go out to the pool. We walked through the foyer-polished stone floors with a car-sized chandelier glimmering above. We cut through the kitchen, which was bigger than my entire flat, and my flat wasn’t small. We stepped down a set of Spanish tile stairs to the poolside door, which slid open to let us pass.

The pool area was done up in desert landscaping. Offworld desiccators buried two meters underground would suck the moisture from the soil, leaving a caked and cracked surface, perfect for cactus imported from the nonpolar regions of Lagarto.

Was that Ben Bandur floating in the pool? I couldn’t tell with his face all bandaged up.

“Juno! What brings you here?”

I turned to see longtime Bandur right-hand man Matsuo Sasaki poolside. Who was that sitting next to him? Tip Tipaldi-Bandur strong-arm. He’d once beaten a chef to death with a slab of frozen meat, for overcooking his fish. The crime scene was still fresh in my head-blood trail from the kitchen to the freezer. Freezer contents included the following meats: two sides of beef, twenty three ’guanas, and one blue-skinned chefsicle with grill marks on his face, hands, and ass. Paul had the incident buried.

I said, “Hey, Matsuo. Is that Ben out there in the pool?”

“The one and only. Please, come join me.”

“Thanks. Matsuo Sasaki, this is Detective Maggie Orzo.”

“Pleased to meet you, Detective. I see Paul is making them better looking these days. I’ve always thought the Office of Police lacked a certain…elegance.”

“Thank you,” she said uncertainly.

We took seats at the table. Aircon blew from vents in the decking. The air rushed by us in a cool gush then dispersed into the jungle heat in a colossal waste of energy.

Sasaki waved at Tipaldi. “Tip, would you please leave us alone for a bit?” Chef-killer Tipaldi ambled off. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked Maggie.

“A glass of ice water would be nice.”

“Ice water? Wouldn’t you prefer something with a little kick?”

“I’m on duty.”

“You’re not going to let some silly rules stand in your way, are you?”

Maggie was emphatic. “Yes I am.”

“How about you, Juno? You wouldn’t mind sharing some brandy with me; would you?”

The early morning hour didn’t bother me. “You know I can’t turn down the good stuff.”

“Very well.” Sasaki made no move to get up for the drinks-no need to; our orders had been picked up by some unseen microphone and forwarded to the help.

I relaxed back into my chair. It responded with a light massage for my back. Damn, that felt good. I looked out over the pool, a blue-gem oasis surrounded by stark desert. Ben Bandur floated on a half-submerged lounge chair, only his toes and his bandaged head above the surface. “What happened to Ben?”

“You’re referring to the bandages?”

“Yeah.”

“He went up to the Orbital to have some work done. That’s why he didn’t make it to the mayor’s banquet the other night. He’s obsessed with his looks. I don’t know where he gets it, certainly not from his father. They built up his cheekbones and enlarged that less than masculine nose of his. He won’t stop talking about it. He pulled off the bandages to show it to me. You would’ve loved it. His nose was swollen up like a tomato, except it was purple. Funniest thing I ever saw. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.” Sasaki let out a rare smile. His teeth reflected sunlight.

“What did Ben think of you laughing?”

“He threw a fit, just like when he was a kid. He’s still spoiled rotten to the core.”

I’d never heard Sasaki be so disrespectful. When he worked for Ram, he was the consummate loyalist. “How’s he doing with the business?”

“I suppose he’s learning, but he’s still more focused on which whore to invite to his room every night. I wish his father were still alive, so he could knock some sense into him.”

“Did you tell Ben that?”

“Sure, I told him. He makes me so angry sometimes I can’t help myself. One of these days, he’s either going to shape up, or he’s going to burn a hole in my head. Half the time, I don’t care which.”

The houseboy approached, carrying a tray with our drinks. I could almost taste the brandy already. I sipped and took the time to enjoy the flavor before swallowing. “How’s the Simba situation?” Koba had been exclusive Bandur territory for over twenty years. I thought Koba would be Bandur domain forever. But now I wasn’t so sure anymore. Not since the Loja crime lord offered that gutsy mayoral toast.

Sasaki looked me in the eyes and nodded in Maggie’s direction as if to say, “Is it okay to talk in front of her?”

“Yeah. I’ll vouch for her.”

“Your word was good enough for Ram, so it’s good enough for me. I’m going to level with you, Juno. Simba’s becoming difficult. There’s no chance that he’d try to pull this on Ram. Ram would have killed him by now. Ever since Ram died, Simba’s been pecking away at us. He’s like a damn child always testing the limits. I keep telling Ben that we have to slam the door on Simba, but he just doesn’t have the balls to do it. Please excuse my language, Officer Orzo. Once I start hitting the hard stuff, I find my tongue has a mind of its own.”

Maggie said, “That’s okay. My father had a foul mouth as well. I didn’t think any less of him for it.”

“A very reasonable attitude.”

I asked, “How bad is it?”

Sasaki swirled brandy in his four-fingered hand. “Oh, it’s sufficiently contained for now, but the potential for disaster is right around the corner. We’ve got people in Floodbank paying double protection. They’re paying us and paying Simba’s people. How long do you think it will be before they quit paying us altogether? We’re supposed to be protecting them from other crime bosses. What else is protection money for? I explain this to Ben, and he just doesn’t get how serious the situation is. I told him about the stunt Simba pulled at the mayor’s banquet, but he was too excited about his new nose to care. You tell me, how do you get somebody motivated when he has everything he ever wanted handed to him before he even knows he wanted it?”

I shook my head and grimaced with a what-is-this-world-coming-to look.

Sasaki was struck by a thought. “Maybe you could talk to him, Juno.”

“What the hell good would that do?”

“He has no sense of what his father had to do to build this business. You were there at the beginning, you and Paul. You could tell him some stories about his father. Tell him what a ruthless man his father was. How he had to fight for everything he got. The kid’s almost twenty-five, and he still hasn’t learned how to be tough. It would do him some good.”

I shook my head.

Sasaki persisted in trying to convince me. “Come on, Juno. It would be fun. You and Paul could come over. I’ll have a big dinner fixed up. We’ll split a couple bottles of brandy and swap some stories about the old days. What do you say?”

“I’ll tell you what, if you can talk Paul into it, I’m in. I hardly know Ben. I wouldn’t feel right talking to him about his father without Paul.”

“No problem. I understand what you’re saying. I’ll talk to Paul and let you know. All right? I really think it would help. He doesn’t listen to me anymore. So what brings you over?”

“We wanted to talk to you about one of your people.”

“Who?”

“Sanders Mdoba.”

“Why are you looking at him?”

Here we go. My heart started pumping nervous beats. Gotta play this one just right. “His name came up in a murder investigation.”

“Murder? I thought you were working vice.”

“I was. Paul asked me to work this case.”

“Why did he do that?”

“The victim’s father works for the city, and Paul’s trying to score points with the mayor by putting Maggie and me on the case. He gave the mayor a line about me being the best detective he’s ever seen, and he ought to know since he used to be my partner. Then he told him that Maggie was the best recruit he’s seen since he’s been chief. He’s hoping that by playing nice he can get the mayor to cool his corruption investigation.”

Sasaki said, “I see. How did Mdoba’s name come up? Is he a suspect?”

“No.” I hoped I sounded truthful. “We know he didn’t do it. We already got our killer-a real schizo. Maggie fried the son of a bitch dead last night. As far as we’re concerned, the case is closed, but the mayor’s investigator-Karl Gilkyson-you know him?”

“No, but I know of him.”

“Well, then maybe you heard how big a shithead he is. It turns out that our killer made contact with Mdoba yesterday. I told him that the killer was probably just scoring some brown sugar off Mdoba. Who cares? But Gilkyson can’t let it go. Best I can tell, Gilkyson got wind that Mdoba’s one of your dealers, and now he wants us to ‘chase the lead.’ Can you believe that? This suit from the mayor’s office saying shit like ‘chase the lead.’ What an asshole. I told him there was nothing to find, but he won’t take no for an answer. He wants to get dirt on Mdoba so he can run it up the ladder to you and Ben.”

“What exactly do you want from us?”

“Your permission to talk to Mdoba.” I was holding my breath.

Sasaki savored a slow sip of his brandy. “You’re right to come talk to us first.” He paused to consider. I needed to breathe. I eased the air out of my lungs, and took long slow breaths so he wouldn’t notice.

A splash of water called my attention to the pool. Done with his morning swim, Ben Bandur stood on the pool’s edge, dripping water into puddles at his feet. The houseboy rushed over with a towel and dried him off while Bandur stayed in place, raising his arms and legs at the right times.

He strutted over to greet us. It was hard to believe this loser was Ram’s son. Ram was the most successful crime lord in the history of the planet, a powerhouse of a man. His control over Koba had been absolute. Nobody dared to challenge him. He would’ve ruled Koba forever if it weren’t for the stealthy, underhandedness of a killer like cancer. Ram had the money to go up to the orbital station for treatment, but he absolutely refused to see an offworld doctor. Sasaki was right that he was the meanest SOB you ever saw, but he was a true Lagartan.

“Juno.” Ben used my name as a greeting. The center of his face was wrapped with pool water-drenched bandages. His bathing suit emphasized an unnaturally large bulge-his nose wasn’t the only thing he got extended.

“Hey, Ben. How’s it going?”

Ben ran his eyes up and down Maggie, checking her out. The bandages failed to hide the lascivious look in his eyes.

I said, “This is my new partner, Detective Maggie Orzo.”

Ben’s eyes focused on her crossed legs. “Nice legs,” he said in a nasal timbre.

Maggie was unsure how to respond, so she didn’t.

He said, “When do they open?”

Again, she didn’t answer, but I could see the flush in her cheeks. I wanted to throttle the little prick, rip those bandages off, and squeeze the hell out of his new nose-maybe fuck it up good. Even Sasaki shook his head in disapproval.

Sasaki spoke in an appeasing tone. “Juno and Officer Orzo want to talk to Sanders Mdoba.”

“Why do you want to talk to that fatass?” Ben’s nasal whine would have been funny if I hadn’t been so busy wanting to rip his nose off.

“They are investigating a murder case and-”

“What murder case?”

“An Army lieutenant,” I said. “Dmitri Vlotsky.”

“Never heard of him. Why do you want to talk to Sanders?”

Sasaki interjected. “He was seen talking to the murderer yesterday. They want to know why.”

“How the fuck should I know?”

Sasaki breathed deep. “They don’t expect you to know. They just want permission to talk to him.”

“Talk to him all you want. I don’t give a shit.” He turned his back on us and swaggered into the house.

Sasaki closed his eyes until his frustration passed. “You see what I have to put up with?”

I said, “He got some work done downstairs, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He had ‘erective surgery,’ as I like to call it. Ben doesn’t get the joke. Every time I say that around him, he tells me to stop talking like a chink.”

I laughed loud and long, fueled by nervous energy.

Sasaki got back to business. “You can talk to Mr. Mdoba. But you can only talk to him about your murder case. His relationship to Ben is strictly off-limits. Do you understand?”

“I understand just fine, Matsuo. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t talk to him at all. We’ll go, and he’ll make up some excuse why he met with our killer-end of story. Then, once Gilkyson sees there’s nothing there, he’ll drop it.”

I swallowed the rest of the brandy and got up to leave. I felt a slight alcohol fog in my head. We walked back through the house, taking the same path to the front door, which opened by itself when we approached.

I hopped into the car, and I aimed it for the Phra Kaew docks.

Maggie spoke while looking dead ahead. “Are you sure that was the best thing for us to do?”

“No.”

I wasn’t sure of anything. I had thought it best that we come to Bandur and Sasaki for permission to speak with Mdoba. If we had talked to Mdoba on our own, he surely would’ve told Sasaki we’d contacted him. That would’ve sent up red flags all over the damn place. Credit for my twenty-five years of loyal service to them would’ve evaporated instantaneously, and Sasaki and Bandur might’ve decided to just kill Maggie and me rather than bother to find out what I’d been up to.

I’d made up the story about Gilkyson as a cover. The way I saw it, it should’ve worked either way. Either Bandur and Sasaki hired Zorno to whack Vlotsky or they didn’t. If they did hire Zorno, they would be alarmed that we connected Zorno to Mdoba. I figured all that bullshit about Gilkyson, and how we considered the case closed, would set their fears to rest. They would be thinking, what harm would it do to let Juno talk to Mdoba? Act like there’s nothing to hide. Even if Juno figured out we put out the contract on Vlotsky, Paul would shut him up before it went too far.

And if they hadn’t hired Zorno, they wouldn’t be worried at all about us talking to Mdoba. If anything, they would want to know if Mdoba was into something they weren’t aware of. Maybe he was moonlighting on them.

Maggie said, “Do you think Sasaki bought our cover story?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Neither could I.”

Sanders Mdoba lived on a boat that was usually tied up to one of the docks in Phra Kaew. Maggie and I walked the labyrinth of walkways and rickety docks looking for the Tropic of Capricorn -an old tug turned houseboat.

We focused on the docks that held the larger vessels-worn-down trawlers leaking and listing, beat-up passenger boats with empty frames where seats used to be. It was still a big fishing time. Many of the moorings were vacated, making our job marginally easier.

The resort-owned Lagartan Queen was in dry dock. It was painted white with red trim, and it had a paddle wheel on front that gave it that old-timey feel. The ordinarily underwater nuke-powered props ruined the steamer illusion. The banner pinned to the rail read, “Sunset Cruises-One for $30, Two for $50.” Convert that to pesos, and you could buy a car. Lagartan workers were at work, scraping barnacles off the hull under the supervision of an offworld foreman who probably paid them by the hour.

We finally found the Tropic of Capricorn loosely roped to a crumbling pier. The rusted hull had left orange stains on the stone landing. We had to step across the water to board-no gangway. Colored lights hung on strands that ran bow to stern. Taped-down power cords snaked across the deck. The cabin door was cracked open. I pushed through. Maggie followed me in.

We passed through the galley. Half-eaten cans of food were strewn about, lizard tails poking out of the tops. Maggie closed the door behind us. Startled geckos upended themselves and sprang from the cans in a panic.

I took a quick look into the common room. Nobody there. We clanked our way down metal steps to the cabin, which welcomed us with a dirty-laundry odor. The messed-up bed was empty. Nobody home. Odd that the door was unlocked.

I hit the dresser: nothing but elephant-sized clothes, hypodermics, and sex toys. Maggie pulled down a cardboard box from the closet and dumped the contents across the bed-vids and pics. We sorted through the pics: Mdoba fishing topless, his bulk hiding his belt all around; a younger and thinner Mdoba boogying on the dance floor; Mdoba posing with both Bandurs, father and son, all wearing hunting clothes and holding dead reptiles up by their tails.

Maggie stopped and held up a pic for me to see. I’ll be damned-Vlotsky. Not Dmitri but his father, Peter. There was a whole stack of them. Vlotsky walking up to his house, Vlotsky in his car, Vlotsky eating dinner.

I grabbed up one of the vids and held it up for the entertainment system.

Holograms appeared on Mdoba’s bed. Mdoba was lying on his back with a heavy-breasted woman riding on top, her legs spread uncomfortably wide to straddle his body. I held up the next vid. Same woman on all fours, Mdoba behind.

I flashed through three more vids of Mdoba’s greatest hits before finding something interesting. A new room superimposed over the reality of the cabin. A different woman was on the bed, naked with a drink in her hand. She looked bored. From a bathroom came a man with wavy hair and dark skin. She traced a teasing finger up and around her breasts. His member traveled from six o’clock to high noon. He crawled on top, and once he did, she went back to looking bored-definite hooker.

They writhed around on the bed. I rotated our vantage, taking in the details of the room. I zoomed to the door, which had a deadbolt and peephole-hotel. I zeroed in on the bedstand. There was no money-she was giving him a freebie. By the time I moved back to the bed, the writhing was already over, done in sixty seconds-record time.

Snap conclusion: classic extortion scheme.

I could picture Sanders Mdoba rigging the room with cameras then squeezing himself into a closet, peeking through a cracked door. I could imagine his hooker in a smoky bar, making eyes at Mr. Sixty Seconds. Letting him buy the drinks; letting him think she’s not a hooker; letting him touch her back, then her ass, cooing as he grabbed and tickled until he brought up the idea of getting a room. She knew just the place.

I’d run the same scam a hundred times.

Next vid: another man getting busy, this time with a teenage boy who cried when they were done.

Next vid: woman locking her toddler in the closet while she fired up some O. Her kid crying and knocking on the door the whole time.

Next vid: Peter Vlotsky at the Lotus with one of Rose’s ’tutes.

New possibilities blossomed in my brain.

The boat moved, just barely, then it moved again. Somebody was coming onboard. Bare feet crossed in front of the porthole. I pocketed the handful of vids and helped Maggie shovel the rest of the vids and pics back into the box. The top deck door opened. Maggie tossed the box back onto the closet shelf. We moved to the steps, climbing quietly. Sounds issued from the galley.

We could see her now: the heavy-breasted woman catalogued in Mdoba’s vids. Wearing a bikini with a puddle of river water gathering at her feet, she was digging through the fridge. We moved up on her without her seeing us.

Maggie said, “Boo,” and just about startled the woman into jumping out of that bikini.

It took the woman a moment to figure out that there were two strangers staring at her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She was trapped-animal scared.

“Mdoba,” I said as I held up my badge with my left.

“Sanders isn’t here.”

“No fucking kidding. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who are you?”

She was starting to get her confidence back, a hint of defiance in her words. “I’m Malis.”

“Are you his girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

She was probably some rich-girl groupie who thought she was living large screwing a high-roller like Mdoba. “Where’s Mdoba?” I repeated.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me his business.” She sized Maggie up then ran her hands into her hair for me, churning out the foxy wiles, trying to take control of the situation. I reevaluated my opinion of her. She wasn’t the well-to-do daddy’s girl. She was more likely street trash with the looks and moves to land a big fish like Mdoba from across a packed dance floor.

I said, “Tell him Juno wants to see him.”

“Yes, officer,” she pouted as she played with her bikini’s shoulder strap.

We left. On the way out, Maggie gave Malis that supernasty kind of look that women save up for each other.

I stopped at the next boat down. A former barge, now an apartment building. There was a girl on a tire swing that was suspended from the rigging.

I asked her, “Do you know the man that lives on the Tropic of Capricorn?”

“Yes.” She put a finger over her lips and blew her cheeks out in imitation of Mdoba.

I smiled and handed her a thousand pesos on the upswing. “You call me the next time he comes home, and I’ll give you another thousand.”

She jumped off the tire when it reached its highest point and landed running. She disappeared into the boat and returned seconds later with the family phone so our phones could exchange numbers.

Maggie and I hustled back to the car and started toward the Cap Square. I peeked at Maggie as I drove. She wore a stern look, no longer the wide-eyed rookie. I was starting to wonder if she would come through all this with her sanity intact. She pushed her hair back and closed her eyes, trying to reason her way through the latest piece of information. There was a connection between Sanders Mdoba and Peter Vlotsky, our murder victim’s father. The further we went on this case, the more complicated it got. Lip-obsessed Ali Zorno killed Lieutenant Vlotsky; Zorno and Private Kapasi were cellmates; Mdoba tipped off Zorno about our witness; Mdoba worked for Bandur, who was tied to Paul and me. And now the latest mind-bender, Mdoba had some kind of extortion scheme running that involved Vlotsky’s father.

I wanted to call Paul, but I couldn’t talk to him without Gilkyson listening in. I called Abdul instead, and we apologized to each other about last night. I told Abdul we needed details on Vlotsky senior’s finances. New house, new car. We needed to trace that money. Abdul had the numbers streamed into Maggie’s digital paper pad.

Peter Vlotsky’s office building looked like most government offices, a plain rectangular structure, constructed from drab concrete blocks that were cracking apart from the years of mosses and ivies digging into the porous surface. Inside, the halls were antiseptic clean and the elevators were slow and jerky. The Koba Office of Business Affairs was on the seventh floor.

We entered Vlotsky’s office. A receptionist put on a polite face until we breezed past him and into Vlotsky’s inner office without stopping. Peter Vlotsky sat at his desk. A dark-skinned man with wavy hair sat across from him. Well I’ll be, Mr. Sixty-Seconds Flat.

Peter Vlotsky stood to greet us. “Hello, officers. It is so good to see you.” The receptionist left the doorway with a wave of Vlotsky’s hand. “Officer Mozambe and Officer Orzo, this is Judah Singh.”

Sixty-Second Singh rose from his chair. “Pleased to meet you both. I’ll leave you alone.”

Vlotsky offered us seats across his desk. “I’m glad you’re here. I was hoping I’d get a chance to thank you for catching my son’s murderer. I can tell you that Jelka and I will be sleeping better knowing that he can’t do this to anybody else’s child.”

Maggie took the lead on this one. She had a better bead on his finances. “We would like to know if you know this man.” She showed him a picture of Mdoba that she had five-fingered from the Tropic of Capricorn.

He hesitated…too long. “No. I don’t. Who is he?”

“Could you please explain the deposits made to your account on the third and seventh of last month?” She read the dates from her high-tech pad.

“What deposits?” His voice cracked.

Again she looked at the pad. “The deposit on the third was eight million, and the deposit on the seventh was another five. Both transfers were made from an account owned by the DHC Corporation. Can you tell us who they are?”

Peter Vlotsky was positively pale. I saw a picture hanging behind his desk showing the entire seven-person board seated at a table with name plaques and microphones. I stood to go study it. Vlotsky was in the middle, chairman of the board. Mr. Sixty-Seconds to his right. Opium-smoking child abuser on the far right. Homo with a thing for teenage boys to the left. Mdoba’s extortion scheme was taking shape.

Vlotsky said, “I don’t think I should talk to you without my lawyer present.”

I rushed up into his face, making him just about tip over in his chair. “You will tell us what we want to know. You hear me, you piece of shit? No lawyers, no games, you understand me?” I popped him one in the face. My body sizzled electric.

“I can’t help you,” he whined. “They’ll kill me.”

I pulled a vid from my pocket. I backhanded him with it.

His nose started running blood.

I got nose-touching close. “We’ve got some great footage of you down at Rose’s. We’ve got half your coworkers caught in compromising positions. You don’t think we’ll learn what we want to know from one of them?”

“No. I can’t talk.” Nose blood ran in his mouth, staining his teeth red.

“We’ll find out anyway, shithead. When we do, we’re going to arrest Mdoba, and I’ll let it slip that you’re the one who snitched.”

“You can’t do that! He’ll have me killed.” He was teetering on the edge.

“I’m sure he will. Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t tell a soul.” I whispered the last part.

He was visibly sweating; his lips quivered. Blood ran down his chin and soaked into his white collar.

Maggie pushed him over with “Your son is dead, and we know it’s your fault. It’s time to clear your conscience.”

Vlotsky rained bloody snot and tears. His wails brought his receptionist back to the door. Again, Vlotsky waved him away.

We waited him out. Finally, he brought his cries under control. “They killed my son.”

“Who did?”

He pointed to the picture of Mdoba held in Maggie’s hand.

“Why?” she asked.

“We were going to vote on a business license for a shipping company called Lagarto Lines. He told me he wanted it to pass. He came to me one night and threatened to release the vid of me at the Lotus to the public if I didn’t.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him it wasn’t my decision. The whole board had to vote. He told me that he’d worry about the rest of the votes.”

“What did you do then?”

“I told him I’d do what I could. At the time, I didn’t think the license had a chance of passing anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Everybody knew the company was a front for the Simba organization.”

Carlos Simba. The Loja crime boss was reaching in every direction. Trying to eat into Bandur’s Koba monopoly and now trying to start a shipping company.

I asked, “What does Simba want with a shipping company?”

Vlotsky raised his hands and sniffled. “I don’t know, but only two members of the board were advocating for the company. Everybody else was going to reject it.”

“Why would they advocate for a business that they knew was a front for Simba?”

“They thought it would be good for Lagarto if we had our own shipping company. They insisted it would mean lower rates because Simba’s line would be able to compete with the offworld lines.”

“ Offworld lines?” I had assumed he was talking about a regular shipping company-running boats on the river.

“Yes, offworld lines. Simba wants to start a shipping line that runs from the surface to the Orbital.”

I was stunned silent.

Maggie said, “How could he do that? He’d have to buy a ship.”

“He already has. He bought a freighter that’s getting refitted at the spaceport as we speak.”

I got my voice back. “Did the mayor chime in on this?”

“No. He stayed out of it. With all his anticorruption talk, you’d think that he would be all over me, making sure this license got rejected. Instead he was strictly hands off. If it ever comes back to bite him, I’m sure he’ll use me as the fall guy. He’ll say I didn’t keep him properly informed.”

Maggie brought us back to the money. “Is the DHC Corporation another one of Simba’s fronts?”

“No. They’re an offworld company.”

“What did they pay you for?”

He wiped his nose with his sleeve then was immediately disgusted by the red stain running from elbow to cuff. “They wanted me to reject the license. DHC is the parent company that owns TransPort, the biggest offplanet shipper. They didn’t want any local competition.”

“So you decided to take the offworld money and vote against Simba?”

“Yes. My wife and I are getting a divorce anyway. We’ve been cheating on each other for years. I didn’t really care if she saw the vid or not, so I went with the money.”

“Then what happened?”

“He”-pointing to Mdoba’s picture-“visited me the morning after Dmitri was murdered. He showed up at my door and told me Dmitri was dead, and I was next. I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was just trying to intimidate me, but then we got the call from Chief of Detectives Banks. I didn’t even care that much about the money. Why didn’t he warn me he would do something to my son? If he had threatened to kill Dmitri, I would have done what he said. He didn’t have to kill him!” More pathetic sobbing.

“When’s the vote?”

“We already had it.” He managed between sobs. “We issued the license yesterday.”

We found a free bench in the Old Town Square and sat to eat kebabs we’d picked up from a street vendor. I ate leaning far forward so any greasy spillover would fall safely to the ground instead of in my lap.

There were still a fair number of people on the square. A little unusual for this early in the afternoon, but the dark clouds were taking some edge off the heat. Even so, it was intensely hot, but bearable when you sat still.

The walks were blanket covered. Vendors offered jewelry, wood carvings, lizard jaws, rugs, paintings, spices, and anything else that was cheap to produce, displayed in neat rows, small items in the front, larger ones in the back. Tourists crowded the narrow trails between blankets, looking for that special bargain that they could brag to their friends about; “guess how little I paid for this.” Every so often, children approached us, trying to get us to come back to their space: “Good quality, good prices.” A quick dose of ignoring them and they moved on. Never make eye contact.

Maggie finished off the last of her kebab. “What does a crime lord want with a shipping business?”

“I don’t know.” I said.

“It can’t be legit. I mean he bought a freighter. It would take years, maybe decades for him to turn a profit if he was on the up and up. He can’t have that much patience or he wouldn’t be a criminal in the first place.”

“Yeah.”

Maggie was incredulous. “Are guys like Simba and Bandur really that rich? They can just buy spaceships and bully the government? How can you work for somebody like that?”

“I don’t work for Bandur. I just don’t work against him.”

“Right,” she said sarcastically.

“Hey! You wanted to know my history, and I told you.”

She let out a sigh. “You’re right, Juno. Sorry.”

She sounded genuine, so I let it drop.

Maggie wondered aloud, “How much does a freighter cost?”

“A bundle.” My brain raced. Where could he have gotten that kind of money? Loja was tiny compared to Koba and hardly made any tourist money. Even if he took 100 percent of the gambling, prostitution, and drug profits, I couldn’t believe he would have enough to buy a freighter. Not even the government could afford to buy one.

Maggie called Abdul. His hologram stood straight, without his real-life stoop. Maggie set the coroner to tracking down the sale of that ship.

I returned to the last few bites of my lunch.

Maggie kept her eyes on her pad. When the data came in, she told the pad to sort through the docs and highlight the relevant portions. The regular-looking paper shifted from one document to another. I couldn’t keep up with her. I just watched the people on the square and waited for her synopsis.

“The freighter cost over thirty billion pesos.”

“Thirty billion?”

“Yeah. Can you believe that? That translates to almost fifty million Earth dollars.”

“How did he pay for it?”

“He put up fifty-one percent of the money. It took loans from four separate offworld banks to front his share. The other forty-nine percent came from two minority investors, both offworlders. Fernando Mendietta, who is the vice president of Universal Mining, and Mai Nguyen, who you already know.”

My stomach seized. I looked at my hand.

Maggie continued. “She had to take out two loans to come up with her twenty percent. Mendietta paid cash for the rest.”

Mai Nguyen. It had been twenty-five years since I’d tried to strangle her…I still wanted to.

Maggie put her notes away. “It’s opium, isn’t it? Simba’ll use the shipping company to smuggle opium up to Nguyen, and she’ll distribute it to the orbital station and the mines.”

I couldn’t answer; my thoughts were swimming. I got up without saying a word and tried to walk it off. Nguyen. Anger welled up from my gut, spilling into my head. My face felt flushed. I wanted to smash something.

I held on until the tide of blood slowly receded from my head and my locomotive breathing chugged out of steam. Some deep breaths soothed me back toward level. I rubbed my face with my hands. My forehead was running sweat.

Maggie looked concerned. “You okay?”

I nodded.

She hurried over to a street vendor, returning with a cold soda.

I chugged down half the bottle.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

Simba, Nguyen, and Universal Mining. Simba: known O dealer. Nguyen: known smuggler and dealer. Vice president of Universal Mining: ???

It made no sense that the VP of a mining company would invest in an opium-smuggling scheme. The last thing he’d want to do is turn his employees into junkies-bad for productivity. He had to be going solo on this one, putting up his own money-screw the company.

How big was the mines’ opium market that they needed a freighter to keep up with demand? It couldn’t be that big…but what else could it be but opium? Everything else on Lagarto was worthless…

A thought popped. Clarity overwhelmed. My nerves fired in a surge of understanding. We had missing people at every turn: six POWs, Kapasi’s sister, Brenda Redfoot’s list of suspected Zorno victims, Josephs and Kim busy investigating MPs…

Pieces snapped together-not all of them, but enough.

I called Abdul immediately. “I want the name of a missing persons case in Tenttown that Josephs and Kim have been working.”

“Sure, Juno. Hang on.”

Maggie looked at me strangely.

Abdul’s holo unfroze. “Got it.”

“Give it to me.”

We tracked down the Wolski family in an hour’s time. Their Tenttown home had a flap for a door. Maggie called inside.

A woman came-short with ratty hair. “Yes?”

“We are police officers, ma’am. I’m Detective Mozambe and this is Detective Orzo. We’d like to talk to you about your daughter. We understand she’s been missing.”

“The police were already here. Don’t you talk to each other?”

“I know, ma’am, but we are carrying out our own investigation which may be connected to your daughter’s disappearance. We’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

She waved us in. Two open sores stood out on her arm-looked like they needed treatment. We made ourselves comfortable on pillows. She hiked her dress up to her knees as she sat down, exposing more sores on her ankles.

“Would you like some tea?”

“No thank you, ma’am.” Too hot without aircon.

Bright blankets covered the tent walls, and the tent’s ceiling was concealed behind more blankets that were tied to the center post and slung out to the corners. A cookstove in one corner had a stack of dishes sitting next to it. Bedrolls were lined up along the wall. I counted six. No other furniture. The surroundings felt childhood-familiar.

Mrs. Wolski scratched at her ankles. I caught a whiff of rot. There was no mistaking that smell.

Mrs. Wolski said, “What you want to know?”

Maggie said, “Please tell us what happened to your daughter.”

“Shamal’s gone.” She fanned her face-the heat suddenly too strong for her. “My husband took her with him to the work tree and she-”

Maggie interrupted. “Work tree?”

“Sure. You want work, you go to the work tree. My husband, Dominick, he goes there every day. If he gets lucky, some rich people come needing a hand for the day. When they do, we eat good that day. How come you never heard of the work tree? You ain’t some rich girl now, are you?”

“I don’t live on this side of town.” Nice cover.

“Anyway, he took her down there with him. She needs to get out of the house, you know. He was waiting by the tree, and she got bored, so he let her wander around a bit. She always been good at taking care of herself. After a while, he starts to wondering where that girl is. He tried to find her, but he can’t find her nowhere. We ain’t seen her since.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Four.”

“Did any of the others go to the work tree with your husband?”

“No, he only took Shamal. She’s the oldest.”

“Can you think of anybody who might have taken her?”

“I think it was that man that came here. I didn’t trust him.”

I asked, “What man?”

“I told the other officers about him.”

“I know. I’m sorry to make you go through it again. Could you please tell me about this man?”

“He was going door to door, trying to find people to work the mines.”

“Was he with Universal Mining?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I suppose he could have been, but he didn’t look all fancy like an offworlder.”

“What did he say to you?”

“I tried to shoo him away, but Dominick invited him in. He told us how they had good jobs out in the mines. I asked him, ‘Why do you want a fourteen-year-old girl?’ He told me they needed all kinds of people; not everybody was going to be a miner. They needed cooks, maids, waitresses… He said they could find a good job for her. Something that she liked to do-all depended on what she was interested in.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him no. We ain’t interested. Sure, it all sounded good, but I had a funny feeling about him. I didn’t trust him straight off.”

“Did he leave when you said no?”

“He left. He went on next door, but not before he got my husband all fired up. Dominick kept telling me how good it would be for Shamal. He told me how happy she’d be, because she’d have all this food and money. I told him food and money don’t make up for losing a mother. That ain’t a fair trade for a child. When she’s older, she wants to go, I’ll kiss her good-bye, but she’s too young to be away from home.”

“And you think this man could have taken her?”

“Yes, I do. I think he made that whole story up about working in the mines. Like I said, he didn’t look like no offworlder. I saw it on the news…how men that like raping little girls and boys make up some excuse to get into your house and see your kids. It’s like they’re shopping. They remember the ones they like and come back for them. I think he came back for Shamal.”

“Did you tell all this to the officers who talked to you a few days ago?”

“Why do I have to say everything twice with you people? Yes, I told them, but they kept trying to tell me that she ran away. I know my daughter…she did not run away.”

“Did you get the man’s name?”

“No.” Her eyes misted over.

“Can we talk to your husband?”

“He went to the work tree first thing this morning. He’ll still be there if nobody hired him today. He’s broken up about Shamal. I’ve never seen him so upset. He even started drinking again. I have to chase him out of the house in the mornings. We got three other kids to feed, so he’s got to keep working.”

I had Maggie jot down Abdul’s name for her. I told her he’d treat those sores. Maybe the rot hadn’t fully set in yet.

There had to be fifty people under that tree-some leaning up against the trunk, others sitting on wide boughs, legs dangling, watching traffic roll by. My deadbeat father used to spend most of his days under this same tree, supposedly looking for work, but mostly just pissing time away. A few were already moving off, the setting sun a sign that there was no more work to be had today. We walked under the umbrella of green foliage just as raindrops began to patter on the leaves above. We stepped over sleeping bodies and approached a trio of chatting men.

I put on a friendly smile. “Do any of you guys know Dominick Wolski?”

The shortest of the three stepped forward, his sleeveless T showing off a scar tattoo of a naked woman in sunglasses. He was too poor to afford the real thing, so he’d had it burned into the skin with a makeshift branding iron. “You mean Nicky? Yeah, we know him.”

“Is he here?”

“What you want with him?”

“Mrs. Orzo here needs him to lay some tile in one of her bathrooms.” I tried to make it look like I worked for her.

“You don’t need Nicky. I can do tile. I’m the best tile man out here. Isn’t that right?” His buddies agreed. The rain was finding a way through the leaf canopy. Large drops fell on our heads and shoulders.

“No. She wants Mr. Wolski. He did her mother’s bathroom, and she wants hers done the same way.” I threw in an eye roll to show how crazy rich people were.

“He isn’t here.” He looked at Maggie. “You take me to your mother’s bathroom. I’ll look it over and do yours the same way. You won’t be able to tell the difference. I’ll give you a good price.”

“No,” she said, turning on an I’m-better-than-you voice. “I want Mr. Wolski. Tell us where he is.”

“He doesn’t work anymore. I’m your man.”

“Tell me where to find him.”

“You think I’m lying? I told you he doesn’t work anymore. He’s been hanging out at PT’s.” He pointed down the street to PT’s Lounge. “You wait and see, he’ll tell you he doesn’t work anymore.”

She walked away without thanking him, playing up the rich-bitch persona. I slipped him a few pesos and followed her out into the now pounding rain.

He yelled at our backs, “I’ll wait right here for you. When he tells you he doesn’t work anymore, you come back.”

PT’s Lounge had the aircon running low, just enough to take the heat down a notch from smothering to uncomfortable. There were about a dozen tables scattered around, half occupied by men drinking and playing cards. We headed for the bar, a window covered in chicken wire with a slot at the bottom for passing out the hooch.

We waited our turn, three men ahead of us. Shine looked like the house specialty. Each customer passed a tin cup and a couple coins through the slot. The woman behind the bar took the coins and scooped out a cupful of mash. Her face was scarred-up from a botched plastic surgery. There were hacks all over Koba that lasered up faces. Make you look like an offworlder-guaranteed. Maggie gave her a pitying look, probably feeling guilty that she’d been able to afford getting her own fake face properly done. The burden of being rich.

When we got to the front, Maggie said, “We need to talk to Nicky Wolski.”

The bartender pointed him out. I looked across the room and sized him up-my enforcer juices were flowing strong. He was a scrawny guy. Based on the dopey look on his face, he was drunk off his ass. He’d be easy for me to take, even at my advanced age. We just had to get him outside so his friends wouldn’t jump in. My muscles tingled with anticipation. My nonviolence kick was strictly a thing of the past.

He was playing cards, showing off a big pile of money. The fuckhead was gambling with the money. Enforcer juices reached tidal wave proportion.

I walked over and stuck my badge in his face. “We need to talk to you.”

He clumsily gathered his money from the table and tried to stuff it in his pocket. Some coins fell to the floor, and he teetered down to get them. We walked him out the back door to an alley littered with garbage, but otherwise empty. All three of us hugged the wall to stay out of the worst of the rain.

Maggie had her arms crossed. “What happened to your daughter Shamal?”

His dopey face went serious. “I don’t know. She disappeared.”

I socked him in the gut, using my legs to put all my weight into it. He went down to the ground, his face landing in a dirty puddle. He sucked in a breath, choking on puddle water. I felt a power surge in my shaking right. It could still do some damage.

When he stopped gurgling and sputtering, Maggie repeated, “What happened to your daughter?”

“I don’t kn-”

I kicked him in the side. A good futbol kick, where foot met leg, no toe. He rolled on the ground, out into the rain.

Maggie was all cold steel. “What happened to your daughter?”

This time, there was no denial. Broken ribs were telling him to cooperate.

“Where did you get that money?”

Wolski vomited shine and puddle water. The rib pain threatened to make him pass out. I lunged in, grabbed his hair, and turned his face up into the driving rain until his eyes looked alert.

Maggie started the questioning again. “What did you do to your daughter?”

“I got her a job.”

I had to lean in to hear him.

She bent over him. “You mean you sold her.”

He didn’t respond.

“Answer me! Did you sell her?”

“Yes. What of it?”

I put my foot on his rib cage and pushed, sending him squirming.

“Who bought her?”

“Carlos Simba.”

“What’s he going to do with her?”

He didn’t answer.

I rifled his pockets and took every last peso before we left him moaning on the ground.

Quick stop at the Wolski house. I gave Mrs. Wolski her husband’s money and padded it out of my own pocket. When we told her that her husband sold Shamal, she broke down.

One of her children entered, looking terrified to see his mother crying. He drew close and rubbed her back the same way she had probably calmed him so many times.

It didn’t help.

Lagarto had finally found something new to export. Slaves.

Maggie and I rolled through the dark afternoon streets. Conversation was impossible as sheets of rain slapped onto the car’s metallic roof, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Knowing what to look for, it had only taken us a couple hours of surfing financials to figure out the basics of the operation. Carlos Simba had been running a slave trade. The buyer was Universal Mining. Free labor equals big profits. The middleman was the electric bitch, Mai Nguyen. We’d checked the shipping manifests. There were four shipping containers a week sent to Nguyen Imports from Vanguard Supplies, a warehouse located on the Loja waterfront that was probably a front for the Simba organization.

The slave business must have been going gangbusters. Four shipping containers a week simply hadn’t been cutting it anymore so Simba, Nguyen, and Universal Mining had gone in together on a freighter, an outright slave ship.

Since there was only one spaceport, Simba had to run the operation from Koba. To get approval from the city, he tried to pass the thing off as a legitimate shipping company. He submitted a business plan to the board of the Koba Office of Business Affairs. He played up the patriotic angle-a shipping company owned and operated by Lagartans.

Simba didn’t stand a chance with the board. They didn’t like dealing with kingpins, plus the fix was in-Chairman of the Board Peter Vlotsky had been scoring big money from an offworld shipping company trying to maintain its monopoly.

Enter Sanders Mdoba-a Bandur crony who must’ve liked the looks of Simba’s slave money. He ran a blackmail scheme on the board, using compromising vids of board members to buy votes.

Chairman Peter Vlotsky didn’t play. His wife already knew he was screwing around, and the offworld money was too good for him to pass up. Mdoba turned up the heat-killed Vlotsky’s kid-and Simba got his shipping company signed and sealed.

The still missing pieces were Private Jhuko Kapasi and the grand prize, Mayor Omar Samir.

We rode through the outskirts of the city. Kicked-up mud from dirt roads stuck to the windshield. The towers of the Koba Spaceport were now visible, poking up through the jungle.

The cab dropped us at the spaceport gates. We used our badges to get past the guards minus our weapons.

The cargo docks housed five massive freighters that towered like high-rises while cranes dangled metal boxes going into and out of gaping cargo holds. Simba’s new purchase, the Sunda, stood in the second position. Trucks on the ground cannoned the ship with water, hiding all but the tip behind falling clouds of mist.

We entered the command tower and marched down the cinder-block halls. The walls were alive with molds and mosses. We looked for the office of Clay Reinholt, nightshift supervisor. His signatures were on almost half of the delivery receipts from Vanguard Supplies to Nguyen Imports.

We found his office, ignored his receptionist’s protests, and strode for the door. She jumped up and blocked our path. Maggie’s dirty look convinced her to move out of our way.

We headed through the door with the adrenaline-pumped confidence of three successful bully sessions in a row. I was revved-hadn’t felt like this in years.

I stopped face to face with Mai Nguyen. NGUYEN! Maggie bumped into me from behind. The corner of my eye picked up something coming from the side. Before I could turn, I was tackled. My face bounced off the floor. Maggie screamed. My vision went red, and my gasket blew sky high. I thrashed against hands that held me stock still. I jerked violently to no avail, my body overheating with the effort. When my flame finally burned out, the hands lifted me off the floor and sat me in a chair. Maggie was already seated. The hands pinned my arms behind the chair. I couldn’t move.

Mai Nguyen stood before me like a deja vu doomsday. She studied my face with her not-a-day-older eyes. She extended her index finger toward my nose. I slipped into a fried-nose panic. I strained against the hands that held my head. She gave my nose a poke.

She retreated to a desk and sat on its front edge, leaning forward so her impressive cleavage offered a view with the utmost titillation. “How nice to see you, Officer Mozambe. I thought you looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure. I’m not used to people who age. I stole a few skin cells off your nose for a DNA test which verified your identity. I’m sure you don’t mind.” She spoke to the hands. “You can let them go.”

Hands released me. I looked over my shoulder at the offworld bodyguards. The one behind me didn’t look familiar, but I recognized the one behind Maggie from a quarter-century ago. I took in the rest of the room. Off to the side stood a nervous-looking local man. It had to be the nightshift supervisor we’d come to see. Nguyen shot him a look, and he made a quick exit.

Nguyen aimed her cleavage at Maggie. “Who are you?”

Maggie spoke with straight-ahead cool. “Detective Magda Orzo.”

“Are you partners?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry for the rough treatment you just received, but you can hardly blame my bodyguards for reacting that way. You didn’t give them much choice, entering unannounced the way you did. What brings you here, officers?”

My hand was outright gyrating. I tucked it under my leg. I didn’t want her knowing how badly she’d hurt me. “We’d like to know about your dealings with Carlos Simba.”

Nguyen wore an amused expression. “Mr. Simba is an entrepreneur. He approached me to see if I would invest in his new shipping company. Lagarto Lines looked like a sound investment, so here I am.”

“Carlos Simba is a known figure in organized crime.”

“He’s nothing of the sort. He’s a very successful businessman. He’s going to be the first Lagartan to compete with non-Lagartan shippers. That means jobs and affordable shipping prices for Lagartans. I would think he’d be a hero to your people.”

“What goods does he plan to ship?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters if he’s going to sell our people as slaves.”

“Don’t be so shortsighted, Officer Mozambe. Mr. Simba will be able to cut into Lagarto’s trade deficit. That means the peso will be stronger. Think of all the things Lagartans could buy with a peso that’s worth something-medicine, robots, computers. This is the first step for Lagarto to enter the galactic economy.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You don’t care about Lagarto. You’re selling slaves for your own profit.”

“Look who is suddenly the moralist. That’s quite the attitude from a hatchet man for the Bandur organization. Bandur enslaves his people with their own vices for his profit. I fail to see the difference.”

“But…but…” I stammered like a fool. I couldn’t find the words to defend myself. Maybe because there weren’t any. Maybe there was no difference between Nguyen and me.

“You tire me.” She looked to her bodyguards, “Escort them out, will you. See to it that the guards don’t let them back in without a warrant.”

I stood up and dropped my right into my pocket. My gut stirred anger, vengeance, and guilt into a vile stew that I couldn’t vomit.

Nguyen’s voice stopped us at the door. “You know I have camera implants in my eyes. Whenever I’m feeling down, I recall the recording of our last meeting. It never fails to cheer me up.”

My hand went spastic within the confines of my pocket. Maggie led me out to the sound of Nguyen’s tech-amplified laughter.

I felt shell-shocked from my run-in with Nguyen. She’d gone from moving O to moving slaves, and she wasn’t shy about letting people know it. I dropped Maggie at her hotel. Seeing all the offworlders coming in and out, I once again marveled at how rich she had to be to afford that place.

I headed home for dinner with Niki. I was looking forward to seeing her. I felt bad about being gone so much. Since I’d stopped my enforcing, we’d spent a lot more time together, and I wasn’t used to going this long without seeing her.

My phone rang. The young girl from the dock dropped into the passenger seat. She looked at least a year younger than her real self-overdue for a holo-update.

“Is Mdoba back?”

“He was,” she said. “But he’s gone again. He took his boat out on the river.”

Thanks for nothing. “Call me when he gets back, okay?”

“Yep.” She disappeared in a flash.

I pulled into the drive and entered the house. I found Niki sleeping on the sofa. “Hey, Niki. It’s me.”

Silence.

“Niki?”

More silence. An empty pill bottle sat on the table.

My mind slid six years to another episode. In an instant, I remembered a blue-skinned Niki breathing shallow, and then the sirens and the stomach pumps. Not again! I flew to her side, checked her pulse. Both my hands shook. Her pulse ran strong and regular; her color was good; her skin felt warm to the touch. I let out the breath I’d been holding and sucked at the air. Ever since that night six years ago, I’d always think the worst. No OD tonight; she’d just double or triple dosed to get to sleep. I’d been neglecting her.

Niki’s mini-relapse complemented my total one with foreboding clarity. My life was running full speed in reverse. I was running around fists first, doing Paul’s bidding, and chasing the hot skirt in some kind of pathetic attempt to recapture my youth. Looking at Niki, my Niki, I could see the ridiculousness of it all.

My galloping heart was slowing to its normal beat. I brushed Niki’s hair off her face and listened to her breathing. I sat on the floor and rubbed my too-sore knuckles. I’d see this case out, because Paul needed me, but then I would be done. I’d quit the force altogether. It was time to put all my energy into Niki. We still cared about each other. We could make it work again.

Niki barely woke when I picked her up. I carried her to bed, whispering soothings in her ear.

I was munching a sandwich when Paul called. Holo-Paul sat across the table from me. “How are things going?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah, we can talk. Catch me up.”

It was hard to know where to start. “Sanders Mdoba is the son of a bitch that tipped off Ali Zorno about our witness.”

Holo-Paul looked delighted. Real-Paul sounded pissed. “Mdoba?

"Shit!”

“The kid’s blood is on his hands, Paul. We still don’t know who told Mdoba about our witness, other than it must be a cop. We tossed his boat, a rusted-up number in Phra Kaew. We found vids of Vlotsky’s father and four other board members caught with their dicks out. He blackmailed them into approving a business license for Carlos Simba’s shipping company, Lagarto Lines. He had Vlotsky’s kid killed to keep him in line. He’s moonlighting for Simba.”

“Bandur is losing control. I can’t believe Simba flipped somebody that high up. Does Sasaki know?”

“No, I didn’t tell him. I was afraid Mdoba was working under Sasaki’s orders.”

“What’s this shipping company about?”

“They’re shipping slaves to the mines, Paul. Simba sells them to Universal Mining. We found a man today who sold his daughter to Simba. It’s only one instance so far, but when we start combing through all the missing persons cases, we’ll find lots more. Guess who the middle man is?”

Paul replied, “Mai Nguyen.”

Surprised, I said, “How’d you know?”

“I’ve been digging into Mayor Samir’s funds. There are connections between him, Nguyen, and Simba all over the damn place.”

The alliance between Mai Nguyen, Carlos Simba, and Mayor Samir solidified in my mind. “We’re getting close, Paul.” I was up out of my seat, pacing. “The Vlotsky hit looks like Simba’s doing, but the mayor must have a stake in the slave trade. Simba must’ve asked him to try and keep us from digging too deep.”

“Do you think that your Army guy has anything to do with it?”

“Yeah. I keep trying to discount him, but it’s too big a coincidence that he and Zorno were cellmates. Why?”

“Private Kapasi’s back on leave as of this morning. Once the Army heard the news reports that we caught Vlotsky’s killer, they decided the murder wasn’t Army related. He should have made it back to Loja this afternoon.”

“Hold on.” I froze Paul’s image and had the system dial up the little girl from the dock.

“Hello?” she said.

“Which way did he take the boat?”

“Upriver.”

I hung up and unfroze Paul. “I gotta go, Paul. Mdoba’s heading upriver. How much you want to bet he’s going to meet with Kapasi?”

I was already out the door. Holo-Paul followed me through the courtyard. “Get me proof, Juno. We’re running out of time.”

I sped to Maggie’s hotel, honking through the intersections. I tried calling, but she didn’t answer, so I left a message. What the hell was she doing?

I recklessly rounded the last corner, the hotel dead ahead. Hell with it. If she wasn’t there, I was going to Loja without her. I rolled the car up near the entrance and caught sight of Maggie getting out of somebody’s car. My heart involuntarily jumped in excitement. I kiboshed the feeling-I was a one-woman guy. I almost called out to her, but my instincts kept me silent. Whose car is that?

She walked through the double doors into the hotel. The car she’d exited was turning around. I swerved onto the street; I had to get close. The car drove right by me. The driver-Karl Gilkyson.

I braked, my mind in a stupor. I couldn’t think straight. Maggie and Gilkyson? I decided I had to ditch Maggie. I needed to swing the car around. I cruised into the hotel turnaround, getting stopped behind another vehicle with an open trunk. Two offworld tourists were supervising a group of bellhops on the proper way to carry their luggage. Like they’d never seen luggage that hovered.

Before I could pull all the way through, the passenger door opened, and Maggie dropped into the seat. “I just got your message. Why are we going to Loja?”

My brain went haywire on a conflicting mixture of being excited to see her and a double-crossed rage.

“They released Private Kapasi,” I said.

My skin slithered as I drove. I could be sitting next to the mayor’s plant. I tried to ice my firing thoughts with careful deliberation. A cop informed Mdoba about Pedro. Could it have been Maggie? Can’t be. She’d saved my life last night. She could’ve waited for psycho Zorno to slice me up before she came in. She didn’t have to come in at all. Better yet, she could have lost Zorno’s trail; she’d had plenty of opportunity to claim she’d lost him in the labyrinthine Floodbank corridors. She wasn’t the mayor’s plant-simply couldn’t be. My nerves cooled from a boil to a simmer.

What then? The mayor was worried about me. The mayor was making a play for her. He wanted her to start informing for him. He wanted her on his side. She probably told him to fuck off, but I couldn’t be sure.

The boat tore through the water. I paid extra for a high-powered fishing boat instead of a skiff-should cut the trip to Loja down by a half hour. We’d arrive well before midnight. I sat on a fish chest, my brain dazed by plots and subplots. My eyelids began to feel weighted. My barely open eyes blurred fishnets into what look like whip-wielding slavers.

Maggie’s voice sounded next to me. “I had a visitor today.”

I tried rubbing my face awake. “Who?”

“Karl Gilkyson. He brought me to see the mayor.”

I tried to keep a level expression. “What did you talk about?”

“He wanted me to tell him about our investigation.”

“What did you say?”

“That I was under orders from Chief Chang not to talk.”

“What did he say to that?”

“He just asked more questions.”

I was already feeling less suspicious of her. If she wanted to hide things from me, she’d be hiding them instead of talking about them. “Tell me more,” I said tentatively.

“Mayor Samir tried buttering me up, asking me about my family like he was all concerned about how they were doing. He talked about how good my mother looked when he saw her at the banquet.

“Then he asked about you-how I felt about partnering with you. I wanted to sound believable, so I decided to tell him I couldn’t stand you. When he asked why, I told him that you were dirty, a disgrace to KOP. He went on to ask me why I didn’t refuse to be your partner. I said that I had no choice; Chief Chang gives the orders. I have to play the game to move ahead.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Then he started asking how I felt about taking the chief’s orders. I said I didn’t like it, and that I’d heard the rumors about him and the Bandur cartel. Then when he asked if I believed those rumors, I told him that I was inclined to believe them, especially after I’d seen how dirty Chang’s old partner was.”

“Then what?”

“Next, he wanted to know how I’d feel about taking his orders instead of the chief’s. He offered me a deal. He wants me to snitch for him, be part of his anticorruption investigation.”

I was studying her closely, her voice, her body language. I could tell she was being honest with me. “What did he offer?”

“A fast track to a lieutenancy after Chief Chang’s forced out.”

“Do you still think the mayor’s innocent in all this?”

“Not anymore. He was pushing me hard to take the deal. When I finally told him I’d take it, he wanted to know all about the Vlotsky case. He has to have a personal stake in it.”

“What did you tell him about the case?”

“Just that we solved it.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I think so.”

Maggie had played him flawlessly, telling him things he already knew about Paul and me, getting him to think of her as an anticorruption zealot, and an ambitious one at that. She was a natural-maybe better than Paul.

“Why’d you decide to tell me about this?”

“Because you’re my partner.”

I grinned at that. She trusted me, and I trusted her. We were true partners. “Tell me something, Maggie. Why did you kiss my cheek last night?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s because you remind me of my father.”

If I had any romantic notions left, that put an end to them, once and for all. “Are we a lot alike?”

“Actually, you’re nothing like him. It’s the way you and I interact that reminds me of him. He and I never agreed on anything, but that never got in the way of us caring for each other. Even when we were dead set against each other, we always had this respect for each other. That’s the way I feel when I’m around you.”

I nodded my head, very glad I hadn’t made a move for her last night. I thought of Maggie and me having a father-daughter relationship and decided I was just fine with that.

Maggie said, “I want you to help me construct lies to tell the mayor.”

“So now you want to be my double agent?”

“No.” Maggie was wearing a sly grin. “I want you to work for me. ”

I laughed. “For what purpose?”

“To take over KOP. I’m going to be chief one day, Juno. Things have to change. Lagarto can’t go on this way. A clean police force can change everything.”

“What do you want with me?”

“Who better to help me take over KOP than somebody who’s already done it once?”

“Are you asking me to overthrow Paul?”

“Of course not, but he won’t want to be chief forever.”

“I don’t enforce anymore.”

“I won’t ask you to enforce for me. I want to do this clean.”

“That’s impossible. It can’t be done.”

“Is that a no?”

“Yes, that’s a no. I’m quitting after this case.”

The lights of the Loja pier appeared off the bow. I hung up with Niki. She’d called when she woke up, giving me the usual postbinge earful. “It’s late… Where have you been?…Paul doesn’t own you… I thought you told him you wouldn’t run his errands anymore.”

The understanding attitude she’d had this morning was long gone. I knew it wasn’t entirely about me. She was feeling bad about herself since her pill-popping relapse, and she was redirecting all that self-loathing at me. I came back with the standard excuses…“This time is different… Paul really needs me on this one… It’s almost over.” More bitterness than normal slipped into my voice-I was angry at her for scaring me by pain-pill binging and angrier at myself for neglecting her and then angry at her again for calling my neglect to my attention when I already knew. It wasn’t going to be easy getting things right between us.

We rode past Mdoba’s docked boat. His bikini-clad girlfriend Malis was on the deck grooving to a tune. She didn’t see us. She was too involved in self-involvement. We landed on an empty pier. Maggie and I hopped off without waiting for the skipper to tie up.

I broke into a heavy sweat as the two of us kept up a brisk pace on the walk to the Kapasi brothers’ falling-apart home. Sneaking up from the outside, we checked the front and back windows-nobody home. I went for a basement window, closed my eyes, and stuck my head through the jungle shrubbery that had overrun this side of the house. Thorns scraped my skin; twigs slapped my cheeks and forehead. I pressed my face against the glass, straining to see through the basement window…holy fuck.

I reached a hand back through the brush and gave Maggie a come-here finger curl. Mosquitoes bit on my face as she rustled her way through the shrubs. Her cheek slid against mine into position at the window.

I tried to keep a cool head as we took in the scene. A dozen laser-clawed and razor-jawed monitors thrashed in their pen. Their metal teeth sparked as they gnashed on the bars that ran floor to ceiling. Their laser-claws scratched at the cement floor in a frenzied scramble to push through the gaps. A piece of meat flew through the bars and landed on the floor where it was torn into a half dozen pieces.

Outside the pen, Sanders Mdoba’s oversized frame was on all fours, lase-blade in hand, sawing through human bone. Body parts lay all over, blood streaming into a floor drain. He successfully severed an arm and slid it through the bars, then moved to the head, his lase-blade slicing clean through neck flesh, getting hung up on the vertebrae. He sawed the blade back and forth, finally cutting through in a cloud of bloody steam. He stood up, his tent-sized clothes stained red and black, and tried to shove Sanje Kapasi’s larger-than-normal head through the bars. It stuck momentarily, monitors snapping at the backside, until Mdoba used a shoulder to shove it the rest of the way through.

I counted the remaining limbs-three legs, one arm. Jhuko and Sanje Kapasi.

Maggie and I pulled free of the jungle scrub. We jogged around to the front door and into the house. We strode purposefully through the house as lizards screeched all around us. I slinked through the basement door and crept down the stairs, Maggie following sure-footedly. Mdoba was hacking through ribs, the lase-blade blinking on and off from overload. I moved up on him from the rear, the racket from the monitor pen covering my approach. Smoke-filled air made my eyes water. Mdoba pulled a side of ribs free-BBQed at the edges. I pushed my piece into the middle of his back, sinking it into his ample flesh. He froze. Maggie moved around front, her piece held level.

He let the blade drop from his hand; the beam flickered out. He put his hands over his head and submitted to the frisking like a pro. I relieved him of his lase-pistol. When he saw who I was, he tried to act all buddy-buddy saying, “It’s good to see you, Juno. How’s Niki?”

I led him upstairs without speaking. He tried to bullshit me the whole way, telling me he was here doing Bandur’s business, and that Sasaki was gonna be pissed when he found out I’d interfered.

I made him sit on the kitchen floor. Sanje Kapasi’s prized monitor strained at its chain, the smell of carnage driving it near insane. I thought about frying it just to shut it up.

Mdoba rested his back on the wall, looking defiant instead of defeated. It would be tough to break him. My stomach sickened at the thought of torturing him. Maggie was waiting for me to take control, but I procrastinated as I tried to summon my temper. I was drawing blanks. I wanted a drink.

I told myself, fuck this. Just do it already. I tucked my piece away and moved in on him, my fists ready to do some damage.

Living room lizards suddenly went berserk. Somebody was here. Maggie wheeled on the kitchen door, her body in a crouch, her weapon extended. I stuck my piece under Mdoba’s double chin, pushing through the fat and pressing on his Adam’s apple.

Matsuo Sasaki came into the kitchen with his muscle, chef-killer Tipaldi. Both their hands up.

“What are you doing here?” I wanted to know.

“Paul called and gave me the news that Mr. Mdoba betrayed us to Mr. Simba. We called his girlfriend, who was gullible enough to tell us where he was.”

“That dumb cunt.” Mdoba wheezed.

I shoved my weapon deeper into his throat.

Maggie butted in. “You can’t have him. We’re going to arrest him.”

I shot her a warning look.

Sasaki didn’t take offense. “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Maggie. You see, the criminal justice system doesn’t offer a punishment severe enough to fit the nature of Mr. Mdoba’s betrayal.”

Maggie’s eyes drilled into Sasaki. “You’re going to kill him.”

“Why of course we are, but not until we’ve had a spot of fun. You don’t know the kind of anguish we’ve felt since your chief told us how disloyal Mr. Mdoba has been. But fear not, I will give you the opportunity to speak with him first. However, you will limit your questions to Mr. Mdoba’s involvement in any schemes masterminded by our Lojan friend, Mr. Simba. It is only along these lines that our interests overlap with police interests. You will not question him on any illegal activities outside of that realm. Is that satisfactory?”

Maggie stayed silent.

“Deal,” I said, glad to be relieved of torture duty.

“Excellent, Juno. You’ve always been most…practical.”

“Where’s Ben? Shouldn’t he be here?”

“That he should, but he had to stay home. He’s suffering from an infection in his reconstructed nose. The doctors told him not to swim, but he didn’t follow their instructions, and now he is suffering magnificently.” He turned to Tipaldi. “If you’ll do the honors, Tip.”

Tipaldi darted in, dropping knucks on Mdoba’s nose, barely giving me time to step back. A few quick shots and he had Mdoba seeing double, his nose swollen beyond the confines of his already fat-swollen face. Tipaldi pinned Mdoba’s arm under his own and dragged Mdoba’s heavy form across the floor. Mdoba was squealing now, his heels kicking at the floor, failing to find purchase.

Tipaldi yanked and pulled the resisting Mdoba into the monster’s reach, holding Mdoba’s hand out as a snack. It came back less three fingers.

Maggie turned her back. I eyeballed the whole scene. I’d done worse. Four fingers later he was ready to talk-the reward: a quick death instead of a part-by-part dismemberment.

Sasaki told Tipaldi to get him cleaned up. “You can’t expect a lady like Officer Orzo to look at such a mess.”

Tipaldi found a couple towels and wrapped what was left of Mdoba’s hands. Maggie stayed planted where she was, her back turned on the ugliness.

I wiped the sweat off my face, and spoke slow and clear. “You work for Simba.”

“Yes,” Mdoba answered.

“When did you start working for Simba?”

He couldn’t answer, the pain too great. Tipaldi slapped him lucid. “Two years ago,” he croaked.

“Why?”

Again he couldn’t answer. Tipaldi slipped him a needleful of morphine. I waited a few, until he started getting happy. “Why did you start working for Simba?” I repeated.

“He paid well.”

“What did he want from you?”

“He wanted somebody high up in Bandur’s outfit to pass him information on what we were doing. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a traitor or nothing, but the money was good. Besides, I was hired by Papa Bandur, not that pussy kid of his.”

“What other kinds of work did you do for Simba?”

Mdoba went into a coughing fit. His belly rolled with every hack. After a glass of water, he was talking again. “I was helping him get his shipping company going. Shit, it was a sweet deal, Juno. He has some bitch on the Orbital that buys up people, ships ’em to the mines.”

“What kind of people?”

Mdoba had entered a morphine euphoria. His words were coming out fluidly now. “All kinds. It don’t matter. Kids are good, because they’re easy to kidnap. Some people even sell their kids cheap.”

“What happens to them?”

“They send ’em to the mines. From what I hear, the ship captains keep the pretty ones for themselves. You ever heard of a harem? They used to have ’em on Earth. They knew what they was doing back then. A harem’s when you got all these women and they do whatever you say; they have to please you. You know what I’m saying? Beat ’em, rape ’em-whatever you want.”

“You don’t treat women like that!” My piece was in his mouth.

Mdoba ranted garbled pleadings, begging mercy.

Tipaldi and Sasaki didn’t move to stop me. Maggie said, “Juno.”

My hand tremor spread over my entire body. Sweaty shivers ran up and down. My face burned red. I pulled my piece free, revealing a newly chipped tooth in Mdoba’s blubbering mouth. I stepped outside and sucked early evening air. My muscles adrenaline-twitched. I struggled to calm my out-of-control thoughts.

Maggie stayed next to me with a look of pity on her face. I’d spent a lifetime proving I wasn’t weak by exacting brutality in abundance, and in the end, I came off pitiful. I gave her my weapon and headed back in.

Mdoba was as calm as could be expected. Sasaki had moved to the stove to prepare tea. Tipaldi was nursing his bruised knuckles with ice from the freezer.

I took a place on the far side of the kitchen-safely out of throttling distance from Mdoba. I concentrated on self-control. “What do they do with the rest of the slaves?”

Mdoba answered, “They make ’em work.”

“Don’t they have robots to do the mining?”

“They need people to run the robots. The more people, the more machines they can run. They don’t need just miners, though. They need people to grow food and shit, same as here.”

“Why can’t they hire labor? Twenty percent of Lagarto is looking for work.”

“This way’s cheaper. Why pay for something when you can get it for free?”

“Aren’t they afraid of getting caught?”

Mdoba’s speech was getting labored. “Who’s going to catch them? Even if somebody found out, it would take years for the message to get to Earth or anybody else that can do anything about it. By the time they send somebody out here to investigate, twenty or thirty years go by.”

“How were you helping Simba get started?”

Mdoba turned to Tipaldi. “More. I need more.”

Tipaldi administered a morphine booster. Mdoba instantly became more relaxed.

I started back in. “How were you helping Simba?”

“He told me how he wanted his own ship. I thought he was crazy. I don’t know how he did it, but he bought a fucking ship. I’d like to see Bandur pull that off. Maybe Papa coulda done it. I seen that man do some amazing shit, but the kid ain’t got it in him.”

“Simba needed approval from the city.”

“That’s right. He wanted me to handle it. He needed somebody that knew Koba. It was a test. You know, to see how I did. If it went well, he was going to see about putting me in charge of Bandur’s operations when he took them over.”

“So you took vids of board members.”

“You know about those? Yeah, it was easy. Everybody’s got something they don’t want people knowing about. I took vids and used them to get the board to vote the way Simba wanted.”

The questions were ticking off my tongue in a strictly professional manner. “What about Peter Vlotsky?”

“I caught that prick screwing hookers, but he didn’t care. It took me a while to figure out that he was getting paid by an offworld shipping company to kill Simba’s business proposal dead. I needed him. He was the fucking chairman. Without his okay there was nothing we could do. He’s got some kind of veto power.”

“What did you do then?”

“Simba gave me the go-ahead to play it rough with Vlotsky. Simba said he couldn’t compete with offworld money, so he said we’d have to use intimidation to get what we wanted.”

“You went after his family.”

“Right. I’d already done my homework on the family. I told him about how Vlotsky had a wife and a son, but the problem with his son was that he was in the Army. How do you whack a guy in the Army? He’s surrounded by guys with guns. So Simba told me to go for the wife, but I told him that if Vlotsky doesn’t care about his wife seeing him fucking another woman then he probably won’t care if we kill her either. We’d be doing the guy a fucking favor.”

“So what did you decide to do?”

“When I mentioned that Vlotsky’s kid was stationed at the base upriver, he told me he knew somebody stationed there.”

“Jhuko Kapasi.”

“You know about him, too? What the fuck are you asking me all these questions for?”

Pieces were coming into focus. “Go on.”

He looked at Tipaldi, not needing to ask. Tipaldi gave him another mini-injection. Mdoba looked at his wrecked hands then closed his eyes. “I checked out this Kapasi. He was a hustler-got sent up to the Zoo for a gambling deal that went bad. He got early release from prison and was sent into the Army. It turned out he was in Vlotsky’s unit.”

“How did Simba know Kapasi?”

“He told me that Kapasi sold him some POWs-farmers that brought a good price when he sold them to the mines.”

“What about Kapasi’s sister? Did he sell her to Simba?”

“Yeah, he sold her, too. He ran that crazy gambling scheme that blew up in his face, and he had to pay off some big debts before he went to jail, so he sold her to Simba. That was when Simba was just getting started on the slavery thing.”

My brain locked the pieces into place. “So you approached Kapasi.”

“Yeah. I told him I’d pay him to snuff Lieutenant Vlotsky. He got all excited about it. He told me how big a prick Lieutenant Vlotsky was and how the lieutenant screwed his whole unit over on some operation. I thought he was onboard. He’d kill Chairman Vlotsky’s kid, and I’d go tell him he’s next if he doesn’t vote our way, but Kapasi fucked the whole thing up.”

“How?”

“I gave Kapasi half the dough up front. I was going to give him the other half after he did the job. He was running around in the jungle with Vlotsky for days. How hard could it be to pop the guy?”

“He didn’t do it?”

“He didn’t do shit. I don’t know if he ain’t got the cojones or what. I figured that a guy who sells his sister as a slave won’t mind killing somebody, but this guy must not like to get his hands dirty. I called him on it, and he said the unit was going on leave. I thought, ‘Good, then I can do it myself.’ I told him to send my money back, but the fucker kept it, and he called me a couple days later and told me he killed Vlotsky. What kind of fucked-up job is that?”

“Then what?”

“A few days later, I got tipped off that there was a witness. I tried to get Kapasi on the line, but the Army had him in some kind of lockup. They were worried that Vlotsky’s murder was Army-related. It cost me a fucking fortune in bribes to get him on the line. I told him that somebody saw him kill Lieutenant Vlotsky. He told me there was no way anybody saw him kill Vlotsky since he didn’t kill him. Can you believe this asshole? I said, ‘If you didn’t kill him, who did?’ He told me he gave the front money to his old cellmate from the Zoo to do the job. He was going to keep the second payment for himself. ‘For the referral,’ he said.”

Mdoba asked for more water. He coughed most of it up before carrying on. “I about shit on the spot. He told me about Zorno. You already know about him since you killed him.”

Holes were filling in lightning fast. My brain raced to keep up-Simba hired Mdoba to fix the board’s vote; Mdoba hired Kapasi to whack Lieutenant Vlotsky; Kapasi subcontracted the job to lip-obsessed serial killer Ali Zorno. “Why’d you come here to Kapasi’s house?”

“Kapasi went back on leave today. The Army decided he had nothing to do with Vlotsky’s death, so they let him go. He called me, asking for the second half of his payment. I acted real nice and told him he did a great job, and I’d be there as soon as I could. I met him here and told him I wasn’t going to pay him. You should have seen him getting all pissy about it. Why should I pay him for hitting Vlotsky when he didn’t hit nobody?”

“What did you do to him?”

“I shot him. He had it coming to him. Then his dumb-fuck brother got all pathetic, crying and shit, so I burned a hole through his chest to put him out of his misery. I figure he’s better off dead. His momma shoulda smothered him the minute she popped him out and saw he was a retard, am I right?”

Maggie was watching now. The repulsive torture scene not quite so repulsive anymore.

Mdoba rattled on. “Once I finished feeding the Kapasi brothers to the lizards, I was gonna open the cage and let the monitors loose. Let ’em shit the evidence all over Loja. Once I hosed that basement down there was no way it coulda gotten traced back to me.”

After another dose of morphine, I asked, “What’s Simba’s relationship with Mayor Samir?”

“They’re working together.”

This final confirmation announced Paul’s vulnerability in bright lights. “How so?”

“Simba approached Samir before the elections, asked him, ‘Why split the power four ways when we can split it two?’ You see what he meant? Bandur runs the drugs, gambling, loan-sharking, and prostitution in Koba. Chief Chang runs KOP. Mayor Samir runs the city government, and Simba runs his slavery operation. Get rid of Bandur and Chang, and you got only two left-Simba for the illegal shit and Mayor Samir for everything else.”

The battle lines were finally clearly drawn-Simba, Nguyen, and the mayor versus Paul, Bandur, and me. “How is the mayor planning to bring down Chief Chang?”

“I don’t know that part. Simba never told me. All I know is they talk every day, so they can coordinate things.”

“Who tipped you off about our witness?”

“Mayor Samir.”

“Mayor Samir?”

“Yeah. He came to my boat to tell me.”

“He was on your boat?”

“That’s what I said. He told me that a cop-”

“Which cop?”

“Some guy named Kim. This Kim told the mayor that you guys had a witness, so the mayor came and told me about it.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“I just told you.”

“Tell me again.”

Mdoba used a nursing-home voice-slow, loud, and deliberate. “He said that Kim from Homicide Division came and told him that there was a witness to the Vlotsky murder-some peeping-tom kid. He recited the kid’s name and address for me, and then he left.”

Make Yuan Kim our rat-fink cop.

Maggie stepped over and leaned into Mdoba’s line of vision. “Do you have proof that the mayor came to your boat?”

“I have it on vid. I know how to cover my ass. He may be mayor, but he ain’t half as smart as he thinks he is.”

“Where’s the vid?”

He was grinning now. “How ’bout lettin’ me walk outta here?”

Sasaki said, “Tip, I think Juno could use your help.”

Tipaldi moved in fast. He yanked one of Mdoba’s hands toward the monitor who was hungry for seconds.

Mdoba shrieked. “STOP! STOP! I don’t know where it is. STOP!”

Tipaldi stopped. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Mdoba panted, “I gave it to my girlfriend. I told her to hide it.”

“Where’d she put it?”

The monitor was snapping at Mdoba’s just-out-of-reach hand.

Mdoba said, “I don’t know! I told her not to tell me where she put it. If you don’t let me outta here, she’ll have it destroyed. Call her. She’ll tell you.”

We needed that vid. It was our smoking gun. I turned to Sasaki. “What do you say?”

Sasaki fingered his lapels, shaking his head no.

“Paul needs this,” I said with determined desperation. “You have to do this for him.”

“Leaving a traitor alive is bad for business, Juno. We can’t have people thinking it’s okay to betray us.”

“He’s already lost most of his fingers. Tell people you let him live so that when people see his hands, it’ll remind them of what happens to traitors.”

Sasaki was thinking it over.

I said, “Paul won’t survive without that vid, Matsuo.”

Sasaki rubbed his face with a pinkyless hand and gave the smallest nod.

I called Mdoba’s boat. Malis’s buxom hologram dropped into the kitchen. I had it one-way conferenced-everybody could hear her side of the conversation, but she could only hear me.

“Have you ever met Mayor Samir?” I asked.

“Sure. He came to the boat to talk with Sanders.”

“What about?”

“You want the vid, don’t you?”

“How’d you know?”

“Sanders told me to hide it. He said that if he got in trouble, I should use the vid to get him out. Is he in trouble?”

“Yes, he is.”

“How can I be sure?”

I let Mdoba’s voice on the line. “Do what he says, babe. Everthing’s gonna be okay if you just do what he says.”

“Are they going to kill you?”

“Not if you do what Juno says. Okay?”

I cut Mdoba off then spoke to Malis. “I want you to bring the vid to me.”

“I want money,” she said. Mdoba tensed.

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “If you don’t bring me the vid, he’ll die.”

“I understand just fine. Go ahead and kill him, I don’t care. How much can you pay?” Mdoba was fucked-sold out by his squeeze.

Mdoba turned wild at her betrayal. He was shouting and flailing his half-hands. The kitchen air crackled with lase-fire. Mdoba took three hits, the last to the head. Tipaldi kept his lase-pistol on target until Mdoba slumped over dead. Tipaldi put his piece back in his belt.

Maggie was stunned. I shrugged.

Malis and I settled on price. She told me she was already on her way back to Koba to retrieve the vid. She said to meet her at Club Dynasty on Bangkok at 2:00 AM.

I rang up Paul. His holo dropped into the Kapasi brothers’ living room, setting off another round of hysterical lizard fits. “Paul, it’s Juno.”

“Yeah.”

“We have confirmation that Mayor Samir and Carlos Simba are conspiring together. They’re planning to take you and Bandur out.”

Silence dragged on the other end. Paul said, “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have proof?”

“Mdoba’s girlfriend is selling us a vid of the mayor telling Mdoba about our witness. We’re meeting her at-” I almost said the name of the place, but I smartly held back. No telling who could be listening in. “We’re meeting her in a couple hours.”

“You want backup?”

“No,” I said. Yuan Kim was a confirmed rat. C of D Banks was a likely rat. And it might not stop there. At this point, I didn’t trust any cops not named Paul or Maggie. “We better do this alone.”

“I understand. Bring it to my office as soon as you get it. We’ll hash out how to go about getting the mayor neutralized.”

“Got it. I’ll see you there.”

Paul sounded more exhausted than relieved. “Thanks, Juno.”

I clicked off.

Maggie came up from behind and spoke in a quiet voice, not wanting Sasaki and Tipaldi to listen in from the kitchen. With all the lizard chatter coming from the cages, she didn’t have to worry. “How long is this going to take?” she asked. “We have to get moving.”

“It’ll probably take Tip another ten or fifteen minutes to finish cleaning up. We’ll hitch a ride back to Koba in Sasaki’s flyer. We have plenty of time.”

Maggie didn’t look pleased about the idea of riding back with Sasaki and Tipaldi. “They didn’t have to kill him.”

“He was no use anymore.”

Maggie shook her head disgustedly.

“What?” I said. “You really care what happens to a piece of trash like Mdoba?”

“It’s you I’m worried about.”

“What does that mean?”

“You act like this was no big deal. They fed a man’s hands to a monitor for god’s sake and you could care less.”

“What do you think we did to that guy in Tenttown? And that bartender?”

“We didn’t kill them.”

“No. I just beat the shit out of them.”

“I know,” she said, and she covered her face with her hands. “That was wrong. I shouldn’t have let you do it.”

“If I hadn’t done it, we’d still be wondering how our witness got killed right in front of us.”

“This isn’t why I became a cop, Juno. I wanted to do good.”

“We are doing good, Maggie. We’re going to stop a corrupt mayor.”

She looked me in the eye. “But KOP is corrupt. You’re corrupt. The chief’s corrupt. And now I’m corrupt. What good does it do to stop a corrupt mayor when we’re corrupt ourselves?”

“No. We’re different from the mayor. The mayor’s out for himself. He’s conspiring with slavers. ”

“You and Chief Chang conspire with those animals in there. You really think you’re better than the mayor?”

Her words cut right through me, the way the truth always did.

JUNE 32, 2787

It was time to meet Malis. Maggie and I cruised through the city. I turned onto the Bangkok Street Strip. The street was still abuzz with late night action. Cars weaved helter-skelter with bikes zipping in between. Partiers rollicked in every direction, brandy glasses in hand. Signs interleaved so tightly over the narrow street that they created a neon ceiling. I parked at the end of the block rather than battle my way down the pedestrian-crowded street.

We stuck to the less crowded street center as we walked. Broken glass crunched under my shoes. Flashing neon stung my eyes. Doormen solicited offworld passersby with megaphone-amplified shouts of “First drink free” and “Live sex acts onstage.” My brain fizzed with overload.

The Club Dynasty doorwoman collected cover charges in full S amp;M regalia: monitor-hide skivvies and studded collar. She play-whipped customers through the door. I passed her a couple bills. She ran her whip up my thigh, stopping just short of my crotch. I ducked the hand she extended toward my temple. She moved for Maggie, touching the device attached to her fingertips to Maggie’s temple, bombarding her brain with pornographic imagery. Maggie jerked away. I should’ve warned her.

Club Dynasty blared with eardrum-rattling dance beats. The dance floor was fogged over with O smoke. A small number of offworld men laid down dance moves with scads of Lagartan women who were wearing homemade miniskirts and cheap high heels. The women were battling for the affections of the offworld men. Hopes of finding an offworld suitor brought them out to the clubs with Cinderella dreams.

It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. An offworld man would fall in love and take one of our women up to the orbiting castle in the sky. For her, it would be a dream come true. She’d never go hungry, and her life expectancy would be extended by a hundred years or more. But marrying an offworlder was rare. For most, the night would degenerate into a ruthless slut-off competition. The one who ground and teased the best would get to sleep with the offworlder, all but certain to be discarded the next morning.

We circled the dance floor, scoping tables for Malis. Discount perfume and opium smoke burned my throat. Maggie grabbed my elbow and pointed. Malis was in a wraparound booth surrounded by doped-up bar trash, passing an O pipe.

Maggie showed her shield to the group. Malis smiled and waved in drug-stupor stupidity. Higher-than-a-kite girlfriends cleared out and weaved to the dance floor. Maggie and I escorted Malis to the restrooms. There was a line at the women’s. A steady stream of women was coming out with freshly poofed hair and water-doused shirts that clung to braless bods. We took her into the men’s. The bathroom was empty except for two offworld men swapping stories at the sink. One modeled marbled skin that made him look like statue. The other was going with his everyday look-chiseled chin, sharp eyes, and a beguiling smile. A genetically enhanced ten. I badged them out.

Maggie seized Malis’s bag.

Malis objected in a punch-drunk whine. “Heyyy, that’sss mmmine.”

Maggie pulled the drawstring, reached in, and handed me the vid. I wrapped my hands around it like it was the Holy Grail. The mayor’s going down.

“Youuu cccan’t have that. It’sss mmmine.”

I passed her the overstuffed money envelope.

Malis leaned into me, breasts first, looking for a new sugar daddy. “Hhhey, baby. You wwwant to ppparty? I’ll show yyyou a good timmme.”

Maggie pushed Malis away. “Let’s go.”

We moved back through the club. Maggie stopped. I looked over her shoulder. A badly dressed man had entered the club. I recognized him instantly-Carlos Simba. I grabbed hold of Maggie’s elbow and led her across the dance floor. Gyrating bodies closed around us. We bumped our way through the sweaty mass to the other side and beelined for the back exit.

We dashed through the door. The alley dead-ended to the left. We sprinted right. An offworld car was parked at the end. I tried to stop and turn back. My ankle rolled over. I fell down hard. Maggie helped me up. The offworld car was emptying. Four figures were coming our way. We started trying doors-locked, locked, locked. Simba came out of the Club Dynasty door in front of two offworld heavies. I snatched the vid out of my shirt, scanned for a place to toss it out of their reach-nothing. Shit. Another door-locked! I clutched the vid to my chest. We were so close!

I kept my weight on the good ankle and faced the oncoming figures. They sashayed through ferns and alley trash with an offworld economy of movement. Maggie stayed next to me, putting a proud face over a terrified one.

There were seven of them all told. The offworld thugs didn’t even bother to take our weapons. They knew how useless they’d be against offworld tech.

The seventh figure came face to face with me. Crime lord Carlos Simba said, “I’ll take that.”

My hands were viced onto the vid. I should go for my gun. I might be able to kill Simba before they react. Or I could hostage him, use him to get us and the vid out of the alley. Simba was staring me down, his hand held out for the vid. Offworlders surrounded us, clacking finger blades and flaunting brass knucks that emerged from under their skin. I calculated my chances-zero, zero, zero. I handed over the vid. I felt I was passing over KOP with it.

Simba tossed the vid over his shoulder. One of the thugs caught it and read the data with eye implants. “It’s authentic,” he said.

Simba stood in front of me-slicked hair, peaked forehead, and a poor-fitting store-cut suit that matched his man-of-the-people image. He was going to kill us. My legs went weak. I thought of Niki trying to go it alone and sank to my knees, my ankle wrenching uncomfortably under my weight.

Simba talked to Maggie. “Mayor Samir would like you to know that your deal is off. What good is an informant that chooses not to inform? He is very disappointed in you. You would be well advised to resign from the police. The mayor promises you nothing but shit duty as long as you stay. Consider yourself very lucky that we’re not going to kill you.”

Maggie didn’t shrink from him. “Why not?”

“A dead cop with your family connections would complicate matters. There’d have to be an investigation, and that just doesn’t fit into our plans at the moment.”

Simba looked down at me.

I got to my feet, swallowing the ankle pain, summoning my emasculated self upright. Kill me standing up.

Simba roughly patted my cheek. It bordered on slapping. He didn’t say a thing. He just turned around and walked down the alley, brushing through the ferns.

I yelled at his back. “Are you afraid to kill me yourself?”

His entourage of offworld goons turned to follow. They piled into the offworld vehicle and powered off, mysteriously leaving me alive.

We left the alley. I refused Maggie’s help and limped. The ankle didn’t feel broken, just a sprain. I tried calling Paul for the third time-no answer. I called his home. His wife, Pei, answered: no, she hadn’t seen him; yes, he was still at the station; he must be in one of his meetings-that was why he wasn’t answering.

Maggie said, “What do we do now?”

“We have to go see Paul. I have to talk to him.” I started for the car.

“How did Simba know about the vid?”

I threw my hands up. How did he know?

Maggie grabbed my elbow. “Tipaldi.”

I ran the possibility. The only people who knew about the particulars of the pickup were Sasaki, Tipaldi, Mdoba, Malis, and the two of us. Mdoba was dead, and Sasaki would never tell Simba. “You’re right. It has to be Tipaldi.” Unbelievable. Everything was going to shit. I half-stepped as fast as I could on the bad ankle. My heart raced dance beats as I hustled down the mossy sidewalk. “Tipaldi is the top strong-arm in the Bandur cartel. He has access to Bandur’s books. If Simba flipped him, Bandur is going down-soon. I have to see Paul.”

We covered the distance to the car in no time. We hopped in and raced to the station, not saying a single word on the way.

We left the car down the block and hurried into the station. Cops stopped what they were doing to watch as I half ran, half limped up the stairs. I felt a cop tug on my arm. “Not now,” I said. I tore my arm loose from the grasp and my other arm was grabbed. Suddenly there were hands all over me. “What the fuck are you assholes doing? I have to talk to the chief!”

I heard Maggie protesting then I saw her on the floor, knocked down. I went berserk. I dug my feet into the floor. I couldn’t feel the ankle pain. Cops reached for my legs, to pick them up. I kicked frantically, making contact with hands and shins until the first leg was seized, then the second.

I jerked violently against their hold as I looked back for Maggie and saw her at the end of the hall, some uniforms blocking her path. They took me into interrogation room two, threw me to the floor, and locked me in. I beat a chair on the floor until it came apart in my hands. Then a second one. I started on the table but ran out of steam before it broke. Three chairs left, I sat in one of the tall ones and waited.

This was it. The mayor had made his move. KOP was in his control. I wouldn’t be stuck in here, detained by my fellow officers if it wasn’t. I had to hope that Paul was still operating freely, finding a way to turn things around. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that that was the case. Paul was one resourceful bastard. It would take a lot more than the fucking mayor to stop him. All I had to do was wait it out. Paul would spring me out of here, and Maggie and I would get back to work. We’d lost the vid, but we’d find other proof.

We made a good team, Maggie and I. She had a lot to learn, but she was sharp. She was right about there being little difference between Paul and the mayor, but it hadn’t always been so. Paul tried to make a difference. It wasn’t until he’d so clearly failed that he gave up and started looking out for himself. Who could blame him? How could anybody fix this place? The fact was he did try, which was more than I could say for myself. All I ever did was tag along.

Maggie was having a hard time picking the right side in this fight. I knew what side I was on. Paul was my friend.

The door opened-Gilkyson. He saw the broken chair and stepped out, coming back in a minute later with two well-built uniforms.

I turned on the smug. “What’s wrong, Karl? You afraid of something?”

Gilkyson set a box on the table then sat in the short chair. What a dumb shit, sitting in that chair. When we’d grill somebody, we’d sit him in the short chair. It was a chair just like the others, but the legs were cut down by a few centimeters-made the suspect feel inferior having to look up at the interrogators.

He looked like a kid doing his homework at the kitchen table as he stretched uncomfortably to read a report he’d pulled out of his box. I draped my arms over the table, claiming its surface as my territory. Gilkyson was forced to stay back-out of my reach.

“Hello, Mr. Mozambe,” he said.

“That’s Detective Mozambe.”

“Not anymore. You’ve been fired-effective immediately.”

“On what grounds?”

“You’ve been fired for engaging in police corruption.”

“You don’t have the authority.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” He turned the report around for me. “Here is your termination report, signed by acting Chief of Police Banks. Paul Chang was removed from his position as chief of police. The mayor has appointed Diego Banks in his absence.”

I told myself not to worry. Paul would figure out a way to get his job back. “You won’t get away with this, Karl.”

“We already have. He was escorted from the building a half hour ago.

Gilkyson pulled more goodies from his box. “Now Mr. Mozambe, I have some propositions to discuss with you. I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

I wanted to kick his self-righteous ass. “Talk.”

“We’ve built a case against you. We know you take kickbacks from whorehouses and gambling dens.”

“That’s not true.”

“I thought you might be resistant.”

He started a vid. Holos of Bensaid and me at Bensaid’s bar. Bensaid handed me a wad of money. We started arguing. Bensaid slammed his glass on the table. I walked out.

Next vid: Bensaid testifying against me.

Next vid: Me taking an envelope from a streetwalker in fishnets.

Next vid: Me taking a cut of the pool at a basement card game.

Next vid: Me shaking down a dope dealer, scoring some painkillers for Niki.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! “You can’t do this!” I was up out of my chair, my finger in his face. The pair of uniforms lowered me into my seat.

Gilkyson talked over my head to the uniforms. “If he gets up again, cuff him.” He lowered his gaze to me. “Please spare me your famous temper.”

“What do you want?”

“I want your testimony.”

“You expect me to testify against myself?”

“No. We want you to testify against Paul Chang.”

This was why I was still alive. Simba let me live so they could use me to prosecute Paul. I wished he’d killed me. “No. I won’t do it. I don’t know anything.”

“You were his partner twenty-five years ago. You’re his best friend. You can’t tell me you don’t know anything about his activities.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You were there when he made his first big busts. In fact, you made them together. You know how he managed to rise so fast through KOP. You know all about his dealings with Ram Bandur and his son Ben. You know everything.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Paul Chang is a great cop.”

“You’ll tell us everything, or else…”

“I won’t do it.”

“…we’ll prosecute you. You’ll go to jail. How long do cops survive in jail?”

“I can’t testify against Paul. Do what you want to me. I’m no rat.”

“Your misguided loyalty is almost touching, Mr. Mozambe. You leave us no option but to go after…let me see…” He checked his notes. “Natasha…is that her name? I understand she goes by Niki.”

I couldn’t speak.

“Her father was a drug dealer; right? She picked up some bad habits from him. I have a warrant here to search your home. Do you think we might find some illegal substances? If we find her in possession of anything illegal, it will carry a mandatory sentence, you know. Two to four years. How will she fare in prison?”

“The pills are mine. You’ve seen my hand. I need them for the pain.”

“The warrant includes blood tests, Mr. Mozambe.”

I lunged over the table. The cops responded with vice-grip holds on my arms. They had me back in my seat before I could touch him.

Gilkyson leaned back in his chair as he set a form in front of me, careful not to get too close. He marked an X. “This form is a testimony agreement. It states that you will testify against defendant Paul Chang in the case of the People vs. Paul Chang on the charges of racketeering, corruption, conspiracy, and participating in a criminal enterprise.”

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!!! My body shook. Paul’s my friend. I can’t do it. I can’t. “You kicked him out of KOP. That’s enough. You don’t need to prosecute him.”

“I’m afraid we do.”

“After all he’s done for Lagarto, you’re going to treat him like this?”

“The man conspires with the most vile criminals in Lagartan history.”

“I can’t do it.” My mouth was bone dry. I needed a drink.

“What’s your answer, Mr. Mozambe?”

Sweat soaked my underarms. I felt sick. I had to piss. I can’t sign.

“Mr. Mozambe?”

We were so close. I held that vid in my hand. What can I do, Paul? I can’t let Niki go to prison. I just can’t. I banged my head on the table…

I’m sorry, Paul. “W-what do I get for signing?”

“I always knew you were more reasonable than your reputation. I will bury the evidence against you. I will let you tear up the warrant to search your home right now.”

“You promise to leave me and Niki alone?”

“I promise. All we want is Paul Chang.”

“I get my pension.”

“That can be arranged. We’ll let you retire instead of being fired. How does that sound?”

What can I do, Paul? “Do you have a pen?”

Gilkyson had to hold my hand still while I moved my fingers and signed by the X. He ran his scanner-hand over my signature, uploading it into the system.

They kept me locked up for another thirty minutes. I spent the time formulating a long-shot plan to save Paul. I had to redeem myself. They unlocked the door and ushered me out of the building before the silent stares of my former workmates. I was weaponless and badgeless. I wasn’t a cop anymore.

I hit the street and was instantly drubbed by pouring rain. I called Paul. His holo materialized on the street, falling rain making his image blur. “Hold on, Juno.” His holo froze on hold. Damn!

I made for the car, Paul’s frozen holo floating alongside. I called Maggie. Her holo appeared on my other side, the three of us moving through the downpour. I blurted, “Where are you, Maggie?”

“I’m at the station. Where are you?”

“They just let me go. I’m on my way to the car.”

“What happened? They wouldn’t tell me anything. All I know is Chief Chang is out as chief, and C of D Banks is in charge. Nobody knows why.”

“They’re forcing me to testify against Paul.”

“You agreed?”

“They have me dead to rights. They were going to arrest Niki.”

“Niki? What for?”

“Never mind that. We can still pull this off, Maggie. I’m going to organize a raid of the spaceport.”

“You’re not a cop anymore, Juno.”

“Paul and I still have loyal friends in KOP. They’re not all rats. We’ll find somebody to do it.”

“What if it leaks back to Simba and the mayor?”

“We go anyway. We’ll find something…we have to find something and find it fast, before the Bandur cartel crashes and the whole city comes under their control. Get all the paperwork together on the shipping orders. We’ll need names, tracking numbers-anything related to Vanguard Supplies. I’ll call you when we’re ready to move.”

We’d get proof of the slavery operation, proof of the mayor’s involvement. Then they’d have to reinstate Paul. They’d let me recant my statement. I’d claim I signed it under duress.

I made it to the car and climbed inside. Holo-Paul passed through the passenger side door and took a seat. I waited impatiently until Holo-Paul finally unfroze. “Juno,” he said.

“They’re making me testify against you.” I spat the words so fast that they were hardly intelligible.

“I heard.”

“They were going to arrest Niki.”

“I know, Juno. It’s okay. You did what you had to do.”

“I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You had no choice. You’re forgiven, okay?”

The knot in my gut began to loosen. “Thanks, Paul.”

“Listen, Juno, you don’t need to worry about this anymore. You’re off the hook. Sasaki and I have it under control. We just made the decision to go to plan B while you were on hold.”

“What’s plan B?”

“We’re going to take him out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mayor Samir. We’re putting out a contract on him.”

“Wait, Paul, there may be another way. Let Maggie and me raid the spaceport. We’ll get you evidence of the slave trade.”

“It’s too late for that, Juno. We’re going ahead and offing the bastard. He doesn’t know who he’s messing with.” Holo-Paul smiled all chipper. I could picture Real-Paul’s expression, closed fist, gritted teeth.

“Wait, let’s talk about this first.”

“The decision’s already made, Juno.”

“Dammit, Paul, let me handle this. I’ll prove the mayor and Simba are running slaves. Once we get that proof, we’ll be able to say that they trumped up the charges against you. We’ll say we were probing into the slavery ring and the mayor fired you to kill the investigation. You’ll come out smelling rosy.”

“No. This way is better. You can’t guarantee you’ll get the evidence.”

“Think it through, Paul. The mayor just fired you, and the next day the mayor shows up dead? Everybody will know you were behind it. You’ll lose the public’s support. Once that happens, you’re finished.”

Paul spoke with steely resolve. “He’s taking KOP away from me, from us. I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

“He already took it away. They’re going to charge you with corruption. After you kill him, you think the new mayor’s going to reappoint you?”

“If I lean on him hard enough, he will. I’ll show him pics of his dead predecessor, and he’ll learn to stay out of my way.”

“You think you can intimidate the entire city?”

“If that’s what it takes. We took over KOP, you and me. We can take over the mayor’s office, too.”

“You took over KOP because you wanted to make a difference. What do you want now?”

After an annoyed sigh, he said, “That was a long time ago. I was a fool to think I could change anything. Lagarto can’t be helped, you know that.”

I paused for a few seconds, arranging the words in my head. “You know what your problem is, Paul? You always think too big. Maybe saving the planet is beyond your reach, but you have it in your power to stop the slavery ring. As we speak, Simba’s people are trolling Tenttown, buying up kids.”

“What difference would it make if we did stop Simba? Another slavery ring would just take its place.”

“Yeah, but until it did, think about all the kids that would’ve been saved. It would make a difference to them. ” I took a deep breath. “Listen to me, Paul, if you kill the mayor you won’t get KOP back. Call off the hit, and we’ll talk it out. Where are you?”

“I’m at Bandur’s.”

“I’m coming over.” I started the car and steered for the Bandur place. “Tell me you won’t do anything until we talk.”

I felt encouraged when Paul didn’t respond immediately. He was thinking it over. I was getting through. “You know I’m right,” I said.

“Okay, Juno. We’ll talk first.”

“Is Tipaldi there?”

“Yeah, he’s around here somewhere.”

“Watch out for him, Paul. He’s with Simba.”

“You sure?”

“Hundred percent.”

“Okay, Juno. I gotta go.”

I gunned the gas.

I swung the car onto Bandur’s street. I knew that if I could just keep Paul from killing the mayor, we could turn it all around. It wasn’t too late.

I left the car running, jumped out into monsoon rain, and rushed up the walk past shrub animals that accused me, the mayor’s turncoat witness, with still stares. Bandur’s door swung open of its own accord. The home system’s voice welcomed me and told me to go to the lounge. I skidded over the stone floor with wet shoes, my twisted ankle making me slide all the more. The lounge door moved aside for me.

The lounge was decorated with recessed lighting and space furniture. Tip Tipaldi came my way.

I met him nose to nose. “You’re a traitor. You told Simba about the vid of the mayor.”

Tipaldi thumped me in the stomach. I keeled over into a fetal ball, gulping for oxygen. I rolled on the lounge floor, Tipaldi’s spit-shined shoes at eye level.

I gasped, “I have to talk to Paul.”

A voice sounded from the far side of the room. “You’re too late, Juno. You missed him.”

I looked around, but couldn’t see the source of the voice from my floored perspective. A pair of scuffed shoes with mismatched socks walked out from behind the bar-Simba. A second pair followed, imported leather-mayor. NO!

I looked up to see the two of them standing in front of me. The smell of recent lase-fire registered in my nose. Oh god, no. It couldn’t be. Paul was still alive. He would still pull through this one. He’d been down before, but he’d always wound up on top. He was too smart to let this happen. He was too damn smart.

The mayor spoke with a politician’s rehearsed tone. “Sorry we can’t talk. We’re on our way out. We’ll be placing our anonymous call in ten minutes, so you won’t want to dillydally.”

I watched the three of them leave, Tipaldi carrying a box brimming with tech equipment-Bandur’s books.

I called out for Paul, knowing there’d be no response. “Paul!” My stomach felt like it had collapsed in on itself. I took deep breaths to keep from vomiting. I crawled on all fours, my arms and legs shaking. I made it to the bar and took a look behind. Matsuo Sasaki and Ben Bandur were lying on the tiled floor, one blackened hole in the back of each head. They’d been done from a kneeling position-execution style.

I grabbed a bar stool and pulled myself up. Music was playing-some kitschy lounge tune.

“Paul! Where are you? Paul?”

I saw him. I went to him, crossing the room on wobbly legs. I said to him, “I’m sorry.” He didn’t answer. He was sitting in an egg-shaped chair that floated over the floor, lase-pistol in his mouth, his brains slagged across the eggshell back of the chair.

I was home, on my sofa, watching the report for what must be the tenth time-Jessie Khalil on the street holding an umbrella, her hair sprinkled with just the perfect amount of rain. Her hair was wet enough to show how she was toughing it out in the elements to bring us the story, yet not so wet that her salon ’do lost shape.

“I am here at the home of Benazir Bandur, son of the deceased Ram Bandur reputed crime boss.”

“His son Benazir…”

“…has denied any involvement in criminal enterprises. A denial that is now proved unequivocally false.”

“It was early this morning that police were given an anonymous call stating that a shooting had occurred on these premises. It is believed that the call came from somebody on the house staff. When police arrived on the scene, they were confronted with a story so shocking that-”

Niki came out of the bedroom. She slept late this morning-pain-pill hangover. “Why didn’t you come to bed?”

I didn’t answer.

I made room for Niki on the couch.

Jessie Khalil reported on. “…Koba’s honored police chief for the past ten years was removed from office by Mayor Samir. Last night, the mayor’s office announced that it was going to file an indictment this morning formally charging Chief Chang with multiple counts of racketeering and conspiracy.”

“As you all know, Mayor Samir has made the elimination of corruption in the Koba Office of Police his highest priority since he was elected. We are prepared to take the first step in that direction by filing charges against former Chief of Police Paul Chang, who we allege is guilty of racketeering, corruption, conspiracy, and participating in a criminal enterprise. Former Chief Chang was relieved of his duties immediately when we secured our key piece of evidence, the testimony of police informant Juno Mozambe. Detective Mozambe and Chief Chang were partners many years ago, and Detective Mozambe is set to testify in court against his former boss.”

Niki’s hand slid over to hold mine.

“In a bizarre twist, those charges will no longer need to be filed. Based on the initial findings of the Koba Office of Police, it appears that former Chief Chang came to the home of Benazir Bandur and killed both him and his associate, Matsuo Sasaki, before turning the weapon on himself.”

Niki’s fingernails dug into my palm.

Jessie Khalil rattled on. “Here’s acting Chief of Police Diego Banks.”

“Our initial findings indicate a murder/suicide. It has come as a total shock to me personally as well as to so many of our finest officers that Chief of Police Paul Chang was conspiring with Benazir Bandur, one of our city’s most despicable criminals. It appears that Chief Chang was enraged upon learning of his impending indictment, and he took out his anger on the criminals who had led him down this path. He came to this residence and murdered both Benazir Bandur and Matsuo Sasaki. Uncertain of his imminent life in prison, he sadly took his own life.”

“The mayor is expected to make a statement later this morning, so be sure to stay with us. We will continue to bring you updates as soon as we have them. This is Jessie Khalil reporting for Lagarto Libre.”

Niki rested her head on my shoulder. I ran my fingers through her hair. I felt her tears on my neck. For me, the tears wouldn’t come. I squeezed a data chip in my hand and thought about the job I had to do.

NOVEMBER 4, 2787

I sat on the roof of my house, watching the stars as lizards skittered around, soaking up the night sky with me. I took a hit of brandy straight from the bottle. The alcohol did a pretty good job of numbing me. I’d try to quit tomorrow; maybe I’d feel better.

I raised the bottle to Paul. Sorry, old friend. I should have known. Prosecuting Paul would have been ugly. He’d known too many people who could’ve created problems for Simba and the mayor. The corruption investigation was just a cover. They were planning to murder Paul all the while and sell it to the public as a suicide. They set me up. They used me to give their murder/suicide story credence. I was their tool, the pawn in a scheme to take over KOP and the Bandur organization. It played perfect in the news: Chief Chang had been angry and depressed; he’d just gotten fired; he’d been on his way to jail. The clincher: his old partner was going to squeal on him.

The stars glistened tonight, clear skies and a cool breeze. Tonight was the night. Maggie thought we should all be together. She’d invited Abdul, Niki, and me over to get a chance to see her new place. I’d told her no, not tonight. Tonight, I wanted to get drunk. Tomorrow, I’d be retired for good-just me and Niki from here on out. Nothing to do but sit back and watch the havoc I’d created these past months…

I’d gone to Paul’s house immediately after finding his body. I got a one-hour shoulder soak from Paul’s wife when I broke the news to her. She was worried about their youngest son. “He’s only a teenager; he needs a father.” I stayed with her until her sisters arrived.

Before I left, I had Pei open Paul’s safe. I took the data chip, Paul’s copy of Bandur’s books. It was part of the original deal struck between Paul and Ram Bandur. They had open access to each other’s activities. It was the only way they thought they could trust each other. Nobody knew about the copy besides Paul, Bandur, Sasaki, and me. Now I was the only one left.

I paid out three months’ worth of collection money for a hot computer system. I didn’t want to rent time on the Orbital’s systems because one of their surveillance worms could’ve sniffed out my activity. I bought the system off an old fence I used to collect from. The hump knew I’d lost my badge and jacked up the price on me. He gave me some shit about the shoe being on the other foot.

I spent three days scrolling through records, looking for anything that I could use against Simba, the mayor, or Nguyen. I wanted them all to pay for what they did to Paul…what they did to me.

Three days of brandy-swilling eyestrain passed before a name caught my eye-Manuel Hidalgo: trained engineer with a drug habit and gambling debts over six figures. I checked his background. He was once part of a public relations program instituted by one of the offworld shipping companies to employ Lagartans on their freighters. He flew for seven years before his O habit got out of hand, and he was cut loose.

I tailed Hidalgo for a week. He was turning tricks for five hundred a romp. He was being pimped by one of Bandur’s people who now reported to Koba’s new crime boss-Carlos Simba.

Hidalgo wasn’t seeing any profit from his skin sales. Every peso went toward his gambling debt. According to the books, they were steadily raising his interest rate. After four years of back-alley blow jobs, he’d only reduced the debt by three percent. He’d be so old by the time he paid it off, he’d be gumming cock.

I thought he might be perfect for my plans. I evaluated his abilities: He couldn’t afford to pay for O anymore, but instead of turning to glue huffing he’d kicked the habit-promising. He was overcharging his tricks and pocketing the difference, hiding the cash in the hollowed-out heels of his pumps-clever. He was taking a big risk by shorting a pimp. It was considered a capital offense-gutsy. One word summation: potential.

Niki, Abdul, Maggie, and I finished off the paella. I poured just half a glass of brandy for myself. I was getting to the point where I could half-glass my way through a bottle in no time. I wasn’t the only one; Abdul was keeping pace. It was taking a two-drink minimum for either of us to forget feeling sorry for ourselves and get conversation turned to the good times we’d had with Paul. Maggie was the willing listener, our excuse to tell the stories one more time. “You ever heard about the time Paul…?” Niki laughed at the right times, as if it were the first time she’d heard any of the stories.

Maggie turned the discussion serious. “I’ve been going through the missing persons files. I came up with seven more likely slaves. That makes thirty-six so far.”

Abdul said, “You have to stop nosing around, Maggie. Somebody’s going to notice.”

“I can’t just do nothing. They’re running slaves and they’re getting away with it. Doesn’t that upset you?”

“Not as much as seeing you get killed.”

“What else am I supposed to do? The mayor has it in for me. Chief Banks won’t let me do any important work. Now he has me doing background checks on academy applicants. And that’s in addition to the traffic violations work he’s got me on. Their strategy to make me quit is becoming abundantly clear. They’re loading me up with so much work that I can’t possibly keep up, and then they’re going to start filing dereliction-of-duty reprimands on me. I can’t stand doing goddamned busywork.”

Maggie ran her hands through the hair behind her ears and talked directly to me. “When are you going to help me take over KOP?”

Niki’s hand moved under the table to my knee and squeezed, signaling a tug of the leash. I was happy to comply. “It can’t be done.”

“Why not?”

“It just can’t.”

Maggie asked Abdul the same question. “Why not?”

Abdul looked at me. “Yeah, Juno. Why not?” The two of them were ganging up, applying the pressure.

My brandy was getting low. I added a dash to my glass. “First of all, you’re a woman. KOP has never even had a woman captain much less a woman chief. Second, you’re not ruthless enough. You have to be vicious. You don’t have it in you.”

“That’s why I need you.”

I couldn’t say, “I’m not vicious anymore.” Not with the scheme I was planning. If went through with it, I’d reach new heights of ruthlessness and viciousness. I couldn’t let myself worry about the moral implications. I was on a mission-destroy the six of them: Mayor Samir, Chief Banks, Carlos Simba, Mai Nguyen, and double-crossers Tip Tipaldi and Yuan Kim. They had to pay for what they did to Paul. They had to pay for using me. They especially had to pay for underestimating me by leaving me alive. There was no time to help Maggie. She’d have to take care of herself.

I said, “If you’re so bored at KOP, I have a job for you.”

Maggie looked skeptical, “What’s that?”

“I need financial workups on Simba, Nguyen, and Chief Banks.”

“What for?”

“I don’t want to say. Can you do it?”

Maggie tried to bargain with me. “You have to agree to help me first.”

“You don’t want me. You said you want to do it clean. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“I have the right guy. You can be rehabilitated.” She said the last part with a smirk.

Abdul laughed aloud. Niki joined in. Abdul and Niki were right. There was no hope for me. I was a real bastard; that was all there was to it. There was no way I could ever redeem myself for the things I’d done. I couldn’t get caught up in Maggie’s dreams for a better Lagarto. I’d already tried to make Paul’s dreams for Lagarto come true, and Lagarto was no better off. Once my scores were settled, I was going to try harder to make Niki’s dreams of a normal life come true. There was still time with Niki.

“I can’t do it, Maggie.”

She relented. “What kind of financial information do you need?”

“I need to know the worth of their assets, cash flow-anything you can get your hands on.”

While I waited for the financial workups, I had time to get one name crossed off my list.

I knocked back an entire bottle waiting outside Yuan Kim’s place until the early AM. The house used to belong to his father, Chen. He’d passed it on to Kim when he’d retired from the force and moved out of the city. It was a middle-to-upper class neighborhood. Most yards were jungle-trimmed immaculate.

I watched his door through the prickly leaves of a shrub. I swatted mosquitoes to pass the time. I didn’t wear bug spray. I didn’t want some passerby picking up my scent. Bites covered my hands and neck. I must’ve lost a liter of blood. I drank brandy as an itch reducer, an orally ingested calamine lotion. No sign of Kim. He still hadn’t come home-must’ve found somebody to service the snake tonight.

I needed to get moving before people started to wake up. I crawled out of the bushes and crept up to the house. Both doors were locked. I decided on a window entry. The basement window looked like the best bet-low to the ground, plenty of jungle cover.

I worked at the lock for a while. Fuck it, I just broke the glass. I used a broomstick handle that I’d brought with me to knock the glass out and beat away the sharp edges. I climbed through, dropping my hand into a lizard’s nest. I got nipped, but luckily it didn’t break the skin-didn’t want to leave any blood evidence behind. I bumped around in the dark, sloshing through ankle-deep floodwater until I found the staircase and moved up into the bedroom.

I took the broomstick handle and taped it to my right arm. It was a perfect fit. I had prepped it by cutting it down to arm length. It was now attached to the outside of my arm, running from my shoulder to the back of my hand. I’d wrapped the tape extra tight around my hand, so it couldn’t move-left just my fingers free, so they could grasp my piece’s handle. I placed the gun in my hand. It held rock solid. I couldn’t sight for shit-wouldn’t matter. I’d take him at close range.

I sat on his bed, my hand tingling from the lack of circulation and mosquito bites. I heard keys jangling in the front lock. I got into position, standing in the door frame. When he rounded that corner, he’d just about run into me. I relaxed my body-just wait. I tuned into the sounds of Yuan Kim making his way around the house. My entire body sizzled with anticipation. He was in the kitchen. That was the fridge opening and closing. He’d be coming soon-keep breathing, nice and slow.

He came around the corner, unbuttoning his shirt. I took care of business with two shots-the first in the chest to bring him down, the second to the head. No “This is for Paul, you cocksucker.” No “Get on your knees and beg.” None of that bullshit. When you got a job to do, you do it-no room for ego. Make it quick and simple-no complications.

I stripped the tape from my arm with a hair-ripping jerk. Kim’s glasses were on the floor. I pulled my shirtsleeve over my hand, picked them up, and placed them on what was left of his fried head. I stuck them to the peak of his nose, so they wouldn’t slide down.

The sun was up already. I sat back on the bed. It was too risky to leave now. I’d have to wait five hours for nightfall. It was Kim’s day off; hopefully nobody would come looking for him.

The smell ripened fast. I rubbed a peppermint leaf paste onto my upper lip. The menthol odor did a fair job of masking-made it bearable. Lizards flocked up from the basement and down from the attic. Flies gathered outside the windows, bumping the glass, probing for an opening.

The phone rang a few times, but nobody came. Generations of flies hatched, fed, and swarmed around the house. The lizards eventually moved on, heavy stomachs dragging on the carpet. I raided his liquor cabinet, waited until the deep dark, and then I stepped over his remains and left the same way I’d come in.

Just like old times.

Time to get my other plans rolling.

The room had an hourly rate, but I’d gone ahead and paid for the whole night. I lay sideways on the hotel bed with a rolled up a towel as a headrest. I didn’t want to touch the pillows. They were crawling with brown bugs. I didn’t even know what those things were. What a fucking hole this place was. It was the kind of place you’d go when anonymity was more important than amenities.

I was staring at the ceiling, well aware of the phone that sat within my reach. All I had to do was call.

A shiver of doubt ran through my mind. I was so sure a couple days ago. Killing Kim was easy. He deserved it. This was different. This involved innocents. Niki told me it was okay to go through with it. I could stop the slavery ring. It would be for the greater good. She was right, though I wasn’t naive enough to believe that slavery would stop. But I could cripple the trade for years, maybe decades.

I sat up. Four hits of brandy brought my nerve back. I couldn’t worry about the guilt. You either have guilt or you don’t. I already had it. It wasn’t a cumulative thing. One more destroyed soul wouldn’t make a difference.

I made the call.

A holo of Manuel Hidalgo’s pimp appeared in the hotel room.

I asked for a male, straight hair, light complexion.

A half hour later, Hidalgo was at the door, secret-compartment pumps strapped to clean-shaven legs, miniskirt cut to skivvy-showing height, and at least two weeks of geological makeup applied layer over previous layer. He pranced in and lisped. “You pay up front, five hundred pesos.”

I pulled out forty thousand, set it out on the bed for him to see. I let my right show in full shaking glory.

“Look who’s the rich boy. Are you trying to impress me?” His S’s whistled.

I added another forty thousand to the pile.

“What’s going on here? Who are you?”

“I’m your savior. Do you really talk like that?”

“No.”

“Then cut it out. How much do you owe?”

“Who are y-”

I slugged him in the gut. The air burst out of his lungs. A kick took his legs out, and he thudded to the floor. His wig fell off, landing like a dead cat. He tried to roll away. I grabbed him by the hair and shoved the wig in his mouth.

“You listen to me, asshole! You work for me now. You will never ask me any questions, and when I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Do you understand?”

He was sucking air through his nose. I pinched it shut. “Do you understand?”

He nodded, his nose tugging at my wobbly hand.

I let go and yanked the wig out; saliva strands clung to the synthetic hair. “How much do you owe?”

“Hundred and ninety thousand.” Lispless.

“I have eighty thousand on the bed there. It’s yours.”

He nodded again, confused.

“Here’s what you’re going to do. You will pay off your debts using that money as a first payment. You will not gamble with any of my money. You will quit prostitution, and you will absolutely not go back to doping. Do you understand?”

“Why?”

“No questions!” I slapped him hard. He yelped. I slapped him again. I said, “Do you understand?” He was guarding his face with his hands now, peeking at me through his fingers. “Do you understand?” My voice was insistent.

“No,” he said with a whimper. “I don’t understand, and that wasn’t a question.”

“You’re right,” I said with a leer. “That wasn’t a question. What don’t you understand?”

He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully, trying to avoid any semblance of a question. “I don’t understand what I’d have to do to earn that money.”

“Here’s what you have to do,” I said. “You have to go to the spaceport tomorrow morning and apply for a job with a new company called Lagarto Lines. They have a freighter to crew and you will offer your services as an engineer. You can do that can’t you?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know. Tell me you understand. Tell me you will do it.”

He was slow in answering. His eyes moved back and forth between me and the money. I saw the way he looked at the money. I had him. I just had to wait him out. He studied me. He studied the money. I kept waiting. Finally, he said, “I’ll do it.”

“If your bookie asks you where you got the money, you will tell him you stole it from one of your tricks.”

“Okay.”

I nodded. “You better be smart enough to realize that this is the best day of your life. You do as I say, and your debt will disappear.”

“If I don’t?”

I stomped on his hand. “No questions!”

He screamed. He held his damaged hand up in the air. One finger stood badly out of whack.

I whispered in his ear. “I’ll be watching you.” Then I walked out.

Maggie, Abdul, and I pored over the financials, an exhaustive workup on their assets and liabilities. Niki brought in tea every few hours. Spreadsheets and loan documents floated all over the room. Maggie ran computer analyses and hypotheticals on the numbers. Abdul hmmphed and uh-huhed through the data. My brain had given up trying to understand any of it hours ago. I just waited patiently for their analyses.

I told them both my plan. What I needed to know was if it would work. They were skeptical at first, shocked by the utter audacity of it, but the deeper they delved into the reports, the more enthusiasm they showed for the idea. My assessment was proving accurate.

Carlos Simba: He was stretched skin thin. Every asset he had was put up as collateral for the four loans he took from offworld banks to buy his freighter. He was barely keeping up on his payments. Taking over the Bandur organization was creating a huge cash drain. He was paying out far more in payroll than he was taking in, while Bandur’s former pimps, dealers, and shylocks were taking advantage of the outfit’s disorganized state by reporting reduced profits or not paying Simba at all.

Chief of Police Diego Banks: His grip on KOP was tenuous at best. Paul used to pay his police followers with money from a Bandur slush fund that Simba was now regularly raiding to make his freighter payments. As a result, Chief Banks had been forced to trim down the payouts to cops. Cops were grumbling, one step from mutiny.

Mai Nguyen: She was out of the O racket all together. She had legitimized her drug business eleven years ago by converting 80 percent of her holdings into two legit companies, one a restaurant chain that serviced the Orbital and the mines, the other an employment agency that was used as a cover for the slave trade. She had used the restaurant chain as collateral for the two loans she took out to buy into Simba’s new shipping company.

If they could stay the course, they’d solidify their power. Slave money was already flooding in with the new shipping line. They’d been severely limited trying to smuggle a containerful here and there. Now they had their own slave ship. I spent three nights at the spaceport and counted 206 slaves passing through a fence hole in the dead of night.

The path to my revenge was obvious: end the slave trade. If I could do it, both Simba and Nguyen would default on their loans. The effects would domino from there. The banks would seize Simba’s assets, and his organization would implode. There were a thousand crime-boss wannabes out there just waiting for such an opportunity. Simba and Tipaldi wouldn’t survive for long before somebody did to them what they’d done to Bandur and Sasaki.

As for Nguyen, the banks would seize her restaurant chain, and her employment agency would be rendered worthless with no slaves to place. She’d be ruined. And Chief Banks? Without Simba’s money to buy cop loyalty, his tenure as chief would be very temporary.

Mayor Samir would go down with the rest of them. His fate was tied too closely to Simba and Banks. The power vacuum left by Simba and Banks would launch the city into criminal and police anarchy. The fragile balance that Paul and Ram Bandur created between KOP and the criminal element would dissolve. A mayoral election was coming in less than a year. He’d be voted out by a landslide.

Niki poured a new round of tea for us and sat down next to me.

I said, “What do you think, Maggie?”

Maggie blew on her tea and took a careful sip. “I think you’re right. If you succeed, they’ll be cleaned out. They don’t have enough reserve funds to survive the hit-financially, that is.”

“And you’re sure that Lagarto Lines isn’t insured?”

“I’m sure. No offworld insurance company is willing to insure a Lagartan company, and the Lagartan insurance companies don’t have the capital to underwrite a freighter.”

My blood surged. I could do this. I could make a difference. “Abdul?”

Abdul sighed. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“I’m sure. There’s no other way. I might be able to score some vid evidence by hanging around the spaceport with a camera, but the vids wouldn’t go anywhere. The mayor and Simba are in charge now. The DAs won’t take up the cause, and the press won’t run the story. Hell, even if we could get the press to plaster it all over the news, the mayor’s people would discredit the vids as fakes. They’d claim there was some offworld conspiracy by the other shipping companies to close down Lagarto Lines. You know that people would eat it up-a lone Lagartan company battling the offworld powers. At the very best, we’d force Mayor Samir to create a sham commission to investigate the matter. Six months later, they’d issue a report saying they found nothing.”

Abdul walked to the window. He talked with his back to us. My plans were too ugly for him to face. “You know the slave trade won’t end. It’s too profitable.”

“I know it won’t, but I’ll knock Simba and Nguyen out of the business. It will take a while for somebody else to step in and take over. Think of how many people will be saved in the interim. And when somebody does take over, they won’t have a slave ship to use. They’ll have to go back to smuggling slaves through on the regular lines. They won’t be able to transport anywhere near the numbers they can now.”

Maggie asked, “How many people are on the crew?”

“Nine.”

“You really think this is the only way?”

“Give me another suggestion.”

Maggie and Abdul both clamped shut. I didn’t think so.

I said, “We’re talking about nine lives versus a lifetime of slavery for thousands.”

Abdul turned around and pleaded, “Nine people, Juno.”

“The greater good…”

Abdul’s sagging face sagged further in resignation. “Yeah, the greater good. How do you plan on doing it?”

“It’s beautifully simple, but I need your help.”

I had Maggie and Abdul onboard. The rest was up to me and my heartless exploitation of Manuel Hidalgo. After a month’s worth of carroting and sticking, he was my tool. I had his loyalty 100 percent. He actually thanked me for saving his life. He said he felt resurrected. He told me it was the first time in a long while that his life was heading in the right direction.

We met under a bridge. Children played in the river while their mothers roasted skewered geckos over oil drums filled with burning trash. I stayed in the shadows. I was going for a very cloak-and-dagger feel. He was into the spy gig. “Hidalgo,” I said.

“Yes?” he responded. He was wearing pressed whites, one hand in a cast. His hair was trimmed and slicked. His canker sores were in remission since I’d sent him to a doctor to treat his VD.

“Tell me about your progress.”

“I went on my first flight yesterday. Starting next week, I’ll be going regular.”

“Tell me about your cargo.”

“It’s like you said. They’re shipping peoples-all kinds of them: men, women, children. I’ve managed to talk to a few of them. Some got conned into it and actually believe there are high-paying jobs waiting for them, but most are being brought against their will.”

“Do you have the shipping schedules I asked for?”

“Yes.” He handed me a data chip. “I put the schematics you wanted in there, too.”

“Excellent. Go now.”

Hidalgo hung around like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head.

“Go,” I said.

He skulked away, thoroughly dominated. I waited until he was out of sight then stalked down to the riverbank and unmoored a rented skiff. I steered for open water, the motor putt-putting along. One step closer to my vengeance. I couldn’t erase the wicked smile on my face.

I gave the chip to Abdul and Maggie. They spent the next three weeks researching the nets, looking for optimal “camera” placements. When they returned the ship schematics to me, there were five red circles marking the spots. Their mood was somber. I had to keep reminding them-greater good.

Two more weeks passed before the time came to end my relationship with Manuel Hidalgo. I told him to come to Afrie’s.

I waited for him at a table, sipping my brandy, working up the courage to take the last step. I watched Hidalgo come in and sit down at the bar. He was dressed proper, sporting new duds and a stylish hat-no more cast on his hand. He’d gone from screwing johns to squarejohn in no time. I got up from my table and brushed by him on my way to the bathroom. He joined me a minute later.

“You’ve done well, Hidalgo.”

“Thank you.”

“You’ve exceeded my expectations these past few months. I have good news for you. There is only one more thing for you to do. I have no doubt that you can handle it. When you’ve performed this task, I will release you from our agreement-all debts paid. How does that sound?”

He looked disappointed. He was so hooked on playing spy that he was sad it was coming to a close.

“Take this bag. In it, you’ll find five cameras and a blueprint of the ship. The blueprint is marked to show you where I want you to place the cameras. The placements I chose don’t offer the best vantage points, but they are in out of the way places, so you should be able to escape detection. The cameras are already recording. All you have to do is put them in place and then leave them alone.”

“Do I need to retrieve them?”

“No, they’ll beam a signal back on their own.”

“Got it. I can do it; you’ll see.”

“I know you’ll succeed. When I start receiving the feed, I’ll transfer the money into your account.”

“Okay. Thanks.” He looked like he had more to say.

“Spit it out.”

“Can I ask a question?”

I nodded. He’d earned it.

“You work for the government, don’t you?”

“I can’t answer that, Manuel.”

“You’re going to expose the slave trade. I can help. I can testify.”

“I won’t let you testify. It would be too dangerous. You’ve done enough for your people. Now take the bag and get out of here.”

The instant he walked out my enforcer juices ran frigid. It was done. Lagarto was about to begin its spiral into chaos.

I spent the rest of the night at the bar, trying to warm my soul with a brandy bottle…

From my rooftop, I watched the Orbital cross the sky. It passed through constellations, drawing an arc across the heavens. I peeked at my watch. Carlos Simba’s solitary ship would be braking into our atmosphere in just a few minutes. I toasted Manuel Hidalgo again. Shit-bottle was empty. Niki padded across the roof. She’d set the alarm to wake her up in time to catch the show. She sat next to me, our feet touching.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” I asked.

Niki moved in close. “Does it matter?”

Not anymore it didn’t. I’d had Abdul rig the cameras. He’d taken out the guts and replaced them with explosives, nothing too powerful, but enough to ignite the fuel tanks. He’d set the timers for reentry. Let friction burn up the evidence.

I wished there had been a way to save Hidalgo. He’d salvaged a good life for himself. I’d gone through it over and over, but just couldn’t take the risk of him blabbing. He just wasn’t stable. If I could flip him, so could somebody else. There couldn’t be any ties back to me. I wasn’t ready to risk my life or those of Niki, Maggie, and Abdul over him. Call me a coward if you want. I’d just add it to the list of my sins.

Greater good. It was a powerful argument, enough to convince Maggie and Abdul, but I knew it wasn’t my main justification. They killed Paul. That was all the reason I needed.

I looked at my watch-started wearing it on my left.

Any second now…

There! A shooting star.