Kop (13 page)

Paul didn’t answer. He turned his gaze back to the papers on the wall. I couldn’t figure out what had gotten into him lately. I didn’t know what he was thinking half the time. I decided to drop it. We’d just wait and see like Paul wanted. We had what we needed on Yashin. There was no rush.

Paul got up. “I’m gonna run out for kebabs. You want anything?”

“Yeah. Set me up with one fish and one liz.”

Paul closed the door behind him. I poured myself a drink and went back to watching the Yashins. Pavel was sulking on his couch. His wife, Gloria, was packing a suitcase, and daughter Natasha was reading in her bedroom. You’d never see any two of them in the same room.

I stayed on F. Pavel Yashin wasn’t doing anything anyway. Natasha sat on the bed, flowery pillows propping her up. The book’s cover was of a tuxedoed man dipping a woman on the dance floor. Natasha twisted her raven hair around her finger, untangling it every couple minutes to turn the page.

She kept checking the clock and returning to the book. Finally, she got up, reading all the while, like a kid reluctant to give up a favorite toy. She finished the page, bookmarked, and stripped off her clothes—petite breasts on svelte physique. She walked into the bathroom.

She came out a few minutes later, naked except for the towel wrapped around her head. She pulled a pair of red sheer panties up over her coffee skin and blow-dried her hair. She was sitting on the bed, using the window as a mirror, unknowingly looking right into the camera, looking right at me. My heart drummed in voyeuristic bliss.

Then she took two dresses out of the closet—one red, one black.
Go for the black.
Like she heard me, she hung the red dress back up, took the black one off its hanger, and slipped it over her head. The dress hung loose, but clung at all the right curves.

The smell of greasy meat preceded Paul’s entrance. He glanced at the screen. “You watching her again?”

“Yeah. Can’t take my eyes off her.”

Natasha dabbed on just a touch of makeup and pulled a pair of heels out of the closet—black with thin straps.

“She is hot. I’ll give you that, but she sulks too much for me. She looks like a real downer.” He tossed me a kebob.

I unwrapped it from the soggy paper.

Paul took a bite. Sauce dripped down his chin. “Yashin up to anything?”

In response, I licked my fingers and kicked it over to B. He was up out of his seat, pouring himself another drink.

“Where’s the missus?” Paul wanted to know.

“She’s packing. She must be going to stay with her mother again.”

“Again? Shit. Natasha’s going out; Gloria’s going to her mother’s. He’s gonna have another one of his party nights. We won’t learn a damn thing tonight.”

This would be the third time this week. Yashin had a thing for young poon. Once he was home alone, he’d call down to one of the prosty joints and get them sent over two at a time, the younger the better.

I finished off the first kebab. “You want to call it a night?”

“Yeah, we can record it. Scan through it tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You wanna hit the bars?”

“Not tonight, Paul. I’m beat. I just want to have a quiet night.”

“Are you shittin’ me? Since when do you want to stay home?”

“Since tonight.”

We hopped separate cabs. I told my driver to let Paul get out ahead of us then made him turn the cab back. I had him wait three doors down from the Yashin house. No more than a
minute later, another cab pulled up. Two women with tall hair sat in the back. After a couple honks, Natasha came out the door and down the walk. She took the front seat.

I made the driver follow them. They stopped in the Old Town Square at a restaurant called Afrie’s—chic and ritzy. The women got out of the cab deliberately, showing plenty of leg. I waited a few, tossed some bills to the driver, and went in.

The place was done up in style. The floors were covered with thick rugs that you sank into as you walked. The chairs were upholstered with monitor hide. Nice. The lighting was dimmed down with candles on the tables, setting the right mood. People dressed in fancy clothes. I looked like a square in my white linens. The maître d’ pretended not to notice. “Will you be dining tonight, or would you like to go to the bar?”

I scanned the restaurant and didn’t see her. “The bar.”

“Excellent, sir. Let me show you the way.”

I parked on a stool at the bar, ordered house brandy on ice, and checked out the room. I saw the three of them sitting in a round booth. The two tall-haired women were laughing over their drinks. Natasha sat opposite them, watching and smiling when they looked her way. I could see she was too smart for them. They bored her, but she was too polite to let it show.

Natasha sipped at her drink, which was already almost gone. It was some kind of special rainbow-colored drink with pieces of fruit on the rim. I was mesmerized by her. She had the goods—gorgeous, sophisticated, mysterious. I was flying high.

For the first time I noticed the man next to me.
What the hell?
His forehead was glassed in with three goldfish swimming about. Offworlders would come up with the strangest shit. This place was a big offworlder hangout. At the end of the bar was a super buxom broad with vampire fangs. A table of quintuplet-clones in low-cut sundresses with cat faces—whiskers, fur, and
all—giggled at the pumped-up muscle-head miners flexing in front of a mirror. Offworlders looked like models most of the time, but when they went out partying, they’d pull out all the stops, morphing into the freakiest characters.
I can’t believe they get off on that shit.

I felt self-conscious in my linens. I was tempted to run home for a change of clothes, but a mental survey of my closet yielded nothing but more of the same. I asked the bartender to bring Natasha a second drink. I watched as he poured, scooped, shook, then blended the drink into a tall glass. He put some fruit on the rim, stabbed it with a straw, gave me a nod, and headed for her table. I picked up my drink and took a swig.

The bartender stopped at her table. The two chatterbugs stopped talking as he gestured in my direction. All three of them looked at me, but I made eye contact with Natasha only. She took the drink and held it up in a silent toast. I toasted back and took a long sip of brandy, hoping it would drown the butterflies in my stomach.

She excused herself and brought her drink with her to the bar. Straight black hair brushed her shoulders as she walked. I picked up the scent of her perfume as she took the barstool next to me.

“I’m Juno.”

She gave my threads the once over. “What brings you here, Juno?”

“You.”

She gave me an odd look.

I said, “I was walking by, and I saw you and your friends come in. I followed you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I want to get to know you.”

“Are you sure?” She smiled the same coy smile I’d seen her get when she read her romance novels.

“Yes.”

“I’m Natasha.” She put her hand out for a formal shake. “What do you do, Juno?”

“I’m a cop.”

“What kind of cop?”

“I work vice.”

She raised her eyebrows at that. Thoughts of her father’s business must’ve been running through her head. “So you chase down drug dealers?”

“Yeah. Drugs, prostitution, gambling.”

“And you think I would be interested in a guy like that?”

“I don’t know. Are you?”

The early morning sunlight beamed through the window, toasting the blanket beyond comfortable. I got up, cranked the aircon, and crawled back into bed. Natasha rolled over and laid her head on my shoulder. I held her and stared at my bedroom ceiling. Geckos came out of the walls to sip water from a ceiling leak. Most days I’d chase the pests away, but today I felt generous. I started to think up pet names for them.

The rage that lived in my gut was blissfully silent. I felt drunk on a night of fantasies come true. I held Natasha tight, my mind rocking to the rhythms of last night’s lovemaking. I ran my fingers into her hair. I thrilled on the smell of her, the way her body curled against me.

Natasha said, “Juno.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know who my father is?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re after him, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you trying to use me to get to him?”

“No.”

“Then why are you with me?”

“Because I want to be.”

Paul and I watched the monitor. All the Yashins were home. Another couple weeks had gone by, and we still hadn’t decided what to do about Pavel Yashin. I was more than ready to run him in, but Paul kept insisting on waiting to see if he could lead us to a bigger bust. Even after this morning, when the lieutenant gave us both a hellish reaming for our lackluster performance these past six weeks, Paul still remained unfazed.

Pavel Yashin was pacing the house, from one room to another. Paul kept flipping channels trying to keep up with his restless movements.

“The guy is getting desperate,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s like he’s sitting on a time bomb with all that dope in his basement.”

Yashin had stopped trying to sell it on the streets since his two dealers got clipped by Bandur’s outfit. Now, he was spending most of his time on the phone trying to find a buyer—nothing but hang-ups so far. Paul changed to channel E. Yashin’s wife, Gloria, was in their bedroom, kneeling in front of an altar made of candles and pinned-up pics of the Virgin Mary. She kept her long-sleeved nightgown buttoned to the top. She crossed herself, and then the room and slipped into bed.

Paul said, “No wonder Yashin goes for hookers. She’s such a prude.” It was true. We’d been spying for a month and a half, and we hadn’t even seen them kiss.

Over to F: Natasha was reading again, another romance novel. My heart thumped in exhilaration. I watched her read, unable to stop despite my mounting guilt over deceiving her by intruding on her privacy. It looked like she’d be staying in for a change. She’d been out every night for the past two weeks, half those nights with her friends, the other half at my
place. Paul didn’t know about us. I told him I was seeing somebody but didn’t tell him who. It was getting harder to cover my tracks. Yesterday, she sat in bed and wrote me a letter. If you zoomed the cam in, you could read my name. I had to erase that section of the recording to keep Paul from seeing it. I’d eventually have to come clean with him.

Back to B: Pavel Yashin wasn’t there. Paul ran through the channels hunting for him, stopping on F. There he was, standing in Natasha’s doorway. Somehow, he’d managed to open her door without her noticing. She was on her bed, engrossed in her book, unaware of his presence. He just stood there, staring long enough that I started to feel uneasy. Eventually, he pulled the door shut as silently as he’d opened it. She kept twirling her hair all the while—lost in her fictional world.

Paul jumped back to B in time to see Yashin settle on the couch. “What was that about?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

“That is one strange family, Juno. You ever notice how they don’t talk to each other.”

“Yeah.” My stomach clenched.
What am I getting into with Natasha?
Why was it that I had such a thing for women with problems? Tall, dark, and fucked up. That was my type. I needed to be careful around her. We were having a good time together, but I didn’t want to fall for her. I really didn’t.

Yashin poured a drink for himself, downed it in a hurry, and poured another. He placed a call. A holo of Ram Bandur flickered into his living room. Both Paul and I perked up. Why would he be calling the man who killed two of his dealers?

Yashin said, “I have a proposition for you.”

“What is it?”

“I have surplus product that I thought you might want to take off my hands.”

“Is that why you’re poachin’ my territory? Just ’cause you
have some extra shit you want to dump, you think you have the right to sell in my territory. You steal from me and then you want to do business? FUCK YOU!”

Yashin winced at the fury coming from Bandur’s cheery-faced hologram. “I’ll give you a good price,” he said.

“What you got?”

“Eight hundred kilos of O.”

“What you askin’?”

“Kilo for kilo.”

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me! What kind of fucked-up deal is that? I did you a favor by not killing
you
for poaching my territory. Is this how you show your ’preciation, you cocksucker?” Bandur hung up.

Paul smiled wide. “This is our chance, Juno.”

“What chance?”

“When Yashin sells the opium to Bandur, we’ll nail both of them.”

“Bandur didn’t sound too interested in buying.”

“Kilo for kilo—that’s hardly a bargain.” One kilo of opium for a kilo of pesos. “They’re just negotiating. We have to be patient.”

I took one last bite and put my fork down.

“Do you want some more?”

“No, I’m full.”

Natasha had cooked up a chicken with apricots over rice. She was nervous about it. Her mother taught her how to prepare it, but her mother used ’guana instead of chicken. When I’d asked her why she didn’t use ’guana, she said it was a special occasion. I thought the chicken was a little dry. I told her it was delicious.

Natasha took her brandy to my couch and pulled her feet up. “What was your family like?”

I joined her on the couch. She listened with rapt attention as I open-booked my life for her. I could tell her anything—judgment free. I told her about Tenttown. I told her how my father would tie me up while he beat my mother. I showed her the rope-burn scars. I told her how I was always getting kicked out of school for fighting. When she asked if I had any regrets, I told her that I wished I had killed my father before his liver beat me to it.

“Really? You wouldn’t feel guilty killing your own father?”

“The bastard deserved it. I deserved the chance to kill him myself. His liver robbed me of my vengeance. It was my only chance to see the world as a fair place.”

She wouldn’t let it drop. She kept asking questions about my father and how I could possibly kill him, my own flesh and blood. He beat my mother. I didn’t know how much plainer I could make it.