Kop (33 page)

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.”

T
HE
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.