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.”
