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?”
