“Did he talk about anything else?”
“No, just that he had a good time.”
“I’m sure he did. Can we look at the room, Rose?”
“Of course. Mohamed, show them the way, will you?”
Mohamed left us alone in Kimi’s room. The bed was in the center, encircled by candles on pedestals. Wax- drip stalagmites grew up from the floor beneath. Sunlight poured through wide windows that opened onto neighboring rooftops. The walls and ceiling were solid mirror all around. Blinding sunspots reflected around the room.
“What was all that about?” Maggie’s tone was accusatory.
I turned to look at her. She stood with her hands on her hips. Her eyes were squinted almost shut, and her jaw was clenched in defiance.
“All what?” I knew what she meant but asked anyway.
“Who’s Jessie?”
“She’s a friend of my wife’s.”
“What kind of friend? Who is she?”
I thought about it and decided to come clean. I must’ve felt guilty about laughing at her in the alley. “Jessie Khalil.”
“The reporter? You’re going to cover this up?”
“Who said anything about a cover-up? I’ll just get Jessie to make sure the news reports leave the Lotus out of it. They’ll say, ‘Lieutenant Dmitri Vlotsky murdered in an alley on the West Side.’ No mention of the Lotus.”
“Why would you want to protect that woman? It’s disgusting what she does here. Did you see Kimi? She’s just a kid.”
“We’re here for one reason only: to work a homicide. That’s it. Rose is a businesswoman. She wasn’t going to talk to us without getting something for it. It’s a business transaction-nothing more, nothing less.”
“And you think that’s okay? She exploits those girls’ bodies for money.”
“What would you have done?”
“I would have arrested Rose and seized her books to get the list of johns. Then I would have talked to Kimi.”
“You think Kimi would talk to you without Rose’s say-so?”
“Hey, I know she’d be scared, but separate her from that witch, and I think she’d be thankful.”
“You don’t know that. The Lotus is first-rate. Rose takes good care of her girls. They’re all very loyal to her. Not everybody grows up rich like you. These girls have limited options.”
“That’s bullshit, Juno. The fact that they’re poor makes what Rose does to them worse. She takes advantage of their vulnerability.”
“Of course she takes advantage of them. What you don’t understand is that being taken advantage of and eating is better than going hungry with your virginity intact. And what about the vic’s family? You think they want people to know their son frequented whorehouses?” With that I climbed out the window, onto the roof.
Maggie followed, “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. The fire escape on the other side goes down to the alley. Our killer could have climbed up here to watch through the window.” I crossed the roof, swimming through the sticky-wet air. Insects dashed over the roof’s sunny spots, eating mold out of cracks and crevices while geckos sat still, clinging to the shaded portions of the walls, too hot to chase potential prey.
My scalp itched sweat; my skin itched mosquito bites. I wandered around, looking for the primo peeping position. This was it. It had a view of four windows and the alley, but more important, the eaves of a neighboring roof hung overhead-perfect for keeping in the night shadows.
I noticed a block of wood plugging a hole in the wall. I pulled the block out, exposing a rumpled magazine cover. Skin mags. I took one out and flipped through the pages-hard-core bondage. The edges were mildewed, and half the pages were spotted with fuzzy mold. When my hand started shaking, I gave the mag to Maggie.
Rookie Detective Maggie Orzo tried to put it together. “The killer hangs out here. He reads his magazines and watches through the windows. He sees Kimi with Lieutenant Vlotsky and something snaps. He goes down to the alley, waits for Vlotsky, and kills him. Maybe he’s fixated on Kimi. He wants to protect her.”
Not bad. It fitted.
I went to the fire escape and looked down at the alley. Med-techs were bagging Vlotsky’s corpse.
Maggie called me over. “Hey, isn’t this a strange place for a puddle?” She stood where I had left her and pointed to a puddle at her feet. I noticed her chic shoes.
“What’s so strange about that?”
She pointed to the overhang above. “Can’t be rainwater.”
Good call, I thought to myself. She was smart-just didn’t know shit.
When I came over, she moved out of the way. I got down on my hands and knees, careful not to burn my hands on the tarred roof. Even in the shade, it’d get plenty hot in the middle of the day. I took a long whiff. “Urine.”
“Urine?”
“Yeah, urine.” Didn’t fit. Not right, not right. The heat dizzied me.
Maggie thought aloud. “Our killer had to go, so he did it on the wall. It pooled up here and the wall dried.”
I was shaking my head. “No. He comes here a lot. This is his spot. I don’t care how crazy he is; nobody soils their own nest.”
“He was afraid of being seen. He didn’t want to come out of the shadows.”
Perspiration stung my eyes. No. He could’ve pissed over the wall, down to the alley-check first, nobody there, let it rip. Not right, no, no. It clicked. Yes? Yes! “We have a witness,” I said.
FOUR
I got Maggie to tear a page out of one of the mags-carefully. We didn’t want him to know there was a page missing. I would have done it myself if I could have kept my hand steady. We bagged the page, returned the mags to the wall, and shoved the block of wood back in place.
I explained my witness theory to her: The killer stayed in the alley the whole time, never going up to the roof. The killer didn’t realize that there was a peeper up there who got off on watching. The peeper probably hung out on the roof all the time, flipping through his stroke books and catching the action through the windows. The peeper heard a commotion in the alley when Lieutenant Vlotsky came out and started getting sliced. He looked down to the alley and saw the killer stabbing away at Vlotsky. The peeper watched as the killer carved up Vlotsky’s face and pocketed the lips. The peeper was scared. So scared he peed himself. When the killer took off, the peeper waited to make sure the killer was gone, then soggy-pants split.
We shared a cab to the station. The driver had put some work into this car. It was white, not one of the manufacturer’s three colors. The thing was tricked out from fender to fender, chrome hubs, flaming racing stripes, and neon-trimmed windows. The overall effect was trashy. Cab by day, cruiser by night. Lagartan car owners would spend tons of time personalizing their vehicles. It was the only way to get some status out of owning a car. Who would want a car that looked exactly like every other car?
Maggie held the baggie with the skin mag page in her hand. She set it on her lap, three leather-hooded individuals looking up at her from the page. She self-consciously turned the page over to a pic of a hog-tied woman at the feet of a man armed with a whip and a hard-on. Maggie tucked the page between her leg and the car door, safely out of sight.
I looked out the window. Shanty homes rolled by in a ramshackle blur. Opium-ravaged hopheads slept on the sidewalks, looking like piles of dirty laundry.
I saw an offworlder on a corner trying to flag down our cab. She was fair skinned with flowing blonde locks that morphed into her dress. I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I would’ve mistaken her for a goddess if it wasn’t for the sweat stains. Our driver started to pull over. Cabbies were known to kick locals out of
