“Sounds good. How much?”
Maggie showed me the numbers.
I was surprised at how low the numbers were. “That's cheaper than I thought it'd be.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. I thought it'd be at least twice that.”
Maggie looked at me quizzically until it dawned on her. “The prices are in offworld dollars, Juno.”
“Holy shit.” I tried to do the math, multiply by two hundred and add ten percent… “Holy shit, Maggie. You can't afford that.”
“My mother can.”
I shook my head. Maggie and her mother butted heads all the time. First and foremost on the list was the fact that Mrs. Orzo didn't like her daughter being a cop. “You hate that woman.”
“Not entirely. You have a better idea?”
I stole a look at my watch. It was almost midnight. Time to meet Ian at Roby's. “Yeah,” I said.
ELEVEN
NOVEMBER 32, 2788
Roby's gladiator-bouncer recognized me and opened the door as I approached. Just inside, a waitress offered me a towel, which I declined. I was liable to break into a nervous sweat at any minute, and my rain-soaked face and hair would do a nice job masking it.
Into the main room, the first thing that hit me was the drumming, slow and methodical. Over the beat, a violin whined in a spooky key. The tables were jam-packed, and people were standing along the walls, all of them watching the stage show that featured a man in a hooded black robe wielding a lase-bladed axe. Fucking A. There's the murder weapon, right there. That or one like it. On the chopping block was a lamb, held down by a pair of blood-spattered girls wearing virginal white. The drumming was getting more insistent as the executioner circled the lamb. Every couple steps, he'd stop and wave the axe back and forth over the lamb, letting the laser light from the axe's edge tint the lamb's wool bloodred. I ran my eyes over the audience, the whole lot of them looking like they were about to cream their pants. What a bunch of crap. My guess was the “executioner” was really just the local butcher, and the girls were likely his daughters. The way I saw it, the whole family was probably making a fortune dressing up to do their everyday job in front of a bunch of sick-fuck offworlders.
I made for the side room. My stomach felt toxic. That kid, Raj, he'd seen me at the cameraman's. If he'd talked to Yuri and said he'd seen me, Yuri would've gone to Ian and told him that a cop with a bandaged hand was snooping through his vids. And if that was the case, the gig was up. Ian would know I was screwing him, taking his money and going double-agent on him, reporting everything I knew to Maggie. This time, there would be little reason to believe that Ian would stop at my fingers.
I took the measure of the back room-cops all over the damn place, with a few offworlders mixed in. Horst was there, our mystery offworlder, sitting with Liz at the autopsy table, talking to her over a holo-cadaver. I looked Horst over, his slicked back hair, his porcelain skin, searching for signs of the serial killer within. Liz spotted me and winked. I nodded in her direction then crossed the room, looking for Ian. I found him with Hoshi in a secluded booth. Upon seeing me approach, Ian put up a finger, telling me to give him a minute.
I stopped and looked around, trying to find a spot to wait, and saw Liz get up out of her seat and pull out a chair for me. She was dressed more conservatively tonight, black heels, black hose, black skirt, and a white top. I didn't move. She waved her hand, gesturing for me to come over. I shook my head and cocked it in Ian's direction, letting her know I was waiting. She pointed emphatically at the chair she'd prepared for me, and I suddenly became very compliant.
I weaved through the tables, mentally making note of every cop face I saw. There was Froelich, Kripsen, Deluski, Yang, Wu, Lumbela… I catalogued every one of them, remembering which ones I'd seen here the last time. I reached Liz's table and sat down in the seat she'd prepared for me. I was sitting to Liz's right, across from the offworlder.
He looked at me across the midsection of the bisected holo-cadaver. “Good to see you, Mr. Mozambe,” he said.
I gave him a half smile in response.
“I understand you and Ian have come to an arrangement.”
“That's right.”
“I'm glad to hear it. He says you could be useful.”
I half smiled again, the two half smiles equaling far less than a whole one. He stared at me, waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. Liz moved uncomfortably in her seat.
What the-? The holo-cadaver moved. I jumped back, almost falling over in my chair. Horst was laughing, as were the customers at the neighboring tables. The cadaver was pulling the stitches out of its chest. Its eyes were still closed, and it looked plenty dead except its hands were pulling the stitching free in one long strand. I moved from startled to embarrassed to pissed, only stopping on embarrassed for a fraction of a second. I glared at Horst as the people at the nearby tables, having had their fun at my expense, returned to their conversations. Horst was still laughing, loud bellowing laughs that were amplified far beyond anything natural. The corpse pulled its ribs wide like doors to a cupboard and started playing show-and-tell with its organs.
I looked at Liz, who had a be-a-sport expression on her face. I tried out a full smile to show I had recovered, but it probably came out more like a full grimace.
I tried to picture Horst as the barge serial. Seeing him gleefully grinning at me, across this flayed corpse, his skin a full shade paler than the cadaver's, with hair blacker than oil, and eyes blacker still
… It wasn't hard to imagine, not at all.
The waitress arrived with a plate of spit-roasted 'guana, and the holo-corpse disappeared. She set the plate in front of Horst on the cold steel table.
“Ah, now that looks delicious,” he said as he waved the steaming scent in toward his nose. He peered at me through the steam and must've caught some steam of a different kind coming off my face. “You're not upset are you? It was just a joke.” He stabbed his fork into the 'guana's flank and twirled a piece of meat free. He dipped it into the spiced juices and offered it to me.
I shook my head.
He dipped again before putting it in his mouth. “I love Lagartan food. You can't get anything like it in space. You can get the same spices, and you can find iguana meat in the specialty stores, but it's never the same. I'm always raving about the food, but you bring somebody to a Lagartan restaurant up there, and they think you're crazy. Half of them can't stomach the idea of eating reptile. And the half who can are repulsed by the sight of these creatures. They don't look like Earth iguanas, they say. Sure, there are a few adventurous ones who are willing to take a taste, but most of them say it's nothing special. I try to tell them it's different down here. It's so fresh. I bet this iguana was alive only an hour ago. Up there, your meat probably gets frozen and unfrozen two or three times before you ever get to stick a fork in it.”
I nodded like I cared. Most offworlders were repulsed by our cooking. They'd see a 'guana on a plate with the head still on, and they'd get all queasy. Horst was one of the rare ones who'd fallen in love with the food. Even then, he'd probably only done so because he got to eat in all the nice restaurants where they made an effort to make the cuisine offworld-compatible. The average Lagartan survived on an unappealing diet of un-spiced fat and gristle over rice.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and Hoshi leaned in, telling me Ian was ready for me.
I got up without another word. Liz smiled at me and Horst nodded as he pulled a piece of bread apart for dipping.
I headed for Ian's table. Already, I could feel my face flushing with nervousness. Get a grip! I took deep breaths through my nose as I reached the booth and dropped into Hoshi's vacated seat. “She went to see the cameraman,” I said.
“So I heard.” Ian had ice in his voice.
I leaned forward, my hands on the table. “She didn't get anything out of him, but the guy's a miserable liar.
