Maggie laid into me the instant the door closed. “Dammit, Juno. I had it under control. What were you thinking?” I circled around to the side of the house as Maggie kept jawing. “Don't forget that I'm the cop.” I ignored her and picked my way into the overgrown jungle that clung to the side of the house. “Where are you going?”
“I'll be right back.” I got soaked by large drops of water that shook loose from the vines above as I rustled my way alongside the house, breaking through any vines that tried to hold me back. I made it to the back patio and looked at the windows, trying to guess which one was hers. She made it easy by flicking her light on and off. Smart girl. I crept up to her window and attempted a one-handed chin-up, winding up on my ass. I found a patio chair and pulled it over to the window then stepped up, reached my hand through the bars, and rapped lightly on the glass.
Raj's little sister opened the window with the biggest brace-faced smile I'd ever seen. She handed me a vid then put her finger to her mouth and shushed.
SIXTEEN
My phone rang: Ian.
Maggie paused the vid we got from Raj's sister, and Margarita Juarez's bobbing head stopped in fellating freeze-frame.
“Yeah,” I said.
A holographic Ian overlaid the scene, his appearance blocking the blowing. “Hey, boy-o, it's time for your report.”
My nerves hummed. I'd already planned out what I would tell him, but that didn't stop a surge of doubt from suddenly running through me. Maybe I was forgetting something. Maybe I'd say the wrong thing. “Maggie interviewed Inez Shenko. Remember her?”
“Yeah. Did you go with her?”
“Of course I did. Inez told her about the affair between Adela's boyfriend and her mother.”
He said, “Damn.” He sounded frustrated, yet his holo kept up its brainless grinning. Most of the time these canned phone holos were a real nuisance, always looking happier than you'd ever seen that person look in real life, but with Holo-Ian it was totally eerie, him standing there with that plastered-on smile. “Anything else?” he asked, sounding like he was asking through clenched teeth.
“Yeah. After Shenko, she went to visit Adela's boyfriend, Raj, but Maggie didn't get shit out of him. He denied the affair, and the parents threatened to lawyer up. Still, you might want to talk to him. He looked a little shaky when Maggie started pushing him.”
I waited for his reaction, my ears tuned to his mood, trying to pick up any sign that he was getting suspicious.
“Okay. Is that it?” he said.
There was no hint of suspicion in his voice. I had him. I was getting nervous for nothing. It was time I nudged him. I braced for the worst as I upped the ante. “Yeah, but it might help if you told me why you're covering for the kid. It's hard to steer the questioning down a safe road when I don't know where the cliffs are.”
I held my breath as Holo-Ian took a long time answering. “Not over the phone, boy-o. Come to Roby's.”
“Will do.”
Holo-Ian vanished, leaving us staring at Margarita taking a mouthful of Raj Gupta.
Maggie started the vid again. “Do you thing it's wise to meet with him again?”
“I think so. Nothing's changed since last night.”
“Except we interviewed Inez and, and lover boy.” Maggie threw a disgusted gesture at the vid.
“So?”
“Ian covered for Raj once before, so who do you think Raj is going to run to now that he's feeling the heat?”
“So what if he does? I just told Ian you interviewed him.”
“But they might get to talking, and Raj might tell him about how he saw you at Yuri's.”
“I was just thinking about that,” I said. “Let's say Raj does tell him I was at Yuri's. If Ian confronts me on it, I'll just admit it. I'll tell Ian I was there, that I was observing the interview.”
Maggie shook her head. “But Yuri and Ian have surely talked since then. Yuri must've told Ian that I interviewed him alone.”
“Right, so I'll say that I was observing the interview without Yuri's knowledge. I was watching from the kitchen, and I got bored for a minute and wandered into that room with all the vid equipment.”
“Why would you watch in secret? Why not interview him with me, like we did Inez and Raj?”
I need a drink. Things were getting too complicated. I took a deep breath and set my brain to concentrating on the problem. I dug deep, looking for that perfect lie. I waded through all my years of being the right hand to the greatest manipulator in KOP history. All those years of cover-ups and backroom politicking…
“Got it,” I said. “Lieutenant Rusedski scolded you already for inviting me to the barge, right?”
“Yep. And thanks for that, by the way.”
“No problem. But you would've gotten into more trouble if you had let me sit in on Yuri's interview, right? You made me hide out because you knew that Yuri would talk to Ian, and you were afraid that when Ian found out I was there, he'd tattle to the KOP brass about you bringing a disgraced cop into official police business, and that was after you'd been warned. It'd put your promotion in jeopardy.”
Maggie nodded agreement. “And I let you attend the interview of Inez Shenko because…?”
I grinned as the pieces fell into place. “Because you had no reason to believe Ian would find out about it. Inez isn't mixed up in any of this. She was hardly going to go call Ian.”
Maggie leaped ahead of me. “And I let you attend Raj's interview because he'd already seen you at Yuri's. What harm would there be in letting him see you again?”
“Right.” I ran through the pile of lies in my mind, looking for contradictions and finding none. “Piece of cake.”
“And what if Raj finds out that his sister gave this vid to us? You didn't tell Ian about that.”
“That would be a problem,” I agreed.
“You need to cut ties with Ian.”
I nodded like I was thinking it over, but I'd already decided to go. Ian was starting to trust me, and I was already running scripts through my head, things to say, ways to ask questions without sounding like a snoop. If we were going to bring him and his cabal down, we'd have to take some risks.
Plus I wanted to keep Ian's money flowing into my pocket. I had a spine to pay for.
The vid was still running, and Raj was now jackhammering Adela's mother from behind. Raj was wearing a loincloth, which was just plain silly since it didn't cover anything, like trying to cover the flagpole with the flag. I was certain they were on the Juarez's bed. I recognized the bedding, the wallpaper, the nightstand, all looking better in their pre-lase-whipped state. Raj and Margarita had some guts doing this in her bedroom. What if Hector came home? Or Adela?
We refocused on the vid. We wanted to know who was working the camera, zooming it in and out, panning left and right. He'd talk from time to time, saying things like, “Oh, that's hot,” and “That's right, suck it.” We kept watching, scene after scene, looking for that one glimpse of the man.
Maggie kept the vid rolling. Raj and Margarita cycled through positions like they were Kama Sutra obsessed. Margarita was getting more adventurous with each session. The first few sessions featured a nervous and deliberate Margarita Juarez. But then, by the time they'd had a dozen-odd sessions in the bag, she'd completely transformed herself from a shrinking violet into a Venus flytrap. Instead of just lying there like she was at the beginning, she was now ordering the loincloth-clad Raj around, a greedy glutton with an unquenchable appetite for his young flesh. Raj, on the other hand, had the endurance of a marathoner. The kid could go forever before letting loose, and even then, his loincloth would only drop to half mast for a couple minutes before he was ready to run it back up for another go round.
Maggie and I were long past the discomfort of watching the erotic material in each other's presence and had now entered a phase of total pornographic overload. We had to keep it rolling, though. We needed to know who
