Seven
I flew through holo-Mota, diving for the river, my shades gripped in my left. My hands punctured the water, next came a slap to the top of my head, and then I was under. I plunged deep below the surface, my ears feeling the pressure. I kicked deeper, waiting for the mad spark to ignite inside me, hoping it would come so I could end this miserable existence.
No such luck.
It was cold down here. My ears hurt and so did my strained lungs. Not so rapturous after all.
I needed oxygen. Aiming straight up, I flutter-kicked for the surface. Breaking through, I sucked air into my lungs. I couldn’t believe this shit. Damn river spat me out. Bitch didn’t like the taste of me.
I looked up. Maggie was there, looking down at me, her expression unreadable from this distance. She gave me a wave. Josephs was there, too, flipping me a double bird.
Holo-Mota reappeared as Maggie must’ve called him back. She’d hung up with him as soon as he mentioned my name. From there, things had gone quick, her saying I better get out of here, Josephs saying they couldn’t just let me walk away with all these cops wandering the pier, and me solving the problem by swanning overboard.
Soon they’d be telling Mota how they’d just tried but couldn’t find me. I must’ve already left the scene. No, they didn’t know where I’d gone. Now what was this tip all about?
I scanned the ship’s rails. I couldn’t see anybody but Maggie and Josephs. Nobody else had seen me. I quietly breaststroked away, aiming for a set of docks just downriver.
Water dripped from my clothes, forming a puddle on the tile floor. I shivered under the blasting aircon. From behind a long row of glass cases, a sharp-eyed woman stared at me with one brow cocked in puzzlement.
I held out my shades, drops of river water falling onto the glass counter. “Sorry.” I tried to wipe off the water, but wound up smearing it around. Under the glass, rows and rows of earrings and necklaces glinted through the resulting blur.
I unfolded my sunglasses so she could see how one stem had bent when I hit the water. Through chattering teeth, I asked, “Can you fix this?”
I lay on the bed, wearing a brand-new set of cheap whites that I’d bought with some soggy pesos. My good- as-new shades covered my eyes.
Maria sat in the sex swing, her bare feet on the floor, her toenails painted pink to match her bra, which peeked out from under a tit-hugger top. My wet clothes hung from the cables that supported the sex swing. So did my drying pesos, two dozen bills clipped on like tiny flags, each held in place by a nipple clamp posing as a clothespin.
We didn’t speak. She seemed to sense I wasn’t in a conversational mood. My mind was grinding and churning, processing and plotting. Mota had overplayed his hand. The guy was a suit, and suits had no business poking around in a murder investigation. Not when they worked in PR. Shoving his weight around with Maggie and Josephs was an overreach. They didn’t report to him.
I never doubted Maggie and Josephs would let me go. Tense as things were between Maggie and me, we had a history. And Josephs, he was an everyday cop, and everyday cops had a long tradition of anti-suit sentiment. He’d let me go on principle. The SOB didn’t like being told what to do.
But Mota would keep pushing. He was already trumping up a bullshit tip to turn KOP against me and my boys. KOP was too fractured for his plan to work in full, but he didn’t need complete success. Shit, all he needed was a single kiss-ass. Just one trigger-happy uniform with designs on currying suit favor and I was fucked.
Whether Mota killed Froelich or not, he had to be corralled. And fast.
But he hadn’t responded to my threats. Or a pair of broken legs.
I knew what I had to do. It was the only way to get the mission back on track. There was no other way to be sure my new protection business would succeed.
The competition had to be eliminated.
I had to kill him.
I tried to tell myself I shouldn’t feel guilty. I ran tired, old rationalizations through my head. Things like, It’s his own fault for not backing down. Or, Anybody stupid enough to buck me isn’t worth the air he breathes. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. You fuck with a monitor, you get an assful of teeth.
I had a million of them, but none helped, the familiar pit of guilt-tinged self-loathing making my stomach ache.
I had to kill him.
There it was.
“You met my sister yet?” asked Maria, her lashes gunked up with so much mascara that her lids and upper cheeks were dotted with semicircles of mascara tracks. I couldn’t see the bruise I’d given her. Whether it had faded or had just been covered by a few coats of foundation, I couldn’t tell.
“No.”
“She works here. She’s got a pretty face. She’s gonna do good at this.”
“How old is she?”
“Fifteen, but she looks older. Most people think she’s seventeen or eighteen. I’ve been saving up to get that doctor I was telling you about to do some work on her.”
“I thought you said she was pretty.”
“She is. She’ll get regular business, but we have to think long-term. Most of these girls don’t think like that. They spend their money as fast as they earn it. They never think about what’s going to happen when their tits start sagging. What are they going to do then?”
Somebody less jaded would’ve told her to get her sister the hell out of here. The girl was only fifteen. It wasn’t too late to get her back in school.
Instead, I told Maria her sister was lucky to have her looking out for her.
“She’s a smart kid. Someday we’re going to start our own house. If we’re really good about saving our money, we can do it in ten years or so.”
“You think a new set of tits will earn her that much?”
“It’s not just the tits. She’s gonna get some work down below, too.”
“What kind of work?”
“This doctor can insert motors and stuff down there so she can give her johns a ride they won’t forget.”
“Motors?” I asked, disbelieving.
“Not that you can see. They’re all internal, small little things. But they’re powerful as hell. I mean they’ll vibrate your wang off. And there’s other settings, too.” She counted fingers. “There’s roll, and jerk, and squeeze, and twist. Oh, and they lubricate.”
My jaw was on my chest. Robo-fucking-snatches? “Guys dig that shit?”
She nodded emphatically, her teased hair bowing up and down like a tree in a windstorm. “I know a girl over at the Red Room who got the procedure. She has to turn ’em away. Now I admit there’s some who aren’t into it. She says she gets johns who come in for a curiosity fuck and never come back, but she also says there’s tons more who won’t do regular girls anymore. She has a waiting list.”
“How long have these things been around?”
“Not long. Offworlders have had ’em for years. I don’t even know how long. But they’re new on Lagarto. As far as I know, that offworld doctor was the first to offer the procedure down here.”
“Does Chicho have any girls who have one?”
“Why? You wanna try it out?”
Surprised at the question, I stuttered a no.
She cocked her head to one side like she was confused by my reaction. “I think I’m starting to get you.”
“You are?”
“You’re one of those sentimental types, aren’t you? You can’t separate sex from love. Big and bad on the outside, but soft and squishy on the inside.”
Soft and squishy? Try twisted and tortured.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. I think it’s sweet, really.”
