wouldn’t get away with what I’d done. I shoved the sap to the ground, where he had the smarts to stay.
Then I saw his kids. Two young boys, one already crying, the other about to. I hoped they’d learn the right lesson, that their father was courageous. Principled. But they were just as likely to grow up thinking their dad was a pussy. Knocked to the ground by a one-armed man and afraid to fight back.
That was the way of things on Lagarto.
I set the badge on the bar and stared at its shiny surface. Instead of sending a couple common thugs, Mota had sent cops to do me in. Yepala cops. I couldn’t make sense of it. If there was one thing this city had in abundance, it was thugs and dirty cops. Why outsource the job to YOP?
Unless they already had a relationship. Unless whatever Mota, Froelich, and Wu were into also involved those two cops. I remembered the night we’d broken Jimmy’s legs, how Wu and Froelich didn’t show because they were upriver at a monitor fight.
Or maybe they were doing business in Yepala. What kind of business, I could only guess.
The bartender returned with a phone. I called Maggie. No answer. I talked to her voice mail. “Hey, Maggie, it’s me. It’s Juno. We need to talk, okay?”
I set the phone on the bar, next to a doorknob that poked up like a mushroom.
What the fuck was I doing? That was what she was going to ask me. I was going to have to tell her all about the mission. It made so much sense a few days ago. Start with a small crew and work my way up. Soon I’d have all of KOP under my control. I’d done it once. I could do it again.
But that was before two of my crew got decapitated. Before I ordered Jimmy’s legs broken. Before I realized Mota was going to fight me to the end. Before I lost my hand.
Before I chased Maggie away.
Shit, and now I’d even injected myself into the nightmares of two teary-eyed kids.
A teen entered carrying a heavy washtub. He waddled forward, and with a clunk, set the washtub on the floor. He pulled off the tied-on plastic bag that served as a lid so the bartender could have a look. Clumped white mash soaked in a pool of clear liquid. I could smell it already, the familiar burn of shine climbing up my nostrils.
The bartender took a tin cup down from a shelf and used it to scoop up a sample, which she set in front of me. “Try this and tell me what you think. I don’t drink anymore.”
I tilted the cup up to my pinched lips and carefully sucked alcohol out from the mash. Shine blazed a path along my tongue and down my throat, the heat running all the way down to my stomach.
“Good,” I said, remembering a time when shine was all I could afford.
She had the teen drag the tub behind the bar while she got some money together.
I took another pull. Pure fire with metallic overtones. Tasted just like my gun.
The memory of it made me want to spit. Gun barrel on my tongue. Finger on the trigger. I’d almost done it. Almost. So what was keeping me from eating my piece right now? It seemed like a fine time. Before I paid for my drink.
But those cops had scared me on that dock. I was afraid of dying. That had to mean I wasn’t done, didn’t it?
I snatched the phone back up and tried Maggie again. Still no answer. Tried Josephs instead.
“Who is it?” came his gruff voice.
“It’s Juno. Maggie there?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Put her on.”
“You deaf? She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I spoke superslow, carefully enunciating each word. “Put… her… on.”
A beleaguered response came back. “Hold on.”
What was I going to say when she came on? I scrambled for something as the seconds ticked nervously by.
The connection went dead.
Shit. She hung up on me. Maggie had hung up on me. Shit. Shit. Shit. I slapped the phone down on the bar, sent the hanging wood door swinging on its ropes.
“Woman trouble?”
I sucked down the rest of my brandy. “Gonna need another one of these.”
I watched the amber liquid fill my glass. It’ll be okay, I told myself. Maggie will come around. Just needed a little more time.
And if she didn’t…
I couldn’t worry about that. Not now. I had to focus on the immediate. I imagined Mota with Wu, Froelich, and two Yepala cops, all of them standing around a stack of scratch.
I clutched my glass tight and took a hearty swig. Mota, you pretty-boy son of a bitch. What are you up to?
Fourteen
I’d lost the files-drowned in the river-but I remembered the name of Lizard-man’s first vic. Franz Samusaka. Died dickless with a tat on his cheek.
The taxi dropped me curbside. Actual curbs in this neighborhood. Sidewalks too. No foot-tramped paths of dirt running through walls of weedy growth. Here, the walls were man-made, brick and mortar with spirals of barbwire on top.
I rang the bell next to the gate. A voice came through the speaker. “Yes?”
“I’m here to talk to Samusaka.”
“Mister or Missus?”
“Whoever’s in.” I waved my stolen YOP badge for the cam.
The gate buzzed, and I pushed my way through. Floodlights lined the pristine walkway, colored tile with unbelievably bright white lines of grout running in between. Must be somebody’s job to scrub away the mold every day.
The grounds were large, walkways snaking off in various directions, leading to guesthouses or garden houses or bathhouses or whatever other kind of houses rich people invent for themselves. Straight ahead was the main house, a brandy-era mansion of austere stone and iron. Deluski said Samusaka was an oil man. The resurgence of the internal combustion engine had done wonders for the family bank account.
A housekeeper in a blue dress with a white apron met me at the door. “You’ll have to wait in the study. Mrs. Samusaka is entertaining guests. I’ll let her know you’re here.”
I followed the housekeeper down a long, broad hall with a gold chandelier overhead and marble slabs underfoot. Below the staircase, a door opened of its own accord, and she ushered me through.
Left alone, I wandered the small room, my shoes sinking into luxurious carpet. One wall was taken up with bookshelves stacked with leather-bound volumes, another with photos of oil pumps working the scorched dunes to our south.
A globe turned slowly on a desk. Lagarto’s bottom three-quarters were dominated by the color of toasted bread, mountains and valleys all the same dead-leaf brown. Oceans broke it up with sprawling, rippling splotches of aquamarine. The globe’s top was textured with a lush green that swayed as if in a breeze.
I reached a finger for the jungle, expecting to poke right through the hologram’s surface, but the globe was real, the ruffling jungles soft like felt. I traced the Koba River’s snaking path and my finger came away wet. Fucking magic, what offworld tech could do.
A woman appeared in the doorway. Black hair hung straight down to her shoulders. Stern eyes sat in deep sockets. A necklace draped from her neck, a diamond pendant hanging from a gold chain, her dress cut just low enough to give it proper room to sparkle.
“Mrs. Samusaka?”
“Yes. I’m Crystal Samusaka.”
“I’m Detective Mozambe with KOP. I was hoping we could talk.”
