“Since a few riot cops got calls from their families and abandoned their posts to protect their homes. Duty first. Want me to call Dispatch, see if I can get a message to them?”
“Yeah. Have them call us first chance they get.”
He placed the call, and a hazy KOP holo-logo appeared in the mist. For an investigation like this, the person I really needed was Maggie. Kripsen and Lumbela were piss-poor substitutes.
A woman came out of the Maze, an offworld woman, full lips, man-eater eyes, her hair a fountain of brown ringlets that splashed over her shoulders in a rippling cascade. She stood under the sign, cobalt-blue neon bathing her fair skin. She looked up into the mist, a blue halo forming around her face. I hadn’t seen her inside. Must’ve been on the dance floor.
I paid no attention to what Deluski was saying to Dispatch. My eyes were riveted. There was something familiar about this woman.
She came my way, tight pants, loose shirt, her eyes meeting mine. She winked like she knew me.
And I knew her. But from where?
She stepped past me, her dewy hair sparkling in the beam of a streetlight.
It hit me. The hair. That same abundant flood of curls streaming across Mota’s pillow. I hadn’t realized she was an offworlder at the time. Too dark. How she knew me I didn’t know. She was totally asleep, her mouth hanging wide open when I had her and Mota in my sights.
Deluski hung up, the KOP logo blinking out of existence. “That didn’t sound right.”
“What?” I asked absently, my mind weighing what was the better move. Confront her or follow her?
“According to Eddie at Dispatch, Kripsen and Lumbela just got pulled off the riot. They were sent to the Cellars.”
She crossed the street. I started walking.
Deluski followed. “Did you hear me? They were sent to the Cellars.”
She turned left at the end of the block. I hastened my pace.
“Boss?”
I crossed the street and ran up to the corner. I peeked around just in time to see her get into a cab. Shit.
“Who is she?” asked Deluski.
I waved my one and a half arms in an effort to hail a ride. No fucking cabs. I looked to my left and already her taxi was lost in a swarm of taillights. I dropped my arms. Fuck.
“Who is she?” repeated Deluski.
“Mota’s girlfriend.”
“Seriously? I thought he was gay. You think she turned him straight?”
I rubbed my jaw. I couldn’t pin Mota down. The bastard kept finding new ways to surprise me. Screwing one of my boys. Siccing a pair of Yepala cops on me. And now an offworld squeeze.
“Did you hear what I said about Kripsen and Lumbela?”
A fly plunked me in the forehead. Damn things were pissing me off.
“Boss?”
“Yes, dammit. I heard you. They got routed to the Cellars.”
“Does that sound right to you? Who gives a shit about the Cellars? Nobody lives in there. No businesses either.”
“Did Dispatch give a reason?”
“Eddie said vandals were spotted in the area.”
“Nothing strange about that. They get a call from a citizen, they have to send somebody.”
“Not when there’s a riot going.”
Again, a fly kamikazeed me. Dammit! I swatted at the little shit, once, twice. A cab pulled over. “Fucking move on!” I shouted at the driver.
The driver leaned her head out the window. “Why did you wave me down?”
“I was swatting at a fly.”
She called me an asshole and pulled away. Unbelievable.
“Maybe the riot is over,” I said.
“That’s just it. Eddie said Villa Nueva’s still dark. The riot’s in full swing. It’s a bad one too.”
Deluski had a point. Why peel a pair of officers off a riot when you could send somebody else?
“Think it’s a setup?”
Dread sprouted in my gut. I could feel Mota’s hand behind this. I could feel it, his fingers itching at my spine.
Fifteen
Our taxi dropped us at the edge of the darkness. The driver refused to go any farther. Said she couldn’t take chances like that.
I took off my shades, stuffed them in a pocket. “You ready?”
Deluski pulled his piece. “Let’s do it.”
I drew my weapon, and we ran into the blackout, Deluski in the lead. He had the flashlight we’d bought off the driver. I’d go without. My hand was already full.
I couldn’t lose Kripsen and Lumbela. I’d already lost two men. No more.
No fucking more.
The Cellars were ten, maybe twelve blocks away. The street was empty. Deserted. I stayed close on Deluski’s tail for the first block, but my lungs were far from equal to his. “Slow down,” I wheezed at his back. He complied, dropping his speed from young buck to old fuck.
I kept my eyes aimed at the ground and followed the bobbing beam of his flashlight, getting in the rhythm when he stopped short. I smacked into him, my face bouncing off his shoulder, the taste of blood in my mouth.
“Sorry.” He swept the flashlight beam left and right. “Don’t we have to turn here?”
We stood in the center of an intersection. He three-sixtied the beam, hitting all four corners: shoe store, fruit stand, rubble from a collapsed building, another fruit stand. I knew where I was. I’d been here a few nights ago, on my way to the Punta de Rio, the restaurant where I’d met Maggie. “Ahead another block, then left to the river.”
“Got it.” He was off.
I hustled to catch up, then settled back into the pace. Misting rain didn’t keep me cool, and sweat broke on my forehead, in my pits. We made the turn, our footfalls echoing in the silence like ticks of an old clock on a sleepless night.
Block after block, we approached the river, the nicer parts of Villa Nueva falling away behind us, brick and asphalt giving way to clumps of weeds and brush, the air heavy with the smell of wet mulch. This patch of urban jungle was once a bustling port, a buzzing, booming link of the supply chain from the long-gone brandy era.
Deluski’s flashlight flitted over the signs of neglect: glue jars huffed clean; used rubbers tossed from car windows; bottles and cans; cig butts and O pipes. We hurdled vines, dodged shrubs, stomped through knee-high grass, coming ever nearer to the Cellars.
Deluski slowed. He swept the flashlight beam across an angled plane of greenery. Starting from ground level, the plane sloped upward, rusted metal showing through in places. This was the roof, one side of a massive A-frame that sheltered a man-made inlet big enough to hold a barge.
We ran alongside, seeking a usable entrance. Deluski stopped to aim the flashlight at a pair of doors lying flush with the ground, his beam settling on a locked chain running through the door handles, the links knotted with roots and vines. This place was condemned a decade ago. A deathtrap. Supposed to be sealed up.
We moved on, passing two more properly chained entrances before reaching a pair of doors flapped upward, a bolt cutter lying on the ground. I could see the first steps of a long staircase that I knew tunneled into the earth, down, down, down to the Cellars, a series of cavernous rooms buried beneath the inlet.
We started our descent, my piece clutched tight, too tight, like I was trying to hold on to a slimy fish. A fly
