“You telling me he pays for you to bum around this place with no strings attached?”
Good question. I remembered the way Ang’s father talked to his wife, the way she dropped her head like a dog before its master. The man was a control freak.
Before Ang could answer, the bedroom door opened behind me, a teenage girl coming through, her hands fastening the last button of her purple hotel-uniform blouse, a pinned-on name badge over her right breast: Mira Grabowski. “Um, good morning,” she said, hands smoothing her hair, then her skirt, gold bracelets jingling on her wrists.
I turned back to Maggie just in time to see the disapproving look on her face. She had a low tolerance for girls like Mira, girls who got ahead by lying on their backs. Maggie dismissed the girl with her eyes and squared them back on Ang. “I asked you a question, Ang. Your father okay with you doping your life away?”
“I do whatever the fuck I want. He doesn’t own me.” The bravado was back; he was putting on a show for his girlfriend.
The girl walked past me to the center of the room. I told her, “We’re having a private conversation here.”
She rubbed the big-ass stone hanging off the gold chain around her neck, her gaze moving from person to person until she lingered on her boyfriend’s face. “I’m not going anywhere. Who are you people?” Mira to the rescue.
“Yeah,” said Ang, his voice gathering strength. “I’m done talking.”
I looked at Maggie, Deluski too. I wanted more answers, wanted to use my particular expertise to extract them. But not this kid. This kid was a Samusaka. Big-time money and big-time power. The kind of power that could crush a has-been cop like me.
Best to keep biting around the edges; take what’s offered and move on. Besides, when it came to unearthing the Samusakas’ family secrets, something told me we’d just begun to break ground.
Deluski pointed to his watch. If we were going to make it to Yepala today, we best get going. We headed for the door, Mira Grabowski following us to make sure we left. I heard her call to Ang just before the door closed us out. “Who the hell were they?”
I followed Maggie and Deluski to the elevator, and we silently rode down to the lobby. We went toward the exit, the girl behind the desk watching us pass. She looked an awful lot like the girl upstairs. I scanned the name badge. Dora Grabowski. Sisters.
On a whim, I let Maggie and Deluski go ahead and stopped to talk to her. “What can you tell me about Ang?”
“We don’t talk about our guests.”
I put on my earnest face, made my voice sound concerned. “You really want to protect him, knowing how he treats your sister?”
Her brows angled downward. “What are you talking about?”
“Hey, I don’t want to cause any trouble, but you know he shares her with his buddies, don’t you? She was doing Jose and that other one on the sofa when we walked in on them.” I really was a wicked son of a bitch.
She dropped her hands to the desk and shook her head. “I told her from the beginning he was no good.”
“Listen, I’d love nothing more than to get him out of her life. Is there anything a cop like me should know about him?”
She leaped at the chance. “He takes drugs.”
I sucked a loud breath through my teeth. “Not good enough. You gotta know a family like his can buy him out of small-time trouble like that. Got anything else?”
She fussed with her hair, pulling at the strands hanging by her ear. I glanced back at Maggie and Deluski, who waited by the door, wearing matching quit-fucking-around expressions.
I took another look at the girl, still pulling at her hair, her eyes staring off to nowhere.
Maggie and Deluski were right. This was a waste of time. I turned for the door.
She spoke before I could take a step. “How about blackmail?”
I froze. Fucking A. I winked in my partners’ direction before facing her. “I’m all ears.”
Twenty-two
I felt Josephs’s shoe bump my shin again. “Dammit, quit kicking me.”
“Don’t blame meee,” he slurred. “You shoulda got a bigger boat.”
“Put that bottle away already.”
“Fffuck you, Juno, you stooopid drunk. Like you’re one to talk.”
I wished I could roll the bastard overboard. The guy had a way of pissing me off like no other. I searched for relief in the black sky, in the few stars that had found a break in the clouds. It had been an hour since we’d seen any onshore lights, the captain’s calm piloting and occasional buoys the only signs we were going the right way.
“I still think he staged the break-in,” said Deluski.
Five hours on this boat and Ang Samusaka’s blackmail scheme still dominated the conversation. According to the hotel clerk, Ang had his father by the curlies, lording an incriminating vid over his head. The clerk had no idea what was on the vid, didn’t think her sister knew either, but whatever it was, it was enough for Ang to turn his father’s wallet into a help-yourself buffet.
Deluski’s theory went like this: Kid and his dad were on the outs for one reason or another, kid decides to rifle his father’s things, finds an incriminating vid of some sort, gets walked in on by the housekeeper, makes up a bogus burglary story to cover up the mess he’s made of his father’s study. Six days later, Ang moves into the hotel.
Maggie’s voice came out of the dark. “Still doesn’t explain why he raided his brother’s room.”
“He was trying to throw his father off, to make it look like somebody really broke in.”
“But if he wanted to make it look like somebody really broke in, wouldn’t he have busted a window or something?”
“I didn’t say he was smart.”
The hollow ping of a glass bottle sounded off the boat’s hull. The bottle clanged around a bit before rolling down to the boat’s center. By the sound of it, Josephs had finished the thing off. I leaned forward. “You still with us, Josephs?”
No response. Finally passed out, thank the stars. I should’ve left his ass on the pier as soon as I saw him buy that bottle. Dumbass wanted to pass it around, like we were going to party our way to Yepala.
Deluski pushed Josephs’s knee with his shoe. “Remind me why we brought him along, Maggie?”
“He told me he wanted to stay involved.” I could hear the shrug in her voice.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. The boat captain pointed to a cluster of lights up ahead. Yepala.
After jumping ashore to join Maggie and Deluski, I stretched a sore back. Long fucking trip. I checked the time: late afternoon, almost true night.
The charter boat captain aimed a pole at Josephs’s slumped form. “What am I supposed to do with your friend?” Josephs’s conked head hung straight back, mouth open like he wanted to catch raindrops. One hand was draped overboard, a couple fingers dipped in the water.
“Let him sleep it off. If he wakes up, tell him to stay on board. You make it real clear, he goes to a bar we’ll ditch his ass.”
The captain used the pole to push off and revved the motor, the boat powering toward a collection of pilings jutting from the water where he’d tie up and wait for our return.
I took the lead up a narrow trail through a tangle of jungle, keeping to the boards embedded in the mud. Dim lights were strung overhead, and the air was ripe with damp peat. Fronds brushed my arms. Leaves dragged over my hair. I lifted a shoe, pinned a thorny shoot to the ground, and waited for Maggie and Deluski to pass before forging forward.
The jungle opened onto the street. Yepala unfolded on either side, squat buildings facing a rutted road. A
