the stars, his gaze quiet and peaceful, not shellshocked like the rest of ours. He hadn’t seen what we’d seen. A goddamned freak show. The kind of shit nightmares were made of.
The captain turned the boat into a canal. A nightclub floated to the right, the crowd overflowing onto a pontoon dock, suits and dresses, cocktails and party voices.
“He has to be stopped.” She was repeating herself. Saying it over and over and over.
“I know.” The same empty response.
“KOP has no jurisdiction.”
“I know.”
“I can go to the governor. See if I can convince him to send the army in to raid that compound.”
“You can try.” But you know you’ll fail.
“If he refuses, I’ll go to the press and amp up the pressure.”
Which you know will simply spook the doctor into relocating. I waited for her to come to the same conclusion.
She shook her head. “There has to be a way to stop him.” Back to square one.
She knew the riddle had no legal solution. The doctor operated in General Z’s territory, meaning the clinic might as well be a million miles away, for all the authorities could do about it. Shit, the General regularly slaughtered entire villages and took the children as his soldiers. Gang rapes were a way of life up there. If the pols hadn’t found the will to do anything by now, they sure as hell weren’t going to start a full-scale invasion just because of a rogue doctor.
Yet she kept at the riddle, around and around, trying to solve the unsolvable. I had to admire her for it.
Deluski jumped up. “I got it!” He held out the phone for me.
“Got what?”
His grin was huge. Didn’t know the guy had that many teeth. “The lizard the killer turned into. I found it.”
I wasn’t in the mood. “Not this again.”
He put the phone in my face. “Fucking look at it already!”
I took the phone, studied the lizard’s pic. Charcoal skin. Red stripes. Wide mouth. “Could be.” I made to hand the phone back.
“Read the description, the part I marked.”
Christ. I held it so Maggie could see and navigated into the text, skipped over the species name-some kind of Latin shit-my eyes pausing on the common name: stripe-faced man-eater. I read the portion he’d highlighted, the text focusing on the lizard’s sexual habits. I took the information in, my smirk fading, my back straightening.
I soaked it up, let it mingle with the case facts, images gaining clarity. I read it a second time, read how the female attracts the male with those red stripes, stripes that get thicker and brighter during mating season. How the male stands on its hind legs, making himself look big, making himself look like good genetic stock. How they mate, the male inserting his genitalia, the female’s vagina closing around it, a vagina made of a bonelike material that pinches down until it severs the male genitalia. Severs it in its entirety. Only then, after the genitals are severed do the muscles relax to release his seed.
Holy shit.
Maggie pulled the phone from my fingers to read it again. “Oh my God.”
Deluski sat back down. “I told you I’d find it.”
Maggie had her face practically pressed into the display. “That steel trap thing he snapped onto your hand. You think the doctor installed another one inside him?”
Josephs perked up. “Inside where? What are you humps talking about?”
Franz Samusaka, Wu, and Froelich all had their dicks chopped.
“Somebody gonna answer me?”
Chopped during mating. Holy fuck.
I rolled over. Again. I scratched my ankles, my neck, my ears. Damn bugs chewed the hell out of me.
I couldn’t sleep. Again. Bad thoughts always came at night. Gave me a good reminder why I usually drank myself to sleep. Niki. How could she do that to me? I loved her. I trusted her.
The love was real. But I knew now the trust was an illusion. Our curse was too many secrets. Secrets that separated us like walls of glass that were so crystal clear that we could fool ourselves into believing we were in the same room all along.
I heard the now familiar sound of high heels clopping down the hall, heard the curtain slide open. Heard it close again. The sheet moved, somebody slipping under, a wave of perfume leaving no doubt who. She curled up next to me, warm skin pressed into my back, an arm worming its way under what was left of my right arm, sliding up my stomach, hand settling on my chest.
I looked at the window. Dark as ever. “What time is it?”
“Morning.”
I scratched my ear, the back of my neck.
“You okay?”
“Got eaten up last night.”
“Yepala?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“More.” I rolled over to face her. “Found too much. Listen to me, do not bring your sister to the offworld doctor.”
Her hand pulled away. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“He’s a monster.”
“I’m not going to work for Chicho the rest of my life. And neither will my sister. We’re going to start our own house, and the doctor is our ticket to better days.”
I couldn’t let her do it. I made the decision right then. Had to blurt it out quickly before I went back on it. “Take my business.”
“What?”
“The protection racket. Take it.”
She sat up. “Is this a joke?”
“Tell your sister to quit, and the two of you run the business.”
She flicked on the light. I squinted at the brightness, her image a blur of hair and rouge and lipstick. “I can’t run a protection racket.”
“Why not?”
“Women don’t run protection rackets.”
“They’re not bouncers either.”
“You think I can face down Captain Mota?”
“I’ll take care of him.”
“What about the next Captain Mota? If KOP or a street gang wants to move in, how am I going to stop them? Sic my fifteen-year-old sister on them?”
“Throw my name at them. You need me to show up, I’ll show up, flex my muscles, but the business is yours. You run it. You keep the money.”
The corners of her heavily painted lips lifted, the beginnings of a smile. “You serious?”
I went to the gate and rang the bell.
“Yes?” came a voice from a speaker.
“I’m here to talk to Hudson Samusaka.”
“That won’t be possible, sir. Your face is on file, and it’s on our no-entry list.”
I sneered into the lens. “He’ll see me. You tell him I had a nice talk with his son Ang. Couldn’t shut the kid up.”
No response. Good. Meant he was checking with his boss. I leaned against the gate and waited.
Worked better than a fucking key. The gate buzzed, the voice telling me Miss Paulina would meet me at the
