“For the murder of Chicahua Coyotl,” I continued. “And the attempted murder of an Imperial Investigator.”
His grin faded a little. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Am I? You mean you didn’t kidnap Coyotl and then stab him to death?”
Pactonal looked around, his grin fading the rest of the way. A couple of his teammates were watching us, wondering what in the Lands of the Dead was going on.
“I’ve got a couple of colleagues going through your apartment,” I said. “I’m guessing they’re going to find the mask you wore when you attacked me. Was it the same mask you wore when you grabbed Coyotl?”
“Nothing illegal about owning a mask, Colhua.”
“Nothing illegal about owning a dagger, either. But when you put them together, it starts looking a little suspicious.”
He held his hands out, palms up. “That’s what you’ve got? That’s what you come here accusing me with?”
“That,” I said, “and a confession.”
“Not from me.”
“No—from your girlfriend. You know, the bar keeper? Tall girl, thin white scar? She liked you enough to mislead me, I guess, but not enough to go to prison for you.”
Pactonal’s nostrils flared but he didn’t say anything to dig himself in deeper. Too bad, I thought. But then, Malinche had done enough digging for both of them.
“You see,” I said, “I found out that Ichtaca wasn’t guilty of Coyotl’s murder after all. And I asked myself where I had gotten the information that made it seem like he was. Then I asked myself who had directed me to the person who gave me that information.
“I’m guessing Malinche’s former employer, the monitor parts guy, is a friend of yours. And that he told you I was looking for her. And that you saw it as an opportunity to make me think someone else kidnapped Coyotl.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pactonal said, looking like he wanted to mash my head against the wall.
“Of course you don’t,” I said. “You didn’t send me to The Thirsty Monkey, right? You didn’t ask Malinche to mention Ichtaca’s daughter, knowing I would ask about her and eventually put two and two together.
“But it wasn’t Ichtaca who seized Coyotl, was it? It was you. Malinche told me.”
“Whoever Malinche is,” said Pactonal.
“Right, whoever. Oh, and one other thing. In the course of that nasty business the other day, I must have scratched one of the guys who attacked me. Got some blood under my fingernails. Funny thing . . . when we tested it, it matched the data in your Sun League file.”
“Listen,” said Pactonal, “I don’t know what you’ve been drinking, but I’ve got a game to play.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and pulled a set of cuffs from my pouch.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Actually, I’ve been pretty thorough. I even checked the Eagles’ schedule. Sure enough, you were home when Coyotl was abducted, and you were home again when I was attacked in District Two.” It was my turn to smile. “I don’t think the judge will have much trouble with this one.”
By then, Ichtaca must have heard that something was happening in the locker room because he arrived in a hurry. As soon as he saw me, his gaze turned to stone. “What are you doing here?”
“My job,” I said. “Don’t count on Pactonal for tonight’s match.”
He looked at me. “Why not?” Then, to Pactonal: “Are you hurt? What in the gods’ names did you do?”
“Or the next match, either,” I said, causing Pactonal to glare at me too. “Or, for that matter, the rest of the season.”
Ichtaca didn’t get it. He looked to Pactonal, then back to me. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but His Excellence—”
“This is the kind of trouble even Xochipilli can’t wave away,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure of that.
Then I put the cuffs on Pactonal and led him out of the Arena, confident that I had my man.
But there was still a lot I didn’t know about Coyotl’s murder. For instance, the identity of the guy who had helped Pactonal kidnap Coyotl, and then attack me in the shadow of the chocolate factory.
And one other thing: why.
Chapter Nine
My mother, a woman who often saw potential where others couldn’t, had an expression: Even a blind gecko finds a mealworm once in a while.
You’d have thought that Aztlan, bereft of the great Coyotl, had little chance to beat a powerhouse like Yautepec. With Pactonal out of the picture as well, you’d have pegged Aztlan’s odds at something approaching zero.
But contrary to what any reasonable person would have expected, the Eagles mauled Yautepec from the beginning of the match to the end. First Yolotli, the youngster who started in place of Pactonal, beat Yautepec’s best defender and gave his team a one-to-nothing lead. Then, a few minutes later, Itzpapa stole the ball and went all the way to score Aztlan’s second goal.
That was improbable enough. When Yolotli took a pass from Chipaua and logged the Eagles’ third goal, all of them unanswered, the situation went from improbable to impossible.
Yautepec went into their locker room angry and embarrassed. They came out in the second half and engineered two quick scores, leading everyone to think the match was finally turning in Yautepec’s favor, just as it should have all along. But that’s not the way it went.
Yolotli notched his third goal of the contest. Then Itzpapa wove his way through Yautepec’s defenders and made the score five to two. Worse, one of Yautepec’s best players—Tenoch—-got hurt on the play. The rest of the match, Aztlan aimed to take advantage of Tenoch’s replacement, and succeeded spectacularly.
In the end, the Eagles prevailed by a score of seven to three. Better yet, Aztlan seemed to have a new young star in Yolotli. I hoped so for the fans’ sakes. They had taken a beating, after all.
I was sitting at my monitor in the Interrogation Center, tracing the codes in Pactonal’s buzzer list, when we got a visit from a couple of guys I had never seen before. Almost invariably, visitors were announced so the Investigator they had come to see could go out to the lobby and bring them in.
But not these two. They were from Ethics. I could tell by the blood-red tunics they wore.
And I wasn’t the only one who noticed them. All over the office, Investigators’ heads turned in the visitors’ direction. No one in the office looked happy.
After all, none of us was perfect. We all made mistakes in the course of doing our jobs. And one never knew when a mistake would be interpreted as a serious Ethics violation.
But this time, Ethics wasn’t looking for a mere violation. They were there to make an arrest. Maybe more than one.
I glanced at Takun. He was scowling, but no more so than usual. Quetzalli mumbled something to herself and turned away from the Ethics guys. Was she one of the Knife Eyes? I hoped not. I hadn’t seen any females in the group that had attacked me, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t involved.
The red tunics didn’t make an announcement. They just went to the desks of a half dozen Investigators and, in subdued voices, told them their presence was required elsewhere.
One of them was Izel. Easy-going, self-deprecating Izel.
Go figure, I thought.
As he got up, he shot a look at me. There was no regret in it, no bitterness, no remorse. It told me he had done what he had to do, in his estimate, and that he would do it again if his allegiance to the Knife Eyes required it.
Well, I thought, I guess I wouldn’t hear him complain about his tea for a while.
Sometimes you can search buzzer list after buzzer list and come up with nothing. This time I came up with something. Very definitely something.
Most of the codes I looked at belonged to Pactonal’s relatives, friends, and business associates. But four of the codes had interesting owners. One was Tecocol, the center for Malinalco. Another was Zincicha, an attacker for Yautepec. And a third one
was Cacamatzin, the floater for lowly Zempoala.
All players on teams other than Pactonal’s. Key players too, if not necessarily the biggest stars anymore.
If it had been my buzzer record, it wouldn’t have been any big deal. But then, I wasn’t a professional player anymore. If I decided to call a few of my old opponents, it would have been well within the unwritten rules of the Sun League.
But an active player? Talking to active players on other teams? It was unheard of—even if the players were brothers, which was sometimes the case.
Those who ran the ball courts had been sniffing out pacts between opposing players since ancient days. Even when the losers were sacrificed to the gods, the guys between the stone walls found reasons to fix the outcome of a game. Sometimes it was to take down a fellow player for something he had said or done to them. Sometimes it was to enrich their families, who had wagered a pile of beans on one team or the other. Sometimes it was simply out of eagerness to join the Deathless Ones.
Whatever the motivation, collusion was an insult—not only to the nobles who sponsored the games, but to the gods in whose honor they were played.
In modern times, when the beans wagered on a game ran into the millions and sometimes the billions, players had to avoid even the appearance of collusion—or take a chance on being barred from the league. Yet Pactonal had taken that chance. And so, apparently, had Tecocol, Zincicha, and Cacamatzin.
Why? Not for anything trivial—I was sure of that. These guys had made the ball court their lives, the same way I had. Losing it would be like having their hearts torn out. So whatever the prize they had dangling in front of them, it had to be worth that kind of risk.
But as I said, there were four codes that caught my eye. Unlike the other three, the last one didn’t belong to a player. It belonged to Calli Ollin.
I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing Calli’s name on that list and not knowing why. So I called her.
“Maxtla,” she said, her voice neutral. It was understandable considering how we had left things the last time I saw her. “How’s your Investigation going?”
“It’s taken an interesting turn.”
“But you can’t tell me about it.”
“I can tell you that I found some codes on a murder suspect’s phone. One of them was yours.”
“Who’s the suspect?”
“I shouldn’t have told her, but I did. “Pactonal.”
Calli didn’t say anything. And the longer the silence stretched out, the lower my heart sank in my chest.
Finally she replied, with an unmistakable hurt in her voice, “You think I had something to do with Coyotl’s murder . . . ?”
“It’s my job to ask.”
More silence. “All right. I’ll tell you why I showed up on Pactonal’s buzzer list. But I need you to keep it between us.”
“I can’t make any promises,” I said, “until I know what it is.”
I knew that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, but it was the best I could do. Gods’ mercy, I was conducting a murder Investigation.
“Fine, Maxtla. I’ll trust you—even though the feeling doesn’t seem mutual.” Her voice softened almost to a whisper, even though no one else could hear us. “I told you that I went to Europe looking for commercial opportunities, right?”
“Right.”
“I also told you the Euros love everything about the Empire. Well, it seems one of the things they love most is the ball court. They couldn’t stop asking me about it, even when I wanted to talk about other business.”
I understood their fascination.
“So,” Calli said, “I talked to some of their wealthier citizens about building courts and setting up a league over there. Twelve teams, one or two in each country. A full schedule of games, just like here in Mexica.”
“A ball court league? In Europe?” It sounded crazy. And vaguely disrespectful, though I couldn’t say exactly why.
“The only thing I needed was players. And since no one in Europe knew how to play the game, I needed players from the Empire. With the help of my associates back here, I got the Emperor’s approval. He had only two concerns. One was that none of the players I recruited would live outside Mexica for more than a single season. The other was that some healthy fees be placed in the Imperial coffers.”
I didn’t care about the details. I was still wrestling with the idea of the game—my game—being played for people who hadn’t grown up with it, who had no idea what it was about.
I recalled what Meztli had said about the Emperor financing the Spaniard’s law suit. It was starting to sound a little less ridiculous in light of what Calli had told me.
“As soon as I came home,” she said, “I started buzzing players who were approaching the end of their contracts, and might make the move to extend their careers. Pactonal was just one of them.”
I got it. “So it was a business call. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” she echoed.
I was relieved.
Of course, she might have been lying to me. But if she were, it would be easy enough to prove. After all, there would be records of the other calls she had made.
Still, I had no intention of checking those records. I believed her. Lands of the Dead, I had to believe her.
“One more question. Did you call Tecocol, Zincicha, and Cacamatzin about your league?”
“Zincicha,” Calli said, “but not the other two. They were a bit too old.”
“I see.”
“Satisfied?” she asked.
“Satisfied.”
“Good,” she said, and ended the connection.
I was thinking so hard about Calli that I didn’t see Takun cross the office and stand over me.
He was a big guy, as I’ve said, and he seemed even bigger when he got up close. I wondered if he was going to take a poke at me then and there—and if he did, how my wound would hold up.
“What’s going on?” I asked, forcing the issue.
He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snarl. “You pleased with yourself? And don’t pretend it was someone else.”
I didn’t. “Pleased has nothing to do with it. I did what I had to do.”
“Ratted on your fellow officers?”
“I took criminals off the street. That’s our job, isn’t it?”
“That’s what they tell me.” He scowled. “The fact is . . . and it’s not easy for me to say this . . . you did the right thing. Matter of fact, I would have done it myself under the same circumstances.”
It wasn’t at all what I had expected him to say. “Well . . . good then.”
“Of course, not everybody is going to feel that way. You’re going to find yourself with a few less friends. Just remember I’m one of them.”
Then he walked away.
Takun taking my side? You could have knocked me over with a quetzal feather.
As I’d expected, it didn’t take long for Pactonal’s judge to find him guilty. I went to visit him as soon as he was settled in his cell in the Prison House in District One.
He didn’t look happy. But then, he’d been making a hill of beans in the ball court, living a life of luxury compared to the average citizen. In prison, he was just another sad clump of flesh and bone awaiting his sentence.
“Anything you’d like to tell me?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
Pactonal was sitting on his bed, dressed in his pristine, white prison clothes. His eyes found everything in the room but me.
“You attacked me,” I said. “The least you can do is tell me why.”
He didn’t say anything in response. He just frowned.
“You know what kind of time you’re facing?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“A lot of guys say that. Then they spend a few cycles in prison and they beat a different drum.”
Again Pactonal said, “Doesn’t matter.”
Prison House inmates seldom passed up a chance to reduc
e their sentences by offering information. So why wasn’t Pactonal doing that?
What was he scared of? Or more to the point, who?
Pactonal chuckled. “You never gave up in the ball court either. You just put your head down and kept attacking, no matter how many goals we were behind. But no matter how hard you try, I’m not going to answer your questions. So make it easy on both of us and leave me alone.”
He was right. I didn’t like to give up.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
“See you then,” said Pactonal.
I didn’t have nearly enough evidence to pin a guilty verdict on Tecocol, Zincicha, or Cacamatzin, but I was doing my best to make them think I did. That’s why they were sitting in separate cells in the Aztlan Detention Center, supposedly waiting for the next available judge.
After I saw Pactonal, I went to visit his buzzer buddies.
“Why were you going back and forth with Pactonal?” I asked Tecocol, considered a big man in his day but less so compared to the centers coming up in recent cycles.
Tecocol didn’t answer my question. Instead he said, “You can get me immunity, right?”
Inwardly, I smiled. I hadn’t expected it to be so easy. But then, the specter of prison had a way of loosening men’s tongues.
“It’s possible,” I said. Certainly, I had done such a thing in the past. “But you’ve got to give me something big enough to warrant it.”
“What if I tell you and you decide it’s not big enough?” he asked.
“You’ll have to take that chance.”
The muscles worked in his jaw. “You could just take the information and put me away anyway.”
“I could,” I conceded. “But I’m an Investigator. To most people, that means I can be trusted.”
“What if you make me a deal and your chief says no to it? Then what?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” I said. I chuckled. “Unless, of course, there was a nobleman involved.”
It was a joke—but Tecocol didn’t laugh. In fact, all the color drained from his face.
But why? All I had said was—
Suddenly I got it, and the blood drained from my face as well.
Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven Page 11