thirteen
I WALKED through the alley entrance to the Lotus. Perfume and incense-scented aircon tickled my nose. I turned down the houseboy’s offer of a clean shirt and sent him off to get Rose. I needed to ask permission to see if our peeper witness was back. I’d be surprised if he was back so soon, but it was worth a check.
Rose sauntered out with gaudy makeup and a dress slit on one side, exposing some thigh. “My word, Juno. What happened to you?”
The bruise on the side of my face had already developed—purple on my brown skin. I’d gone home after the fight. The aspirin wasn’t strong enough. Niki went through her stash, picking out the best painkillers for me. She gave me an ice pack and left me napping on the sofa after some appreciated babying. I slept the afternoon and early evening away in a drugged euphoria.
I told Rose I got into a little scuffle.
She said, “You have to take it easy, Juno. Would you like to lie down?”
“No thanks, Rose. I’m fine.” My face didn’t hurt. I was still looped. “It okay if I head on up?”
“Sure.” She checked her watch. “They should be done in room two any minute now. Do you mind waiting a bit for them to come out?”
“No problem. Is it okay if I wait upstairs?”
“You go right ahead.”
I climbed up the back stairs and waited at the end of the hall. I sat on a frilly bench and watched the door to room two. The sounds of somebody’s good time came through the walls at high decibels. I probed my jaw, finding the tender spots. What the hell was I thinking attacking Josephs like that? I knew he might kick my ass. And now that he had, the whole police force knew he could kick my ass. What the hell good was an enforcer nobody was afraid of?
The door opened. Out came an offworlder—genetically engineered perfection. Every one of them an Adonis. He buttoned his last button, and his hair self-straightened—never seen that before. Lagartans were starving to death while these narcissistic bastards thought up ways to obsolete combs. Attached to his elbow was one of Rose’s hookers, wearing yellow satin with lacy edges. They giggled their way to the opposite stairs.
I went into fuck-chamber two and surprised a couple on the floor, he on his knees, she on all fours getting her throat checked by his Doctor Johnson. The scene reflected off the mirrored walls with hundredfold intensity. She startled at my entrance, then grinned and went back to work with renewed relish. My face burned red. She pulled her mouth free and said, “It’s okay, honey. You can watch.” Both of them had offworld-white skin, not Lagartan brown. Holograms—used to get the johns in the mood. Rose forgot to shut down the system.
My embarrassment turned to anger at being fooled. The holograms adjusted to my frame of mind. Leather, spikes, and chains faded in. He had a hold of her hair now, yanking her head back and forth with rough jerks. These weren’t the cheap holos we got with the phone system. These auto-adjusted to your emotions. The Orbital must have been charging Rose a hefty fee to have these images beamed down.
They sensed my lack of arousal and shifted into two women. The system was searching for that perfect image, the one that sent my blood gushing south. I walked through the scene, my legs momentarily disappearing under their sweaty flesh. I approached the window, pulled my piece, and climbed out onto the roof.
I beelined across the roof, heading straight for the peeper’s hideout—couldn’t see shit. Somebody dashed out of the shadows and vaulted over the wall, landing on the fire escape with a loud clang. The peeper’s feet clomped down the metal stairs.
I jogged to the fire escape and looked over the wall. He clunked his way to the bottom and sputtered down the alley. He chanced a look back to see if I was in pursuit. He was going to run right into Maggie who had stationed herself at the end of the alley. She held her weapon firm and called “Freeze!” He tried to stop, skidded, and fell on his ass with his hands up. “I got him, Juno! Come on down.”
I put one hand on the rusted fire escape rail, thought better of it, crossed the roof, and crawled back through the window. Houseboys were giving the room a makeover—fresh sheets, replacement candles. By the time I made it into the alley, Maggie had him on his knees, hands cuffed behind his back. He was just a kid.
I stood over him. “How old are you?”
He had to crane his neck back to look at me. He had a smirk on his pudgy face. Clean clothes stretched over his chunky body—kid had a home. “Fifteen,” he mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“Fifteen.” He said it louder this time.
“What’s your name?”
“Pedro Vargas.”
“Did you say Pervo Vargas? Who do you live with, Pervo?”
“My mother.”
“Where’s your father?”
“I don’t have a father.”
“Why’s that?”
“I just don’t. Okay?”
“What does your mother do?”
“She’s a waitress.”
“Is she working tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know you’re a pervert?”
No answer.
“What’s she gonna think when she finds out her little piggy boy has grown up into a sexual deviant?”
“Fuck you.”
I slapped him across the face.
“You can’t do that! I’ll—” I slapped him again. He was 100 percent smirkless now. My heart kicked into high gear.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“That’s right, girls don’t go for pervs.” Another slap for good measure. “You have a boyfriend?”
“NO!” That struck a nerve. Remember that.
“Pedro the Homo.”
“NO! I like girls.”
“How about Officer Orzo here? You want to spy on her?”
“No.”
“Do you think she’s pretty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is your mother pretty?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does she have boyfriends? Do you like to spy on her when she’s with them?”
“NO!”
“How long have you been coming here?”
“This was my first time.”
“You’re lying, Pervo. You make a habit of peeping.”
No answer.
“Were you here two nights ago?”
No answer.
“Did you see something go down in the alley?”
No answer.
“What did you see? Tell me now.”
“I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t here.”
“You were here. We found your stash of skin mags. We know the kind of sick shit you’re into. We got your DNA from the mags. You jizzed all over them, Pervo. Don’t tell me you weren’t here. You saw something that scared you, and you pissed your pants.”
“No, I didn’t see anything.” He was shaking now.
“If you want us to let you go, fatboy, you’ll tell us what you saw.”
“I-I didn’t see anything.”
We rode back to the station in my car. The triple palm print I’d put on Pedro’s cheek had faded. His lips were zipped up tight. He was too scared to talk. The things he saw were enough to haunt him for life. I couldn’t blame him for being afraid, but it didn’t change the fact that I had to break him.
We hauled him up to the second-floor lockup. Eddie was working the desk. “Hey, Juno. How’s it going?”
“You know how it is, Eddie. You look like you could use a cup of coffee. Why don’t you guys take a break? I can watch the desk for you.”
Eddie beamed. We hadn’t played this game in years. He called out the interior guards, and they made like they were leaving. They weren’t really going anywhere. In a couple minutes they’d be gathered around the monitors to watch the show.
“Did you turn off the cameras?” I asked.
“You bet.” Eddie flipped a couple switches to make it look good. You couldn’t really turn them off. What Eddie really did was
flick the holding tank lights on and off. We had no more control over our cameras than we did our phone system. Like most of the tech on Lagarto, it was provided by the Orbital. Paul told me that the fat cats on the Orbital got a bigger cut of the KOP budget than police payroll did. Damn offworlders would never just sell us the tech. Instead, they’d rent it and then have the gall to tack on maintenance fees. They’d say we didn’t have the expertise to maintain it ourselves.
I seized Pedro by his shirt and led him in as the door opened upon detecting my DNA.
The holding tank consisted of three cages on the left. The night’s catch looked bored until they saw us. A chorus of teeth sucking started Pedro to shivering. I paraded him up and down the hall, close enough to the bars that the prisoners could just about touch him. I surveyed the detainees: drunks bloodied from bar fights, tweaked-out dealers, freaked-out johns caught wagging their wangs. Not the toughest group I’d ever seen, but there might’ve been one or two actual rapists or murderers in there. More than enough testosterone-laden malice to get the kid blabbing his life story.
They barraged the kid with catcalls. “Sooo weee! Piggy boy.” “Look at that big juicy butt.” “The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’.”
I egged them on, telling them his name was Pedro the Homo.
His lip quivered. “Why did you turn off the cameras?”
I got up in his face. “I’m not a fucking perv like you. I don’t want to watch.” The kid looked pale. “Time to pick a door, Pervo. One, two or three…”
Prisoners whooped.
Pedro avoided my eyes. He was on the edge….Push him.
I whispered in his ear. “You hear them? They can’t wait to pop your cherry. You talk now, or I leave you here.”
“I’ll talk.”
I popped a couple more pain pills while Maggie filled out a witness report with the kid.
Vice was now in full swing. The veterans were gathered around the coffee machine, passing a flask and putting on an early buzz. They were swapping stories and laughing up a storm like always. They quieted down when I passed. News of my ass-kicking by Josephs must have been the hot topic.
The younger cops sat at desks, talking to the air, their words caught by the dozen voice pickups around the office, sending their dictation up to the Orbital to be digitized and fed into the system as arrest reports, nightly activity logs, citation journals, and evidence entry forms. The vets made the younger cops do all the paperwork. It was called paying your dues. I had had to do the same tedious bullshit work until I latched onto Paul’s coattails.
I rang up the kid’s mother. I could barely hear her over the bar’s din. “What’s the little fucker done now?” Her hologram smiled sweetly.
“Nothing, ma’am. He’s a witness to a crime. We just need to question him.”
“You keep him for the night. Teach the brat a lesson.”
“He hasn’t done anything, ma’am. Would you like us to call you when we’re done questioning him so you can take him home?”
“No. I need my sleep. He knows the way.”
“I’m sure he does, ma’am, but he’s seen some things no boy his age should see.”
“Don’t think I won’t punish him for it, officer. He may be bigger than me, but I can still beat his ass.”
I got off the phone and entered interrogation room two. Maggie and I sat on one side of the mildewed table, the kid on the other.
Maggie said, “Tell us what you saw…from the beginning.”
Pedro wiped away a tear. “I was on the roof, you know…”
“Peeping.”
“Yeah…peeping. And I heard something in the alley. So I looked over the wall. I saw two guys, one holding the other from behind. The guy was struggling—kicking and grabbing at the other guy to get loose, but the first guy held him tight, and he couldn’t get away.”
“How did he hold him?”
“He had him in a headlock, from behind. Like this…” Pedro held his fleshy arm across his throat.
“Then what happened?”
“The guy stopped struggling, and the man dragged him farther into the alley.”
“Dragged how, by his feet? Hands?”
“No, he kept him in the headlock and just walked backward.”
“Then what?”
“The man let him go, and he fell down. It was sick the way he fell.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He landed wrong. He hit his head on the ground, and his arm was all bent up under his body. I thought he had to be dead, but I guess he wasn’t, ’cause then the man got on top of him. You know, he got on his knees over top of him.”
“He straddled him.”
“Yeah, he straddled him. Then I saw the knife in his hands, and he started stabbing him.”
“How?”
“Like this…” He held his hands together over his head, brought them down to the table with a quick stroke. “He stabbed him a whole bunch of times…I didn’t count. Then he took the knife and started cutting on the guy’s face.” Maggie shuddered.
“Then what?”
“He undressed. He wrapped the knife in his clothes and stuffed them in a plastic bag. You know, the kind you get from a store.”
That bag was guaranteed bottom of the river. “Then what did he do?”
“Then he pulled clean clothes out of another bag and got dressed.”
“Did he leave then?”
“Yeah, but first he stopped to take the piece with him.”
“Piece?”
“Yeah. The part of the guy’s face. The part he cut off. He wrapped it up in a cloth.”
Maggie asked, “Why did you go back there tonight? Weren’t you scared?”
Pedro looked down, guilt written all over his face. I’d seen his type before. The kid was a born voyeur. I’d seen the twinkle in his eye as he described the murder scene. He was into it. Two nights ago, he had been so terrified that he wet himself. He had never felt anything so intense before. Now he wanted that feeling back. His little bondage books looked like kid’s play now. He returned to the alley hoping to catch a double feature, sex through the windows and violence in the alley.
Maggie looked puzzled. She didn’t get it. “Could you see the killer’s face?”
“It was kinda dark, but I saw him.”
Maggie and I walked back to my desk. I connected to the Orbital and surfed the KOP system for mugs. Our own computer system had fried in ’41. A lot of cops still had the old terminals on their desks as if they still worked. That way we didn’t appear to the public as helpless as we were. I voice-navigated to an old mug of Jhuko Kapasi and then had the system bring up five shots of males with matching skin, hair, and eye colors. I put them in an array and had them holo-beamed to the interrogation room.
Maggie and I went back in. Pedro looked spent. He was slumped in his chair.
“If you recognize anybody, point him out.”
He studied each of the images, one by one. “Nope. He’s not here.”
“What do you mean he’s not there?” Maggie asked.
Pedro looked at the holograms again—Jhuko Kapasi in spot four. “What do you think I mean? He’s not there.”
“You’re sure you got a good look at him?”
“Yes. I’m sure. The guy in the alley had a messed-up face. None of these guys has a messed-up face.”
“Messed up how?”
“I don’t know…like he was in an accident or something.”
“We’ll be right back, Pedro. Just sit tight, okay?”
“Okay. Can I have something to drink?”
“Sure, no problem. You like soda?”
“Yeah.”
Maggie and I stepped out. We downloaded mug shots of the other cons in Vlotsky’s unit—no messed-up faces. We downloaded phone holos of the remaining members of Unit 29. Normal faces all around.
“Dammit to hell!” Maggie said. “We’ve wasted two days on Kapasi, all for nothing.”
My stomach sank. Lie
utenant Vlotsky’s entire unit was cleared by witness testimony. Two days and no closer to the mayor.
Maggie wasn’t ready to give up. “You think the kid is lying?”
“No. I scared him pretty good. He’s telling the truth.”
“It was dark. Maybe Pedro didn’t get a good enough look. Hey! Maybe Kapasi wore a mask.”
I shook my head no.
We remained in silence for a moment. I looked out over the vice room, which was hopping with action. Pimps crowded around the violations window waiting for their numbers to be called so they could pay off their tickets and free their hookers. If they got through quickly, they could still notch a sale or two before the night was over. Jose, the night janitor, sat on his upturned mop bucket, selling the low numbers while the toilets stayed dirty.
Maggie asked, “Would you have gone through with it?”
“Gone through with what?”
“Put the kid in one of those cells. Let him get raped.”
“No, but I would have put him in a cell and let him sweat it out a while.”
Maggie nodded approval. “What do we do now?”
“Get the kid a soda and start him going through mugs. We have to hope he recognizes somebody. It’s going to be a long night. We can take turns.”
Maggie volunteered for the first shift with Pedro.
I crashed on the padded floor of the psych room, falling straight into a pain pill–induced sleep.
fourteen
JUNE 30, 2787
“JUNO…Juno, you awake?” I did my best to ignore the words that were invading my dreams until a hand began shaking my shoulder. “You awake?” I knew that voice, Niki’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m awake,” I croaked with my eyes closed.
“What are you doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Why didn’t you come home?”
“What time is it?”
“About six.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe it was morning already. I was still so tired, and I still felt doped on painkillers. I didn’t know how Niki could function taking these pills all the time.
“I tried calling you, but you wouldn’t answer,” she said.
“I was sleeping. I guess I didn’t hear it.”
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