Maggie followed me into the Floodbank bar. The place was empty except for the bartender, who was sweeping up after closing. “We’re closed,” he said.
Maggie held up the bar bill with Pedro’s address written on the back. “You passed this note to one of your customers. Who told you to do it?”
He stopped sweeping and leaned on the broomstick handle in a belligerent fashion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t pass no note.”
I ran at him. He reflexively swung the broom. The handle bounced off my arm. I drove my shoulder into his chest, and brought him down hard to the floor. I was on top of him. Years of pent-up enforcer rage drove my piston fists, my right doing as much damage as my left. My blood pumped through my veins, while his pumped from nose and mouth. He gave up the struggle and covered his face, submitting to the beating.
I started taking my time, a cat playing with its prey. I picked and chose shots through his guarding hands. I felt better than I had in years. The enforcer was back. So what if I couldn’t shoot anymore?
Maggie strode forward. She stood over us, her legs spread wide, hands on hips, her face pure cool. She held out the bar bill. He moved his hands off his face and looked at it through teary eyes. She spoke slow and deliberate, enunciating every syllable. “Who told you to give this note to Ali Zorno?”
I was primed for the words Mayor Samir.
He sobbed through a wrecked mouth. He said, “Mdoba, Sanders Mdoba.”
Maggie gave me a look that said, “I told you so.”
Son of a bitch! Sanders Mdoba: I knew him. He ran the East Side O dealers for the Bandur cartel. They were supposed to be on our side.
twenty-two
MY eyes stung when I forced them open. Fuck me—it was early. The sky hadn’t even begun to brighten with the coming dawn. Ali Zorno had come to me in my dreams, wearing a lip mask and charging with a butcher knife while my father held me down. Two sweaty wake-ups later, I’d used a triple-shot of brandy to put myself under.
I sat up; Niki stirred. I imagined a lip mask strung over her face. A shake of my head couldn’t dispel the image. I labored my aching body out of bed. The brandy fog made me wonder if two hours of uninterrupted sleep was worth going to bed at all. I bumped my way into the shower and let the warm water massage me awake.
In a perverse attempt to shake the image of Niki wearing a lip mask, I recalled Pedro’s death, his hands to his throat in a futile attempt to keep his blood from spilling. If only I’d gotten there a minute earlier…What good would that have done? I would’ve burnt the whole place down before I hit Zorno. I looked at my hand shaking under the trickling water—fucking useless.
I rubbed soap into my scraped fists, relishing the sting. I found a deep cut on one of my knuckles. I hadn’t realized I’d cut myself so badly. With so much of the bartender’s blood on my hands last night, I hadn’t noticed. The cut was only a couple centimeters long, but an open wound was an open wound. Taking a close look, I could see the tiny wriggling shapes of maggots. Shit, I’d have to get it cleaned out.
Last night’s events ran through my mind. When had I turned into such a joke? Zorno killed our witness while we were following him. How could I have let that happen? It had been my idea to follow him. I should’ve arrested him the first time I’d seen him. I could’ve crossed the street with my gun under the bag of potatoes. I could’ve made up some shit to say to him like, “Helluva downpour.” I could’ve walked right up to him, real close, then dropped the bag, my piece right in his face, close enough that I couldn’t miss if he tried anything, shaking hand or not.
If I had just arrested the fishhook-faced asshole, I could’ve beat the truth out of him. I used to strong-arm all the time. I was a first-rate expert with over two decades of experience. I probably didn’t even need to torture him. I bet I even could’ve gotten him talking with some sick game like showing him holos of his mommy with the lips cut out, or maybe pasting a holo of Zorno’s own fubar lips on top of hers. Instead, I had pushed Maggie into following him.
Maggie was blaming herself for the kid’s death, but the fault was pure Juno. She was going to carry that guilt for the rest of her life. It would eat her up. I knew what it was like, a hundred times over.
Dammit, all of that was in the past. Nothing to be done about it now. I hit the brakes on my thoughts and changed gears from reverse to drive. Where do we go from here? I was supposed to find a link to the mayor, and instead I’d found Sanders Mdoba. He was the one who passed Zorno the skinny on our witness, and he was a high-ranking member of the Bandur organization, the same outfit that Paul and I had been conspiring with for all these years. Hell, Paul made the Bandur organization what it was. Without Paul, they’d still be just a neighborhood outfit.
Reluctantly, I turned off the faucet and watched the ankle-deep water swirl down the rusted drain before I got out and dried off with a towel that smelled like mildew. I needed to tend to the cut on my knuckle. I rummaged under the sink, trying to find the fly gel.
“Juno, what are you doing?”
I looked up from my kneeling position to see Niki in the bathroom doorway. My first instinct told me to hide my hands, but I could see it was already too late. Niki was looking at my hands with a resigned look on her face. She gestured at the toilet, and I took a seat while she took my hands in hers. “You have to be more careful.” She didn’t say it as a nag. She said it like she meant it.
“I know,” I said.
She opened a drawer and pulled out a tube of fly gel that hadn’t been opened in a long time. She parted the skin around the cut. Blood oozed out as she squeezed a bead of the yellow gel into the cut. She walked out, coming back a minute later with a magnifying glass. She moved my hand under the faucet, rinsing the gel free along with the now dead maggots and eggs.
Niki asked, “Who did you…?”
“A bartender.” I remembered what he looked like, lying on his back, one of his popped-out teeth stuck to his forehead. Did I really do that? “He wouldn’t talk. He passed on some information that got our witness killed.”
“Hold still.” I held my hand steady. Luckily it was my left hand that had been cut. Niki was looking through the magnifying glass, using a pair of tweezers to pull the maggot corpses out. “Sounds like he deserved it,” she said.
How many times had we had this same conversation, with me sitting here on this same toilet while Niki nursed my damaged fists? The conversation always ended with that same line about how whoever it was deserved it. For over two decades, I’d beaten down anybody that opposed Paul. I’d destroyed countless lives with these fists, and no matter how lame the reasoning, Niki always told me I was doing the right thing. We were increasing tourism. We were bringing offworld money into the economy. We were serving the greater good. And it was true…at first.
The great upsurge in tourist money eventually plateaued as offworld businessmen began to take over the industry, effectively erasing any progress Paul had made. Over the years, Paul became less worried about Lagarto and more worried about holding on to his power. I no longer knew what purpose I served, yet I kept up my enforcer’s ways, demolishing Paul’s opposition and collaborating with a murderous crime lord, the flames of hell licking at my feet. It was Niki who saved me, pulling me out of the fire, telling me I had to quit enforcing. Niki always took the right side, my side.
I rested my head on her hip as she stood over the sink, squeezing a fresh bead of gel into the cleaned wound. She placed a bandage on it and declared me good as new. I knew I could never leave her.
Maggie wasn’t interested in me anyway. I was deluding myself if I thought any different. Maggie was young, smart, honest, good-looking. I wasn’t any of those things. There was absolutely no way a woman like that would ever be interested in a guy like me. I remembered how she’d kissed my cheek. I wasn’t sure what that was all about, but it wasn’t romantic. That was just wishful thinking on my part. Some kind of midlife crisis–induced hallucination. Hell, even if she were int
erested in me, what were we going to do? Go out on a date? Go dancing? Go meet her high-society mother? Give me a fucking break.
I stood up and embraced my wife. I kissed the top of her head. I dropped my nose into her pillow-head hair and kept it there, breathing her in. I held her tight as I said, “Thank you.”
Benazir Bandur’s home sat on a rise, no neighbors within a hundred meters. The surrounding jungle was immaculately controlled. The house was ivy free, and the walk was mossless. Shrubs were formed into topiary animals, a bird on the left with a goat behind. Check out the two rabbits and a chicken just over the little brook. The former Kingpin of Koba, Ram Bandur, used to love his garden. He’d rave about it all the time. The way plants grew around here, he must’ve had to get the shrubs trimmed every day to keep their shape. Today they looked a bit shaggy, like they all needed haircuts.
Detecting my DNA, the door opened on its own. A bodiless voice welcomed Maggie and me, then instructed us to go out to the pool. We walked through the foyer—polished stone floors with a car-sized chandelier glimmering above. We cut through the kitchen, which was bigger than my entire flat, and my flat wasn’t small. We stepped down a set of Spanish tile stairs to the poolside door, which slid open to let us pass.
The pool area was done up in desert landscaping. Offworld desiccators buried two meters underground would suck the moisture from the soil, leaving a caked and cracked surface, perfect for cactus imported from the nonpolar regions of Lagarto.
Was that Ben Bandur floating in the pool? I couldn’t tell with his face all bandaged up.
“Juno! What brings you here?”
I turned to see longtime Bandur right-hand man Matsuo Sasaki poolside. Who was that sitting next to him? Tip Tipaldi—Bandur strong-arm. He’d once beaten a chef to death with a slab of frozen meat, for overcooking his fish. The crime scene was still fresh in my head—blood trail from the kitchen to the freezer. Freezer contents included the following meats: two sides of beef, twenty three ’guanas, and one blue-skinned chefsicle with grill marks on his face, hands, and ass. Paul had the incident buried.
I said, “Hey, Matsuo. Is that Ben out there in the pool?”
“The one and only. Please, come join me.”
“Thanks. Matsuo Sasaki, this is Detective Maggie Orzo.”
“Pleased to meet you, Detective. I see Paul is making them better looking these days. I’ve always thought the Office of Police lacked a certain…elegance.”
“Thank you,” she said uncertainly.
We took seats at the table. Aircon blew from vents in the decking. The air rushed by us in a cool gush then dispersed into the jungle heat in a colossal waste of energy.
Sasaki waved at Tipaldi. “Tip, would you please leave us alone for a bit?” Chef-killer Tipaldi ambled off. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked Maggie.
“A glass of ice water would be nice.”
“Ice water? Wouldn’t you prefer something with a little kick?”
“I’m on duty.”
“You’re not going to let some silly rules stand in your way, are you?”
Maggie was emphatic. “Yes I am.”
“How about you, Juno? You wouldn’t mind sharing some brandy with me; would you?”
The early morning hour didn’t bother me. “You know I can’t turn down the good stuff.”
“Very well.” Sasaki made no move to get up for the drinks—no need to; our orders had been picked up by some unseen microphone and forwarded to the help.
I relaxed back into my chair. It responded with a light massage for my back. Damn, that felt good. I looked out over the pool, a blue-gem oasis surrounded by stark desert. Ben Bandur floated on a half-submerged lounge chair, only his toes and his bandaged head above the surface. “What happened to Ben?”
“You’re referring to the bandages?”
“Yeah.”
“He went up to the Orbital to have some work done. That’s why he didn’t make it to the mayor’s banquet the other night. He’s obsessed with his looks. I don’t know where he gets it, certainly not from his father. They built up his cheekbones and enlarged that less than masculine nose of his. He won’t stop talking about it. He pulled off the bandages to show it to me. You would’ve loved it. His nose was swollen up like a tomato, except it was purple. Funniest thing I ever saw. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.” Sasaki let out a rare smile. His teeth reflected sunlight.
“What did Ben think of you laughing?”
“He threw a fit, just like when he was a kid. He’s still spoiled rotten to the core.”
I’d never heard Sasaki be so disrespectful. When he worked for Ram, he was the consummate loyalist. “How’s he doing with the business?”
“I suppose he’s learning, but he’s still more focused on which whore to invite to his room every night. I wish his father were still alive, so he could knock some sense into him.”
“Did you tell Ben that?”
“Sure, I told him. He makes me so angry sometimes I can’t help myself. One of these days, he’s either going to shape up, or he’s going to burn a hole in my head. Half the time, I don’t care which.”
The houseboy approached, carrying a tray with our drinks. I could almost taste the brandy already. I sipped and took the time to enjoy the flavor before swallowing. “How’s the Simba situation?” Koba had been exclusive Bandur territory for over twenty years. I thought Koba would be Bandur domain forever. But now I wasn’t so sure anymore. Not since the Loja crime lord offered that gutsy mayoral toast.
Sasaki looked me in the eyes and nodded in Maggie’s direction as if to say, “Is it okay to talk in front of her?”
“Yeah. I’ll vouch for her.”
“Your word was good enough for Ram, so it’s good enough for me. I’m going to level with you, Juno. Simba’s becoming difficult. There’s no chance that he’d try to pull this on Ram. Ram would have killed him by now. Ever since Ram died, Simba’s been pecking away at us. He’s like a damn child always testing the limits. I keep telling Ben that we have to slam the door on Simba, but he just doesn’t have the balls to do it. Please excuse my language, Officer Orzo. Once I start hitting the hard stuff, I find my tongue has a mind of its own.”
Maggie said, “That’s okay. My father had a foul mouth as well. I didn’t think any less of him for it.”
“A very reasonable attitude.”
I asked, “How bad is it?”
Sasaki swirled brandy in his four-fingered hand. “Oh, it’s sufficiently contained for now, but the potential for disaster is right around the corner. We’ve got people in Floodbank paying double protection. They’re paying us and paying Simba’s people. How long do you think it will be before they quit paying us altogether? We’re supposed to be protecting them from other crime bosses. What else is protection money for? I explain this to Ben, and he just doesn’t get how serious the situation is. I told him about the stunt Simba pulled at the mayor’s banquet, but he was too excited about his new nose to care. You tell me, how do you get somebody motivated when he has everything he ever wanted handed to him before he even knows he wanted it?”
I shook my head and grimaced with a what-is-this-world-coming-to look.
Sasaki was struck by a thought. “Maybe you could talk to him, Juno.”
“What the hell good would that do?”
“He has no sense of what his father had to do to build this business. You were there at the beginning, you and Paul. You could tell him some stories about his father. Tell him what a ruthless man his father was. How he had to fight for everything he got. The kid’s almost twenty-five, and he still hasn’t learned how to be tough. It would do him some good.”
I shook my head.
Sasaki persisted in trying to convince me. “Come on, Juno. It would be fun. You and Paul could come over. I’ll have a big dinner fixed up. We’ll split a couple bottles of brandy and swap some stories about the old days. What do you say?”
“I’ll tell you what, if you can tal
k Paul into it, I’m in. I hardly know Ben. I wouldn’t feel right talking to him about his father without Paul.”
“No problem. I understand what you’re saying. I’ll talk to Paul and let you know. All right? I really think it would help. He doesn’t listen to me anymore. So what brings you over?”
“We wanted to talk to you about one of your people.”
“Who?”
“Sanders Mdoba.”
“Why are you looking at him?”
Here we go. My heart started pumping nervous beats. Gotta play this one just right. “His name came up in a murder investigation.”
“Murder? I thought you were working vice.”
“I was. Paul asked me to work this case.”
“Why did he do that?”
“The victim’s father works for the city, and Paul’s trying to score points with the mayor by putting Maggie and me on the case. He gave the mayor a line about me being the best detective he’s ever seen, and he ought to know since he used to be my partner. Then he told him that Maggie was the best recruit he’s seen since he’s been chief. He’s hoping that by playing nice he can get the mayor to cool his corruption investigation.”
Sasaki said, “I see. How did Mdoba’s name come up? Is he a suspect?”
“No.” I hoped I sounded truthful. “We know he didn’t do it. We already got our killer—a real schizo. Maggie fried the son of a bitch dead last night. As far as we’re concerned, the case is closed, but the mayor’s investigator—Karl Gilkyson—you know him?”
“No, but I know of him.”
“Well, then maybe you heard how big a shithead he is. It turns out that our killer made contact with Mdoba yesterday. I told him that the killer was probably just scoring some brown sugar off Mdoba. Who cares? But Gilkyson can’t let it go. Best I can tell, Gilkyson got wind that Mdoba’s one of your dealers, and now he wants us to ‘chase the lead.’ Can you believe that? This suit from the mayor’s office saying shit like ‘chase the lead.’ What an asshole. I told him there was nothing to find, but he won’t take no for an answer. He wants to get dirt on Mdoba so he can run it up the ladder to you and Ben.”
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