“Did he have a drug problem?”
“He ODed, didn’t he?”
“How long have you been living here?”
“About a year.”
“Why don’t you live at home?”
“I’m an adult. I do whatever the hell I want.”
Maggie moved in a step, getting close enough to brace him.
I passed his chair, posted myself directly behind it. People get nervous when they can’t see you. He looked over his shoulder to find me, and I nudged myself out of his view.
Maggie leaned down to him. “You reported a robbery at your house.”
“No. I reported that somebody broke in.”
Smartass.
“He didn’t take anything?”
“He didn’t take any of my stuff, but he tore up my brother’s room. My dad’s study too.”
“What did he take?”
“I don’t know. My father and brother didn’t say.”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
He twisted in his seat. “You’d have to know my father to understand. Man likes his secrets. My brother was just like him.”
Maggie gave him a long, appraising stare before deciding to let it pass. “Was anybody home when he broke in?”
“Miss Paulina was.”
“Who’s she?”
“Our housekeeper. She was in her living space downstairs. She never heard anything until I came home from school and found the mess.”
“How did the burglar break in?”
He shook his head. “Why are you asking me all this crap? Can’t you just read the police report?”
I booted his chair. That startled the shit out of him, hands and knees jumping. Over on the sofa, Jose’s eyelids flickered and went still. Ang torqued his body all the way around to look at me, his face part surprise, part fear. “What’s your problem?”
“She asked you a question.”
He faced forward again. “I don’t know how he got in.” His words were coming out quick now. “The police couldn’t figure it out. They said somebody must’ve left a door open.”
Deluski leaned against the arm of the sofa. “Ask him about the tattoo.”
“What tattoo?” asked Ang.
“Your brother had a tattoo on his face.”
“What about it?”
“What does it mean? Why two snakes?”
“It’s a gay thing.”
“Explain.”
“The snakes are eating each other’s tails. Get it?”
Maggie stared at him, her eyes processing.
“It’s like they’re sixty-nining,” said Ang, as if he thought he needed to explain things to us old people. “The snakes, they’re sucking each oth-”
Maggie put up a hand. “I get it.”
“My brother and his friends got their tats at the same time.”
“Like they were in a club?”
“I guess.”
I pressed myself into the back of his chair, my eyes looking straight down at the top of his head. “Who was in this club?”
He looked up at me, counted on his fingers. “My brother, the doctor, a couple cops.”
My thoughts braked on the word “doctor.” “What doctor?”
“I don’t know his name, but he’s an offworlder.”
“And the cops?” asked Maggie.
“I only met them a couple times, but they were tight, always holding hands and stuff.”
“Names.”
“One was called Froelich. Can’t say whether that’s a first or last name. The other name I don’t know. Everybody just called him Captain.”
“Good-looking?”
“I don’t swing that way.”
“Humor me.”
“I guess so. My brother sure had eyes for him.”
Froelich and Captain Mota. Together with Franz Samusaka and Doctor Tranny. Matching tats all around. All of them into the same shit. Froelich’s nongay partner must’ve gotten dragged in along the way. “Is that it? Just the four of them?”
“Far as I know. I saw each one of them come out of my brother’s bedroom at one point or another.”
“They do more than screw each other?”
“What do you mean?”
“They had a business going.”
“What kind of business?”
“You tell me.”
He shrugged. “My brother helped find patients for the doctor, if that’s what you mean. The doctor is a plastic surgeon. My brother would get a killer referral fee for all the rich friends he sent over.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Has your brother ever been to Yepala?”
“Sure. He went a few times to visit the doctor. The doc has a clinic up there, one here in the city and one up north.”
“What does the doctor do at this clinic?”
“I don’t know. I guess he does the same thing he does here.”
Maggie jumped in. “You have a job, Ang?”
“No.”
“You go to school?”
“Nope.”
“Who pays for this place, a nice suite like this?”
“My father.”
“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 motorbike putted by, mom, dad, three kids and a baby heaped on top.
We looked at one another, the same questioning faces all around. Now what?
We turned right-why the fuck not? — and passed in front of a market, blue tarps stretched over tables of piled fruit and spice. Chickens and ’guanas squawked inside cages hanging above butcher blocks. I recognized the market from some of Mota’s pictures. He’d spent a lot of time here.
“You need a guide?” I looked down at the voice. A young girl, ten, maybe twelve, pinned-back hair, grunge-stained pants, jellies on her feet with dirt-blackened toes poking through the cracked plastic.
“You know an offworlder with long hair? Says he’s a doctor.”
She put a finger on her cheek, drew a circle. “Snakes?”
I nodded.
“He has a clinic in the jungle. He comes into town sometimes. I can take you.”
Just at that moment, an older boy came out from the market and stepped in front of her. “I know the way. Half hour on foot.”
The girl slipped around him, wedged herself between us. “I saw them first!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and tossed her to the side. “Come, I’ll take you.”
She threw a punch, fist bouncing off his arm, her follow-up swing catching him in the ribs.
I liked her already.
“Cut it out.” He geared up to give her another shove.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “She asked us first.”
“But-”
I squeezed down, fingers digging in, words slowing. “We have our guide.”
He backed up and ducked out of my grasp. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
I took an aggressive step his way, and he darted off.
The girl stood tall, posture proudly erect. “Are you cops?”
Were we that obvious? “Why do you think that?”
“Some cops from Koba come to visit the doctor a lot.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No, but one of them has a big scar.” She drew a line across her forehead.
Wu.
“How many cops?”
“There’s the one with the scar, and then there’s the bald one with the same snake tattoo. And sometimes they come with a captain.”
Wu. Froelich. Mota.
“What do they do here?”
“They go out to the doctor’s to get a cask they take home to Koba.”
“What kind of cask? The kind they put brandy in?”
She nodded.
“Do you know what’s inside these casks?”
“No.”
“So how do we get to the doctor’s clinic?”
“If you want to pay for a car, we can drive halfway, but the hills get too steep after that. Too muddy after it rains. Or we can walk the whole thing.”
I exchanged glances with my traveling partners.
Maggie bent down to the girl’s eye level. “What’s your name?”
“Evangeline, but everybody calls me Evie.”
“Okay, Evie, I think we’d rather walk. It’ll do us good after that boat ride.” She didn’t mention that we wanted to make a silent approach. Our goal was simple: figure out what the
hell was going on up here and go home. No confrontation. Not here.
Evie started down the street, and we fell in line-me in back-keeping to the narrow channels between puddles and clumpy mud. I took a look over my shoulder and scanned the sparsely lit street for a panama hat. This was his turf.
Warlord territory.
We strode past food counters and refurbed tech shops, a clothing store with broken mannequins in the window, amputees sporting sundresses. Somebody called to us. I spotted him up ahead, sitting on a tire, trying to wave us down: a beggar in rags.
I looked away. If you don’t want to give, you don’t make eye contact.
I heard him call again and chanced another glance his way. He was off the tire now, crab-walking. Something wasn’t right about him, the way he moved, crawling backward, his head twisted uncomfortably around so he could see where he was going. Curiosity got the better of me. I stopped and pulled a bill from my pocket and waited for him, his out-of-whack crab-walk striking a freaky chord inside me.
He came closer, his bare feet too short, toes too long. What the fuck? Hands. I realized they were hands.
I bent over and held out the money, waiting for one of his four hands to come off the ground and take it. Something snaked around the bill, wrapped it up tight and pulled it from my fingers. I jumped back, heart kicking. What the hell was that?
He smiled and laughed softly as he crabbed away, the money held up high with his tail.
“Juno,” Deluski called. “You better get up here.”
My legs obeyed and started moving to catch up, my gaze slow to unlock from the beggar. What are you?
I stumbled over a clod of mud and forced my attention forward. Evie was standing next to another young boy with a lase-rifle hanging across his chest. Maggie and Deluski faced them, Maggie digging into her wallet. “He wants money.”
“Who is he?”
Evie said, “You have to pay to leave town to the north.”
The kid waited with crossed arms, one elbow resting on the weapon’s butt, the other on the barrel. His shirtsleeves were cut off, a scar tattoo of the letter Z raised on his arm, the scar tissue too perfectly lined to be made by anything other than a branding iron. I looked left, through the open window of a dance hall. Music played loudly, and a dozen armed boys sat at long tables with longer stares.
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