Aztlan: The Last Sun (13 page)

T
his time, I didn’t call ahead to speak with Molpilia. I just walked in and told his receptionist I wanted to see him.

“Is he expecting you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m on Imperial business.”

“I’ll let him know you’re here,” she said. “Won’t you have a seat?”

“It’s all right,” I said, though I’d be giving up the lizard-hide chair. “I’ll stand.”

A couple of minutes later, someone came out to see me. But it wasn’t Molpilia. Not unless he had suddenly grown a couple of knuckles in height, gotten a lot brawnier, and shed a dozen cycles.

“What is this about?” asked the guy who had come out in Molpilia’s place.

The funny thing was that I knew him.

He had been an Investigator, like me. But unlike me, he had brought shame to his bracelet a couple of cycles ago. I didn’t remember the details, but it had something to do with missing evidence.

And now he was working for the developer.

“That’s between the Empire and Lolco Molpilia,” I said.

“I
represent
Lolco Molpilia,” the fellow who had been an Investigator maintained.

“Well,” I said, “I’m glad to see you’re coming up in the world. But I’m not here to see Molpilia’s representative. So either go in and get him or I’ll do it myself.”

Just then, Molpilia emerged after all.

As usual, he had a tobacco stick in his mouth. “It’s all right,” he told his man. “The Investigator is just doing his job.”

The guy stood there a moment longer, just to show me that he could. Then he stepped aside.

“You want me,” the developer told me, “you’ve got me.”

“Good,” I said, as I opened my pouch and removed the rope-manacles from it. “Hold your hands out.”

The former Investigator took a step between us, but Molpilia put his hand on the fellow’s shoulder. “I’m sure this is a mistake.” He eyed me. “But I’ll go along with it. After all, I’m a law-abiding subject of the Empire.”

He put his tobacco stick in a receptacle on his receptionist’s counter. Then he held out his hands and I bound his wrists.

“Care to tell me the charge?” the developer asked.

“All in good time,” I said.

Molpilia looked down at the manacles for a moment, then looked up at me and smiled. “A law-abiding subject, Colhua, just like you. Just like anyone.”

“Just like anyone,” I said, “who beats up his fellow subjects. Or more accurately, pays others to do it.”

And maybe kills a couple of people into the bargain, I added inwardly. Though that might be a little harder to prove.

The developer’s forehead creased. “That’s a serious accusation. Can you back it up?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll accompany you,” said the former Investigator.

“That won’t be necessary,” I told him.

Molpilia’s man looked to his employer. “No need for concern,” said the developer. “I’m sure the Investigator will take good care of me.”

My only response was to take his arm and guide him in the direction of the lift. He didn’t say anything the whole way down. All he did was look straight ahead, which was fine with me.

The auto-carriage that had brought me to Molpilia’s building was still waiting outside. I put him in the back, then sat down beside him.

“Detainment Facility,” I told the driver, an officer from District Fourteen.

“Whatever you say,” he assured me.

I was glad that Necalli had gotten me the carriage. It was a little slower than the rail lines but no suspect had ever escaped from an auto-carriage. Also, it was a lot more comfortable.

As we pulled away from the curb and joined a couple of other southbound vehicles, Molpilia ended his silence. “All right,” he said. “I support the efforts of the Knife Eyes. And in return, they support mine.”

“An equitable arrangement,” I said. “So it was your idea for them to attack me in that tunnel?”

He nodded. “I wanted you to think it was the cultists so you’d finally go after them.”

“And forget about the real murderers—you and the Knife Eyes.”

Molpilia’s face reddened. “I’ve never asked anyone to kill, Colhua. You hear me? That’s not the way it works.”

“If you say so.”

“I don’t care who we’re talking about,” said Molpilia. “Maybe it’s my biggest enemy. Maybe I hate his guts like I’ve never hated anyone before. I do what I can to take him down, sure. I put the fear of the gods in him. But I stop short of murder.”

“I’m sure the judge will appreciate your restraint,” I told him.

After I dropped Molpilia off at the Aztlan Temporary Detainment Facility in District Six, where he would await the next available judge, I returned to my office.

I had always looked forward to being there, ever since my first day as an Investigator. I loved the activity, the camaraderie. But the place felt different all of a sudden.

I allowed that it might be my imagination. It would have been normal for me to experience a little paranoia after what I had told Necalli. But I didn’t think it was paranoia.

I felt like I had been exposed. In fact, as soon as I sat down at my desk, I felt like my colleagues’ eyes were drilling holes in the back of my neck.

Some of them had to be Knife Eyes, just by the law of averages. Sure, the names Yaotl had given me hadn’t included any of my fellow Investigators, but he had made it clear he didn’t know everyone in the organization.

And I believed him. I mean, who knew more about keeping a secret than a bunch of Investigators? They would never have trusted someone like Yaotl with everything there was to know.

I tried to tell myself that I could trust Necalli, that of everyone I knew in the place he had always been the most straight-up with me.

Still, every time someone walked behind me I felt a little twinge between my shoulder blades. I didn’t like it.

For a long time, my desk had been my home away from home, my sanctuary.

Now I felt as if I had been evicted.

I wanted to stand up and challenge everybody at the top of my lungs, get it over with. But I couldn’t. Not until Necalli had conducted his investigation.

Fortunately, I only had to sit there long enough to file my arrest report. Then I had somewhere to go.

Just as I was finishing the report, my radio buzzed. I picked it up and said, “Colhua.”

“This is High Priest Itzcoatl,” said the smooth, measured voice on the other end.

“High Priest,” I said. “How may I serve you?”

“You have already served me better than I might have hoped,” said Itzcoatl. “By apprehending the murderer, you have defused an explosion that threatened to shake Mexica to its foundations.”

“You mean Molpilia?” I asked.

“Who else?”

Lands of the Dead, I thought. I knew the High priest was well-connected, but I had arrested Molpilia only an hour earlier.

“Honestly,” I said, giving away a confidence I should have restricted to police officers, “I’m not sure if he’s the one. I have another lead.”

“Then, by all means, pursuit it. But as you have access to certain sources, I do as well. And I am confident that you have found the one you seek.”

I had to smile. If the gods were on my side, maybe I
had
cracked the case.

Or maybe Itzcoatl was just too eager to put the murders aside. It was understandable, considering who he was and what he was preparing to do that evening.

“But I am not calling merely to praise you, Colhua. I would like to mark your accomplishment in a more public way.”

“Public. . .?” I echoed.

“As you know,” said Itzcoatl, “I will be making the journey from the river to my sanctum this evening. I would like you to walk at my side as part of my Honor Guard.”

Inclusion in the High Priest’s Honor Guard was usually reserved for noblemen and prominent government officials who had in some way benefited the priesthood. Not police officers.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Itzcoatl laughed softly. “You mean is it a wise decision, when so many powerful men will feel slighted to see a man of your station in a place they covet? At a time like this, there are more important things than placating the powerful. There are also the common people to consider. And,” he added, “to be honest, it is not only your efforts I wish to honor. I wish to recognize your father’s as well.”

I was touched.

But the High Priest had said himself that it wasn’t simply a matter of rewarding me. The common people had to be soothed in times of change, and I was one of the common people. By serving in the High Priest’s Honor Guard, I would be telling them that they had a place in the new millennium.

“I don’t know what to say,” I told Itzcoatl.

“You need not say
anything
. Simply meet me at the river before dusk. You know the place, I trust.”

I said I did.

“Gods’ blessings, Colhua,” said the High Priest.

“Gods’ blessings,” I replied.

When the connection terminated, I leaned back in my chair.
The High Priest’s Honor Guard
. Now that was something I
could
tell Aunt Xoco.

Yet I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the idea. Itzcoatl might have been certain that I had caught the killer, but
I
wasn’t.

I needed to know more—and there was a place where I might satisfy that need.

Eren’s apartment was in District Five, not far from the edge of town, in a pyramid that had seen far better days. If it hadn’t been torn down and replaced yet, it would be soon.

In the meantime, the rent was low and the neighbors didn’t seem to mind the animal sacrifices. Or maybe they did, and they were just afraid to say anything.

The majority of the cultists lived in the building. I knew that because that was where we had found them after each of the murders.

There wasn’t any doorman, so I walked in and took the lift to the fourth floor. According to our files, that was where Eren lived. When I emerged from the lift, I checked the day-signs on the doors.

New buildings just used numbers, and had for the last fifty or sixty cycles. But for a short time before that, builders had decided it was charming to use day-signs like Flint, Wind, and Monkey instead.

Eren’s door had the sign Dog on it. I rapped on it and waited.

A few moments later, it opened. But it wasn’t Eren standing there. It was one of her fellow cultists.

The phrase “a bull of a man” came to mind. In fact, I had seen bulls
smaller
than he was. His neck alone was the size of my waist.

There were others standing behind him—a man and a couple of women. I didn’t see Eren, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t somewhere in the back of the apartment.

“I’m an Investigator for the Empire,” I told the guy with the bull neck. “I’ve come to see Erendira Nacatl.”

“I know who you are,” he responded in a clipped, northern accent.

And he wasn’t moving aside. He’s got balls, I thought.

“This is a bad decision,” I told him.

He smiled a cold, dangerous smile. “Mocking the gods is a bad decision too.”

“That’s a worthwhile sentiment,” I noted, “but it’s entirely irrelevant to the situation at hand. As a public service, I’m going to summarize that situation for you. Ready?”

Bull Neck’s eyes narrowed.

I took that as a
yes
. “You’re impeding a police investigation. Do you know what the penalty is for that?”

“Only the gods can judge a man.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said.

All I’d come for was to see Eren. But now that this lizard turd had challenged me in front of the others, I had to do something about it. Otherwise, I’d be derelict in my duty.

I remembered one guy, maybe a cycle from retirement, who had backed down from a public confrontation in the course of an investigation. As soon as his superior learned of it, the guy was fired. No retirement celebration, no benefits, no nothing.

He hadn’t complained, either. He knew he had been wrong.

People had to have respect for the police. Otherwise, all kinds of bad things would happen. That was what it said in the Investigator’s manual, and that was what I believed.

Faced with an oppositional citizen, I was supposed to go for my hand stick. That was another thing it said in the manual. And as stiff as I was from my beating, no one would have criticized me for it.

But hand sticks left scars, and I didn’t think I needed to do that to make Bull Neck see reason.

The first thing I did was throw a left at his face. He managed to block the attack, but he had to use both hands. That deprived him of a chance to strike back. Too much weight-lifting, I thought, and not enough time in the sparring house.

Taking advantage of the opening, I stepped forward and planted my other fist in Bull Neck’s belly. It doubled him over, if only for a moment, but that was long enough for me to hook him hard in the ear with my left.

He didn’t go down, but he staggered. If I’d believed that he would let it go at that, I would have stopped. But I knew he wouldn’t, so I hit him again.

That dropped him to his knees.

I looked past him, half-expecting someone to take Bull Neck’s place. But it wasn’t another challenger I saw standing there in the doorway. It was Eren.

“It’s all right,” she told the cultists behind her, signaling for them to stay back. “Just take care of Cuetz.”

One of them, a tall fellow, swung a finger in my direction. “But this shitbug Investigator—”

“Watch your mouth,” I told him.

“It’s all
right
,” Eren insisted, putting her hand against the tall man’s chest.

The cultist’s eyes were a fiery red, but he choked back whatever else he had to say. Then he bent to pick up his friend Bull Neck, though he didn’t look happy about it.

Eren didn’t look happy either. Slipping sideways past Bull Neck, she grabbed my arm and said, “This way.”

We went back down the corridor, into the lift, and down to the lobby. Then she walked me out the back door of the pyramid into a big concrete courtyard, the likes of which was popular fifty or sixty years ago as well.

Somewhere in the expanse of dirt and grass beyond it was the place where the cultists conducted their animal sacrifices. I tried not to think about that. After all, I had more important salamanders to fry.