Ex-Kop (20 page)

I crashed through a set of dominatrix extras, catching a whiff of cheap leather. I saw an exit sign and bulled my way toward it, flinging stagehands out of my way. I slammed my
body into the crash bar and erupted out into the alley. I didn't think about which way to run, I just ran. My lungs blazed as I hoped to reach the corner before I heard them come through the door behind me. If I could reach the corner first and get around it, they wouldn't know which way I'd gone. They'd have to split up. I heard the door smash open behind me a full second before I made it around the corner.
Fuck
. The whole lot of them would still be on my tail.

I was on Bangkok Street, my feet speeding through a crowd of drunken bar hoppers that wobbled out of my way. I couldn't keep this up. My legs were already getting heavy, and my chest felt ready to explode. I sprinted into a trashy souvenir shop that had a stuffed monitor on its haunches guarding the door. I dashed down an aisle crammed with cheap wood carvings and machine-painted ceramics. When I reached the aisle's end, I threw a shoulder into the shelving before hurtling through the back door to the sound of toppling knickknacks.

I ran left, sending a group of teenage opium smokers clambering. I took a couple more steps and had to stop to keep from collapsing. I turned around and fought to keep from vomiting as I aimed at the door. The door flung open and I squeezed off a stream of lase-fire. I tried to keep my left hand steady, but between having to shoot lefty and my wild breathing, the beam wavered all over the damn place. As bad as the aim was, it was still effective enough to force Ian and Hoshi back into the store. The door swung open again, and I squeezed off a sustained burn that fried a path of raindrops out of the air. I stepped backward down the alley, my eyes trained on the door as I began to catch my breath. Again, the door swung open, and I squeezed off another burst that scorched the brick walls with a scribble of black as my aim fluttered hopelessly about.

I took off for one last fast-paced sprint. My feet kicked up puddle water, splashing the O heads who had plastered themselves
against the alley walls to keep from getting in my way. I got back out onto Bangkok Street and slowed down to a walk. Ian wouldn't be far behind, but I decided to try melting into the crowd of dark-haired, brown-skinned Lagartans, most of whom were wearing their cotton whites just like me. I walked as fast as I could without running. My phone rang. I didn't have to look at the display to know it was Ian trying to run a trace that would lock down my position. I dropped it on the street—should've dumped it as soon as I'd started running.

I kept moving, not looking back. I saw Froelich, one of the hommy boys who had been guarding the fire exit. He was standing tiptoe trying to pick me out of the crowd, but succeeding only in making himself stand out. I avoided him easily by ducking behind a series of street vendors with canvas tarps tied to lampposts that shielded me from his view. I turned left, down one of the side streets. I tried to stay under the tarps as I passed by the vendors' booths—first a florist, then a souvenir hawker, and finally a snail-selling street vendor who tried to entice me by ladling snail juice over a steaming snail pyramid.

I came out into the open. My back muscles tightened in expectation of lase-fire. I told myself not to look back. The crowds were thinning and looking back would make me easier to pick out. I kept my feet moving at a controlled pace and hit the end of the block. I turned right, the buzz of Bangkok Street falling away behind me.

I'
D
spent half the night at the hospital, the other half in my tent, lying awake in my hammock, my head full of racing thoughts. I was surprised that Ian never showed up in the maternity ward. I didn't know if he'd checked in on Niki or not, but if he had, he must've believed that she had indeed checked out. That, or he still thought I didn't care what happened to her. Either way she was safe, at least for now.

I was worried about Maggie. I'd woken her up when I called her from the hospital and told her she should get out of the house, but she refused, saying she'd be safer staying inside where her alarm system would keep her well protected.

It was getting noisy outside my tent as I began to hear the early risers clearing their throats of night phlegm, and shortly thereafter came the ring of pots and pans bumping together. Suddenly, there were crying babies and zippering tent flaps all around. Hushed conversations were getting gradually louder as there were fewer and fewer sleepers to be mindful of. I could hear the hollow clangs of gas cans and plastic milk jugs as Tenttowners made their way down to the canal to fill up with filthy water. Dozens of propane stoves came alive, sounding like a chorus of exhaling emphysema patients.

Three generations of Mozambes had lived this same harsh existence until I said enough and got myself out. My family emigrated from Earth, one family among thousands who set off on the fourteen-year journey to Lagarto at the peak of the
brandy boom only to find that the boom had gone bust by the time they landed. With no jobs or homes waiting for them, they were all left to rot here in Tenttown.

The tent shook. I reflexively grabbed for my piece with the wrong hand. I pawed at it with my splinted fingers once, twice before realizing that I needed to switch hands.

I heard Maggie's voice. “Juno. Are you in there?”

“Yeah. Come in.” I rested my piece on my chest and flicked on the battery-powered lantern as Maggie unzipped her way in and looked for a dry place to set her bag, one of those high-priced soft leather suitcases. “You can hang it there,” I said, pointing to a hook on the center post.

She hoisted it up over her head and hooked it through one of the handles. “Got an extra hammock?”

“Take your pick.”

Maggie took a swinging seat. “My partner dropped by last night.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, just a little shaken up. He started shouting threats through the door. I pretended I wasn't home, which must've made him angry because he started throwing rocks through my windows.”

I didn't even want to think about what he might have done to my house. “Was he alone?”

“I don't know.”

“Did he try to come in through the windows?”

“If he had, he'd be dead. He must've taken off pretty soon after the alarm went off. I waited until the rent-a-cops arrived and then I snuck out the back.”

“Did you ditch your phone?”

She nodded and swung her legs up onto the hammock.

I had my landlord bring in some food for me to share with my new roomie. Maggie and I hung in our hammocks and
forked through our eggs unenthusiastically. I thought I should be mad at Maggie for getting me into this. It had seemed simple enough at the start. All I had to do was talk to the Juarez girl and get a confession. I'd score a little cash, and that would be it. And now I was living in this pit with a bounty on my head. Yes, I should've been mad at Maggie, but I wasn't, not in the slightest. Niki had used up all the anger I had. It was her fault. She was the one who had me scrounging for dough.

Hours passed before somebody came out of the house. It was the sister. And when she stood under the porch light, we could see she was sporting a fresh black eye. She walked down the block and stepped into a bodega a few doors down, coming back out a couple minutes later with a candy bar. She inhaled it on the way back and stuffed the wrapper in her pocket before going back inside.

Another hour passed before Raj finally came out. He strutted down the sidewalk, right past the burned-out opium house where Maggie and I were hiding. Maggie and I filed out the door, leaving the stink of O-head piss behind. She and I fell in behind Raj as he crossed the street. We followed ten paces behind, closing the gap as he approached a minialley between a liquor store and a pharmacy. Maggie and I timed our sprinting approach so we would catch him as he passed what we hoped would be a nice place to have a private little chat. He spun around too late, and I had him in my arms, pulling him into the gap between the stores. He flailed his arms, trying to shake loose of my grip. I slammed him into a brick wall, stunning him still.

Maggie surveyed the alley. “It's clear.”

I shoved my bandaged forearm under his chin and pinned his neck to the wall. I clamped my free hand over his mouth to cover his calls for help. I started baby-talking him. “Where's
your mommy and daddy now? They're not here to protect their little baby boy, are they?” Raj put on a defiant face that I broke through with a little more pressure on his windpipe.

“Take it easy, Juno,” Maggie said.

I paid no heed to Maggie and stared deep into his eyes, keeping up the pressure until he turned good and red. I counted to five in my head then loosened up so he wouldn't pass out. Raj started sucking air through his nose so hard that his nostrils almost pinched themselves shut. “I'm going to take my hand off your mouth,” I told him. “You start screaming, and I start squeezing, understand?”

He nodded his pinned head.

I took my hand away but kept my forearm under his chin. “You put that shiner on your sister, didn't you?”

He opened his mouth to talk but couldn't speak. I relaxed my forearm a little more and let him catch more breath. “She's lucky that's all I gave her,” he finally wheezed.

“How did you know she gave us the vid?”

“She told me. She's so fucking stupid. She stole that vid out of my room and then bragged about it.”

“What do you say we get back to how you were banging your girlfriend's mother while her father watched?”

“What about it?” he said in a defeated voice.

“Tell me about Hector and Margarita, from the beginning.”

“It was Hector's idea. He came to me months ago. He saw I had a way with the girls, and he started asking me questions about them. Just innocent stuff at the beginning, but then he started asking me about what kinds of things I liked to do with them. That's when he told me he liked to watch. I got all weirded out thinking he wanted me to let him watch me with my girlfriends, but then he explained how he wanted to watch me doing his wife. He told me that if I did it, he'd hire me as a junior reporter after my internship was over.”

“He offered you a job if you'd have sex with his wife?”

“That's pretty much it. He asked if I'd be into it, and I thought why the hell not. Rita looked like a nice piece of ass.”

“How about her? Was she into it?”

“Not at first. Once Hector got me onboard, he had to talk her into it. It took weeks before we all got together that first night. She was all nervous and shit. But by the time we finished, she was into it. Believe me, she was into it.” He flashed his pearlies.

“Why were they going to divorce?”

“That was Rita. She was the one that wanted to divorce. She started seeing me without Hector. I guess she eventually decided she didn't need him anymore. She'd get a hotel room, and I'd come over and bone the shit out of her. That lady was an animal. I'd have to put my dick on ice afterward.” More pearlies.

“And you were doing all this
while
you were dating her daughter?”

Raj grinned even wider. “Yeah. I figured that tight little pussies probably ran in the family.” He leered at Maggie.

I slapped that look off his face. “Show some respect,” I ordered. “What did her parents think about you dating their daughter?”

“You think I'm stupid? I kept them in the dark.”

“And how did you manage that?”

“I told Adela that if she wanted to see me, she had to keep it secret. I told her that her father didn't like me, and he'd fire me if he found out we were seeing each other.”

This kid was fucking unbelievable. At nineteen, he was already a master manipulator. “Who killed Hector and Margarita?”

“Adela did.”

“Bullshit.”

“She did. She must've found out about me and her parents, and she went nuts.”

“You're full of shit, Raj. You expect me to believe that when Adela found out about your little ménage à trois with her parents, she decided to kill them only
after
sneaking off to hump your sorry ass a couple times?”

“No. She must've found out that night when she went home. Detective Davies found that same vid my sister gave you loaded up in the home system. My guess is Adela walked in on Hector whacking off to the Raj and Rita show, and then she just lost it.”

“What's your relationship with Detective Davies?”

“I barely know him.”

“You know him well enough to call him and tell him about our visit last night.”

“I thought he might be able to get that vid back again.”

“What do you mean by again?”

“When Detective Davies told me about the vid he found in their home system, I begged him to keep it quiet. I didn't think it would be good for my career if my new boss found out that I was doing the old boss's wife. He gave it to me, but then my sister stole it and gave it to you. I asked him if he could get it back again, or maybe just destroy it.”

“Why did Detective Davies agree to help you the first time?”