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  Rookie Detective Maggie Orzo tried to put it together. “The killer hangs out here. He reads his magazines and watches through the windows. He sees Kimi with Lieutenant Vlotsky and something snaps. He goes down to the alley, waits for Vlotsky, and kills him. Maybe he’s fixated on Kimi. He wants to protect her.”

  Not bad. It fitted.

  I went to the fire escape and looked down at the alley. Med-techs were bagging Vlotsky’s corpse.

  Maggie called me over. “Hey, isn’t this a strange place for a puddle?” She stood where I had left her and pointed to a puddle at her feet. I noticed her chic shoes.

  “What’s so strange about that?”

  She pointed to the overhang above. “Can’t be rainwater.”

  Good call, I thought to myself. She was smart—just didn’t know shit.

  When I came over, she moved out of the way. I got down on my hands and knees, careful not to burn my hands on the tarred roof. Even in the shade, it’d get plenty hot in the middle of the day. I took a long whiff. “Urine.”

  “Urine?”

  “Yeah, urine.” Didn’t fit. Not right, not right. The heat dizzied me.

  Maggie thought aloud. “Our killer had to go, so he did it on the wall. It pooled up here and the wall dried.”

  I was shaking my head. “No. He comes here a lot. This is his spot. I don’t care how crazy he is; nobody soils their own nest.”

  “He was afraid of being seen. He didn’t want to come out of the shadows.”

  Perspiration stung my eyes. No. He could’ve pissed over the wall, down to the alley—check first, nobody there, let it rip. Not right, no, no. It clicked. Yes? Yes! “We have a witness,” I said.

  four

  I GOT Maggie to tear a page out of one of the mags—carefully. We didn’t want him to know there was a page missing. I would have done it myself if I could have kept my hand steady. We bagged the page, returned the mags to the wall, and shoved the block of wood back in place.

  I explained my witness theory to her: The killer stayed in the alley the whole time, never going up to the roof. The killer didn’t realize that there was a peeper up there who got off on watching. The peeper probably hung out on the roof all the time, flipping through his stroke books and catching the action through the windows. The peeper heard a commotion in the alley when Lieutenant Vlotsky came out and started getting sliced. He looked down to the alley and saw the killer stabbing away at Vlotsky. The peeper watched as the killer carved up Vlotsky’s face and pocketed the lips. The peeper was scared. So scared he peed himself. When the killer took off, the peeper waited to make sure the killer was gone, then soggy-pants split.

  We shared a cab to the station. The driver had put some work into this car. It was white, not one of the manufacturer’s three colors. The thing was tricked out from fender to fender, chrome hubs, flaming racing stripes, and neon-trimmed windows. The overall effect was trashy. Cab by day, cruiser by night. Lagartan car owners would spend tons of time personalizing their vehicles. It was the only way to get some status out of owning a car. Who would want a car that looked exactly like every other car?

  Maggie held the baggie with the skin mag page in her hand. She set it on her lap, three leather-hooded individuals looking up at her from the page. She self-consciously turned the page over to a pic of a hog-tied woman at the feet of a man armed with a whip and a hard-on. Maggie tucked the page between her leg and the car door, safely out of sight.

  I looked out the window. Shanty homes rolled by in a ramshackle blur. Opium-ravaged hopheads slept on the sidewalks, looking like piles of dirty laundry.

  I saw an offworlder on a corner trying to flag down our cab. She was fair skinned with flowing blonde locks that morphed into her dress. I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. I would’ve mistaken her for a goddess if it wasn’t for the sweat stains. Our driver started to pull over. Cabbies were known to kick locals out of their car for a chance at an offworld fare. A flash of my badge talked him out of it.

  Even though the Koba Spaceport was kilometers away, I could feel the rumble of a launching ship over the car’s normal vibration. I looked up but couldn’t see the vessel. It always sounded like it was right on top of you.

  We crossed a narrow canal and entered Cap Square, the government district. There was a crowd gathering by City Hall, peaceniks waving homemade placards denouncing violence. They were worked up over the most recent victim in Lagarto’s latest organized-crime war, a young girl who caught lase-fire from a street skirmish. Every time an innocent died, the peaceniks would take to the streets in an ineffectual attempt to get city leaders to crack down. The dumb-shits didn’t get it—where there was poverty, there was crime, and where there was organized crime, there was always going to be a battle for supremacy. You couldn’t stop the violence.

  Koba was run by the Bandur cartel. It was started by Ram Bandur, aka the Kingpin of Koba, aka the Nepali Svengali. Ram Bandur was a crime lord the likes of which Lagarto had never seen. He seized control of Koba’s illegal activity more than twenty years ago. He was the first to consolidate every one of Koba’s neighborhoods under one criminal house. Bandur would take a piece of all the city’s action—prostitution, bookmaking, loan-sharking, extortion, pornography, cloning, protection rackets, gunrunning, con games, fraud, drugs, bootlegging, DNA smuggling…He stood unopposed for two decades.

  Ram passed away three years ago and willed his criminal empire to his son Benazir—a weaker version of his father. The criminal kingdom had since been under attack from Carlos Simba, Loja’s crime lord. Loja was the planet’s second largest city, two hours upriver. Simba declared all-out war against Ben Bandur’s organization and launched the two cartels into an ever-escalating bloodbath. I hoped the Bandur cartel would quell the Simba uprising soon. Paul and I had a vested interest in seeing the Bandur cartel victorious. KOP had a secret and unholy alliance with the Bandur outfit. Hell, it was Paul and me that put them in power.

  The driver dropped us curbside. KOP station loomed over us, its stone steps and columns streaked with lizard excrement. I marched straight to Paul’s office, Maggie trailing a half step behind. Out came Diego Banks, KOP’s chief of detectives and Paul’s number two. His jet black hair was slicked back into a duck’s ass hairstyle. The tension crackled between us. I didn’t take kindly to traitors. The latest lowdown was that he’d become chummy with Mayor Omar Samir. It sounded like the number two had his eyes on the number one job, angling for a post-Paul appointment as chief.

  Banks wrung the tension out of his voice and spoke in an easygoing tone. “Thanks for coming by, Juno. The chief says go on in. Maggie, why don’t you come with me?”

  I went in, leaving her behind…hopefully for good.

  Chief Paul Chang sat at his desk. His hair was streaked gray, and his familiar Asian eyes had started wrinkling in the corners. His trademark smile took ten years off his age. He sprang from his seat when I entered. He was wearing a spare-no-expense hand-tailored suit with diamond-studded cuff links and tie tack. His badge sparkled, shined to diamond intensity. “It’s good to see you, Juno.”

  My eyes went straight to Karl Gilkyson who was sitting to the right. I immediately wondered what that asshole from the mayor’s office was doing here. “Isn’t this a police matter?” I asked.

  “Don’t mind Karl. He’s just doing his job, Juno. I told the mayor we had nothing to hide, so he suggested Karl tag along and see how we conduct business. You know how tense things have been between the police and the mayor’s office. I thought this might promote cooperation between us. He’s been a fly on the wall for a couple weeks now.”

  Shit. Things were worse than I thought. Clearly I had lost track of what’d been going down since I’d stopped enforcing for Paul. Mayor Samir took office almost three years ago promising to clean up the city’s government with KOP as his first target. He launched an investigation into police corruption that had been slowly gaining momentum. Paul must’ve been feeling the heat to be letting that bastard
Karl Gilkyson in here. I thought that investigation was pure get-the-vote-out posturing. I had no idea it had legs.

  Gilkyson was a typical lawyer: tight suit, tight lips. He leaned forward in his chair. “That’s right, ‘fly on the wall.’ Don’t mind me. Just pretend I’m not here.”

  I was happy to oblige by pretending he wasn’t there. I said to Paul. “Why do you want me on this case? Josephs and Kim can handle it.”

  “Because you’re a better detective than both of them put together. The victim’s father is a bureaucrat who works for the city. I told the mayor we’d put our best man on the case. That’s you, Juno. Besides, Josephs and Kim are swamped with missing-persons cases.”

  Gilkyson broke from his supposed fly-on-the-wall persona. “Don’t feel pressured to take the case. The mayor made his wishes very clear to me and Chief Chang. He doesn’t want any special treatment just because the victim is the son of a city employee.”

  “Nonsense,” Paul dismissed him. “We’re all city employees here. When one of our sons is brutally murdered, we all take it personally. I know the mayor understands that. So what do you think of Officer Orzo, Juno?”

  “I haven’t had a partner since you, Paul. I don’t see the point of having one now.”

  “I know this is hard for you, but I’m in a bind here. She’s descended from plantation owners. You know what that means.”

  Yeah. It meant she was rich. Very rich.

  Paul said, “Her mother keeps calling me, wondering when she’s going to get a big case. I really want to call her now and let her know her daughter is working a homicide before she calls me again. As long as I have to give her a case, she may as well learn from the best.”

  “I don’t care how rich she is. She’s not ready for this.”

  “She doesn’t have to be ready. You don’t have to give her any responsibility. Just let her look over your shoulder.”

  I turned to Gilkyson, hoping the bastard could bail me out. “Isn’t this unethical?”

  He turned his palms up. “We don’t have a problem with it. The mayor often has to grant favors. It’s the way the system works.” His left palm caught my attention. It was glassed over—no, not glass; it was flexible but clear like glass. I could see the circuitry behind it. It was a scanner. He could swipe his hand over documents, uploading them through the phone system to the computers on Lagarto’s orbital station. They must’ve sent him up to the Orbital to get that thing installed. I couldn’t imagine how big a dent it must’ve put in the mayoral budget.

  Paul put his unaugmented hands flat on his desk. “What do you say, Juno?”

  He always could talk me into anything. I said, “I think Officer Orzo is going to need some convincing. I don’t think she’s very enthusiastic about working with me.”

  “I’ve got Banks talking to her right now. He’ll smooth things with her. You’ll report direct to me on this one.” He laid one of his toothy smiles on me. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll see you and Niki at the banquet tonight, won’t I?”

  “Yep, we’ll be there,” I said reflexively as I walked out, though we both knew I hadn’t had any plans to attend the mayor’s banquet. I hated that hobnobbing bullshit. I didn’t fit in. So why did he say he’d see me there? He wanted me to come so he could talk to me without that prick Gilkyson listening in. I knew right then that this case was bigger than he’d been letting on.

  five

  I LEFT Paul’s office, right hand in my pocket, my shoes crunching weeds that sprouted from floor cracks. The ceiling lights were penny-saving bulbless. The dim passages were lit by misty sunlight beaming through sparsely placed windows. The building was half abandoned. Lagarto was perpetually entrenched in rough times.

  I headed up to the third, taking the stairs slow. Their sharp edges were now rounded from a hundred years of wear. I’d lost my footing more than once, so I held the rail tight in my left, my fingers running over the crusted mold of the underside.

  I called home. “We’re going to the banquet tonight.”

  Niki’s hologram was all smiles, matching her mood. “That’s great! What made you change your mind?”

  I smiled back at Holo-Niki. “Paul. He’s got me on a case, and he wants to talk to me tonight.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “A homicide.”

  “But you work vice.”

  “I know, but Paul asked me to take this one.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s why he wants me to come to the banquet.”

  “I don’t believe this. I’ve been trying to get you to go for weeks, and Paul just snaps his fingers.”

  “I know, I know. I gotta go. I’ll check in later, okay?”

  “But—”

  “I have to go, Niki.”

  I clicked off. Niki’s hologram vanished. That was easier than I thought. She must’ve been too excited about the banquet to give me a serious tongue-lashing. I thought she’d go wild when I mentioned Paul. I wasn’t supposed to do jobs for him anymore.

  I went into vice to find my new partner. A plantation owner! What was Paul doing, putting me on a homicide and partnering me up with a fucking plantation owner? The plantation owners had developed this planet, setting up a booming brandy trade that made Lagarto the talk of the Unified Worlds. Lagartan fruit tasted like shit, but let it rot with some sugar for a couple years, and you’ve got gold. The plantation owners made a killing exporting their brandy to the stars. Even after the crash, plantation owners still occupied the highest seats in Lagartan society.

  Vice was almost empty. It didn’t get buzzing until after sundown. The floor was molded over like a pale green carpet. Wooden desks were topped by computer terminals that had quit working decades ago.

  Maggie Orzo was sitting at my desk. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it up off the back of her neck the way women do when they’re trying to cool off. Her hair looked nice up like that. I noticed she was on hold with an Army logo hologram floating over my desk.

  I marched up to her. “Have you talked to them?”

  “Not yet. They’re trying to find an officer to talk to me.”

  “Hang up.”

  “Why? I want to inform them of Lieutenant Vlotsky’s death.”

  “Hang up.”

  She pulled her hands out of her hair and severed the connection.

  I said, “Once they hear about Vlotsky, they’ll recall his unit. They’ll call it a military matter and clamp everything down tight. We won’t get to talk to anybody in his unit. I’ll call Jessie Khalil at the station and have her delay the story as long as she can, so we can get to some of them first.”

  Maggie had no objections. She looked pensive, then said, “Why do you think the killer took the lips?”

  I shrugged. I didn’t know. Who knew what was in the mind of a serial? “Why don’t you bring the skin mag page downstairs and have it checked for prints.”

  She sensed the brush-off but didn’t say anything about it. C of D Banks must’ve done a job on her. He must’ve told her to do what I said. Maybe this could work out after all.

  I called Jessie and set her to tracking down a roster of Vlotsky’s unit. She had contacts everywhere. I told her the angle I wanted her to play on the Vlotsky story—keep the Lotus out of it. I asked her to shelve the story as long as she could, but there was nothing she could do about that. Her editor already had it scheduled for the next broadcast. That wouldn’t leave us much time.

  Maggie was back. “What next?” she asked.

  “I hear you’re a plantation owner.”

  Her face tightened up. “That’s right, but don’t think that’s how I got here. I’m here because I deserve to be.”

  “So the fact that you’re filthy rich is just a coincidence?”

  “I make my own way. Chief Chang assured me that my family had nothing to do with this posting. If they had, I would have refused it.”

  “You really believe that?”

  Maggie was pissed, more
pissed than she had been in the alley. “I don’t care what you think. I earned it. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”

  I let it go, wondering why a plantation owner would choose to be a cop. Our collars were way too blue for their tastes. Even after they’d lost the bulk of their wealth in the brandy market crash, they were still the richest of the rich, at least on a Lagartan scale. On an offworld scale, the crash had dropped them down a few rungs to upper middle class at best. It was their own fault. What do you expect when you try to build an entire economy on a single product?

  I split Rose’s list of johns with Maggie. I took seventeen, gave her sixteen. After a half hour’s work, I scored seven left-messages, six didn’t-see-anythings, and four can’t-talk-to-you-right-nows. Maggie scored about the same.

  Jessie called back with the roster. Unit 29: Lieutenant Dmitri Vlotsky and ten enlisted men, all on leave.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Are we going to talk with the Vlotsky family?”

  “Later. Chief of Detectives Banks will call them if he hasn’t already. The Vlotsky story’s going to break in less than an hour. We have to talk to his unit while we have the chance.”

  I didn’t have my car, so we decided to take the river. We started hoofing it for the pier. The five hours of daylight were almost over, the sun just dipping below rooftops. Cool shadows had begun to draw people out of their homes. They sat on their stoops waving paper fans. The Koba winter was currently serving up seventeen hours of night and taking the worst of the stifling heat out of the jungle. The thankfully shortened days were symptomatic of Koba’s polar location. Go much farther south and you’d hit uninhabitable deserts.

  I adjusted my pace to keep a half step ahead of my partner. I didn’t want her thinking she was my equal. This was my case.

  We made our way through the Phra Kaew market area. I spotted an offworlder at a fruit stand; his too-tall body and two-tone designer skin were dead giveaways. The suck-up fruit stand owner hustled out from the back with a crate of fresh fruit and picked out the choicest pieces for his newfound offworld friend. The prospect of landing some offworld currency was enough to set just about any Lagartan to performing tricks.