Ian said, “Not bad, boy-o. How's your fucking face?”
The man shrugged and aimed his black eyes at the floor. The guy looked like shit, and it wasn't just the black eyes. It was the rumpled clothes, the dumpy body, the nervous face.
“Don't be a pussy,” said Ian. “It'll heal.”
“I know,” he said. “But you didn't have to hit me that hard.”
Holy shit. Did I hear that right? Ian was the one who gave him the coon face? Recognition overwhelmed me, the pear shaped bod, that same crappy shirt. What the fuck was going on?
Ian said, “Christ, Yuri. I was just trying to make it look believable. It's your own damn fault. If you hadn't been so fucking sloppy, I wouldn't have had to lay you out like that.”
“I know, I know. It was my fault,” Yuri responded, spineless.
“Are you going to order a drink or what?”
“Yeah.” Yuri held up a meaty hand. When the waiter showed, Yuri looked at Ian's empty glass and asked him, “What are you drinking?”
“Christ, just order whatever you want. What does it matter what I'm drinking?”
“I just thought that whatever you were having might sound good to me.”
“It's not like we're fucking lovers who have to drink the same thing. Just order.”
The waiter stood by with raised brows.
“B-brandy,” Yuri said in a weak voice.
Ian looked at the waiter and said, “I'll have another.” When the waiter moved off, the cam squared on Yuri and stayed there until Yuri made eye contact. Then the cam's view moved from side to side as Ian shook his head at him. Yuri wilted and stared at the floor again.
I tried, but couldn't make sense of why Ian was having dinner with the cameraman, the one from the Libre, the one Ian and his boys had roughed up on the pier. Ian had just told him he had to make it look good. He said Yuri hadn't done his job right. What job? The three little circles on the cabin floor, made by a tripod. The scope of the Juarez case exploded in my mind.
“Where's Horst?” asked Ian.
“I don't know,” said Yuri. “He said he'd be here.”
“You didn't tell him we were meeting at the bar in the basement did you?”
“No. I told him we were meeting at the restaurant, just like you said.”
“Go check the bar.”
“He's not going to the bar, Ian. Horst knows we're meeting here.”
“Don't make me say it again.”
Ian watched as Yuri meekly complied, the cameraman's pudgy frame disappearing down a staircase a few seconds later.
Horst. He was the offworlder at Roby's, the one who was all hands with Liz. And he was coming to the restaurant. That wasn't good. I forced my scattering mind to focus in on the problem at hand. An offworlder's head was sure to be riddled with implanted tech. He'd be detecting our camera as soon as he got in range. “Shit.” I placed the call. I could hear the ringing in my ear at the same time it was echoing from the projector. “Turn off the volume,” I told Maggie.
Ian ignored the ringing and looked at the door. “About time,” he said to himself. Just inside the door was the offworlder, waiting to check his raincoat and umbrella. Pick up already. Ian finally answered, his buff holo appearing in front of Maggie and me.
Maggie was up out of her chair, staring me down. I put up a finger to say, “Wait.”
“Ian. It's Juno. We need to talk. Now.”
“Okay, boy-o. What's up?” The camera on his head was aimed straight at the Holo-Juno that stood next to his table.
“You've been bugged.” I said.
Maggie went wide-eyed.
Ian said, “What are you talking about?”
“You're in a restaurant with jungle paintings, and you were just sitting across from a guy with a bruised face. I can see everything.”
“Where are you?” The camera view wheeled dizzyingly around the restaurant floor. The offworlder was approaching.
“Are you listening? You've been bugged. You remember Maggie shooing a fly away? She dropped a bug in your hair. I'm looking through the cam right now.”
“You're shitting me.”
“Ask the offworlder. He might be able to detect it.” I clicked off. My guess was the offworlder had already picked it up. Those people seemed to have more circuitry under their skullcaps than they did brains. Maggie's cam was surely lost, and this whole stakeout setup was already shot-might as well take the opportunity to prove my snitch skills.
Ian led Horst into the men's. We caught a super-close-up of the offworlder a second before he picked the cam out of Ian's hair and the projector went blank.
Within seconds, my phone was ringing. Holo-Ian asked, “Where the fuck did she get this thing?”
“She's rich, remember? She said she picked it up from an offworld shop.”
“Are you saying she's been watching me?”
“We've been watching you together, ever since you left KOP station. She just ran out to get some food when I called you. It was the first chance I got. Listen, Ian, I gotta go. I need to finish erasing our conversation from the recording before she gets back. She's going to be suspicious as hell. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep her trusting me.”
“I'm not done with you, boy-o. Come to Roby's tonight,” he ordered before hanging up.
Maggie was staring at me.
“Sorry about the cam,” I said. “The offworlder would've found it anyway.”
“You don't know that for sure. That unit was pretty high-end.”
“Never underestimate an offworlder,” I said with the authority of somebody who had been burned before.
Maggie sighed. “We got nothing.”
“We got plenty, Maggie.” I paused, prolonging the moment long enough to give proper emphasis to what I was about to say. “That guy with the bruised face, he was at the barge the other night. The unis caught him trying to sneak onboard to steal some footage. Josephs told me he was a cameraman for the Libre. I watched him get his ass kicked by Ian and company right there on the pier, and now we just heard Ian say something about how he'd been sloppy-”
“What are you saying?” she asked with a shocked face. “Are you saying Ian's involved in the barge murders?”
I nodded, my mind crackling with the possibilities. The plot was already forming in my mind. Horst: the offworld serial killer. Yuri: the documentarian. And Ian: the cover-up man. The three of them having dinner together: maybe a celebration dinner, or maybe they were getting together so Horst could pay them their fees.
Maggie's face knotted into a tight mask of concentration as she worked through the same possibilities. “That would explain why Ian's so determined to work the barge case.”
“That it would,” I said, stone sober. I was amazed at how quickly Maggie recovered from the bombshell. Here she just found out that her partner was likely involved in thirteen more murders than she'd thought, and already her mind was back in high gear. My worldview must have rubbed off on her more than I thought. She was finding it all too easy to believe the worst in people. That, or her opinion of Ian was so low that even thirteen murders weren't far beyond the reach of what she thought he was capable of.
“And you think Yuri is our filmmaking accomplice?” she asked.
I was already nodding before she finished the question.
“He must have vids of all the murders,” she said.
I suddenly remembered to ask, “Hey, did you ever watch that vid, the one the rook found on the pier?”
“It was blank.”
“Erased?”
“No. It was blank, never been used. Ian thought some tourist probably went down to take some shots of the old barges and then lost it in the weeds trying to change discs.”
It sounded plausible, but I didn't believe it, and I could see in Maggie's eyes that she didn't believe it either. A tourist visiting the pier? The barges were hardly a top tourist attraction. And at this time of year? Way too rainy. I was shaking my head.
“He's full of shit,” Maggie said hotly.
“Was the vid molded over?”
“No. Just wet.” Which meant the vid hadn't been exposed to the rain for long, a couple days at most.