Despite Maggie’s insistence, I’d refused to go to her place after leaving Mota and his girlfriend sleeping in their bed. It was the middle of the goddamn night. I couldn’t intrude like that. I’d intruded enough when I woke her.
I’d meet her in the morning. I’d survive the night without doing something drastic. Starting early, she and I would talk it out. That was what she said. That was enough to keep me going.
I watched the window light up with the crimson glow of neon, then blacken with the dark of night, on and off, back and forth, no telling which would eventually win my soul.
I laughed at myself, at what a fuckup I was.
Maria woke. “When did you get in?” She rubbed her eyes.
“An hour ago.”
She yawned and stretched her arms. “I’ve been waiting for you. I wanted to warn you that a couple guys came looking for you earlier.”
“Who?”
“They didn’t say. I think they were from upriver.”
“How do you know?”
“One was wearing a panama hat, one of those cheap ones they make out of straw.”
“What did you tell them?”
She adjusted her position in the swing. I didn’t know how she could sleep on that thing. “I told them I hadn’t seen you.”
“They say why they were looking for me?”
“No.”
Nice. Now a pair of strangers were after me. They’d have to take a fucking number. “Does Chicho know?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
We stayed quiet for a while. She dropped a foot to the floor and used it to rock herself, red light slashing across her face with every flash from the sign outside. “You know Chicho’s already bringing in protection money from the other snatch houses.”
“I figured.”
“If I were you, I’d ask to see his books. He’ll short you if you don’t keep on top of him.”
“You think his books are accurate?”
“Yeah. That man keeps track of things. He’s smart that way. I’ve been asking him lots of questions. I gotta know how to do numbers to run my own house. It’s actually…”
I stopped listening and pulled Mota’s phone from my pocket. It still worked. He must not have noticed it was missing yet or he would’ve ordered it wiped. The bastard was probably still snoring away.
I opened the pics folder, and the first shot materialized over the bed. I squinted at the bright light until I slipped on my shades. Mota stared at me with a pearly-toothed grin, hat square on his head, badge shined bright. It was his graduation photo. I moved to the next pic, and the next. Mota waving from the deck of a boat. Mota posing by a new car. I jumped from pic to pic: Mota, Mota, Mota.
He liked to take pictures of himself, hundreds of them, the holo-slide show floating above the bed: Mota rubbing his chin, pensive-like; hands on hips with a faraway look; leaning on a door frame, looking oh so casual. He had all the poses down.
Maria was still talking, going on about her plans for the future. I motored through Mota’s photos, tossing her an occasional “uh-huh” as if I were listening.
What’s that? I stopped and moved back a pic.
“Find something?” she asked.
I stretched the holo-pic’s edges in order to enlarge the image. It was a street market, rugs and wood carvings under jury-rigged tents. Mota stood in the foreground, his arm over the shoulder of another man, a man with a shaved head and a round tattoo on one cheek. Fucking Froelich.
Froelich and Mota? I checked the file’s time stamp. Six months old.
But that couldn’t be. Froelich never had a tattoo. I thought the killer must’ve stamped him when he chopped off his head. I zoomed in to get a closer look at the two interlocked snakes, each one eating the other’s tail.
“What is it?” Maria asked.
I spun the 2D image her way.
“Isn’t that one of your crew? The one who showed up late?”
“Yeah. But he didn’t have that tattoo.”
“You know they make ’em so you can turn ’em on and off, don’t you?”
“They do?”
“Offworlders been doing it forever. You’ve seen how they can shift their looks. But now locals can do it too. They can’t afford to get the works like offworlders do, but a little tattoo isn’t that expensive. They even make some that are animated.”
I started back into the slide show, the next bunch of pics all candids of Froelich, some with the face tat, some not. And then came a string of shots of Froelich and Mota posing together. How weird was that? If I didn’t know better, I’d think they’d been dating.
“Lovers,” she said.
“You think so?”
“Definitely.”
“Wu told me Mota was gay, but I didn’t buy it. He sleeps with women.”
“How do you know?”
Remembering the woman in his bed, I said, “Trust me.”
“Maybe his snake don’t like just one kind of hole.”
I navigated pics, dubious of the gay lover theory until a shot of the two of them kissing clinched it.
I was stunned. Floored.
One of my crew had been dicking my enemy.
The streets were waking up, vendors hosing sidewalks, farmers wheeling pushcarts loaded high with spiralfruit and cilantro. Stooped porters labored by with sacks of grain strapped to their backs. The Phra Kaew market would open soon.
The Mota and Froelich slide show cycled through my head, pic after pic, my brain snagging on one picture in particular, this one of Mota, Froelich, and Wu, brandy glasses raised to the camera, standing behind a table stacked high with cash. As if discovering Froelich and Mota were sword fighting each other wasn’t shock enough, there was Wu, consorting with the enemy. The pic was dated the twenty-first. The night Wu and Froelich ignored my calls. When they claimed to be upriver watching monitor fights.
The night Froelich got his head cut off.
My gut stung with the realization that long before I’d come onto the scene, Mota had penetrated my crew, and maybe in more ways than one.
I had to know how deep.
Wu lived in this neighborhood with his wife and kids. I was going to brace that hungover shitbird. I’d throw the wife a few bills and tell her to treat the kids to a nice breakfast. Then I’d get after that son of a bitch.
I thought this would be easy. I’d picked on Mota for that very reason. I thought he’d go down without a fight. I didn’t know he’d toughened up. I didn’t know he was screwing one of my boys.
I didn’t know shit.
Mota’s phone chirped in my pocket.
I pulled it out and checked the display. The call was holo-free, and whoever it was, they’d blocked the name. I picked up but didn’t say hello.
“Who is this?” Mota’s voice.
“Who the fuck do you think?”
He stayed quiet for a few. “You broke into my house.”
I didn’t respond. No way I was going to admit it over the phone.
“You can’t intimidate me, you hear me?” His voice rose in pitch. “You’re going to pay for Froelich, you bastard. You’re going to pay.”
The phone went dead. Wiped.
I’ll pay for Froelich? How was he going to blame me for that? He couldn’t possibly think I killed him, could he?
The answer came in a sickening flash. If Mota and Froelich were lovers, he just might think I offed his boyfriend to intimidate him.
Jesus.
Mota and I were on a collision course. I could see that now. I’d started something that couldn’t be stopped. No way to undo it. No such thing as do-overs. It didn’t matter that I’d lost the will to fight, that I wanted out. It wouldn’t end before one of us was dead.
I needed Maggie. I couldn’t trust myself. I needed somebody with a level head, somebody who could see straight. Somebody who could call me on my shit. Somebody who had a moral compass that wasn’t spinning in circles. Maggie.
But first, Wu.
I turned right. A narrow alley closed all around me. Light slanted out from workshops on either side, illuminating the alley with a weave of dim beams. I passed basins filled with clothes soaking in dyed water. Up ahead, a pair of women dumped a tub. A rush of crimson water came running down the stained pavement. I moved to the side and let the tide roll past. They dumped another tub, and this time it was yellow water-smelling of saffron-that ran past and found its way into a storm drain.