Seven years of class photos. Samusaka’s class and the three years before and after. Close to the end now, the last year of San Juan Diego Academy’s privileged but troubled youth cycling by.
“That’s it.” I rubbed tired eyes. Lizard-man wasn’t a student here. He knew Samusaka some other way. Knew about the party pad where he killed Samusaka and later posed Froelich and Wu’s bodies some other way.
Deluski came back. “Ang was Franz’s brother. Graduated last year. Last the librarian heard, he was living in a hotel off the Square. She hears the kids talking about it. Sounds like he hosts a lot of parties there.”
“Anything else?”
“I made a quick call to a cop friend I used to work with-”
“Did you use your new phone?”
“Yeah.”
I felt an uptick in my pulse. “Why the hell did you do that? You should’ve borrowed the school’s.”
“I wanted to see if-”
“Ditch the phone.”
He rolled his eyes. “The phone’s anonymous.”
“Not anymore. Dump it.”
“This was a friend I called. He’s not going to tell anybody.”
I pointed my short arm at the trash can.
He rolled his eyes and tossed in the phone. The loud, metallic clunk drew a scolding stare from the librarian. Librarians must practice that shit.
“You know Maggie still has her phone. Mota could track us through her.”
She shook her head no. “Mine’s anonymous. I hid my police issue under the seat of a taxi.”
I smiled at the thought of Mota following a taxi all around town. “What did your friend tell you?”
“I had him look up Ang to see if he has a record. He wasn’t in the system except for a call he put in to report a B-and-E at his parents’ house. I checked the date. It was only a month before his brother was killed. Think we oughta check it out?”
Hotel Koba. Ten minutes of asking around the school had scored us the name of the place. We followed the arrow down a set of stairs to a basement door and pushed our way through. Stone floors and sculpted light fixtures. Thick rugs under monitor-hide chairs. A front desk made of polished wood with a backdrop of gold-tinted mirrors.
“Ang Samusaka,” I said to the desk clerk, a teenage girl in a purple hand-me-down uniform with overly long sleeves folded up at the wrists and a worn-through collar.
“Let me see if he’s in.” She touched a number on an airborne holo-grid to her right. “May I ask who’s calling?”
“No.”
Lines in her forehead arched at my curt response. “Um.” She gestured at her earpiece. “It’s ringing right now.”
We waited.
“He’s not answering.” Not He’s not in, but He’s not answering.
“No problem. What’s his room number?”
She hesitated until Deluski waved his badge. “Three-o-three.”
Maggie pushed the elevator’s up button, and steel doors slowly cranked open with a metal-on-metal scrape. Inside, a chambermaid struggled with a tippy towel hamper that was missing a wheel from one of the front corners.
I reached with my half-arm but came up short. Dammit. Deluski beat me to it, used his big hands to lift the cart’s front end over the gap between the elevator and the floor.
We stepped into the now vacated elevator. The humid stench of soggy towels clung to the walls. The elevator banged and groaned up to the third before the doors took their time scraping open. We walked down the hall, shoes sinking deep into plush carpet.
Deluski rapped on the door. A punk kid answered, dark skin and fried eyes. No shirt, no shoes, wrinkled pants. Not him.
“We want to talk to Ang Samusaka.”
“Ang!” he called over his shoulder before wobbling back inside.
We strode into the young Samusaka’s suite and closed the door behind us. The room stank of burned herbs. Damn early for that shit. Another kid slept on the sofa, and to his left, a rolled herbstick burned on a saucer, and next to it a plate with a half-eaten frybread. The punk who let us in sat and called for Ang again before snatching up the bread.
A bedroom door opened. Ang came through fastening his pants and nabbed a shirt off the floor. He gave it a shake before pulling it over his shoulders. “Who are you?”
Maggie moved toward him, her shoe avoiding a food scrap on the floor. “We want to talk to you about your brother.”
He pulled his shirt over visible ribs and started buttoning. “He’s dead.”
“We know.”
“Who are you?”
Deluski pulled his badge, gave Ang a quick wave.
Ang rolled his eyes while his friend dropped his jaw and swiveled burned eyes between Deluski and the smoldering herbstick. The punk tossed the frybread back onto the plate. “Um, I’m still hungry. I’m gonna get some more food.” He nudged the kid sleeping on the sofa. “C’mon, Jose.”
Jose’s lids slowly cranked open like the hotel’s elevator doors.
“Cops are here.” The punk shook Jose’s shoulders. “C’mon, we gotta go.”
Jose’s lids couldn’t hold, lashes dropping back down like they were weighted.
The punk ditched him and slunk out.
Ang took a seat. “You gonna tell me what you’re doing here?”
Maggie pointed at the herbstick. “Put that out.”
Ang leaned over and mashed the ashy end into the plate.
“Your brother was murdered.”
“Cops said he ODed.”
“Did he have a drug problem?”
“He ODed, didn’t he?”
“How long have you been living here?”
“About a year.”
“Why don’t you live at home?”
“I’m an adult. I do whatever the hell I want.”
Maggie moved in a step, getting close enough to brace him.
I passed his chair, posted myself directly behind it. People get nervous when they can’t see you. He looked over his shoulder to find me, and I nudged myself out of his view.
Maggie leaned down to him. “You reported a robbery at your house.”
“No. I reported that somebody broke in.”
Smartass.
“He didn’t take anything?”
“He didn’t take any of my stuff, but he tore up my brother’s room. My dad’s study too.”
“What did he take?”
“I don’t know. My father and brother didn’t say.”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
He twisted in his seat. “You’d have to know my father to understand. Man likes his secrets. My brother was just like him.”
Maggie gave him a long, appraising stare before deciding to let it pass. “Was anybody home when he broke in?”
“Miss Paulina was.”
“Who’s she?”
“Our housekeeper. She was in her living space downstairs. She never heard anything until I came home from school and found the mess.”
“How did the burglar break in?”
He shook his head. “Why are you asking me all this crap? Can’t you just read the police report?”
I booted his chair. That startled the shit out of him, hands and knees jumping. Over on the sofa, Jose’s eyelids flickered and went still. Ang torqued his body all the way around to look at me, his face part surprise, part fear. “What’s your problem?”
“She asked you a question.”
He faced forward again. “I don’t know how he got in.” His words were coming out quick now. “The police couldn’t figure it out. They said somebody must’ve left a door open.”
Deluski leaned against the arm of the sofa. “Ask him about the tattoo.”
“What tattoo?” asked Ang.
“Your brother had a tattoo on his face.”
“What about it?”
“What does it mean? Why two snakes?”
“It’s a gay thing.”
“Explain.”
“The snakes are eating each other’s tails. Get it?”
Maggie stared at him, her eyes processing.
“It’s like they’re sixty-nining,” said Ang, as if he thought he needed to explain things to us old people. “The snakes, they’re sucking each oth-”