I checked the time. Maggie should be along any minute. Careful to stay in shadow, I leaned out and peered down at the street, where a jam of cars was gridlocked like bathroom tiles, pedestrians walking the grout lines. Horns and shouts echoed up the alley walls, the noisy sounds of a dysfunctional city.
There she was, crossing the street. Even from way up here, I recognized her, that confident stride, black locks waving in a light breeze. Maggie passed the Rojo Caballo’s front door and entered the alley, reaching a staircase and starting up.
I moved again, butterflies lifting off in my gut, pulse beating faster. Harder. I walked to the edge and stepped off, dropped a meter to a balcony, the landing muffled by a soft bed of moss. I ducked under a pipe, detoured around a ventilation fan, and sidestepped my way out onto the ledge.
I looked down at the hotel. Maggie was on the fifth floor now. She tried a gate that led to the roof but found it locked. Mota and Panama had seen to it that there was only one point of entry, meaning Maggie would have to walk to the opposite end to the other gate. She stepped along the outdoor walkway, heels crunching crumbled concrete, hotel rooms on her left. Door, window, door, window, door, window…
I caught a glimpse of her face as she walked under a light, the beam catching a rock jaw and eyes like jade.
She passed below my position. I kept still. She had no idea I was here, no clue what I had planned.
I hadn’t liked lying to her, but I did it. I’d told her I was ready to surrender my protection racket to Mota. I just needed her to negotiate the truce.
I’d told her all about Maria’s sister getting cut, and how I thought Mota and Panama would be on the hotel’s roof ready to ambush me. She could go in my place and work out a deal.
But it was all a ruse.
What I really needed was for someone to draw out Mota and Panama from their hiding places so I could kill them.
I couldn’t feel bad about using her. Not now. Not until it was over. Time enough to repent later.
She was on the other end of the hotel now, going through the unlocked gate and disappearing up the stairs. I could hear her call Mota’s name. “Don’t shoot! It’s Maggie Orzo.”
I used my left to put the earpiece dangling on my shoulder into my ear. I recoiled at the volume when she shouted his name again. The bug I’d dropped in her hair had a sensitive pickup. She’d never find it. Small like a flea.
I sloughed the bag off my shoulder and reached in, pulled out a lase-rifle, unfolded the stock and snapped it into place.
“Captain Mota?” I heard in my ear. “Come on out. I came alone.” So she thinks.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mota’s voice.
“I’m unarmed,” she said. “Juno’s not coming. He didn’t fall for that story Chicho told him. He knew it would be a trap. He sent me to negotiate a truce.”
So she thinks.
I dropped the now empty bag, watched it sweep and sway its way down to the alley far below. I checked the rifle to see if the telemetry from Maggie’s bug had been received. Green light.
“Who is this?” Maggie’s voice.
“I’m a business partner from upriver.” Maggie, meet Panama.
I gauged the distance across the alley. Two meters. A drop of, say, four. I could clear it easy. No problem.
I looked straight down. The alley was long and narrow with evenly spaced lights, the last one infected by a jittery flicker. I figured it best to jump now in case the jitters were contagious.
I held the rifle out front and pushed off with both feet. Air blew through my hair and billowed my shirt, my stomach climbing into my throat. I dropped as I crossed the narrow alley, sailing over the blacktop far underneath. I cleared the hotel wall, feet reaching for the roof of one of the penthouse units.
Contact.
Knees buckled.
Impact.
The rifle wrenched out of my hand. My body folded up, my chin driving into my knee with a clap of teeth. I fell backward, my back and head striking the wall.
Too stunned to move, I stayed where I was, my heart pumping mad beats. My lungs sucked wild breaths. I swallowed blood. My chin, teeth, and jaw suffered from a wicked uppercut. I thought the forward momentum would’ve been enough to take me into a roll, but my downward trajectory must’ve been too steep.
I fumbled for my earpiece, stuck it back in my ear. Maggie’s voice came through the dazed fog. “He doesn’t care about the protection business. You can have it back.”
“And in exchange?”
“All we want is the doctor. We’ve been to that hellhole he calls a clinic. He’s using people as lab rats.”
“That’s a little outside your jurisdiction, don’t you think?” Panama’s voice.
“He has an office here.”
“He doesn’t do anything illegal here. And what he does in Yepala is my jurisdiction.”
They hadn’t heard my fuckup of a landing. I tested my legs, couldn’t feel them, but they moved when I told them to. I forced myself onto my hands and knees, started feeling around for my gun, thorny weeds poking and scraping.
I crawled on numb knees. It felt like I had two more stumps. My hand made contact, fingers wrapped around the rifle. I pulled the weapon up, pressed the cool steel of the barrel against my cheek. I struggled upright, using the rifle as a third leg.
Maggie spoke in my ear. “Juno offered to sweeten the deal.”
Mota laughed. “Now you’re saying he wants to buy his way out? What happened to the empty threats?”
I took slow, lurching steps, wobbled and weaved, toddler-like, toward the open arms of scaffolding pipes. I hooked my arms around them and leaned out, took a look, couldn’t make visual. My weapon required line-of-sight.
I went to the corner, looked in another direction, couldn’t see them. Shit.
I looked into the gunsight, studied the rifle’s display. I saw numbers. Coordinates. Maggie’s bug was reporting her exact position, its camera eye picking out Mota and Panama, calculating their positions, feeding the data into the targeting system. Somebody smarter than me would know how to read this thing. They’d do some quick math and know right where to go. All I saw was random numbers. Shit.
“It’s too late for him, Maggie. He can’t undo this. It’s time he paid for all the shit he’s done.”
I climbed out onto the scaffolding. I needed to make my way down from the penthouse rooftop to the hotel proper. They had to be behind the other rooftop unit, close to the staircase Maggie had climbed.
I pulled out a pocket light and risked flicking it on. I carried it in my teeth, seeking a way down. I spotted a ladder, took a step in that direction, and stopped. How was a one-armed man going to carry a rifle down a ladder?
I jogged in the opposite direction, toward the street, found an access stairway and struggled with a single-hinged door, managing to angle myself through.
“She knows where he is.” Panama’s voice. “We can make her lead us to him.”
“No. We’ll find him another way.”
“Fuck that. Let’s teach her how we do it in the jungle.”
“We’re not in the jungle.”
“I’ve never given a necktie to a woman.”
“This is a homicide detective.”
“So?”
“So, we can’t bring that kind of heat down on ourselves.”
I exited the stairwell and turned toward the hotel’s rear.
“What are you talking about? You weren’t opposed to killing cops when I nectktied those two in the Cellars.”
“This one’s well connected.”
Maggie had no fear. “Don’t be stupid. You touch me, and there’ll be no deal. It’ll be all-out war.”
Panama’s voice was full of malice. “That ship done sailed. The war is on.”
I stepped into the shadow of the second penthouse unit. Flashlight off. Rifle raised. Eyes peeled. I lifted one shoe and then the other, taking high steps to keep from getting tangled in the vines.