I doubted they bought it, but I told myself it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they could quit and join some other cop clique. They were property. My property.
I should’ve known they’d come to my rescue. Had I been thinking straight, I would’ve realized they had no choice. I’d told them more than once that if anything ever happened to me, their little hit flick would air for the public.
I turned off the water, grabbed a musty towel and walked naked back to the living room. I kept my clothes there now. I found a pair of white pants that almost looked fresh. As for shirts, I saw none that wasn’t balled up, piled up, or left for dead.
I peeled back the flaps of a box I’d pulled from the bedroom closet before closing the bedroom door for the last time. Old shirts folded and stacked. I chose a pullover-style short-sleeve. Buttons were a bitch with my shaky right. I shook out the folds, and a pair of sunglasses fell free. Strange. I didn’t remember owning any sunglasses.
They were probably a gift. Niki used to buy me tons of shit I didn’t want. I’d probably never worn them. I’d just stuffed them in some drawer, where she eventually found them and jammed them in this box of forgotten crap. I was such an asshole. She’d gone through all that effort to buy me something nice, something she thought I’d like, and I’d dismissed the gesture. Would it have killed me to wear them a few times?
She must’ve been confused when she found them. Why hadn’t I put them in the car? Or brought them to work? And then she must’ve realized that I didn’t want them, that I’d rejected her gift. That I’d rejected her.
My gut was rolling over, my eyes stinging. Fuck this bullshit. I didn’t have time for this sorry-ass crap. Just get the fuck over it already. The mission. Think about the mission.
I moved into the kitchen and grabbed the empty brandy bottle from the table. It had been three-quarters full last night. No wonder I still felt partly loaded. I put the empty back in its crate with the other empties and set the crate out on the balcony with all the booze crates.
Exiting out the front, I went down the steps and headed into the courtyard, jungle vines grasping at my ankles. I’d really let the place go to hell. I was tempted to grab my sickle, if I only knew where it was. I’d probably left it leaning against a wall someplace and now even it had been overtaken by the sprawling growth.
I stomped and kicked my way out to the street. The road was clogged with cars and bikes darting through the gaps. The air tasted of exhaust. This was the only planet I knew of that used fossil fuels. When you can’t afford to import good tech, you do what you can, and that included reviving centuries-old technologies like the internal combustion engine.
I decided to hoof it so I could walk off the last of my buzz. I didn’t like Maggie seeing me drunk.
I rounded the corner and spotted a group of kids under a streetlight. Their clothes were filthy, same as their faces. I watched one of the young teens squirt a bead of industrial glue into a plastic bag before holding the bag over her nose and mouth. I walked past as the bag ballooned in and out below her faraway eyes.
My phone rang.
Captain Emil Mota.
I’d intended to pay him a little visit after the riot. He needed to know he’d been replaced. But that riot had really fucked me up. When it was over, I couldn’t have crawled into a bottle any faster.
Evidently, he’d gotten word another way. “Yeah,” I said into the phone.
Holo-Mota skimmed alongside me as I walked, and like all the holos used by the phone system, he had this ridiculous, pasted-on, ultra-happy attitude. Phone holos were incapable of matching the speaker’s mood. Nothing but broad smiles and twinkly eyes. One of the crueler jokes played by offworlders on us poor and simple folk.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His sour tone clashed with the sugar-coated holo floating alongside me. Cheap-ass holograms.
“That alley’s mine again,” I said, matter-of-fact.
“But you’re not a cop anymore. You can’t do this.” The fact that he was whining instead of demanding was a good sign, a sign that this would be as easy as I’d hoped. This hump was still afraid of me.
“Don’t fucking tell me what I can’t do.”
He didn’t respond for a few. Memories must’ve been running through his mind. Memories of him strapped to a chair, me standing over him, my fists pummeling that pretty face of his, his sharp, long-lashed eyes going puffy, that primly refined nose swelling up to double size.
My stomach twisted under the brutal truth of my enforcer’s past, the guilt ripping me up like it always did. But I had no choice except to forge ahead. I put some extra steel in my voice. “You remember what happens to people who defy me, don’t you?”
“But protection money is for cops.”
As if there were a rule written somewhere.
As if rules mattered on Lagarto.
“Protection money is for protection,” I said. “Where were you last night when that neighborhood burned? You weren’t earning that money so they hired somebody else. You got what you deserved, so quit your bitching and stay the hell out of my territory.”
I hung up, relieved that I’d managed to stay in don’t-fuck-with-me character for the duration. I couldn’t afford to let attacks of conscience throw me off my game. I had to stay focused. It was all about the mission.
I owned that alley outright now. Mota wouldn’t fight me. The guy was a political animal, smart as hell, and a real up-and-comer at KOP, but he was also a pretty boy, the kind who shied away from street duty, a born bureaucrat best suited to public relations.
I’d been surprised from the outset that he’d entered the protection racket. Never would’ve thought a guy like that had the balls for it. Strong-arming wasn’t his style. But as a captain, even a captain of the bullshit PR division, he could order around as many well-hung unis as he wanted.
I crossed the street, my eyes blinded by headlights, my feet chasing away dozens of geckos feasting on some kind of roadkill. I crossed a makeshift footbridge over lazy canal water flowing underneath.
No, he wouldn’t call my bluff. I was sure of it. He wouldn’t want to risk another beating. Those memories were still fresh in his mind, probably fresher in his than mine. A decade had passed, but shit like that never goes away.
Back then, he was a desk jockey working the KOP lockup. Paul Chang had put him in charge of collecting buyouts for petty crimes. You want to get your friend or loved one released before charges are filed with the Koba Office of Justice, you come make an offer. Cash only.
Smart as he was, Mota had a real knack for scoring maximum coin. So smart that he thought he could skim a little for himself. Who would know? He thought he could stay a step ahead of Paul.
He couldn’t.
Enter me and my two fists.
Phone rang. Mota again. “What?”
“I won’t let you do this,” he said, like he’d found a spine. “That alley’s mine.” He’d probably spent the last five minutes psyching himself up for this. “I’ll haul your ass in if I have to.”
I laughed. “You’ll haul me in? What kind of threat is that? You wanna hear a threat? You keep this shit up, and I’ll bash your fucking face in. Again.”
Holo-Mota stayed silent.
I needed to keep pushing. His little bout of courage had to be quashed. “The chief used to like you, you know. When he sicced me on you, he told me to go easy. Nobody will be holding me back this time.”
“You got some nerve mentioning the chief,” he countered. “You ratted him out when he needed you most. You’re nothing but a two-bit snitch.”
My temples pulsed. My feet picked up their pace, my shoes clomping angrily on the pavement. Holo-Mota stayed on my wing, his apparition floating alongside.
Snitch. Squealer. Rat. I’d heard the accusations before. I’d been hearing them in my head since the day Paul was murdered.
Paul’s enemies used me to bring him down. They threatened my wife. They forced me to turn on him. They used me to get him fired. And then they killed him and sold it as a suicide.