Lumbela put his arm over Jimmy’s shoulder. “C’mon, man, nobody’s gonna know.”
“I hear you, but I gots a new girlfriend, see.”
“So? We won’t tell her.” Lumbela shook Jimmy’s shoulders in a big-brother way.
“I know, but she’s been real good to me, so I best stay out here.” Poor kid had no clue of the danger he was in.
With one arm already over Jimmy’s shoulder, Lumbela swung his other arm across his chest, completing the bear hug. Jimmy still didn’t get what was happening, not until Kripsen snatched his piece. “Hey, what the fuck are you doing?”
Lumbela and Deluski wrestled him into the alley. He was kicking and thrashing now. I looked up at the hookers peering down from open windows-lace and leather, poofed hair lit by flashing neon.
“Let go! Let the fuck go! Juno? Tell these fuckers to let me go.”
I wanted to let him go. I really did. But I needed to put an end to this pissing match with Mota. He’d called my bluff, and now it was time for me to call his. I had to send him a signal he wouldn’t forget. The mission didn’t allow for half measures or nice tries. The mission wasn’t for the timid. KOP needed to change. This broken world needed to change.
“Juno?” called Jimmy, his voice cracking, his eyes pleading. “Why you jus’ standin’ there? Fuckin’ help me!”
It hurt me to hear the innocent fear in Jimmy’s words. He was a fellow Tenttowner. He trusted me. My dinner threatened to come up.
I swallowed to keep my food down. “Break his legs.”
April 22, 2789
Midnight had passed. I couldn’t sleep.
I lay on the bed, my fingers laced under my head, listening to the sound of a bedframe scraping across the floor upstairs. Lumbela was really getting at it up there. Been going like this for ten minutes now.
I was in one of Chicho’s screw suites, lying on a bed with fresh sheets. I’d insisted on fresh sheets. And even with the clean sheets, I made sure to lie on top. And fully clothed.
I was pretty damn sure Captain Mota would stand down, but until I could be absolutely certain, I’d stay here. No point making myself easy to find. For that reason, I’d dumped my phone too. Last thing I needed was to get arrested.
I was less concerned for my crew-cops didn’t arrest other cops-but thought it best for them to lay low anyway. Deluski and Kripsen were bunking down the hall. And Lumbela was upstairs rearranging the furniture, making a goddamned racket. Fucking idiot.
Literally.
I turned on the lights. Geckos scurried and bedbugs scattered. An iguana stayed on the wall, a mane of spikes framing his face like military-inspired flower petals. His charcoal skin had turned fluorescent-pink along his spine like it always did during mating season. ’Guanas were especially brave this time of year. They’d leave themselves exposed for days in an effort to attract a mate, waiting in the starlight, their neon pink skin glowing with desire.
I wished my life could be so simple. Eat. Sleep. Fuck. If I could only be reduced to my biological urges. No love. No hate. No pride.
No guilt.
Using the room phone, I called a few fences I knew, waking them up until I found one who had a hoverchair in stock, one of those nice offworld models. I told the fence to send it to Jimmy’s room at the hospital. No, don’t put my name on it. Make it anonymous.
Jimmy. I could still hear the sound, the sickening crack of bone.
Fuck me. And fuck Mota for making me go this far.
Somebody knocked.
“Come.”
The door swung open. “I saw your light was on.” Maria held up a bottle of brandy. “Wanna drink?”
I nodded with enthusiasm. Sobriety was a bitch.
She stepped in, her hair and her mini both teased up to hooker heights. She pulled out a couple glasses from a rolltop liquor cabinet and poured. I took a deep swig, and sweet liquid fire burned down my throat. She sat on some kind of hammock apparatus that hung from the ceiling. Swinging, she snuggled herself into the folds, her ass hanging out through a hole in the bottom until she snapped a mesh flap in place.
I took another gulp, just about draining my glass. Damn, that was good. Looking at Maria nestled into that contraption, I mentally cycled through sex positions, trying to figure out how to use that thing.
I was stumped. And glad for it. Made me feel like I still had at least a drop of innocence somewhere inside me.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked.
Her left eye was decidedly puffy. I searched for other signs of bruising, but couldn’t see through the layers of foundation on her cheeks.
“Sorry I hit you.”
“Goes with the job, right? Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Taking over this alley.”
The ’guana stared at me like he was waiting for an answer. I pulled my shades from my shirt pocket and slipped them on, darkening the iguana’s pink stripe to the color of blood.
I looked at Maria, her brown-sugar skin closer to chocolate now. She gave me a puzzled look, but didn’t ask about the shades. “You’re not in it for the money, are you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at you. Those are decent shoes, durable, but nothing fancy. You don’t wear a glitzy watch. You’re dressed in whites like any other joe. If you were about the money, you’d be showing off what you got. That’s what pimps do. Madams too.”
I downed the rest of my glass, stood and walked over to her for a refill. Damn, her perfume was strong.
“You should get that hand fixed.” She poured brandy into my wavering glass. “I know a doctor who works cheap. She does a lot of work on the girls around here.”
“Tit jobs?”
“Yeah. And other stuff.”
“What kind of other stuff?”
“Other stuff,” she repeated with a shrug. “I bet she could fix that hand.”
I took my place back on the bed. “Not interested.”
“She’s an offworlder. Or she used to be. She lives on-planet now.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess she likes it here.”
“So how did you end up working for Chicho?”
“He took me in when I was eleven.”
“You hooked for him?”
She nodded. “But I wasn’t very good at it. I was young, so I did well with the pervs at the beginning, but when my tits started coming in, I knew my time was limited. The other girls were prettier, and they knew how to work the johns better than me. I tried to compensate in the looks department by learning how to do my makeup and my hair real good like this.”
I wanted to laugh.
“But even then, I couldn’t compete. So I had to find another way to make myself useful.”
“And you chose security?”
“Why not? I still get to beat men off. I just do it a different way now.” She gave me a mascara-caked wink, her lashes coming together like two rakes. “You never answered my question. You’re not doing this for the money, are you?”
“No.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
“It’s complicated.” I had nothing more to say on the subject. I sipped my drink, uncomfortable silence taking hold.
“That was some riot,” she said after a while.
“Yeah.”
“You just about got yourself killed, you know.”
“I know.”
“What were you thinking? The sky was fucking falling, and that’s when you decided to stroll on out?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“You remind me of some of the girls around here.” She poured herself another. “I’m talking about the ones who drink and drug and fuck like they’re on a mission.”
“What kind of mission?”
“I wish I knew. It’s like they’re out to kill themselves, but they don’t have the guts to just slash their wrists and be done with it. Is that who you are?”
“No. I’m on a different kind of mission.”
“That’s what they all say.”
I tiptoed out, trying not to wake Maria, who was conked out on the sex swing. I hadn’t slept all night. My haunted thoughts wouldn’t allow it.