“That figures. I want to know who came up with that idea-an Army of ex-cons. Dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. Someday they’ll join in with the warlords and attack us. ”
“Do you think he’s capable of murder?”
“Not the guy I sent up. He was strictly a hustler, but you never can tell what a few years in prison will do to a man.”
“I need to know what he’s been up to lately. Can you tell me who he ran with back then that we could talk to?”
“I don’t know anybody that could help you there. He made more enemies than friends with his hustles. He lived with his brother who raised the ’guanas in the basement. You could try to talk to him, but I don’t think you’ll get much out of him. He’s slow-some kind of retard. My guess is he’ll still be living at the house. He was living with a younger sister named Isabel who used to take care of him. She was maybe sixteen, and a real looker, but she disappeared the same day Kapasi got sentenced. It must’ve been tough for the poor retard to lose a brother and a sister the same day. He didn’t have any other family to speak of.”
“What do you mean she disappeared?”
“I mean she disappeared. She went missing. The police got on it, but they never found her. If you ask me, she was lookin’ at a life of taking care of her half-baked brother all on her own, and she took off. Can’t say I blame her.”
“Can you think of anybody else Kapasi may have associated with?”
“No, that’s it.”
I hung up after getting the brother’s name, Sanje Kapasi. I already had the address.
Maggie arrived with coffee. She was dressed smartly, loose-fitting blouse over color-coordinated ironed pants. Her clothes were too good for a cop, but not fancy enough to betray how rich she was. “Good morning, Juno,” she said with a casual smile, her hair still damp from a morning shower. She was pretty, there was no denying it. I had to remind myself of how easy it was to look that good with her kind of money. To her, getting nipped, tucked, lifted, and lipoed was as easy as getting a haircut.
“Morning, Maggie. Thanks for the coffee.” I took the coffee with my left and took a sip-too hot. I wanted to take off the lid and get it to cool faster, but there was no way to do it without spilling. I’d just have to wait a while.
We chartered a boat to take us to Loja, two hours upriver. The river was the fastest way. There were no good roads to Loja; the damn things would get overrun by jungle so fast that the government couldn’t keep them clear.
Loja was founded at the junction of the Koba and Vistuba Rivers. It was only a fraction of the size of Koba; still, it was the second largest city on Lagarto. In its glory days, it was a bustling port, but now it was just a hollowed-out husk of a city. The smart people migrated downriver by the boatload and left that second-rate town to rot.
The Army would be interrogating Jhuko Kapasi by now. No way we’d get to see him, but with any luck we’d be able to get something out of the brother, find out what kind of rackets he was into. Jimmy Bushong’s story repeated in my mind. Jhuko Kapasi: hustler ex-con, running games in the Army and selling O to his lieutenant. One night he took six POWs out in the jungle and came back without them. His lieutenant was so incensed that he sent the whole unit into combat with sabotaged weapons. And now that lieutenant was dead, lipless.
And somehow the mayor was involved. Paul’s instincts were rarely wrong. My hands clutched. I felt juiced, back in the game. Paul needed me to connect this to the mayor. One way or another, I’d do it. Who the fuck does the mayor think he is, making a play for KOP? That’s Paul’s turf.
Maggie and I sat on mildewed cushions and rode slowly away from the dock. Buoys bobbed on either side, guiding the way. Once in deeper water, the driver opened up the throttle and turned into the current. The sun rose but was quickly overtaken by thick clouds from the east. The city gradually faded behind us, and we were alone on the river, leaving a wake of black-green water rolling into the reeds and mangroves of the riverbank.
I sprayed on a thick coat of bug spray and relaxed into the cushions, settled in for the ride.
“Juno, can I ask you something?” I could barely hear Maggie’s voice over the motor’s roar.
“Yeah.”
“Are you dirty?”
I hesitated-damn it. Then I looked at her expectant eyes: second mistake. “Yeah, I’m dirty.”
She looked disappointed.
“We all are, Maggie. You will be, too.”
Deafening rain pounded onto the rusted tin roof of the boat as we pulled up to the Loja wharf. We hurried through the stinging downpour, past the rusted-out robotics and ducked into a cafe. A good time to have breakfast and wait out the showers. We ordered a flatbread with honey drizzled on. It’d be easy to eat with my left.
Maggie said, “You’re wrong.”
“About what, Maggie?”
“Me becoming dirty.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I didn’t get into police work for the money.”
“Then why did you?”
“I want to help people.”
“Help people? You should be a teacher.”
“I don’t like kids.”
I smiled at that. “I don’t like them either.” I looked out the window. “Looks like the rain is slowing down.”
Maggie wouldn’t drop the subject. “Just because KOP is corrupt doesn’t mean it has to stay corrupt.”
“Give me a break, Maggie. KOP will always be corrupt.”
“How can you say that?”
“Until the city starts paying us more than the pimps and pushers, it will always be corrupt. It’s the natural order.”
“That’s not true. The city can stop hiring people like you and start hiring cops who care more about serving the people than lining their pockets with a little cash.”
“Now you sound like Mayor Samir.”
“At least he’s trying to do something…clean things up.”
“You think the mayor’s clean?”
“Of course.”
“Trust me, there’s no such thing as a clean politician.”
“How can you say that?”
I just shook my head. She’ll learn.
She wouldn’t let it drop. “Hey, I know the government isn’t perfect, but they try to do the best for the people.”
“If they wanted to do the best for the people, they wouldn’t have sold off the Orbital and the spaceport to a bunch of offworld corporations. They sold out Lagarto for their own profit. This planet would be sitting pretty by now if we were running the mining operations.”
“That happened a long time ago, and they had no choice. They needed to get the government out of debt.”
“They had a choice, and they chose their own interests over ours.”
We sat silently for a few moments, then she said, “All I know is I’ve met the mayor a few times. He seemed genuine to me.”
“Friend of your parents?”
“Acquaintances. My mother supported his campaign.”
Figures. She couldn’t find out we were hunting the mayor. She was liable to run to her mother. “What about your father? Doesn’t he support the mayor, too?”
“My father’s dead. Murdered during a mugging. They executed the son of a bitch that did it.”
I creaked out an apology as I began to understand why the rich girl had gone into police work.
“It was a few years ago,” she said. “I was just a teenager.”
“Do you miss him?”
Maggie’s raised eyebrows voiced a silent, “What do you think?”
“Sorry. Stupid question,” I said with the sad realization that to me the answer to that question wasn’t at all obvious.
Maggie said, “I especially missed him last night. My mother can’t stand it that I’m a cop. I made the mistake of calling her last night to tell her that I got my first case. You should’ve heard the way she laid into me. It’s that kind of crap that made me move out before I could find a proper place. I figured living in a hotel was better than listening to her every night. If my father was still around, he’d be able to settle her down some. He was good at keeping her off my back. He wouldn’t be happy with me being a cop either, but he’d respect my decision.”