Kop (32 page)

“No. She wants Mr. Wolski. He did her mother’s bathroom, and she wants hers done the same way.” I threw in an eye roll to show how crazy rich people were.

“He isn’t here.” He looked at Maggie. “You take me to your mother’s bathroom. I’ll look it over and do yours the same way. You won’t be able to tell the difference. I’ll give you a good price.”

“No,” she said, turning on an I’m-better-than-you voice. “I want Mr. Wolski. Tell us where he is.”

“He doesn’t work anymore. I’m your man.”

“Tell me where to find him.”

“You think I’m lying? I told you he doesn’t work anymore. He’s been hanging out at PT’s.” He pointed down the street to PT’s Lounge. “You wait and see, he’ll tell you he doesn’t work anymore.”

She walked away without thanking him, playing up the rich-bitch persona. I slipped him a few pesos and followed her out into the now pounding rain.

He yelled at our backs, “I’ll wait right here for you. When he tells you he doesn’t work anymore, you come back.”

PT’s Lounge had the aircon running low, just enough to take
the heat down a notch from smothering to uncomfortable. There were about a dozen tables scattered around, half occupied by men drinking and playing cards. We headed for the bar, a window covered in chicken wire with a slot at the bottom for passing out the hooch.

We waited our turn, three men ahead of us. Shine looked like the house specialty. Each customer passed a tin cup and a couple coins through the slot. The woman behind the bar took the coins and scooped out a cupful of mash. Her face was scarred-up from a botched plastic surgery. There were hacks all over Koba that lasered up faces. Make you look like an offworlder—guaranteed. Maggie gave her a pitying look, probably feeling guilty that she’d been able to afford getting her own fake face properly done. The burden of being rich.

When we got to the front, Maggie said, “We need to talk to Nicky Wolski.”

The bartender pointed him out. I looked across the room and sized him up—my enforcer juices were flowing strong. He was a scrawny guy. Based on the dopey look on his face, he was drunk off his ass. He’d be easy for me to take, even at my advanced age. We just had to get him outside so his friends wouldn’t jump in. My muscles tingled with anticipation. My nonviolence kick was strictly a thing of the past.

He was playing cards, showing off a big pile of money. The fuckhead was
gambling
with the money. Enforcer juices reached tidal wave proportion.

I walked over and stuck my badge in his face. “We need to talk to you.”

He clumsily gathered his money from the table and tried to stuff it in his pocket. Some coins fell to the floor, and he teetered down to get them. We walked him out the back door to an alley littered with garbage, but otherwise empty. All three of us hugged the wall to stay out of the worst of the rain.

Maggie had her arms crossed. “What happened to your daughter Shamal?”

His dopey face went serious. “I don’t know. She disappeared.”

I socked him in the gut, using my legs to put all my weight into it. He went down to the ground, his face landing in a dirty puddle. He sucked in a breath, choking on puddle water. I felt a power surge in my shaking right. It could still do some damage.

When he stopped gurgling and sputtering, Maggie repeated, “What happened to your daughter?”

“I don’t kn—”

I kicked him in the side. A good futbol kick, where foot met leg, no toe. He rolled on the ground, out into the rain.

Maggie was all cold steel. “What happened to your daughter?”

This time, there was no denial. Broken ribs were telling him to cooperate.

“Where did you get that money?”

Wolski vomited shine and puddle water. The rib pain threatened to make him pass out. I lunged in, grabbed his hair, and turned his face up into the driving rain until his eyes looked alert.

Maggie started the questioning again. “What did you do to your daughter?”

“I got her a job.”

I had to lean in to hear him.

She bent over him. “You mean you sold her.”

He didn’t respond.

“Answer me! Did you sell her?”

“Yes. What of it?”

I put my foot on his rib cage and pushed, sending him squirming.

“Who bought her?”

“Carlos Simba.”

“What’s he going to do with her?”

He didn’t answer.

I rifled his pockets and took every last peso before we left him moaning on the ground.

Quick stop at the Wolski house. I gave Mrs. Wolski her husband’s money and padded it out of my own pocket. When we told her that her husband sold Shamal, she broke down.

One of her children entered, looking terrified to see his mother crying. He drew close and rubbed her back the same way she had probably calmed him so many times.

It didn’t help.

Lagarto had finally found something new to export. Slaves.

M
AGGIE
and I rolled through the dark afternoon streets. Conversation was impossible as sheets of rain slapped onto the car’s metallic roof, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Knowing what to look for, it had only taken us a couple hours of surfing financials to figure out the basics of the operation. Carlos Simba had been running a slave trade. The buyer was Universal Mining. Free labor equals big profits. The middleman was the electric bitch, Mai Nguyen. We’d checked the shipping manifests. There were four shipping containers a week sent to Nguyen Imports from Vanguard Supplies, a warehouse located on the Loja waterfront that was probably a front for the Simba organization.

The slave business must have been going gangbusters. Four shipping containers a week simply hadn’t been cutting it anymore so Simba, Nguyen, and Universal Mining had gone in together on a freighter, an outright slave ship.

Since there was only one spaceport, Simba had to run the operation from Koba. To get approval from the city, he tried to pass the thing off as a legitimate shipping company. He submitted a business plan to the board of the Koba Office of Business Affairs. He played up the patriotic angle—a shipping company owned and operated by Lagartans.

Simba didn’t stand a chance with the board. They didn’t like dealing with kingpins, plus the fix was in—Chairman of
the Board Peter Vlotsky had been scoring big money from an offworld shipping company trying to maintain its monopoly.

Enter Sanders Mdoba—a Bandur crony who must’ve liked the looks of Simba’s slave money. He ran a blackmail scheme on the board, using compromising vids of board members to buy votes.

Chairman Peter Vlotsky didn’t play. His wife already knew he was screwing around, and the offworld money was too good for him to pass up. Mdoba turned up the heat—killed Vlotsky’s kid—and Simba got his shipping company signed and sealed.

The still missing pieces were Private Jhuko Kapasi and the grand prize, Mayor Omar Samir.

We rode through the outskirts of the city. Kicked-up mud from dirt roads stuck to the windshield. The towers of the Koba Spaceport were now visible, poking up through the jungle.

The cab dropped us at the spaceport gates. We used our badges to get past the guards minus our weapons.

The cargo docks housed five massive freighters that towered like high-rises while cranes dangled metal boxes going into and out of gaping cargo holds. Simba’s new purchase, the
Sunda,
stood in the second position. Trucks on the ground cannoned the ship with water, hiding all but the tip behind falling clouds of mist.

We entered the command tower and marched down the cinder-block halls. The walls were alive with molds and mosses. We looked for the office of Clay Reinholt, nightshift supervisor. His signatures were on almost half of the delivery receipts from Vanguard Supplies to Nguyen Imports.

We found his office, ignored his receptionist’s protests, and strode for the door. She jumped up and blocked our path. Maggie’s dirty look convinced her to move out of our way.

We headed through the door with the adrenaline-pumped
confidence of three successful bully sessions in a row. I was revved—hadn’t felt like this in years.

I stopped face to face with Mai Nguyen.
NGUYEN!
Maggie bumped into me from behind. The corner of my eye picked up something coming from the side. Before I could turn, I was tackled. My face bounced off the floor. Maggie screamed. My vision went red, and my gasket blew sky high. I thrashed against hands that held me stock still. I jerked violently to no avail, my body overheating with the effort. When my flame finally burned out, the hands lifted me off the floor and sat me in a chair. Maggie was already seated. The hands pinned my arms behind the chair. I couldn’t move.

Mai Nguyen stood before me like a déjà vu doomsday. She studied my face with her not-a-day-older eyes. She extended her index finger toward my nose. I slipped into a fried-nose panic. I strained against the hands that held my head. She gave my nose a poke.

She retreated to a desk and sat on its front edge, leaning forward so her impressive cleavage offered a view with the utmost titillation. “How nice to see you, Officer Mozambe. I thought you looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure. I’m not used to people who age. I stole a few skin cells off your nose for a DNA test which verified your identity. I’m sure you don’t mind.” She spoke to the hands. “You can let them go.”

Hands released me. I looked over my shoulder at the offworld bodyguards. The one behind me didn’t look familiar, but I recognized the one behind Maggie from a quarter-century ago. I took in the rest of the room. Off to the side stood a nervous-looking local man. It had to be the nightshift supervisor we’d come to see. Nguyen shot him a look, and he made a quick exit.

Nguyen aimed her cleavage at Maggie. “Who are you?”

Maggie spoke with straight-ahead cool. “Detective Magda Orzo.”

“Are you partners?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry for the rough treatment you just received, but you can hardly blame my bodyguards for reacting that way. You didn’t give them much choice, entering unannounced the way you did. What brings you here, officers?”

My hand was outright gyrating. I tucked it under my leg. I didn’t want her knowing how badly she’d hurt me. “We’d like to know about your dealings with Carlos Simba.”

Nguyen wore an amused expression. “Mr. Simba is an entrepreneur. He approached me to see if I would invest in his new shipping company. Lagarto Lines looked like a sound investment, so here I am.”

“Carlos Simba is a known figure in organized crime.”

“He’s nothing of the sort. He’s a very successful businessman. He’s going to be the first Lagartan to compete with non-Lagartan shippers. That means jobs and affordable shipping prices for Lagartans. I would think he’d be a hero to your people.”

“What goods does he plan to ship?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters if he’s going to sell our people as slaves.”

“Don’t be so shortsighted, Officer Mozambe. Mr. Simba will be able to cut into Lagarto’s trade deficit. That means the peso will be stronger. Think of all the things Lagartans could buy with a peso that’s worth something—medicine, robots, computers. This is the first step for Lagarto to enter the galactic economy.”

“Don’t bullshit me. You don’t care about Lagarto. You’re selling slaves for your own profit.”

“Look who is suddenly the moralist. That’s quite the attitude from a hatchet man for the Bandur organization. Bandur enslaves his people with their own vices for his profit. I fail to see the difference.”

“But…but…” I stammered like a fool. I couldn’t find the words to defend myself. Maybe because there weren’t any. Maybe there was no difference between Nguyen and me.

“You tire me.” She looked to her bodyguards, “Escort them out, will you. See to it that the guards don’t let them back in without a warrant.”

I stood up and dropped my right into my pocket. My gut stirred anger, vengeance, and guilt into a vile stew that I couldn’t vomit.

Nguyen’s voice stopped us at the door. “You know I have camera implants in my eyes. Whenever I’m feeling down, I recall the recording of our last meeting. It never fails to cheer me up.”

My hand went spastic within the confines of my pocket. Maggie led me out to the sound of Nguyen’s tech-amplified laughter.

I felt shell-shocked from my run-in with Nguyen. She’d gone from moving O to moving slaves, and she wasn’t shy about letting people know it. I dropped Maggie at her hotel. Seeing all the offworlders coming in and out, I once again marveled at how rich she had to be to afford that place.

I headed home for dinner with Niki. I was looking forward to seeing her. I felt bad about being gone so much. Since I’d stopped my enforcing, we’d spent a lot more time together, and I wasn’t used to going this long without seeing her.

My phone rang. The young girl from the dock dropped into the passenger seat. She looked at least a year younger than her real self—overdue for a holo-update.

“Is Mdoba back?”

“He was,” she said. “But he’s gone again. He took his boat out on the river.”

Thanks for nothing.
“Call me when he gets back, okay?”

“Yep.” She disappeared in a flash.