I sidestepped and shoved him in the back as he passed, using his own momentum to send him crashing into the wall head first.
He fell to the floor with a rough thud. Sound erupted from under the floorboards, the growls and snaps of an unknown number of monsters like the one in my weapon’s sights. Sanje Kapasi pulled his hands away from his head. They came away bloody. Scalp wounds were always the best bleeders.
“Ow!…Ow!” he sniveled.
“That’s right, Sanje. We’re going to kill your pets, and there is nothing you can do to stop us.”
“N-no, y-you can’t do that.”
“I’m starting with this one.” I made another show of aiming at the surgically enhanced monster, ready to fry it with one sustained burn. It had to be at least twice the size of any monitor I’d ever seen.
“No, don’t kill him! Don’t!” He started to cry. Tears ran from his eyes and snot poured from his nose.
“I’m gonna start with this one, but I’m going to kill them all, Sanje.” The monitor stared at me coldly unaware, testing the air with its tongue.
“Stop, Juno!” About fucking time Maggie stepped in, good cop to my bad.
“No. I’m going to kill this one right now!”
“No. Why can’t we tell Sanje to stop fighting ’guanas? He’ll stop if we tell him to. We don’t have to kill them.”
“Y-yes, I’ll stob,” he sobbed through clogged nasal passages.
I lowered my piece. “How can we trust him? He won’t even answer our questions.”
Maggie leaned in close, put her hand on his shoulder. “He’s right, Sanje. How can we trust you?”
“I b-bromise I won’t fight them.”
“Will you answer our questions?”
“Y-yes.”
I looked at Maggie, at the expression on her face. She was enjoying this. I put the lase-pistol back in my belt and tossed Sanje a musty towel, telling him to blow his nose and wipe the blood off. He wound up just smearing it all over.
Maggie baby-talked. “We want to know about your brother.”
“H-he’s not mad at me anymore.”
“Why was he mad at you?”
“I-I was s-stubid. He t-told me I was stubid.”
“What did you do that was stupid?”
“I didn’t give Vishnu the bill.”
“Who’s Vishnu?”
He pointed to the reprieved reptile.
“What kind of pill?”
“A w-white bill.”
“What does the pill do?”
“Makes him bleed and bleed.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean it makes him keep bleeding?”
“When he gets cut, it makes him bleed and bleed and bleed.”
“An anticoagulant?”
Sanje just looked at her, his mouth hanging open.
Maggie asked, “Why did Jhuko want you to give the pill to Vishnu?”
“I told him Vishnu was the best. I c-couldn’t give him the bill. He w-was the best.”
“Did Vishnu win the fight?”
“Vishnu was the b-best.”
“So your brother told you to give Vishnu a pill, and you didn’t do it? Is that right?”
“Yes.”
Maggie took a long breath. “What happened next?”
“H-he couldn’t bay. B-because I didn’t g-give the bill to Vishnu.”
“Who did he have to pay?”
“A-a lawyer was after him.”
My mind went instantly to the pretentious prosecutor. “Was it Wilhelm Glazer?” I asked.
“N-no. A lawyer.” Then thinking I wasn’t understanding him, he clarified, “A law-yer.”
Fuck, this is driving me crazy. “Why was a lawyer after him?”
“B-because Jhuko couldn’t bay. Then Jhuko s-stobbed c-coming to see me.”
Maggie and I tracked along the river, in the direction of the wharf, Sanje Kapasi’s less-than-shack of a house falling out of sight.
I said to Maggie, “How come you helped me manipulate him? That wasn’t exactly police procedure in there. I thought you were the honest cop.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Don’t even try it, Maggie. You know we manipulated him. And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it. I saw you.”
“I just questioned him. You’re the one who assaulted him.” She played it innocent, but her foxy grin betrayed her. Was that a wink? My stomach flipped at the thought, in a good way.
We walked back onto the wharf. Arboreal robotic loading arms lined the water’s edge. The last one had died decades ago. Ivy had greened over the rusted metal, and lizards had nested on hydraulic pistons.
We found the same boat captain at the wharf playing cards on an upturned barrel. He must’ve waited around, hoping he’d catch us for the return trip. We climbed down into the boat and sat next to each other on the shady side, our knees bumping with the river flow. The electricity of each knee bump set my heart sparking.
A flyer launched from behind the wharf. It buzzed the wharf then headed upriver. It was probably filled with offworld tourists who had stopped in Loja for lunch. The sun hung low in the sky as we plowed our way out into the thick water. The temperature was just starting to drop. I tried to fan my shirt, but it was plastered to my body.
I tried to piece things together. My theory went like this: Jhuko Kapasi was running ’guana fights. He got greedy and rigged a fight. He gave good odds on Vishnu and took big bets. He gave his ’guana keeper brother some anticoagulants and told him to give them to Vishnu before the fight. Real simple-Vishnu gets cut, doesn’t clot, bleeds to death; Kapasi makes a killing. But his brother Sanje was attached to Vishnu and didn’t give him the pills. Vishnu won the fight, and Kapasi didn’t have the money to pay out.
Assuming I was right, I was surprised Kapasi was still alive. A guy who pulled a scam like that paid one way or another…and since he didn’t have the money…
He must’ve had enough dough to pay off Carlos Simba. The Loja crime lord totally controlled that city. No ’guana fights would have gone on without a fee going his way. If it was illegal, he’d get his piece. Simba would’ve whacked Kapasi by now if he hadn’t paid. Not even prison could have protected him.
The way I saw it, Kapasi must’ve used the purse to pay off Simba and any bookmakers he was afraid of-fuck everybody else. According to his brother, one of the fuckees was a lawyer, almost certainly Prosecutor Glazer. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to getting stiffed on his winnings. He had Kapasi arrested and sentenced to five years. I still found it hard to believe Kapasi made it through alive. He would’ve had to cough up some serious bucks.
Fast forward three years and Kapasi opted for a stint in the Army rather than serving the full nickel. According to Jimmy Bushong, Kapasi got back to his old tricks running games and supplying brown sugar to his lieutenant. Then he took six prisoners out in a truck for reasons unknown. Lieutenant Vlotsky was forced to cover for Kapasi and came up with a BS story about getting attacked rather than being made for a guy who was dosing on duty. Vlotsky resented being made the fool and armed the unit with bum guns and sent them into combat. The logical conclusion was that Kapasi killed Vlotsky out of revenge.
Where Mayor Samir fit in, I had no idea.
By the time we made it back to Koba, early afternoon darkness had already fallen. Seventeen hours of darkness before the sun would rise again.
We hit the station. The basement was naturally cool. Condensation seeped from the walls, and the ceiling had sprouted dense green growths. The stone floor was ridged for better footing. Even so, muckish puddles had to be avoided. We entered the morgue. “Seen Abdul?”
“He’s in room four.”
We pushed our way through the swinging doors into room four. My eyes burned from the smell of morgue-sterilizing acid. Frigid air gusted from the overhead cooling unit. Bright lights shone on a steel table that was topped by an open body. Abdul Salaam was ripping the rib cage apart.
He looked up and spotted us through his thick glasses. His magnified eyes lit. “Juno.”
“Hey, Abdul. This is Maggie Orzo. You remember her from yesterday.”
“Yes, yes-of course I remember.” He tore his gloves off, revealing bony hands creviced with age. Maggie and I followed Abdul to his office, grabbed up a couple mugs of coffee, and took seats on wooden chairs.