Warren Hammond - Kop

He always could talk me into anything. I said, “I think Officer Orzo is going to need some convincing. I don’t think she’s very enthusiastic about working with me.”

“I’ve got Banks talking to her right now. He’ll smooth things with her. You’ll report direct to me on this one.” He laid one of his toothy smiles on me. “Thanks for coming by. I’ll see you and Niki at the banquet tonight, won’t I?”

“Yep, we’ll be there,” I said reflexively as I walked out, though we both knew I hadn’t had any plans to attend the mayor’s banquet. I hated that hobnobbing bullshit. I didn’t fit in. So why did he say he’d see me there? He wanted me to come so he could talk to me without that prick Gilkyson listening in. I knew right then that this case was bigger than he’d been letting on.

I left Paul’s office, right hand in my pocket, my shoes crunching weeds that sprouted from floor cracks. The ceiling lights were penny-saving bulbless. The dim passages were lit by misty sunlight beaming through sparsely placed windows. The building was half abandoned. Lagarto was perpetually entrenched in rough times.

I headed up to the third, taking the stairs slow. Their sharp edges were now rounded from a hundred years of wear. I’d lost my footing more than once, so I held the rail tight in my left, my fingers running over the crusted mold of the underside.

I called home. “We’re going to the banquet tonight.”

Niki’s hologram was all smiles, matching her mood. “That’s great! What made you change your mind?”

I smiled back at Holo-Niki. “Paul. He’s got me on a case, and he wants to talk to me tonight.”

“What kind of case?”

“A homicide.”

“But you work vice.”

“I know, but Paul asked me to take this one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s why he wants me to come to the banquet.”

“I don’t believe this. I’ve been trying to get you to go for weeks, and Paul just snaps his fingers.”

“I know, I know. I gotta go. I’ll check in later, okay?”

“But-”

“I have to go, Niki.”

I clicked off. Niki’s hologram vanished. That was easier than I thought. She must’ve been too excited about the banquet to give me a serious tongue-lashing. I thought she’d go wild when I mentioned Paul. I wasn’t supposed to do jobs for him anymore.

I went into vice to find my new partner. A plantation owner! What was Paul doing, putting me on a homicide and partnering me up with a fucking plantation owner? The plantation owners had developed this planet, setting up a booming brandy trade that made Lagarto the talk of the Unified Worlds. Lagartan fruit tasted like shit, but let it rot with some sugar for a couple years, and you’ve got gold. The plantation owners made a killing exporting their brandy to the stars. Even after the crash, plantation owners still occupied the highest seats in Lagartan society.

Vice was almost empty. It didn’t get buzzing until after sundown. The floor was molded over like a pale green carpet. Wooden desks were topped by computer terminals that had quit working decades ago.

Maggie Orzo was sitting at my desk. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulling it up off the back of her neck the way women do when they’re trying to cool off. Her hair looked nice up like that. I noticed she was on hold with an Army logo hologram floating over my desk.

I marched up to her. “Have you talked to them?”

“Not yet. They’re trying to find an officer to talk to me.”

“Hang up.”

“Why? I want to inform them of Lieutenant Vlotsky’s death.”

“Hang up.”

She pulled her hands out of her hair and severed the connection.

I said, “Once they hear about Vlotsky, they’ll recall his unit. They’ll call it a military matter and clamp everything down tight. We won’t get to talk to anybody in his unit. I’ll call Jessie Khalil at the station and have her delay the story as long as she can, so we can get to some of them first.”

Maggie had no objections. She looked pensive, then said, “Why do you think the killer took the lips?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know. Who knew what was in the mind of a serial? “Why don’t you bring the skin mag page downstairs and have it checked for prints.”

She sensed the brush-off but didn’t say anything about it. C of D Banks must’ve done a job on her. He must’ve told her to do what I said. Maybe this could work out after all.

I called Jessie and set her to tracking down a roster of Vlotsky’s unit. She had contacts everywhere. I told her the angle I wanted her to play on the Vlotsky story-keep the Lotus out of it. I asked her to shelve the story as long as she could, but there was nothing she could do about that. Her editor already had it scheduled for the next broadcast. That wouldn’t leave us much time.

Maggie was back. “What next?” she asked.

“I hear you’re a plantation owner.”

Her face tightened up. “That’s right, but don’t think that’s how I got here. I’m here because I deserve to be.”

“So the fact that you’re filthy rich is just a coincidence?”

“I make my own way. Chief Chang assured me that my family had nothing to do with this posting. If they had, I would have refused it.”

“You really believe that?”

Maggie was pissed, more pissed than she had been in the alley. “I don’t care what you think. I earned it. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”

I let it go, wondering why a plantation owner would choose to be a cop. Our collars were way too blue for their tastes. Even after they’d lost the bulk of their wealth in the brandy market crash, they were still the richest of the rich, at least on a Lagartan scale. On an offworld scale, the crash had dropped them down a few rungs to upper middle class at best. It was their own fault. What do you expect when you try to build an entire economy on a single product?

I split Rose’s list of johns with Maggie. I took seventeen, gave her sixteen. After a half hour’s work, I scored seven left-messages, six didn’t-see-anythings, and four can’t-talk-to-you-right-nows. Maggie scored about the same.

Jessie called back with the roster. Unit 29: Lieutenant Dmitri Vlotsky and ten enlisted men, all on leave.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Are we going to talk with the Vlotsky family?”

“Later. Chief of Detectives Banks will call them if he hasn’t already. The Vlotsky story’s going to break in less than an hour. We have to talk to his unit while we have the chance.”

I didn’t have my car, so we decided to take the river. We started hoofing it for the pier. The five hours of daylight were almost over, the sun just dipping below rooftops. Cool shadows had begun to draw people out of their homes. They sat on their stoops waving paper fans. The Koba winter was currently serving up seventeen hours of night and taking the worst of the stifling heat out of the jungle. The thankfully shortened days were symptomatic of Koba’s polar location. Go much farther south and you’d hit uninhabitable deserts.

I adjusted my pace to keep a half step ahead of my partner. I didn’t want her thinking she was my equal. This was my case.

We made our way through the Phra Kaew market area. I spotted an offworlder at a fruit stand; his too-tall body and two-tone designer skin were dead giveaways. The suck-up fruit stand owner hustled out from the back with a crate of fresh fruit and picked out the choicest pieces for his newfound offworld friend. The prospect of landing some offworld currency was enough to set just about any Lagartan to performing tricks.

The sidewalks were crowded with merchants. Shopkeepers were busy moving racks of wares onto the walk. Vendors on the street side were propping open boarded-up windows, cutting the sidewalk down to a narrow path for pedestrians to navigate. It was like walking through a tunnel with walls made of butchered chickens, cheap sunglasses, stacked cigarettes, and skin vids. I bought some ’mander tacos-extra hot.