KOP Killer

by Warren Hammond

  “People are dying all around you, my boy. You heard Kripsen and Lumbela got killed?”

  “No.” Seeing wasn’t the same as hearing.

  “They got necktied. Word is you and that Deluski kid were chummy with them.”

  I looked over at Deluski. He had his head in his hands, probably wondering if he’d ever be able to shake these questions. Wondering if he’d ever be able to erase the stain of sins.

  The kid needed to chill. This was just a negotiation. He was mistaking Jeljili’s questions for accusations. Everything in this city was negotiable. Everything. I spoke into the receiver. “I don’t make the kind of scratch I used to.”

  “Don’t gimme that. I know you, Juno, you always got something going. Am I right?”

  Deluski gave me a bewildered stare while we haggled over price.

  The money settled, I asked my question: Bronson Carew. Rape complaint. I want the whole story.

  “Yeah, I remember that kid. He was one scary freak. He came in with this vid, said it proved he was raped.”

  “You watched it.”

  “I watched the whole thing. Hours and hours of it. Must’ve been shot over several days. It looked like they were living in an abandoned house, just a crappy old mattress on the floor.”

  The party house where he’d staged Franz’s body. And later Froelich’s and Wu’s.

  Jeljili rolled on. “I couldn’t help the kid. He wasn’t raped. He never objected, never said no. He didn’t cry or call for help.”

  I already knew the answer but asked anyway. “Who was the alleged assailant?”

  “Franz Samusaka. A rich kid. Father’s an oil tycoon.”

  I clicked the new facts into place. “I know who he is. Did you question him?”

  “Absolutely. Found out his house was broken into the day before Carew came into KOP. Didn’t take a genius to know Carew was the burglar.”

  I processed the new info, incorporated it into the building narrative.

  Jeljili continued, “Franz Samusaka denied the rape. Said it was consensual, which it was. This freak was digging for gold. Scored some high-class ass and now he wanted to get something for it.”

  “Did Carew say he wanted money?”

  “No. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? The Samusaka kid wanted me to return his stolen property, but I couldn’t do that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “This was evidence in a potential rape.” I could practically hear him smile, he was so pleased with himself. Translation: he wanted to get paid. “That was when Franz called in Froelich and Wu. He knew them somehow.”

  “And?”

  “And they brokered an arrangement.”

  “The vid?”

  “I heard it got lost.”

  Of course it did. “That it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I tossed the phone into the fountain. “Let’s move.”

  * * *

  I took a chair next to the wall so I could look down on the Square.

  Deluski went to the bar to pick up drinks, and came back saying, “I don’t get it. I thought Ang Samusaka staged the break-in in order to cover for the fact that he trashed his father’s study.”

  I sipped my ice water, eyes tracking a panama hat that had just entered the Square. Its owner walked with a second man. It was too dark and too far to see faces, but I knew who they were. They walked toward the fountain.

  Deluski was still waiting for an answer. “Well?”

  I’d already reasoned it through. “Ang found the mess in his brother’s room after Carew broke in to steal the alleged rape vid. Then Ang took the opportunity to ransack his father’s study before reporting the break-in to the police. Whatever Ang found, he’s been using it to blackmail his father ever since.”

  “But that doesn’t explain how Carew could’ve broken in without leaving any jimmied doors or broken windows.”

  “True.”

  Panama circled the fountain. Mota climbed onto a park bench so he could get a better view of the crowd. I aimed my left index finger in their direction, cocked my thumb like it was an antique-style gun. Bang.

  “So how did Carew get inside?”

  “Somebody must’ve let him in.”

  Panama stepped into the fountain, water up to his knees, reached down and fished out Deluski’s phone. He held it up for Mota to see.

  I aimed my finger. Bang.

  He got out of the fountain and spiked the phone on the ground, drawing startled glares from passersby.

  A smile came to my lips. I reveled in their frustration. They had scored some early points on me, but that was before my head was straight. Before I’d purged the booze out of my blood. They couldn’t match me now. I was a fucking master.

  They moved out, heading in the opposite direction. I pumped finger shots into their backs. Bang, bang, motherfuckers.

  * * *

  I stared at the ceiling. Snails. It had to be the snails.

  I heard Maria call my name from down the hall and sat up on the bed a second before she stepped through the curtain. “Hey, I can’t stay for long or Chicho will miss me. The evening rush will be starting soon.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you’re still breathing.”

  I gave her a wry grin and sucked in a couple life-proving deep breaths.

  “Where’s Deluski?”

  “He’s trying to track down the bastard who did this to me.” I lifted my arm. “The guy went off-grid a year ago.”

  “But you know who he is?”

  “We do.”

  “So what are you doing lying around here?”

  “Thinking. Ever seen anybody drink snail juice?”

  She raised her overplucked eyebrows. “Snail juice?”

  “Supposed to be an aphrodisiac.”

  Her eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, you’re talking about the genie. It’s supposed to do more than that.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Supposed to make a person open to suggestion. Like when people get hypnotized. ‘Your wish is my command.’ I don’t know if it works, but I was there when Mota tried to sell some to Chicho. He claimed that it only took a drop to put somebody in a sex trance.”

  “Sex trance?”

  “It’s like you tell them what to do and they do it. Can’t help themselves. Mota said this particular species of snails produces some chemical they use as a defense mechanism. Makes hungry iguanas get disoriented or something, and discourages them from eating more snails. Mota said the snails he was selling had been enhanced with a concentrated version of the chemical.”

  “Did Chicho buy any?”

  “No. What would be the point? You don’t need a snail to make a hooker fuck your brains out. That’s what money is for.”

  It finally made sense. The new fact meshed with other facts. I turned and twisted them into proper place.

  A little drop was all it took for Franz Samusaka to turn Bronson Carew into his sex slave. He ordered Carew to enjoy it so the vid wouldn’t look like rape. Carew might not even be gay. No wonder he went psycho.

  Fueled by humiliation and victimization, he fixated on the stripe-faced man-eater. That was one badass bitch. Couldn’t fuck her for free. He fantasized himself as the victim turning all powerful. You want to rape me? I dare you. C’mon, do it. There you go. That’s it …

  Snap.

  A shiver rippled down my back.

  The fantasy was so powerful he made it real, got a steel trap installed inside himself. He re-created the rape by using the snails on Samusaka and brought him back to the original scene of the crime. Then he forced his rapist to rape him a second time, but this time he turned the tables. Took his pound of flesh in revenge.

  God, a fantasy like that must’ve dominated his every waking thought. The urge to do it again grew over the months since, the drive like a tidal force, pressure building day after day until the bursting point, when he chose two more victims, the men who covered up Samusaka’s crime.
They deserved it. They were accessories, rapists by proxy. He made them attack him, made them mount him.

  It was the doctor who did this. Genetically engineered a new breed of snails and kept them in a pen outside his clinic. Wu, Froelich, and Mota were his distributors with connections to the gay community as well as the brothels. The trio headed upriver every so often to pick up a new cask of snails. The pile of cash in that picture of them was their latest ill-begotten haul.

  And Panama was their partner. A Yepala sheriff who took his cut of the profits in exchange for providing muscle as well as allowing the doctor to run his clinic on his land.

  Maria sat next to me. “What’s wrong? You look lost.”

  Not anymore, I’m not. The doctor had to be stopped. He’d brought us the genie. The ultimate date rape drug. The bastard was a menace. A scourge.

  Her phone rang. “It’s Chicho.”

  “Take it.”

  I stood and walked into the bathroom, lifted the seat with my shoe.

  The genie.

  A sickening thought came to mind. Lizard-man might’ve made Wu kill his own family, his own girls. Jesus. I didn’t know if the drug was strong enough to make somebody do a thing so horrendous, but if it could make him shove his junk into a steel trap, then what couldn’t it do?

  The sudden urge to vomit overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and gagged into the toilet. Jesus.

  I flushed and stood on my quivery legs. Maria was still on the phone. “Where? Tell me where!”

  I hadn’t paid any attention to her conversation until now. A rush of alarm struck, and I was out the door.

  She was pacing, Chicho’s holo moving to and fro to stay in front of her. I stepped through him, into her path, grabbed her by the elbow. “What is it?”

  Words came out in a frantic, hyper stream. “My sister. A john attacked my s-sister. She’s g-going to the hospital.”

  “That you, Juno?” asked holo-Chicho.

  I took the phone from Maria. “It’s me.”

  “A john cut one of my girls. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Who is he?”

  “He goes by the name J.T. I’m paying you for protection, you better take care of this.”

  “You know his address?”

  The address popped in over his holo-head. I read it twice before hanging up.

  I passed the phone back and looked into her terrified eyes. “Go to the hospital. Take care of her.”

  “He said she lost a lot of blood.”

  I guided her toward the door. “Just go. I’ll take care of everything else.”

  I watched her hurry down the hall. A john cut her sister, and Chicho wanted me to rough him up.

  I wasn’t buying it. A john my ass. Chicho cut her himself. That rat bastard had gone back to Mota and helped him and Panama set their trap.

  The showdown was near.

  twenty-five

  THE Rojo Caballo.

  I sized up the hotel from a neighboring rooftop, eyes scanning up and down six stories of stone staircases and long outdoor walkways. Lights shined inside windows of the lower levels. The upper levels were dark and empty. Vacant. Abandoned.

  This was the address Chicho gave me. The address of the supposed knife-happy john.

  I scoped the two-tiered roof, its ragged tarps and gnarled rebar. Scrap metal rested in piles. Scaffolding had been there so long it could be mistaken for part of the structure.

  The address came complete with a unit number: P2. P for penthouse, 2 for the two men who were about to die.

  A light glowed inside one of the rooftop unit’s windows. Probably just a flashlight positioned to make me think the john who had cut up Maria’s sister actually lived there. I kept my eyes on the shadows, primed to spot movement of any kind. But they were keeping cool. Disciplined.

  The smart move was to stay clear. The smarter move was to take advantage. They were planning to kill me on that rooftop. That meant they’d taken great pains to make sure they hadn’t been seen getting up there. And that meant they hadn’t told anybody of their whereabouts.

  Which meant they’d made my job of getting away with murder that much easier.

  Mota’s setup was a yawner. Did he really think he could lure me to my death with that flimsy-ass story? That shit was grade-school.

  I crossed the rooftop, feet tromping through leafy vines and ripped tar paper. I climbed a wall and jumped down to a lower rooftop, the long bag slung over my shoulder bouncing on my back. All I had to do now was hurdle that rail, cross that balcony down there, climb out onto that ledge, jump across this alley.

  I checked the time. Maggie should be along any minute. Careful to stay in shadow, I leaned out and peered down at the street, where a jam of cars was gridlocked like bathroom tiles, pedestrians walking the grout lines. Horns and shouts echoed up the alley walls, the noisy sounds of a dysfunctional city.

  There she was, crossing the street. Even from way up here, I recognized her, that confident stride, black locks waving in a light breeze. Maggie passed the Rojo Caballo’s front door and entered the alley, reaching a staircase and starting up.

  I moved again, butterflies lifting off in my gut, pulse beating faster. Harder. I walked to the edge and stepped off, dropped a meter to a balcony, the landing muffled by a soft bed of moss. I ducked under a pipe, detoured around a ventilation fan, and sidestepped my way out onto the ledge.

  I looked down at the hotel. Maggie was on the fifth floor now. She tried a gate that led to the roof but found it locked. Mota and Panama had seen to it that there was only one point of entry, meaning Maggie would have to walk to the opposite end to the other gate. She stepped along the outdoor walkway, heels crunching crumbled concrete, hotel rooms on her left. Door, window, door, window, door, window …

  I caught a glimpse of her face as she walked under a light, the beam catching a rock jaw and eyes like jade.

  She passed below my position. I kept still. She had no idea I was here, no clue what I had planned.

  I hadn’t liked lying to her, but I did it. I’d told her I was ready to surrender my protection racket to Mota. I just needed her to negotiate the truce.

  I’d told her all about Maria’s sister getting cut, and how I thought Mota and Panama would be on the hotel’s roof ready to ambush me. She could go in my place and work out a deal.

  But it was all a ruse.

  What I really needed was for someone to draw out Mota and Panama from their hiding places so I could kill them.

  I couldn’t feel bad about using her. Not now. Not until it was over. Time enough to repent later.

  She was on the other end of the hotel now, going through the unlocked gate and disappearing up the stairs. I could hear her call Mota’s name. “Don’t shoot! It’s Maggie Orzo.”

  I used my left to put the earpiece dangling on my shoulder into my ear. I recoiled at the volume when she shouted his name again. The bug I’d dropped in her hair had a sensitive pickup. She’d never find it. Small like a flea.

  I sloughed the bag off my shoulder and reached in, pulled out a lase-rifle, unfolded the stock and snapped it into place.

  “Captain Mota?” I heard in my ear. “Come on out. I came alone.” So she thinks.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Mota’s voice.

  “I’m unarmed,” she said. “Juno’s not coming. He didn’t fall for that story Chicho told him. He knew it would be a trap. He sent me to negotiate a truce.”

  So she thinks.

  I dropped the now empty bag, watched it sweep and sway its way down to the alley far below. I checked the rifle to see if the telemetry from Maggie’s bug had been received. Green light.

  “Who is this?” Maggie’s voice.

  “I’m a business partner from upriver.” Maggie, meet Panama.

  I gauged the distance across the alley. Two meters. A drop of, say, four. I could clear it easy. No problem.

  I looked straight down. The alley was long and narrow with evenly spaced lights, the last
one infected by a jittery flicker. I figured it best to jump now in case the jitters were contagious.

  I held the rifle out front and pushed off with both feet. Air blew through my hair and billowed my shirt, my stomach climbing into my throat. I dropped as I crossed the narrow alley, sailing over the blacktop far underneath. I cleared the hotel wall, feet reaching for the roof of one of the penthouse units.

  Contact.

  Knees buckled.

  Impact.

  The rifle wrenched out of my hand. My body folded up, my chin driving into my knee with a clap of teeth. I fell backward, my back and head striking the wall.

  Too stunned to move, I stayed where I was, my heart pumping mad beats. My lungs sucked wild breaths. I swallowed blood. My chin, teeth, and jaw suffered from a wicked uppercut. I thought the forward momentum would’ve been enough to take me into a roll, but my downward trajectory must’ve been too steep.

  I fumbled for my earpiece, stuck it back in my ear. Maggie’s voice came through the dazed fog. “He doesn’t care about the protection business. You can have it back.”

  “And in exchange?”

  “All we want is the doctor. We’ve been to that hellhole he calls a clinic. He’s using people as lab rats.”

  “That’s a little outside your jurisdiction, don’t you think?” Panama’s voice.

  “He has an office here.”

  “He doesn’t do anything illegal here. And what he does in Yepala is my jurisdiction.”

  They hadn’t heard my fuckup of a landing. I tested my legs, couldn’t feel them, but they moved when I told them to. I forced myself onto my hands and knees, started feeling around for my gun, thorny weeds poking and scraping.

  I crawled on numb knees. It felt like I had two more stumps. My hand made contact, fingers wrapped around the rifle. I pulled the weapon up, pressed the cool steel of the barrel against my cheek. I struggled upright, using the rifle as a third leg.

  Maggie spoke in my ear. “Juno offered to sweeten the deal.”

  Mota laughed. “Now you’re saying he wants to buy his way out? What happened to the empty threats?”

  I took slow, lurching steps, wobbled and weaved, toddler-like, toward the open arms of scaffolding pipes. I hooked my arms around them and leaned out, took a look, couldn’t make visual. My weapon required line-of-sight.