Kop k-1

by Warren Hammond

  Simba finished his toast and chinked glasses with the bandleader. A spotlight illuminated Mayor Samir. He held up his glass like he was returning the toast. Then he slowly poured it out on the carpet without taking a sip. He turned his back on the stage in a show of contempt. The crowd went pin-drop silent. The mayor was letting everybody know he was anticorruption pure. He didn’t consort with criminal elements.

  I slugged down a hit of brandy to quell my nerves. Simba left the stage with a broad smile, not missing a beat. His goal wasn’t to score points with Mayor Samir. He wanted people to notice his presence and Bandur’s absence at a major Koba social function. The signal was clear: I’m the new man in town. The Bandur kid had better grow up fast and quit staying home before Simba took away his Koba empire in a self-fulfilling prophecy of greatness.

  I knocked back the last sip of brandy and moved on. I found C of D Diego Banks at the police table. His mousy wife gave me an abbreviated smile.

  I dispensed with the niceties. This asshole wants Paul’s job. “Where’s Paul?”

  Banks stared at me. The hostility between us pushed his wife back in her chair. Banks pointed to the dancers.

  I waited on the edge of the dance floor. The band was playing an upbeat number slowed down to a geriatric tempo. Haughty old men moved in slow motion. Their dates danced with hankies to dab the sweat off. I mentally relocated to the Tenttown canal party-dancers spraying starlit mud and sweat with every gyration. Poor people knew how to party.

  The tune ended. People spilled off the floor to the surrounding tables. Paul had his arm around his wife’s waist. Her dress was conservative, covering shoulders and knees. She saw me and gave me a strong hug for such a small woman. Paul and I shook hands and found an uncrowded spot near the can.

  Paul looked sharp in his tux. He looked good in everything. He said, “Did you see the shit Simba pulled?”

  “Yeah, the guy’s got cojones.”

  “I don’t even know how he got in here. The mayor never invited him. He must’ve bribed his way in through the kitchen.”

  I changed the subject to the reason I came. “What’s this case about, Paul?”

  Paul’s permanently pasted-on smile disappeared. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I mean I don’t know. Listen to me, I got the mayor’s office investigating me, and their man Gilkyson’s been like my fucking shadow. Then the Vlotsky killing came up, and I found out his father worked for the city, so I thought I could get some good PR with the mayor’s office if I made a show of the investigation, maybe get them to lay off a little. Then Gilkyson started telling me the mayor didn’t want special treatment. Give me a break. Since when does a politician not want special treatment? So I got to thinking they might have something to hide. I started talking big, saying things like we have to nail the SOB that killed Vlotsky, or people will think it’s open season on city employees. It was a total stab in the dark, but Gilkyson got all nervous. He kept trying to downplay the whole thing. I’m telling you, Juno, I’ve had that weasel in my office for two weeks. I can read him. The more I talked about ramping up the investigation, the more he resisted.”

  “You think the mayor had Lieutenant Vlotsky popped?”

  “That, or he has a good reason for covering it up. Either way, I need you to connect him to it. I have to kill this corruption investigation. I’m getting desperate. You get me the goods on this one, and I’ll extort the mayor into laying off of KOP.”

  “Why don’t you just kick that asshole Gilkyson out of your office?”

  “Don’t you get it, Juno? I work for the mayor. He wants Gilkyson to follow me around. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Just give them what they want. Hand over a couple crooked cops, and they’ll leave you alone. You have a whole police force to choose from. Use it as a goddamned opportunity to clean house.”

  Paul became visibly angry, very un-Paul. “You don’t think I tried that? Do you think I’m a fucking idiot? The mayor won’t take the deal; he wants me, Juno.”

  I snagged a brandy from a passing waiter and tossed it down my throat. The alcohol quashed my rapid-fire nerves. “Why?”

  “He wants control of KOP, and he knows he won’t get it as long as I’m here. He wants a fucking yes-man.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad. My informants in the mayor’s office say he’s getting ready to make a move on me.”

  I rejected the notion. “He can’t touch you.”

  “The mayor is flexing some serious muscle. He’s got cops on his payroll, and he’s got Chief of Detectives Diego fucking Banks working against me. He’s the mayor’s little lapdog, and he’s drooling all over himself, thinking about my job. He’s been sucking up to Mayor Samir so he’ll get appointed chief when I fall. I never should have let Samir get elected. I thought I could buy him off like the other mayors. I should have sabotaged his campaign the minute he started in on KOP. Now it may be too late. It’s only a matter of time before Gilkyson ties me to the Bandurs. Shit, we’ve been allied with the Bandur cartel for twenty-five years. We worked hard at covering our tracks, Juno, but we’ve been sanctioning criminal activity for over twenty-five years. You can’t tell me they won’t find something.”

  “I can’t believe what you’re saying. Why haven’t you told me about this?”

  “I couldn’t do that to you. You’ve been working so hard on getting your life under control. I wanted to keep you out of it.”

  “But now you want me back in?”

  “I don’t want to drag you into this, but listen to me, Juno. You’re the only one I can trust. Since Mayor Samir started in heavy on this corruption bullshit, I’ve been trying to take him down, but nothing’s worked. Even my extortion scheme fell through.”

  I waved for another brandy. “What kind of extortion scheme?”

  “I put some of my most loyal cops on it. They started checking into Mayor Samir’s personal life. Turns out the mayor’s daughter is a real slut. ‘Sounds promising,’ I thought. We catch some vids of her poking every guy she meets and threaten to go public with them, and the mayor will lay off. We’ve been tailing her for a month, and we’ve got squat. All the sudden, her legs lock together at the knees. It’s like she’s a fucking nun. Somebody in the inner circle’s a rat.”

  I squeezed my glass. I was growing double angry-angry at a cop who was a rat and angry at myself for letting Paul down. Ferreting out rats used to be one of my specialties.

  Paul said, “So then I figured that if I can’t trust my own men, I’ll give Sasaki a crack at it, but somebody keeps ratting his plans, too. You know Sasaki; he does his best to run a tight ship, but that fucking Bandur kid is fucking worthless. Ram was always too soft on him. He’s too worried about his looks to do anything productive. When I told him that he’s got a rat in his organization, he listened, then asked me how he’d look with a more pronounced chin. I wish his father was still alive. Shit, they’re so worried about the Simba cartel moving in that they don’t care about the mayor anyway.”

  I tried to soak it all in. Mayor Samir was trying to take KOP away from Paul, and Paul thought the Vlotsky case was related. My stomach started to flop. I downed the brandy in my glass. The mayor was up on the bandstand now, dancing with his wife. They were hamming it up, twirling and dipping, taking full advantage of the photo op.

  Paul asked, “What have you got so far on the case?”

  Paul’s question took a minute to register. “We were going to look at an Army guy who has a record and a good motive. But I don’t see how that could be related to the mayor. Do you want me to drop it and focus on the mayor?”

  “No. Work it like any other case. I need you to find out what happened in that alley. You work the case from the bottom up. I’ll work it from the mayor down. Hopefully we’ll meet in the middle.”

  “Can you get me in to see this Army guy? His name’s Jhuko Kapasi. The military has him under wraps.”

  “I�
��ll do what I can.”

  The place went quiet. The band had stopped playing, and the mayor had moved to the podium, throwing grins and waves at the audience. A hundred holographic replicas of the mayor floated over the tables of the people too far away to see his charming mug. Paul and I waited quietly as he spoke a few brief words of thanks then ticked through his political agenda. Straight through the mayor’s anticorruption stumping, Paul kept his true feelings hidden behind his public face.

  The crowd was still applauding when Paul said, “Are we square on this?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you have to get rid of Maggie. I work alone.”

  “No. I handpicked Maggie for this. Everybody knows how far back the two of us go. If we manage to nail Mayor Samir, we’ll need somebody with a good rep, somebody they can’t slander as a dirty cop. Somebody that they can’t dig up any dirt on. Maggie is crystal. She hasn’t been corrupted like the rest of us. She was first in her class, and she comes from a prominent family that can’t be pushed around. Plus she’s got that honest face-the public will believe anything she says. I’m hoping that we can force the mayor into a deal, but if we have to go to the public with it, she’ll make the perfect face for it. You don’t have that kind of credibility. If I put you in front of the cameras, they’ll spin it as a ploy to save ourselves. I made up all that stuff about her mother calling me so Gilkyson wouldn’t suspect anything. He thinks I’m doing her mother a favor.”

  “Does she know about this?”

  “No. She just thinks she’s my favorite. Keep her out of the loop. You do the dirty work, let Maggie take the credit.”

  Niki appeared at my elbow. “Who’s Maggie?”

  Paul smiled at Niki, happy to see her. His smile faded when he caught her evil eye. Before he moved off, he said, “It’s nice to see you, Niki.”

  Niki evil-eyed Paul until he disappeared into the crowd. Niki used to like Paul. It was hard not to like him, the way he could charm you. With that broad smile and that easy attitude, you’d think he was the nicest guy you ever met. Niki blamed Paul for my drinking problem and my nightmares, and everything else that was wrong with me. To her, it was all Paul’s fault for making me do all the things I’d done as his enforcer. While it was true that I was following his orders, I had free will. I knew there was nobody to blame but myself.

  Even when I’d gotten to the point where I’d have to down half a bottle to work up the nerve to go into a beatdown session, and then drink the other half to try and forget what I’d done, I’d still kept going. It made me sick to think about all the times I’d slammed my fists into some defenseless sap’s face.

  “Who’s Maggie?” Niki repeated.

  “My new partner.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why do you need a partner?”

  “Paul has his reasons.”

  Niki and I got home late after having a surprisingly good time. It had started off rocky, but once I’d explained away my new partner to a jealousy-prone Niki, things got loose. I pounded down enough brandy to grease the friction between us, and I slipped into my old hard-partying habits. We danced ourselves sweaty and ran the waiters ragged on brandy refills.

  On the way home, I drove with one hand on the wheel and one on Niki’s thigh. A full day of looking at Maggie Orzo had me feeling frisky. At home, Niki went into the bathroom and came out in the sheerest of negligees, her dark nipples visible through the red fabric. Already buzzed on brandy, my buzz notched higher as I took in her long legs. She smiled coyly.

  I took off my clothes then took her in my grasp. I started on her neck then moved in to taste her mouth. My hands slid down and around and back again. She pressed into me, her need as great as my own. I stripped her negligee off, tasted her breasts, her nipples, her shoulders. We moved to the bed, touching and fondling, trying to stretch out the moment. We couldn’t resist any longer. She crawled on top of me, sinking me into her. We moved together, slow at first, then faster when it became apparent we wouldn’t last long. I watched Niki’s face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was open, the corners curled upward in pleasure. I closed my eyes and couldn’t resist picturing Maggie Orzo’s face with that same expression, closed eyes, open mouth, maybe biting her lip to keep from screaming…I lost control and released into her, feeling ashamed even before the last spasm. I kept my hips moving when I was through, only stopping after Niki reached her destination.

  I held Niki from behind. My liquor and lovemaking high starting to fade. Niki asked, “Is she pretty?”

  “Who?”

  “Your new partner.”

  “Yeah, I suppose she is.” I tried to sound casual despite the guilt I was feeling.

  “I thought so.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Her voice turned cold, accusatory. “I haven’t seen you this horny in a long time.”

  Her words doused the last embers of my high, and my eyes stung from the smoke. I tried to blink them normal, but they stayed stung. I rolled away from her, looking up at the ceiling, but not really looking at it, mostly just looking up. Was this all we had? She’d needle me, and I’d say ouch, then I’d needle back, the two of us constantly yanking each other’s strings, neither one of us able to stop.

  EIGHT

  MARCH 3, 2762-MARCH 9, 2762

  ’Sixty-two was the year everything changed. For better or for worse, I still wasn’t sure. I never set out to change the world. Shit, it had never crossed my mind that it was even possible.

  I was a vice cop and I thought that was the greatest gig there was. A cop’s take-home afforded what seemed to me to be a good life. When the bus was inconvenient, I could take a cab and not worry about the cost. I didn’t have to barefoot it anymore. I could afford to buy two pairs of shoes a year, and not the crappy ones with the laces that snap off in a month. Best of all, I was renting my own place, a place with actual walls and a floor that was raised off the ground. After spending my whole life in a tent, I felt like I was living large.

  I’d even been able to afford a proper death for my mother. Once the rot had set in, there was no way to save her, but with my KOP paychecks, I was at least able to pay for her antibiotic injections. Without those shots, the rot would have spread to her face, and she wouldn’t have been able to have a wake when she died. Most rot sufferers would be so disfigured by the time they died that they had to be cremated, but my mother was buried whole. She meant something.

  I was just your average clock-punching cop with aspirations of being nothing more. Things were good. Other vice dicks were making names for themselves and rising through KOP ranks while I was content to work the shit details. I wasn’t scoring any flashy busts, but I was doing my job, arresting one pimp or pusher at a time.

  Paul Chang was different. He was a dreamer, a big-picture guy. He never cared much about the daily grind of police work or about the individual victims we saw. To him, such things were just pieces of a pattern, cogs in a system that he needed to understand. Paul was all visions and designs. I was all nuts and bolts. But for some reason, when the two of us were partnered together, we were electric, instant best friends.

  Our big break came when we caught a hot tip from Chow Lin-an opium dealer who we’d flipped a few months earlier. We pinched him for pushing, which carried a minimum seven. We held the evidence and told him he could serve the seven in prison or serve seven working for us. He made the easy choice and kept pushing while he passed us information on the side.

  He put us onto an offworlder named Mai Nguyen who had just come down to the surface from the Orbital. He told us she was a big offworld buyer who smuggled O up to the Orbital and sold it to the freighter crews that passed through the Lagartan System. He heard she was on the surface, shopping for new suppliers.

  It took Paul and me a full day to pick up her scent. We bribed hotel clerks all over the city, finally scoring a hit at the Nirvana Palace. We staked out the place for an hour before spotting her leaving from the back entrance.
Like all offworlders, Mai Nguyen was easy to pick out. She was physically perfect. She had a doll’s face, an athlete’s legs, and cleavage up to her chin. She strutted down the grassy steps accompanied by two heavies who came out into the steamy heat wearing thick jackets, gloves, and long pants. Nobody dressed like that on Lagarto. It could mean only one thing-the suits were covering some serious technological voodoo. Retractable finger blades? Recessed lasers? Mechanical limbs stronger than a crane? Who the fuck knew? You never could tell with offworlders.

  They turned and walked onto the street. Crowds gave them a wide berth, making them easy to tail. They strolled into the Old Town Square, a busy thoroughfare crammed with souvenir shops and sidewalk stands. Hawkers flocked around them, peddling chess sets with lizard-shaped pieces and old bricks with jungle scenes painted on.

  Mai Nguyen stopped at a small stand and bought a cloth that she used to mop her brow and cleavage. Her goons stayed on her heels with their perspiration-soaked jackets buttoned all the way up. She weaved from booth to booth trying on sandals. She finally found a pair to her liking and talked the old woman into a trade: Nguyen’s shoes for the sandals. The old woman gladly stuffed paper into the toes of Nguyen’s shoes then slipped them on.

  They stopped for dinner at an Asian place on the square. Paul and I sat on a park bench and watched them through the restaurant window. “Some drug dealers,” I said.

  Paul looked at his discount store watch and chuckled uncomfortably. “Tell me about it. So far, it looks like a nice family on vacation.”

  Paul was knotted with frustrated ambition. He came onto vice after only two years as a beat cop compared to my three. He became fast friends with our lieutenant, passed all the tests with high marks, and got reports done on time but was still passed over when promotions were handed out. I told him it was because he was young, but we both knew the real reason. You had to earn your stripes with a big bust, simple as that. He wanted to nail Nguyen. An arrest of an offworld trafficker would put our pictures all over the news and land him a lieutenancy, maybe even get him his own squad.