Kop k-1

by Warren Hammond

  I hopped into the car, and I aimed it for the Phra Kaew docks.

  Maggie spoke while looking dead ahead. “Are you sure that was the best thing for us to do?”

  “No.”

  I wasn’t sure of anything. I had thought it best that we come to Bandur and Sasaki for permission to speak with Mdoba. If we had talked to Mdoba on our own, he surely would’ve told Sasaki we’d contacted him. That would’ve sent up red flags all over the damn place. Credit for my twenty-five years of loyal service to them would’ve evaporated instantaneously, and Sasaki and Bandur might’ve decided to just kill Maggie and me rather than bother to find out what I’d been up to.

  I’d made up the story about Gilkyson as a cover. The way I saw it, it should’ve worked either way. Either Bandur and Sasaki hired Zorno to whack Vlotsky or they didn’t. If they did hire Zorno, they would be alarmed that we connected Zorno to Mdoba. I figured all that bullshit about Gilkyson, and how we considered the case closed, would set their fears to rest. They would be thinking, what harm would it do to let Juno talk to Mdoba? Act like there’s nothing to hide. Even if Juno figured out we put out the contract on Vlotsky, Paul would shut him up before it went too far.

  And if they hadn’t hired Zorno, they wouldn’t be worried at all about us talking to Mdoba. If anything, they would want to know if Mdoba was into something they weren’t aware of. Maybe he was moonlighting on them.

  Maggie said, “Do you think Sasaki bought our cover story?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “Neither could I.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sanders Mdoba lived on a boat that was usually tied up to one of the docks in Phra Kaew. Maggie and I walked the labyrinth of walkways and rickety docks looking for the Tropic of Capricorn — an old tug turned houseboat.

  We focused on the docks that held the larger vessels-worn-down trawlers leaking and listing, beat-up passenger boats with empty frames where seats used to be. It was still a big fishing time. Many of the moorings were vacated, making our job marginally easier.

  The resort-owned Lagartan Queen was in dry dock. It was painted white with red trim, and it had a paddle wheel on front that gave it that old-timey feel. The ordinarily underwater nuke-powered props ruined the steamer illusion. The banner pinned to the rail read, “Sunset Cruises-One for $30, Two for $50.” Convert that to pesos, and you could buy a car. Lagartan workers were at work, scraping barnacles off the hull under the supervision of an offworld foreman who probably paid them by the hour.

  We finally found the Tropic of Capricorn loosely roped to a crumbling pier. The rusted hull had left orange stains on the stone landing. We had to step across the water to board-no gangway. Colored lights hung on strands that ran bow to stern. Taped-down power cords snaked across the deck. The cabin door was cracked open. I pushed through. Maggie followed me in.

  We passed through the galley. Half-eaten cans of food were strewn about, lizard tails poking out of the tops. Maggie closed the door behind us. Startled geckos upended themselves and sprang from the cans in a panic.

  I took a quick look into the common room. Nobody there. We clanked our way down metal steps to the cabin, which welcomed us with a dirty-laundry odor. The messed-up bed was empty. Nobody home. Odd that the door was unlocked.

  I hit the dresser: nothing but elephant-sized clothes, hypodermics, and sex toys. Maggie pulled down a cardboard box from the closet and dumped the contents across the bed-vids and pics. We sorted through the pics: Mdoba fishing topless, his bulk hiding his belt all around; a younger and thinner Mdoba boogying on the dance floor; Mdoba posing with both Bandurs, father and son, all wearing hunting clothes and holding dead reptiles up by their tails.

  Maggie stopped and held up a pic for me to see. I’ll be damned-Vlotsky. Not Dmitri but his father, Peter. There was a whole stack of them. Vlotsky walking up to his house, Vlotsky in his car, Vlotsky eating dinner.

  I grabbed up one of the vids and held it up for the entertainment system.

  Holograms appeared on Mdoba’s bed. Mdoba was lying on his back with a heavy-breasted woman riding on top, her legs spread uncomfortably wide to straddle his body. I held up the next vid. Same woman on all fours, Mdoba behind.

  I flashed through three more vids of Mdoba’s greatest hits before finding something interesting. A new room superimposed over the reality of the cabin. A different woman was on the bed, naked with a drink in her hand. She looked bored. From a bathroom came a man with wavy hair and dark skin. She traced a teasing finger up and around her breasts. His member traveled from six o’clock to high noon. He crawled on top, and once he did, she went back to looking bored-definite hooker.

  They writhed around on the bed. I rotated our vantage, taking in the details of the room. I zoomed to the door, which had a deadbolt and peephole-hotel. I zeroed in on the bedstand. There was no money-she was giving him a freebie. By the time I moved back to the bed, the writhing was already over, done in sixty seconds-record time.

  Snap conclusion: classic extortion scheme.

  I could picture Sanders Mdoba rigging the room with cameras then squeezing himself into a closet, peeking through a cracked door. I could imagine his hooker in a smoky bar, making eyes at Mr. Sixty Seconds. Letting him buy the drinks; letting him think she’s not a hooker; letting him touch her back, then her ass, cooing as he grabbed and tickled until he brought up the idea of getting a room. She knew just the place.

  I’d run the same scam a hundred times.

  Next vid: another man getting busy, this time with a teenage boy who cried when they were done.

  Next vid: woman locking her toddler in the closet while she fired up some O. Her kid crying and knocking on the door the whole time.

  Next vid: Peter Vlotsky at the Lotus with one of Rose’s ’tutes.

  New possibilities blossomed in my brain.

  The boat moved, just barely, then it moved again. Somebody was coming onboard. Bare feet crossed in front of the porthole. I pocketed the handful of vids and helped Maggie shovel the rest of the vids and pics back into the box. The top deck door opened. Maggie tossed the box back onto the closet shelf. We moved to the steps, climbing quietly. Sounds issued from the galley.

  We could see her now: the heavy-breasted woman catalogued in Mdoba’s vids. Wearing a bikini with a puddle of river water gathering at her feet, she was digging through the fridge. We moved up on her without her seeing us.

  Maggie said, “Boo,” and just about startled the woman into jumping out of that bikini.

  It took the woman a moment to figure out that there were two strangers staring at her. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She was trapped-animal scared.

  “Mdoba,” I said as I held up my badge with my left.

  “Sanders isn’t here.”

  “No fucking kidding. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who are you?”

  She was starting to get her confidence back, a hint of defiance in her words. “I’m Malis.”

  “Are you his girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  She was probably some rich-girl groupie who thought she was living large screwing a high-roller like Mdoba. “Where’s Mdoba?” I repeated.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell me his business.” She sized Maggie up then ran her hands into her hair for me, churning out the foxy wiles, trying to take control of the situation. I reevaluated my opinion of her. She wasn’t the well-to-do daddy’s girl. She was more likely street trash with the looks and moves to land a big fish like Mdoba from across a packed dance floor.

  I said, “Tell him Juno wants to see him.”

  “Yes, officer,” she pouted as she played with her bikini’s shoulder strap.

  We left. On the way out, Maggie gave Malis that supernasty kind of look that women save up for each other.

  I stopped at the next boat down. A former barge, now an apartment building. There was a girl on a tire swing that was suspended from the rigging.
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  I asked her, “Do you know the man that lives on the Tropic of Capricorn?”

  “Yes.” She put a finger over her lips and blew her cheeks out in imitation of Mdoba.

  I smiled and handed her a thousand pesos on the upswing. “You call me the next time he comes home, and I’ll give you another thousand.”

  She jumped off the tire when it reached its highest point and landed running. She disappeared into the boat and returned seconds later with the family phone so our phones could exchange numbers.

  Maggie and I hustled back to the car and started toward the Cap Square. I peeked at Maggie as I drove. She wore a stern look, no longer the wide-eyed rookie. I was starting to wonder if she would come through all this with her sanity intact. She pushed her hair back and closed her eyes, trying to reason her way through the latest piece of information. There was a connection between Sanders Mdoba and Peter Vlotsky, our murder victim’s father. The further we went on this case, the more complicated it got. Lip-obsessed Ali Zorno killed Lieutenant Vlotsky; Zorno and Private Kapasi were cellmates; Mdoba tipped off Zorno about our witness; Mdoba worked for Bandur, who was tied to Paul and me. And now the latest mind-bender, Mdoba had some kind of extortion scheme running that involved Vlotsky’s father.

  I wanted to call Paul, but I couldn’t talk to him without Gilkyson listening in. I called Abdul instead, and we apologized to each other about last night. I told Abdul we needed details on Vlotsky senior’s finances. New house, new car. We needed to trace that money. Abdul had the numbers streamed into Maggie’s digital paper pad.

  Peter Vlotsky’s office building looked like most government offices, a plain rectangular structure, constructed from drab concrete blocks that were cracking apart from the years of mosses and ivies digging into the porous surface. Inside, the halls were antiseptic clean and the elevators were slow and jerky. The Koba Office of Business Affairs was on the seventh floor.

  We entered Vlotsky’s office. A receptionist put on a polite face until we breezed past him and into Vlotsky’s inner office without stopping. Peter Vlotsky sat at his desk. A dark-skinned man with wavy hair sat across from him. Well I’ll be, Mr. Sixty-Seconds Flat.

  Peter Vlotsky stood to greet us. “Hello, officers. It is so good to see you.” The receptionist left the doorway with a wave of Vlotsky’s hand. “Officer Mozambe and Officer Orzo, this is Judah Singh.”

  Sixty-Second Singh rose from his chair. “Pleased to meet you both. I’ll leave you alone.”

  Vlotsky offered us seats across his desk. “I’m glad you’re here. I was hoping I’d get a chance to thank you for catching my son’s murderer. I can tell you that Jelka and I will be sleeping better knowing that he can’t do this to anybody else’s child.”

  Maggie took the lead on this one. She had a better bead on his finances. “We would like to know if you know this man.” She showed him a picture of Mdoba that she had five-fingered from the Tropic of Capricorn.

  He hesitated…too long. “No. I don’t. Who is he?”

  “Could you please explain the deposits made to your account on the third and seventh of last month?” She read the dates from her high-tech pad.

  “What deposits?” His voice cracked.

  Again she looked at the pad. “The deposit on the third was eight million, and the deposit on the seventh was another five. Both transfers were made from an account owned by the DHC Corporation. Can you tell us who they are?”

  Peter Vlotsky was positively pale. I saw a picture hanging behind his desk showing the entire seven-person board seated at a table with name plaques and microphones. I stood to go study it. Vlotsky was in the middle, chairman of the board. Mr. Sixty-Seconds to his right. Opium-smoking child abuser on the far right. Homo with a thing for teenage boys to the left. Mdoba’s extortion scheme was taking shape.

  Vlotsky said, “I don’t think I should talk to you without my lawyer present.”

  I rushed up into his face, making him just about tip over in his chair. “You will tell us what we want to know. You hear me, you piece of shit? No lawyers, no games, you understand me?” I popped him one in the face. My body sizzled electric.

  “I can’t help you,” he whined. “They’ll kill me.”

  I pulled a vid from my pocket. I backhanded him with it.

  His nose started running blood.

  I got nose-touching close. “We’ve got some great footage of you down at Rose’s. We’ve got half your coworkers caught in compromising positions. You don’t think we’ll learn what we want to know from one of them?”

  “No. I can’t talk.” Nose blood ran in his mouth, staining his teeth red.

  “We’ll find out anyway, shithead. When we do, we’re going to arrest Mdoba, and I’ll let it slip that you’re the one who snitched.”

  “You can’t do that! He’ll have me killed.” He was teetering on the edge.

  “I’m sure he will. Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t tell a soul.” I whispered the last part.

  He was visibly sweating; his lips quivered. Blood ran down his chin and soaked into his white collar.

  Maggie pushed him over with “Your son is dead, and we know it’s your fault. It’s time to clear your conscience.”

  Vlotsky rained bloody snot and tears. His wails brought his receptionist back to the door. Again, Vlotsky waved him away.

  We waited him out. Finally, he brought his cries under control. “They killed my son.”

  “Who did?”

  He pointed to the picture of Mdoba held in Maggie’s hand.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “We were going to vote on a business license for a shipping company called Lagarto Lines. He told me he wanted it to pass. He came to me one night and threatened to release the vid of me at the Lotus to the public if I didn’t.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him it wasn’t my decision. The whole board had to vote. He told me that he’d worry about the rest of the votes.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I told him I’d do what I could. At the time, I didn’t think the license had a chance of passing anyway.”

  “Why not?”

  “Everybody knew the company was a front for the Simba organization.”

  Carlos Simba. The Loja crime boss was reaching in every direction. Trying to eat into Bandur’s Koba monopoly and now trying to start a shipping company.

  I asked, “What does Simba want with a shipping company?”

  Vlotsky raised his hands and sniffled. “I don’t know, but only two members of the board were advocating for the company. Everybody else was going to reject it.”

  “Why would they advocate for a business that they knew was a front for Simba?”

  “They thought it would be good for Lagarto if we had our own shipping company. They insisted it would mean lower rates because Simba’s line would be able to compete with the offworld lines.”

  “ Offworld lines?” I had assumed he was talking about a regular shipping company-running boats on the river.

  “Yes, offworld lines. Simba wants to start a shipping line that runs from the surface to the Orbital.”

  I was stunned silent.

  Maggie said, “How could he do that? He’d have to buy a ship.”

  “He already has. He bought a freighter that’s getting refitted at the spaceport as we speak.”

  I got my voice back. “Did the mayor chime in on this?”

  “No. He stayed out of it. With all his anticorruption talk, you’d think that he would be all over me, making sure this license got rejected. Instead he was strictly hands off. If it ever comes back to bite him, I’m sure he’ll use me as the fall guy. He’ll say I didn’t keep him properly informed.”

  Maggie brought us back to the money. “Is the DHC Corporation another one of Simba’s fronts?”

  “No. They’re an offworld company.”

  “What did they pay you for?”

  He wiped his nose with his sleeve then was immediately disgu
sted by the red stain running from elbow to cuff. “They wanted me to reject the license. DHC is the parent company that owns TransPort, the biggest offplanet shipper. They didn’t want any local competition.”

  “So you decided to take the offworld money and vote against Simba?”

  “Yes. My wife and I are getting a divorce anyway. We’ve been cheating on each other for years. I didn’t really care if she saw the vid or not, so I went with the money.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He”-pointing to Mdoba’s picture-“visited me the morning after Dmitri was murdered. He showed up at my door and told me Dmitri was dead, and I was next. I didn’t believe him at first. I thought he was just trying to intimidate me, but then we got the call from Chief of Detectives Banks. I didn’t even care that much about the money. Why didn’t he warn me he would do something to my son? If he had threatened to kill Dmitri, I would have done what he said. He didn’t have to kill him!” More pathetic sobbing.

  “When’s the vote?”

  “We already had it.” He managed between sobs. “We issued the license yesterday.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  We found a free bench in the Old Town Square and sat to eat kebabs we’d picked up from a street vendor. I ate leaning far forward so any greasy spillover would fall safely to the ground instead of in my lap.

  There were still a fair number of people on the square. A little unusual for this early in the afternoon, but the dark clouds were taking some edge off the heat. Even so, it was intensely hot, but bearable when you sat still.

  The walks were blanket covered. Vendors offered jewelry, wood carvings, lizard jaws, rugs, paintings, spices, and anything else that was cheap to produce, displayed in neat rows, small items in the front, larger ones in the back. Tourists crowded the narrow trails between blankets, looking for that special bargain that they could brag to their friends about; “guess how little I paid for this.” Every so often, children approached us, trying to get us to come back to their space: “Good quality, good prices.” A quick dose of ignoring them and they moved on. Never make eye contact.