Like a Boss (27 page)

Soni called out to me. She stood in the ruined doorway, holding up a spray bottle. “I think this is a painkiller. Forgot I had it in my utility belt.”

“Give it to that lady with the broken hip,” I said. “We need to keep her calm.”

“I’d like to put a bit in your eye.”

I waved her off. “It’s not like I can use my pai right now,” I said.

“It’s not your pai I’m worried about,” she said.

“I don’t want it,” I said.

Soni grumbled. “Can I put a bandage on your eye, then? Or do you want to save those, too?”

I sighed. “Fine. If it’ll get you off my back.”

Soni popped a fist-sized gauze pad out of a pouch on her belt. I held still long enough for her to tape it over my right eye. “We’ll have to get you to a doctor.”

“Them first,” I said, pointing at our patients. “Can’t you raise anyone?”

Soni held up her radio, a tiny handheld unit. Someone had taken a pen to its backing and drawn an angry cat. It stretched a paw and showed a mouth full of teeth. “Total silence. Our relays got knocked out.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “We had one on top of the house that got blown up.”

“You think that was on purpose?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I don’t have a clue what’s going on now, Padma. I keep hearing sirens, but I’ve yet to see an ambo or a patrol wagon. We have to get out of this neighborhood and start talking to other people, find EMTs, other police, doctors, whatever.”

Onanefe joined us. “Is that the plan? Leaving?”

“It’s
a
plan,” said Soni, “and it involves me. I’m the least injured, and the only one with a badge.”

“You think that matters right now?” I said. “Christ, someone’s setting off
bombs
.”

“We don’t know that,” said Soni. “It could be crap piping, makeshift heaters, or just plain bad luck.”

I swept my hand over the ruined street. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

She gave me a hard look. “I
have
to,” she said. “Otherwise, it means our city’s coming apart at the seams, and I’m not ready to believe
that
. Not yet. Not until I know that all the people under my command have given up or gotten themselves killed.”

I sighed. Of course. Someone at Soni’s level had to have hundreds of people working under her. She wasn’t the type
not
to worry about them during a crisis. “You’re right. But I still want to go with you.”

She shook her head. “You’re hurt. It’s going to be hard enough to get around.”

“I got a bolt to the face, not a concussion.”

“Did you just get magical diagnostic power?” said Soni. “You might have a blood clot working its way to your brain. What happens if we’re walking and you stroke out?”

“Probably the same thing that would happen if I stayed
here
. I’m going.”

“No, you’re not. That’s an order.”

I laughed. “Are you fucking kidding me? You can’t order me.”

“The hell I can’t. This is a civil disturbance, and as the chief of police I have the power to–”

I blew a raspberry. “You don’t have the power to do squat unless the Prez says so, and you know it.”

She narrowed her eyes. “The same Prez who set fire to your house? That’s who you’re going to defer to?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “But I’m also not deferring to someone wearing a badge, because many other people with badges have completely failed to do their jobs.
You
haven’t, Soni. You take that badge seriously. But what about the people you’d sent to Bakaara? They can’t be the only police like that in the city.”

Soni clenched her jaw for a moment, then sighed. “I hate it when you’re right about stuff like this.”

“Me, too. Can we go now?”

“I can. You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve only got one eye.”

“Oh, like that’s gonna stop me.”

“Yeah?” Soni walked to my right side and said, “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I gave her the bird.

“Wrong!” She put her hand in front of my left eye; she had shaped it into a gun, her thumb cocked back. “We’re walking along, someone sneaks up on your right side, you can’t see anything until it’s too late.”

“Then I’ll walk on your left.”

“Dammit, Padma! I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt!”

I tapped the bandage. “Too late.”

Soni swore. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“That’s why you trust me.”

Behind us, Onanefe cleared his throat. I rolled my eye as I turned. “You have something to add?”

“I do,” he said. “Me.”

“Oh,
hell
, no,” said Soni. “I will have enough to worry about without both of you invalids coming along.”

Onanefe smiled, the first time he had without wincing in pain. “While you two were arguing, I helped myself to Chief Baghram’s painkillers. Not all of them, mind you, but enough so I don’t have to think about my chest exploding. Now that I have a clear head, I have something to point out.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Yes?”

His mustache widened with his grin. “What we are seeing is a breakdown of trust. There’s no trust between you two, or between the citizenry and the police, or between the Freeborn and the Union. That’s the thread that’s run through every discussion we’ve had, Padma: people don’t trust anything right now. People didn’t trust they’d get paid or get to keep their jobs or their homes, and they got
angry
.”

“Angry enough to start blowing up their own neighborhoods?” I said.

Onanefe shook his head. “These bombings are meant to reinforce that mistrust. I would argue that this is all deliberate. We’re seeing an orchestrated campaign.”

Soni’s eyes narrowed, and her mouth became a line so hard it could have shattered diamond. “And how do you know this?”

Onanefe’s smile never flagged. “Because it’s what we talked about doing two Contracts ago.”

Soni now gave Onanefe her full Cop Face. He flinched the tiniest bit. “Who, exactly, is
we
?”

Onanefe’s eyes flicked to me. I nodded:
tell her the fucking truth
. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m on the Executive Committee of the FOC.”

Soni stiffened for the briefest of moments. Her arm was a blue blur as she grabbed Onanefe’s wrist and spun him around. He didn’t say anything when she jammed him against the front of the konbini, but that was probably because his face was squished.

“Do you have any idea what you assholes did two Contracts ago?” she hissed. “I was a rookie, and I had to do clean-up duty after every one of your bombings.” She looked at me. “You really know how to pick your company, Padma. First that Ghost, now this terrorist.”

I held my hands out. “I think you might be overreacting a bit, Soni.”

“This?” She laughed. “No, this is a calm, measured response. If I were overreacting, your friend here would be weeping.”

“All the same, I don’t think he or his group is responsible for all of this.”

“Then that can come out in court,” said Soni.

“For what?” I said.

“Consorting with terrorists.”

“So, what, you’re going to drag him to the nearest cell? Lock him away? He helped me keep you safe while you were unconscious.”

Soni turned and looked at me, her face screwed up in hatred. “The FOC killed police. They bombed precinct houses.”

“That wasn’t us!” yelled Onanefe.

“Then who was it?”

“I don’t know!”

“This is a waste of time.” Soni pulled a zip-tie off her belt and looped it around his wrists. She cranked them extra tight. “You want to talk about trust now? I’d
love
to hear you talk about trust.” She let him go and stepped back.

Onanefe turned with care. He looked me in the eye as he took a breath. “Twenty-two years ago, the FOC’s Executive Committee met to determine what we would do during the upcoming Contract. A small faction wanted to engage in a bombing campaign. They thought the only way to get the Union to pay attention to us was to show strength. I argued against it because, surprise, no one would trust us if we started blowing people up. Leticia Arbusto Smythe was on the committee with me. We were on the same side. It took a week of debate, but we finally prevailed. There would be no bombings.”

He cleared his throat. “And they happened anyway. None of the people in the faction claimed responsibility. In fact” – he looked Soni in the eye – “they all turned themselves in to the police as a show of good faith. It never went to trial, because there were never any charges. We didn’t do it, and if we knew who did we’d have turned their asses in.”

Soni shook her head. “Not good enough.”

Onanefe sagged. “What more do you want? It was good enough for the police back then.”

“That was then. I was only a rookie. Now I’m the chief of police. I’ve had my comms cut, my people moved, and my city on fire. I need to know who was in that faction, because it’s a pretty good bet they’re behind this now.”

“Then you can go to Lonxia Cemetery, ’cause that’s where they are now.”

Soni nodded. “So, they’re meeting there?”

And then she saw Onanefe’s eyes, the way he tried to keep them open despite the tears welling up. She cleared her throat. “Ah.”

And then I remembered: the Hanuman, sparkling clean with the cane wreaths on the front grill. Onanefe and his crew, all in white as they rushed into my burning building. “Whose funeral was it?”

“Does it matter?” he said, his voice breaking.

“If he was buried at Lonxia, he lived in my neighborhood. I’d like to know the name. Yes.”

He coughed. “Milt Gorsky was a cutter and a Zen priest. He spent all his down time teaching kids to read. He used to cry whenever he found dead animals after a cane burn. He was the friendliest man you ever met, which is why it shocked me when he proposed the bombing campaign. Even though he planned it to make sure no one would get injured – giving everyone plenty of warning, making sure only to take out the target building – it hurt me to think he’d do that. We were such good friends until he made that proposal. I hadn’t spoken to him since the vote.”

He snuffled and didn’t look away. “He died last week, alone, in some grubby bedsit in Faoshue. He left a handwritten will that just said he wanted to be at Lonxia because he liked the shade there. He’d spent enough of his time in the sun.”

I flashed back to Meiumi Greene-with-an-e. She wanted to come into town for
Uncle Gorsky
’s funeral. “Are they all there? The ones who wanted the bombings?”

Onanefe nodded. “Milt was the last one of them left.”

I looked at Soni. “You know about this?”

She shook her head. “It must not have looked like a suspicious death, or I would’ve gotten a call.”

“Milt was always in poor health,” said Onanefe. “And considering how nasty his place was, it looked like he hadn’t gotten better. Dirty dishes in the sink, spoiled food in the fridge. That kind of thing.”

“You were there?” said Soni. “After he died?”

Onanefe nodded. “I knew his landlady. She called me after the police went in to investigate the smell.” He coughed again and shuddered. “He’d been in there a while. A couple of months, the coroner said.”

Soni rubbed the top of her head. Her eyes were still hard, but the thin line of her mouth had shifted like a fault line. “Did all of them die like that? Natural causes?”

Onanefe bit his lip as his head bobbed from side to side. “Susan Broyles had a heart attack. Thanchanok Morrison drowned. Jimmy Nguyen got hit by a tuk-tuk. But he was also really drunk, and considering how much he liked his rum, that’s practically natural causes.”

“When did this all happen?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. In the past few years. They were in their fifties when we met. Letty and I were the youngest ones on the committee.”

Soni’s line of questioning clicked in my head. “You said everyone who voted for the bombings died,” I said. “What about the people who voted against them? Are they all still alive?”

“Hm.” Onanefe rubbed his mustache. “There were seven of us on the Executive Committee. Of the four who voted against, there’s just me, Letty, and Marquise Spadinet. Louellen Prima, she was the chair, and the whole thing broke her heart. She died a few weeks after the vote. Marquise moved to the other side of Santee after the bombings. She didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. Haven’t heard from her in years.”

“What are you thinking?” said Soni.

“I’m thinking it would be nice to find a working phone and see if Marquise is still alive.”

Soni narrowed her eyes. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Because she’s the last FOC member at that vote, excepting Onanefe and Letty.”

“What, you think
she’s
behind this?” said Soni.

“Maybe. I don’t know,” I said, looking at Onanefe. “What was Milt’s proposal? What was his plan?”

Onanefe took a deep breath. “He was going to pack tuk-tuks with fertilizer bombs. Small enough to take out a storefront, knock a Union office out of commission, that kind of thing.”

I nodded. “The other day, one of Jilly’s drivers told me that a lot of tuk-tuks have been boosted. And I’ve heard complaints of how hard it’s been to hail a ride over the past month.”

Soni cocked her head. “You don’t think...?”

I nodded. “When we got outside this morning, I saw a shophouse blow up. A tuk-tuk was parked in front of it.”

“You sure?”

“I realize my memory isn’t as accurate as my pai’s feed, but, yeah. I thought the house had exploded, but maybe it was the tuk-tuk. Maybe someone’s carrying out Milt’s plan.”

“Who else knew the details?” said Soni.

Onanefe put his head in his hands. “Just us. And whatever police were in on the interrogations.”

I looked at Soni. “You think you can find out who they were?”

Soni shook her head. “Not with the Public down. But I can’t believe any police are doing this.”

“Yeah? Like you can’t believe your people just stood by at Bakaara?” I hunkered down in front of her. “Two days ago, I would have laughed in your face if you told me that. I would have laughed if you’d told me the President of the Union would have set my building on fire. But now?” I took her hands. “We’re all getting played, Soni. And I don’t know about you, but it really pisses me off.”