Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (55 page)

Maybe Michael couldn’t find Sandip, but he could at least find out what was going on with his girlfriend. If he couldn’t stalk his girlfriend, what good was it being a cop, anyway?

Michael called in sick to work the next day,
after
he’d left the condo.

She spent the morning at the studio, but at noon she left and didn’t head for home. It was easy, following her. She might have ace powers, and jet set with the Committee on occasion, but Kavitha was still a civilian at heart. She didn’t even look behind as she left the studio, walking a path that wasn’t taking her home to the condo. And when she finally ended up in a frankly terrible part of town, she headed straight into one of the dingiest motels on the street. Michael waited a few beats, and then followed her in. She might see him, but at this point, he knew enough to confront her if he had to. He was going to get the truth out of her, one way or another.

He was in time to see the elevator doors closing, and to watch the indicator go up, up, up. Third floor. Michael took the stairs, as fast as he could, glad he’d kept up with the station’s physical requirements, and emerged from the stairwell just in time to catch her disappearing into room 328. At that point, he abandoned all subtlety—because what the hell? Why in God’s name would his girlfriend be meeting up with someone in a dingy motel? Was this why she’d refused to marry him?

There was just one likely explanation, but it made no sense. Michael found himself with one hand on the door, the other on his gun, fighting a sudden murderous rage. It was one thing to date more than one person—it was an entirely different thing to have one of them cheating on you. If she’d just
told
him that she wanted to see someone else—well, Michael still wouldn’t like it, but he wouldn’t feel the need to pound somebody’s face in. He didn’t think.

“Open up!” He shouted. “Police!”

The door suddenly swung open, with his fist still raised to pound again, and Michael almost fell inside before catching himself on the door frame. Kavitha stood just a step away, and there, legs and feet hanging off the end of the motel bed was … her brother. His torso swathed in bandages, looking like death warmed over, with terror in his dark brown eyes.

Michael took a quick, steadying breath. Carefully, deliberately, lowered his hand from the butt of his gun, suddenly ashamed of the urge that had put it there. And then he asked, in as calm a voice as he could manage, “Will one of you
please
explain what is going on?”

They didn’t fall over themselves to explain. Not at first. The silence grew quite deafening, until Kavitha finally said, “Sandip. Tell him.” She moved over to sit by her brother and took his hand in her own slim hand. She petted it gently, reassuring him, and finally, the kid opened his mouth to speak.

“They’re killing jokers. Killing
people
.” The words came stumbling out, and suddenly, shockingly, the kid was crying, big gasping sobs from deep in his belly, tears streaming down his face. Kavitha grabbed a towel by the side of the bed and started dabbing at his cheeks with practiced motions, as if she’d done this before. As if she’d been doing this for days.

“Tell me what happened,” Michael said, in his calmest cop voice. On one level, he couldn’t believe Kavitha had kept this from him—but he held the anger down, waiting for the facts.

And the story came spilling out. Sandip had been recruited a few weeks ago by the kidnapping squad; one of the disgruntled Tamils he’d tried to join up with had been a joker involved in the scheme. Sandip knew the basics of how to handle a gun, part of his revolutionary aspirations, though he’d never shot one outside the range. He didn’t mind waving one around to scare people, though. Especially given how much money they’d paid him to do it.

“And not just money. Free drinks, as many as I wanted, and women too. Fucking gorgeous women just waiting for us.
Machan
, you should have seen the setup they had over there.” The kid’s eyes were wide and glassy.

“Over where?” Michael asked sharply.

Sandip huddled in on himself, and Kavitha put a protective hand on his arm. “I can’t remember. They never really told us anything, but I heard some of them talking about it. Some tiny country, something stan?”

This was important. He had to tell the captain, as soon as he got the whole story. The kid was still babbling. “I don’t know where it was, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” He kept going on about how cool it had seemed, at first. Sandip had thought he was living the dream. And then they’d let him see the killings.

Now he was crying again as he talked, the words stuttering between jagged sobs. “I mean, they
told
me what was going on, but it’s different when you see it. They said joker fight club, I figured it was gangsters, big guys, fighting it out to prove their manhood, y’know? Those were the kind of guys I was helping to grab. But the first real fight I saw, it was this little man, with glasses—he looked like a schoolteacher. Like the guy who taught my freshman history class. I kind of hated Mr. Matthews, but I didn’t want to see him ripped apart into little pieces! The other guy started chomping on what was left of his stomach, and that’s when I knew I couldn’t keep doing this.” Now Sandip was crying so hard that he couldn’t talk anymore, and Kavitha took up the story.

“That’s almost all of it,” she said. “When they came back to New York on that trip, he took off. Got shot in the shoulder, but got away. He was too scared to go to the hospital, so he called me. It was the day your parents came for dinner. I snuck out that night, took some of our money, and rented him this place. Got medicine, bandages, dug the bullet out of his shoulder, patched him up and prayed that he’d survive it. You should have seen the shape he was in.” Her voice was high, trembling.

Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “A week. You’ve kept this from us for a week?” No wonder she’d been wound up so tight; keeping secrets wasn’t in Kavitha’s nature. It must have been killing her to lie to them like this. That didn’t make him any less angry. Rage was churning in his stomach.

“Michael.” Kavitha stood up, came two steps closer, close enough that he could smell her fear. Although, perhaps wisely, she didn’t touch him. “I knew you’d have to arrest him, send him to jail for a long, long time. But he’s just a kid. That’s what they do, you know.” Her voice was shaky now, close to breaking. Kavitha took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. “To keep the brutality going—they take children, and make them part of their battles. We can’t punish the children for what the adults have done.”

Michael shook his head. His chest felt as if it were being stabbed with knives. He’d never thought heartbreak could feel so literal, so real. “Kavitha, you know better. He participated. Sandip is old enough to know what he was doing when he took those people to their deaths.” She’d always been so committed to doing what was right. It was part of why he loved her. He’d known how she felt about family, but he’d thought she was better than this.

The boy was quieter now, doubled over and hugging his knees, swallowing his sobs.

She spread out her hands, helplessly. Despite everything, Michael was struck once again by how beautifully she moved. “He’s my little brother,” Kavitha said. “You should have seen him, bloody, with a bullet in him. He asked me to help him. I thought if I hid him for a little while, until it was all over…” She trailed off, clearly not sure what possible good ending there could have been.

If she had only come to him right away—he could have found some way to make it right. To protect the boy; as a juvenile, if Sandip had come in and told his story right away, maybe Michael could have saved him. But now it was too late. “You lied to me for a week. You let these bastards continue their operation unimpeded. How many people did they grab, in the last week?” He could see the words hitting Kavitha, see her bracing against their assault.

How could they come back from this? Michael realized that she was never going to wear his ring, not now. He couldn’t offer it to her after this, even if he understood on some level why she’d done it. He couldn’t keep living with her; he could barely look at her. Oh, Isai. Sweetheart. This was going to tear their little girl apart. And Minal—would she still marry him? Or would he lose her too? If he made her choose between them, Michael didn’t know who Minal would pick.

Kavitha stepped back, away from him. Let her hands fall to her sides. “What are you going to do, Michael?”

She knew the answer; she knew him too well. “What I have to.”

Michael said the words, feeling the weight of them fall like a knife between them, cutting the ties that bound them together. “Sandip Kandiah, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law…”

Those About to Die …

Part Six

STANDING JUST OUTSIDE THE
arena, hidden behind the doors that opened into it, Marcus told himself,
Just one more time.

One more, and this is all over
.

He knew he would hate himself for it later, when he was far from here and could look back. But that would be then. This was now. He had to get out of here. With Olena. He would do this for her, and then they would be free. They’d hide somewhere nobody knew him. It wouldn’t matter where, because he’d have Olena.

Just one more death, and then never again.

The music died down and changed tempo. The announcer called for the crowd’s attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been an amazing night so far,” he claimed, “but now it’s time for the main event—a death match. Not since the time of the ancients, of Rome’s mighty glory, have gladiators risked their very lives in the arena. But this bout goes even further back than that. Back to the very beginning. Back to the Garden of Good and Evil.”

A different voice cut in, speaking a different language. Russian, Marcus guessed. And after that still another language, perhaps Chinese.

Marcus thought,
The world’s watching,
but he hoped that wasn’t true. Both for himself, and for what it meant about the world.

The English announcer picked up again, saying the first competitor, ladies and gentlemen, showed his murderous talent just days ago. He comes armed with the weapons the wild card virus gave him. Welcome him, ladies and gentlemen!
The Infamous Black Tongue!

The doors in front of Marcus flew open. The rush of sound trapped in the small, claustrophobic space hit him like a physical force. He slithered into the bright lights of the arena. As soon as he was through, the doors shut behind him, trapping him inside. That was all right, though. He knew the way out. To kill. And he knew this arena. It was a friend. He passed through a rippling wave of tension in the air. Like heat but not. Like a scent but scentless. He sucked it in, feeding off it, filling himself with the rage he was going to need.

His eyes darted up to Baba Yaga’s box. She was there, like always, with the twisted old man beside her. But this time someone sat on her other side, looking uncomfortable and nervous. And beautiful. Olena. She wore a tiny, tight red dress, and had her hair pulled up. She could’ve been a model, or a starlet on the arm of some Hollywood actor. He hated that she was so close to that evil woman and that horror of a man. Hated that the black-suited guards lined the back wall, a half dozen of them, staring at the arena from behind black sunglasses. They shouldn’t be anywhere near Olena. He closed his eyes, reminding himself that once this was over she was going to be his. He would take her away from all this. That’s what mattered.

When he opened his eyes again, Baba Yaga reached over and set a hand atop Olena’s. She held it there, watching Marcus. The message was clear.

When the commotion died down the announcer continued. Facing the serpent would be a soldier of death disguised in godly robes. For years he pretended to be a man of the cloth, when he was really a man of the blade, a soldier of fortune with a past soaked in blood. They all knew the name he went by now. They’d all seen him in action.