Free KOP Killer by Warren Hammond Page B

wanted to enjoy the moment. Good fucking fight.
    I was back.
    Nobody would care that I’d taken a beating at the end. What they’d remember was me not backing down. They’d remember how I threw that nasty sucker punch, how I’d stomped that hump’s nuts.
    Confidence surged through me. The tattered mission was restored, achievable. I’d take back KOP. My will was too strong. My desire was too great.
    *   *   *
    I was putt-putting the river on a rented skiff, a breeze drying the blood on my face.
    I was very aware of the fact that nobody had made a move against me at the Beat. Even when I was down, catching facefuls of knuckles, nobody tried to arrest or kill me. That told me Mota’s influence over KOP was minimal. Captain or no, he couldn’t turn the police against me. He was a middle manager, a bureaucrat, nothing more. He didn’t send a crew to guard the alley last night. The best he could do was to get a single uniform posted. A clueless uniform. Jimmy.
    I wasn’t going to feel bad about Jimmy. Not tonight. I was serving a higher purpose. Together, Maggie and I were going to change this city.
    Mota was just a bump in the road. A temporary hurdle. And I was going to end this thing tonight. I was going to kill the bastard.
    I angled the boat into one of the many canals built when Lagarto’s brandy trade was the agricultural envy of the Unified Worlds. I passed houses on stilts, drawn curtains and dark windows. An offworld flyer rose into the Big Sleep’s perpetually black sky. Unusual for this neighborhood. Not many offworlders ventured into the residential districts. The dumbass had probably got lost and decided to get his bearings by taking an aerial view. The flyer banked left and headed for the river, buzzing rooftops with its ear-rattling shriek.
    I ducked my head as I passed under a low bridge, viny growths scraping through my hair. I turned left and entered a broad canal. Both banks were lined with stilted homes jutting over the water. I couldn’t stop myself from remembering: Niki grew up not far from here. She’d still lived with her parents when Paul and I staked out their home. Back then, Paul and I were young guns hot to make a name for ourselves by nailing a big-time drug dealer, Niki’s father.
    Hour after hour, day after day, we’d spied through the windows, watching her brush her hair and read her books and change her clothes. I fell for her. It was as simple as that. I fell, and fell hard.
    The earliest days were the best. We each had our demons, but we were still young and stupid enough to believe that our love for each other would conquer all. I didn’t need to stop my enforcer’s ways, and she didn’t need to face the ugly truth that her son-of-a-bitch father had raped her.
    But the happy days didn’t last long. The shit we were carrying kept getting in the way, so we broke up and reunited, broke up and reunited, over and over until we each found a way to contain our demons. For me, the secret was booze. For her, pills.
    But even then, the demons never stopped nipping at our souls. They took tiny, little bites, nibbles so small we didn’t even notice them until our hearts and souls had been completely devoured.
    She’d had the good sense to escape her torment by leaving this world. And me, I was still here. Why, I didn’t know.
    Mota’s house shouldn’t be much further. Afraid of making too much noise, I turned off the motor and let the boat coast to a stop before grabbing a pole. I stood in the stern and stabbed the water, driving the pole deep down into the mud, and propelled the boat with a shove. Quietly, almost silently, I moved toward my destination.
    Stroke by stroke, I made my approach. Monitors lurked in the water, their reflective eyes watching me pass.
    I stopped.
    This was it. Mota’s place. Light from a neighbor’s outdoor lamp penetrated enough of the shadows to let me see his back wall. Weighted by the relentless strangle of jungle roots, the porch had