IQ(10)

The boat was getting closer, the engine screaming. The man was half turned around and had his pants down to his knees. He was wiggling his butt and yelling Shoot me, shoot me. Isaiah raised the launcher.

“Why aren’t you shooting me?” the man laughed as the boat sped by.

Isaiah fired. The grenade went over the man’s left shoulder and slammed into the back of the windshield. There was a huge explosion of red-and-white sparks. The guy let go of the wheel and staggered backward, hands over his eyes, his T-shirt on fire, his pants twisted around his ankles. He fell to the deck, hitting his face against a rod holder on the way down. The boat was going in a circle at full speed, sparks whirling out of it.

“It’s the Fourth of damn July,” Deronda said.

The man got to his feet and was immediately slung overboard. He splashed and floundered, choking on water poisoned by a million storm drains, submerging and coming up again until he found his footing and plodded toward shore, wiping the slime out of his eyes.

Isaiah went out to meet him with the collapsible baton. “The girl better be all right,” he said, thinking how much she must have suffered already. He hit the guy across the head with the baton hard enough to make Deronda wince. The guy fell over and went under. Isaiah thought about letting him drown but grabbed him by the collar and lifted his head out of the water. “She better be all right, do you hear me?” he said. “She better be just fine.”


Twenty minutes later, patrol cars and an ambulance were parked around the overpass, a helicopter whap-whapping overhead. Cops were standing around pointing at things and talking, Boyd’s boat tied up and webbed with yellow tape. The girl was on a stretcher, conscious but shaken and nauseous, a paramedic attending her.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” the paramedic said.

“Teresa,” the girl said.

“You’re gonna be all right, Teresa. Now I’m going to put this oxygen mask over your face and I want you to breathe deep for me, okay?”

Teresa pushed the mask aside. “Where’s my phone?” she said.

An officer was taking Boyd to a patrol car. Boyd was cuffed, wet like a wet dog, no pants, his T-shirt in charred rags, burn marks on his face; he’d lost his other front tooth, his mouth a bloody hole. “I sidn’t soo anysing,” he said.

“You didn’t do anything to who?” the officer said. “The little girl you kidnapped and had tied up in your boat?”

Boyd thought about saying he was just showing her around but that sounded stupid even to him. “Whas abou suh guy who sot suh bomb ass me?” he said.

“You mean the guy that shot the bomb at you and saved the little girl you had kidnapped in your boat? Shut the f*ck up and get in the car.”


Teresa’s dad, Néstor, arrived. Teresa told him she was walking near the store and somebody put something wet over her face and when she woke up she was in the boat and this black guy was asking her if she was okay.

“Did he do anything, you know,” Néstor said.

“No, Dad, you don’t understand. He wasn’t the guy that kidnapped me, he was like rescuing me. He was nice, I could tell.” Teresa told Néstor how the black guy carried her to shore, set her down, and told her to breathe deeply. After she could sit upright without holding on to him he said the police would be there soon. Then he got in his car with a girl and left.

“He just left?”

“That’s what I said, Dad.”

Néstor wondered why the guy didn’t stay and be a hero, get his picture in the paper, and be on TV. Néstor would have to find him and thank him personally. A black guy who shot grenades at people couldn’t be too hard to find. Néstor decided to let Teresa recover for a day or two before he asked her why she was near the store, which wasn’t on her way home, and if she was going to see that pendejo Ramón he’d take away her phone.


Isaiah carried Margaret across the lobby to the elevators, a group of people already waiting there. Nobody smiled or said anything. Too many crazies around these days, she might be his girlfriend.

Flaco was in physical therapy now. On the ride up, Isaiah decided to put Deronda together with Blasé. Maybe he could put her in a video and who knew, maybe she’d get discovered and be on TV. It was all luck anyway. Like the skinny girl walking past Beaumont’s as he was coming out. If he’d stayed inside another minute she would have suffered in ways he didn’t want to think about. She got lucky and maybe he did too. When you owed as much as he did you didn’t expect the coins to be put in your hand.

Isaiah had been to the hospital hundreds of times but always had a moment when he thought about coming back later or not at all but what would be the point? There was nowhere he could go, no road that went far enough or jet that flew fast enough to free him from his past. He wished he could be like Dodson, just go about his business like nothing had ever happened.

Isaiah had seen Dodson twice since the war. The first time was at Mozique’s funeral. The second time he was coming home late and saw a patrol car with its lights flashing and Dodson sitting on the curb with his fingers laced on top of his head. One officer was searching the car, the other talking on his radio. Dodson was outraged. “We got terrorists and serial killers running around everywhere and you muthaf*ckas ain’t got shit else to do but profile a law-abiding brutha on his way to a job interview? Yes, I know it’s one in the morning, you think a nigga ain’t got a watch? I what? I smell like marijuana? Oh you know that for a fact? You one of them drug-sniffing dogs disguised as a big-ass white man? Yes, I recently completed a sentence at a state correctional facility but what’s that got to do with anything? I’m out now. I don’t deserve this kind of harassment. I paid my debt to society.”