IQ(24)

The nine ball bounced gently off the far cushion and came back, Isaiah cupping his hand over it. “Whistles,” he said.

“Did you say whistles?” Dodson said.

“The man was using whistles, giving the dog directions like those sheepherders do with their dogs. Like a high-low for going left and low-high for going right. The dog’s ears went up every time he made a turn.”

“But why use a dog at all?” Anthony said. “It makes no sense.”

“Yeah,” Charles said, “it’s stupid.”

“If you’re the hit man, you’re on a deadline,” Isaiah said, drifting toward the glass door. “You’d have to be. Nobody would hire you to kill somebody without a time frame, but the hit man didn’t plan on Cal staying in the house for three weeks. The alternative was shooting him through a window but the drapes were always closed. The hit man’s only option at that point was to get inside the house but he couldn’t because there’s an alarm and cameras and people with guns. So now what does he do?” Isaiah reached the glass door and looked out at the pool. “He sends in his killer dog.”

Anthony was nodding. Charles was rubbing his goatee. Bug’s face was screwed up like it was too much information.

“Any questions?” Dodson said.





CHAPTER FOUR


The Hatchet Man


June 2013

Three weeks before the dog attack on the rapper, Kurt walked along the Santa Monica Pier, unconsciously massaging his arm and reminding himself that that was his name today. The weather matched his shitty mood. The air was damp, the sky a washed-out gray, the ocean dark and sluggish. There was a breeze but it wasn’t strong enough to blow away the smell of grease, stale popcorn, French fries, and hot dog water. The only decent thing out here was the old-fashioned merry-go-round. The rest was a bunch of stupid rides, fast-food stands, kiosks selling hats and key chains, and a restaurant called Bubba Gump’s from that boring movie about the retarded guy. Some old gook asked him if he wanted his name painted on a grain of rice. “What for?” Kurt said. “Who’s gonna read it?” He joined a family of foreign tourists watching the most interesting thing out here, a Mexican guy reeling in a spiny brown fish. “You eat that and you’ll be shitting mercury,” Kurt said.


They called him the Hatchet Man, a ground-and-pound heavyweight with an eighteen-and-eight record. His last fight was against a Korean fireplug nicknamed Seoul Man. With a minute to go in the second round, Seoul Man locked Hatchet Man up in a vicious arm bar. The pain was unbearable but his face was smushed into Seoul Man’s right calf and his arm was pinned under the Korean’s left leg. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t tap out. The ref called it when he heard Hatchet Man’s ligaments pop and his humerus splintering like a green twig. Everybody in the arena groaned. A guy in the front row threw up.

Three surgeries and months of rehab later, Hatchet Man regained some arm strength but nothing like before. Some of the nerves were permanently damaged and it was more comfortable carrying the arm at an angle. He could unbend it if he wanted to but his range of motion was limited. Still, he was dangerous. Some guy in Donahue’s made a wisecrack about the arm and Hatchet wrapped it around his neck like a python and choked him into unconsciousness. But bar fights weren’t cage fights and he had to retire. Now he was doing security for one of DStar’s clients.


Kurt took the wide wooden stairs leading down from the pier to the parking lot and the beach. The lot was almost empty. He walked along the second aisle from the right, trying to look nonchalant. Just a regular two-hundred-and-forty-three-pound guy in a lime-green muscle shirt and beaded dreadlocks, jagged scars under both cheekbones, his right ear shredded to nothing and an arm bent like he was escorting a date to the prom. It made him nervous, knowing he was being watched. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff was bullshit. He’d refused to do the job himself so the boss had him call DStar for a reference. That man knew people.

“You want somebody dead, my guy won’t let you down,” DStar said. “He’s a real lunatic. I mean they’re all lunatics but this guy is—” DStar hesitated like he couldn’t find the words. “Let me put it this way. He always gets it done.”

What’s a real lunatic that always gets it done? Kurt thought. Would the guy come cartwheeling across the sand dressed like a ninja or pop up out of the ocean wearing a headband and firing an M16?

A homeless guy was sitting on a parking block holding a cardboard sign that said HUNGRY. He was filthy like he’d been living with wolves, bundled up in an old gray blanket, rags wrapped around his feet.

“Sir, can you spare some change?” he said.

“Get a job, you f*ck,” Kurt said.

There was a business-type guy sitting in a convertible Benz and thumbing a text. Kurt slowed as he walked past but the guy didn’t look up. Now a knock-kneed Asian girl wearing complicated high heels tottered toward him like a baby giraffe, Kurt wondering if the girl, the rice-painting guy, and Seoul Man all knew each other. The girl smiled and made eye contact, Kurt thinking no, it couldn’t be.

“This is way to pier?” she said.

Kurt looked at the pier big as life and looked at her. She couldn’t be the hitter, she was too stupid. “Yeah,” he said, “this is the way to the pier.” He kept going and reached the end of the lot. The beach was empty except for a bunch of seagulls camping on the sand. He waited, getting pissed off, not knowing if he should stand around like a dummy or blow the whole thing off.