IQ(28)
Dodson poured hot chicken broth into the roux, added the chicken, some cut-up chorizo, the vegetables, the garlic, a few spices, and what looked to be a dried leaf. Then he put on some rice, measuring the water by eye. He did all this with a kid’s enthusiasm. Stirring, tasting, adding salt and pepper. “Lupita Tello, you know her?” Dodson said. “I was hittin’ that ’til she moved to the Valley. Girl wanted to be a chef, taught me how to cook, said I had a knack for it. You know, different techniques, what tastes good with what. Even my old man liked my cooking. I had something going on the stove he be looking over my shoulder talking ’bout, what you got happening there, Private? You make enough for the troops? Muthaf*cka was in the marines. Didn’t know how to talk to you unless he was giving you an order. You will make your rack every morning rain or shine. You will be back in this house by oh five hundred. Muthaf*cka liked to you will me to death.” Dodson checked the rice and trimmed the stems off some okra. “Yeah, he did a few tours in Iraq,” he said. “They be banging for real over there. Make our shit look like kindergarten. Messed him up too. He was drinking that vodka like strawberry Kool-Aid, went to work drunk every day. He was an inventory manager at Best Buy ’til they fired his ass for sleeping in his car. He took the whole family back to Oakland, that’s where I’m from.” Dodson threw up some gang signs. “Northern Cali, baby, West Coast on the Bay.” He woot-wooted like a train. “You got any hot sauce?”
“Cupboard on the left.”
The mystery mud was a gumbo. Thick and rich, served over rice with okra fried crisp, the color of maple syrup. Isaiah ate like food was new to him, taking cautious bites and nodding his head. “Good,” he said, “real good.” But he couldn’t taste a thing. He felt self-conscious, Dodson watching him, looking for more of a reaction.
“That okra’s good, ain’t it?” he said. “Soak it in vinegar first, get the slime off.”
“Yeah, that’s good too.”
After he’d eaten all he could stand, he pushed the rest of the food into a pile so it would look like he’d eaten more. He thanked Dodson and went to his room to do his homework. All his classes were Advanced Placement. Environmental science, calculus, computer science, human geography.
“I know your classes are hard,” Marcus said, “but they’re the pathway to your dreams. Lots of folks can’t stay on their pathway or their dreams don’t make sense. Look at those kids on American Idol, the ones that don’t make the cut. Can’t sing worth a damn and what do they always say after they’ve been humiliated? But it’s my dream and Mariah Carey said I shouldn’t give up! Yeah, well, you don’t have Mariah Carey’s voice so get that dumb-ass dream out of your head. What Mariah Carey should be telling them is to follow their abilities and make a dream out of what God gave them.” Marcus smiled that big sunny smile and saw the future in Isaiah’s eyes. “God gave you wings so you could fly up that pathway to the very top,” he said. “That’s where the best dreams are.”
Isaiah always thought Marcus should have been an engineer or an architect but he’d only just graduated high school when their mother died during an operation and their father fell into a deep depression and killed himself. Marcus was left caring for a ten-year-old boy and ended up a jack-of-all-trades. Isaiah had watched for signs of disappointment but never saw any or heard anything in Marcus’s voice. He always sounded like things had turned out exactly the way he’d planned them.
Isaiah couldn’t finish his homework. He slung his books into the wall and stormed around the bedroom spitting out words like cobra strikes. Fucking Marcus. How could you do that? Why didn’t you look? Are you stupid? Fucking Marcus. What am I supposed to do now? It was happening all the time now, the rage boiling up inside his chest, threatening to explode and kill everyone around him. He stopped and stood there with his fists clenched and nothing to punch. It was luck how things turned out so why even try if you were going to get hit by a car? Why not coast if your fate wasn’t in your hands? Why do anything at all if Marcus wasn’t there?
Isaiah’s anger was consuming him. It had nowhere to go, nothing to focus on. He knew if he went on this way he’d end up in a mental ward. He was out on the balcony at dawn when the idea came to him, lifting and warming like the morning sun on his face. He’d go after Marcus’s killer. Find him. Hunt him down, tell him he didn’t kill just anyone, he killed Marcus, the best person in the world—and then make that murdering piece of shit pay.
CHAPTER SIX
Burnout
July 2013
Isaiah and Dodson went around the pool and headed toward the stand of ficus trees at the back of Cal’s property. The dog and the man had come from there.
“You talk too much,” Isaiah said. “All that stuff about do you have any reason to believe—”
“I’m trying to give you the appearance of professionalism,” Dodson said.
“Didn’t I tell you about this? Didn’t I tell you I do things my own way?”
“You ask me, your way needs a serious overhaul, you hope to make it in times like these. You can’t be standing there talking to yourself and staring off into space like some kinda damn psychic. You need to communicate with your clients, be optimistic, make them feel like they getting something for their money.”