IQ(43)

“We’ve got no way to link Skip with whoever hired him,” Isaiah said. “I shook his tree.”

“Is that what you were doing? Looked to me like you was humiliating the man. Taking his f*cked-up life and sticking it in his face, especially that part about reading to the puppies. You know he’s gonna come after you, don’t you?”

“I hope he does. He’s too pissed off, he’ll make a mistake.”

“You the one got pissed off and you the one made a mistake. Now he knows we’re onto him.”

“Doesn’t matter, he already knew. It took us about three hours to get from Long Beach to Fergus. Remember what Skip said when we were walking around the side of the house? He said, how long did it take you to get here, three hours? We could have been coming from anywhere. San Bernardino is an hour away. So is Riverside. LA is two.”

“So who told him?” Dodson said. “Only people who know anything are Bobby Grimes, Anthony, and the Moody brothers.”

“And one of them is Skip’s employer or works for Skip’s employer.”

“I ain’t buying it. They all want Cal to finish the album and he can’t do that unless he’s alive.”

“If Cal finishes the album he’ll have to go to the studio.”

“So?”

“So he’ll be out in the open where Skip can put a bullet in his head.”

The woman gave the salad back, lettuce spilling out of her mouth. “Are voo kiffling?” she said.





CHAPTER TEN


Pet City


July 2005

No guns. Isaiah wouldn’t budge on that. He knew his way around computers but hacking was an FBI crime. Out of his league. There was selling drugs but the gangs had that sewed up. Designer drugs were in his wheelhouse but they were rave drugs, white people drugs, nobody around the neighborhood used them. Isaiah was an excellent poker player but you needed a stake.

“Ain’t nothing left but thievery,” Dodson said. He was at the stove frying bacon for BLTs. “My boy Duane and his partner Dakor was gonna rob an auto parts store but they had to get high first and that took a while. Coupla niggas in a ’72 Cutlass driving around at three in the morning. Got busted before they got to the freeway.”

“What for?” Isaiah said.

“For being two niggas in a ’72 Cutlass driving around at three in the morning. This other time they got into an electronics store over in Carson. They was heisting TVs but forgot to measure the car. Fools was trying to stuff a sixty-inch plasma into the backseat of that Cutlass when the cops showed up. Both of ’em had records, did their bids up in Vacaville. Soon as they got out they went right back at it. Hit a drugstore looking for oxy and some people across the street saw ’em and called the police. They went straight back to Vacaville, didn’t even have to change the sheets. Duane got his throat cut in the chow line. Dakor’s gonna be in there ’til he’s on Social Security.”

Dodson took the bacon out of the pan and let it drain on a paper towel. “Ain’t easy being a bandit these days,” he said. “All them cameras everywhere. They put your ass on TV now. Got the whole city looking for you. Roamin wore a Halloween mask but got recognized by his hair. Must be the last brutha on the block with a Jheri curl. Prescott wore a ski mask with just his eyes showing but they ID’d him by his ink. Nigga had his ex-wife’s name running up and down his neck. She’s the one who turned him in. Prescott’s in Vacaville too, in there making jailhouse chili and playing tonk with Dakor.”

“Don’t you know any successful thieves?” Isaiah said.

“They’re all successful ’til they get busted,” Dodson said. He put the BLTs on plates and gave one to Isaiah. “Eat up,” he said. Dodson’s version of the BLT was double-smoked bacon on toasted rye with some kind of spicy lettuce, thick heirloom tomato slices, and Best Foods mayo with herbs in it. Isaiah took a bite. It was the first thing he’d actually tasted in a long time and he couldn’t believe how good it was. He had to stop and look at it.

“But you know what gets niggas busted more than anything else?” Dodson said. “They partners. Shit. You got a brutha looking at a ten-year charge he’ll roll over on your ass before he gets to the police station—where’re you going?”


Isaiah went out on the balcony with his BLT and his laptop and stayed out there for a long time. When he came back in Dodson was playing GTA. “Damn, this game got some lame-ass dialogue. They couldn’t get a real Mexican to play Chico?”

“Let’s go for a ride,” Isaiah said.

They took Marcus’s five-year-old Explorer. Marcus didn’t care about cars and usually drove a clunker. He’d buy something on the cheap, run it into the ground, and buy something else. He bought the Explorer so Isaiah wouldn’t be embarrassed when he got his license.

“The cops get thousands of burglar alarm calls a year,” Isaiah said, “and over ninety percent of them turn out to be false.”

“Ninety percent?” Dodson said.

“That’s why they came up with this rule. Your business gets two false alarms but on the third one you have to pay a fine and if there are more false alarms the fines go up. That’s why the alarm companies try to verify if it’s really a burglary and not somebody working late.”