IQ(58)

Dodson was staring blankly, his mouth hanging open like the firing squad had emptied their rifles at him and missed. “Could we get the f*ck outta here, please?”


On the trip back to Long Beach, Isaiah was as still as a person can be and still drive a car. Dodson pulled his S&W .38 Special from under his fishing shirt. It was a revolver, lighter than a Glock, the barrel two inches long. The fellas preferred semiautos but Dodson liked pulling the hammer back and hearing it click. Just the sound of it scared the shit out of people. He flipped open the gun’s cylinder, pushed the ejector rod, the bullets falling into his palm. “Safety first,” he said. He put the bullets in his pocket and tucked the gun away. “Whatever you got to say, say it.”

“You were really going to shoot me? Shoot a cop?”

“Maybe, but I know I wasn’t going to jail.”

“I told you no guns.”

“I know what you told me, nigga, but I don’t give a shit. I took enough orders from my old man and I ain’t taking no more from you or anybody else.”

“They’re not orders, they’re just—you’re messing everything up, you know that, don’t you?”

“You the one messing shit up. I’m telling you, Isaiah, y’all better get your boot up off my neck or some shit gonna happen.”

“Like what?” Isaiah said, angry now. Dodson threatening him with a gun. Threatening to take his life away the way life had taken Marcus. “What are you gonna do? What? Tell me. Because whatever it is, stop trying to intimidate me and do it.”

“Don’t push me. We get into it I’ll f*ck you up.”

“And wreck the whole thing? End it? You won’t, I know you won’t. You need this too much.”

“Yeah, but you need it worse than me.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I figure it like this. I need the money. You just need it.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


You Can Make Anything Run


July 2013

Skip parked the Speedy Appliance Repair van and put on his Kenmore cap. The kids playing football in the street were too busy arguing about the out-of-bounds line to notice him getting out of the van with a duffel bag full of tools and walking across the street to Q Fuck’s house. He rang the bell even though he knew nobody was home. He took his time, ambling down the driveway toward the garage and backyard. Since when do repairmen hurry? Music was coming from the neighbor’s house. A good thing. He checked the kitchen door but the locks were indestructible.

Skip found a narrow path on the other side of the house overgrown with bougainvillea. He used the thorny bushes for cover and set up at a window. He put on latex gloves, opened the duffel bag, and got out the Halligan, a titanium pry bar the fire department used for forcible entries. He wedged the adze end between the wall of the house and the frame of the burglar bars and with a padded sledgehammer drove it all the way in. He stopped a few times to listen but the music was still playing and the kids were arguing about something else. Skip yanked, pried, and wrenched the Halligan until he’d leveraged the frame away from the wall, the anchor bolts, chicken wire, and chunks of stucco coming out with it. He broke the window and climbed in.

The bedroom smelled a little like ammonia, weird but no big deal. The bed was made and a couple of photos were on the nightstand. No empty beer bottles, no laundry, no shoes on the floor. Smart-ass was a neat freak. Skip was unloading his gear when he heard a car pull into the driveway, the rumble of the engine telling him it was the hot-rod Audi. His cell buzzed. A text said on his way. “Thanks for telling me, *,” Skip said.

Hurrying now, Skip slipped on his ski mask and popped a high-capacity magazine into the Glock 17, the shorter barrel better in tight spots. The clip held thirty-three rounds and extended five inches below the grip. Skip inserted the Glock’s barrel into an ordinary automobile air filter fitted with a special adapter. It looked odd, like the gun had a can of soup stuck on the end, but with the subsonic ammo the gunshot was no louder than the snap of a mousetrap. He thought about meeting smart-ass at the front door but it was risky. He might be seen or heard before he got off a shot. Better to stay here and wait. He’d come into the bedroom sooner or later.


Isaiah drove home, smelling like melted plastic and ashes, hoping it wouldn’t stay in the car. Cal was truly crazy, burning up thousands of dollars’ worth of his belongings, stuff people clawed and struggled for used as firewood. Put a perspective on it, though. Owning all that didn’t help Cal any. He was lost before the fire and lost afterward. The common denominator was Cal.

Isaiah pulled into his driveway, on high alert now. He got out of the car quickly and stepped behind it. He was afraid of that target gun with the long barrel but there weren’t any lines of sight where Skip could set up. Isaiah had driven home fast, changing lanes, making sudden turns, watching for that blue truck coming up behind him.

Isaiah scanned the street from end to end. Nothing happening except for some kids playing football. But there was an appliance repair van parked in front of Mrs. Marquez’s house. If Mrs. Marquez wanted an appliance repaired she’d have called him. The tinny taste of adrenaline expanded on his tongue. He crossed the street to her house and knocked on her door but she wasn’t home. He approached the kids. “Say, did you see where the repairman went?” he said.