IQ(82)

At long last the rapping stopped. Skip could hear the kids laughing and congratulating themselves, probably doing that stupid handshake and bumping shoulders, their voices loud off the cement walls. A few moments later the pack of them came skating out of the garage. The rapper was in there alone. Skip wanted to go in and get him before anything else happened but the kids were rolling right at the Corolla, filling up the alley. Skip honked the horn and lunged the car at them but they kept coming. Fuck you, dude, yeah, come on and run over us. Yeah, bitch, run us over. They banged their fists on the hood. What are you doing in there, jerking off, you f*cking loser? A kid in a hoodie and a cap that said PLAN B hawked a loogie on the windshield. Skip could hardly keep from shooting him.

Finally, the kids moved on. Skip stepped on the gas and the car rattled and died. “I don’t f*cking believe this,” he said. He got out of the car and walked quickly toward the garage entrance, the Glock at his side. He could hear the rapper right around the corner.

“I have been misled,” the rapper said. “Brian has misled me.”

Isaiah came running out of the Amos Center. He tried to turn back for the door but it had already closed. He was trapped in the vestibule.

“This must be my lucky day,” Skip said. He grinned, the twinkling eyes like death stars. He walked toward the smart-ass, aiming the gun at his face. He’d planned to use the multi-impact rounds on the rapper but this would be better. Splatter this prick all over the alley, nothing left for his family to see, pieces of him in the coffin. Shoot the rapper with the Beretta.

“What have you got to say now, *?” he said, cupping his ear. “What’s that? I can’t hear you. What did you say? Please don’t shoot me and I won’t be a smart-ass anymore?” Skip wished he would beg or cry or piss himself, anything besides stand there and look at him. “I knew I’d get you,” Skip said. “I knew I would.”


Isaiah was more furious than scared. This piece-of-shit killer about to put a bullet in his heart. His life didn’t flash before his eyes but Flaco did. The boy’s face lighting up when he saw Margaret. And Marcus, coming out of the bathroom with that big sunny smile singing “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”

“Ready to die?” Skip said.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Isaiah said.

Skip never saw the eighty-pound roll of roofing paper falling out of the sky. He crumpled like a Red Bull can stomped into the pavement. The Glock went off. Thirty-three multi-impact rounds hitting the Corolla in 1.65 seconds.

Isaiah looked up at Dodson peering down from the roof. “I got tar all over my Pumas,” he said. “That muthaf*cka owes me for a new pair of shoes.”


Cal came out of the parking garage and blinked a few times, not sure his eyes were working right. What was Mr. Q doing here? Weren’t they just talking on the phone? Did he have something to do with Brian Sterling? Why was that car all shot to shit and who was that white boy lying on the ground with a gun and a big roll of black paper? Was that Brian Sterling? Was Brian Sterling dead? “I don’t understand,” Cal said. He put the back of his wrist over his eyes and started to cry. “I don’t understand.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN


One Damn Bullet


April 2006

The day after the shooting at the taquería, Isaiah went to the hospital, Marcus’s voice resounding in his head. He asked to see the boy that was on TV but the nurse told him he couldn’t visit because he was a minor and not a blood relative. She wouldn’t tell him anything, not even the boy’s name. If he wanted to speak to Dr. Lopez he’d have to call her office and make an appointment.

Isaiah went to the cafeteria and stationed himself near the cash registers. Hundreds of people streamed past carrying their trays. Around two o’clock, when the flow had slowed to a trickle, he saw a Latina woman in green scrubs and running shoes. Her name tag said AMELIA LOPEZ MD. She was bony but fit. Long arms and sharp elbows, deep tan, hair in a tight bun. Marathons, Isaiah thought. He waited until she was eating a Yoplait and then sat down in front of her. “That boy,” he said, “the one with brain trauma. I’m the one that got him shot. I’m the one that got his parents killed.”

Isaiah told the doctor his story beginning to end, leaving out nothing.

“I don’t know what to say,” Dr. Lopez said.

“It’s my fault,” Isaiah said. “It’s all my fault.” He was crying now, his head bowed, tears falling into his lap.

“I think you’re being hard on yourself. You didn’t know that would happen.”

“I have to make it right.”

“How?”

“My brother Marcus was my only family and he was taken away from me. I want to be the family I took away from the boy.”

She looked at him. “I think you have a good heart, Isaiah. I really mean that and I think your intentions are admirable, but I can’t give you permission to see him. Only the family can do that.”

“What should I do?”

“If it were me? I’d pray for forgiveness.”


Weeks went by. Flaco’s only visitor was a caseworker from a state program for the medically indigent. Flaco had fallen into a deep depression, groaning something that sounded like mommy over and over again. Dr. Lopez prescribed an antidepressant but it didn’t help.