IQ(84)

If you think reading Harry Potter to that boy gets you off the hook, you are sadly mistaken. Flaco is only the start of it. The war caused death and destruction and made innocent people worry for their lives and their children’s lives and made them feel ashamed of where they lived. You were supposed to raise people up, ease their suffering, bring them justice, do some good out there—Oh, I’m sorry, are you crying again? Well, I hope it’s not for yourself because I don’t feel sorry for you and neither should you. What? What was that? You can’t pay back everybody for everything that’s happened? Is that your excuse? You can’t pay back everybody so you’re gonna pay back nobody?


Isaiah stopped spending the burglary money and set aside what was left for Flaco. He didn’t know what else he could do. Broke now, he got a job at the Hurston Animal Shelter. He liked the animals and he liked Harry but the city cut the budget and Harry had to let him go.

Isaiah worked as a night janitor at Hopkins Machining and Welding. He learned how to use the machines by watching videos and practiced on them at night. Mr. Hopkins caught him working on a canopy for a client’s vintage Spitfire airplane. He was impressed but couldn’t hire Isaiah because it was a union shop.

Hopkins referred Isaiah to Garrison Robles, a gunsmith who made custom firearms and ammo. Garrison was looking for a machinist who would work cheap in exchange for learning the trade. Isaiah had reservations about taking the job. Since the shootings he was gun-shy and Dr. Lopez and her one damn bullet had made him almost phobic.


Isaiah was eleven years old and afraid of spiders. He refused to take a bath because a daddy longlegs was in the tub.

“That little thing?” Marcus had said. “It can’t hurt you.”

“I don’t care,” Isaiah said. “I’m not going in there.”

“I was scared of snakes. Couldn’t even look at a picture of one. So I studied up on them, learned what made them tick, got them down to their nuts and bolts. Made them a thing instead of a boogieman.”

“Are you still afraid of them?”

“Oh yeah, I’m terrified—but I know what I’m dealing with.”

Isaiah learned a lot about guns and ammo working for Garrison. He was still afraid of them but he knew what he was dealing with.


Other jobs came and went. He worked as a barista at the Coffee Cup, making espressos, lattes, and mocha frappuccinos. He learned about coffee and its smells. Separating the aroma into notes of charcoal, chocolate, red fruits, caramel, and a dozen others. He began paying attention to smells in general. Walking into a room, meeting someone, opening a package. He worked for a law practice as a process server. He liked finding people who didn’t want to be found and he liked reading the documents he was serving. Divorces, summonses, lawsuits, subpoenas, cease-and-desist orders. A mini-course in the law. He worked at a sporting goods store. It had a rock-climbing wall and he got into it, the guy there taking him on climbs to Eagle Peak, Stoney Point, Joshua Tree.


His best job was at TK’s Wrecking Yard. Twelve desolate acres near the Dominguez Channel. TK was a skinny old man who smelled like motor oil and sweat, enough room in his overalls for two more TKs, his cap so filthy you could barely make out the STP.

“What’s your name, son?” TK said, wiping his hands with a rag that was dirtier than his hands.

“Isaiah Quintabe,” Isaiah said.

“You ever work on cars before, Isaiah Quintabe?”

“No sir, but I know my tools and I learn fast.”

“Must be six hundred vehicles out here plus all the parts. You can’t tell one from another you’re of no use to me.”

“I can tell one from another,” Isaiah said. He’d seen every make and model ever made come off the Anaheim off-ramp. After he’d named all the cars within a forty-yard radius TK said: “Say, have you heard this one? These two old peoples was at the church service and during the prayer the old man leans over to the old lady and says, ‘I just cut a silent fart. Should I say something?’ And the old lady says, ‘No, but you better put a new battery in your hearing aid.’” Isaiah laughed for the first time in a long time. TK lit a Pall Mall, his eyes narrowing as he inhaled. “Well, I guess you got the job, boy,” he said.

As a young man, TK raced a Turbo Eclipse on the wide streets near the Ontario airport and ran super go-karts at CalSpeed and drove a highly modified CRX in SCCA races until he couldn’t afford it anymore. Isaiah found boxes of dinged-up trophies in the warehouse. TK taught Isaiah how to drive. Really drive. How to heel-and-toe, rev match, drift with the hand brake. They set up their own race course. S-turns through the rows of crushed cars, a straightaway along the perimeter fence, then a sweeping right-hander around the mountain of tires and back through the S-turns to the finish line in front of the warehouse, where you had to brake hard or run into the crane.

TK would get a car up and running, put Isaiah behind the wheel in a scratched-up motorcycle helmet, and class was in session. TK knew his stuff but patience was not a virtue he cultivated. He’d bounce around in the shotgun seat, pointing at things Isaiah couldn’t see and rounding the curves with his hand.

“Get wide, wider, goddammit—okay okay, here comes your turn-in, brake to the threshold, pick your line—no, not that line, you’re early, steer, steer, come off it now—too much, too much—shit, boy, if they gave points for sliding off the road you’d be a goddamn champion.”