IQ(89)

The brown apartment building was L-shaped. All the doors were facing in, big white patches where the paint had chipped off the stucco. Laundry was draped over the second-story railing, an overflowing dumpster in the parking lot. Isaiah parked the Explorer facing the sun so you couldn’t see him through the glare of the windshield. Women sat outside their doors talking. Kids ran up and down stairs, old men played dominoes.

Isaiah was eating the last of the trail mix when Darcy emerged from an upstairs apartment. She was sixteen going on thirty-five, wearing a bathrobe over a slip and fuzzy slippers. She leaned against the railing and looked down at the parking lot like she was disappointed it was still there. Somebody called her. Her shoulders sagged. She looked skyward and shuffled back inside.

Isaiah saw himself going up the stairs and knocking on that door and Shake coming out in a do-rag and no shirt and asking him what the f*ck he wanted and then explaining to him that he was taking Darcy home and Shake drawing a pistol and shooting him in the head. Clearly not his best option and after thinking a bit he came up with another.


“911, what is your emergency?”

“A girl, they’re holding her captive. She’s only sixteen. I think they’re messing with her.”

“What is the location, sir?”

A few minutes later four squad cars were jammed into the parking lot. A crowd watched an officer come out of the apartment holding Darcy by the arm. “I haven’t done anything,” she said. “Let go of me!”

Two more cops brought Shake out in handcuffs. “You muthaf*ckas is wrong,” he said. “That girl’s consensual.”


It was a revelation. Isaiah made a thousand dollars in one day and there were new messages on his voice mail. Word must have spread all over the neighborhood. They’re bullying my daughter. The police set me up. I want to find my birth parents. My class’s computers were stolen. I can’t find my husband. I can’t get away from my husband. My boy did not commit suicide.

Why not charge them for his services? Isaiah thought. Not like he charged Tudor but get paid, be worth something. He knew what Marcus would say.

Get paid? You wanna get paid? Didn’t I tell you about money?

“It’s not about the money,” Isaiah said. “I can help people, start giving back to the community, do some good out there just like you said, remember?” Isaiah waited. He could see Marcus at the breakfast table with his Shredded Wheat and coffee, leaning back in his chair, nodding, weighing.

“We’ll see, Isaiah. We’ll see.”





CHAPTER TWENTY


R.I.P.


August 2013

Skip was arrested and taken to the county jail hospital with a severe concussion, cervical damage, a fractured clavicle, a broken jaw, broken ribs, and a torn rotator cuff. Just before he fell into a coma he said to the doctor: “My dogs.”

Isaiah, Harry, and some volunteers from the animal shelter went out to Blue Hill and rescued the dogs. Goliath, Attila, and some of the others were too vicious and had to be euthanized. Harry distributed the rest of the dogs and puppies to foster homes, rescue shelters, and his pit bull breeder friends. There would be more pit bulls in the world but Harry couldn’t bear to put them all down. Isaiah kept a puppy for himself. With Alejandro gone he needed a warm body in the house.

Cal voluntarily checked into the Tranquility rehab facility in Malibu and saw Dr. Freeman three times a week. Somebody snapped a picture of them walking around the grounds together and sold it to the tabloids. The sales of Dr. Freeman’s book went up six hundred percent.

Anthony was going to quit his job right after Cal’s divorce but Noelle was gathering material for a book about her life with a famous rapper. When Cal started losing his mind it was too juicy to pass up and she made Anthony promise he’d stay until Cal either died or got locked up somewhere. She needed a good ending. Noelle pitched Up from Nothin’ and Back Again to a publisher that specialized in tell-alls. She told the editors about the giant pit bull, the bonfire, the hit man, and the underground detective they called IQ. The editors gave her an $850,000 advance.

Rodion, Noelle’s bodyguard, was ogre-big, his eyes like a fish on ice and a Neanderthal forehead that slanted back from his one shaggy eyebrow. Rodion was a former KGB officer who specialized in enhancing the interrogations of dissidents. His favorite implements were his huge gnarly hands and long sharp fingernails. Byron said they looked more like ostrich feet than human appendages.

When Charles heard Cal’s track, “The Fuck Am I Doing on This Earth?” he knew the album would be a disaster. From his point of view, the sooner Cal got to the studio the sooner he’d humiliate himself and clear the way for Grandyose. And it was Bug who asked Noelle to be on the diss track. That was why the calls weren’t on Charles’s phone.

Charles shopped his Takin’ Over album to other labels but there were no takers and without paychecks the brothers were soon broke. They hung out at Cal’s crib, drank his liquor, and played video games on the ninety-inch Sharp. One afternoon, Charles was on the phone trying to get back into the drug business and Bug was cleaning up the mess from the bonfire. The PAWG and her PAWG friends were coming over to swim and ashes were getting into the pool.

“Hey, Charles,” Bug said, a push broom in his hand, “get off the phone and check this out.” There in the charred rubble were loose diamonds and emeralds and melted gold and platinum, the remains of the Teddi the Gleam bling. The brothers sold it all and bought a tire and rim shop.