IQ(9)

“A few minutes ago. I’m chasing the guy, he’s getting away. Going west on Dover, just passed Pacific.”

“Did you see the kidnapping?”

“No, I didn’t see it. He chloroformed her, put her in his truck.”

“Sir, you said you didn’t see it.”

“I smelled the chloroform, they’re probably in his boat by now.”

“Chloroform doesn’t have a smell—what boat?”

“Isaiah!” Deronda said, dropping the phone.

The river was coming at them fast, filling up the windshield. Isaiah downshifted, jerked the wheel right and then cranked it hard left, the car sliding sideways onto the bike path, Isaiah stomping on the gas, dust and gravel shooting out from behind the car as it raced off downriver.

“Why didn’t I get out of the car?” Deronda said. “Why?”


The Mercury outboard chugged along, the Hannah M moving at wake speed down the wide green LA River. Upstream the water was too shallow but here near the harbor there was just enough draft. Boyd stood tall on the bridge of his twenty-one-foot cuddy cruiser. The air was a warm wet blanket on his face but it felt good anyway.

Boyd was living in his grandmother’s second bedroom when she died of old age. The house went back to the bank but she’d left him some money in a safe-deposit box. Not a lot but enough to buy a secondhand boat with Bondo patches on the hull, a cracked windshield, and rust flaking off the gunwales. He loved the boat, by far the best thing he’d ever owned. Nick let him park the boat trailer inside the chain link enclosure with the forklift providing he could use the boat whenever he wanted. Backing the trailer into the water took no time at all.

The skinny girl was stashed in the cabin below. Boyd had laid her down on the mildewed mattress and put duct tape around her wrists and ankles and over her mouth. She’d moaned a couple of times, her shirt pulled up over her incredibly small waist. Boyd kneeled next to her, listening to her breathe and feeling the tapeworm in his gut growing and twisting, filling him with rage. He’d almost attacked her right then and there but decided to stick with the plan.

Hannah was veering to starboard. Boyd snapped back to the present and saw a black guy in a gray car driving on the bicycle path. Is that the same guy? No, it can’t be. Boyd steered back to the center of the river and pushed the throttle lever forward, the Merc blatting louder, the boat surging ahead. But the car caught up and stayed even. Who is this guy? Now he had his arm out of the window and he was pointing—no, not pointing, he was wagging his finger like a windshield wiper and saying something over and over again, you could read his lips: Don’t you do it. Don’t you do it. Boyd pushed the throttle to the max, the boat lunging, building speed, the car staying even, bouncing over dips and swerving around the bicyclers and joggers. “Who is this guy?” Boyd said.

Boyd knew the black guy would run out of road soon. The bicycle path ended a half mile downriver at the Seaside Freeway overpass. He’d get stuck there and Boyd would be home free. A few more minutes to the Queensway Bridge, where the river widened and went past the fancy marinas, the lighthouse, and the Queen Mary and on into Long Beach Harbor and then through the buoy line and into the open ocean where the loudest scream in the world wouldn’t be heard by anything but the jellyfish. Boyd wasn’t worried when the black guy sped up and drove away. What could the guy do? Nothing. “Fuck you!” Boyd shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Fuck you, *!”

Boyd went down and took a look in the cabin. The girl was still out of it. Good. He didn’t want to chloroform her again. He wanted her awake. Wide awake. He grinned and rubbed his palms together. He imagined himself ripping the duct tape off her face and saying Wake up, you little bitch. You belong to me now.


Isaiah parked the Audi near the overpass abutment. He got out quickly, went around to the trunk, and opened it. The floor panel and spare tire had been removed making the compartment extra deep. Plastic storage boxes of various sizes were neatly arranged and labeled. HAND TOOLS, SOLDER/WELDER, RESTRAINTS, DRILL/CIRC SAW, PRY TOOLS. The WEAPONS boxes held, among other things, a stun gun, a taser, a rubber bullet gun, bear strength Mace, a fighting stick, and a sap cap. It looked like an ordinary cap except it had a secret compartment loaded with lead pellets. Smack somebody and you’d break every bone in their face. The Determinator was in its own yellow hard plastic case.

“What’s a Determinator?” Deronda said.


Boyd was bouncing on the balls of his feet when the Seaside overpass came into view. He threw up his hands like Rocky. “Yahooooo!” he yodeled. He started jiggling and shaking like he had to take a pee. “You did it, Boyd, you did it!!” And then his voice wound down and his face went dark. “What now?” he said. The black guy and a girl were climbing down the riprap to the shore, the girl holding her flip-flops and complaining. The black guy was carrying something. It was too short to be a rifle and too fat to be a pistol. It looked like a caulking gun. Boyd laughed. Good luck with that, you stupid idiot. He waved like he was meeting the black guy at the airport. “Shoot me! Shoot me, *! Shoot me!”


The Determinator HX Grenade Launcher was hard to aim. It weighed six pounds, had a pistol grip, and was two feet long with the stock extended. The barrel was as big around as a can of tennis balls. Isaiah loaded a grenade into the breech and snapped it shut. The flash-bang type was for law enforcement only but you could buy a fireworks grenade online. Isaiah calculated angles. The boat would pass right in front of him but it was going fast, bow up, pushing a wake to either shore. If he fired point-blank, the grenade would explode on the wraparound windshield. It would scare the man but that would be all. He’d have to let the boat go by just far enough to shoot the grenade into the back of the windshield.