by Joe Ide
“Who’s Tiana?” Bobby asked.
“This girl I met. She was here right ’fore you knocked on the door.”
“Well, she’s not here now.”
“She got to be,” Sandra said. Deronda heard her get up from the sofa. Please, Sandra, sit your dumb ass down.
“Well, I’m going,” Bobby said.
“Whatever,” Sandra said. Bobby left. It was silent except for the TV. Moments went by like minutes. Sweat was running down Deronda’s face, but she couldn’t reach up to wipe it off. Her nose itched. Was Sandra looking for her? Was she standing there scanning the room inch by inch, her eyes about to land on the All-Stars? The quiet was nerve-racking. For some reason, the TV made it quieter.
“See, I knew she was here,” Sandra said. She must have found the napkin. “I wish she woulda stayed. I thought I had me a friend.” She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Deronda had been standing there so long, the blood had pooled in her legs and she was light-headed. She shoved the curtains aside and got out of there, breathing deeply as she flew down the stairs.
“It was so fucked up,” Deronda said. “I heard everything but I couldn’t record it.” She was home with Grace.
“But you got useful information,” Grace said. “Bobby is supporting his girlfriend, a drug-addicted prostitute. He buys her drugs and gives her money. That doesn’t sound like father material to me. What I don’t understand is, what’s Bobby doing with her? He works in a bank.”
“I think they met at the strip club,” Deronda said. “He was a regular, came in and only saw her, spent everything in his wallet before he went home. The stripper’s dream.”
“That happens?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a few customers like that. Dudes get obsessed. They think they love you, want to meet you outside the club, buy you presents, make all kinds of promises. It’s a hard line to walk. You want nothing to do with ’em, but you gotta keep ’em thinking you do.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“So Bobby gets obsessed with her, right? But Sandra’s playing him. She’s already got a man, some dude named Peaches or Mr. Hat. He gets her hooked on dope and gets her to do porn, and when her looks go, he turns her out. When she’s too skanky even for him, he dumps her. What she gonna do now? She’s got no man and no money.”
“She calls her favorite customer,” Grace said.
“Hey, Bobby,” Deronda said in a cooing voice. “It’s Sandra. Did you miss me? I missed you.”
“Even though she’s messed up?”
“Because she’s messed up,” Deronda said. “That rescue thing. Lots of men are into it. At the club, we called them white knights.”
“And there’s Bobby’s fantasy girl as messed up as she can be.”
“Uh-huh,” Deronda said. “He’ll save her, get her back on her feet, and she’ll be so grateful she’ll keep house and blow him night and day.”
“But we can’t tell that to the judge. We need some kind of proof.”
“Like what?” Deronda said. Grace thought for a long moment.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Bobby grew up in East Long Beach just like Deronda. Same struggles, same teetering on the poverty line, same limited prospects. Growing up hard does something to you. You worry about survival all the time. Whether you know it or not, your gut tells you to forget your wants, your needs come first. Put your desires in the passenger seat, son, you’ve got work to do. Did you want to get a degree in business finance? No, you didn’t. Why did you? Because you had your cousin’s notes, and he graduated with honors. How do you think the grade point average went from 2.0 to 3.0?
After you got your degree you had a choice. Be the business manager of a start-up or work at a bank. Working at a bank was at the bottom of your shitty job list. But survival demanded a monthly paycheck, a pension plan and medical insurance. It was a solid, safe choice. Aspirations were nowhere to be seen. But what had all your solid, safe decisions come to? An ordinary boring life. In a damn cubicle all day, opening IRAs and checking accounts, which amounted to no more than filling out a mountain of forms. People didn’t know this, but you were under pressure all the time. Management pushed you into opening accounts and issuing credit cards to customers without them knowing about it. They made money by charging unwarranted fees. To hit your sales target, you had to create phony PIN numbers and email addresses to enroll people in online bank services. Was that rewarding? Satisfying? Did it utilize any of your intelligence and creativity? Was it something you could be proud of? No, it wasn’t. Bobby was on the lookout for an opportunity.
Bobby first got onto Deronda because he subscribed to the LA Times. He read the article about her and the food truck business. He remembered the name and her world-famous backside. He saw the picture of Janeel and thought, what if you were the father? What if you wanted custody? How much would Deronda pay to make you go away? Didn’t matter if Bobby wasn’t the father. With what he had in mind, she’d have to capitulate. She was trapped.
Seeing Sandra was depressing. Bobby was at home, making himself a grilled-cheese sandwich. He was worried about time. The hearing was in four days. Deronda was desperate. She might do more than worm her way into Sandra’s apartment. For all Bobby knew, she would drive her car through his front door or get her friends to beat him into the sidewalk. He had to shut her down once and for all. But how? What was Deronda thinking? He wondered. Obviously, she wanted something to hold over your head and make it a standoff. There was nothing in your past to use as leverage.
That’s why she was in Sandra’s apartment. She was looking for dirt. Okay, Bobby thought, if you’re Deronda, what do you know or think you know? What did you hear while you were hiding behind that curtain? Bobby visiting a drugged-out hooker. Bobby bringing her dope and money so she wouldn’t have to trick. Bobby pleading with her, using his love to coerce her into another life.
Bobby absently took a bite of the grilled cheese and burned his tongue. He drank some water and let the sandwich cool off. The realization came to him and he smiled. Okay, if you’re Deronda, what do you do now? Bobby thought. You try and get evidence, of course, but how would you do that? He smiled again. You’d want to take pictures.
Chapter Thirteen
Stealth Dog
Skip was back in his moldy motel room, eating a cold Quarter Pounder with Cheese. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction said in France they call it a Royale with Cheese. Some name for a burger. The shit that happened at the food truck had rattled him, that scary fucker sticking the barrel of a shotgun under his chin. He was just like the black dudes on the yard at Vacaville, the ones who lifted weights until they looked like armored vehicles.
Skip hated Grace almost as much as he hated that goddamn Isaiah. She would definitely have to pay. Oh, my God, he wished Goliath was here. He’d grind that bitch into hamburger, stick her in a Royale and let the dog eat her with Secret Sauce. The Mexican lady told him Isaiah left. If that was the case, he only had one option. Scare Grace, intimidate her, break her down. Make her go to Isaiah or Isaiah come to her.
Next day he went to Fry’s, bought a GPS unit and put the app on his phone. Keeping track of Grace would be easy. The blue dot told you where she was and where she was going. You could also set up zones, boundaries covering her usual routes. If she left that zone to meet Isaiah, you’d get an alert. If Isaiah came here, it was a different situation. The Mexican lady said bad people were after Isaiah. If that was true, he wouldn’t stay at Grace’s house. He’d hole up someplace else and Grace’s driving pattern would change. Instead of home to work and back again, she’d go visit him.
Skip drove over to the Vons parking lot. Grace was working at the service window, passing out food and making change. He had to wait a couple of hours before she got off. He followed her to a house on Mayfield. She was living with some black chick who drove a really nice car. Skip had some time to waste. He went to the movies. Another fucking Godzilla. Really? All those supposedly smart people in Hollywood and tha
t’s the best thing they could come up with?
He went back to the motel, drank some, watched TV and slept longer than he’d wanted to. He woke up at four a.m. He put on some dark clothes and drove over to Grace’s house. He didn’t take the gun; there was no need. He got to the house around four-thirty. The street was dark and quiet. No traffic, no people. The moon was almost full but it was cloudy, the light faint.
He parked three houses down, got out of the car, walked normally until he reached Grace’s driveway. Then he got low, scurried to her car. The Jeep had a lot of ground clearance. He crawled underneath and turned over on his back so he could see the underside of the car. He attached the unit to the frame. Then he turned over and started crawling out again—and froze. A black dog was sitting on the front steps. Just sitting there, panting. It must have been sleeping and getting under the car woke it up. It was looking at him.
The dog was mostly in the dark, but Skip could see its shape and the gleam of its teeth. It looked familiar. Very familiar. The big square head, the curled-over ears, the squat body. Skip mouthed the words Ohh fuck.
It was a goddamn pit bull.
Skip squiggled back under the car and stayed still. He didn’t know what to do. If he made a run for it, the dog would be on him before he reached the sidewalk. You could kick and punch a pit bull all you wanted but once the dog clamped on to your arm, shoulder, wrist, hand or ankle, you were done. A pit will never let go. You’d have to jam a spike down its throat, stab it thirty times, or shoot it in the head.
Skip’s mouth was dry; he was starting to sweat. His heart was thudding. He noticed something strange. The dog hadn’t barked, growled or even come over to investigate. Skip had never seen a pit bull or any other kind of dog act like that. A goddamn Labradoodle would at least be barking. Calm down, Skip thought. Wait it out. See what happens.
It was hard to tell how much time went by. Two minutes, ten minutes, and the dog was still sitting there licking its balls. Was there something wrong with it? Was it sick? The dog stood up. Oh, shit, here we go. It was standing at a different angle and Skip could see it better. He knew a lot about conformation, the way a purebred is supposed to look. This wasn’t a purebred. It was mixed with something. There was some dewlap, wrinkling on its forehead, the legs were a little long and the tail had a curve in it. Skip gasped and felt a burst of high-voltage fear in his chest. It was one of Goliath’s kids! And Goliath wasn’t just big. He’d been bred from a long line of fighting dogs and then crossbred with Presa Canario. The Presa was a hulking beast, like a bull mastiff, bred for ring fighting and killing predators. It had an unpredictable temperament and was human aggressive. In the dog world it was described as a “pit bull on steroids.”
Oh, shit, it’s coming over here! Nothing for Skip to do but scramble out of the other side and run like hell. He wished he hadn’t parked so far away. He was about to turn around, but the dog had already arrived. Skip went still, sweat running down his temples. The dog stood there panting. Heh-heh-heh-heh. A sound he once enjoyed sounded like a car chugging carbon monoxide into his skull. The dog was a little bigger than average, seventy-five pounds or so. That Goliath chromosome. Even so, it could easily get under the car, but if it did, it would have a hard time manuevering, Skip thought. If he could swivel around, he could kick at the dog and keep it off him—until the dog got hold of his foot, ate the toes and tore off the rest.
The dog stuck its nose under the car. Heh-heh-heh-heh. No growls, no barks. All it did was sniff a couple of times. Then the dog raised its leg and pissed on a fucking tire! It finished, trotted back to the front steps and sat down again.
The hell was this? Skip thought. He was freaking out. The dog was definitely freaky, but so far seemed harmless. He started crawling out and stopped again. He thought of something. Isaiah. He was as smart as he was sneaky. Skip huffed and nodded to himself. Yeah, the fucker. You know what he did? That son of a bitch had trained a stealth dog! It sat around like it didn’t care, but as soon as you were out in the open, it attacked and ripped you to shit. So now what, Skip? Knowing that didn’t really help. He was thirsty, cramped, hungry, and he needed to piss. It got lighter. It was dawn.
Now the dog was lying down with its chin on his paws. It was looking at him with its eyes open. Take a chance? Run for the car? He remembered Goliath killing an entire herd of goats and chasing a mail truck for four miles, all the way to the landfill, the driver screaming the whole way. All Skip could do was wait until somebody came by and distracted it. Oh, shit. What if Grace found him, cowering under the muffler? She’d let the dog eat his organs. Jesus, he really had to pee. He was on his stomach and couldn’t open his zipper. He held it a while longer, but his bladder was about rupture. Fuck it. He peed and felt its warmth spread over his groin. Christ, Skip, you pissed on yourself! He couldn’t deal with this. He didn’t know what to do. Run, stay, run, stay. The piss was turning cold. He felt like crying.
And then—hope! Skip saw the mailman, halfway down the block and coming this way. He must know the dog and it didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe it wasn’t a stealth dog. Maybe he was making that up. Yeah, sure, you dope, it’d be really hard to train a dog like that. He started to move but stopped again. What if he was wrong? Suppose it was a stealth dog. He wouldn’t attack the mailman because they knew each other. Skip could smell the piss, his whole crotch was freezing. It was so depressing it made him want to do nothing.
The mailman approached. “How you doin’, Ruff!” The dog was suddenly energetic, wagging its tail, hurrying over to him. The mailman gave him a treat. “Here ya go, buddy. Special just for you.” Christ, that’s no stealth dog. You’re a fucking idiot, Skip. He crawled out from under the car. He smiled cheerily and dusted off his hands. The dog didn’t care but the mailman was staring at him.
“Grace asked me to look at the muffler,” Skip said. “Too bad, I think she’s going to have to replace it.”
“Have an accident?” the mailman said, nodding at the piss stain that went from Skip’s waist down to his knees.
“Oh, that,” Skip said, with a weak chuckle. “It’s just, uh, water.” He hurried back to his car.
He got to the motel, left his pants outside the door and took a shower. That was one of the worst things that had ever happened to him. He lay down on the bed. He couldn’t sleep. He stared at the ceiling fan, patting his groin to see if the piss stain was still there. He thought of Grace. He thought of Isaiah. His anger came from a distance, thundering war drums and crackling cymbals, billowing storm clouds rolling off the desert hills, an advancing army dressed in black, blotting out the sky and shitting rain, drenching you, drowning you, washing you into a river, dark as gunpowder and pulling you under.
Skip said, “Time for the pain.”
Chapter Fourteen
Bona Fides
Isaiah slept miserably. When he awoke, two voices were nagging at him. One of them said, Be strong, don’t give in, and the other said, Get it over with and you’ll be done. Strength and control were far and away the better option. Good, you’ve decided, he thought. There were other things to do. He could look for another dog, read, play with Alicia and Juana or take a hike somewhere. For the moment, why not make yourself some coffee and breakfast? It might improve your mood. He had his coffee and breakfast but his mood was worse. Get it over with had made a comeback. Grace once told him he was like Coltrane’s music. Seemingly unstructured and directionless, but underneath, a hidden current of discipline and rigor, of forward movement in calculated beats. She said the current always flowed whether he knew it or not. Abruptly, he stood up. He put his hands in his front pockets and stood there. He could feel the Demon, itchy and restless, yanking on its chain.
He entered the garage, angry and impatient. “You said you had Crowe’s records,” he said, accusingly.
Billy was lying on the narrow cot, listening to his headphones. Startled, he sat up. “Um, what?”
“You said you had William Crowe’s records. I want to see t
hem.”
“I didn’t even think you heard me,” Billy said.
“Are they on your laptop?”
“Yes, but why—”
“Give it to me,” Isaiah said sharply. “Now.”
He brought Billy’s laptop into the kitchen and plunked down at the breakfast table. He hated himself for doing this, for failing to deny the Demon Curiosity. The PTSD hadn’t stopped his driving need to know, find out and reveal, however sickened he was by the prospect. The question to be resolved: did William Crowe kill Ava’s sister, Hannah, or was it made-up bullshit?
Isaiah looked at Crowe’s mugshot. He had an oblong face, jowly and unshaven, double chin, thick lips, his eyes dull and too close together. There were surveillance photos of him standing at an intersection waiting for the light to change. According to his file, he was six foot, 232 pounds. He towered over the people around him. His body was like an upright gorilla. Huge torso, short legs and long arms. There was a brutish, mechanical quality about him. Like he’d do whatever he wanted without thought or feeling, and there was no one who could stop him.
The police files were daunting. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, photos, notes and exhibits. When Isaiah had a vast quantity of data to read, he used speed-reading techniques. He formed an objective. What was he seeking? In this case, he wanted information that would confirm or vindicate Crowe as Hannah’s killer. Knowing that, he narrowed his focus. For the entire afternoon and into the early evening, he skimmed the paragraphs to see if they were relevant so he could either skip them or read for more detail. He widened his visual field to take in whole sentences and used his finger to guide his eyes over the text. His finger moved faster than his eyes would naturally. He looked for conclusions, theories, the bottom line. He could read over seven hundred words per minute instead of the usual two-hundred-plus. He skimmed Crowe’s background, the forensic reports, case notes, photos, witness interviews and the key evidence, all of it circumstantial. Crowe was a reasonable, even likely, suspect, Isaiah decided.