Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  After Carter left, Dodson was incensed. “The fuck was that, Isaiah? You made me look like a fool!”

  “We’ll get paid with something that’s worth more than money.”

  “Oh, I need to hear this. What’s worth more than money?”

  “A police officer who will owe us a favor.”

  Spoon’s last known address turned out to be fake, but Isaiah remembered that Deronda’s friend Nona was Spoon’s cousin. It turned out she hated him and was happy to give him up. Spoon was living in the Crest Motel on Long Beach Boulevard. Nona said, “If you see a cockroach runnin’ across the floor backwards, it’s him.”

  The Crest was a Motel 3 with two floors and a soda machine with no soda and an anchor chain securing it to an iron railing. Dodson gave the clerk twenty dollars and got Spoon’s room number. “Number 204,” Dodson said when he came back to the car. “He’s in there. I heard him yelling at somebody.” Dodson was proving useful, Isaiah thought grudgingly. “You got a plan?” Dodson said.

  “Not yet. Let’s hang around for a while, see what’s what.”

  They sat in the car and waited. The silence was uncomfortable. Isaiah had overruled Dodson with an airtight argument. They both knew a favor from a police officer could save your life or keep you out of jail. But that hadn’t settled the pecking order. It had only increased the sense of competitiveness. For the moment, Dodson was distracted, playing a game on his phone and sending texts to Cherise. Isaiah had a book his brother Marcus had been reading just before he was killed. The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Isaiah was reading the part about Satan pledging to find evil out of good when Spoon emerged from the hotel room in a do-rag and boxer shorts. He stood at the railing, smoking a j and talking on his phone. He was insistent, selling something.

  “That’s him,” Isaiah said.

  A girl came out. She was white, miniskirt, high heels and a crackhead’s resignation, not enough room on her face for all the makeup. One more dreamer from Ohio or Iowa who’d watched too much E! channel, her fantasies overwhelming her common sense. Spoon muttered something threatening and the girl lowered her head and hurried down the steps.

  “How old do you think she is?” Dodson said. “Fifteen? Sixteen?” She walked past the car. There were welts on her legs, a bruise on her cheekbone. “Sometimes you need a word that’s stronger than muthafucka. I’m gonna enjoy taking Spoon down.”

  Isaiah could understand a teenage girl running away from home. What he couldn’t wrap his head around was why she wouldn’t return home in the face of shit like this. Was there abuse there too? Or were her parents so uncaring and belittling it was just another kind of hell? Such a waste. She’d probably get herself pregnant just to have someone who loved her and who she could love in return.

  “Go on and catch her,” Dodson said. “I want to talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Just catch her, okay?”

  When they pulled up next to her, Dodson leaned out of the window. “Excuse me. Could we talk for a minute?”

  She stopped and looked them over. “I’m not getting into the car with two of you.”

  “Leave this to me,” Dodson said, and he got out of the car. There was a taco stand right there. He gave the girl some money for her time and the two of them sat at the counter eating tacos while IQ waited in the car. Dodson’s street persona gave him cred, telling the girl in a very un-social-worker-like way how fucked over she was and what a piece of shit Spoon was for treating her like this.

  “He didn’t mean it,” she said, barely audible.

  “What’d he hit you with?” Dodson asked.

  “His belt.”

  “He took off his belt but he didn’t mean to hit you with it? It’s a good thing he didn’t mean to hit you with a hammer.”

  “You’re another pimp, right?” she said. “He’d kill me if he saw us talking.”

  “No, I’m not another pimp and nobody’s gonna kill you.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “My beef is with Spoon. I need something in that room and if I can break you out at the same time, that’s gravy.” Dodson explained the situation with Carter and the consequences for his family. He told her what he wanted her to do, promised she wouldn’t be hurt and that she wouldn’t have to go home. “I’ll take you to a shelter right after it’s done. I know the people there.” Which was true. The director was Auntie May’s daughter. The girl was listening or she’d have left, Isaiah thought.

  “He’ll find me,” she said, hugging herself.

  “Aww, come on, girl, use your head,” Dodson replied. “There’s twenty million people around here. Could you find him if he wanted to get lost?”

  Dodson was wearing her down but Isaiah could tell she wasn’t completely convinced. Then Dodson leaned in close and said something. She perked up but she still wasn’t sold. Then he said something else, like a sweetener, a closer. He brought her back to the car. “Bridgette,” Dodson said. “This is my partner, Isaiah Quintabe.”

  She looked in the window. “Are you really IQ?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I am.” And then she smiled like everything would be all right.

  Spoon was on the sofa drinking a tall can of Monster and reading a tabloid. One of many he said he bought for Bridgette but were really for him. He liked those articles about somebody getting bungholed by an alien or a senator getting his dick sucked in the bathroom at Mickey D’s. There was a knock on the door. He grabbed the Sig Sauer off the coffee table.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me. Bridgette.”

  “The fuck you doing back so early?”

  He set the gun down, got up, and undid the chain, ready to slap the shit out of this bitch if she didn’t have her daily quota. He yanked the door open and a short motherfucker came leaping at him with a goddamn Superman punch that knocked him backward over the coffee table, scattering the gun, the Monster can, the sixteen hundred dollars that Bridgette had made, and the belt he’d used to beat her with. Before he could get up, Shorty had a foot on his throat.

  “Stay still,” Shorty said, “or you’ll never holla at a woman again.”

  Spoon recognized the guy who’d come in behind him. “Isaiah?” he said. “I ain’t forgot what you did. I served thirty-six months because of you.”

  “You got off light.”

  “You are one sorry muthafucka, Spoon,” Shorty said. “Pimpin’ is a fucked-up thing to do.”

  “First of all, I ain’t no pimp,” Spoon replied indignantly, “I’m a personal manager, and second of all, y’all should be talkin’ to the johns, not me. If they can’t get some decent pussy on they own that ain’t my fault.” Spoon noticed Bridgette standing behind Shorty, her face blank but doing something with her eyes he didn’t like. “You in on this?” he said. “I’m gonna kill you, bitch.”

  “Where’s the DVD?” Isaiah said.

  “What DVD?” Spoon replied.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I’m gonna call the police on you,” Spoon said for the first time in his life. “This is assault with intent to hurt somebody.”

  “I don’t think you want to do that. How old are you, Bridgette?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “You still want to call the police? Where’s the DVD?”

  For no apparent reason, Spoon closed his eyes. “I don’t know ’bout no DVD.”

  They duct-taped his hands behind his back and his ankles together and ransacked the room. The whole time he talked at Bridgette. “You know what I’m gonna do to you? I’m gonna knock you into next week, you hear me? You think you got beat bad before? It’s gonna be ten times worse. A hundred times worse.” He kept going, the bitch not saying anything, standing there staring like he was a math problem she was trying to figure out.

  “Here it is,” Isaiah said, waving the DVD.

  “This is bullshit,” Spoon said. “And tell Carter he’s really fucked now.”

  “I don’t see how. He’s an officer of the
law and you’re a low-down pimp.”

  “I’m not a pimp, I’m a personal mana—and how do you know I ain’t copied that thing all over the place?”

  “Because you’re too stupid to think of it,” Isaiah said, “and too lazy to get it done.”

  He’s got you there, Spoon thought. “You ain’t gonna leave me like this, are you? I might starve to death.”

  “I can only hope,” Bridgette said.

  Spoon was enraged. “You can only hope? You need to hope I don’t kill you to death.” Bridgette looked at Shorty like she was asking permission.

  “A deal’s a deal. Go on and take it,” Shorty said. She scooped up the money and stuck it in her bag.

  “Hey, bitch! That’s my money!” Spoon shouted.

  “It’s mine now,” she said flatly. She looked at Shorty again.

  “We’ll wait for you in the car,” he said. The two guys left, closing the door behind them.

  Spoon was alone with Bridgette and was just starting to realize he was forehead-deep in shit. “Look here, baby,” he said, droppin’ his suave game on her. “Let’s put this behind us, aight? You know I love you. Get this tape off me and we’ll start all over again.” He expected her to forgive him and fuck him like she always did but she casually picked up the belt, doubled it, and snapped it just like Spoon had done. He smiled like it was a joke. “Hey, baby, whatchoo doin’ with that?”

  “Stop calling me baby.” She swung the belt viciously, whomping the bed a few times, dust rising, Dorito crumbs jumping. She stopped and looked like something was wrong. Like she wasn’t satisfied.

  “The hell’s goin’ on, ba—Bridgette?” Spoon said. “Look, tell you what. I’ll cut you in on it. Keep twenty percent all for yourself. That’s cool, ain’t it? Nobody’s gonna give you a deal like that.” She was looking around the room. “What?” he said. “What are you looking for?” Her eyes found the aluminum baseball bat leaning in the corner.

  She looked at it like she’d never seen it before. “Well, what do you know,” she said. She picked up the bat.

  “Hey, hey, don’t fuck around, girl,” Spoon said. “Now come on and get me out of this. I’ll take you to Roscoe’s, get you some chicken and waffles. You like that place, don’t you?”

  “No. I hate it. Haven’t you ever noticed I don’t order anything?”

  “Oh yeah, yeah,” Spoon said, like he was just now remembering. “How ’bout Norms? I know you like they salads.” She stood over him and took a couple of practice swings. They made a whooshing sound and he could feel the air move over his face. Before she was officially his ho, he’d seen her play softball at McClarin Park. She hit one so hard she knocked down the third-base coach and put another one over the fence and broke a windshield in the parking lot. Spoon smiled queasily, sweat running into his eyes. “Let’s talk about this, get everything out in the open, air this nonsense out.”

  She had the bat on her shoulder and was looking at him like dog shit on her brand-new Pumas. She gripped the bat and positioned her hands, choking up a little.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, his throat as dry as a sandbox. “Make it thirty percent. Forty percent, and that’s my last offer.”

  She reared back with the bat. “Shut up, Spoon. Just shut up.”

  Manzo called. He was Khan of the Sureños Locos 13 and a neighborhood entrepreneur. He invested the gang’s money in equities, real estate, and small businesses. Most of the membership wasn’t enthusiastic about his vision of ending gangbanging and becoming legit businessmen, but they respected him and enthusiastically cashed their quarterly dividend checks.

  “What can I do for you, Manzo?” Isaiah said. The phone was on speaker. He was playing Frisbee with Ruffin, the dog chasing it, catching it, and immediately sitting down. In his mind, returning it wasn’t part of the game.

  “You owe me, right?” Manzo said.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I want to collect.”

  When Isaiah was searching for his brother Marcus’s killer, he had mistakenly thought Manzo was responsible. He’d beaten him severely with a collapsible baton and owed him more than a favor. They met at the Coffee Cup. The last time they were here, Manzo had been nervous, not used to the concept of people going someplace to hang and work on their laptops while they sipped four-five-six-dollar cups of coffee.

  Manzo looked around, thoughtful. “You know, I’m thinking about opening one of these.”

  “A coffee place?” Isaiah said.

  “Yeah. It’d be like a Starbucks for Mexicans. And not just coffee. Horchata, Mexican soda, all that stuff. The profit margins are like fifty-sixty percent.” He took a sip of his French roast and nodded appreciatively. “The place would have cool decorations too, not just sombreros and Corona posters. People think Mexicans don’t care about nice places, you know? They think we like hangin’ out on street corners and somebody’s backyard. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  “Yeah. I just might do that.”

  Isaiah waited.

  “It’s about Vicente,” Manzo said. Isaiah heaved an inward groan. Vicente was a hothead with a trip-wire temper, and he had no love for Isaiah. Manzo continued. “Vicente kidnapped his own daughter and he keeps calling his ol’ lady threatening to take her to Mexico because she threw him out. I want you to find him.”

  “Why don’t you call the police?”

  “Because they’ll arrest him and he’s got priors. He’ll go away for a long time. Plus, his ol’ lady still loves him, or that’s what she says. You ask me, homies don’t deserve the women that love them.” Isaiah nodded. That was his opinion too. Manzo went on. “The other thing is, Vicente’s brothers are Locos and he’s got other family too. His mother knows my mother.”

  “What happens if I find him?” Isaiah said.

  “Up to you.”

  “What do you mean, up to me?”

  “Up to you how you get the girl away from him.”

  Isaiah was home again on another Saturday night. He was usually all right with it but tonight was different. He was restless. He tried reading The Known World again but the words were a smear on the page. He thought about Dodson, how he’d deftly handled things with Bridgette and earned himself a place at the table. It made him anxious. The future was gray and dim and complicated. He opened his laptop. The hotshot from South Africa wanted to play online chess again but how many times can you beat a guy in twelve moves? He watched the news on his laptop and discovered nothing had changed. The same blaring headlines about mayhem, corruption, and sorrow; the same fiery commentators burning the bridges that connect us one to the other. Isaiah put on some music but it was more irritating than soothing, reminding him that no one was there listening with him. At times like these, he wished he liked to drink or smoke dope. Something to get him out of himself.

  Since resolving his brother’s murder, he’d undergone some changes. The albatross of guilt he’d worn around his neck had flown the coop and he’d realized what an isolated life he’d been living. He had no friends except Dodson and TK, both of whom he rarely saw. He was lonely. He wanted a girlfriend, he wanted to have fun, whatever that was. He spent most of his time with the dog.

  He’d made a few halfhearted attempts to improve his social life. He went to Nona’s birthday party but stayed in the kitchen helping her mother with the food. Then he sat out in the yard with her father and talked about the old guy’s days as a professional boxer, music and laughter taunting him from the house. He took a class on forensic science, hoping to meet someone with similar interests, but the only female there was a cop in uniform who looked at everybody like they were bank robbers.

  Cherise set him up with a dental hygienist named Leslie. He decided to take her to dinner because he couldn’t think of anything else. The photos on her Facebook page showed a cute, lively young woman who looked like she could be perky during a firestorm. She liked spin training, Gone Girl, the book and the movie, spending time with her family, hiking, a
nd she was a vegetarian except for bacon (I know, right?).

  He took her to the Souplantation, a dubious name, he thought, but it had a lot of different salads.

  “I work for Dr. Fujimoto, over on PCH?” she said as she picked at a pile of spinach leaves, radishes, and bacon bits that looked like dead bugs. “He’s in that strip mall right next to Vons? I’ve got to get away from him. You know what he likes to do? When I’m working on a patient, he comes up behind me and bumps me with his you-know-what and says Woopsie daisy! Jeez, what a creep.” She widened her eyes like she was announcing her engagement. “Oh my God! Today? This one patient didn’t even brush his teeth before he came in! I could hardly stand it. Oh my God, it was like a garbage disposal in there. I almost said something.” She crossed her eyes and wagged her head. “But you have to be a professional. Oh, did I tell you I have this friend, Jackie? She’s great, you know? Really funny—and crazy. Anyway, she asked me if she could get a discount on bridge work and I told her it’s up to the doctor and she said maybe he’d like to woopsie with her. Can you believe it? Jackie’s so crazy! Are you really a detective?”

  Isaiah sighed at the memory. He closed his laptop and ate some canned chili standing at the counter. It was too salty and tasted like another barren weekend. There was nothing else to do but walk. At least he wouldn’t be still and stymied in the house. Ruffin sensed the plan immediately and came over panting and mewling. Isaiah slipped on his leash and was halfway out the door when his phone buzzed. An email alert. It was late and he might have ignored it but any shred of human contact was better than none.

  Dear Mr. Quintabe,

  I’m the person you met at the wrecking yard and again in front of the art supply store. I’m sorry I was so abrupt but I am naturally suspicious of strangers. Since then, I’ve found out who you are and what you do. In fact, I’ve heard of you before. You helped a friend of mine, Samantha Chow. She said you were a good person. I hope so. I have a problem and would be grateful if we could talk about it. Would it be possible to meet for coffee?