by Joe Ide
“Somebody named Chester Babbitt. A crazy muthafucka, owns a knife store over on Atlantic.”
“How does he know Nona?” she said.
“Who gives a shit? He’s gonna tell Junior if we don’t do what he says.”
“Junior’s back?”
“Uh-huh, Booze is still with him and so is Michael Stokely. You do a search on killa thugs with no conscience and Stokely’s name will come up two million times.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Deronda looked nauseated, a hand on her stomach. “So how much cash does this knife man want?”
“He don’t want cash,” Dodson said. “He knows I can’t come up with anything and he knows the bank owns them food trucks.”
“What about Isaiah?” Deronda said.
“What about him? He’s scraping by like always. Louella Barnes is paying him with a reindeer sweater.”
“I heard,” Deronda said. “So what then?”
Dodson picked the Dom up by the neck and finished the bottle. He wiped his mouth with his shoulder and looked at her. “He wants us to rob Junior.”
Deronda gulped air. “Rob Junior? You mean again?”
“That’s what he wants.”
“You mean if we don’t rob Junior he’ll tell Junior?”
“Uh-huh.”
After the car chase, Isaiah took Grace to the house. She stood in the doorway a moment, looking around like it might be a trap. Isaiah was self-conscious as she surveyed the minimal furnishings, polished cement floor, and tall bookshelves loaded with LPs. She smiled. She likes the place! he thought. No, it was the dog. How many times would he fall for that? Ruffin came bounding out of the hallway, deliriously happy to see his old pal.
“Hello, beautiful. How are you, huh? Yeah, I’m glad to see you too.”
Isaiah went into the kitchen, prepared Ruffin’s dinner, and came out with the bowl. Usually, the dog would come as soon as he heard the can opener, but he stayed with Grace, panting and mewling and trying to lick her face. She took the bowl from Isaiah and set it down in front of the dog. “Here you go, boy. Good, huh?” she said, happy to see him eat.
“Okay,” Isaiah said, “let’s talk.”
She sat on the edge of the couch. He stayed standing, his hands in his front pockets. “Who were those people?” he said.
“The driver was Stan Walczak. I didn’t get a good look at the others but I can guess who they are. They were with my dad at Abu Ghraib.”
“Abu Ghraib,” Isaiah said evenly.
“Dad was an MP. He didn’t do any of the abuse. He was just there.” She got out her phone, did some scrolling, and handed it to him. “He sent me pictures.” There were group shots of the people who had chased them and other soldiers as well; eating MREs, lying around in their narrow cots, posing with cells behind them or standing in long concrete corridors. They all wore fatigues, but Walczak’s looked new.
“I don’t remember the other people’s names,” she said.
“What about that guy in the porkpie hat?”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
Isaiah took her into the second bedroom he used as an office. He’d never realized how barren the room looked. A desk, a chair, a folding table with nothing on it, two file cabinets, and stacks of storage boxes. It looked like he was either moving in or moving out. There were only two personal items. A photo of Marcus and Isaiah mugging for the camera, and another of Mrs. Marquez holding up a chicken by its feet. Its name was Alejandro, named after her pendejo ex-husband. Isaiah got another chair and set it as close to his as possible without putting them on top of each other. They sat down at his laptop and did a search on Walczak.
Stanislaw Walczak was founder and CEO of Walczak Security Services International. The website said:
WSSI provides consulting, informational and decision making services in support of our national security, intelligence and military operations. WSSI retains 17,000 employees all over the world and offers exciting career opportunities for former military personnel and security professionals. Our principal service areas are:
• Command and Control
• Intelligence Systems and Operations
• Investigatory Services
• Communications
• Cyber Security
• Readiness
• Surveillance and Reconnaissance
“Jesus,” Grace said. Isaiah tried not to echo the sentiment. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would Walczak be after me?”
“He’s not, he’s after your mom,” Isaiah said. “He thought she was staying with you.” Anticipating her question, he went on. “She has something Walczak wants and if he’s personally involved, it’s something important.”
“Like what? Mom was an artist.”
“Whatever it is, it probably came from your father.” Either that, he thought, or your mother killed somebody close to Walczak. Grace was still gaping at the web page. It was as if she couldn’t wrap her head around the enormity of her pursuer.
“This is too much. I can’t let you do this.”
“You’re not letting me do anything,” Isaiah said. “I took the case, I’ll finish the case.” The bravado felt good but he was almost as intimidated as she was. This was way deeper than he’d ever imagined. Walczak had huge resources at his command. Trained operatives, computer analysts, drones, satellite photography, military and law enforcement personnel, 17,000 employees, and an arsenal of every weapon imaginable. Walczak could take over France. Finding Sarah would have to wait, Isaiah decided. Keeping Grace safe was the first priority.
They took the dog for a walk and he gave her the leash. Ruffin was on his best behavior. “He’s a great dog,” she said.
“He’s a weird dog,” Isaiah said.
“Why?”
“He’s a wimp, especially for a pit bull.” Isaiah remembered the murderous struggle he’d had with Manzo, the gang leader threatening him with a gun, Ruffin watching distractedly, like they were two palm trees blowing in the breeze. “Once he walked away from a couple of pigeons squabbling. If Mrs. Marquez’s Pomeranian barks at him he’ll go back in the house. If somebody rings the doorbell, he’ll bark, but only if it’s somebody he knows.”
“Every dog is different,” she said as if he was attacking the dog’s ethnicity. “Just like people.”
“You ever have a dog?”
“A few. Linus was my favorite. He was a Cavalier King Charles with three legs.”
“What happened to him?”
“Cancer,” she said. “I think they catch it from humans.”
At least they were talking about something other than the case, he thought, but she was only being polite, throwing him a conversational bone, not really into it. It was discouraging but he’d volunteered for this and had no right to expect more.
They arrived at McClarin Park. Old-fashioned streetlamps lined the main pathway and lit nothing but themselves, moths fluttering in the moons of amber. Around them and beyond were shadows within shadows, leafless trees like veins against a blue-black sky. A couple of old men, Mo Hopkins and Dancy Fitzgerald, were camped out next to the cement-block restrooms, arguing over a can of Colt 45.
“Don’t worry,” Isaiah said, sensing her hesitancy. “We come here all the time. You can let Ruff off the leash.” She did and the dog went meandering, his nose skimming the grass like a metal detector as he disappeared into the dark. Isaiah felt safe almost anywhere in East Long Beach because he had ex-clients everywhere. If something was to happen here, Mo and Dancy would come running with the sharpened screwdrivers they kept under their layers of rank clothing.
Two people were coming up the path. Seb Habimana was a small, precise man who wore glen plaid suits and walked with a cane, the same cane Isaiah had snapped over his knee. It had since been mended, a brass coupling holding the two pieces together. Seb had lost a leg when he was a boy back in Rwanda. An enemy of his tribe had hacked it off with a machete. Years later, Seb returned the favor. The head
of his cane was fashioned from his attacker’s tibia.
“Is that who I think it is?” Seb said, an acrid smile disguised as warmth.
Isaiah felt the hate uncoiling in his gut. He clenched his fists. There was suddenly too much blood in his neck and face, his heart was slamming against his rib cage like a man trapped in a burning room. Grace felt it and looked at him.
“You okay?” she said.
Seb’s flunky was with him. Laquez was bubble-eyed and brainless, his face scrunched up like he was thinking about philosophy or writing an op-ed. He was a vicious, cowardly kid. He’d stab you to death with an ice pick but only if you were sleeping. Isaiah had sent his brother to Folsom.
“Isaiah!” Seb said. “How are you? You’re looking well.” Isaiah didn’t answer. Seb looked at Grace. “Where are your manners, Isaiah? Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“No, I’m not,” Isaiah said.
“How you doin’, baby?” Laquez said, leering at her. “What’re you doin’ with this punk-ass muthafucka?”
“Hi,” she said faintly.
“What’s up with the white girl, Isaiah?” Laquez went on. “Sistas ain’t good enough for you? You know what they say, if it’s white it ain’t right.”
Isaiah’s gaze never left Seb’s. “You’re too stupid to live, Laquez, and if you provoke me I’ll put you in jail just like your brother.” Laquez buttoned up, his eyes retreating into their sockets.
“There are matters still to be resolved, Isaiah,” Seb said. “I have not forgotten.”
“I haven’t either. Now get out of my way.”
The air went out of the world. Laquez looked all too willing to step aside but Seb stood his ground, adjusting the grip on the cane, getting ready to slash. Do it, Isaiah thought. Do it so I can stick it through your heart. Ruffin appeared out of the dark. He sensed the tension and stopped, but it was enough to distract Seb. Laquez stepped behind him.
“Hey, man,” he said, “why don’t you keep that damn dog on a leash?” Isaiah shouldered past Seb, Grace trailing him out of the park.
They didn’t talk for a while. Grace said, “Do you mind my asking what that was about?”
“Yeah, I do.” They kept walking and as they neared the house, he said, “His name is Seb Habimana. He killed my brother.” Grace stopped and put her hand on his arm.
“Oh, Isaiah. I’m so sorry.”
He felt the anger rise in his throat, the hatred like bile. “And I’m going to kill him.” He thought he’d learned his lesson about hate, but it didn’t stick. He was bitter and vengeful and couldn’t control it.
When they got back to the house, Grace said she had to go out again. “Just something,” she said with a shrug. It was one in the morning. She’d nearly been kidnapped by a guy with a private army and now she was going out? “Don’t go back to your place, okay?” he said. “They might be watching it.”
“Right.”
He left her some bedding and went into the bedroom. He didn’t undress, left the light off, and lay down on the bed. He’d sent Dodson a text, saying he’d taken on a new case and they needed to talk. Might as well face the music. He thought about what Laquez had said about sistas not being good enough for him. A lot of people made a fuss about a black man dating a white girl. The implication was that you thought black women were an easier score or were too common, the equivalent of an economy car. White women were rarer and therefore harder to catch, and capturing one spoke to your manliness and was somehow poetic justice; a black man doing something he’d have been lynched for a few decades ago. Isaiah wondered how Laquez would have reacted if Grace was Chinese or Puerto Rican or Pakistani. Would their status as girlfriends diminish with the darkness of their skin? To Isaiah, race had nothing to do with it. He’d have been drawn to Grace if she was Martian or Mongolian. He thought about the lengths people went to find someone. Dating websites, speed dating, hanging out in bars, letting their friends set them up, and it was still more likely than not you’d end up alone. Restrict your choices to your own kind and your chances for happiness went down exponentially.
It was almost dawn when Grace returned. Isaiah peeked through the blinds and watched her get out of the car. She had a duffel bag and a toiletry kit. She’d gone back to her place. So much for telling her what to do. She’d changed her clothes. She had on sagging, dirty jeans with holes in the knees and a T-shirt with oil stains on it. Her hands were dirty. After going to her place, she’d gone somewhere else, but at least it wasn’t on a date.
He heard her come in, greet the dog, and take a shower. There was some rustling around in the living room and then it was quiet. A brooding light came through the blinds, caging Isaiah in bars of shadow. Grace was forty feet away, and for some reason that made him feel lonelier. Ruffin had stayed with her. There was something special between those two and he wished he could be part of it.
Chapter Five
She Had All the Power
R ichter had come up with the obvious, gathering CCTV footage from businesses around the Edgemont, his boss pissed because he hadn’t thought of it first. He had WSSI’s document specialists generate five fake FBI IDs, and there were no problems getting the footage. People responded to the FBI. The team was gathered in Walczak’s study again, working at their laptops, going through miles of tape. It was laborious and time-consuming. The guy who helped Grace could have come from any direction, and it turned out there were more than four or five black people in Long Beach. What the team remembered wasn’t any better than civilian witnesses. It was embarrassing. Is this the guy? No, he was fatter. No he wasn’t. Bald? Get out of here. He had a mustache. No, that was a shadow. I’m telling you, he was an older guy. An older guy can move like that?
“Listen. You’re all wrong, okay?” Walczak said decisively. “I’ve identified a lot of people from video. Terrorists, in fact. This guy was thirties, five-ten, soul patch, tattoo on his forearm, sneakers and a light green shirt. I’m sure of it.”
Richter countered. “Twenties, six feet, skinny, no facial hair, jeans, light blue shirt, Timberlands, and it was too dark to see any tats.”
Walczak sneered. “We’ll see about that, Sherlock.”
It was evening when they found what they were looking for. The black guy was as Richter described down to the Timberlands. “Well, I’ll be,” he said, smiling at his boss. “I guess I just got lucky.”
Walczak pretended not to notice that everyone was gleeful. He gestured dismissively. “Okay, okay. Can we get back to work?”
The black guy was in footage taken from a liquor store and a pawnshop a block and a half away. He was getting out of his car. It took three different snippets and a lot of enhancement to get the license plate number. His name was Isaiah Quintabe, an address a few miles from the Edgemont. He was some sort of neighborhood P.I. The articles said his nickname was IQ.
“I know him,” Richter said. He remembered the case because Isaiah had embarrassed him. The Coffee Cup had been robbed. The camera wasn’t working and the witnesses didn’t remember anything except the guy was black and had a gun. Richter told the lady who owned the shop it was highly unlikely the perp would ever be caught. Besides, he thought privately, it was too penny-ante to bother with. A day later, Isaiah came into the station accompanied by two winos Richter hadn’t interviewed. They identified the robber as one Spencer Witherspoon, a small-time criminal with a long record. The two winos swore by it and picked Witherspoon out of a lineup.
“You shoulda asked us,” one of the winos said. “We was sittin’ right across the street.” Since then, Richter had heard stories about Isaiah’s exploits and his reputation as some sort of wizard at catching the bad guys. He had much respect around the neighborhood.
“How do you know him?” Walczak said.
“From a case. He’s a smart guy. Nobody to mess with.”
“When was this?”
“Years ago.”
“Then how does that help us now?” Walczak said, throwing up his hands. “Well?
Do you have anything else irrelevant to say?”
“The guy gets paid with cakes and pies,” Owens said. “I’d say he’s nobody to worry about, right, Jimenez?”
Jimenez was surprised by the question. “What?”
“Okay. Tonight then,” Walczak said, adding, “If that’s okay with you, Richter.”
Do you have anything else irrelevant to say? If that’s okay with you, Richter. If they were on the street, Richter would have beat him to death with one of those yellow sneakers. He’d decided what he was going to do. Break the case himself. Find Sarah on his own and rub it in Walczak’s face until it turned to shit. How to get started? He wondered. Isaiah was still the only point of contact but Richter needed to know more about him, things you couldn’t Google. Who did Richter know that Isaiah knew? Spencer Witherspoon.
Lots of people thought Richter was still a cop and were happy to make a few dollars for giving up Spoon, the useless prick.
“Spoon, open up,” Richter said, pounding on the door. “Police. Don’t make me kick it down.” The door swung open and there was Spoon; his face was bruised, one eye closed, his jaw lopsided, a giant bump behind his ear, his arm in a sling made out of a ripped towel, and he was leaning on a crutch.
“Where was the police when I needed ’em?” Spoon said.
“Finally got what you deserve, huh?” Richter barged in, looked around at the mess, and shook his head disgustedly.
“The maid took the day off,” Spoon said. “How can I help you, Officer?”
“Isaiah Quintabe. What do you know about him?”
“Why should I tell you? You the one took me to jail.” Richter kicked the crutch away and Spoon fell to the floor, howling. “Damn, man, the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“Start talking.”
“Help me up,” Spoon said. Richter kicked his injured leg. Spoon howled some more. “Okay, okay, man! What do you wanna know?”
“Everything. Details.”