Wrecked

by Joe Ide

  Junior came back and she turned on her brightest smile. “I missed you,” she said.

  “Please excuse my audacity. Business matters frequently demand my inattention.”

  “No problem. I understand completely.”

  Junior gave her his serious face, which was slightly better than a pug in heat. “Are you aware that in my opticals, you are the delineation of sexuality?”

  “Thank you, Junior,” Deronda said. “I am gratified by your commendation.” Two can play this game.

  “The adulation pertains to my selfhood.” He put his hand on her knee.

  “On no, the reimbursement is all mine,” he said. She put her hand on his.

  “I am satiated beyond my concepts.”

  She was getting queasy. It was easy to get Junior to hit on her but the only way to find out about his money was to go home with him. She finished her drink. “Junior, could I get another one of these?”

  It was late. The lone lightbulb cast a pensive halo over the loft, darkness all around it. Grace was sitting on the futon with her arms around her knees, Isaiah standing with his hands in his front pockets. Neither had mentioned their night with Porkpie. Isaiah had saved her life and she had saved his and without acknowledgment, they knew this bond, this connection—so extraordinary and intimate—should forever be a secret.

  At the moment, she was annoyed and giving him a hard time again. “How can I remember any more than I already do?” she said. “And I still don’t get why looking into the past is going to help us find my mother.” Isaiah knew why she was resisting but he had to get on with this.

  “Just go with me on this, okay? It doesn’t pan out, we’re no worse off. Who was your mom’s best friend?”

  “There’s no point in answering that question.”

  Isaiah believed in the adage The best predictor of the future is the past, but having to explain everything was a little insulting. He was a pro, that’s why she’d come to him. “Grace, you hired me to do a job. Get out of my way and let me do it.” Still, she pushed back.

  “My mom’s been missing for ten years. Those people are long gone.”

  “Grace,” he said, not fucking around anymore. “Who was your mom’s best friend?”

  She was stunned for a moment. “Stephanie,” she said. “I don’t remember her last name. She was an artist too. She was a real ditz, but I think that’s why Mom liked her.” Grace got out her phone and showed him a picture of a woman about Sarah’s age. She was wearing a Mad Hatter’s hat, an orange sarong, and a bikini top, a Rubik’s cube on a chain around her neck, mischief in her owlish eyes. She was sitting on a bright orange bicycle with a tail of long feathers like a peacock.

  “I have no idea what that’s about,” Grace said.

  “Does the color orange mean anything to you?” Isaiah asked. She shook her head. He went on. “Do you remember anything specific that involved your mom and Stephanie? Anything? It could be random.”

  “Um, yeah, sort of,” she said. “I remember they went on trips together. I guess it sticks out because it pissed off my dad. Mostly what I remember is him yelling, her crying, and a lot of slamming doors.”

  “What was your dad angry about?”

  “I don’t know. I must have been what—seven years old? Oh, these are some of Mom’s art pieces. She worked in different media.” She showed Isaiah a short animated video of a strip club. It was intentionally blurry, ghostly strippers onstage, men watching and waving dollar bills. With startling suddenness, a stripper leapt at the camera, coming into sharp focus. She was banshee-like and aiming a gun right at you. “Mom was angry a lot,” Grace said.

  Another photo showed a miniature house, a perfect house, like an ad for a real estate development called Oak Lane. It was painted all beige, even the doors and windows, and you could imagine that the rooms inside were beige and the people in them lived beige lives. “Yeah,” Grace said. The house nearly filled the frame, but around it you could see it was set on a flat desert plain. Isaiah indicated a tiny, flea-size speck at the very edge.

  “Do you see that?” he said.

  “Yeah. Looks like dust on the lens.”

  “You said your mom and Stephanie took trips,” Isaiah said. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know, but…” She showed him four photos of a van parked under the carport. In two of them, Sarah, Stephanie, and a guy in a straw cowboy hat were mugging for the camera. The women were in bikinis. In the second, an older guy in an orange T-shirt was on top of the van, arranging water cans. The sliding door was open, the orange bicycle with the feathered tail inside. In the fourth, the older guy was leaning against the bumper reading a newspaper. You could make out part of the headline: 37 GO. The rest of it hidden in the folds.

  “Who took these pictures?” Isaiah said.

  “I got them off my mom’s phone.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “No. I tossed it a long time ago.” Grace was restless and edgy, but he persisted. There were two words painted in orange on the side of the van. EVER AFTER. They were crude, like a sign for a garage sale.

  “Ever After,” he said. “What does that mean?”

  “A band? A book title? A new kind of Ecstasy?” She was fucking around and Isaiah gave her a look. With a sigh, she did a quick search, Isaiah watching her small hands manipulate her phone. “There’s a movie about Cinderella called Ever After,” she said dryly. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

  Isaiah let that go. “What else did your mom and dad fight about?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Ordinary stuff—oh, there was Mom’s friends. Dad hated them.” She showed Isaiah a photo of Sarah, Stephanie, and a bunch of scruffy, happy people in the backyard, building something out of two-by-fours and plywood. There were tools, a sawhorse, buckets of paint, a couple of window frames, and building supplies scattered around.

  “What were they building?” Isaiah said.

  “Beats me.”

  She felt scrutinized. He knew her underwear size and what brand of soap she used, for Christ’s sake. What else did he know? It was unnerving. He made you choose your words carefully and read between your own lines, and when he asked you questions, he listened hard. Another thing that hadn’t happened in a while. Who actually paid attention these days? Who did she know that wasn’t always waiting for their turn to speak? He was persistent too. He kept coming. There was no way to back him off. Should she tell him what happened? There was a part of her that wanted to but no, out of the question. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Cherokee, and it wasn’t any of Isaiah’s business, no matter that he was trying to help her. It was obvious he cared for her, but he was keeping his feelings in check. She felt oddly ambivalent about that. It was a relief, but it made her anxious too. A sign her resolve was leaking. Forget it, she thought, maybe in some other life. Right now, she had to find her mom. There were important things they had to talk about.

  TK called up to them. “Hey, you two? I ordered some Chinese food. Come on down and eat.” She colored a bit, TK calling them you two as if they were a couple. If Isaiah noticed he didn’t let on. They sat around a rickety card table next to TK’s office. There was pork chow mein, egg rolls, beef with broccoli, and lemon chicken. They ate off paper plates and drank beer with frost on the bottles, Ruffin snorfling around for tidbits. Isaiah liked the way Grace dug right into her food, eating like a construction worker. He was far more fastidious.

  “You guys making any progress doin’ whatever it is you’re doin’?” TK said.

  Grace shrugged. “Some, I guess.” Isaiah felt the words like a flu shot.

  Grace and TK chatted about finding another catalytic converter for the GTI and if TK had seen Transparent. No, he said. He saw the commercials and preferred The Walking Dead, where the zombies were either men or women.

  They talked about an incident that happened in a down-and-out section of North Miami. Charles Kinsey, a behavior therapist, was retrieving a patient, an autistic man who�
�d left the group home. Both men were African American. Officers encountered the pair while searching for a suicidal man who reportedly had a gun. The patient didn’t have a gun—he had a toy truck that was clearly visible. The officers ordered the two men onto the ground. The patient was sitting, Kinsey was lying flat on his back with his hands in the air. Kinsey begged the officers not to shoot, telling them repeatedly that he was a therapist and that his patient was autistic and didn’t have a gun, he had a toy truck. Inexplicably, an officer shot Kinsey. The officers put three pairs of handcuffs on him, rolled him over and left him there bleeding for twenty minutes.

  “Bet that shit don’t happen in Palm Beach,” TK said.

  Isaiah was envious, how TK and Grace could talk so easily while his conversations with her were like trading bricks.

  “Okay, it’s time,” TK said.

  “Time for what?” Isaiah said.

  “Time for you to tell a joke.”

  Grace smiled and put her chopsticks down. “Tell a joke?” Isaiah said. “I don’t know any jokes.”

  “Grace already told hers,” TK said. “Now it’s your turn.” They looked at him expectantly. The pressure was terrible. He was the unfunniest person he’d ever known. The last time he’d made someone laugh was when Mrs. Marquez saw him fall off the roof and land in the bougainvillea.

  “Well?” Grace said, obviously enjoying this. Thankfully, he remembered a joke a thief had told him on their way to the police station. He cleared his throat.

  “Did you hear about the two guys who were arrested for stealing a calendar?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” TK said.

  “They both got six months.” Isaiah smiled, hoping to encourage them, but they sat there like their portraits.

  After an interminable pause, Grace said, “Good one.” Then she excused herself and said she had to go. She drove away. He stood there, watching her turn signal blink. Why couldn’t she let him in on it? For fuck’s sake, he’d saved her life.

  Deronda went home with Junior. His cologne was so strong it left a film on her skin. He hardly paid attention to the road, talking constantly, kicking the shit out of the English language. “Welcome to my reverence,” he said as he opened his front door. Deronda thought she’d walked in on Sonny Corleone beating a man with a garbage can lid but it was the huge TV. She considered her place colorful and rambunctious but it was a nunnery compared to Junior’s living room. There was more chrome than a dealership for lowriders and more zebra hide than she’d seen on the Discovery Channel. The sofa looked like the dominant stallion.

  “Please. Make yourself convenient,” Junior said. He killed the sound on the TV and put on some Drake, the lyrics about being bigger than you’ve ever done it.

  “Could I use the bathroom?” Deronda said.

  “Down the hall and make a starboard on your left.”

  The bathroom looked like James Brown and Lady Gaga had done each other’s hair and makeup. Deronda counted six different kinds of tile in six different colors. The shower head looked like an airplane engine. “Oh my muthafuckin’ God,” she said. Right there on the counter was a shiny black dildo that must have been cast from a mastodon or the Lincoln Memorial. She turned on the tap and called Dodson. “I can’t do this,” she said. “Even if I break him off a piece he’s not gonna tell me where his money’s at.”

  “He don’t have to tell you,” Dodson said. “It’s there in the house. You know he’s not gonna let his cash out of his sight. Search around for it.”

  “Search around for it? Where? In his sock drawer?” But Dodson had already ended the call. Junior knocked on the door.

  “What’s happening in there? I hope you’re not having trouble with your rectal operations.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Deronda said. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Wait a second, did he say rectal operations? Was he out there taking the cap off a family-size tube of K-Y? Oh hey-ell no. She’d kill herself before she let that happen. The problem was, she couldn’t look around unless he was asleep, and he wouldn’t fall asleep until she had exhausted him—which she was perfectly capable of doing, assuming she didn’t beat him to death with that dildo.

  She took a bunch of deep breaths, pulled the hem of her dress down, and went back to the living room. Junior was lounging on the sofa in a shiny red-and-gold bathrobe that was quilted like a puff jacket. He was still wearing his sunglasses, his bony legs were crossed, his uncut toenails like mussel shells. He patted the space next to him.

  “Ensconce yourself and let us celebrate our amalgamation,” he said.

  She sat down and he put his arm around her. “You have a beautiful place, Junior,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  He smiled at her like a pig on garbage day. Suddenly, he pulled her close and kissed her. Junior was a notorious womanizer. You’d think he’d know how to kiss instead of ramming his tongue into her mouth. It felt like a nightcrawler wriggling down her esophagus. She pulled away before she choked. He started groping her, nibbling her neck, whispering nonsensical nothings in her ear. He slipped his hand under her skirt and slid it up her thigh. She clamped her hand over it. “I’m sorry, Junior. I should have told you this before, but I’m on the rag and I bleed like I been stabbed in the cooch.”

  “That is certainly a fiasco on your part,” he replied, “but there are other mechanisms for gratifying your due diligence.” She was trying to figure out what that meant when he said, “Get on your knees, bitch.”

  Chapter Eight

  Praise God

  Richter was pissed, Sarah’s daughter getting him to let his guard down. He’d see her bleeding out of her ears before this was over. And that goddamn Isaiah. He was a fucking menace. The problem now? If he couldn’t find Sarah he needed another way to fuck over Walczak. The officious dimwit was giving him shit again.

  “Flyers?” he said, incredulous. “That’s your idea, Richter? You want to put up flyers? Why don’t we beat on bongos or send up smoke signals? Ridiculous!”

  “You want people to look for Grace, don’t you?” Richter said. “How else can we let them know in that neighborhood? Robocalls? Your technology is useless here.”

  The whole team waited, Walczak in the hot seat once again. He mumbled, “I’ll have the office make them up.”

  They came out nice. On brightly colored paper with a photo of Grace from her website. The caption, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? $5,000 REWARD.

  “We’ll have everybody in the area looking for her,” Richter said.

  “Yeah,” Jimenez agreed. “Poor people are into rewards.”

  “I still don’t think they’ll work,” Walczak mumbled.

  Isaiah drove through the neighborhood, tearing the flyers down. The crew was following him again. By now, they knew he was deliberately eluding them and they tried different techniques. They used rental cars, changing their silhouettes with caps and wigs and different kinds of sunglasses. They changed the formation of the follow cars. They’d put a GPS tracker on his car, which he found and threw in a passing garbage truck. And then one morning, they were gone. Had they given up on him? Did this mean they’d found Sarah? Maybe. Isaiah drove into a parking garage, wound his way up to the top, and immediately went down again. If they were tailing him he’d see them on their way up. Nothing. He drove down long isolated straightaways. He walked into crowds, checked window reflections, and took selfies to see who was behind him. He called TK to see if Grace was okay and everything was fine. Had Walczak caught Sarah? Was that why they no longer needed to follow him? To be sure, he drove over to the West Ocean Condos, one of the tallest buildings in Long Beach. Twenty-nine stories. He followed the FedEx man inside, took the elevator, and got out on the roof. He looked over the parapet and saw a four-rotor industrial drone about ten stories down, hovering over the building entrance waiting for him to come out.

  He went back to his car. He drove to a culvert near his house. He parked, climbed the fence, and walked into the big drainpipe. He had to stoop
and his sneakers got wet. Eventually, the drainpipe fed into the LA River. The drone operator would anticipate where he was going and hover over the exit while Walczak and his team watched the entrance. Isaiah went a couple of hundred feet and found an escape ladder. It led up to a manhole cover that opened into an alley. He’d found it when he was running from two Asian Boyz with guns. He climbed up the ladder and took the bus to the wrecking yard. He’d come back for his car later.

  The team was pissed off and frustrated. They met at La Frida, where Richter said the carnitas were the best he’d ever had and the salsas were homemade. Walczak wouldn’t eat Mexican food with somebody else’s mouth. He could feel everyone blaming him, the CIA hotshot deked out by some homeboy gumshoe. He got the blame and that fucking Richter got the glory.

  “I told you he was smart, didn’t I?” Richter said.

  “Yes, Richter, you told us,” Walczak said wearily. “You’re a fucking genius, okay? You’re a goddamn fucking Einstein that makes me coffee and washes my car.” Richter shrugged and went back to his carnitas. The others looked away, probably wondering why an ex-cop would put up with this shit.

  Owens held up her empty margarita glass. “Over here.” Everyone looked at her. “It’s only my second.”