by S. A. Cosby
“Who was you after?” Buddy Lee asked.
“I don’t even remember. I think somebody was trying to push up on him. Or maybe they stepped on his homeboys’ shoes over at the Satellite bar and he had me come through to correct them. I don’t know. I did a lot of dumb shit back then for street cred. When I went inside I learned the hard way street cred don’t mean shit,” Ike said.
“I think I could give you a run for your money in the dumb-shit department. My last time around the mulberry bush I took a fall that wasn’t mine to take,” Buddy Lee said.
“For real?” Ike asked.
“Yeah. My brother, my half brother Deak, and me got picked up with a trunk full of ice. We was moving it for a fella named Chuly Pettigrew. Deak didn’t have a record. Mine was long enough to wrap up a mummy. I wanted Deak to stay clean. He wasn’t built for that kind of life. They would have eaten him alive inside. I did my best to make sure it was his first and last run. So I kept my mouth shut about Chuly, took the blame for Deak, and got three to five years. Did the full five. After I went away Deak went out west and got a job on a natural gas crew. Far as I know he’s still there.”
“Huh,” Ike said.
“What?”
“You had a trunk full of meth and you only got five years? If you had looked like me, they would have put you under the jail for moving that much weight. I got friends who got three to five for holding weed. Weed,” Ike said.
“I don’t know about that,” Buddy Lee mumbled.
“I do. This is the place,” Ike said. He’d stopped in front of a two-story town house with slat-board siding stained a deep burgundy. The front steps were painted a sleepy cream color. A large black ceramic planter sat at the base of the steps. It was decorated with the initials IR & DJ. The letters were fat and wide and painted white. Like they had been drawn on by hand. Ike pulled the key out of his pocket and opened the door.
They stepped into a small foyer that was decorated in understated blues and whites. An umbrella container sat to their left next to a coatrack carved out of a large piece of what appeared to be driftwood. A lack of movement inside the house had allowed a pall to settle over the entire structure. The air had a stale, spoiled scent. A thin layer of dust covered most of the exposed surfaces. Death had laid his cold hand on this place and stilled its heart.
The living room continued the understated motif. A sectional couch dominated the space. A flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall facing the couch. To their right, pictures detailed various moments of Isiah and Derek’s life together. Trips they had taken, parties they had attended. Quiet candid moments. Pictures of the two of them holding Arianna as a newborn. The three of them wearing paper pirate hats at a restaurant. A black-and-white picture of Arianna blowing on a dandelion. A picture of the three of them and Arianna holding a poster with the word “DEED” written on it in cartoonishly large letters. Derek and Isiah were grinning from ear to ear. Arianna appeared nonplussed.
The photos were a mosaic showing the evolution of their journey together.
“They look happy,” Ike said.
“Yeah. They do,” Buddy Lee said. He pointed at the picture of the comical deed.
“They must have paid the house off. Derek told me one day he was gonna have a house, not a trailer. Goddamn if he didn’t do it,” Buddy Lee said.
He clapped his hands hard. A crack echoed through the house.
“Where should we start?” Buddy Lee asked.
“I guess we should split up maybe? I’ll go check the bedroom, and I think Isiah had an office in the back. I remember him saying they had closed in the back porch. You wanna check around in here?” Ike said.
“Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll just go through anything that has a drawer pull on it,” Buddy Lee said.
“Alright. Holler if you find something,” Ike said. He walked through the living room and down a short hall. Buddy Lee started with an end table that sat next to the sectional. It was full of junk mail and odds and ends. He moved on to a coffee table with two drawers on each end. He thought that was a strange design choice, but what did he know? He used milk crates for furniture. A multitude of remotes were in one drawer. The other drawer held a few magazines. Buddy Lee closed the drawer and studied the wall of pictures. He hadn’t noticed an accent table that was sitting under the pictures. There were two tiny book-shaped picture frames sitting on the table. He picked one of them up and felt his chest heave. It was a copy of the picture he kept in his wallet. The other frame showed a young Black boy and a man that was a much younger Ike. The boy was on Ike’s shoulders. Buddy Lee put the frame back on the table. Next to this picture was a photo he hadn’t seen in over twenty years.
It was Christine and Derek. They were sitting on the steps of the trailer the three of them had shared before Buddy Lee got himself locked up the last time. Christine was as beautiful as a sunset. Auburn hair falling down her back like a waterfall. Big cornflower-blue eyes. That dimple in her chin that had driven him crazy all those years ago when they had first met. He’d asked her to dance at a bonfire and she had said no. Not in a cruel or haughty way. Just a simple, succinct, I-can’t-be-bothered fashion. He’d gone and found a handful of wildflowers just inside the tree line. He returned to the log she and her friends had been sitting on and got down on one knee.
“Dance with me. Just one dance and I’ll never bother you again for the rest of your life.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“You don’t look like much of a scout.”
“And you look like the prettiest woman on God’s green earth. C’mon, one dance. I won’t even try and dip you.”
She had laughed at that. A full, throaty laugh as bright and sweet as summer itself. They had danced. They had kissed. They had gone down a long dirt lane in his Camaro and found paradise under a harvest moon. For a few years it had been magic. But magic was just sleight of hand, and eventually the magician’s assistant had seen every trick. By the time he’d done his second stint inside, Christine had seen enough. He didn’t begrudge her moving on and marrying that rich prick. Hell, he would have divorced him, too. That was understandable. But the way she erased Derek from her life was just wrong. He knew he wasn’t much of a father, but what kind of mother did that to her own child?
Buddy Lee removed the picture from the frame and put it in his back pocket. He moved on to the kitchen. Buddy Lee was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of equipment that was crammed into this space. The decor in here had an old-school Americana vibe. Black-and-white-checkered floors. Stainless-steel appliances. Black cabinets with granite countertops. Buddy Lee figured those countertops had to be granite to hold all the cooking utensils and machinery Derek had acquired over the years. Buddy Lee didn’t know what half of this shit did, but he knew his son had probably mastered all of it. Derek had loved to cook ever since he’d first seen his grandmother stirring cake batter. Buddy Lee’s cousin Sam had been a hell of a cook, too. Culinary skills ran in the Jenkins family. It had just leapfrogged over Buddy Lee and landed on Derek. Derek’s affinity for cooking had never struck Buddy Lee as gay, per se. It was just something he was good at. Even when they argued—which wasn’t often, because, if he was being honest, he didn’t see Derek that much—he’d never thrown any shade at him for being a chef. Not that he deserved a medal for that. He’d said plenty of other shit that he regretted. It was just too bad it took Derek dying for him to realize it.
Buddy Lee went through the cabinets checking sugar dishes and saucepans with tops. He wasn’t surprised when he found some weed. A lot of people hid their stash in the kitchen. He’d robbed enough houses to say it wasn’t an anomaly. There was nothing in the drawers except knives, forks, and spoons. Buddy Lee put one hand on his hip and rubbed his forehead with the other.
What was he doing? This was a waste of time. It wasn’t like he was going to find a notebook with the girl’s name, the name of the person who killed his son, and an address where he could find them
. What he should do is go back and talk to that kid at the caterer’s. Squeeze the name of the guy who had the party out of him like an apple caught in a vise. Buddy Lee placed his hand on his forehead. The ice maker made a horrific sound before it dropped a load down the chute into the holding container. Buddy Lee thought it sounded like maracas. He took a step toward it. There was a notepad on the fridge attached with a magnet. Buddy Lee grabbed it. There was a doodle on the first page of the notepad. A fairly sophisticated drawing of a pair of shoes, then an arrow, then what he supposed was a piece of fruit followed by an exclamation point. At the bottom of the page there were a series of numbers, then a space and then another set of numbers and an exclamation point.
Buddy Lee studied the drawings. A part of him thought it was just what it looked like, a doodle. Maybe Isiah and Derek were joking around and one of them scrawled an amateur comic strip on their message pad. But his gut told him it was something more. The exclamation point made it seem important. Buddy Lee fanned the pad against his hand.
He tore the page off and put it in his front pocket. He trusted his gut but he didn’t always listen to it. That’s how he ended up taking two falls. He wasn’t a genius but he learned from his mistakes. Most of the time.
Ike stood for a long time in the doorway of the first room he came to. This was Isiah and Derek’s bedroom. This was where they slept together. Held each other through the night. Ike didn’t get it. How could Isiah feel the same way about Derek that Ike felt about Mya? Ike shook his head. If Isiah were here he would tell him there was nothing to get. Love is love. But Isiah wasn’t here. He was dead.
Ike stepped in the room and started to tear it apart. He pulled out the drawers in the nightstands and dumped them on the bed. They were filled with the usual hodgepodge of items that found their way into a nightstand. Fingernail file, eye drops, bandages, lube, and a huge collection of bar napkins. Ike picked up one. In the corner the word Garland’s was printed in cursive. Almost all the napkins were from Garland’s. Ike balled up the napkin and tossed it in the trash. He turned and went to the closet. There was a collection of hats on the top shelf. Baseball caps, fedoras, skullcaps, and a tam-o’-shanter. The closet was jam-packed with shirts and blazers hanging in color-coordinated order. Ike smiled. Isiah used to do the same thing with his sneakers as a kid. The smile faded.
Ike walked out of the bedroom and headed straight for Isiah’s office. The room was just as organized as the closet. A slim bookcase in the far-left corner had all the editions arranged in alphabetical order by title. In the far-right corner was a tall filing cabinet. In the center of the room was a clear Lucite desk. A computer was in the middle of the desk. A landline phone sat next to it like a relic in a museum. There was a composition notebook next to the phone. Ike flipped through it. There were notes written in Isiah’s precise handwriting. Most of it was gibberish to Ike. It was some sort of shorthand that only Isiah could decipher. The last entry was only one sentence.
“Does she know?”
Next to it Isiah had drawn a frowny face. Ike stared at the page. What the hell did that mean? Who was “she”? Was she the girl from the party? Was she someone else not connected with that girl at all? Ike put the notebook back on the desk. How did the police do this shit? He didn’t know enough about Isiah’s life to make sense of anything in it.
Ike pushed a button on the phone and pulled up the call log. He’d seen a detective do it in a movie once. He scrolled through the numbers without any firm idea of what he was trying to find. He didn’t know Isiah’s friends, so the numbers were just a collection of digits. No one had called since March 24. That was the night it happened. As he scrolled, something jumped out at him. The day before the boys were shot, one number called eight times in a row. Ike pushed another button on the phone and checked the messages. A robotic voice announced there were twelve messages.
Ike pressed PLAY.
The majority of the messages were fairly innocuous. He was sure the cops had already done this, but it didn’t hurt to hear it for himself. The last message was left the day before the shooting. A breathless voice rumbled out of the speaker.
“Hey, it’s me. I changed my mind. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry. I’m scared. Bye.”
The machine cut itself off. Ike didn’t recognize the voice, but he thought it sounded like a woman. She wasn’t just scared. She sounded terrified. Ike checked the phone number. It had a local area code. Ike grabbed a pen and a scrap of paper off the desk and wrote the number down. As he was transcribing the number he couldn’t help thinking, What the hell had Derek gotten Isiah into?
THIRTEEN
Andy pulled a screwdriver out of his pocket. He jammed it between the doorjamb and the lock. Oscar stood behind him, shielding him from the street with his bulk. Not that he really needed any shielding. There was hardly anybody on the street. A few stumbling lost souls who weren’t worrying about anything but their next drink or hit. They’d parked three blocks away just in case some civic-minded neighbor decided to copy down Andy’s license-plate number.
He gripped the doorknob and turned it as he forced the screwdriver into the jamb. To his surprise the knob turned with almost no effort.
“Shit, I think it was open,” Andy said.
“Huh. Well, let’s get this over with, I guess.”
Andy paused. Why was the door unlocked anyway? Had they stumbled on somebody robbing the place? He wasn’t sure of how you defined irony, but he thought that would be damn close. Andy touched the small of his back. The butt of a .357 Colt Python rested against his waistband. He’d gotten it from Grayson when they left the clubhouse. He didn’t think they would need it, but if you stayed prepared you didn’t have to get prepared. That was one of the only things his piece-of-shit mother had said that actually made sense.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Andy said. It didn’t matter why the door was unlocked. It didn’t matter what might be on the other side of that door. All that mattered was getting what Grayson asked for so they could be made full members. Andy pulled the door open and stepped inside the house.
Buddy Lee leaned against the sink. His chest was as tight as virgin pussy. He tried to cough but he couldn’t seem to get enough air into his lungs. He flicked on the faucet. He cupped his hands and caught some water. He splashed his face, took a deep breath, and finally coughed up some phlegm. He spit into the sink. The light-greenish phlegm was stippled with red spots.
“Well, that ain’t good,” he murmured.
The front door opened.
Buddy Lee snapped his head up and whirled around until he was facing the living room. Two men had stepped inside the house. One of them was a tall drink of water with a spindly frame that could use a few pounds. The other one had bulk to spare. He could donate fifty pounds to his buddy and still be as wide as a tank.
They tiptoed into the room like a pair of skittish deer. Buddy Lee leaned back against the sink. He reached behind him and pulled the first thing his hand touched out of the drain basket. That happened to be a heavy decorative jelly jar. He gripped it behind his back with his right hand. They hadn’t seen him yet. He could try sliding out the kitchen and down the hall. Probably wouldn’t work but he could try it. Of course, if he did that he wouldn’t be able to ask them what the hell they were doing in his son’s house. He didn’t think they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“Hey there, fellas,” Buddy Lee said from the kitchen. The two men stopped in their tracks.
“Hey,” Andy said. He let his right hand slip into his back pocket.
“What y’all fellas doing walking up in my son’s house without knocking? Y’all friends of his?”
Andy and Oscar exchanged a look. Buddy Lee had seen that look before. They were deciding which one of them were going to tell the lie. Andy smiled.
“Yeah, we’re friends of his.”
“You all must work with him at the newspaper,” Buddy Lee said. Andy moved his hand closer to his gun.
“Yeah, that’s it
. We all work at the newspaper together,” Andy said. Buddy Lee smiled back at Andy.
You a lying sack of shit, he thought.
Andy saw the smile crawl across Buddy Lee’s face. He noticed it never reached his eyes.
Shit, he thought.
The house went quiet. Buddy Lee could hear the ticking of the clock above the sink. The hum of the traffic on the street. The sighs and groans of the house as it settled into a monolithic position for the foreseeable future.
The ice machine rattled again.
Andy reached for his gun.
Buddy Lee hurled the jelly jar at his head. It exploded against his right cheek. Buddy Lee was on the move as soon as he threw the jar. He slammed his whole body into Andy before Oscar even realized he was in the living room. Andy and Buddy Lee crashed into the coffee table. Despite their total body weight barely breaking the 250-pound barrier, the table collapsed under their bodies. Andy felt the gun biting into the skin just above the crack of his ass. He wanted to grab it, but the old man was trying his best to knock his teeth down his throat.
Buddy Lee punched Andy as hard as he could on the right side of his face. The kid tried to block his punches but to no avail. When Andy raised his hands to protect his eyes and forehead, Buddy Lee cracked him in the chin. When he inverted the position of his hands, his cheek bore the brunt of Buddy Lee’s assault. The old man was as wiry as a spider monkey.
Buddy Lee suddenly felt like he was flying. Oscar had grabbed him around the waist like he was a bag of laundry. The big man squeezed Buddy Lee so hard he thought his nuts were going to pop. Buddy Lee opened and closed his mouth like a trout bouncing around on the floor of a jon boat. As Andy got up to one knee, Buddy Lee kicked him as hard as he could in the face. The younger man fell back into the ruin of the coffee table. Buddy Lee tucked his head forward, then snapped it backward. The sound of Oscar’s nose breaking was music to his ears. The big man released him from his deadly embrace. Buddy Lee landed on his feet, then mule-kicked Oscar in the right shin.