by Joe Ide
“Wear the polo shirt under the jacket. You’ll look casual but not too casual.”
“Thanks, Grace, I really appreciate your help.”
“Glad to do it, TK.” She couldn’t wait for this to be over. This was the ignorant leading the innocent.
“Any advice?” he asked. She thought about it. Did she have anything useful to say to an old man going on a first date in fifteen years? No, she didn’t. TK was looking at her expectantly.
“Uh, well, be yourself,” she said. She had never dispensed a homily before and it felt awful.
“Why would I do that?” TK said. “We already know she doesn’t like me.”
Good point, she thought. She winged it. “She only dislikes you because she doesn’t know you yet.”
“I appreciate this, Grace,” TK said. “I truly do.”
“What are friends for?” Jesus, she thought, another homily.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Be myself, huh?”
Isaiah got the word from Gia: Christiana had been released on bail. A reprieve for Stella but it was temporary. He was brooding, trying to keep his mind off his troubles by reading the paper. An article described how the police found a dangerous weapon in a house on Lindenhurst Avenue in Cambodia Town. Gunfire was heard by the neighbors and two people were arrested. Witnesses saw officers in hazmat suits removing a large PVC crate out of the house and loading it into a police van. The spokesperson for the department wouldn’t identify the contents of the crate, saying only that it was a threat to the entire community. There was some speculation it was a military weapon but that hadn’t been confirmed.
Isaiah felt a moment’s satisfaction. At least he’d done something. He wondered if Grace had seen the report and if she knew it was him. He wondered if that was enough. But Grace hadn’t called and he didn’t have the nerve to call her. He sat in the armchair, drinking cold espresso. Three dead and many more wounded. Stella still at risk. Nothing had changed. He was right back where he’d started. No, it was worse than that. He’d created new problems along the way.
He got up, kicked the wastebasket and screamed in the shower, accomplishing nothing before gathering himself and getting back to work. He reviewed the case microfiche-style, frame by frame projected onto the backs of his eyelids. He waited for a discrepancy, something that didn’t fit or was supposed to be there but wasn’t or was the other way around, or where the words were at odds with the facts at hand. He’d been doing this for a long time now and his unconscious often put things together before he did.
He thought about Jasper’s room and the Fender Stratocaster leaning in the corner. It shouldn’t have been there. Neither should the empty bottles of Everclear or the toolbox under the bed or the boots with the monk straps, the left sole worn down to nothing. He thought about his first conversation with Pearl and what she’d said at the end. He thought about how the alters smelled of cigarettes and the posters of bands on the walls. He thought about the fist dents in the wall. None of it fit.
Jasper didn’t play a Fender Stratocaster; he played the drums. The boots were motorcycle boots, the left one worn down because the left foot scraped the ground at stops and starts. Jasper didn’t drive and why would he need a toolbox?
Everclear was grain alcohol, 190-proof. Jasper drank beer. The alters smelled like cigarettes but none of them smoked. The posters didn’t match. The Ramones and the Dead Kennedys were punk. The New York Dolls, Kiss, and Twisted Sister were glam rock. Jasper was rock and roll. Who liked punk? Punching walls wasn’t in Bertrand’s character. When Isaiah talked to Pearl she said she had to leave or she’d get in trouble. In trouble with who?
Isaiah thought about what he’d read. How each alter played a role that helped them survive the abuse. Christiana was day to day, Pearl was submissive, Marlene was salacious, and Bertrand was protective. But where was the anger? Where was the hatred for what Angus had done? The night of the murder, Bertrand said he watched the woman in black climb up a rope. Then he came inside but the alters were switching out too fast and he didn’t remember anything beyond that. Then there was another time gap between then and Marlene standing in the front door, feeling the temperature change and sweating. Presumably, either Christiana, Pearl or Jasper had switched out with Bertrand, and whoever that was ran through the cutting room, hopped over Tyler’s dead body, continued through the showroom, out the front door, down the block and then returned, switching out with Marlene who felt the temperature change and was sweating as she reentered the shop. That made no sense. Isaiah couldn’t imagine any of them doing something like that.
There was another alter.
Isaiah sent a text to Christiana’s phone. To the sixth alter. I know you’re there. You are in serious jeopardy. Desperate to talk. Fifteen minutes later, he got a return text. Hollywood Palladium. He was hesitant to call Grace. Would she hang up on him?
“I need your help,” he said.
“Okay. Come pick me up.”
The east end of Sunset Boulevard was another anonymous stretch of urban sprawl with that cluttered, you-could-be-anywhere-in-LA look. Billboards, strip malls, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, nail salons, palm trees spaced too far apart to be glamorous, and more dry cleaners per square foot than anywhere in America. There were a few tattered reminders of the past. The Seventh Veil Strip Club, a former hot spot, now shabby and neglected, thick layers of pollution darkening the lavender paint. There were photos of strippers gone by in the dusty window boxes and a life-size Venus de Milo wishing you hot lap dances as you went through the door.
TK had told Isaiah about the Hollywood Palladium; TK had been there many times in his youth. It was built in the forties, styled in sleek art deco, aqua and white. Everybody from Tommy Dorsey to Frank Sinatra, Tito Puente and Stevie Wonder had played there. The Lawrence Welk Show made its home at the Palladium. TK’s grandmother had watched the show regularly. The Champagne Lady, the Lennon Sisters, Al Hirt and Arthur Duncan—a tap dancer and the only person of color to ever make it on the show, which ran for twenty-seven years. TK said, “They couldn’t find another black man who could sing or dance?”
The Palladium might have gone the way of the Seventh Veil but some investors had come to the rescue and gave the place a complete makeover. Jay Z performed at the grand reopening. Isaiah and Grace didn’t talk on the drive over. She was distant but held his hand. Did this mean she’d seen the news video with the police carrying the big crate out of Mrs. Heng’s house? Did she understand what it was and that he’d made it happen?
The marquee said OXY. “Is that a band?” Isaiah said.
Grace nodded at the people in line. “Yeah, they’re punk,” she said. “Was into it for a while. This is after my Motown phase.” She told him about the Sex Pistols, Ramones, the Slits and Green Day. “Punk was about rebellion and resisting the establishment,” she said. “If you were a good musician, you were suspect. The bands did outrageous things but it got to be self-conscious. Vomiting onstage, rolling in broken glass. Donita Sparks threw a bloody tampon at the crowd. Eventually I lost interest. I don’t trust anything with its own fashion. Have you ever seen a mosh pit?”
“Not in person,” Isaiah said.
“It’s a trip.”
“What does mosh mean?”
“Move over, shithead.”
The Palladium was much bigger than he anticipated. Huge dance floor, people packed in like too many sheep herded into a holding pen. A flying saucer of klieg lights and strobes hung overhead, flashing and beaming and sweeping across a thousand sweaty faces. A banner hung from the balcony that said MAKE AMERICA RAGE AGAIN.
The music was so loud it was like a wall closing in, something you had to push back on for fear of being smashed. It sounded to Isaiah like one continuous car crash. The band was onstage, backed by a massive video screen flashing a jangle of images: Mona Lisa with a green mohawk, gargoyles with glowing eyes, Andy Warhol’s checkerboard of Marilyns, a baby wearing a diaper and a medieval helmet, a vulture carrying a peace s
ign in its claws, Beelzebub in various forms and a lot of different skulls.
Four shirtless white dudes made up the band, headbanging to their waists, jumping up and down like hysterical chimps, the drummer hammering more than playing, the lead singer choking the mike to death, braying in anger, self-indulgence and lunacy. What was he in the daytime? Isaiah wondered. A dog walker? A mechanic at Jiffy Lube?
The crowd was into it, headbanging, shouting and screaming, their pumping fists silhouetted against the stage lights. It was as sweltering and muggy as the Amazon, somehow appropriate for a jungle jammed with primitives on the edge of control. There was a mosh pit in the middle of the dance floor, a maelstrom of young men shoving and shouldering and bullying one another aside while they staggered and careened around drunkenly. No women. They weren’t stupid. Maybe it was his vantage point but Isaiah couldn’t see anyone of color. Only white people would do this, he thought.
Grace was delighted, like she was remembering fun times. “Oh, yeah!” she exclaimed. They kept moving but it was pointless. The crowd was too thick to locate anyone in particular.
“What are we going to do?” she shouted.
“Try to get lucky,” Isaiah shouted back.
The music stopped. It was like a terrible pain had suddenly vanished. The houselights went on. The crowd was revealed. A scroungy, heavy-breathing bunch of kids, their eyes glinting with hormones, adrenaline and ecstasy. The bandleader shouted into a mike. “All right, ladies, are you ready for a death wall?” There were raised fists and screams of excitement. Grace screamed too, hands cupped around her mouth.
“Yeah, let’s do it!”
“Death wall?” Isaiah said.
“Everybody get back,” the band leader shouted. “This is ladies only!” The middle of the dance floor cleared. Women emerged from the crowd, dozens of them, grinning with anticipation. They formed two lines, facing each other, about thirty feet apart. Isaiah saw her—the sixth alt! Christiana was wearing an oversize T-shirt and a fierce attitude and she was stripped of makeup. She gave the illusion of bulk.
Isaiah pointed. “Grace, do you see her?”
He turned but Grace was gone. He turned back to the dance floor. Grace was in line, grinning and eager like the others. Directly across from her was the sixth alt. The band began to play a tick-tock rhythm, getting louder and louder, the women leaning forward like runners on the starting line, the crowd cheering and hooting, berserk with excitement. As the music reached a crescendo, the band leader shouted, “One…two…THREE!”
The lines charged. Like no shit, they really charged, smashing together like the armies in Braveheart. They moshed with abandon. The sixth alter got lost in the chaos, but there was Grace, fierce little Grace, in the middle of it, giving as good as she got. The lights went out, the strobes came on, and it was too dark to see. Isaiah was afraid for her, even though he knew it was everybody else who should be afraid.
He texted her. I’m in the lobby. He waited, the same song playing endlessly. The song changed to another but he could hardly tell the difference. Grace and the sixth alter came out into the lobby, sweaty and disheveled. Grace’s shirt was torn. The alter looked angry and resentful.
“I’m Isaiah.”
“I know,” the alter said.
“Let’s talk.” They started for the exit but the alter stopped and glared at Grace.
“Could you go get lost somewhere?” she said.
“Um, sure,” Grace said. She looked at Isaiah. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
They sat outside on a bus bench.
“I don’t know your name,” Isaiah said.
“Angie,” she said.
“What’s your problem with Grace?”
“I don’t like chicks, that’s all. So what?” Isaiah noted a bruise on her face and a bald spot just above her forehead.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
She touched the bald spot. “I got into a fight when I was in jail. It was nothing.”
“Do any of the others know about you?” Isaiah said.
She shrugged. “Just Pearl. I think the others kinda know I’m around, but really? They don’t want to know.” She smiled grimly. “If they knew how much shit I do for them…” She found a pack of Camels, lit one and blew the smoke out of her nose.
“I want to know what you saw that night,” Isaiah said.
Angie searched her mouth with her tongue, found a shred of tobacco, and spit it out. “I saw everything. I can see through everybody’s eyes.” Isaiah remembered Gia saying that was possible. Angie went on. “I saw that fucking bitch come in the back and shoot Tyler and I saw her climb the rope. I switched out with that doofus Bertrand and went after her. I knew where she was going. The building next door. On the other side, there’s an old-fashioned fire escape. So I ran outside—”
“Through the front door?”
“Yeah. I ran down to the corner and I was right. The fire escape was all the way down, but that bitch was gone. Then I came back to the showroom and Marlene took over. There was some random switching around. Christiana was last, kneeling down next to Tyler.” Angie shuddered with anger.
“He wouldn’t give me a chance!” she said. She blurted it out in a sob. “He was too busy fucking Marlene and gushing over Christiana. He loved her! He fucking loved her!” Her voice quavered and went lower. “He couldn’t stand me. I’d come out for three fucking seconds and he’d look at me like I was shit!” She wept. Isaiah felt sorry for her. This fraction of a person with her fraction of a life, her past too horrifying to contemplate, her present a fugue state understood only in remnants. Unrestrained rage swept through her, the hatred so intense he thought she might catch fire.
“Now I’m all messed up!” she screamed. “Fucking Tyler. Fucking Tyler! I wish he was alive so I could kill him again!” Was that a figure of speech or an admission? She sneered at him. “Angus brought you into this, didn’t he? Yeah, nobody as straight as you would work for him. He’s got something on you.” She huffed, admiringly. “Yeah, that’s Pop for you. He doesn’t fuck around. He was always like that. He never asked; he took what he wanted and if you fucked with him, he’d fucking destroy you. I worked for him for a couple of months. He thought I was Jasper. It was cool, you know? Seeing how the old man operated.” She brightened into what looked like nostalgia. She laughed. “Fuck, he was ruthless! Fuck!”
“Angie,” Isaiah said. “If I’m going to help you I have to know. Did you have Tyler killed?”
She looked at him, her gaze dripping with disgust, malice and glee. “I’ve gotta go,” she said. Then she got up and went back inside.
Chapter Twenty
This Is Our Life
Angus was roaming aimlessly around his house. He wished he liked to watch TV, have something mind-numbing to do. The theft of the Gatling gun was infuriating. It was the goddamn trifecta: a blow to his pocketbook, ego and reputation. And that bonehead Sidero had lost the fucking briefcase to the goddamn Cambodians. A millllion fucking dollars in there. He left it on purpose, Angus thought. Oh how that little shit would suffer. He would no longer remember what manhood meant. If only Tyler had been around. He’d have kept his cool, just like he had in Afghanistan when he ran across open ground, grabbed an RPG and blew the shit out of the enemy and saved the rest of his platoon. Where the fuck do you find guys like that? They’re all cops or FBI agents or straight-shooting assholes like Isaiah.
The last time anybody saw the Gatling was when the leader of the Locos was driving away with it. It was probably in Culiacán already, mowing down campesinos digging in the fields and minding their own business. Rage made the house seem small and close. He wanted to kick something, destroy something, but he bellowed his fury instead, his head back, arms out like a crucifix, repeating the outcry over and over again, until his breathing was a hacking cough and he felt his ugliness like a tumor on his heart. Somebody—everybody, would pay. Including that goddamn Isaiah and his goddamn girlfriend.
The thing that r
eally snagged in his throat? How did Lok know about the delivery? How did he know to be there in the industrial zone? Someone told him. Someone was a rat. It was so precise it felt personal. Someone wanted him to ride off into the sunset a worn-out old man. Someone wanted the Top Gun to be humiliated. He pondered that awhile. Sidero. It had to be him. Isaiah had called, saying he wanted to come over. As soon as he left, that little prick would be dealt with. Angus’s outrage had frightened Weiner. He found the dog under his desk. He sat down with the dog trembling in his lap.
“It’s okay, boy,” he said, stroking its ears. “Everything’s all right.”
Aside from Christiana being released on bail, everything was fucked. All the years he’d spent struggling and killing and creating mayhem, and for what? To preside over a snake pit of traitors, liars and incompetents? To sit on a useless shit pile of money? There was nothing left to do, no more to be gained, no limelight to bask in, no love to be discovered, no comfort or joy left in the world. He longed for Virginia and normal life and pleasure in small things, but their possibility was as finished as he was. At first he didn’t recognize them, but there were so many tears falling rapidly, one after the other, beading like jewels on the dog’s soft brown fur.
They were driving over to Angus’s place. “Angie admired her father?” Grace said. “That makes no sense at all.”
“I’ve been wondering about that,” said Isaiah. “Maybe a family connection is better than no connection at all. Love from your parents is a powerful thing.” He was thinking about Marcus and how his death had left him with a massive emptiness. He was still in high school at the time and was so desperate to fill the void he’d let Dodson, a drug dealer and a gangster, move into his apartment. He went on. “Maybe it helps Angie feel less, I don’t know—more normal.”