Righteous

by Joe Ide

  Chapter Four

  Seb Habimana

  Isaiah’s office was so stuffy it was hard to breathe. He opened a window and let in a breeze that was warmer than the room. The discovery that Marcus had been murdered enraged him. The hit-and-run had fractured Marcus’s skull, broken both his legs, smashed his rib cage, collapsed his lungs, caused cardiac arrest and massive internal bleeding. He died at the hospital after six hours of surgery.

  Isaiah put away the Kayo’s bag and the photos of the Accord. He tried to calm himself. He needed his brain to work unencumbered by emotion. After Marcus had passed, some functionary gave Isaiah a big plastic tote bag containing his belongings. He had never looked inside. The whole idea made him feel ghoulish and afraid. He took it out of the storage box, breathed deeply, and opened the bag. Wafting out were smells of leather, paper, musty ballistic nylon, and another scent that made him close his eyes. A lot of people said it smelled like your hands after handling coins but the smell didn’t come from metal. It was a variety of organic chemicals and amino acids that gave blood its distinctive coppery odor.

  The wallet first. Driver’s license, a few business cards, an expired Visa card, a discount coupon for Nestlé’s Quik, a shopping list, and seventeen dollars in cash. Isaiah recognized every key on the key ring. There were also some change and a folding knife. It had belonged to their father. He said it was an antique but it might have just been old. Six inches long, a nicked blade with a bone handle and sharp as a box cutter. Pieces of Marcus’s crushed cell phone were also in the bag.

  Marcus’s backpack was a JanSport, gray in color, limp from use, a billion of them out there. Isaiah remembered the paramedic cutting the straps off with a scissors so he could slip the backpack off Marcus’s shoulders. There was a large black bloodstain shaped like a desert island. Inside was a copy of The Known World by Edward P. Jones. Isaiah thought he’d take a look, see why Marcus chose it. There were also a dented tape measure, a multitool, safety goggles, a rolled-up windbreaker, an empty thermos, a little box of earplugs and a package of surgical masks. Marcus did a lot of construction and the work got loud and dusty.

  The stain overlapped the small zippered pocket. There was some dried blood in the teeth of the zipper that hadn’t flaked off. The pocket hadn’t been opened. Isaiah unzipped it and another familiar smell drifted out. Most people said it was from the paper or the ink, but Isaiah thought it was the funk from a million dirty hands. Used twenty-dollar bills were bundled neatly with a rubber band. Three thousand dollars. There were also a package of oral syringes and, most disturbing, sixteen plasticine envelopes of white powder. It didn’t numb the tongue so it wasn’t cocaine. There was a faint vinegary smell, a by-product of converting morphine to heroin. The quantity was enough to get you busted for distribution. No way to tell the purity. The cops on TV who dabbed their finger in a Baggie, tasted it, and said Yeah, this is the good stuff were full of it. The only way to measure the purity of heroin was in a lab. This stuff could be cut with anything from vitamin B and quinine to crushed-up Tylenol to Fentanyl. Fentanyl was popular these days. It was a synthetic painkiller, fifty times more powerful than morphine. Mixed with heroin they called it flatline.

  The implications were unimaginable. Marcus a heroin addict? A drug dealer? Beyond ridiculous. No way could he have hidden that from Isaiah. The oral syringes gave Isaiah a moment’s pause. Junkies used them as a suppository, mixing up a heroin solution and injecting it into the rectum or vagina. No needle marks and more efficient than shooting up. Still, the whole idea that Marcus was in any way involved with drugs was too farfetched to think about. This had to be a plant. A setup. The motive was unknowable at this point, so the question for now was, who had access to the backpack? The plant couldn’t have happened in the apartment so it had to be when Marcus was at work.

  It was late September, but fall was slow in coming. The hot, dry breath of the Santa Anas rippled off the asphalt, burned up dashboards, and drove up the attendance at movie theaters because their air-conditioning worked. Isaiah went to Marcus’s storage locker for the first time in eight years. Dread and foreboding writhed around inside him like pythons in a burlap bag. He unlocked the padlock and lifted the roll-up door. The trapped air was hotter than the heat wave, stale as an underground parking garage, and heavy with the smells of dust, cement, and the rubber-tire stink of cardboard. There were memories in the locker. Marcus making a cherry wood rocking chair for Mrs. Barnes, singing Motown even as the band saw sprayed sawdust on his safety goggles. Marcus showing Isaiah how to miter corners, use the drill press, the router, and a hundred other things, always patient and painstaking. Isaiah saw himself and Dodson prepping for a burglary, hyped as tightrope walkers. He saw them gloating over their stolen booty and arguing about money and merchandise and control, every issue momentous and critical but absurd in retrospect. The most excruciating memory was of who he was back then. A boy. Confused and lonely and grieving, constantly in motion, Marcus’s ghost dogging him, pissed off and ashamed.

  Isaiah let the heat dissipate and stepped inside. Trash on the floor, cobwebby boxes and bins lining the metal shelves. The battering ram was standing in the corner, crusted with ashy oxidation. The standing tools looked abandoned like they were too heavy to carry out before the enemy troops arrived.

  Marcus kept his work log in the top drawer of the big red toolbox. He was scrupulous about his jobs but record keeping wasn’t a strong suit. Like his little brother, he was able to keep vast amounts of information in his head. The work log was a jumble of notations, reminders, job descriptions, estimates, and supplies to pick up. The only thing that kept them organized was the dates. In the days leading up to the accident, Marcus had jotted down a number of names and numbers. Stores, tradesmen, people Isaiah knew or knew of. The only one that stood out was Seb Habimana. A neighborhood character with a shady reputation. There was a circle between Seb’s name and the one written above it. Inside the circle was a note: ISLANDER CHALET 8-47 BAM LT GRY. Whether it applied to Seb or the name above it was hard to tell.

  Isaiah asked around. Seb was known to hang out at the Nyanza Bar, a place so unwelcoming it was hard to believe it was open to the public. The front of the shack-like building was scaled with cedar shingles so old and black they looked blowtorched. Gold stick-on letters spelled NYANZA BAR on a window covered with tar paper, a single string of dead Christmas lights strung across the top. The vestibule looked like a cave even in the daytime.

  It was cool inside, a welcome relief from the heat. Isaiah let his eyes adjust to the dark. The only light came from around the edges of the tar paper and the neon Tusker sign. Two men and a woman were hunched over their drinks at ten-thirty in the morning. Music was playing, an African woman wailing like she’d lost her whole family. The bartender was a twist of beef jerky in a chartreuse polo shirt. He was sitting on a stool looking up at a TV, a soccer game on.

  “What you want in here?” he demanded.

  “I’m looking for Seb Habimana,” Isaiah said, wondering why the guy didn’t say good morning or what will you have to drink.

  “He don’t come round dis place,” the bartender said.

  Isaiah looked down the hall. Through an open door he saw part of a room and a pool table. Voices back there. “I’m going to shoot pool,” he said.

  “You don’t go back dere, boy.”

  “Don’t call me boy.”

  As Isaiah approached the door he saw Seb. He was a small, fastidious man, almost aristocratic in the way he carried himself. He was leaning lightly on a cane and wearing a three-piece glen plaid suit, squares and lines in muted mustard, brown, and green. His shoes were old-fashioned wing tips, but they were lustrous and expensive and matched the darker browns in the suit. Hard to tell his age. Thirties? Forties? His face was surprisingly warm and generous, his eyes yellowed like old piano keys. Seb was talking to Laquez, a neighborhood hooligan. Isaiah had busted him twice for burglary. Isaiah took a step back into the shadows, he wanted to hear this.
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br />   “Come now, Laquez,” Seb said patiently. “Enough of your lies and diversions, let us be truthful for once.” Seb had an accent like Nelson Mandela; African by way of colonialism.

  “Swear to God, Seb,” Laquez said. “I’m telling you straight up. I wouldn’t take no money from you.” Laquez was goggle-eyed and puffy-cheeked; a black goldfish in a big white T-shirt.

  “Tell me what you did today,” Seb said.

  “Okay, no problem. Like first I went to Wells Fargo, then B of A, Citibank, Republic, Chase, and then the other Wells Fargo, the one on PCH—no, that’s wrong. I went to Wells Fargo and then I went to Chase,” Laquez said, as if correcting himself made him more credible.

  “And what were the amounts?” Seb said.

  Laquez frowned. “Well, let me see—don’t worry, I got it, I got it. Yeah, it was fifteen hundred, twenty-five hundred, seven hundred—shit, Seb, I can’t remember all that.”

  “Fifteen hundred, twenty-six hundred, seven hundred, thirty-one hundred, fifty-five hundred, twelve hundred, and twelve hundred,” Seb said. “That comes to fifteen thousand eight hundred dollars but only fifteen thousand seven hundred was loaded onto the debit cards. You kept a hundred dollars because you didn’t think I would check.”

  “Naw, naw, naw,” Laquez said, smiling and shaking his head, “y’all can’t put that on me. This is bullshit, Seb, I mean like, maybe you made a mistake, like when you was countin’ the money.”

  “I do not make mistakes counting money,” Seb said. The fatherly warmth had fallen away, leaving in its place an Easter Island monolith with yellow eyes. “You took the money, Laquez, and if you continue to lie to me it will go hard for you.”

  “Come on, Seb, that ain’t even logical. Sheeit. If I was gonna take your money I’d take the whole thing.” Laquez did jazz hands. “Naw, naw, naw, I’m just playin’. I’d never do you like that. You my boy, Seb. Me and you is tight.”

  Seb rapped his cane on the floor like he was quieting a rowdy classroom. The cane was made of dark wood, scars and dents on the shaft, the finish worn through in places, a brass ferrule, the head shaped like a cabinet knob crudely carved from some kind of white stone, smooth with age. Sentimental value, Isaiah thought, Seb could afford better.

  “I am losing my patience, Laquez,” Seb said. “I will ask you one more time. Did you steal my money?”

  “Naw, Seb, I told you, man, I wouldn’t do you like that.”

  With surprising quickness Seb stepped forward and slashed Laquez with the cane. Laquez spun around, holding his face and saying Oh fuck oh fuck. He staggered away, Seb going after him, whacking him twice more, the boy dropping to the floor and curling against the wall.

  “I’m sorry, Seb,” Laquez said, holding a hand up to protect himself. “It won’t happen again, I promise. Please forgive me, Seb, gimme another chance.”

  Seb limped rapidly back and forth, going in and out of Isaiah’s view. “Did I ever tell you how I lost my leg?” he said. “It was during the genocide. My tribe, the Hutus, were killing Tutsis, slaughtering them by the thousands. Don’t ask me why. There are no explanations for such things. One afternoon, I was visiting a friend in the neighboring village when a Tutsi man captured me. He used a machete to cut off my leg and with every blow he called out the name of a loved one he had lost.” Seb slashed Laquez and screamed like the militiaman, “Ariche! Farelle! Bijoux! Brihanna!” He was trembling, his face bunched up with rage.

  He took a moment to calm himself and found a square pack of English Ovals cigarettes in his coat pocket. He put one in his mouth, and another man appeared. He’d been in a different part of the room. The man was tall, lean, and striking, his eyes patient and intelligent; a Zulu warrior in a cranberry-colored Members Only jacket. His pants were too short, two inches of white sock showing between his cuffs and his cheap sneakers. He had four deep scars on the side of his head. It looked like a bear had attacked him, its claws scooping out creek beds of flesh; suture marks left by someone with a knitting needle and kite string. Without a word he produced an old Zippo, lit the cigarette, and snapped the lighter shut like a mousetrap.

  “Thank you, Gahigi,” Seb said, twin streams of smoke jetting out of his nose. “Would you like one?”

  “No, Seb,” Gahigi said, sounding a little annoyed. He leaned back against the pool table with his arms crossed. Neither he nor Seb gave any notice to Laquez’s crying and whimpering.

  “I understood the man’s anger,” Seb went on, “but I did not forgive. Many years later I went looking for him. I asked the people in his village if they knew a man who had four children who were killed in the genocide, and I named them. For a small fee, they told me he was in Kigali selling vegetables by the side of the road. I searched all the roads leading in and out of Kigali until I found him. He did not remember me, but I refreshed his memory. Do you see the handle on my cane? I fashioned it from the man’s—what is it called? Oh yes. The tibia.”

  Laquez didn’t know what a tibia was, but he knew it was bad. “Come on, Seb, I won’t fuck up no more, swear to God I won’t.” Laquez had his knees pulled up to his chest, his hands over his head. He looked pitiful, something about that making Seb’s anger rise again. Maybe that was how he looked as the machete came down on his leg. Seb raised the cane to strike him and Isaiah stepped into the room. Gahigi got up quickly like he’d left his gun in the car. Seb lowered the cane, the rage vanishing in a millisecond, replaced by the warm fatherly smile.

  “Hello, Isaiah,” he said. “May I offer you a cup of tea?”

  They went to the bar and sat down in a booth, apparently set aside for Seb’s exclusive use. In stark contrast to the rest of the place, the table and vinyl seats smelled of disinfectant and were so shiny they looked shellacked. In front of Seb, some items were arranged in a grid. Lined up nearest him was a beautiful porcelain tea set. Sugar bowl and spoon to his left. Teacup and saucer directly before him. Teapot on his right. In a row above that: a new gold foil ashtray, a gold lighter, and a pack of English Ovals.

  “Yes, I am somewhat exacting at times,” Seb said, catching Isaiah’s look. “A form of OCD, I am told, but harmless enough. Will you have some tea, Isaiah? It’s Taylors of Harrogate.”

  “No, thanks,” Isaiah said.

  Gahigi was watching from a bar stool, nearly invisible, a panther in a thicket of shadows and liquor bottles.

  “How do you know my name?” Isaiah said.

  “Come now,” Seb said, lifting the teapot and pouring himself a cup. “Everyone knows your name and what you do. Let us not pretend you are unaware of this. Now tell me, Isaiah, why have you come to see me?” Seb shifted in his seat and winced. “Gout. Another indignity. It would be better to fall apart all at once, don’t you think?”

  “Do you remember my brother doing some work for you?” Isaiah said.

  Seb put sugar in his tea and stirred it with the small silver spoon, the sound like a glass clock ticking. “You make it seem like an accusation,” he said. “Please remind me, who is your brother?”

  “Marcus. Marcus Quintabe.”

  “When was this?”

  “Eight years ago.”

  “Eight years ago? My goodness, Isaiah, do you really expect me to remember something like that?”

  “I’m asking you if you do.”

  Seb took a slow sip of tea. “No, I’m afraid not. My memory does not serve me well these days.” He sighed. “Age, as they say, is not for sissies, but I suppose there are some advantages. What was the line? Ah yes. The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected. I believe it was your Robert Frost who said that. I once took a class on American poets. A bit too optimistic and sentimental for my tastes.” Seb nodded at the bartender. “Sahid,” he said. “Was my booth cleaned?”

  “This morning, Seb,” the bartender said.

  “Well, please clean it again.”

  “Okay, Seb.”

  Seb lit a cigarette, putting the lighter and cigarettes back in their places. “Would you like a cigarette
, Gahigi?” he said with a mischievous smile.

  “No, Seb,” Gahigi said sternly. “You know I am quitting.”

  “Someone told him smoking was bad for his health,” Seb said, amused. “Gahigi, will you see to Laquez? Tell him if he does not return the money he will be punished.”

  “You have already told him, Seb.”

  “Tell him again—and make sure he understands.” Gahigi unzipped his jacket and brought out a pair of leather gloves. He pulled them on and went down the hall flexing his fists. “I’m sorry, I interrupted you,” Seb said to Isaiah. “Please continue.”

  “I asked you if Marcus did some work at your house.”

  “And this was eight years ago?” Seb said. Isaiah nodded. “Not likely. I was living in an apartment then. Upkeep was the landlord’s responsibility.”

  “Your name and phone number were in his work log.”

  Seb took another slow sip of tea. “It is possible your brother did some work for me at my office, but I do not keep track of who did what or what their names might be.”

  “Do you know how three thousand dollars in cash and sixteen grams of heroin ended up in my brother’s backpack?” Isaiah said.

  Seb carefully squeezed some lemon into his cup, Isaiah wondering why he hadn’t put it in before. “I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest, Isaiah,” Seb said, unruffled, “but I will let the innuendo pass for the moment. However, if I do not remember your brother, how would I know if he had a backpack or anything else?” Seb huffed through his nose. “Heroin,” he said. “Filthy stuff. A professor of mine was an addict. The last time I saw him was at the Drummer Street bus station. He was dressed in rags and sleeping on the sidewalk, poor man.”

  “The drugs and money were put in Marcus’s backpack while he was working for you,” Isaiah said.

  Seb smiled, patient and patronizing. “But you haven’t established that your brother worked for me at all. Perhaps I asked for an estimate or advice. It is impossible to say. And really, Isaiah, suspicion is one thing but paranoia is quite another. Have you considered the possibility that your brother was an addict? Or a dealer, perhaps?”