“I gave them away,” Skip said, barely audible.
“Gave them away?” Isaiah said. “Bullshit. You’ve been bullshitting since we got here. The arrows in that target are eighteen inches long. They’re bolts for a crossbow and the crossbow isn’t an Olympic event. What unit, Skip?”
“What?” Skip said.
“What unit? Your father was in the marines. What unit?”
“I forgot,” Skip said.
“Your father wasn’t in the marines any more than you were,” Isaiah said, “and what was all that nonsense about a gun club?”
“You’re lucky they’re not here,” Skip said, his voice in a wringer, his eyes like knife wounds. “They’re not too keen on the brothers.”
“Do all the members of your gun club sit in that one chair? Do they all drink Red Bull? Do all their burgers fit on that one hibachi? Where do they eat them? On the picnic table you don’t have? It’s just you, Skip. Lying on that couch at night reading to the puppies.”
The blue puppy squealed. Skip was squeezing it too hard. “Seriously?” he said. “It’s time for you to go.”
They stopped at McDonald’s and ate inside. Isaiah didn’t want the smell in his car. “I think it’s true these fries got crack in ’em,” Dodson said. “I wonder if you can rock ’em up and smoke ’em? I know some niggas that would try.”
Isaiah was pushing lettuce around with a fork trying to find the premium part of his Premium Southwest Salad. A mess of wilted greens, dried-out chicken cubes, a few black beans, and corn kernels in a plastic box. The dressing looked like snot. “I don’t know what this is,” he said.
At the next table, a woman wearing three cardigans was gurgling Sprite vapor through a straw.
“You want this?” Isaiah said, offering her the salad.
“Sure,” the woman said.
“Well, I guess we found our man,” Dodson said. “That was some cold shit you put on that boy. Do all their burgers fit on that one hibachi. I thought he was going to cry.”
“We’ve got no way to link Skip with whoever hired him,” Isaiah said. “I shook his tree.”
“Is that what you were doing? Looked to me like you was humiliating the man. Taking his fucked-up life and sticking it in his face, especially that part about reading to the puppies. You know he’s gonna come after you, don’t you?”
“I hope he does. He’s too pissed off, he’ll make a mistake.”
“You the one got pissed off and you the one made a mistake. Now he knows we’re onto him.”
“Doesn’t matter, he already knew. It took us about three hours to get from Long Beach to Fergus. Remember what Skip said when we were walking around the side of the house? He said, how long did it take you to get here, three hours? We could have been coming from anywhere. San Bernardino is an hour away. So is Riverside. LA is two.”
“So who told him?” Dodson said. “Only people who know anything are Bobby Grimes, Anthony, and the Moody brothers.”
“And one of them is Skip’s employer or works for Skip’s employer.”
“I ain’t buying it. They all want Cal to finish the album and he can’t do that unless he’s alive.”
“If Cal finishes the album he’ll have to go to the studio.”
“So?”
“So he’ll be out in the open where Skip can put a bullet in his head.”
The woman gave the salad back, lettuce spilling out of her mouth. “Are voo kiffling?” she said.
CHAPTER TEN
Pet City
July 2005
No guns. Isaiah wouldn’t budge on that. He knew his way around computers but hacking was an FBI crime. Out of his league. There was selling drugs but the gangs had that sewed up. Designer drugs were in his wheelhouse but they were rave drugs, white people drugs, nobody around the neighborhood used them. Isaiah was an excellent poker player but you needed a stake.
“Ain’t nothing left but thievery,” Dodson said. He was at the stove frying bacon for BLTs. “My boy Duane and his partner Dakor was gonna rob an auto parts store but they had to get high first and that took a while. Coupla niggas in a ’72 Cutlass driving around at three in the morning. Got busted before they got to the freeway.”
“What for?” Isaiah said.