by Joe Ide
“Look what the cat dragged in,” she said. Isaiah was looking in the service window.
“Am I too late for a three-piece?” he said.
“How you doin’, Isaiah?”
“I’m doing okay. You?”
“I’d be doing fine if it wasn’t for Dodson.”
Dodson came around to the window. “What’s blazin’, son?” he said, smiling. “What you been up to?”
They sat on a bus bench, Isaiah with his three-piece that Deronda insisted he pay for, not even a discount.
“This is really good,” Isaiah said. “Whose recipe?”
“Deronda’s grandmother. See how crispy it is? After you got the coating on you let it sit ’til it gets doughy.”
“I’ll remember that,” Isaiah said, knowing he never made anything more complicated than a steak.
“Yeah, customers love it, but making that nut is a bitch. We gotta pay off the loans too. Working with Deronda—you might as well have Bigfoot in the kitchen.”
Dodson looked like he always did; a cool, casual featherweight with ropy arms and an attitude that would make you think twice about messing with him. But Isaiah heard a glint of regret in his voice, like I’ve missed the turnoff and all I can do is keep driving.
“When’s the baby due?” Isaiah said.
“Soon,” Dodson said. “Cherise looks like Jabba the damn Hutt. I might have to hire a crane to lift her ass out of bed, and that thing about cravings ain’t no lie. You know last night she ate Cheez Whiz on a pork chop?”
“Pick out a name yet?”
“If it’s a boy I wanted to name him Tupac, but Cherise copped an attitude, talking ’bout, yeah, let’s name him after a dead rapper. How about Eazy-E or L’A Capone or Ol’ Dirty Bastard? Can’t you just hear me? Oh, Bastard, come in for supper now.”
Dodson had run into Isaiah a couple of times since the Black the Knife case. They small-talked but neither of them knew how to go forward or what forward was, and they lived in separate worlds. Dodson with his food truck, Cherise, their circle of friends, and now the baby. Isaiah with his cases, a circle of one.
Isaiah finished the chicken and closed the box. “Best I’ve ever had,” he said.
“Glad you liked it but you didn’t come all the way out here from Long Beach to eat fried chicken,” Dodson said. “What’s on your mind?”
Isaiah explained how Sarita had reached out to him and how her sister was in serious trouble and that he had to go to Vegas to see about it. “I could use some help,” he said. “If you could come along I’d really appreciate it.”
Dodson hesitated, not sure he’d heard right. Not too long ago Isaiah wouldn’t have asked for help if his arm was stuck in the deep fryer, and since when did he appreciate anything? Something strange was going on here. “Can’t do it,” Dodson said. “Deronda will go crazy if I leave her here by herself, and if the baby comes while I’m away, Cherise will choke me to death with the umbilical cord.”
“You’ll get the whole per diem,” Isaiah said.
Dodson stared at him, then looked back at the truck. “Let me see what I can do.”
Janine couldn’t believe she was doing this. Crawling on her hands and knees across the Italian broadloom, her dad sleeping twenty feet away, his snore like dragging a table over a cement patio. Her mistake was telling Benny about identity theft and the fat cats. He went nuts, shrugging off his hangover, dancing around the room and singing We’re in the money, we’re in the money. He was such a little kid. He didn’t hear her when she talked about how smart her dad was and how she could get caught and that he might call the cops. Then Benny really got into it, making plans, drawing indecipherable diagrams and going over the moves step by step like he was Brad Pitt in a heist movie, and now here she was, smelling her failing deodorant and so scared she could barely hold back the pee.
Her destination was the bedside table and her dad’s cell phone blinking in its charger. The password to his laptop was in there. He was supposed to keep it in his head so it couldn’t be hacked, but he cheated. He’d explained it to her when she was his darling daughter getting straight As in middle school, and he was eager to prepare her for a complicated world. He had two very important passwords. One for encrypted business files, the other for encrypted email. Both were twelve digits long, hard to remember with all those numbers, letters, and symbols. He showed her what he did.
“First I go to my contact list,” he said. “Then I pick someone innocuous—innocuous means not standing out.” Ken scrolled through hundreds of names and found Laura Vincent. “She’s the woman who cuts my hair. I use her name because V is the first letter of our last name. Easy to remember, right? Okay, see the phone number? That’s the first seven digits of the password. And the address? That’s the last five. Can you guess who has the other password?”
“Somebody whose last name starts with A-N,” Janine said.
“Right, very good. Martin Anders is my insurance man. So you see, if my phone is stolen no one would think to look there and I still have my passwords handy.”
The chemical smell from the carpet was making Janine nauseous. She felt ridiculous, dressed all in black including a ski mask. Benny’s idea—he was into ninjas. He volunteered to do the job himself but if her dad woke up he’d shoot him with the gun he kept in the bedside drawer whether he recognized Benny or not.
Her dad stirred. He smacked his lips and snorted. Janine felt her entire body congeal. She held her breath, wondering what she’d say if he woke up. She could just see herself lying on her back like a submissive puppy saying It’s me, Pop, and him saying What the hell are you doing, Janine, and her saying—what exactly? She lost a contact lens? She’d decided to drop the DJ thing and become a ninja?
She started to move again, but her dad’s breathing changed and he yawned. He was awake. She was in the middle of the floor, and there was no place to hide. She curled up like one of those armadillos that tiptoed through the backyard; the black clothes were a good idea after all. She peeked under her arms. Her dad was sitting on the edge of the bed. She could see his feet and his fish-white calves. Was he looking at her, letting his anger swell? It would be just like him, let her sweat it out, wait for her to crack.
Her dad cleared his throat and stood up.
Highway 15 to Vegas. Eighty miles an hour through the parched, unending desert, the road straight as a yardstick but not as interesting, power lines running parallel against a background of barren browns and dusty grays.
“How did you work it out with Deronda?” Isaiah said.
“I’m giving her half the per diem, and that’s more than she makes working at the truck,” Dodson said. “Her sister’s helping out.”
“What about Cherise?”
“Doctor said the baby’s not due ’til next week, and Lord have mercy I’m glad to be out of there. Cherise’s mama is over all the time and she hates my ass. Every time she sees me she says Oh, it’s you like I’m not supposed to be in my own damn apartment. Did I tell you Cherise made me sit through the baby shower? The fuck we gonna do with a li’l biddy pair of pajamas got a seahorse on ’em? The goddamn baby don’t even know what water is.”
“Are you worried about being a father?”
“No, I’m worried about being broke. For what it’s gonna cost me to raise that baby I could buy a KFC. I tried to convince Cherise to adopt. You know, get a young buck from Somalia or the Congo, eighteen–nineteen years old, somebody grateful who could go get a job right away.”
“It’s that bad?”
“I sat down and worked a budget out four or five times, and it always came out the same. If the food truck don’t start doing better the Dodson family’s gonna end up living in my car.”
Isaiah had never seen Dodson like this, stressing about an unpredictable future just like everybody else. “Come on, you must be a little excited,” Isaiah said.
“Yeah, I suppose. I can see myself doing things with a kid. Teach him to shoot craps, roll a dub, help him pic
k out a gang to join—don’t tell Cherise I said that.”
They crossed the California-Nevada border and sped past Whiskey Pete’s, a casino for people who couldn’t wait to lose their money in Vegas or spend what little they had left. The place looked bizarre out here in the desert all by itself like a giant Steve Wynn had dropped it out of the sky.
“What you been up to?” Dodson said.
“Cases,” Isaiah said.
“You got an ol’ lady yet?”
“No.”
“I heard Vatrice Coleman wants to go out with you.”
“Yeah, she called me up and told me as much. Not my type.”
“Not your type? Nobody’s your type, and that girl is fine, went to college too.”
“Beauty school.”
“Still an uppity li’l nigga, ain’t you? Well, in case you don’t remember, you dropped out of high school, you ain’t even got a GED. Compared to you that girl’s an Einstein.”
“I still don’t want to go out with her.”
“Cherise wants to set you up with her friend Kalina,” Dodson said. “You know her? Looks like Halle Berry but darker?”
“Yeah, I know her. We don’t have anything in common.”
“Hard to have something in common with an abnormal muthafucka like you. You know what your problem is? You too damn particular. What are you waiting for? Some girl with a PhD likes to stay home all the time and play with that damn pit bull?”
No, Isaiah thought, I’m waiting for Sarita. Much of the guilt he’d been carrying around for years had lifted and feelings were surfacing that he’d always ignored. He was lonely. He wanted friends, he wanted to go out and be with people. He wanted to have fun, not that he knew how. Inviting Dodson to come along was a bold step for him. He felt vulnerable, as if his need was a weakness.
Isaiah had been to Vegas on cases and was less impressed every time he came; the Strip’s kaleidoscopic walls of neon signs losing their appeal, the colors so bright and starved for attention they all ran together. He wondered if the tourists had a meeting and decided to look more or less the same. The beer-bellied men in Bermuda shorts, golf shirts, and running shoes, their top-heavy wives in white capris and flowered pregnancy tops. The Luxor sphinx must have been built by somebody who’d only done sand castles before. Lady Liberty looked stranded like she’d wandered into an amusement park and couldn’t find her way out. The canals at the Venetian were the same color blue as toilet water dyed with an automatic cleaner, the Eiffel Tower lit up like Elton John at a New Year’s Eve party. Everything was a spectacle. Too bright, too loud, too colossal. Once, Isaiah bought a hot dog for ninety-nine cents and it was as big as a cat.
Isaiah didn’t gamble much, the gaming odds were ridiculous, but occasionally he played poker. He was good at it, instantly calculating the odds and reading bluffs like the LA Times, but he didn’t like sitting around for hours and hours. Other than that there was nothing to do except look at things. Look at the water show, look at the light show, look at the New York skyline and the giant Coke bottle tall as a nuclear missile. The Ansel Adams photographs at the Bellagio were just wrong. Like Pavarotti at the MTV awards or a family of gazelles running down the Avenue of the Stars.
“Where we going?” Dodson said.
“Janine’s DJing at a club,” Isaiah said. “She left our names at the door.”
Seven Sevens was like the Tokyo subway at rush hour. You couldn’t lift an arm without putting somebody’s eye out. Isaiah sidled through the crowd saying excuse me a hundred times, Dodson somewhere behind him. The music, if you could call it that, was a barrage of cell phone beeps, tin cans, sirens, whistles, Morse code, panting dogs, buzzing hornets, foghorns, cannon fire, and fragments of songs he didn’t recognize set to a beat as fast as a drum roll.
Isaiah surveyed the dance floor, the fellas moving their shoulders and bobbing their heads, looking past their dance partners like there must be a hotter babe in here somewhere; a few holding liquor bottles like they were strangling a goose. Isaiah hadn’t seen so many gold chains since the Jewelry Bazaar. The girls danced with their hands over their heads, snaking their bodies around, laughing and grinning at their friends. Look at us! We’re here! Isaiah wondering why you’d wear a miniskirt if your thighs were like two Beluga whales swimming side by side. Kanye West and an oil sheik must have gotten together and decorated the lounge area, people in there drinking and trying to be cool; not easy when you were sunk down in a plush pink sofa so soft your knees were above your waist. Was this the fun Isaiah had heard so much about? He felt old and out of it and wished he was home playing with Ruffin.
“I ain’t been to a club in a long damn time,” Dodson yelled over the music. “It’s a trip, ain’t it? Reminds me of my wayward youth.”
Janine was on the DJ stand. A fantasy woman in a halo of gauzy light, fluid and rhythmic, her arm extended and pumping up and down, her long hair moving like it was underwater, her music commanding the crowd to speed up, slow down, go berserk.
“Girl got some skills, don’t she?” Dodson said.
The beat decelerated into a head-bobbing tom-tom. “Whassup my people!” she shouted into the mike. “This is your queen kamikaze, the heat in your wasabi, the gravy train in the food chain, the champagne in the chow mein, I’m DJ Dama, baby, that’s my set and I’m gettin’ up outta heeerre, PEACE!” The crowd let loose with a raucous cacophony of cheers, applause, woo-hoos and offers of sexual release.
“Damn, that girl got it going on,” Dodson said.
“She’s showing off her good side,” Isaiah said, “before she shows off her stupid one.”
They went back to the motel room and talked. Sarita had told Janine all about Isaiah, assuring her he could be trusted and to tell him everything. Isaiah already knew the story, but he wanted to hear it from her, fill in the blanks. He didn’t want to sit down in all the mess so he stood with his hands in his front pockets. Dodson had the same idea and leaned against a wall. Janine sat on the couch looking at the floor and shaking her head. She’d changed into sweats and a T-shirt and didn’t look like a fantasy woman anymore. She looked like a kid who’d thrown a rock at a window and accidentally killed somebody. She talked about Leo and the vig and the landfill and how desperate she and Benny were and stealing her dad’s records.
“Everything went okay at first,” she said. “Dad was so sleepy he didn’t see me and went to the bathroom. I switched his phone for mine, went downstairs and downloaded his records onto a flash drive. Then I waited until he was asleep again, switched the phones and got out of there. When I got back, me and Benny took a look at the records. God, I wish I had a joint.”
“Keep going,” Dodson said.
“They were business records, account records.” She blinked angry tears out of her eyes. “For brothels and massage parlors. Lots of them. Here, Henderson, Reno, San Diego.” She found her laptop in the junk on the coffee table, typed something and turned the screen around. “Look,” she said.
There was a gallery of photos. Chinese girls, in their late teens and twenties, their names and places of origin written in black marker.
Mei—Fujian
Jiao—Hunan
Lijiang—Guangxi
Ah Kum—Fujian
There were dozens of them. No models or starlets or hooker types. Just ordinary girls. Janine scrolled through page after page of photos. “I can’t even imagine it,” she said. “Fucking strangers all day.” Her expression turned hard and bitter. “My dad,” she said. “He’s the head pimp. That’s why he’s always on the phone, supervising employees, making sure everybody’s on their toes. You know what they say, the customer’s always right.”
“Does your dad own the business?” Dodson said. Isaiah looked at him. It was a logical question but it was beginning to seem like Dodson was in charge of the case.
“No,” Janine said. “He works for a triad. 14K. Thousands of members. They’re vicious dudes. They’re into sex trafficking, dope, kidnapping, all kinds of fucked-
up things.”
“How do you know it’s 14K?” Dodson said, stepping on Isaiah’s line.
“My uncle, Tommy Lau—he’s not really my uncle. He used to be their Mountain Master, sort of like the president. He and my dad talk all the time. Tommy told me he’d quit when he got into currency trading, but I guess that was a lie.”
“I don’t understand something,” Isaiah said, feeling like he had to hurry. “If you knew the records belonged to the triad why didn’t you just get rid of them?”
“I wanted to,” Janine said. New tears were seeping out of her eyes. “It’s Benny,” she said. “We had a huge argument. He took the flash drive and left. Now he won’t answer my calls. He’s disappeared.”
“What’s he going to do with it?” Dodson said.
Janine wiped her face with the back of her arm, sat up straight, and took a breath. She was setting up for the punch line, Isaiah thought.
“Benny’s going to blackmail them,” Janine said. “He’s going to blackmail the 14K Triad.”
