Righteous
Page 30
“Hey, no problem, man!” Mike said, backing into the wall, his eyes wide as Frisbees. “Swear to God, I won’t even think about her!”
Isaiah took no new cases, didn’t answer his emails and spent his time reading or listening to music or, for the first time in his life, doing nothing at all. Somebody said if you stop moving, the world does too. Gradually, his mood improved, and he started to work again but something had been lost, something that couldn’t be replaced.
Isaiah drove down Seventh Street, the unofficial Long Beach railroad tracks; the houses and apartments getting more upscale as you went toward the ocean, more downtrodden if you went in the other direction. He was taking Ruffin to the vet, something wrong with the dog’s ear. He was scratching at it all the time, a foul, yeasty smell coming out of it. As usual, Ruffin was sitting in the front seat with the seat belt on. All he needed was a cell phone and he could be on his way to work.
“Say,” Isaiah said. “Could you not slobber all over my car?”
He’d come to realize that TK was right. He’d tried to take a shortcut; leapfrog over the messy, uncertain ordeal of starting relationships and making them grow; of filling his life with people and possibilities. The only thing keeping him in the hood was himself. Marcus’s murder hadn’t condemned him to live how he was living. He could do whatever he wanted. A frightening thought. He’d also come to terms with Sarita. There was nothing wrong with her or her lifestyle. Ambition and a taste for luxury didn’t make her a bad person. She’d grown up in the hood and come up the hard way herself. She was someone to admire and appreciate.
She’d called him twice. Once to invite him to a cocktail party, but he made an excuse. The second time, they had coffee. He suspected she knew how he felt that awful night in her apartment and was grateful she didn’t bring it up. She told him she’d quit her job and had applied at the Legal Aid Foundation in Long Beach. “I think I have enough shoes,” she said. She told him she and Kevin had gotten engaged and she invited him to the wedding and he was sorry he’d given his suit to the Goodwill. He didn’t tell her about Seb. Why upset her all these years later?
He thought about Dodson’s proposal to partner up. Did he need a partner? Not really. He’d been doing okay on his own for a long time. But then there was that friend thing. The closest he’d ever come to having one was Ruffin. Pitiful, when you thought about it, and it was reassuring having Dodson around. The bickering aside, he was loyal and fearless and he had a good heart. The experience reminded Isaiah of being with Marcus; going through things together, things nobody else could share. And Dodson had a point about his cases. He was getting bored. Stepping out of his comfort zone would be a good thing; take some risks; not like rescuing Ken and Benny, but get out there in the world and make shit happen, see what it’s like on the high side. If Kevin had some work for him that would be a start. He’d call Dodson and set something up, maybe invite him over for a beer. He wondered what the shingle would say. QUINTABE AND ASSOCIATE? Dodson would no doubt want it the other way around. They’d have to see about that.
He couldn’t keep Marcus’s robbery money so he gave it away. Some to repair Deronda’s house and pay off the loans on the food truck. Dodson sold his half of the business to Deronda. She and her sister would run it. The rest Isaiah kept for Flaco. The last Isaiah had heard, Janine and Benny were back in Vegas and still gambling. Why wouldn’t they? They were debt-free now.
When Ken got out of the hospital, he hid in a motel. He almost committed suicide but hanging yourself was harder than it looked. It was hard to find your courage when you’d never seen it before. Sarita finally demanded that he turn himself in or she’d do it for him. Ken cooperated with the police, giving up Tommy’s whole operation. The triad’s West Coast string of brothels and massage parlors were shut down. Ken was awaiting sentencing now, his lawyers were trying to settle.
Ken rolled over on the Mountain Master and Tommy fled back to Hong Kong. The police there had been alerted so he fled again to mainland China, only to find that the People’s Republic didn’t like human traffickers any more than anybody else. Tommy was tried and sentenced to forty years’ hard labor at Huaiji Prison in the Guangdong Province, the same place the sick girl was from. He slept on a dirt floor in a space twelve inches wide and near the latrine because he was a new prisoner. He washed up at an outdoor trough shared by his twenty cellmates. His diet consisted mostly of sorghum and corn, ground into a flour and made into bread, and a watery vegetable soup. He was awakened at six a.m., worked in the fields all day, spreading fertilizer made from human shit. Sarita found out through her sources that he’d tried to bribe an official and got forty more years tacked on to what was already a death sentence.
Isaiah turned off Seventh onto Linden and saw the girl from the wrecking yard. What was her name again? Grace, that was it. She was standing in front of an art supply store talking to another girl who was anemically pale. Her jet-black hair was shaved on one side of her head, tats coming out of her tank top like a turtleneck. Isaiah wondered if TK was right and Grace was a lesbian. Or maybe she had a boyfriend or was married and had kids or maybe she wouldn’t recognize him and would think he was some weirdo off the street.
He pulled the car over to the curb and watched in the rearview mirror. He tried to read Grace’s body language. Was she friends with the pale girl or was she friends? Was she wearing an engagement ring? Was the pale girl wearing one? He couldn’t tell. They were laughing now, Grace putting her hand on the other girl’s arm. Was that a normal gesture or was she flirting? Isaiah sat there, mired in doubt, the dog looking at him as if to say What’s your problem?
Okay, Isaiah thought. Make up your mind. Are you going to say hello or not? Not, he decided. This was too off-the-cuff, too spontaneous. He needed time to think about it, come up with a plan. Maybe he’d see her again or meet some other girl. Plenty of opportunities, no need to pressure yourself. He put the car into gear and drove away.
Grace gave Cherokee a hug, said goodbye, and turned for home. She was in a hurry. She had a painting to finish for the art fair in Ojai. A million other artists would be showing their work, but there were rich people up there and she really needed to sell something. Illustrating bilingual workbooks for night school students wasn’t exactly a career path. She’d only gone a few steps when she smiled, big and warm and glad. “Hello, friend,” she said. The slate-colored pit bull with the fierce amber eyes was bounding toward her. It was nearly on top of her when she heard someone say, “Ruffin, sit,” the dog coming to an immediate stop and sitting at her feet.
Acknowledgments
My never-ending gratitude to Esther Newberg and Zoe Sandler for carefully, lovingly guiding my career, and to Josh Kendall, whose unerring editorial eye has made the book better than I ever thought possible. A special thanks to L. F. Monger, whose guidance on a number of issues was indispensable. Sabrina Callahan, Pamela Brown, Alyssa Persons, and Nicky Guerreiro have labored tirelessly to put my work before the public. Their kindness, creativity, and professionalism continue to astound me.
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About the Author
Photograph by Craig Takahashi
Joe Ide is of Japanese-American descent. He grew up in South Central Los Angeles. His favorite books were the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. The idea that a person could face the world and vanquish his enemies with just his intelligence fascinated him. Ide went on to earn a graduate degree and have several careers before writing his debut novel, IQ, inspired by his early experiences and his love of Sherlock. He lives in Santa Monica, California.
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