The vice principal, Mr. Ingram, came to the podium. He was wearing khaki Dockers and a baby-blue polo shirt, a weariness about him like he should have followed his dad into the carpet cleaning business. “All right, everybody, let’s settle down,” he said, looking at a clipboard. “Our next speaker is a prominent entrepreneur and well-known local businessman, Mr. Juanell Dodson. Mr. Dodson?”
Dodson stood up. He was wearing a chalk-striped charcoal double-breasted suit with a canary-yellow tie and matching pocket hankie. He could have passed for an ordinary businessman if it weren’t for the diamond studs in his ears and the Stacy Adams black-and-white spectators. He strolled across the stage, a hitch in his stride like a pimp on his birthday, snapping his cuffs and glancing at his sundial-size watch, so many dials and buttons on it you could hardly tell the time. The kids hooted and whistled but they might have been birds chirping for all Dodson cared.
A table and a projector were set up at center stage, a mike on a mike stand next to the table. Dodson squared up to the mike, took a slow, deep, charitable breath and surveyed his audience, a look on his face like he smelled something past its sell-by date. The kids continued to snicker and whisper but Dodson waited… and waited… and waited… until there was absolute silence. A circumstance so unusual the kids were looking at each other.
“Losers,” Dodson said, “I don’t see nothin’ but losers. Bad hair, ashy elbows, prepaid cell phones you ain’t even allowed to use unless you get kidnapped, and sneakers with logos on them nobody’s ever seen outside of Hong Kong and Vietnam. Don’t you wish there was one thing about you that was stylish? That was now? Something your mama didn’t buy at the Kmart after-Christmas sale? Something you could be proud of and flaunt in front of your friends? Well of course you do, you know you do.” Dodson raised a hand like he was fending off a reporter’s question. “Oh I know what you thinkin’. What could my raggedy self ever possess that would give me the status and attention I may or may not deserve? What vestige of the good life could somebody from my pitiful demographic ever hope to acquire? Well, pay attention, young people, Juanell Dodson is about to make your dreams come true.”
Dodson got out his cell and swiped the screen and music came through the PA system, Tupac’s “California Love”; the kids bobbing their heads and smiling at each other. Dodson swiped the cell again and a PowerPoint slide show commenced on the onstage screen. The first slide was of Jay-Z, smoking a cigar and wearing a gold curb chain fat as a boa constrictor. Nelly wore an all-diamond chain with matching studs. Flo Rida’s chain was relatively modest but the diamond-encrusted Jesus pendant was the size of a chicken pot pie. “Check out them joints,” Dodson said, beaming like he’d crafted the chains in his own workshop. “Makes you feel like a playa just looking at ’em.”
As the music flowed and the kids danced in their seats, there were more slides of rappers, singers, actors, record producers, and pro athletes, all of them wearing outrageous gold chains. “Oh I know what you thinking,” Dodson said, that hand coming up again. “How could somebody as financially challenged as me afford bling like that? Get a job? Doing what? Who’s gonna hire my illiterate ass? Maybe my parents could help? Please. Ain’t no extra income on their monetary horizon. You not gonna get a raise if you pushing a hot dog cart or working the cash register at Shop ’n Save.” Some of the kids laughed but most of them didn’t. “But Juanell,” Dodson said, “why are you even showing me these treasures when you know I’m broke and even if my whole family died at the same time the only thing they’d leave behind is some lottery tickets and a car note? Well, don’t despair, young people, Juanell Dodson’s rent-to-own financing plan can put you in a genuine fourteen-karat rope big enough to put a crick in Kanye’s neck for only pennies a day.”
As Dodson was doing the riff about Kanye, Mr. Ingram put his hands on his knees and pushed himself out of his chair. This was all he needed, as if five classes of health ed with kids who had mustaches and got more sex in a weekend than he did in an entire year weren’t enough to ruin his day. He walked over to Dodson and put his hand on the mike. He tried to sound outraged but it came out like a plea. “Okay, Mr. Dodson, I need you to stop now,” he said. “This is a school assembly, isn’t that obvious? We’re here to educate, not provide you with an opportunity to hustle up business.”
Dodson looked saddened, as if Mr. Ingram had been stricken with some rare disease. “It’s a hustler’s world, son,” Dodson said, “and if you ain’t doing the hustlin’? Somebody’s hustlin’ you.”
The assembly was over. Dodson came off the stage and handed out his business cards to the kids filing by. “W W W dot Juanell Dodson Rent to Own,” he said. “That’s all one word. Just fill out the application form and we’ll be in touch.” Isaiah was still standing at the back of the auditorium, waiting to be noticed. Dodson kept passing out cards until there were no more kids and the auditorium was deserted. He went up onstage, got his briefcase, and fussed with it for effect.
“You know I’m here,” Isaiah said, coming toward him. “You saw me when I came in the door.”
“Isaiah!” Dodson said, like Isaiah was an old girlfriend he’d run into at a party. “What a surprise. Did you enjoy the presentations? I thought it went well, didn’t you?”
“I need to talk,” Isaiah said.
“Oh I’m sorry but I’m in a bit of a rush. Can we do it next week?” Dodson came down off the stage and walked right past him.
“Come on, Dodson, quit messing around,” Isaiah said, trailing him.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Dodson said. He quickened his pace. Make Isaiah hurry up, reduce him to a kid chasing after his mom.
“I want to talk about that case,” Isaiah said.
“Case?” Dodson said. “I have a lot of cases at the moment. Could you be more specific?” You had to be careful with Isaiah. Push him too far and he’d walk away from the table no matter what it cost him.
“The case you told me about,” Isaiah said. “The one with the client who can pay.”
“That could be any one of my clients. They’re a very exclusive group.” Dodson knew he was reaching Isaiah’s limit but couldn’t resist. It wasn’t like this uppity, condescending muthafucka didn’t deserve it. “Oh wait, I remember now,” he said. “Yes, yes, it’s a very complicated situation. It’ll take me at least five minutes to explain and I’m afraid I don’t have the time.”
There wasn’t much to look at on the drive over to the client’s house. Ivy-covered berms and concrete walls blocked the view on either side of the freeway. Not that you were missing much. Come in on an airplane and all you’d see is borderless urban sprawl clear to the horizon. Long Beach, Compton, Carson, Torrance, Westwood, Studio City-just names on a map.
Isaiah drove, resisting the urge to speak. Dodson was messing with him. After the assembly he didn’t say anything about the case, making Isaiah ask and giving him a vague answer. Then he’d made a call and said they had to go meet the client right away, not telling him who the client was. Then he wouldn’t let Isaiah crack open a window, saying it would mess up his hair, his cologne stinking up the car. It smelled to Isaiah like somebody’d put fruit-flavored chewing gum, a new leather glove, and a man’s sweaty balls into a blender and put it on pulverize. Now Dodson was picking his teeth with a toothpick and bobbing his head to Tupac, music he insisted would clear his mind for the case.
In one of his previous incarnations, Dodson was a record producer. His most promising protégé was a Charles Barkley-looking kid who called himself Da Chunk. Chunk had a song that went to number one hundred and ninety-eight on the rap singles chart. It was titled “Where’s My Samitch, Bitch?” Dodson wrote the lyrics: