“Well, what does this new lead have to say?” Bobby said.
“I’ll tell you if it pans out. I don’t want to jump the gun and piss somebody off.”
“Piss somebody off like who? You’re not making any sense, Mr. Quintabe. Can we get back to reality, please? Now will you or won’t you go along with the program?”
“No. I won’t.”
Bobby put his hands on his hips, looked down at the ground, and took a deep breath, Anthony thinking Uh-oh. When Bobby looked up again, his eyes were frozen solid, an ice pick in his voice. “I happen to be a very influential man, Mr. Quintabe,” he said, “and I know a lot of influential people. It would be a shame if something were to diminish your stature in the music community. You know how people talk.”
“There are a lot of communities out there besides music,” Isaiah said, “and none of them give a damn about your influence and I’ll tell you something else, Mr. Grimes. I can’t be diminished by people talking no matter who they are but I will be if I take that money.”
Anthony felt a surge of pride and wished it was for himself.
They were driving down Pacific to Dodson’s place, Dodson staring out the window at his bank statement. “Turn down twenty thousand dollars,” he said, disgusted. “Even for you that was off the rocker.”
“I had to,” Isaiah said.
“No, you didn’t. You got pissed off and lost your common sense just like you did with Skip and fucked up my situation in the process. I got a nut to crack. Turn down twenty thousand dollars. You took the case to make some money and here you are walking away from it? What kind of bullshit is that? And don’t tell me you gonna solve the case. Ain’t nothin’ to solve. We got nothing to go on and nowhere to go, do we? Do we? Shit. You pay your mortgage with your scruples? Buy your damn groceries with it? I tried to spend mine at the supermarket and they told me they only accept money. And what was all that shit about meeting somebody at JC’s? If you making a play the least you could do is tell me about it.”
“Skip is the only lead we have,” Isaiah said. “We have to make him talk.”
“Make him talk how? Waterboard him? My old man showed me how to do it and damn near drowned me. Oh I know. Let’s kidnap Skip’s mama and cut her toes off ’til he talks. Shit. That crazy muthafucka might not even have a mama.”
“It’s not his mama.”
Dodson thought a moment-and then his face exploded into abject terror. “No, unh-uh, forget it. Get that out of your mind, you hear me? I ain’t doing that shit no matter what you say.”
“It’s that or give up the fifty grand.”
“What am I gonna spend it on, my tombstone? I don’t want no part of it and you know why. Let me out of the car. I gotta pick up some ice cream for Cherise.” Isaiah stopped and Dodson got out of the car. “I’m not playing, Isaiah.”
“I know you’re not playing.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“I heard you.”
“No, I don’t think you did. I’m not doing it.”
“Okay, you’re not doing it.”
“Well, all right then.”
The Drop In Diner was open twenty-four hours, the animal control truck parked in the lot. From there you could see the dirt road leading to and from Skip’s place. The truck was on loan from Harry along with a tranquilizer gun and a special gurney for transporting unconscious animals. The gun came with darts loaded with Sucostrin, a muscle relaxant, the dose calculated by species and weight.
“Why do you need me?” Dodson said. “Can’t you shoot the dog by yourself?”
“I told you ten times already,” Isaiah said. “I need you to help me get the dog on the gurney. That’s a hundred and thirty pounds of deadweight.”
“What if he gets loose? What if all them dogs get loose? Shit. You don’t even know if that dart gun’s gonna work. They don’t use ’em on dogs.”
“No, just bears and mountain lions. Will you please relax? All you have to do is bring the gurney and you’ll only be in there for a minute.”
They saw headlights. Skip’s truck was coming up the road. It turned onto the pavement and drove away.
“Ready?” Isaiah said.
“No,” Dodson said. “And I never will be.”
They drove the two miles to Skip’s place, the moonlit desert like the desert on the moon. The house looked more isolated than it did in the daytime.
“Every scary movie I ever seen happened in a house just like that,” Dodson said.
The animal control truck was too wide to make it around the fence posts and the exercise yard, so they parked it alongside the house with the archery target and the mountain bike with the bent fork. Dodson waited on the back patio with the gurney. He’d come when he was called. Isaiah walked off toward the barn wearing a backpack and carrying a ladder.
“Hurry up, you hear me?” Dodson said. “Don’t leave me out here forever.”
Skip was on Highway 58 heading into Barstow and he was already low on gas. He should have filled up in Fergus but he was distracted, thinking about Q Fuck meeting someone that knew him. He couldn’t figure out who that could be. Having no friends made the list of suspects really short. He called Bonnie.
“Let me get this straight,” Bonnie said. “This IQ guy is going to meet somebody who’s got info on you?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Like who? You don’t have any friends.”
“That’s why I’m calling, Bonnie, I want to know who it is.”
“Didn’t I tell you not to call me Bonnie?”
“Okay, Jimmy, what do you think’s going on?”
“Well, it’s not any of the people you worked for. They’d give you up to the police, not some ghetto detective. What about a housekeeper or a gardener?”
“You’ve been to my place, haven’t you?”
“One of your dog breeding people?”
“None of them know what I do for a living.”
“Then it’s a setup.”
“Setup how? I go to this bar and that asshole puts a gun to my head and forces me to talk? He couldn’t do that if he wanted to.”
Jimmy was quiet a moment and then he laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Skip said.
“This guy is pretty smart. No wonder they call him IQ.”
“Quit fucking around, Jimmy. What?”
“He’s not trying to get you to some bar. He’s trying to get you out of your house.”
Skip’s heart shot up to his throat. He yanked the wheel, the tires screeching, the suspension bucking as he drove over the median and made a U-turn across all four lanes of Highway 58.
Isaiah was eager to get this done, telling himself it was all about the case. He didn’t like thinking he wanted to hurt Skip. Take something from him. Make him feel the pain of losing a loved one. When he got to the barn, the dogs were barking and yowling and banging against their kennels. Attila was loose, his wet nose snuffling on the other side of the door. No way to shoot him without opening it and Harry had warned him the dog might not go down right away. Fifteen feet overhead was the bay door to the hayloft. On his last visit here, Isaiah had seen a big sliding bolt on the inside. Getting in that way meant removing the track that held up the door. Take out a bunch of heavy bolts and move the ladder from side to side. The easiest access was through one of the two skylights but the roof was steeply pitched. He’d have to wield the circular saw while he stood on what amounted to the side of a pyramid.
Isaiah went around to the long side of the barn and set the ladder against the wall. He already had on the climbing harness. It fit him like a diaper made of nylon straps. He climbed the ladder to the drip edge of the roof, set the backpack down in front of him, and took out a three-pronged grappling hook and a coil of climbing rope. With practiced ease, he lofted the hook over the top of the roof. He yanked, setting the hook against the roof cap. Then he tied the tail end of the rope to a metal loop on the climbing harness, put the backpack on, and rappelled up the roof to the skylight, holding himself there with an ascender clamp. He got out the circular saw and began cutting through the plexiglass, the sound huge in the desert quiet. He knew this was a desperate move, maybe a stupid move, but it was a stupid case. He never would have considered it if it wasn’t for Flaco-and now Bobby Grimes.