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  For Mom, Dad, Bea, and Henry

  Saving you is the only thing that will bring me peace for all the wrong I have done.

  That is my truth.

  —Jillian Peery, TigerLily

  Prologue

  Boyd parked his truck across the street from the school and waited for the bell to ring. It was ninety-plus degrees outside, the air in the cab as still and stifling as a closed tomb. Boyd’s fishing cap was dark with sweat; streams of it trickling down his face, getting in his eyes, and making his sunburn sting. To get some relief, he flapped the collar of his T-shirt and got a cloud of armpit steam so foul it made him laugh.

  Boyd had spent hours in the bathtub, half submerged in the gray, lukewarm water, seeing himself do it one way and then another. Jesus Christ, that’s so STUPID, think of something else, Boyd, come on, come ONNN, Jesus Christ, don’t be so STUPID.

  When he broke a front tooth he almost called the whole thing off. It happened in the kitchen while he was trying to make chloroform. You couldn’t buy the stuff unless you were a doctor or a laboratory but he’d found a recipe online: acetone and swimming pool chemicals. Putting it together was easy enough but he inhaled too much vapor and passed out, smashing his tooth on the sink as he slid to the floor.

  Later, when he stopped being dizzy, he ate some Chunky Monkey to soothe his bloody gums and wondered what he’d do if the girl wasn’t scared or laughed at him or thought it was a joke. He thought about going to the dentist but the need was a giant tapeworm twisting in his gut, frustrated, hungry, and blind. He was halfway through his second pint of Chunky when he started to get angry. So what if he was missing a tooth? He was already weird-looking. His mouth was a wavy line on his big round face, his other teeth jagged and coffee-stained, his black button eyes set too far apart. The rest of him was shaped like an egg.

  When he was eleven years old a wild girl named Yolanda called him Humpty Fucking Dumpty while she and her friends from the soccer team kicked him with their cleats until his legs were covered with green and purple bruises. Yolanda had warned him not to say hellooo, Yolanda but he did it anyway. It was sort of a trademark, something he did even though he knew it annoyed people. Hellooo, Ernesto. Hellooo, Laquisha. Hellooo, Mr. Bleakerman.

  Boyd still annoyed people. On league night he’d stand at the line staring at the pins like he was trying to remember what they were while the whole team groaned and said Boyd, Nick telling him to hurry up, asshole. When he finally rolled the ball, he held on to it too long so it flew up in the air and bounced down the lane, dropping into the gutter or taking out the six pin. Then he’d yell FUUUCK and stomp back to his seat with his fists clenched at his side, muttering Come on, Boyd, COME ONNN like all he had to do was bear down, Nick saying What were you aiming at, numb nuts, the fucking sky? That always got a laugh.

  The bell rang. Boyd played the bongos on the steering wheel and watched the kids pour out of the building, pulling on their backpacks, poking at their phones, messing with each other, screeching like monkeys. Akeem! Over here, dude! Oh my God, that’s like crazy! Text me, okay? Don’t forget! The energy coming off them was thrilling at first but then it made him angry and sad. None of the girls fit the bill. They were too old or too big or too grown-up looking. Come on, come ONNN, there’s got to be SOMEBODY. And then he saw her. Pretty and skinny, her hair in a long braid that went down below her waist, her laugh like the wind chime on his grandmother’s front porch, the boys punching each other to get her attention.

  Somebody called her. “Carmela! Carmela! We’re going now, okay?”

  Her name was Carmela.

  Boyd went back to his shitty apartment and took a bath. He floated in the water like a corpse and imagined the panic in her eyes when she woke up in the dark and felt the duct tape stretched over her mouth and heard his hot breath whistling through the space where his tooth used to be and saw the black button eyes, vicious and glittering.

  Hellooo, Carmela.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Unlicensed and Underground

  July 2013

  Isaiah’s crib looked like every other house on the block except the lawn was cut even, the paint was fresh, and the entrance was a little unusual. The security screen was made from the same heavy-duty mesh they used to cage in crackheads and bank robbers at the Long Beach police station. The front door was covered with a thin walnut veneer but underneath was a twenty-gauge steel core set in a cold steel frame with a pick-proof, bump-proof, drill-proof Medeco Double Cylinder High Security Maxum Deadbolt. You’d need some serious power tools to get past all that and even if you did there was no telling what you’d be into. Word was, the place was booby-trapped. A cherry eight-year-old Audi S4 was parked in the driveway. It was a small, plain car in dark gray with a big V8 and sports suspension. The neighborhood kids were always yelling at Isaiah to put some rims on that whip.

  Isaiah was in the living room, reading emails off his MacBook and drinking his second espresso, when he heard the car alarm go off. He snatched the collapsible baton off the coffee table, went to the front door, and opened it. Deronda was leaning her world-class badonk against the hood, smothering a headlight and part of the grill. She wasn’t quite a Big Girl but damn close in her boy shorts and pink tube top two sizes too small. She was pretending to sulk, sighing and sighing again while she frowned at the sparkly things on her ice-blue nails. Isaiah chirped off the alarm, one hand shading his eyes from the afternoon glare.

  “No, I didn’t forget your number,” he said, “and I wasn’t going to call you.”

  “Ever?” Deronda said.

  “You’re looking for a baby daddy and you know that’s not me.”

  “You don’t know what I’m looking for and even if you did it wouldn’t be you.” Except she was shopping around for somebody who could pay a few bills, and Isaiah would do just fine. Yeah, okay, he did make her uneasy, he made everybody uneasy, checking you out like he knew you were fronting and wanting to know why. He looked okay, not ugly, but you’d hardly notice him at a club or a party. Six feet tall, rail thin, no chain, no studs in his ears, a watch the color of an aluminum pan, and if he was inked up it was nowhere she could see. The last time she’d run into him he was wearing what he wore now: a light-blue, short-sleeve shirt, jeans, and Timberlands. She liked his eyes. They were almond shaped and had long lashes like a girl’s. “You not gonna invite me in?” she said. “I walked all the way over here from my mama’s house.”

  “Stop lying,” he said. “Wherever you came from you didn’t walk.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your mama lives on the other side of Magnolia. Are you telling me you walked seven miles in the heat of the day in flip-flops with all those bunions growing out of your feet? Teesha dropped you off.”

  “You think you know so much. Could have been anybody dropped me off.”

  “Your mama’s at work, Nona’s at work, Ira still has that cast on his leg, and DeShawn lost his license behind that DUI. I saw his car in the impound yard, the white Nissan with the front stoved in. There’s nobody left in your world but Teesha.”

  “Just because Ira got a cast on his leg don’t mean he can’t drive.”

  Isaiah leaned against the
doorway. “I thought you said you walked.”

  “I did walk,” Deronda said, “just, you know, like part of the way and then somebody else came and I—” Deronda slid off the hood and stamped her foot. “Dang, Isaiah!” she said. “Why you always gotta fuck with people? I came over here to be sociable, aight? What’s the damn difference how I got here?”

  It made no difference at all but he couldn’t help seeing what he saw. Things different or things not right or out of place or in place when they shouldn’t be or not in sync with the words that came with them.

  “Well?” Deronda said. “You gonna make me stand out here and get heatstroke or invite me in and pour me a cocktail? You never know, something good might happen.”

  Deronda looked down at her ankle, turning it to one side like something was stuck to it, probably wondering where Isaiah’s eyes were. On her dark chocolate thigh gleaming in the California sunshine or her dark chocolate titties trying their best to escape over that tube top. Isaiah looked away, uncomfortable deciding for the both of them what would happen next. She wasn’t his type, not that he had one. Most of his love life was curiosity sex. A girl intrigued by the low-key brother who was so smart people said he was scary. That hadn’t happened in a while. He opened the screen.

  “Well, come on then,” he said.

  Isaiah sat in his easy chair rereading his emails. He was hoping he’d missed something. He needed a payday case but nothing here was coming close.

  Hola Senor Quintabe

  I am a frend of Benito. He tell me you are trusted. A man from my work is saying blackmail to me. He say if I dont give him money he will tell INS I no have green card. My son cannot stay for his school. Can you do something to help me?

  Dear Mr. Quintabe.

  Late at night while I am asleep in my bed, a man comes in and fondles my private areas. I know this for a fact because in the morning my nightgown is all bunched up and I have a funny feeling down there. Please don’t tell anyone as I have been ridiculed about my suspicions before. Can you come over Sunday after church?

  Isaiah didn’t have a website, a Facebook page, or a Twitter account but people found him anyway. His priority was local cases where the police could not or would not get involved. He had more work than he could handle but many of his clients paid for his services with a sweet potato pie or cleaning his yard or one brand-new radial tire if they paid him at all. A client that could pay his per diem gave him enough income to support himself and helped him pay Flaco’s expenses.

  “Dang,” Deronda said, looking into the fridge at the FIJI Water and cranberry juice. “You ain’ got nothing to drink?”

  “Just what’s there,” Isaiah said from the living room.

  There was nothing to snack on either. Deronda might have thrown something together if she knew a recipe for plain yogurt, some plums, a bag of trail mix with no M&M’s, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, bread with birdseed stuck to the outside, and Cage Free Eggs, whatever the fuck those were. There was a complicated machine on the counter. Stainless steel, big as a big microwave with handles and buttons and a double spigot over a grill like a soda machine. A tiny coffee cup and a little metal pitcher were set on the grill. “Is this your coffee machine?” she said.

  “Espresso.”

  “You need a bigger cup.”

  Isaiah kept reading the emails and tried not to think about Deronda, ripe and juicy as one of those plums. Reluctantly, he kept his Diesels zipped up. Not an easy decision. If he’d had sex with her he’d come home one night to find her three-year-old son tearing up the place while she watched Idol and ate the last few pieces of Alejandro fried to a crispy golden brown. When he told her to keep her clothes on she wasn’t so much put out as she was surprised.

  “You don’t know what you missing,” Deronda said, “I be doing some crazy shit.”

  Dear Mr. Quintabe.

  My daughter dint come home for two weeks. I think she is gone with a man named Olen Waters who is to old for her. She need to be took away from him before its too late. Could you get her plese? I can pay not much.

  Dear Mr. Quintabe

  Two months ago my beautiful son Jerome was shot to death in his own bed. The police said they don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest even though everybody knows his wife Claudia was the one that pulled the trigger. I want to hire you, Mr. Quintabe. I want you to bring that bitch to justice.

  The living room was cool and dim, soft bands of sunlight and shadow coming through the burglar bars, the place so clean there weren’t even dust motes in the air. Isaiah didn’t look up as Deronda padded barefoot out of the open kitchen and across the polished cement floor. It had come out differently than he’d anticipated but he liked it. Amorphous shapes of gray and green like a satellite map of the rain forest. Deronda plunked down on the sofa across from him and put her feet on the coffee table. Strewn across the glass were car keys, a cell phone, a Harvard cap, and the collapsible baton.

  Deronda spotted a black box under the table. “What’s that thing?” she said, like she suspected a booby trap.

  “Subwoofer and get your feet off of my coffee table.”

  “Who went to Harvard?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Can I watch TV?”

  “Do you see a TV?”

  “You ain’t got no PlayStation?”

  “No, I don’t have a PlayStation.”

  “You need some more furniture.”

  Aside from the burgundy leather sofa and armchair, there was the chrome and glass coffee table, a lacquered wicker ottoman, a cherry wood end table, and an antique-looking, long-necked reading lamp. That was it unless you counted the floor-to-ceiling bookcase that took up an entire wall. There was a huge collection of LPs and CDs lined up neat as bar codes and an elaborate stereo; Coltrane’s sax braying from the speakers, angry and hoarse.

  “Can I put another record on?” Deronda said, wincing like she was listening to the garbage disposal.

  “No.”

  Isaiah kept his head down and read another email. Deronda was going to ask him something. He’d sensed it as soon as he let her in, looking at him like a baby daddy wasn’t all she needed. Passing on the sex had taken away her opening and now he could hear her cheeks squeaking on the sofa as she squirmed around trying to pick a moment. Maybe if he ignored her long enough she’d give up.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Could you maybe like, you know, hook me up?”

  “Hook you up with who?”

  “Blasé. You all tight with him and everything.” She waited a moment before saying, “IQ.”

  An article had appeared in The Scene magazine titled:

  IQ

  ISAIAH QUINTABE IS UNLICENSED AND UNDAGROUND.

  The article recounted a number of neighborhood cases but the one that made the tabloids was the simplest to solve. It involved the R&B singer Blasé. During a party someone had stolen his camera, which contained a video of him bent over an ironing board getting pounded from behind by his live-in keyboard player. If the tape got out there’d be more than a scandal. Blasé promoted himself as a heterosexual sex symbol. The cover art on his last album, Can I Witness to Your Thickness, showed Blasé in a thong and priest’s collar leading a choir composed of three women in crazy blond wigs and shorty choir robes, their backsides bulging like babies were in there. Blasé received a note that said: My demands will soon follow. Obey them or your transgressions will be revealed and your career will be over.

  “The language,” Isaiah said. “Your transgressions will be revealed. It’s biblical. Were any of your guests religious?”

  “Heavens no,” Blasé said. He took a deep breath. “But my mother is.”

  Blasé’s mother was a fundamentalist Baptist from a small town in Georgia. When Isaiah confronted her, she told him she was going to use Blasé’s camera to take video of the rose garden and got the surprise of her life. After resting and drinking tea made from Valerian root she
decided to blackmail her son into abandoning his life of sin and iniquity.

  “I am who I am, Mother,” Blasé said. “But if I can’t accept myself, there’s no reason you should.”

  Blasé was grateful to Isaiah for bringing him to that moment but Isaiah didn’t know what he’d done besides read a note. Blasé came out on The Shonda Simmons Show. His record sales suffered but the people who bought them also bought the sex tape available online for $39.95, half the profits going to his mother’s church.

  “I need Blasé to help me with my career,” Deronda said. “He might be gay but he’s a celebrity and all I need is a leg up. I mean like, once I’m circulatin’ in that uppa level and the shot callers can check out my style up close and personal? I’m off to the big time.”

  Isaiah could feel Deronda looking at him, waiting for him to say it’s only a matter of time or don’t give up or some other such nonsense, but he kept his eyes glued to the MacBook. Deronda sulked, this time not pretending. “I shoulda been gone from here a long time ago, much star quality as I got,” she said. “I’m an up-and-comer, you know what I’m sayin’? I was born to be a celebrity. I should have the spotlight all over me.”

  “Spotlight all over you—for what?” Isaiah said.

  “What do you mean for what? That Kardashian girl’s booty could fit inside my booty and you talking about for what. You know she made thirty million last year?”

  Isaiah knew other girls who felt that way. Somehow believing a big booty was like owning real estate or having a college degree, something you could put on a job application.

  Alejandro came bobbing and pecking his way out of the hall making little buck-buck sounds and giving Deronda the beady red eye. Alarmed, Deronda lifted her feet off the floor. “You let that thing just walk around in here?” she said.