Bobby partied at Young Snap’s mansion in upstate New York. The place had the same square footage as a football field and you could take a piss every day for three weeks and never be in the same bathroom. Bobby estimated a family of four could survive just eating the fish in Snap’s private lake. Bobby got a backstage pass at a Layla concert and was staying in the same hotel. Aside from the usual battalion of bodyguards and makeup artists, the icon’s entourage included a laundress, a food taster, a Buddhist monk, and a Botox technician. Somebody told Bobby her Labradoodle had its own suite.
Bobby was invited to the Monaco Grand Prix by one of Cal’s sponsors. GKnight and his girlfriend Nia were there and Bobby spent the weekend on their luxury yacht, the Colossus. You didn’t board the boat, you landed on it like an island. Bobby thought if you put a few cannons on the decks and loaded up some Tomahawks you could send the Colossus to the Persian Gulf. No way he was giving all that up and he’d commit suicide before he went back to the ramen diet. If he was anything he was a survivor.
“I am not going down,” Bobby said.
“What?” Hegan said. “Who’s not going down?”
“Bobby Grimes,” Bobby said. “Bobby Grimes is not going down.”
After dropping Dodson off, Isaiah went home. He swept the driveway, watered the front lawn, and mowed the grass in the back. He let Alejandro out of the garage, the bird pecking at insects fleeing the mower blades. After, he let the bird snoop around in the house while he made some soup and ate it standing at the counter.
He thought about Bobby Grimes. Bobby needed Cal to make an album, that was clear. He was more desperate than you’d expect but there was no question his anger and frustration were real. Charles and Bug. It was obvious they hated Cal but their livelihood depended on him. Killing Cal was killing the goose that laid the golden records. Without Cal they were back on the streets.
The question mark was Anthony. He was the only one who defended Noelle and he didn’t seem to care about his job, the album, or Cal for that matter. But if that was his attitude, why didn’t he leave? He could get a job somewhere else. There had to be some other reason that was keeping him around and that would explain his impatience. Anthony wasn’t interested in the next thing on Cal’s agenda. He was trying to finish. To be done. Anthony wanted everything to be over.
All that made sense but Isaiah was uneasy. He had a feeling he was on the wrong track but so far there weren’t any other tracks to be on. And there was something else flitting around the edges of his awareness like one of those dragonflies in the backyard. There and gone, there and gone. If only it would stay still. It was the case-breaker, he could feel it.
And it was something he already knew.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Is That You?
September 2005
It was irritating, Isaiah making him guess what the job was. No doubt the boy was feeling foolish about the Pet City score and was trying to get some leverage back. Kinkee played that game too, knowing you were down to kibbles and bits and making you ask when the reup was happening. Then he got to tell you: “That’s some classified shit, nigga, above your lowly-ass pay grade, you feel me? I’ll let you know when I let you know.”
Dodson tried to hold out but by the time they got on the 710 he couldn’t stand it anymore. “What is it?” he said.
“A beauty shop,” Isaiah said, victorious.
“How come you didn’t take me with you when you cased it?”
“Didn’t need to. It’s perfect.”
“I don’t know it’s perfect and what can you steal from a beauty shop?”
Isaiah told him what he’d found on the Ruby’s Real Beauty website. Ruby’s stocked the largest, most complete inventory of human hair extensions in the South Bay area. The most highly prized were Virgin Remy.
“Virgin because the girl still had her cherry?” Dodson said.
“No. Virgin because the hair wasn’t chemically treated,” Isaiah said.
“What’s Remy mean?”
“It means the hair was carefully cut so the cuticles and roots stayed in the same direction. Otherwise, they mow it down like weeds and throw it in a bin.”
Isaiah went on explaining like a college professor talking to a not very bright middle school student: A Brazilian-weft Virgin Remy human-hair single-drawn superior-grade twenty-eight-inch naturally curly extension from a woman in São Felipe whose hair was half the family’s income retailed at Ruby’s for four hundred and thirty-four dollars. A Russian Virgin Remy human-hair superior-grade double-drawn naturally straight twenty-inch extension from a teenager in Volgograd who wanted a new pair of boots was five hundred and nineteen dollars.
“So that’s what you can steal from a beauty shop,” Isaiah said. “Anything else you want to know?”
As they got out of the Explorer behind Ruby’s, Dodson said, “This time try and handle your shit.”
The battering ram took the door out no problem. The siren was as loud as Pet City’s but the burglars wore noise-suppression headphones like the pit crews at NASCAR. They didn’t block the sound out completely but at least your head didn’t explode. Isaiah was overanxious but it was an easier score. All the Virgin Remy extensions were on the same set of shelves and he’d replaced the trash bags with collapsible hampers. They were lightweight and stayed open by themselves and you could load them with two hands.
“Four minutes,” Isaiah said as they drove away. “We were in and out in four minutes. What’d you think of the hampers? Made a difference, didn’t it? The heat’s still bothering me and the glasses keep steaming up, I’ve got to fix that. Four minutes.”
Dodson could feel the boy’s head swelling, probably thinking he was a man now. That was all right, let him believe it if he wanted to. The main thing was this burglary shit was working out. If they kept it going he could quit the crack business, tell Kinkee to go fuck himself, and be a man of leisure.
A customer came in, the only one in the last couple of hours. The man had the shakes and was looking around like he’d lost a child at the county fair. He was a regular, somewhere between forty and sixty, his face sagging like Auntie May’s basset hound, his eyes yellow and bloodshot from seeing too much of his own life. He was a typical customer these days, older and a longtime addict. Youngsters were staying away from crack. They’d seen too many crackheads wandering the streets all stank-ass nasty, groveling for change and trying to sell you a toaster oven with the power cord cut off. Crackheads weren’t cool and if you wanted kids to stay away from something, uncoolness was all it took.
Which was a problem for Dodson. Without new people getting on the pipe he was competing with every other dealer on the block for the same dwindling pool of dope fiends. The only way to make a buck was repeat business. Fiends shopped around. To make them come back you had to have the good shit. Dodson’s shit was hit or miss and today was a miss. To make the same money he’d have to stay longer, serving it up to the fiends who were too sick and desperate to walk six blocks and buy from the Locos. It was Kinkee’s fault. He was Dodson’s supplier and a burly surly Ice Cube clone who scowled even when he smiled and treated everybody except Michael Stokely like an intruder. Kinkee didn’t weigh the cocaine before he cooked it into crack and cut it with too much baking soda, always in his favor. To make up for it, he added what he called flavorings: vodka, furniture polish, bleach, laundry detergent, kitchen cleaner, whatever he had around. Dodson felt bad for the crackheads. “The fuck you put all that shit in there for?” he said. “You trying to get ’em high or kill ’em off?” Kinkee never answered.