“Well,” Ed said, standing up, “that’s a very interesting theory but unfortunately it’s pure speculation and if I were you I’d leave the detective work to me. Now I’ve got a really busy schedule today and-”
“Room 605,” Isaiah said.
“605?” Ed said.
“That’s the room you hid the presents in and why nobody saw you. It’s right across the hall from Brenda’s room and it’s always vacant because it’s next to that noisy elevator. You used it again today, didn’t you? Want some advice? Take a shower when you’re done. Both of you smell like the lubricant on a condom.”
“Oh my God,” Karen said, sniffing her hands.
Ed did the gorilla pose. Leaning forward, arms straight down, palms flat on the desk. “You can spin all the theories you want but you’ve got no proof, no witnesses, no nothing.”
“Good, Ed,” Karen said. “Way to not give it away.”
“I talked to a housekeeper,” Isaiah said. “She said everybody knows about the stealing and she said you’ve done it before.”
Miss Myra looked at him. What housekeeper?
“That’s a bald-faced lie,” Ed said, “and I know who told you that. That bitch Esmeralda. Woman’s got it in for me but I couldn’t tell you why.”
“You call her Chiquita Banana,” Karen said. “Maybe that’s why.”
“Only once or twice and if she thinks management’s gonna take her word over mine-”
“I’d take her word over yours,” Karen said. “God, you’re an idiot. How I let you talk me into something like this I’ll never know.”
“Karen, I’m handling this.”
“Shut up, Ed, for God’s sake shut up.” Ed started to reply but Karen looked at him hard enough to break his jaw. She pushed the hair out of her eyes, her face shinier and redder than before. “I’m really really sorry,” she said. “Is there any possible chance we could make this go away? We’ll do anything you say.”
“What do you think, Miss Myra?” Isaiah said. Miss Myra looked at Isaiah like he’d sprouted wings.
“I suppose that would be all right,” she said.
“I only slept with Ed because I was bored,” Karen said. “You believe me, don’t you?”
Brenda was thrilled. She got almost all her presents back and three hundred dollars for the ones that were missing. As a thankyou, she baked Isaiah some chocolate chip cookies that Miss Myra warned him not to eat.
“This young man is special,” Miss Myra told her best friend, Elaine. “This young man has a gift.”
Elaine and Arthur Steadman were in debt and too proud to ask their grown children for help. They turned to Don Wheeler, a debt resolution specialist who advertised on bus benches and the radio. He said they needed to sign some documents giving him authorization to act on their behalf but the documents turned out to be a grant deed transferring ownership of their house to Wheeler.
“I feel like a damn fool,” Arthur said. “Had the papers notarized and everything. We’ve been in this house for forty-two years.”
“When did you sign them?” Isaiah said.
“Sign the papers? On Friday, around seven or so. Why?”
Isaiah knew Wheeler couldn’t file the documents at the county recorder until Monday. It took him six minutes on the nose to break into Wheeler’s house, take the documents, destroy his computers, and leave the door open so the neighborhood kids could scavenge the place. Arthur cried when he got the documents back. He told Burton Stanley about Isaiah and Burton told his sister Anita and Anita told her fiancé, Tudor.
Isaiah met Tudor at the Coffee Cup. He was in his fifties, immaculate, precise pencil mustache, manicured nails, and gold Rolex thick as a hockey puck. Before he sat down he dusted the seat off with a napkin.
“Anita’s daughter got involved with a drug dealer and she’s run off with him,” Tudor said. “Anita’s very upset. She called the police but they said they don’t go looking for runaways, they usually come home on their own.”
“Why’d she run off?” Isaiah said.
“Darcy and I had an argument so naturally it’s my fault. Girl’s completely out of control and spoiled rotten and I told her so. Then she starts talking back to me, calling me names, calling her mother names, and I slapped her. A good one too. She deserved it. Any grown man would have done the same thing.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Four, five days, something like that.”
“Got a picture?”
“I can get you one.”
“The dealer, what does he look like?”
“What does he look like? He’s young, bald, wears a big white T-shirt and a do-rag. That narrow it down for you?”
“Do you know his name?”
“Shake. Do you believe that? His name is Shake. Oh here’s something for you. Shake is not really a drug dealer even though he deals drugs. He’s got a few videos on YouTube so of course that qualifies him as a rap artist. How’s that for originality? And you know what I said to him? Oh you’re an artist? An artist like who? Billie Holiday? Wynton Marsalis? John Lee Hooker? Art lasts through the ages and a hundred years from now folks will have forgotten all about you and your Simple Simon rhymes but they’ll still be grooving on Billie and John Lee. What we were talking about?”
“Shake. How to identify him.”
“Well, let me see. He’s got a tattoo on his forearm, I saw it when he was drinking my orange juice straight out of the box. It was a crown, like a king’s crown and some letters, CRR or CMM, something like that. And what else? Some numbers. Nineteen hundred?”
“The crown is for Prince Street,” Isaiah said, “and it’s seventeen hundred. That’s the block number. The letters are CHH. For Crip Headhunters.”
“I just remembered,” Tudor said. “There were some initials too. BK. Yes, I’m sure about that. BK. That should narrow it down some, don’t you think?”
“BK means Blood killer,” Isaiah said. “Crips and Bloods are enemies.”
“Good Lord, what’s this world coming to?” Tudor said. “I grew up the hard way myself but youngsters these days are another breed altogether. Blood killer. When I was a kid we didn’t have to kill somebody to settle a score. We did it one on one, man to man, fist to fist. Any fool can pull a trigger. And there was none of this beatdown nonsense. Most cowardly thing I ever heard of. Five or six guys beating up on one. Is that what passes for badass these days? That’s punk behavior if you ask me. You can’t take care of your business by yourself, you shouldn’t be on the street in the first place.”
They heard a horn honk. They could see Anita sitting in Tudor’s snow-white Range Rover tapping her snow-white nails on the windowsill. She held her head high like an Egyptian queen if Egyptian queens chewed gum, wore sunglasses with rhinestones on them, and styled their hair in elaborate blond curls.
“Anita,” Tudor said. “She’ll be wanting to know when you’re going to start, which I’m hoping is immediately.”
Isaiah didn’t like Tudor. He was arrogant, not asking for help, just assuming Isaiah would do his bidding, and not even polite about it. And he didn’t like the man’s pinkie ring or the metallic blue suit that fit him too good to be off the rack or the Rolex watch. A gold Yacht-Master, the same one Dodson had wanted. Nineteen thousand dollars and change. “I’m not doing this for free,” Isaiah said.
“I guess I misunderstood,” Tudor said. “I thought you did these kinds of things as a community service.”
“Sometimes I do.”
“But not with me, is that it?” Tudor said, flicking some imaginary lint off his lapel. “All right, young man, what do you intend to charge me for your services?”