TWELVE
Ike parallel-parked his truck between a bright-pink scooter and a car that was so small he could have probably picked it up with one hand. A streetlamp with a busted bulb towered over them.
"This my first time here," Buddy Lee said.
"I came here once for the housewarming. Right after it … happened, Mya was talking about us coming over and cleaning the place up. Two months later and all we did was talk," Ike said.
The housewarming. Another night that ended in yelling and slammed doors. He opened his door and Buddy Lee soon followed. Civilly engineered oak trees dotted the sidewalk at twenty-foot intervals. They chased the streetlamps down the sidewalk. Bike racks popped up every few feet like iron hedges. Ike and Buddy Lee walked side by side as they headed to the town house.
"Things up here done changed a lot," Ike said.
"Oh yeah?" Buddy Lee said.
"Back in the day there used to be this ol' boy who ran a lot of product through this part of town. I used to run with a crew back home who bought from him. When we used to ride through here to re-up, every other building was a crack house. Base heads wandering up and down the street like zombies. Offering to have their girl suck your dick for a ten-dollar rock. If times got really tight, they'd offer to do it themselves. I come through one time doing a favor for that ol' boy. Sprayed this whole street up with an AK, then carried my ass back to Red Hill."
"Who was you after?" Buddy Lee asked.
"I don't even remember. I think somebody was trying to push up on him. Or maybe they stepped on his homeboys' shoes over at the Satellite bar and he had me come through to correct them. I don't know. I did a lot of dumb shit back then for street cred. When I went inside I learned the hard way street cred don't mean shit," Ike said.
"I think I could give you a run for your money in the dumb-shit department. My last time around the mulberry bush I took a fall that wasn't mine to take," Buddy Lee said.
"For real?" Ike asked.
"Yeah. My brother, my half brother Deak, and me got picked up with a trunk full of ice. We was moving it for a fella named Chuly Pettigrew. Deak didn't have a record. Mine was long enough to wrap up a mummy. I wanted Deak to stay clean. He wasn't built for that kind of life. They would have eaten him alive inside. I did my best to make sure it was his first and last run. So I kept my mouth shut about Chuly, took the blame for Deak, and got three to five years. Did the full five. After I went away Deak went out west and got a job on a natural gas crew. Far as I know he's still there."
"Huh," Ike said.
"What?"
"You had a trunk full of meth and you only got five years? If you had looked like me, they would have put you under the jail for moving that much weight. I got friends who got three to five for holding weed. Weed," Ike said.
"I don't know about that," Buddy Lee mumbled.
"I do. This is the place," Ike said. He'd stopped in front of a two-story town house with slat-board siding stained a deep burgundy. The front steps were painted a sleepy cream color. A large black ceramic planter sat at the base of the steps. It was decorated with the initials IR & DJ. The letters were fat and wide and painted white. Like they had been drawn on by hand. Ike pulled the key out of his pocket and opened the door.
They stepped into a small foyer that was decorated in understated blues and whites. An umbrella container sat to their left next to a coatrack carved out of a large piece of what appeared to be driftwood. A lack of movement inside the house had allowed a pall to settle over the entire structure. The air had a stale, spoiled scent. A thin layer of dust covered most of the exposed surfaces. Death had laid his cold hand on this place and stilled its heart.
The living room continued the understated motif. A sectional couch dominated the space. A flat-screen TV was mounted on the wall facing the couch. To their right, pictures detailed various moments of Isiah and Derek's life together. Trips they had taken, parties they had attended. Quiet candid moments. Pictures of the two of them holding Arianna as a newborn. The three of them wearing paper pirate hats at a restaurant. A black-and-white picture of Arianna blowing on a dandelion. A picture of the three of them and Arianna holding a poster with the word "DEED" written on it in cartoonishly large letters. Derek and Isiah were grinning from ear to ear. Arianna appeared nonplussed.
The photos were a mosaic showing the evolution of their journey together.
"They look happy," Ike said.
"Yeah. They do," Buddy Lee said. He pointed at the picture of the comical deed.
"They must have paid the house off. Derek told me one day he was gonna have a house, not a trailer. Goddamn if he didn't do it," Buddy Lee said.
He clapped his hands hard. A crack echoed through the house.
"Where should we start?" Buddy Lee asked.
"I guess we should split up maybe? I'll go check the bedroom, and I think Isiah had an office in the back. I remember him saying they had closed in the back porch. You wanna check around in here?" Ike said.
"Yeah, that's cool. I'll just go through anything that has a drawer pull on it," Buddy Lee said.
"Alright. Holler if you find something," Ike said. He walked through the living room and down a short hall. Buddy Lee started with an end table that sat next to the sectional. It was full of junk mail and odds and ends. He moved on to a coffee table with two drawers on each end. He thought that was a strange design choice, but what did he know? He used milk crates for furniture. A multitude of remotes were in one drawer. The other drawer held a few magazines. Buddy Lee closed the drawer and studied the wall of pictures. He hadn't noticed an accent table that was sitting under the pictures. There were two tiny book-shaped picture frames sitting on the table. He picked one of them up and felt his chest heave. It was a copy of the picture he kept in his wallet. The other frame showed a young Black boy and a man that was a much younger Ike. The boy was on Ike's shoulders. Buddy Lee put the frame back on the table. Next to this picture was a photo he hadn't seen in over twenty years.
It was Christine and Derek. They were sitting on the steps of the trailer the three of them had shared before Buddy Lee got himself locked up the last time. Christine was as beautiful as a sunset. Auburn hair falling down her back like a waterfall. Big cornflower-blue eyes. That dimple in her chin that had driven him crazy all those years ago when they had first met. He'd asked her to dance at a bonfire and she had said no. Not in a cruel or haughty way. Just a simple, succinct, I-can't-be-bothered fashion. He'd gone and found a handful of wildflowers just inside the tree line. He returned to the log she and her friends had been sitting on and got down on one knee.
"Dance with me. Just one dance and I'll never bother you again for the rest of your life."
"Is that a promise?"
"Scout's honor."
"You don't look like much of a scout."
"And you look like the prettiest woman on God's green earth. C'mon, one dance. I won't even try and dip you."
She had laughed at that. A full, throaty laugh as bright and sweet as summer itself. They had danced. They had kissed. They had gone down a long dirt lane in his Camaro and found paradise under a harvest moon. For a few years it had been magic. But magic was just sleight of hand, and eventually the magician's assistant had seen every trick. By the time he'd done his second stint inside, Christine had seen enough. He didn't begrudge her moving on and marrying that rich prick. Hell, he would have divorced him, too. That was understandable. But the way she erased Derek from her life was just wrong. He knew he wasn't much of a father, but what kind of mother did that to her own child?
Buddy Lee removed the picture from the frame and put it in his back pocket. He moved on to the kitchen. Buddy Lee was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of equipment that was crammed into this space. The decor in here had an old-school Americana vibe. Black-and-white-checkered floors. Stainless-steel appliances. Black cabinets with granite countertops. Buddy Lee figured those countertops had to be granite to hold all the cooking utensils and machinery Derek had acquired over the years. Buddy Lee didn't know what half of this shit did, but he knew his son had probably mastered all of it. Derek had loved to cook ever since he'd first seen his grandmother stirring cake batter. Buddy Lee's cousin Sam had been a hell of a cook, too. Culinary skills ran in the Jenkins family. It had just leapfrogged over Buddy Lee and landed on Derek. Derek's affinity for cooking had never struck Buddy Lee as gay, per se. It was just something he was good at. Even when they argued—which wasn't often, because, if he was being honest, he didn't see Derek that much—he'd never thrown any shade at him for being a chef. Not that he deserved a medal for that. He'd said plenty of other shit that he regretted. It was just too bad it took Derek dying for him to realize it.
Buddy Lee went through the cabinets checking sugar dishes and saucepans with tops. He wasn't surprised when he found some weed. A lot of people hid their stash in the kitchen. He'd robbed enough houses to say it wasn't an anomaly. There was nothing in the drawers except knives, forks, and spoons. Buddy Lee put one hand on his hip and rubbed his forehead with the other.
What was he doing? This was a waste of time. It wasn't like he was going to find a notebook with the girl's name, the name of the person who killed his son, and an address where he could find them. What he should do is go back and talk to that kid at the caterer's. Squeeze the name of the guy who had the party out of him like an apple caught in a vise. Buddy Lee placed his hand on his forehead. The ice maker made a horrific sound before it dropped a load down the chute into the holding container. Buddy Lee thought it sounded like maracas. He took a step toward it. There was a notepad on the fridge attached with a magnet. Buddy Lee grabbed it. There was a doodle on the first page of the notepad. A fairly sophisticated drawing of a pair of shoes, then an arrow, then what he supposed was a piece of fruit followed by an exclamation point. At the bottom of the page there were a series of numbers, then a space and then another set of numbers and an exclamation point.