by Ace Atkins
At 3, it’s dark as hell from that storm rollin’ in off the Gulf, and you see all his boys sittin’ in rockin’ chairs on this wide porch like gunfighters from old movies. Drinkin’ Cristal and forties and listenin’ to the music comin’ from open windows. Thin curtains ruffle like ghosts. The thunder breaks above your head, and fat little salty drops that you imagine come from around Mexico slap you in the eyes as you walk to the porch. You don’t pay them niggas no mind. Cash called you. This his invite and you welcome as hell. It’s payday and you got to smile.
This fat ole oak’s roots has cracked open the sidewalk like ripped skin and you almost trip while opening up the gate to Cash’s place. The floors inside are wood and bleached and buffed smooth. Cash has lined the walls in blue and red neon, his gold records behind a long glass case lit up with little lights. The rest of the house is dark and smells like the inside of this old shoebox where your grandmamma used to keep her needles. The floor tilts slightly to the left, and in the dark, the thunder coming again, you follow the slant to that back room where you find Cash.
He ain’t wearin’ no shirt and he’s sweating with the windows open and playing poker with three women and some young white dude. Cash smiles a silver mouth. The red tattoo on his big chest muscles seems to beat when he flex up. The white dude don’t look right, sweat rings under his shirt, his tie hangin’ loose.
Two of the women are black. One’s white. One of the black girls is naked as hell and her fat old titties lay over a pile of money that Cash has been tossin’ to her.
“How ’bout a hundred for them li’l ole panties,” he say when you walk in.
The girl shake her head and ask for a thousand.
“Girl, that trap ain’t worth fifty,” Cash say, and laugh, taking a sip of champagne in a jelly jar and grabbing some potato chips. The music is all around you and low. Some raps and sounds you ain’t never heard and you recognize the voice as Dio’s and you wonder about that.
Cash introduces you to the white dude. Some man from L.A. who’s workin’ on distribution, and the man about shits on himself when he hears your name. He palms you off a card and smiles a little too wide to be real.
You and Cash wander out back, past a couple women in bikinis playin’ with his pit bull, Jimmy, that he uses in all his videos. They rubbin’ the dog’s stomach and cuttin’ his toenails.
Y’all walk into a maze of bushes, some ole hedges cut higher than you and Cash are tall and you wander through the cuts and turns as he tell you about some Greek man and a freak that had the head of a bull.
“Yeah, boy,” he say. “I like that history shit. You know what the Civil War is?”
You nod. But you don’t.
“Nigga, don’t lie. You know some peckerwood white folks used to keep us like hogs, right, and there was a big war ’cause of it. Don’t be all ignorant. Learn to read.”
You look at him. He is open and easy and you see all the holes and cracks that run from his face to his heart. The sky opens and begins to rain but Cash is drunk and shoeless and you don’t give two shits. He unzips his pants, whips out his dick, and starts pissin’ on the shrubs.
“Reason I’m sayin’ that,” he says, while you look away so he don’t think you a sissy. You notice the yellow Christmas lights clicking and burning off some balcony on his purple house. “Reason why is ’cause the man who was the peckerwood president of the Confederacy or some shit died in my house. My house, nigga. Ain’t that a trip? Wonder what that boy would think with the Red Hat crew all up in it?”
You nod and mumble you understand as you twist again into the hedge. When you look back up, the house is gone. Cash stumbles on and pulls the black do-rag from his bald head to wipe his armpits. He hands you a champagne bottle and it’s warm as piss. You don’t drink and he don’t notice.
“You made up your mind?” Cash asks.
You fold your arms inside each other. “I want three records. Want $500,000 up front.”
“That ain’t the way it work, kid.”
“Don’t try and jack me, Cash,” you say. You put some force behind his name. “You get that back in six months. And I want the house too. Want you to buy it outright from Teddy.”
“Thought you said it was yours.”
“You know what’s up. Don’t try to pull my dick.”
You want to be free of Teddy and Malcolm and that white dude Travers. You didn’t make Teddy’s play. Ain’t no reason to try and save his ass.
“You one hit, kid. ‘Signal 7’ ain’t comin’ round again.”
You bite the inside of your cheek and don’t take your eyes away.
“It’s better than bein’ dead,” he says.
“I ain’t afraid of you,” you say. “I can handle myself.”
You feel like you can’t breathe, like you in the green stomach of some dragon. The walls gettin’ close.
“You don’t need to be,” he says. He smiles, his teeth chrome. “Not of me.”
And he let that threat hang there and you know what he’s talkin’ about and suddenly a bunch of birds rush from under a stone. All the talk is making you feel light in the head. Kind of like smokin’ that first blunt.
You turn and try to find the street. Then Cash pats you on the head. You push his hand away but he’s two feet ahead of you.
Cash smiles and disappears. The scars on his back scorched and hard and seem to you like iron strips.
10
I TRIED FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to talk to a human at this super-conglomerate bank in the CDB about Teddy’s account. I held Teddy on the cell for most of the wait to get someone to release the information on the transfer. But after being shuffled around to, no lie, eight people, I was finally told by a vice-president returning from a very late lunch that this was now a police matter, and Teddy’s accounts were confidential, even to him.
The woman wore white makeup, making her almost look like a spooky clown with her dyed black hair, and her face cracked with the stress when she forced a smile on me. I just winked at her and pushed out onto Carondelet where I’d left Annie in the truck with the windows rolled down. I thought about letting her shit in their lobby but decided to take the higher road. Besides, even with all the account information in the world, I didn’t think I’d be able to decipher it. I’d need an accountant to work out the details.
Since it was a police matter and there was someone investigating, I knew I could get access to them through my old roommate at Tulane who was now a detective in homicide. I called Jay from the cell, got voice mail, and heard him give out his beeper number. I beeped him and five minutes later, as I was already headed down Canal toward Broad Street and police headquarters, he called back. A second afternoon shower hit my windshield and I turned on the wipers. Toward the end of Canal I could still see the sun shining.
“Detective Medeaux? I have information on the Fatty Arbuckle case of 1921.”
“Is that right?” he asked, a slight edge in his voice. “Oh yeah, I remember. Asphyxiation by farting.”
“I have some beans and rice that need to be questioned,” I said. My arm was hanging out the truck window and I had on sunglasses looking into the late-afternoon sun. It was almost four.
“You sure? I heard it was carne asada.”
“You ever work a homicide like that?”
“No, but when I was on patrol in the First District, I once saw a homeless dude humping a burrito.”
“Hey, it’s Nick.”
“No shit.”
“Listen, man. I need a big favor. You remember Teddy Paris?”
I told him the whole story in about thirty seconds. I asked him to make a call and put me in touch with whoever was in white-collar crime and was pushing the paper on the ALIAS con.
“Guy named Hiney.”
“Really.”
“Don’t make fun of him. He’s really sensitive about his name. Tries to pronounce it Hi-nay, like he’s fucking French or something.”
“What’s his deal?”
“He�
��s our Bunco guy, bra,” Jay said in his thick Irish Channel way. “Works all the hotel cons. Real pro, even if he is kind of a dick.”
“You’ll call?”
“When you want to come down?”
“I’ll be there in two minutes.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “If this Cash guy really wants Teddy bad, we can send someone over. Or why doesn’t he just hide out awhile?”
“Good questions,” I said. “But Teddy won’t have it. Says it’s all about rules he laid down.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said.
“Well, if something happens to Teddy, you won’t have to look far.”
I hung up. Five minutes later, I walked the steps to the gray concrete building down by the parish jail. The cell phone rang and Jay said to give my name to the officer at the front desk. “The Hiney is waiting for you.”
“Thought it was Hi-nay?”
“Fuck him. He’s an ass any way you say it.”
A FEW minutes later, Detective Hiney walked in – short dress sleeves and clipped black mustache – and asked me what I knew about these black shitbags in the Ninth Ward. I presumed he meant Teddy and Malcolm. Then the conversation with this guy somehow veered away from the theft of the $500,000 and into his theories on race. I drank a cold Barq’s root beer and watched his eye twitch.
He’d actually divided the blacks of New Orleans into different tribes, and according to him – as I was unaware he’d received a degree in sociology or history – most blacks were the same as they’d been in Africa.
I felt I’d wasted the drive over to Broad Street to his little cop office that he’d had decorated with Norman Rockwell prints and awards he’d received at law enforcement conventions.
“How do you know Medeaux?” he asked.
“He was my roommate in college.”
“He said you played ball. I don’t remember you, but some guys said they kicked you off the Saints. Heard you choked your coach on Monday Night Football.”
I shrugged. “My hands slipped.”
He watched my eyes as if he couldn’t tell if I was joking and gave a half grunt to stay on the safe side either way. I saw a tattoo of an anchor on his hairy forearm when he leaned forward and ran a stubby finger along some notes he’d made.
“Five hundred thousand,” he said, giving a low whistle. “What the hell is a fifteen-year-old gonna do with that kind of money but lose it?”
“He didn’t lose it.”
“He lost it,” he said. “Maybe it didn’t fall out of his pockets. Let’s just say if this kid had a second brain, it would be awful lonely.”
I nodded again, finished the Barq’s, and threw it into a trash can. I watched his face as he spoke. He had to be in his midforties but his skin was worn and sallow. Crumbs caught in his mustache and his breath smelled of wintergreen gum. He kept chewing as he leaned back in his seat and studied me.
“Who in New Orleans has the balls to follow through with that act at Lee Circle?” I asked. “These guys were good.”
“From what you told me, they were all right,” he said. “So you wanna know how many con men in New Orleans would work that game. Maybe fifty? A hundred? Bra, I been workin’ Bunco since ’83. I know a lot of these people. But you got to realize if you hit some kid up for that much, you’re gonna retire. How many scores you think people make like that?”
“Who have you talked to?”
He stayed silent for a few moments, waiting for the impact his words would bring. “I asked Medeaux why he has a buddy who’d be mixed up with these shitbirds,” the detective said, smiling slightly. “He told me that you played on the Saints with this Teddy Paris guy. Said Paris and his brother Malcolm are hot shit in the record business. So is that it? Money? They payin’ you a bunch to listen to their horseshit?”
I leaned back and let him keep on rolling. The windowsill behind him was caked in dirt and broken concrete. Sunlight had yet to come close to the hulking gray building on Broad Street. Only rain. I waited.
“Just some personal advice,” he said. “Medeaux said you’re smart. But let me ask you a question: If you’re so smart, why didn’t you check out the people you’re working for?”
He tossed a manila file at my hands, stood, and stretched, his bones creaking like old wood, and walked away. “I need some more coffee. I need a smoke and maybe take a dump. Why don’t you read a little bit, Professor.”
He walked to the door, his shoes making ugly thumping sounds. Before he closed the door to his office, he peeked back in. “I know what you think of me. I know how you liberals are. But after you’re done reading, why don’t you think about what made me this way?”
He left. There was silence in the room. Rusted file cabinets and sun-faded posters of crime prevention lined the walls.
I flicked open the file.
It was an investigation into the disappearance of a twenty-year-old named Calvin Jacobs. By the second page, I knew the man had been abducted last January at an Uptown club called Atlanta Nites. I knew that he was better known as Diabolical or “Dio” and he was a rapper employed by Ninth Ward Records. By the twentieth page, scanning through the depositions and detective notes, I knew that Malcolm Paris was the main suspect but they couldn’t find a body. Never really a crime.
One unnamed source said: “Malcolm was bragging that he got enough Dio’s shit on tape to last for years after that motherfucker was gone. Just like Tupac, he’s worth more dead than alive.”
I read back through.
A couple had spotted Malcolm’s Bentley at the club two hours before the abduction by two men in a black van. Teddy had been walking out with Dio when the men appeared and threatened them with their guns.
I read the file again.
The file ended. Dio’s body was never found.
Hiney walked back in and lifted up the blinds in his little office. He was eating a Zagnut bar and had chocolate in his teeth when he smiled at me. “Why don’t you ask me why I don’t like Malcolm Paris?”
“Because he’s black.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” he said. “You work this job for two days and tell me what you see out there. Tell me what it’s all about from the inside of your office at Tulane.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m having to get a fucking subpoena this week because Malcolm Paris is the only shitbird involved in this thing with the kid who won’t let me look at his bank records.”
11
I RAN ANNIE BACK by the warehouse, ate half of a muffuletta I’d bought at Central on Tuesday, and made a pot of coffee on my stove. A pile of pictures Maggie had sent me a few weeks back lay splayed on the table. Shots of me on her painted horse Tony and a couple of her son catching the football we’d been tossing around her old white farmhouse. One shot had been tucked neatly in the pile, a photo of us down at this catfish restaurant in Taylor, where you ate on plank wood tables and listened to bluegrass. She’d had a few glasses of white wine and was resting her head on my shoulder when a friend of hers had grabbed her Canon. Maggie showing she had her guard down. Black hair and green eyes. Bright white smile. Maggie.
Shit.
I called her. It was almost five, about the time I should’ve been getting into Oxford. Tomorrow I was supposed to help JoJo repair his aging barn.
As the phone rang, I reached underneath the sink and pulled out a Glock 9mm where I’d rested it on a hidden ledge. I was down on my knees peering up into my hiding place by the rusted pipes when she answered.
“Where are you?”
“New Orleans.”
“Nick?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I got held up.”
I explained Teddy’s situation, leaving out the worrisome details.
“Well, I’d already gotten the horses into the trailer and was waiting like a dumb-ass for you to roll down the road,” she said. “Why do you do things like this?”
“He needed help in a bad way.”
“I knew you’d do this
to me.”
“Maggie, I swear to you, it’s not that,” I said. “I swear.”
“Well, tomorrow’s your birthday,” she said. “You can fuck it up any way you want.”
I’d forgotten.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
I heard her son Dylan talking to her in the background. She said something short to him and then said to me, “I’ve got to go.”
Dial tone.
Annie barked.
I poured out some dog food and scratched her ears. “You like me. Right?”
I PARKED beneath the expressway leading up to the Greater New Orleans Bridge about thirty minutes later. Above what felt like a concrete cave with a ceiling of twisting on-ramps, cars and trucks made roaring sounds. I passed by thick columns spray-painted with graffiti and elevation markers and smelled the exhaust. Crime-scene tape marked the set. The light had faded into that summer afternoon golden glow and softened all the asphalt and concrete. The sun touched everything as it grew weak and I sat watching it fade for a few minutes, aware that I was just getting started with my day.
I saw Teddy talking to a skinny black man wearing a Metairie Zephyrs baseball hat backward and a satin Yankees jacket. The man watched a video monitor and pointed to a loose group of dancers surrounding ALIAS. The kid was breathing hard and soaked with sweat in a circle of 1960s American cars with low-rider shocks to make them jump up. About forty women in bikinis, all hard-bodied and sweating, and about fifty or so thugs stood ready to go wild when ALIAS pointed to them. They were at his command and every few minutes he’d flash a gold smile and point to the center of the group just to hear them scream.
During the break, I yelled for Teddy, who gave me the one-minute gesture. Thumping bounce rap music thudded from some speakers near ALIAS and he started into a rolling rap about Reebok sneakers, FUBU shoes, and a whole lotta Cristal was gonna make it real smooth. He bragged about a Mercedes-Benz and two Escalades and how the women who kept his company just couldn’t behave.