Ace Atkins

 

Copyright © 2004 by Ace Atkins

 

For my mom and sister,
“Ain’t nothin’ like family.”

 

 

Ain’t no needa go no further, brother.
Ain’t no needa go no further, man.
Tole you packin’ .45
You had better quit that jive.

—LITTLE WALTER (B. LOUISIANA, 1930)

 

I ride DL into the CL,
gun right in my grip.
I slip a clip in every rip,
cause hatas likely to trip.

—LIL WAYNE (B. LOUISIANA, 1981)

 

 

 

 

PROLOGUE

 

I SPED ALONG HIGHWAY 61, darting from one small town in the Mississippi Delta to the next with nothing but my old army duffel bag and CDs of blues singers I spent my life researching. Two weeks on the road from New Orleans and still nothing to show for it. I drove back to Clarksdale on a spring afternoon where heat broke in gassy waves from the pavement to find my old buddy JoJo. He was waiting for me when I arrived, a sack lunch filled with cold fried chicken sandwiches and potato salad. Loretta waved to us from the porch of their old farmhouse. Large and brown, she squinted into the white-hot sun, knowing I had to get back to New Orleans by Friday and that only JoJo could help me.

“This man doesn’t like white people,” JoJo said, unwrapping our sandwiches and rolling down the side window to my 1970 Bronco. He was a black man in his late sixties, white hair, short mustache. Wisdom around the eyes.

“No, sir.”

“You think bringin’ along a black man will help?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You think ’cause he know me from the day might help, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s eighty years old,” JoJo said. “He may think I’m Jesus or Harvey the goddamn rabbit.”

“There is a possibility of that,” I said.

Hot breeze. Black birds cawed and screamed at stop signs at crossroads hanging in the pine and oak. Mimosa trees surrounded barns faded to a dull red and trailers lay on piles of concrete blocks. Gas stations out of the 1930s turned to Quickie Marts with long humming coolers filled with frozen candy bars and Cokes. Soft white bread. Stale peanuts.

“He was a good guitar player,” JoJo said. “Sonny Boy liked him. Sonny Boy said he made him sound real fine.”

“How long has he been in Marks?”

“Bronco says he heard he’d been in Marks since ’72.”

“What’s he do?”

“Carve the faces of dead people.”

We rolled along Highway 6 talking about old times at the bar JoJo used to own in New Orleans. It was a beautiful little place before it burned. A little cove on Conti Street with brick walls and a long mahogany bar dented and scarred from elbows and cold Dixie bottles. Loretta sang there every Friday and Saturday. During the week, she cooked. She made soul jambalaya and a mean batch of gumbo. JoJo and Loretta took care of me then. They were still my family.

We passed over a small metal bridge running over a creek and by a junkyard filled with hundreds of rusting cars. The creek had flooded into the ditch where the cars sat in stagnant water, reaching over their hoods and suffocating them in the green muck.

We talked about Robert Johnson and Lee Marvin. Bessie Smith and Earl Long.

JoJo told me about his corn crop coming up and a new John Deere tractor he bought and how he did not miss the bar he’d run for as long as I’d been alive.

“It’s still there.”

“Fuck it,” he said.

We rolled into Marks at sundown. A broken-down collection of gas stations and abandoned buildings stood around an old church and a graveyard. I had to slow down to miss a couple of wandering dogs, skinny and coated in mange. I put on some Robert Johnson and I told JoJo about Johnson coming to a juke joint in Marks in the thirties. He played guitar for Son House and Willie Brown with his new skills he’d acquired from a man named Ike Zinnerman in Hazlehurst. Son House said Johnson had sold his soul to the devil to get those skills.

We found an old black man on his porch, eating purple-hulled peas and cornbread and listening to Z. Z. Hill. JoJo got out of the truck with me and we asked him about where we could find a man who called himself Tip-Top. JoJo said his real name was Bob and that he liked to carve dead people.

The man pointed down the hill where some dogs gathered to eat a rooster that had been killed. At the end of the road, the sun was a dropping orange orb that looked as if, if you kept following the road for a mile, you could touch it. Walk into its big burning fire.

“How’s Maggie?” JoJo asked as we headed up the hill.

“Good.”

“This one gonna last?”

“Maybe.”

I parked on a gravel road and walked with a couple dogs trailing me. JoJo walked by my side whistling a little Muddy Waters song. The porch had been screened in, the front door hanging loose by its hinges. Wood shavings littered the buckled floor. Two pinewood coffins. New and fresh smelling. The sound of a television inside. Canned TV laughter.

“What’s he watchin’?”

We heard the familiar Love Boat theme song.

“Always liked that woman who ran the cruise,” JoJo said.

“Julie McCoy.”

“Yeah, she looked like a nice lady.”

“She liked the cocaine,” I said.

JoJo nodded. He wasn’t thrilled about Julie’s coke problems.

The door opened after a knock. An old black man strapping himself into a pair of overalls eyed us. He fixed up the strap on his shoulder. His left eye twitched. “You the man lookin’ for me?”

“You Tip-Top?” JoJo asked.

He nodded.

“This man don’t want to do you no harm,” JoJo said. “Wants to know about you and Sonny Boy.”

Tip-Top looked at JoJo. “I know you,” he said.

“I know.” JoJo walked off the porch and began to play fetch with a few of the dogs. I asked the man if he would mind sitting on the porch and letting me record him for a project I was working on about Sonny Boy. I told him I was a professor at Tulane University and was working with the University of Mississippi about the great harp player.

“Sonny Boy was a motherfucker who stole my whiskey and my women and once took a piss in my boot. I spent half my life tryin’ to forget about the Goat. Now you leave me be. Got work to do.”

He slammed his door and I heard the canned laughter of Love Boat.

JoJo kept playing with the dogs. He kept his eyes on one in particular, rubbing the dog’s head. She was of questionable breeding, somewhere a German shepherd in the mix, with long drooping ears and a curved tail.

“Look at her,” he said. “She ain’t no more than a pup. Smart. Look at her watchin’ me.”

JoJo walked back to the truck and grabbed some chicken from the sandwich he hadn’t finished. He fed the dog. “I don’t like people who don’t take care of their dogs. Show they’re evil. I know you tryin’ to find this man ’cause he got some stories about Sonny Boy. But he evil if he let a fine dog like this get all skin and bones.”

I heard a screen door slam behind the old shotgun house. I followed a dusty trail behind it and saw Tip-Top working a planer on top of a casket. A life-size dummy — some kind of stuffed black suit with a face made out of wood — watched from a lounge chair nearby.

I walked over to Tip-Top, moving my hand to the back of the dummy’s head. I wanted to do Señor Wences or even the Parkay margarine ad. “Friend of Charlie McCarthy?”

“Don’t know no Charlie.”

“Listen, man,” I said. “Give me twenty minutes. Heard you were with Sonny Boy at his last gig in Tutwiler. Something happened with a bottle of gin.”

“He threw it at me.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Why do you want to know these things?”

“I write about the blues.”

He kept planing. A steady thump, thump.

“The world don’t make no sense,” he said. “The blues is dead.”

“I don’t think so.”

Thump, thump.

“JoJo brought some whiskey,” I said.

He stopped planing.

Thirty minutes later, he was drunk, had told the story, and JoJo had bought the dog from him for five dollars. JoJo liked to joke but didn’t joke with Tip-Top. When he was through making the deal, he found some rope to put around the dog’s neck and waited for me by the old truck that my friends called the Gray Ghost.

“We was in this church,” Tip-Top said. “Down where he buried now. And it was still a church then. And he sat in there all night askin’ God to let him die. He walked outside in this thunderstorm. I was too drunk to move and he kept cursin’ God.”

I wrote down some notes. Asked a few more questions. It was the story I needed to finish the piece.

“They pay you for doin’ this?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t seem like an honest living.”

“It’s not,” I said. “Thanks.”

JoJo loaded up the new dog in the truck and she curled into a seat behind us, yawning. “We need to get her some water down the road.”

“What you gonna call her?” I asked.

“Don’t matter to me,” JoJo said. “It’s your dog.”

“No way.”

“You need a dog,” he said. “Every man needs a dog.”

“Where’s she gonna piss in New Orleans?”

“There are a few trees,” JoJo said, watching the yellow lines of the blacktop heading back to Clarksdale. “Can’t you stay till Monday?”

“Got to head on back.”

We passed through a couple of small towns and stopped at a Texaco station for Annie’s water. We decided on Annie because of the old song “Work with Me, Annie.” But I told JoJo it was more like the song “Polk Salad Annie.” This dog was straight Delta mutt, could probably eat a cottonmouth and make the alligators seem tame.

When we reached the crossroads at 49 and 61, I looked over at the big metal sculpture someone had erected to the history of the blues. Metal guitars and road signs. I knew there wasn’t any real crossroads and it was a nice gimmick to bring folks in. But it made me think about something Tip-Top had said.

“Is blues dead?”

JoJo thought about that as we headed down 49 and passed by the old Hopson plantation where JoJo had worked as a child. The old commissary was now some kind of bar. The sharecroppers’ shacks motel rooms to give tourists a feel for the old days.

The sun was gone. It was night. Only the headlights of the truck and Annie’s panting to keep us company.

“About the best I can say is it’s different,” he said. “Ain’t the same. Doesn’t mean the same.”

I saw his old profile in the dim light as we rounded onto the footbridge and country road to take us home.

 

1

 

SIRENS AIN’T NOTHIN’ but ghosts. They reach out every damn night, red and blue, white spotlight flashin’ ’cross your eyes as you sleep on that concrete floor patterned in blood and dirt. You covered in a torn yellow blanket that once hid your dead mamma for weeks. In its touch, you see a bit of her cold ear and the edge of that face you tried not to imagine while you kept goin’ to school, cuttin’ her las’ ten dollars in a hundred ways at Rob’s Party Store down on Claiborne. You remember? Don’t you?

Back then, you hold your own in the Calliope yard, the ole CP-3, and find your only friends are a mean-ass pit bull you call Henry and a little rottweiler with short legs you name Midget. Your mamma stay alive to you for weeks underneath that blanket. Through it all, she stay like she is ’cause that room don’t have no heat and it’s February, like it is now, and her own family live on the other side of the project.

Y’all know Calliope — its own little galaxy in New Orleans. Findin’ your people on the other side is like shootin’ over to the moon. They long ago forgot about her. Don’t know you. Your daddy ain’t nothin’ but a word and the only future you see come from a box of Bally shoes you traded for two of your mamma’s rocks out in the yard. Henry and Midget backin’ you up like thugs in the rope-and-barbed-wire collars you made for them. A hundred windows covered in aluminum foil watchin’ you like eyes stand on the grassless ground.

You take those shoes down to some fancy-ass shoppin’ mall by the Quarter. The dollar you spend on a streetcar is the last green you have. Ten minutes later, that worn box of shoes you was gonna return for a hundred dollars — like that man said — is dumped out on the street along with your ole mongrel ass. But you don’t cry.

Why would you?

Don’t take that streetcar. You walk. All damned day. It’s a day from Calliope.

It’s dark when you get back. You remember. You thinkin’ about it all tonight with the sirens and the spotlights and them ghostful sounds.

It was Friday and Calliope was workin’ plenty down the cross streets. Strawberries’ heads bobbin’ in white men’s Lexuses and Hondas. Boys you once knew jacked up as hell, wide-eyed and watchin’ for drugheads to slow down and make that deal. Shit made out of flour and toilet water.

Room a hotbox when you crawl up the fire escape. Television on, playin’ BET and Aaliyah. She on a sailboat but dead. Like your mamma. You can smell Mamma now and you want to shake her awake, have her find people she know but you don’t, to get somethin’ to eat. Your belly all swole up after four days without food. You hungry and you know you need it. It hurt to even swallow.

Knock on the door. Ole man who you seen your mamma kneel before on the stairwell is smilin’ at you with a wrench in his hand. He tell you he hooked you up, but then he see your mamma, nothin’ but a hidden hump, and you duck under his arm as he walk back and puke on hisself.

Five days out of juvie, you back with a forty-year-old woman callin’ herself your grandmamma. You only know her as a woman your mamma would see and turn the other way to spit. Your grandmamma don’t like you. Make you run around like you work for her, makin’ corner deals by the Stronger Hope Church. Bringin’ her weed pipe to her with copies of Jet and Star. But you got a place on a small couch next to your twelve-year-old uncle who has fits and drools on himself when he don’t take his pills.

They got food, too. Cold Popeyes and cans of green things you ain’t never tasted. You gain a little weight, start pocketin’ bus money she give you to go to school, and buy a dictionary, even though you don’t know most of the words in it. You want to be like the silver mask on the bus signs. Diabolical. He don’t have no eyes or a body, just a silver face. God? You’d heard about him comin’ from the Calliope and how he makin’ rhymes from all the words he know.

Sometime when you on the corner, hearin’ your own beat and bounce in your head, rhymin’ for fifty cents for some hustler to smile, you see Dio’s face on a passin’ bus. He comin’ back. He’ll hear you.

One night you find a white girl and you rob her with a knife you made from an oak tree splinter. Don’t feel bad. She’s pretty fucked up and lookin’ for some more shit to fill her head. You scare her good and she runs away. With that money, you start it all.

Thirty-two damned dollars. Water into wine, what Teddy always say.

You buy a minimixer with a dual cassette made for a kid and a beat tape. You got a microphone about the size of your finger. But it’s all you need to make your own.

It’s all you do. Sleep on Grandmamma’s couch, run her business, run her drugs a bit, and make them tapes. You sell them. They cost you a dollar at Rob’s; you sell ’em for three. Pretty soon — we talkin’ weeks, man — you known. Calliope ain’t no galaxy; it’s a planet. It’s your planet. You grabbin’ your toy and hittin’ Friday-and Saturday-night block parties and you eatin’.

Then — don’t know how — Teddy Paris finds you at that Claiborne corner with your dogs. Kids swallow his Bentley and mirror rims. You don’t. You hang, till he call you over and offer you a ride. At first you don’t, everybody workin’ you. Everybody a freak.

The kids tell you it’s about your tapes.

You go.

You ride. Ninth Ward Records.

You keep ridin’.

Four months later, you livin’ Lakefront.

You got a half-built house with iron gates and three girls who clean your underwear and wash you in the shower. Henry and Midget wearin’ Gucci and eatin’ filets.

Ain’t nothin’ but rhymes and ambition.

Ambition feel somethin’ like that heat in the room when they took your mamma away.

It’s all what you believe. You can believe anything.

Least that’s what you tell yourself as you slip that gun in your mouth, listenin’ to the sounds of the Calliope around you. It’s old beats, old music that you never wanted to hear again. It’s shoes and cold gray skin and swollen bellies and a shakin’ uncle whose eyes disappear into his head.

But you back.

They say you $500,000 less a man.

It all look good, you told yourself that day back in December when that white man came to you. It all look good on paper when they tell you about this trust fund you had and all the money Teddy and Malcolm keepin’ from you.

You saw it all until they worked you. Then everythin’ disappeared. That office on the Circle sat empty. Them business cards that felt like platinum, all to disconnected phones.

Teddy didn’t talk to you.

Everythin’ was gone.

Tonight, you hear the bus make its stop outside and you pull the gun from your mouth, gag a little. You bend back that foil in the window. Just a bit.

You got to smile, huggin’ arms round your body, metallic taste of your gold teeth in your mouth. It’s your face out there. All thuggin’ and mean-lipped on the side of the bus. Platinum and diamonds. Do-rag cocked on your head.

You like that until you hear that Raven pop in your hand and feel your legs give out and a hot, sticky mess spread across your belly and leg.

It was all there.

Now you ruin.

You ruined as hell.

You are fifteen.

 

2

 

WITHIN THE FIRST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS I’d known Teddy Paris, he’d stolen my Jeep, bruised my ribs in the ensuing fight, almost gotten me cut from the Saints, and become one of the best friends I’d ever known. I often wondered why he found it so funny to break into my Wrangler while we were at training camp that summer and disappear in it with a few buddies to blow their rookie paychecks on stereo equipment at a mall in Metairie.

I thought he was making a point because I was white and from Alabama and he hadn’t known I’d lived in New Orleans since I was eighteen. But I later learned, while we bonded over our mutual love for Johnnie Taylor ballads and a nice shot I’d given him in the jaw, that Teddy chose me, out of the dozens of players, because he thought I could take a joke.

Teddy and I had been friends even after our short-lived careers in the NFL ended, mine trailing into getting a doctorate and becoming a roots music field researcher, and his into a multimillion-dollar rap music partnership with his brother, Malcolm. His professional path came in a dream — he’ll tell you complete with a sound track — after opening five failed nightclubs and a pet photography studio.

Teddy was always into something.

I’d been back from the Delta for only two weeks and already missed JoJo, Loretta, and a woman I’d been seeing for the last few months in Oxford. It was early on Friday, about 10 A.M., and I’d just turned in my students’ grades for spring semester and was looking forward to heading back to Mississippi.

The day was crisp and blue with a warm white sun peeking through a few thin clouds. The air seemed clean, even for New Orleans, tinged with the tangy brackish smell of the Mississippi. Muddy Waters’s Folk Singer album with Willie Dixon slapping and plunking his big stand-up bass in stripped-down perfection played on an old cassette player.

I needed to finish up this job and pack, I thought as I pulled out the old water pump from my Bronco. I inspected its rusted blades and wiped the blackened oil and grime from my hands onto my jeans and prized Evel Knievel T-shirt. I thought about Maggie and her farm. And her legs and smile.

Polk Salad Annie trotted by, sniffed my leg, and then rummaged for a bone she’d hidden in a pile of old milk crates that held my CDs and field tapes. She chomped the bone, found a nice spot on an old pillow she’d grown to love, and then started to sniff the air.

My five-dollar dog.

I was already planning out the day’s drive when Teddy walked through the gaping mouth of my garage and called my name. I knew the voice and told him to hold on.

I heard the familiar click of his Stacey Adams shoes nearing on the concrete floor. “My woman so mean she shot me in the ass and run off with my dog,” Teddy sang, his voice booming in the small cavern. “Why you listen to that sad ole music?”

“The blues ain’t nothing but a botheration on your mind,” I said, speaking low.

“No wonder it makes me depressed.”

“What? You want me to ‘Shake That Ass’?” I asked, naming one of his New Orleans competitor’s top-ten hits. Asses, champagne, and platinum usually dominated his preferred style of music. Dirty South rap. I shook my butt a little while continuing to work under the hood of the truck before turning back around.

“Travers, you got to remember, I seen you dance,” Teddy said, straightening out the folds in his tent-sized black double-breasted suit. Teddy was 300 pounds plus with a deep insulated voice from all the fat around his neck. His words seemed to come from inside a well. “Ain’t pretty.”

As I leaned back into my thirty-year-old truck, I noticed his newest electric blue Bentley parked outside. Chrome rims shining like mirrors into the sun. I’d heard the inside was lined with blue rabbit fur. Real rabbits died for that.

One of those new Hummer SUVs painted gold with black trim pulled in behind the Bentley, shaking with electronic bass. Teddy’s brother, Malcolm, walked across Julia.

I grunted as I fit a pipe plug into the heater hose outlet of the new water pump. Malcolm wandered into the garage, decked out in hard dark denim, a tight stocking cap on his head and a platinum cross ticking across his chest. “What up?”

“Hey, brother,” I said, reaching back from the hood and giving him the pound. I liked Malcolm. Always streetwise and hard. Sometimes in and out of trouble but always himself.

“Came by to see if you want to have lunch at Commander’s,” Teddy said.

“I’d settle for fried chicken and greens at Dunbar’s.”

“Travers, you are the blackest white man I know.”

I cleaned my hands with a gasoline-soaked rag and ran my fingers over the sleeves of his suit. “Nice.”

Malcolm laughed.

You would’ve thought I was a leper, the way Teddy yanked his arm away. “Get yo’ greasy-ass monkey hands off me.”

Malcolm crossed his arms across his ghetto denim, a scowl on his face. “Teddy don’t want no one messin’ with his pimpin’ clothes.”

“Nick—” Teddy began.

Annie ambled on over and made a slow growling sound. I scratched her antenna ears. She smelled his crotch and trotted away.

“What in the hell is that?” Teddy asked.

“A hint,” I said. “She says arf.”

“Look like a goddamn hyena to me.”

“So?” I asked, cleaning grease and oil off the timing cover. I reached for a putty knife resting on my battery. Teddy strolled in front of my workbench and admired my calendar featuring Miss March 1991. Annie found her bone.

Sweat ringed around Teddy’s neck and he kept patting his brow with a soiled handkerchief. Malcolm lit a cigarette from a pack of Newports and leaned against my brick wall. He kept his eyes on his brother and shook his head slowly. His beard was neatly trimmed, his thick meaty hands cupped over the cigarette as he watched us.

“Y’all never asked me to lunch before.”

“Sure we have,” Teddy said.

“When you wanted to borrow $3,000 to start your own line of hair-care products.”

“Macadamia-nut oil. It would have worked.”

“Well?” I scraped away at the old sealant around the timing cover. I studied the crap caked over the cover after decades of use. At least the truck was running even after I ran it into a north Mississippi ditch last fall.

“You ever listen to the CDs I send you?” Teddy asked.

“Nope.”

“You know ALIAS, right? You ain’t that livin’ in 1957 that you ain’t seen him. BET, MTV, cover of XXL.”

“I don’t watch TV except cartoons. But, yeah, I know ALIAS. So what?”

“He got caught in some shit,” Teddy said. His voice shook and he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “Need some help.”

“I can’t rap,” I said. “But I can break-dance a little.”

“Not that kind of help,” Teddy said.

“Aw, man. Kind of wanted some of those Hammer pants. Need a long crotch.”

“Kind of help you give to them blues players,” he said, ignoring me. “Them jobs you do that JoJo always talkin’ ’bout.”

“Royalty recovery?”

Malcolm spoke up in a cloud of smoke: “Finding people.”

I began to remove the screws from the old pump and looked at Malcolm. I still remembered when he was a nappy-haired kid who shagged balls at training camp for our kickers. Now he was a hardened man. I noticed a bulge in the right side of his denim coat.

“Who do you need found?”

“A man who conned my boy out of 500 grand,” Teddy said. “Goddamn, it’s hot in here.”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “Sounds like you need more help than me.”

“You the best I got.”

“We’ll talk.”

“There ain’t time.”

“Why?”

Malcolm looked at his brother and put a hand on his shoulder before walking back to his Hummer with an exaggerated limp.

“Some Angola-hard punk gave me twenty-four, brother,” Teddy said. “I only got twenty-one hours of my life left.”

 

3

 

AFTER TEDDY DROPPED THE NEWS, we decided there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time for soul food at Dunbar’s. So when we watched Malcolm head back out to the studio, I pulled on my walking boots and a clean T-shirt, closed down the garage, and we rolled down Freret and headed up to Claiborne in Teddy’s electric-blue Bentley. I cracked the window, lit a Marlboro, and sank into the rabbit fur while he leaned back into the driver’s seat and steered with two fingers. A sad smile crossed his face as we moved from the million-dollar mansions off St. Charles to candy-colored shotguns and onto a street populated with pawnshops, check-cashing businesses, and EZ credit signs. Neon and billboards. Broken bottles lay in gullies and yellowed newspapers twirled across vacant lots.

The air felt warm against my face, heavy bass vibrating my back and legs, when we rolled low under the giant oaks that shrouded the corners around the Magnolia projects. The trees’ roots were exposed, rotted, and dry near portions of the housing projects that had been plowed under. Their tenants now living in Section 8 housing in New Orleans East.

I felt the rabbit fur on the armrest and looked into the backseat, where Teddy had a small flat-screen television and DVD player. A copy of Goodfellas had been tossed on the backseat along with a sack of ranch-flavored Doritos.

“Why don’t you sell your car?”

“It’s a hell of a ride but ain’t no way close to 700 grand, brother,” he said.

“Your house?” I asked. “That mansion down by the lake with your dollar-sign-shaped pool? What about a loan on that?”

“Ain’t time,” he said. And very low, he said, “And I got three of them mortgage things already.”

“Oh, man.”

“What about J.J.?” I asked, dropping the name of our teammate who had just won two Super Bowls. “He’s got more money than God or George Lucas. You try and call him? He’d float you a favor.”

“J.J. and I ain’t that tight no more.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I owe him $80,000.”

“Jesus.”

“Don’t you go blasphemin’ in this car.”

“Why?” I asked. “You pay to have it baptized?”

We stopped at the corner of Claiborne, where on a mammoth billboard two hands were held together in prayer. Someone had spray-painted the words WHY ME? over the address of the church. Across the wide commercial street, I saw another billboard of Britney Spears. She was selling Pepsi. Britney hadn’t been touched.

“You’re deep in debt and can’t get a loan from anyone else,” I said. “Who is this Cash guy? Just kiss and make up.”

He didn’t even look over at me as he accelerated toward the Calliope housing projects. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crack a joke. See, Cash is a real humane individual.” Teddy licked his lips and wiped his face for the thousandth time. “Heard he once stuck a set of jumper cables in a man’s ass for spillin’ wine on his Italian leather coat. Up his ass, man. That’s fucked up.”

“Did the man turn over?”

Teddy shook his head. “Listen, I came to Cash ’bout two months back so we could get the money for ALIAS’s CD. Had to get some promotional dollars.”

“For what?”

“Advertisin’. This video we shootin’ tonight.”

“Call it off.”

“Too late,” he said. “Everyone’s been paid. See, we were all in some trouble and then Cash and me was tryin’ to put together this movie? I had this idea about New Orleans bein’ underwater and only the folks in the ghetto survived. You know like we were livin’ in this underwater world with boats made out of Bentleys and shit…”

“So he loaned you $700,000?”

“Half a mil,” he said. “He added another two for interest and his hard-earned time.”

Teddy shook his head as he drove, hot wind blowing through the car. The asphalt more cracked on this side of Uptown. We passed a Popeye’s fried chicken, a McDonald’s, some bulletproof gas stations. Barbershops. Bail bonds.

“Tell me about Cash,” I said. “Maybe I can reason with him.”

“You got a better chance of gettin’ a gorilla to sing you ‘Happy Birthday,’” Teddy said. “This ape raised in Calliope like my man ALIAS. But he don’t have no heart like the kid. He’s an animal. Bald head. Got all his teeth capped in platinum and diamonds. Stole everythin’ he have. Even his beats. Got his sound from this badass DJ ’bout five years back. Now Cash eatin’ steaks and lobster, screwin’ Penthouse pets and that boy coachin’ damn high-school football.”

“How’d he steal his sound?”

“The bounce, man,” Teddy said. He turned up the music. That constant driving rhythm I’d heard played all over New Orleans shook the car. The drums keeping the rap elevated as if the music was made of rubber-reflecting words.

“Why don’t you just run?” I asked. “Get out of town till you can raise the money?”

“I got family here,” Teddy said. “Besides, a Paris don’t ever run. You know that.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Quit your posturing before you do get killed.”

“Ain’t no bullshit,” he said. “I leave and then he fuck with a member of my family? Man, I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Can’t you just sign over something to him? Just give him your house. You can stay with me.”

“I appreciate it, brother,” he said. “I really do. But there is only one thing this mad nigga want and he ain’t getting it.”

I looked at Teddy — out of breath, sweating like hell — as he turned into the housing projects. Two men on the corner with hard eyes and wearing heavy army coats watched us turn. Teddy lowered the stereo. The heat whooshed through the car, just making the silence between us more intense.

Teddy gritted his teeth as he passed the men. “ALIAS my boy and I ain’t neva losin’ that boy. Not again.”

I watched him. “I want y’all to meet,” he said.

 

4

 

“YOU GONNA VALET this thing in Calliope?” I asked. “Or are you trying to collect insurance?”

“You don’t know who I am,” Teddy said. “Respect everything around here.”

“Even for a Ninth Warder?”

“For Teddy Paris.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

He kissed a ruby pinkie ring on his fattened little finger and gave me a wink. “You’ll see.”

Calliope soon swallowed us into endless rows of four-story colorless brick buildings seeming to sag with exhaustion. Fire escapes lined each building in V patterns; some hung loose like broken limbs. In a commons that reminded me of a prison yard, Dumpsters spilled trash onto the wide dirt ground. Along the walls of project houses, signs read NO DOG FIGHTING.

We slowed and rolled into the commons.

As Teddy shut off his engine and coasted to a stop, dozens of black children wrapped their arms around the car. I could hear them laughing and breathing and giggling. Making faces with their eyes pressed against the glass. Teddy got out and ripped out a massive roll of ten-dollar bills, palming them off to more than a dozen kids.

Stay in school; get yo’ mamma right; no way, you been back twice.

I smiled as the kids formed a tight circle around the car, the chirp of Teddy’s alarm locking them out.

We walked along a buckled path and by a brick wall where someone had painted the huge face of a rapper named Diabolical. I’d read he’d been killed in some gang shit last year and now he’d taken on some kind of martyr status in the projects. The slanted warped image of his face in bright colors surrounded by painted candles reminded me of a Russian icon.

Teddy nodded to his face, “That’s the one I lost.”

We found ALIAS among a loose group of teen boys and two girls tossing quarters along a concrete staircase stained with rust. Teddy pointed out the kid, and as he saw Teddy’s wobbling figure coming toward him, he picked up the collection of cash and sat back down.

He didn’t look up. Teddy took off his coat and sweat stains spread under his arms and across his back in a big X. ALIAS muttered something and the kids broke away.

He was a tall kid. Lanky and slow-moving in red basketball shorts that slipped past his knees. He wore a white FUBU baseball jersey with his sleeves rolled up and sneakers made of black fabric and gel. He sported an awkward mustache that only a fifteen-year-old could appreciate.

He still didn’t look at us, counting the money.

“How you feelin’?” Teddy asked.

“Sore,” ALIAS said, pulling up his shirt and showing a white and red puckered scar on his side. “Still don’t know who jumped me.”

The kid shook his head and pocketed the money, watching the uneven open earth and the slabs of projects that stacked farther north like dirty caves. He leaned forward, a piece of platinum jewelry slipping from his shirt. The Superman symbol inscribed in diamonds.

“Happens out here in the yard.” Teddy leaned down and made the kid look at his face. “Didn’t want you to come back here where that kind of shit happen. But you fucked up, kid. That’s a lot of money to lose. Put me in a hell of a tight.”

The kid nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that shit. I’m sorry, man.”

Teddy opened his big arms wide and the kid fell into his clutch. Teddy swallowing him into his sweaty silk shirt, patting him on his back.

In the yard, a shirtless man clutching a long bottle staggered toward Teddy’s child security. “Teddy,” I said, nudging him.

“Get back, motherfucker,” Teddy yelled and rolled off to the yard.

I sat down next to the kid. He pulled the money back out, probably about twenty in cash, and I watched him recount it.

“Teddy told me what happened.”

He looked at me. One eye had yellow flecks in the iris and he had a very pink scar that slashed from the bridge of his nose and ran into one eyebrow. His teeth were gold.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“What you gonna do about it?”

I watched Teddy’s fat butt jangle in his $2,000 suit as he ran off the man. The children laughed while the crazy shirtless man darted across the grass and mud field like an aimless dog.

“I helped a woman who got sent to prison for forty years because people lied,” I said. “She got stuck. No one believed a word she said. Thought she was crazy.”

He looked at me. Then back at the money.

“If you don’t help,” I said, “your boy Cash is gonna mess Teddy up bad.”

“What the fuck you know about Cash?” ALIAS asked. “He ain’t my boy.”

“What did the man who shot you look like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Fuck no.”

“What did he look like?”

“White.”

“Terrific.”

Teddy looked down at us, sweating and out of breath. “Y’all ready to go? I ain’t got the energy to run that motherfucker off again. What you poor-mouthin’ for, kid? I said let’s go.”

“What’d you do with my dogs?”

“I got ’em.”

“You ain’t got the right.”

“Sure I do. That was a ton of money. Had to make you think about the shit you done.”

“That was my money.”

“Yeah, I heard Cash was fillin’ your head up. Wants you to roll with those Angola ballers when I’m dead. Right?”

I got up from the stoop. Looked at the time. Noon. I should’ve been on the road by now. Eatin’ chicken-fried steak in Vaiden, Mississippi. Headed into Maggie’s heavy iron bed. Her Texas show boots by the door.

“You see this man?” Teddy said, pointing at me. “See him? He don’t look like much. All that gray hair and don’t shave his face and tries to be funny all the time. Which of course he ain’t. But he gonna help find them fuckers. He ain’t like the police.”

“Why wouldn’t they help?” I asked. He did bring it up.

“‘Signal 7,’” ALIAS said.

Two teenage girls in halter tops, lollipops in splayed fingers, strolled by ALIAS and smiled. Both with bright red lips. Bare feet dusty from the broken concrete around Calliope.

ALIAS smiled back.

“What’s ‘Signal 7’?”

“‘The popo ain’t got answers,’” ALIAS began in a slow, deliberate rap. Enunciating words to me the way you would to a retarded person or a very smart monkey. “‘Ain’t nothin’ but lies. Put that Glock in their face and see if they read our minds.’”

“The ‘popo’ didn’t like that too much?” I asked.

Teddy nodded his head.

“Guess not,” I said.

We followed ALIAS into a small room with three filthy windows crowded with dead plants and covered in comic strips. A haggard woman, oddly old in a way I couldn’t quite place, had her feet up in a ratty recliner chair. She flipped through channels on a television that flickered so much it made me dizzy.

No one spoke to her. ALIAS disappeared down a short hall and returned with a leather duffel bag with the Timberland logo.

“That’s it?” Teddy asked.

ALIAS said, “You locked me out of my own home.”

“Did I?” Teddy asked, leading the way as we passed the silent old woman living in her TV.

When we got back to his Bentley, the commons was bare of the children. A low bank of dark clouds rolled toward the river and there was the slight smell of rain in the distance mixed with the loose dust of scattering feet.

ALIAS held his bag. No expression.

Teddy circled his ride, searching for scratches or dents.

He shook his head. We both scanned the four clusters of housing projects surrounding us. No one. Loose popping of dried clotheslines stretching from metal crosses.

He pressed the release on the locks. The alarm chirped and I looked back at the long row of clouds. The silence was almost electric as I waited for him to take me home.

We rolled away in the Bentley, his car smelling of leather and new wood and some kind of lime perfume he sprayed on the rabbit fur. When we drove away, I watched three teenagers being hustled into the back of a black Suburban by about ten DEA officers. An old woman in pink house slippers yelled at them and kept throwing rocks at their back as they all loaded into the car.

 

5

 

“HOW DID YOU MEET this man?” I asked ALIAS, while we waited for a streetcar to move on St. Charles Avenue heading uptown to Lee Circle. Rain splattered the hood of my truck and wooden shop signs in the Warehouse District shook in the wind. Teddy had left me with the kid at my place and had gone back to the studio to make calls for last-minute loans. I told him I’d do my best but wished he’d just leave town.

ALIAS wasn’t listening to me. He’d busied himself by flipping through some blues CDs in my toolbox as we headed to the office where he’d had most of his business meetings. “Who the fuck is Super Chikan?”

“A guy I once got drunk with in Clarksdale. Can make his guitar talk like a chicken.”

“Man, that’s country-ass.”

More and more abandoned brick warehouses sported new rental and sale signs for the district. One showed a mural on an old cotton warehouse advertising white couples playing tennis, swimming, and drinking foaming coffees.

“How did you meet this guy?” I asked again.

“Through this woman I knew,” ALIAS said. He’d moved from the blues CDs to a cardboard box holding articles on Guitar Slim. I watched in the rearview as he scanned the articles and moved his lips.

“Who was she?”

“She came up to me when we was at Atlanta Nites,” he said. “Don’t remember her name. But man, she was fine.”

“That doesn’t help much.”

“She just gave me his card and was sayin’ that he worked with Mystikal and shit.”

“Where did you first meet him?”

“At my lake house. Dude just knock on the door like we old friends. Knew my name. Started to talkin’ to me right off about my Bentley. Knew all about my ride.”

“Who else was there?”

“That fine-ass woman.”

“You know anything else about her?”

“She smelled real nice.”

“Stinky ones don’t get much work.”

I downshifted, rain against my windshield, and saw a parking spot by the Circle Bar. The bar made me think of cigarettes and Dixies and Jack Daniel’s and me about five years ago.

Robert E. Lee stood tall on his pillar at Lee Circle, where streetcars made wide turns around its grassy mound and headed uptown.

I reached across ALIAS and into my dash for a pack of Bazooka.

I offered him a piece.

“What’s that shit?”

“Gum. You chew it. Brings enjoyment.”

“Man, that shit looks old as hell.”

“I will have you know that Bazooka is the finest damned gum ever known to man. All other bubble gum tastes like rubber paste. And they have comics inside. Brilliant.”

He looked at me and flashed a gold grin.

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“Kind of bald but kept his hair real tight. Like shaved so no one would notice. White.”

“You said that.”

“Well, he kind of dark for a white dude. Nose kind of big.”

“I’d ask how he dressed but it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Anything different about him? Moles? A tattoo?”

“Naw, man. He did have this weird shit about his ears,” he said, and rubbed the cartilage in his ears. “Like he got shit stuck up in it.”

“You mean like cauliflower ear?”

“Yeah, sumshit like that.”

We stopped at this three-story tan brick building on the Circle and got out. Most of the windows were open and we could hear a construction crew with their drills and hammers blaring Tejano music from small radios while they worked. We walked right into the first floor. It was gutted and open with exposed metal support beams. Even with the air flushing through the open space, it smelled of hot wood and oil from their tools and lifts.

No one was on the floor.

“Where were they?” I asked.

“Second floor.”

Upstairs, we found the office. Two Mexican workers were inside cleaning up a mess left by Sheetrock hangers. They swept the floor in their hard hats, T-shirts bulging with cigarette packs. They didn’t even look up at us as we walked over the stained plywood floor. I watched ALIAS taking it all in.

“Tell me what you remember.”

“They had a secretary. Every time I come in, she’d make me sit there awhile and read magazines till Mr. Thompson was ready.”

“Did Mr. Thompson have a first name?”

“Jim. He acted like we was friends.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Drove.”

“By yourself?”

He nodded.

“Anyone know about this besides you?”

“Naw.”

He walked over to a window where you could see the statue of Lee on his pillar. A streetcar lapped him. Clanking bell. Gears changing. You could only see the back of Lee.

“What’d they promise you, kid?”

“ALIAS.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Tavarius.”

“I like that better.”

“Whatever.”

I smiled.

“I got a business card they gave me.”

I shook my head. “Won’t do any good. Were any of these construction crews here when you came in?”

“No.”

“Didn’t see anyone else in this building except Mr. Thompson and this secretary? Who was she?”

“I don’t know. She was just always runnin’ around and answering phones and interruptin’ his meeting with calls from Britney Spears and shit,” he said, dropping his head.

“So how did it work?” I found a huge paint bucket to sit on and nodded to its mate by the window. He seemed pretty embarrassed. He prided himself on being smart and quick-witted. It was his job. He was a rapper.

Basically, this guy said he represented a ton of celebrities and boasted a long list of phony clients that included everyone from B. B. King to the Nevilles. He even had eight-by-ten photos of clients hanging above the secretary’s desk both times ALIAS visited the office. Once for the hook. The second was the yank.

He told ALIAS long stories about his clients losing millions to their record companies — a common and unfortunately all-too-often-true tale of the recording business — and that he wanted to protect him. He said his group — ATU, or Artists Trust Union — would handle the major balance of ALIAS’s earnings that up until that point had been kept in a trust fund because he was a minor. The guy spun wild tales about potential earnings and even hooked ALIAS real good about being able to invest in a private island in the Caribbean. This all sounded like complete 101 con horseshit to me, but then again, I’m not fifteen years old. He exploited every facet of ALIAS’s teenage dreams and paranoid fantasies about Teddy and Malcolm ripping him off.

But the true genius in the plan was that this guy really had to do little work. ALIAS had to break into Teddy’s office and get the bank account numbers for the ALIAS money market account. Mr. Thompson — bless his heart — acted as his legal guardian (with just a little maneuvering or forgery) and siphoned every bit of cash from the fund that was earmarked for the kid when he turned twenty-one.

I told him that I’d start with the owners of the building and look for any short-team leases he probably did not sign. I asked ALIAS more about the woman from the club and the secretary. The club girl was hot. The secretary had a big butt.

“Why an island?” I asked. “Where did that come from?”

“Shit,” he said as we climbed back in the Gray Ghost. The smell of a warm rain mixed with exhaust and heat from the asphalt.

“You sure no one else could’ve seen them?”

He shook his head.

“No one ever came with you? Took a phone call? Vouched for these folks?”

“No one,” he said. He turned the bill of his Saints cap backward and slumped into his passenger seat.

“I’ll have to talk to your friends,” I said, spitting the Bazooka out the window. The gum had lost its taste and I reached for a fresh piece.

“Do what you got to, man,” he said. “My friends got heart.”

He pounded his chest two times and raised his chin into the wind cutting from the road.

 

6

 

WHEN JOJO OPENED HIS BUSINESS back in 1965, he hired one of the best bartenders in the Quarter. Felix Wright transcended just pouring Jack into a shot glass or popping the top off a Dixie. He performed. He’d have a cold beer rolled down to you from five feet like in an old Western. He kept a file of New Orleans facts in his head, things about Jean Lafitte or Andrew Jackson. Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet. Some of it was probably bullshit. But Felix made you feel welcome. Made you feel like you owned a little bit of JoJo’s, too, while he’d tell you about the night he’d seen Steve McQueen shooting The Cincinnati Kid.

I’d dropped ALIAS back at the Ninth Ward studio and picked up Polk Salad Annie from home. I’d finally taught her to hop up in the Gray Ghost with me. We parked down by the old bar so I could find Felix. Someone had rebuilt the place after the fire last year and turned it into a martini bar where everyone wears all black and compares what they do for a living.

I turned my head as I passed. The blue neon and velvet drapes were enough. I missed the old blues posters in the window and those tall doors fashioned for a Creole restaurant more than 150 years ago.

I had to find Felix and I knew where to look.

It wasn’t pretty. The top bartender in the Quarter had taken a job at Kra-zee Daiquiris down on Bourbon Street. It was the kind of place where you had the option of pouring your drink into a pair of plastic breasts or a long green penis.

Kra-zee’s pumped with that song “Mambo No. 5” and had Polaroid photos of Girls Gone Wild on the walls. The bar was long but thin, maybe six feet from door to counter, just stools lined up under a fake grass canopy like the place was in the middle of the South Pacific. I knew the building used to house a bar that had been around since the early 1800s, serving presidents and pirates in its time. But the new owner wanted to update. Bring in some new tourist dollars in the form of to-go cups.

Felix wore a Mardi Gras Indian headdress on his bald black dome. Strong forearms and quick in his step behind the bar. He was frowning, but his face brightened when I took a seat.

He gripped my hand very hard as he slid down a couple of daiquiris to two women at the end of the bar. Maybe more like plunked them down; apparently the plastic penis doesn’t slide in the same way as JoJo’s glasses.

“How you been?”

“Workin’.”

“You all right?”

“Fine,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eye. Hadn’t since I’d walked in.

“JoJo wanted me to tell you hello.”

He didn’t respond.

“He’s finally got the farm running again. Bought twenty-five head of cattle.”

“Good for him.”

He looked at me and then flashed his eyes away. He poured me a margarita made out of blueberries. I was thankful for the regular to-go cup with just the logo of the bar. I asked for a small glass of water for Annie. He poured it and didn’t comment on a dog being in the bar. Just normal. Crazy Nick and his friends.

“You seen Sun?”

“No.”

“Oz? Hippie Tom?”

He shook his head. “JoJo’s Bar is closed,” he said. “Ain’t you heard?”

I nodded and looked at my hands. A couple of men in pink tank tops and cutoff shorts sauntered into the bar and asked for some margaritas. They began to dance to “Mambo No. 5.” More followed. Drunk at one in the afternoon. I lit a cigarette and waited for Felix to finish.

Felix poured the margaritas with a little panache. He wiped down the cheap Formica bar as if it were still the worn mahogany of JoJo’s. He took drink orders, sometimes three at a time, and worked the stirring machines as if pouring a perfect shot or finding the right head of foam on a Dixie. I kind of respected that. A professional to the last.

“I need to find Curtis,” I said.

“Peckerwood Curtis?” he asked, laughing.

“Is he out?”

“Yeah, got out a few months back. Went back to Stella, too.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

He nodded. I took a small sip of the blueberry margarita and pushed it away.

“You seen him around?”

“Puttin’ in some floors at some new bar on Decatur,” he said. “You know that place that used to be a coffee-house where them vampire people hung out?”

“Thanks.” I got up to leave and shook his hand again.

There was a long mirror behind the daiquiri machines framed in some dripping red chili pepper lights. I watched us — even as I continued to talk — and noticed the fine line of gray on the back of Felix’s normally smooth head. To me, he’d always been ageless, between forty and seventy. I’d never asked. Watching our reflections, I was jarred with a memory of when I was nine and at Disney World with my parents. It was the Haunted House, the end of the ride, and there was a trick mirror when you didn’t see who was sitting with you, only the ghosts who’d stowed away.

“You tell Loretta hello,” he said. “Would you do that?”

I told him I would.

 

7

 

THE FRENCH QUARTER is a shiftless little town. People gain and lose jobs the way some change underwear. You may be working as a bouncer at a club on Decatur one week and the next you find yourself as cook at a four-star restaurant on Bienville. Addresses don’t mean much. Most people just crash, always looking for the cheapest housing where you won’t be too worried about getting jacked every night. I needed to find a buddy of mine named Curtis Lee. Curtis, as I learned from Felix, had been out of Angola for at least six months and had gone straight. Again. Either it was religion or AA; Curtis always found the latest salvation. After one short stint in the Jefferson Parish Jail — this for pissing on the sheriff’s boots during Mardi Gras — he told me he wanted to become a monk and spent months at JoJo’s reading prayer books.

I parked at Decatur and Esplanade behind the French Market, smelling the strands of garlic, dried red pepper, and fish on ice sold there as I hooked Annie onto a leather leash. We walked down Decatur underneath a metal overhang and past a couple of Italian delis and a store that sold Christmas ornaments all year. Cajun Santa. An alligator Rudolph.

I heard hard hammering and the buzz of a saw. The air inside the open door smelled of sawdust and burned wood. On his knees by a miter saw, I saw Curtis, all wiry and mullet-haired, smoking a cigarette and cutting down a tongue-and-groove board.

He smiled up at me, the cigarette pinched between his front teeth. He shut off the saw and stood, shaking the shavings from his coveralls and bending the bill of his Styrofoam hat. The hat asked: GETTIN’ ANY?

I shook his hand. He was playing some Journey on an Emerson cassette player that was held together with duct tape.

“Travers, I heard you was up in Mississippi.”

“I just got back,” I said. “Finished up the project.”

“What was it?” He said wuzzit in that redneck drawl. New Orleans was a long way from Curtis’s north Louisiana home.

“Researching the early days of Sonny Boy Williamson. Found an old partner of his who was the only man I ever met that could take a leak and walk at the same time.”

“How’d he stop from pissin’ on himself?” Curtis asked.

“He didn’t.”

He walked over to a cooler and cracked open the top of a Bud Light. He asked me if I wanted to join him and I said I was cool. I knew it was going to be a very long night.

The hammering in the other room stopped. A large-framed white woman wearing a jogging bra that could’ve comfortably held a third-world country came in and grabbed the beer from his hand. She swigged it, looked at me, and blew out her breath, foam still on her chin.

“Hello, Stella.”

“Eat me, Nick.”

“I’ll take a rain check.”

She turned back to her husband. “Soon as you finish with the professor, let’s get rollin’. You wanted to lay 300 feet today. I’m already growin’ mold.”

Annie started to growl low at her.

“That your mutt?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“Figured you for the mutt, Travers,” she said. “He’s just your style.”

“Her name is Annie.”

She laughed, making snorting piglike grunts in her nose. “Hope you’re happy together.”

Curtis cracked open a beer for himself and watched his wife’s big ass waddle away. “Man, she still makes me hard.”

“Oh, boy.”

“So what can I do for you, brother? Those red maple floors of yours cracking up?”

“Nope. Need some advice on working a con.”

He nodded outside and spoke a little louder for his wife’s benefit. “Let me finish this cigarette outside. All right?”

Outside, he leaned against a metal support pole and watched a couple of Hare Krishnas banging the shit out of a tambourine. “Hey,” he yelled. “Hey.”

One of the Krishnas, orange robe and standard bald head, turned around.

“Y’all fuck off.”

They started singing and banging some more but turned the other way.

“Goddamned assholes,” he said. “Jesus will turn those fuckers into an orange quilt.”

“About the con.”

“Yeah, what’s up? I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Stella. She’d keep my nuts in her purse if she knew you had something for me.”

“Need some direction. I’m working a job for an old buddy of mine. He has this kid he works with — he’s in the music business and they make rap records — and this kid got taken for a huge one.”

“What they use?”

I told him about the offices at Lee Circle and this guy named Thompson and the way they worked on the kid’s paranoia about his trust fund.

“Man, that’s some good shit.”

“Sound like anyone you know?”

He shrugged. “Not really. You say he had fucked-up ears?”

I nodded.

“I know people with fucked-up noses and necks and faces. Maybe even some peckers. But no ear things. Wow, man. How much was it?”

“A lot.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Means I don’t want to say.”

“That’s cool,” he said, taking a sip of beer, starting on what would be one of the first of about one hundred today. He had small hands and yellow teeth. I knew he’d been busted last year for trying to work a handkerchief game on a couple of Lithuanians. When he made the switch and they found the bag full of cut-up newspapers, they tried to stuff him into a mail drop. Apparently the slot was thinner than Curtis and there had been chafing.

“I can ask around,” he said. “Could use a little help, though.”

I knew it’d come to this. Curtis liked to be paid and I didn’t blame him. He had Stella to feed.

“How much?”

“Five hundred.”

“Shit, no.”

“You said it was a ton of money.”

“I said it was a lot. What the hell do you think I keep in my bank account?”

“Two?”

“A hundred if this pans out. I don’t know if I’ll be paid back for this shit.”

“Done,” Curtis said, lighting up his second cigarette. Stella began to yell for him to get back inside. Her voice made nails on a chalkboard seem like chanting monks.

“Goddamn,” he said. “She’s on this new kind of diet from TV. Something that all the stars are onto. Like those little girls on that coffee-shop show in New York. You know where all the girls got tight little asses?”

“Friends.”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, we was watching the other night and she says she wanted her ass to look just like that Courtney Love.”

I didn’t correct him.

“I told her I like that booty,” he said. “I like ’em full and healthy.”

Stella screamed: “Hurry up.”

Curtis’s shoulders shrank a bit. “Maybe it would make her more quiet.”

“You’re a lucky man, brother.”

He winked. “I’ll call.”

“I need this fast,” I said. “Today.”

I held his gaze and he slowly nodded, understanding. Some of the biggest fuckups I’ve ever known always come through in a pinch. Maybe they do because they’ve been in similar situations.

“What’s up?”

“My friend borrowed money from the wrong folks.”

“Greaseballs?”

“Nope,” I said. “A mucho bad motherfucker.”

“Man,” he said. “At least with the greaseballs you knew where the shit was flyin’. This city has turned to shit ever since the Mafia turned into a bunch of pussies.”

He wrote my cell-phone number on his hand.

 

8

 

I STOPPED AT THE MARKET and bought a large Snoball in a cup, black cherry, and sat on the back loading dock trying to figure out what to do next. I had to wait for Curtis, since ALIAS hadn’t given me anything to work with. I shared a little of the cone with Annie while a farmer in overalls unloaded crates of strawberries. She worked her tongue over the ice neatly as her tail wagged a lot. I scratched her chest and kept watching the man unload the crates.

“Dem dogs are nasty, no?” he asked in a deep Cajun accent.

“No,” I said, smiling. “Dogs’ mouths are cleaner than a human’s.”

“No human I know lick their backside like that,” he said.

“Annie doesn’t lick her ass,” I said, digging my spoon into the ice. “Very much.”

The old Cajun shook his head and disappeared with a dolly full of strawberries. I turned back to Annie.

“You want to stay with me?”

Annie wagged her tail, the twisted muttlike loop knocking against my arm. I thought about where she’d been in the Delta, days before. Starving out by a dusty road where she would’ve probably died under a truck tire.

I called Teddy from my cell and asked him about the DJ he’d mentioned. The guy who’d been sold out by Cash.

“Lorenzo Woods?”

“Where does he coach?”

Teddy told me. I laid the rest of the Snoball on the ground for my new friend. Annie scarfed it up and pawed at the Styrofoam when it was gone.

“What you wastin’ your time with him?” Teddy asked, his voice broken by static. “He doesn’t know shit.”

“He knows Cash.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They was tight.”

“And now he doesn’t like him.”

“Yeah.”

“JFK is on Wisner, right?”

 

 

THE SCHOOL’S security guard stopped us as soon as we hit the front door. He had a big belly and a small gun and snorted when he talked as if announcing a sermon on where dogs are welcome. Apparently school wasn’t one of them.

“That’s racism.”

“A dog ain’t no race.”

“It’s a species.”

“That ain’t no race, and it needs to be outside.”

He put his hands on his hips.

“Will you call Coach Woods?”

“Why would Coach Woods want to see some dog?”

“She’s the best placekicker in the southern parishes.”

He squinted his eyes up and shook his head, turning his back to us.

“Wait till you go pro, Annie,” I said. “They’ll all be sorry.”

Coach Woods found us a little while later on this old practice field where Annie and I were playing with a tennis ball she’d found. He was about forty and black. Wore a crewneck T that said KENNEDY D-LINE. LIKE A ROCK.

“You lookin’ for me?” He kept his hair short and it had started to turn gray at the temples. Annie trotted over with the tennis ball and dropped it against my leg. I took the slobbery ball, tossed it about thirty yards, and she took off for it.

“Heard you used to be DJ Capone.”

He just watched me.

“Heard that Cash stole your beats.”

Woods walked closer. “What you sellin’, man?”

“I’m a friend of Teddy Paris. Said maybe you could help me figure out Cash a little bit.”

“Teddy?” he said, smiling.

He squinted into the sun behind my head as Annie looped back and dropped the ball by my foot. Out in the field, the team still kept the old-school goalposts that were shaped like an H. They reminded me of a field with high grass in south Alabama where my dad coached. He used to have to cut the grass himself. Sometimes he’d make me weed the field as he slipped back into his office to drink some Beam on ice.

“You know Cash?”

I shook my head and dropped to a knee to slow Annie down a bit. She was still too skinny to be a healthy dog.

“He give you that scar on your face?”

“Got that myself.”

“Figured as much,” he said. “What business you got with Cash?”

“Teddy and Cash are fighting over money and recording this boy out of Calliope.”

“ALIAS,” he said. “Yeah, I know all about that.”

“I’m looking out for the kid’s interests.”

“Cash will kill you if you get in the way.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But would he really kill Teddy?”

“Teddy owe him money?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Teddy owes everybody money.”

“You want to take a walk?”

I hooked up Annie to her leash and we began to walk around a rubberized track that circled the football field. We kept looping around the field and I still felt like I needed to be weeding all these years later. I thought about ALIAS at fifteen, wondered how long he’d been out of school.

“You’re Nick Travers, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said and shook his hand.

“I seen you play many times, man. Y’all had the best defense those years. You and that man from Mississippi, linebacker?”

“Ulysses Davis.”

“The Black Knight.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him that somebody remembers him,” I said. “He’ll like that.”

“Y’all stay in touch?”

I nodded.

“Tell me about what happened with you and Cash.”

“I grew up in Calliope,” he said. “Proud of that. Most of my kids come from there or Magnolia. I got out by workin’ block parties. Hustlin’ for any money I could make. I invented bounce, man. You know bounce?”

“It’s the Dirty South sound.”

“Damn right,” he said. “That’s me.”

“Cash took it.”

“Took my beats, put his lame-ass raps over it, and threatened all the record stores in Uptown. Made ’em sell his record or he’d fuck their ass up.”

“Man, that’s good marketing.”

“That ape don’t play,” he said. He patted Annie on her head and reached down to pull some high grass from some broken asphalt inside the track. “When I confronted the man, he just walk away. We was at a block party at the Y when I let him know he was a thief. Didn’t even answer me. But that motherfucker sure broke into my apartment one night. Tied up me and my girl. Made her watch while he beat my ass.”

I changed the leash into the other hand. Woods put his hands into his coaching shorts and pulled out a whistle. He twirled it into his fingers. “Stuck a knife into my mouth. Cut my tongue.”

He shook his head. “Made me go back to school, though. I played ball in high school but I wasn’t like y’all. Didn’t have the speed. No real size. Got my degree from Xavier on my twenty-sixth birthday, man. Now I teach computer skills to these kids.”

Annie kept pulling on the leash, not sure why it was slowing her down. Her tongue lolling out, antenna ears askew.

“Someone took ALIAS,” I said. “They conned him. Made him think he was represented by some big agency. Does Cash have the connection or the smarts to make that work?”

“Man’s smart. But he don’t have the patience for something like that. He wants the kid. Wants Teddy to look bad. But see, Cash doesn’t work that way, conning somebody. If he wanted something done, he’d head right to it. He’ll lie, steal, and cheat. But he’ll do it face-to-face. Con games and playin’ ain’t the man’s style.”

“You answered my question.”

“What kind of dog is that anyway?” he asked.

“A Delta dog,” I said. “The finest breeding outside Memphis.”

“Got some pit in her?”

“Maybe.”

“What else?”

“Boxer. Shepherd. Wookie.”

“Man,” he said, laughing. “Listen. You think you could come by practice sometime this fall? Kids ’bout to get out of school now. Tryin’ to make ’em show up to workouts this summer and all. Ain’t workin’ that great. All kinds of distractions. Girls. Drugs. Money. Man, when I was a kid, football was everything. Now they just into ballin’.”

“I guess when you hit the big time, you don’t even need school.”

“ALIAS will have to come down hard one day,” he said. “You ever want to help out, let me know.”

“Sure, man,” I said. “I work at Tulane. They know how to find me.”

I stopped walking at the gate to the parking lot. Annie needed some water and to be fed. I needed to make a few calls. “Who would want to cheat this kid?” I asked.

Woods stretched out his fist and gave me the pound. Hard black clouds rolled in from the east, a few small trees planted around the field started to shake. I heard thunder crack. The rain was back.

“A millionaire kid with a Calliope education?” he asked. “I’d look at everybody who breathes in this city.”

“Will Cash come for me?”

“If you’re in between him and the boy, you better bet on it.”

 

9

 

CASH STAYED UPTOWN in this purple mansion with yellow shutters just off the streetcar line where white people played tennis and parked their cars behind thick iron fences. You’d heard that his neighbors don’t like him none. Not ’cause he’s black and rich but ’cause he throws parties about every night, rips apart some old-as-hell house breakin’ the law, and threatens folks with sawed-off shotguns. He even made some white lawyer get on his knees and kiss his buck-naked ass after the man told Cash to cut his lawn. In a lot of ways, you got to respect that.

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.

He had a roughened, musical voice and worked his tricky lyrics and rhymes as if he were juggling words and verses in midair.

I didn’t know rap but I knew he was good.

“Hey, dog,” Teddy yelled. He wore rimless sunglasses tinted a deep red and a toothpick hung out of his mouth. The rap music was loud and shaking and the red, green, and yellow cars bucked like wild horses, the bikini girls popped their asses, and the posse just shouted and waved black-and-gold bandannas over their heads.

We walked to a far corner of the expressway cavern, behind one of the huge columns, where we were somewhat shielded from the music.

“I know about the cops and Malcolm,” I said.

He was silent.

“You could’ve just dropped a word, man,” I said. “I like to know these things.”

Teddy was six feet six and 300 pounds and loomed over me while I talked. Not a lot of people made me feel so small.

“The cops wanted Malcolm ’cause it was easy,” Teddy said, finally speaking.

The rain from earlier dripped down in dirty beads from underneath the expressway and dropped onto Teddy’s sunglasses. He wiped his face and looked over my shoulder.

“Why won’t he let them see his bank account?”

The music stopped and I heard the director yelling at one of the women to put her bikini top back on. While Teddy and I watched, a young white man in loose khakis and a plaid untucked shirt came by.

“I need to talk to Malcolm,” I said.

Teddy nodded and said, “Later.”

The man offered his hand to me and I shook it.

“This your friend Nick?” the man asked. He was in his late twenties. Easy smile on his face. Relaxed handshake. His eyes kind of unfocused, slow and lazy in his movements. He looked like he’d just woken up and stifled a yawn with his fist.

“This my dog Trey,” Teddy said. “Take care of my financial things. Keep the Ninth Ward show runnin’ hard.”

“Y’all work together?” I asked.

“Trey Brill,” he said. He had that carefully disheveled hair that was supposed to make you look like you’d just crawled out of bed. He was kind of tan and had a slight blondish stubble on his face. He kept his sunglasses on Croakies around his neck.

“Thought I was your one and only token,” I said.

“I like to diversify.”

“Hey, man,” I said to Trey. “I need to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“You can come by the office tomorrow.”

I looked at Teddy.

“They ain’t no tomorrow,” Teddy said to Trey. “I’ll explain later. I need you to do this.”

Trey looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

“I told you about Nick looking into what happened with ALIAS?”

“Yeah.”

“Give him what he needs.”

“What do you do, Nick?”

“Pick up my paycheck at the end of the week,” I said. I hated that question.

Trey gave that relaxed smile. “You’re a teacher or something?”

“At Tulane.”

“Teddy, I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand.”

“Take care of Nick,” he said. “I ain’t got time.”

“I’ve got to head back to my office,” Trey said.

“I’ll meet you there.”

Trey looked back at Teddy, but Teddy had already disappeared under the concrete caves.

 

12

 

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I rode the elevator up to the thirty-second floor of a nameless CBD building made of steel and mirrors. A black leather sofa and a small coffee table covered in back issues of the Robb Report sat inside the glass door to BRILL & ASSOCIATES, SPORTS AND ENTERTAINMENT MANAGEMENT. A wooden humidor of cigars and a cutter waited for anyone who needed to indulge. The magazines featured articles on test drives of the latest Ferraris and new Caribbean resorts with nights that started in the $3,000 range.

Framed photos hung on the walls. Couple of old teammates of mine. The current coach for the Saints. A famous jazz musician. I stared through a doorway flooded with dim light into an office and back wall with a view of another mirrored office building across the street. A red light blinked from an antenna on the roof. The sky was orange and black, dark clouds still hovering over Algiers. I hoped the streets would not flood tonight.

Brill walked in with a black man who looked to be somewhere in his twenties. The black man, really just a kid, carried a couple of helmets and footballs. He wore a navy polo shirt and khakis. They were laughing hard, and when the guy put down all the sports paraphernalia, Trey gave him a high five.

The other guy looked at me and his eyes narrowed a bit. Trey waited a second, checked messages on the secretary’s desk, and then turned back. “One minute, Nick. Okay?”

We shook hands and his smile folded deeply into dimples. He divided his long frat-boy hair out of his eyes. “So, what do you need?”

He’d yet to introduce his buddy. The buddy crossed his arms over his chest and peered down at my dirty boots. I looked at him and he just watched me. No smile, no greeting.

“Oh, this is my friend Christian,” Brill said. “We had to grab some of this stuff for a new sports bar a friend of ours is opening. They needed some more Saints crap. Man, we’re going to be great this year. I can’t wait.”

I always hated it when men referred to the teams they followed as “we.” I don’t call drinking beer and yelling at the players doing the actual work some kind of true common bond. Especially the ones who think their affiliation is on a metaphysical plane and they are as responsible for the outcome as the guys on the field.

I followed Brill back to his office, where the walls were lined with more sports stars and photos of him with old NFL greats. One showed him running through some tires at some kind of NFL fantasy camp.

He reached into a small refrigerator by his glass desk and pulled out Evian water. He kicked out of his Nikes, rolled off his socks, and laid his bare feet on top of the desk. “Shoot.”

“I need to look at Teddy and Malcolm’s bank records, any account that was drained.”

He sipped on the water as if it were a baby’s bottle. A pacifier of some kind. He squinted his eyes and nodded with concern. “And what will that do?”

“Find ALIAS’s money.”

He nodded. “O-kay. Haven’t the police already done this?” He gave a forced laugh.

“They tried, but Malcolm wouldn’t let them,” I said. “I need to know when you noticed the money was missing and copies of any withdrawals made.”

He nodded again and downed half the bottle of water. He stood up and patted me on the back. “Listen, I appreciate you being such a good friend to Teddy, and if you hear of anything that can help us out with that missing money, I will let the detectives know. But it’s not our policy to let information like that out.”

“Call Teddy.”

“We already spoke.”

“And he said not to release these records to me?”

“And what would you do with them?”

“Make paper animals. Maybe a hat.”

“They don’t tell us anything. It just transferred to some kind of holding account that disappeared. The money came from Malcolm’s joint account, and he doesn’t want to work with you.”

“What was the name on the account where the money was transferred to?”

He patted me on the back again and tried to steer me out of his office by grabbing my biceps. I didn’t move.

In the other room, his buddy had strapped the helmet on his head and was trying to drop back like a QB. He had a puckered scar from a brand on his muscular arm, but his polo shirt was stiff and fresh. Expensive brown leather loafers.

“Teddy gets a little ahead of himself sometimes,” he said. “I can only work with the police.”

I pried his fingers from my biceps.

“Don’t ever grab my arm again, kid.”

“Whooh.” Brill laughed and made a scary motion with his palms raised.

His buddy laughed and took off his helmet. He moved in close to me. I could smell a sourness about his clothes mixed with some kind of expensive cologne. He was light-skinned and his eyes were a brownish green.

“Listen, I know Teddy thinks he owes you something because you didn’t really work out with the team and all.”

“I look forward to getting those records,” I said. “Why don’t you just wait here for Teddy to call.”

“All right, then,” he said, holding the door wide. “Thanks for coming by.”

His smile remained stuck on his face as if drawn by a stranger. He didn’t even know it was there.

 

13

 

ABERCROMBIE & FITCH. Brooks Brothers. Crate & Barrel. Starbucks. Trey Brill liked the way his stores smelled. Uncluttered and clean. The dark coffee smell of Starbucks. The faded look to an Abercrombie hat with a cool old rugby logo. The way Brooks Brothers had the same ties and shirts every year. Everything the way you expected it. Trey finished up paying for a new suit and walked out with Christian, who’d hung with him since they left the office. He and his old friend side by side since the time they were twelve. Soccer practices to bars to business partners.

Trey and Christian watched Teddy from the second floor of the shopping mall, looking down at the fat man sitting by the wishing fountain. Teddy sure was sweating a lot today, the back of his silk shirt soaked. He seemed real jumpy, too, like when Trey mentioned that he needed to pick up a suit before they headed to Redfish for dinner. Teddy just kind of freaked out.

“He’s fucked,” Christian said, smiling.

“His own fault,” Trey said.

“People like that can never handle money,” Christian said. “They don’t understand it.”

“True.”

He said good-bye to Christian, and as his friend was walking away, he saw Teddy peer up at the balcony. He was sure that Teddy saw Christian only from a distance and he was glad of that.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Teddy said when he met him at the foot of the escalator. The PA system played some Sting from his Live in Tuscany concert, one of Trey’s favorites.

“He’s my friend.”

“Just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Trey tried to look concerned at Teddy’s sweating and paranoia while they walked outside to the parking lot and stuck his suit in his trunk. Make him think he was flipping out about nothing. They decided to walk over to Bourbon Street and Redfish. Teddy said he couldn’t breathe in the car.

“Are you doing okay, man?” Trey asked as they walked around the old marble Customs House. It was dark now and he could hear all the dance music and that awful Cajun stuff starting up down on North Peters and through the Quarter. Tourists in tennis shoes and shorts, carrying cameras and cups of Hurricanes, walked by the old brick storefronts and under wooden signs flapping in the warm wind.

“Yeah,” Teddy said, huffing and puffing down Iberville and crossing over Decatur Street. “Just got some things on my mind.”

“Your buddy Travers stopped by,” he said.

“You help him out?”

“Yeah,” Trey said. “Gave him what I legally could.”

“Good.”

Some homeless man wandered over, begging them for a few bucks. Said he needed some bus fare, behind him was the red curved neon of an all-night bar.

Trey laughed at him. “Get a job.”

“Can’t,” said the toothless man.

“Sorry,” Trey said. “Jeez.”

Teddy didn’t even notice. He just had his big head down kicking absently at a dirty Lucky Dog wrapper filled with mustard and stinking onions.

“You believe ALIAS?” Teddy asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know him that well.”

“I need that money.”

“I know, Teddy.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said. “Ain’t worried about creditors, man. See, I borrowed some money from Cash.”

Trey stopped walking by a used bookstore. He put his hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “What’s going on? Talk to me, dog.”

Trey knew Teddy liked when he said “dog.” Made him seem like a true Ninth Warder.

Teddy told the whole story about why he’d gone to Cash for money for ALIAS’s video, said he thought they could make it up on the next record from this guy that Malcolm thought was so great named Stank. But Trey knew that Stank hadn’t even cut the damned album yet. They were already getting killed by the latest releases from No Limit and Cash Money. Last year Ninth Ward Records was making those guys sweat.

Teddy said he had till morning before Cash said he was going to kill him. Trey led him into the restaurant, where they took a seat near the bar and ordered. They didn’t talk until the waiter returned.

Trey took a sip of his dirty martini and looked concerned. Redfish had lots of chrome, yellow Christmas lights, a big fake oyster over the bar that had been turned into a mirror. Nice leather seats. It was all right to Trey, but he liked Emeril’s a lot more.

The waiter brought them a couple of plates of Oysters Three Ways: grilled, fried, and raw on a bed of rock salt. Teddy slurped his right off his plate, gobbling everything up just like the street hustler that he’d always been. Or maybe because he thought this was his last supper or something. Pretty weird. Of course Teddy wasn’t brought up with any class. He hadn’t gone to Metairie Country Day or gone to Vandy on an academic scholarship that his parents bought. He hadn’t spent his winters skiing in Vail or summers down in Baja sipping tequila and screwing girls from UCLA.

Teddy went to Freaknik in Atlanta and still paid women to be seen with him.

“Can we get money from anywhere else?” Teddy asked. “Did you check into the cars or the house?”

“Not in one night, man.”

“Don’t you know some people?” he asked. “People in Old Metairie. That kind of money like chump change to them.”

“Teddy, you are my friend. But it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just call up somebody and ask for a half a million. I mean, they’d think I was crazy.”

Trey stirred the martini with his finger. He knew he needed to call Molly, finally buy that sofa from Restoration Hardware, and maybe hook up with this gash who was in grad school at Tulane. A buddy of his had already fucked her. He’d buy her a drink and take her to the Hyatt or something. Heard she had an ass that just wouldn’t quit.

Teddy buried his head in his hands. The redfish entrée came and Teddy pushed it away. “Nick’s got to find it. He has to.”

Trey played with his drink more. Two women, dirty blondes in halters and fake leather pants, walked into the bar. Their boyfriends behind them. Couple of tools in cheap Gap shirts and tourist running shoes. Last year’s Nikes.

“I know this guy’s your friend, but who is he, really?” Trey asked, trying to seem interested in Teddy’s problems. “I mean, as a professional. He’s a teacher, right? My buddy Josh is a lawyer and has three investigators working for him. They’d do a better job. This guy doesn’t impress me.”

“Yeah?” Teddy said. “Nick once got this woman out of jail after forty years. Also took down that L.A. motherfucker that owned that Blues Shack club.”

“So he’s muscle?” Trey asked. “That’s not what we need. Let me get someone good on this. This guy, no offense, man, seems like a real loser. He was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon on it.”

“I have till the morning,” Teddy said, head up and watching Brill now. “Ain’t you listenin’?”

Trey shrugged. “Aren’t you above this thug shit now? You worked too hard. You don’t need people like that.”

“What you got goin’ on, Brill?” Teddy asked, looking Trey hard in the eye. He held his stare. “You wouldn’t want to see me lose, would you?”

“After all we’ve been through?” Trey asked. “We’re more brothers than you and Malcolm.”

“You still meetin’ with him tonight?”

“Should I cancel?”

“I guess not,” Teddy said. “Don’t have nothin’ to do with my troubles.”

Trey winked at him.

Teddy smiled. “You a hustla too, right?”

Trey smiled back and took a sip of the martini. “You know it, dog.”

 

14

 

I CHECKED WITH CURTIS at his house — and got nowhere — dropped by the warehouse and fed Annie, leaving on Cartoon Network for her to watch Super-friends, and headed out to a strip club in New Orleans East where I knew I’d find ALIAS. It was about eight o’clock and the sky turned black and purple on the horizon as I drove I-10 toward Slidell and found the exit. I passed an old Shoney’s and a now-defunct shopping mall that had become the place for local crack deals and gun-fights. The cops didn’t even like to patrol here anymore.

About ten years ago, New Orleans East was a suburb of corporate apartments and yuppie condos along with the usual strip malls and chain restaurants. But since the Hope VI federal housing initiative took off and local slumlords could get easy money through Section 8 housing grants, New Orleans East had taken over where the now-demolished Magnolia and Desire housing projects had left off.

But instead of brick and mortar sheltering the poor, it was Sheetrock and flimsy plywood — no apartment manager having to answer for shit while the slumlords grew rich and wrote off millions on their taxes.

The Booty Call Club was pretty much black-only with the loose gathering of basic out-of-town white businessmen with per diem cash to spend. Nothing special. A rambling building with no windows next door to a Denny’s. By the parking lot stood an industrial plastic sign of a cartoon black woman covering her breasts with a Mardi Gras mask.

The inside was dark, lit in a few areas with track lighting and neon beer signs. The air smelled like cherry incense and Pine-Sol. Toward a main stage where some woman was twirling on a brass pole to George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog,” I found Malcolm sipping on a forty-ounce and smoking a Newport. His Saints jersey running down to his knees and his Timberland boots propped up in a chair before him. A couple of other teens I’d seen at the video shoot gathered around the girl’s stage and stuck twenties into her garter.

She was brown-eyed and had long curly brown hair. She had a little pooch to her belly and her legs jiggled when she danced. But the more twenties she got, the more she shook it.

I pulled up a chair — the sound of the funk deafening — and leaned into Malcolm. He gave me a pound and offered me a Newport from his pack, his cigarette catching in the side of his mouth by his gold tooth.

“Where’s ALIAS?” I asked. The music shifted to this old Prince tune about not having to watch Dynasty to have an attitude, and Malcolm ran with it, bobbing his head, cigarette dangling from his lips as he listened.

“You gonna get that man that took all that money?” Malcolm took a sip of the beer. He’d been smoking it up and his eyes were a little tight. He just kind of hummed each word out of his mouth. Told me he loved me. Loved me for helping his big brother out. He asked if I wanted a cigarette again and I said I did.

He handed me the pack.

“I know you always bummin’ off people, right.”

I appreciated the gesture; he was into respect. Last year when two shitbags had almost killed Loretta, the Paris brothers were the first at the hospital. Malcolm called me about every day after that wanting to know what he could do. He would’ve killed somebody if I’d asked him.

I took a cigarette and tucked the pack in my jacket.

“I need to borrow ALIAS.”

“Take ’im,” Malcolm said. “Boy played out.”

“Was Dio like that?”

“Dio was nothin’ but heart,” Malcolm said. I still saw the boy’s face in the hardened man. He still had the same soft eyes and nappy hair from when he used to come by practice with Teddy. Fifteen and running errands for his big brother.

Malcolm cupped a cigarette to his face, smoke fingering its way up over the lines and creases the last ten years had left.

“That what killed him?”

“I don’t know what killed him, man,” Malcolm said. He turned away and took a long drag off the Newport and a deep swig off the forty. “I always thought it was Cash that snatched his ass.”

“Looking forward to meeting him.”

“Be careful, brother,” he said. “The man could turn Mike Tyson into his bitch. He likes to make you bow down. Bleed a little bit to his respect.”

“You think Cash took ALIAS for the money?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Naw,” he said. “Didn’t you listen to ALIAS? Some white man worked him. That ain’t Cash. He don’t play.”

“So I heard,” I said. “What happened with Dio?”

His smile turned.

“Couple of men took him last year.”

“Stuffed him in a van at that Uptown club?”

He nodded.

“And you don’t think that’s connected to ALIAS?”

“Why would it be?” he said. “Some hustlers took him down. He’s dead. We’ll never find him.”

“Police said it was you.”

Malcolm stuck the cigarette in his mouth and inched closer to my face. He mouthed the word “Shit,” and turned his back to me. “Goddamn, I used to respect you,” he said. “You just like ’em all. Fuck this. I don’t care if I told Teddy to find you.”

He got up and strutted away, his football jersey un-tucked, and took a long swig from his forty before wrapping his long arms around two of the dancers.

I found and followed a hallway through a back room where flickered patterns of red and blue lights played in small, individual coves.

ALIAS lay on a round bed with a young girl, really beautiful with her long black hair partially covered in a black bandanna and long slender legs. She stretched out on top of his back, hugging him tight almost like he was a life preserver, as he — oblivious to her — worked out some aggression on a video game with dragons and knights.

“You ready?” I asked.

“You get what you need?”

“No.”

“I told you, Old School,” he said, pulling on his baseball cap. “You wouldn’t listen. These people done gone. No faces. No names. How you supposed to come through for Teddy? You best call him now and tell him to take a long ride out of New Orleans.”

“Maybe.”

“What else you gonna do?”

“I’m workin’ on it.”

“Better work fast.”

“Come on.”

He patted the young girl’s right hand that gripped him tight, her body prone on his, and she slowly slid off of him. Wordless. Her eyes accusing me for taking him away. She tucked her hair back into her bandanna and stripped off a long shirt to reveal a complicated array of belts, garters, lace, and buckles.

She was fourteen and then she was an adult.

ALIAS checked himself in the mirror, grabbed a Saints ball cap that was perched on the edge of the chair, and nodded at me. “Let’s roll.”

 

15

 

ALIAS WAS HUNGRY and I was fresh out of ideas. But I’d made a ton of calls and hoped Curtis’s countryfied lyin’ ass would come through for once. I checked the cell phone, willing it to ring, but it didn’t while we sat at the counter of the Camellia Grill waiting on ALIAS’s hamburger. I’d ordered an omelette and a cup of coffee. It was about ten o’clock and I was tired. I washed my face in the bathroom with cold water and returned to the seat where ALIAS was already eating. I thought about Maggie’s porch and these great old green chairs she had where we kicked back and talked all night.

The Camellia Grill was a little diner in a small white house at the end of the streetcar tracks near the turnaround in Carrollton. After being in the humidity all day, the air-conditioning felt nice, and for a long time, ALIAS and I didn’t talk.

“You trust Malcolm?” I asked.

He nodded and took another bite.

“What about Teddy?”

“Sure.”

“Malcolm ever ask you for money?”

He shook his head, looking confused. I passed him some ketchup and asked the waiter for some Crystal sauce. Just right on an omelette.

“Is Teddy gonna die?” ALIAS asked.

“No.”

“How you know?”

“’Cause Teddy can talk his way out of anything.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean Teddy knows how to survive.”

“So why you workin’ so hard?”

“Just in case.”

“Cash is evil.”

“How do you know?”

“Me and him know each other. He offered me money to get on his label.”

“You gonna leave Teddy?”

“Don’t know.”

“What do you want to be when you’re grown up?” I asked.

“I am grown up.”

“You’re fifteen.”

“I’m a man,” he said.

“You like women?”

“They a’ight.”

“Just all right.”

“Yeah, I like them.”

He looked away from me and dabbled a fry into the ketchup.

“I have a woman in Mississippi that’s pretty pissed at me.”

“You fuck someone else?”

“No.”

“Get drunk?”

“No.”

“Then what she bitchin’ ’bout?”

“It’s my birthday tomorrow and she had something planned.”

He finished off the burger and carefully poured more ketchup in a neat little pile. He liked to keep everything separate. There was no mixing of ketchup and fries till he was ready.

“Who was that girl at the club?”

“Tamika.”

“Who is she?”

“A friend.”

“She’s a kid.”

“Maybe,” he said. “She use her sister’s driver’s license so she can dance. She ain’t bad. She can shake her ass and shit.”

The streetcar passed underneath the oaks outside. A priest and a woman with a bruise under her eye walked in and found a seat by the bathroom. I finished the omelette and drank some more coffee.

“Where we gonna head next?”

“I don’t know.”

I excused myself and walked outside, trying Curtis again. The phone rang about six times before he answered. He sounded out of breath.

“Stella got me doin’ this exercise tape, got that black dude that’s some kind of big star in Hong Kong. You know he got that funny head that look like a turtle? Man, that shit kickin’ my ass.”

“What you got?” I watched my truck across the street and a couple of kids skateboarding around it. Crime lights scattered on my hood and I heard some bottleneck guitar playing at a biker bar in the crook of St. Charles.

“Pinky’s Bar.”

“Where?”

“It’s in the Marigny but ain’t no fag place or anything,” Curtis said. I heard Stella yelling at him. “Ask for Fred. You’ll get what you need.”

 

16

 

PINKY’S SPECIALIZED in kick-ass punk music, explosive drinks, and a Tuesday-night bondage show, or so I heard from Curtis. I’d left my leather mask back home and I never owned a whip in my life but decided I’d be safe. I told ALIAS he could wait in the truck, but he said he wanted to see this place. He said freaks were interesting and wanted to know if it was like that shit in Pulp Fiction. I’d parked off Elysian Fields and Chartres by a methadone clinic and a vegetarian restaurant that offered discounts to same-sex couples. A few years back, I wouldn’t have even driven through this neighborhood; the gunshots and violence were constant. But a few years ago, the homosexual community had taken over the Marigny, cleaning it up and making it their own. But now the historic district right by the Quarter was going through another change. Gentrification. Now it was hipper than Uptown and way too cool for the Quarter.

And Pinky’s, I think, was supposed to be too cool for anyone.

A nice neon sign of a forties pinup in a pink nightgown hung over the vinyl padded door with a diamond glass for a window. Nice curvy butt and shoulders and blond hair on top of her head in ribbons. She winked at you, holding a hand of cards. Pink neon surrounding her body. From inside, Johnny Cash was singing “That Lucky Old Sun,” the Ray Charles number.

A grizzled white dude with multiple piercings and a shaved head smoked a clove cigarette behind the bar and flipped through a copy of Newsweek. A photo of George W. Bush on the cover looking intense. He nodded along with the article as I waited for a little service.

“What’ll it be?” he asked. He was British.

“Two Cokes.”

“I want a beer,” ALIAS said.

“One Coke and a Barq’s.”

“Man, that’s root beer.”

“No shit.”

ALIAS walked off to the jukebox.

“I’m also looking for a guy named Fred Moore,” I said.

“She’s not in.”

“She?”

“She’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “She had to pick up the band.”

We waited as the bar really opened up. The lights dimmed. More pink neon. Black-and-white photos of forties B actors and movie posters for these noir films that I didn’t even know lined the walls. A few Bettie Page flicks. Some sixties Roger Corman stuff. ALIAS loaded up the jukebox with some rap music I’d never heard.

The waitresses walked in and started getting ready for the night. Brunette and blond. They were all beautiful and young and hard as hell. Their pasty white faces never saw the sun. Deep red lips outlined in black and hair up in Andrews Sisters configurations. Tight black Ts with glitter sayings: BITCH and HOT STUFF and double dice on snake eyes. They all wore combat boots and black socks.

ALIAS gave me a wild stare over the back of one of the girls and mouthed the word “Freak.”

A few minutes later, an older woman with hair so blond I wasn’t too sure it wasn’t white walked in the door with a group of tired kids hauling guitars and pieces of a drum kit. She pointed out the stage cast in a red light, walked over to the bar, and asked the pierced Brit for the mail.

He handed some stuff to her but didn’t mention me. She had on large black sunglasses in the darkened bar. Long black shirt, tight black pants.

I introduced myself and said I’d like to talk to her about some business in private. Johnny Cash came back on in the shuffle and sang about God havin’ a heaven for country trash.

“I do my business here. You don’t like, then fuck off. This is my place.”

She sat at the bar stool next to me. She was in her late forties or early fifties. She reminded me of Deborah Harry if Deborah Harry lived an even tougher life. She lit a long cigarette.

“Who was Pinky?”

“My mother.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” she said. “I’ve heard that more GIs jacked off to her than Betty Grable.”

“You must be proud.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“I had one of those posters of Farrah Fawcett. Got me through puberty.”

“You must be proud too.”

“I have guilt.”

She took a long draw of cigarette and nodded about ten times, letting the smoke just float out of the corner of her mouth. Her mouth looked like a shrunken, dead rose. She kept looking over my shoulder at ALIAS. She watched him as she played with her cigarette.

Fred motioned for the bartender. “Watch that kid.”

The bartender nodded.

“The kid’s with me.”

“What are you, into some kind of Big Brother program?” she said. “Get rid of that guilt you got.”

“I heard you could lead me to someone who conned a friend of mine.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Great question,” I said. “I can arrange money.”

“Who sent you?”

“Curtis Lee.”

“Thought he was on the Farm.”

“Got out.”

“I would’ve stayed if I was married to that wretched woman.”

“He loves her.”

“Curtis has problems.”

“Maybe.”

She walked off, spoke to the band for a few minutes, and then returned to the bar. Punks began to fill up the place, all black-T-shirted and pierced, tattoos muraling their arms. Heads shaved. Hair moussed up in impossible directions.

“What do you want to know?”

I repeated the story about Teddy, the kid, and the con. The man with cauliflower ears. She listened.

“How much money did he lose?”

“That’s for you to find out and then tell me who I need to find.”

She shrugged. “How much?”

“Has to come through first.”

“I haven’t run a game in five years.”

I ordered another Coke. She paid for it and I appreciated that.

“Anyone run the big games around here?”

“Used to be this cocksucker named Fourtnot but he died in the eighties. I don’t know. Mostly freelance. Lots of Lotto games. Big cons on old women down at the lake-front. But what you’re talking about is impressive. Good imagination.”

“Not bad.”

She reached out with her long fingers and slowly raked her red nails across my arm.

“Tell your boy to get lost and come with me,” she said.

“Where would you start?”

She flipped her hair back and lit another cigarette. She looked at herself in the mirror, not finding what she was looking for, and mussed her hair with her fingers. “I will. You won’t.”

Her fingers were stained with nicotine and her breath smelled of garlic and mint. She looked at me and sighed. “I want five thousand.”

“Has to come through tonight,” I said.

“I’ll work on it.”

“I need it within a couple of hours.”

She nodded.

“What happened to Pinky?”

“She jumped off the balcony of the Fountainebleau in Miami.”

She stubbed her cigarette into an ashtray filled with peanut shells and walked away.

 

17

 

I DROPPED ALIAS at his mansion a little past midnight. He told me that the place — a Mediterranean Revival number on Pontchartrain with bonsai-looking trees — was going to be plowed under someday and updated with something he’d seen on Deep Space 9. We walked inside an empty house and I noticed a little spot for him in the living room with a GI Joe sleeping bag and a small CD player. Dozens of rap CDs lay on the floor by his pillow and a couple of discount packs of chips and warm liters of Pepsi. Little indentations from missing furniture spotted the white carpet. Moonlight crept into his paneled French doors from the pool.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why not?”

I gave him the number to the cell and watched him as he tucked himself into the blanket and turned his back to me.

I drove back home, hoping that thing from Fred would shake out. Without that, I didn’t have much. Teddy wouldn’t respond to my messages about that dick Trey Brill. I was beginning to lose patience and I was tired as hell.

But as soon as I got close to my warehouse on Julia, I felt something was out of place.

Four cars were parked in broken patterns in front of businesses that had closed up for the night. A black Cadillac Escalade, two red Ferraris, and a green Rolls, all their bright silver rims shining down the stretch of asphalt.

I didn’t turn into the warehouse. I parked down the street and walked.

The convertible top was down on the Rolls. A box of .38 slugs sat empty in the passenger seat. The light to my warehouse burned bright through a huge bank of industrial windows. The small blue door that leads to the second floor was closed.

I slipped a key into the lock and slowly pushed it open with both hands. I reached for the Glock in my jacket. The seventeen rounds waited jacked inside.

Upstairs, I heard Annie’s high-pitched barking. She yelped in an urgent rhythm.

I crept up the stairs and heard a crash in my loft and a couple of men laughing.

I moved forward, my heart skipping pretty damned quickly in my chest. I tried to control my breathing and slip silently to the landing. Annie kept barking, her yips working into a howl.

The huge sliding door had been pushed open and inside about a half-dozen men rifled through my shit. A man with a puckered burn mark across his cheek drank my Jack Daniel’s from the bottle and then spit a mouthful onto the floor. Two of the men were shirtless and muscular, wearing stiff, wide-legged jeans and clean work boots. Gold and platinum in chains hung around their necks and molded into their teeth.

I couldn’t spot Annie.

I slipped my finger tighter on the trigger and backed down the stairs to call the police. My heart began to palpitate, my breathing quick. The man with the burn mark asked for a lighter.

I took another step backward.

I felt the sharp prick of a flat, wide blade in my side.

The knife moved up to my neck.

“Slow down, motherfucker. We waitin’ on you.”

He pushed me forward on the landing while I slipped the gun into my jacket pocket. In the darkness, he hadn’t seen it.

As we entered the large open space of the warehouse, a couple of tool shelves by the window where I kept my field interviews had been toppled. Several VHS tapes — loaded with interviews of people who’d died years ago — lay in piles on the floor.

A short, muscular man in a net shirt walked toward me, his palms open on each side as if waiting to begin prayer. His teeth were platinum and jeweled and he had a red tattoo of a heart that seemed to be live and beating on his muscled chest.

His right hand darted to the small of his back and he came up with a snub-nosed .38 that he jammed and twisted in my ear. I was so intent on not moving, I didn’t even notice his feet kicking out my legs.

I fell to the floor. He inched closer with the gun to the bridge of my nose.

“You like scrambled eggs?”

He called ’em “aigs.”

His group ringed me. Their eyes were red and squinted tight and they gritted their teeth while I squirmed.

“What you doin’ with them Paris brothers?” the man asked.

The man with the scar pulled out a book, Catcher in the Rye, from my kitchen table and held a Zippo against its pages. He dropped my book next to the pool of whiskey and I watched its pages curl with smoke.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. Annie’s yelps came from inside my bathroom.

The leader knocked me across the face, holding the gun in my ear.

“Teddy’s my friend,” I said.

He laughed at that, his platinum teeth feral and wild. He yanked me halfway off the floor with one hand and an arm the size of my leg. His arm didn’t even tremble as he held me there.

I smelled the fire burning into the book’s musty pages.

“I take it you’re Cash?”

“How you know my name?”

“Luck.”

He let me go. As I got to my knees, I heard the clicking of guns around me. He kicked me hard in the ribs. I tried to breathe but couldn’t. My bones felt like they were made of splintered wood. He thumped my head with the back of his hand. “Who got that money?”

I gasped that I didn’t know. Cash picked up the smoldering book, nodded at my shelf of first editions, and asked if I thought it was too cold in the room. “Need some heat.”

One of the thugs gripped the back of my neck and I could smell his rancid body odor, like that of spoiled milk, seeping through his bare chest. He threw me forward, my head connecting hard with the wood floor. I rolled on my stomach, wheezing and groaning a bit, and reached into my jacket for the Glock.

Two of his boys tackled me and wrestled the gun from my hand. Annie kept yelping. One of the boys let her out and she came running to me, licking my face. I held her close and stayed on the floor.

“Teddy Paris sold out the kid,” Cash said. “You keep out ALIAS’s business. He roll with me now. You hear? Don’t come round Calliope no more. That’s my world.”

I wiped the blood off my mouth and stood, holding Annie’s collar. “Someone conned ALIAS.”

“Ain’t my trouble.”

“If anything happens to Teddy, a detective from NOPD will be coming for you before you can take your morning piss.”

He smiled some more. I got to my feet. Annie stood by me and began to growl.

“You set Teddy up?” I asked.

He laughed and pawed at his chest. His mouth shined in the light.

“We goin’ for a ride,” Cash said.

I could taste the blood in my mouth and my hands shook uselessly at my sides.

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we’ll kill your ass.”