Ace Atkins: Dirty South

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.

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.”