Ace Atkins - Dirty South

“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.”

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.”