Ace Atkins - Dirty South

I held the gun in my hands.

On the lower floor, the vacant building shined silver from the crime light. My feet were still bare. I felt discarded pieces of wood and wet cardboard on my toes. The air smelled the way it had in my warehouse and I tried to slow down my breathing, already growing nauseous.

The silver light leaked through like vapor.

I could not see the man.

No shadow. No ghosts.

I found stairs leading to the level above me. But I did not follow.

The light had ended. My heart beat in my chest so fast.

I could not think. The smell overpowering.

I walked back through the wind and rain to my stoop.

At the base of my stairs, there was a gold pocket watch hanging from a tarnished chain.

When I flicked open the cover, the old blues song “Love in Vain” played. I could not breathe. I felt someone had entered my head.

I snapped shut the cover, walked back upstairs, and bolted my door three times before calling the police.

THE GIRL’S HAIR smelled of cigarettes early that morning. Her breath like Jack Daniel’s and old cherries. Trey moved out from under her and grabbed the suit pants that he’d kicked out of last night and carefully counted out the money in his wallet. His AmEx and ATM cards were where he’d left them. He slipped into his pants, the white sunlight crawling through the girl’s Pottery Barn curtains. The checked ones from page fifty-eight. Painful light that hurt his head a lot. He couldn’t remember when he’d lost count.

Thirteen dirty martinis. Some bar owned by retired surfers down in the Warehouse District. Not far from his loft. There was blurry stuff in his head. A round of drinks for some girls from Loyola. Some dancing in the middle of a crowded bar. Some rap. ALIAS’s song. White girls singing along. Two more martinis. Three. The nineteen-year-old snuggled into his neck. Her grabbing his crotch by the cigarette machine. A cab ride to somebody’s house by Audubon Park. A pass-out, more drinks, some beer this time. The girl’s roommate’s boyfriend putting an X tablet into his hand. All that good feeling. That alertness. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, not even fucking moving last night.

He pulled on the linen shirt, the good one from Brooks Brothers that his girlfriend Molly liked. Molly was always mothering him. She bought his food, did his laundry, made sure he was working out when she came in from Atlanta.

He found the latch of the door, never taking another look at the girl in the bed.

He took a cab back to the bar, found his BMW, and made his Saturday-morning calls. He called Molly, told her he had a cold. Made sure she hadn’t called last night. She had. He’d been too sick to pick up the phone. Poor baby, she said. She’d make him feel better next week. She talked about cooking for him or something. He wasn’t listening. He just wanted to make sure she was lined up. Her father was so damned close to investing in his company. All that old Atlanta money, lunch at the Cherokee, Buckhead parties where he could get even more. More contacts.

He parked, opened the door to the loft, and found Christian lying on his leather couch. The one he’d had delivered from Restoration Hardware. Christian’s feet were rubbing around one of those Tuscany pillows.

“Bitch, get your nasty feet off my shit.”

Christian rolled over. “Eat it.”

Trey walked back to the kitchen. Everything stainless steel, the way Molly liked. She ordered them. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, watching himself in the warped reflection. Fuck, he needed a haircut. All shaggy and low, could barely see his eyes.

“What’s up, Chaseboy?” Christian hated to be called that. All of that going back to Country Day. One black boy in the class. Some kind of Martian.

“That dude Travers called.”

Trey stopped drinking the beer, his stomach twisting.

“I said you were at work. But it looks like you were out on pussy patrol.”

“Hell, I think she was passed out for most of it.”

Christian pointed at him and said, “You got game, motherfucker. You got game.”

Trey nodded. Still feeling a little fuzzy with the X and the martinis. Really play up the whole sick thing. Call Molly. Have her mother him more.

“Was she as good as Kristi Lynn?”

“God damn, that redneck whore will never wash out. You know? I mean, who really gives a shit anymore.”

Christian threw the remote at the brick wall and stomped into the bathroom, where he took a hard, long piss. He wandered back, laughing, no longer mad, and wanted to go down and score a dime bag from some niggers who lived down by the Riverbend.

“What’s Travers want now?”

“Maybe he thinks I took ALIAS’s money.” Trey laughed.

“Why would you con out your own client?”

“Exactly.”

“He any good?”

Trey’s head hurt more. He walked to the edge of the sink and held himself there. Williams-Sonoma towels. A rack of ten types of olive oil. Some with oregano and black pepper inside.

“Yes,” Trey said finally.

“You worried?”

“I got it under control.”

Trey looked over at Christian, suddenly remembering the fall carnival at Country Day, five years before that redneck bitch who changed their life. The families had paid some trash down south to bring in a Ferris wheel, some kind of ship that rocked back and forth till you about puked, and these little swings where you’d get strapped in for your ride and be twirled until you were almost horizontal. He remembered Christian being kind of gay about it and trying to catch his leg when they swung close. He held on to his leg and laughed and laughed like it was so funny. Why would he do something like that?

“I’m just wondering if this badass rap star is worth all this trouble.”

“Don’t get much meaner,” Christian said. “Man don’t like it when you talk that way ’bout him.”

FOUR HOURS AFTER THE POLICE LEFT, Teddy called to let me know he’d come up with a way to pay Cash. Just like that. He was at the airport about to fly to Los Angeles to strike a deal with Universal for distributing the final Dio album. He didn’t want to do it but he said the offer was his only option. While we were on the phone, I tried to talk to him about Malcolm and why he should try to work with Jay Medeaux at NOPD. But he didn’t want to, instead asked me to leave town with ALIAS. He needed me to keep the kid out of New Orleans until peace was made with Cash.

“I’m not worried about ALIAS,” I said. “I’m worried about you, man.”

“I have a dozen of the baddest motherfuckers in the Ward lookin’ out for me,” he said. “What’s a white boy from Alabama gonna add to the mix?”

I told him about the man from last night.

“Some ratty-clothes fucker?” Teddy asked. “Man, that some ole homeless dude lookin’ for a place to squat and a sandwich.”

I loaded up my army duffel bag, called JoJo in Clarksdale, picked up ALIAS, and headed the Gray Ghost west on I-10. We drove north on 55, passing supersize truck stops, Cracker Barrels, and rest areas. We stopped for gas outside Kentwood but kept rolling for a few more hours. ALIAS slept. I listened to a new album by Jim Dickinson and some old Ry Cooder sound tracks.

At about 3 P.M., ALIAS and I pulled off at an exit in Vaiden, Mississippi, for supplies and some chicken-fried steak at the All-American Diner. Eighteen-wheelers blew diesel fumes from their exhaust. Fords and Chevys nestled by a bank of glass windows, their owners inside shoveling in chicken-fried steak and fries.

“What the hell is that shit?”

“It’s steak.”

“Then why they call it chicken?”

“They don’t call it chicken, man,” I said to my young road Jedi. “They fry it like a chicken.”