Ace Atkins - Dirty South

He caught me watching and gave me the two-finger salute and turned back to his pupils.

Teddy walked by and handed me a paper plate laden with black beans and rice topped with shaved onion. He settled onto the base side of the board and began to eat too.

About ten people suddenly rushed the pool and splattered us. But Teddy didn’t break stride with the fork. He stared into an empty field beside the house where a contractor’s bulldozers sat idle.

The men in the pool had plucked a couple of women up on their shoulders and were chicken-fighting. A young kid had a circle of men around while he freestyle-rapped about the women he’d slept with and the cars he owned.

I tried to find what Teddy saw in the open field.

I think he was just numb.

“Sold Malcolm’s car today,” he said to himself.

“Jay Medeaux said you still believe he killed himself.”

He nodded. “I don’t hate him, Nick. I don’t. Even after what coulda happen to me with Cash when that money disappeared. Still don’t change nothin’.”

“I’m leaving town,” I said.

Teddy shook his head and drank down the rest of the Red Stripe in one gulp. He smoothly shifted from the diving board, stood, and disappeared back into the house. I followed.

The inside of his mansion was all slate and tile, all big chunks the size of flagstones in the Quarter. He had a couple of paintings of jazz scenes on the walls, a USS Enterprise -sized entertainment center with four big screens. Only one couch and a couple of chairs. Half of a furniture store display.

Teddy handed me a Dixie. “That’s your brand, right?”

I nodded.

“I need you, Nick.”

“Teddy,” I said. “You’re all right now. Talk to the police.”

“Naw, man. Not for that. I need you to hang. You know? Like we did back at camp. Remember how we used to watch them soap operas and shit, laughin’ at them women with those big titties who couldn’t act? Remember that dude who had that eyebrow and shit? You would turn the sound off and make up his voice. Man, that was hilarious.”

“I need to get back to ALIAS. JoJo can’t handle him on his own.”

He reached inside his bulky pants pocket and then pressed a brass key into my palm. He gripped my hand inside his meaty fingers and held me there, looking into my eyes. “There you go.”

I looked at him. He winked.

“It’s the bar,” he said. “It’s yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I bought JoJo’s back,” he said. “It’s yours. You were there when I needed you. You came through.”

“I can’t take that,” I said. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t help you.”

“How you supposed to know it comin’ from my own backyard?” Teddy smiled. “You my brother?”

I nodded.

He shook his head as two women in bikinis came up to him and started tickling him on his side. One of them, a black girl with ringlets of soft brown hair and softer eyes, had a squirt gun tucked into the elastic of her thong bikini. “Come on, Teddy,” she said, teasing. “You promised.”

The other one, a blonde in a red-checked bikini, reached for my hand, her stomach flat and hard. Brown eyes and smooth rich tan. I shook my head, wanting to stay.

“We cool?” Teddy asked. He nodded at me, waiting on my answer as if I had another to give. I nodded. The blonde smelled like cocoa butter and strawberries.

I heard his booming laugh, the splash of water from the pool outside, and smelled the hog meat roasting in the air. I remembered something I had not thought about for years. About ten years ago, we had this smart-ass full-back from Nebraska who thought he was the ultimate practical joker. Sometimes his jokes were funny, like putting child-size jockstraps in all the coaches’ lockers, but sometimes he crossed the line. His jokes a little too mean.

One season, after a few losses on the road, he started giving Teddy a hard time about never having a woman. He said if we won the next game, that he’d get Teddy a date with the best-looking woman in Louisiana.

We won, unexpectedly, in San Francisco. When we stepped off the plane, there was a beautiful black girl in a cheetah print coat and spandex pants holding a sign that read TEDDY.

Teddy, his long coat draped over his arm, stopped cold because he was the only Teddy on the team. He pointed to himself, a smile forming on his lips while the smart-ass fullback patted Teddy’s huge back and said “Good luck, Tiger.”

I drove down to JoJo’s and got drunk because that’s what I did back then, only to find Teddy waiting at my apartment when I got back. He sat on the curb in the parking lot, his head in his hands, sobbing.

He’d apparently taken the woman to Commander’s Palace and to the top of the Trade Center for drinks. He walked with her under gas lamps in the Quarter, holding her arm in the crook of his, telling her about growing up in the Ninth Ward with a brother he loved. He told her that she felt special, that he knew things like this just happened, and that maybe he was in love.

She just smiled at him, rarely talking.

She held his hand back to his car, where she unzipped his pants and performed acts on him that he’d only read about as a small fat child growing up in a poor neighborhood.

He kissed the top of her head and told her that he loved her.

In seconds, she sat upright in the car and fixed her coat, asking for the money that she was promised. Teddy asked what she meant and didn’t understand until she reached into his pocket, pulled out two hundred-dollar bills, and climbed out of the car.

Teddy cried and fell asleep on my sofa that night. In the morning, he was gone.

He never mentioned it again. Ever.

I drove back to the city and called Maggie on the way, letting her know I’d be late.

“What happened now?” she asked.

“I was paid for something I didn’t deserve.”

“What are you looking for now?”

“Respect for a friend.”

I NEVER HEARD BACK from the woman at Pinky’s bar in the Marigny. I never called her and she never called me. No messages, no letters. After Malcolm died, I didn’t see there was much point. Since that morning we’d found him hung in the tree, I’d been bothered. What had happened to the money and the people who’d been working with him? I never was much for neat endings and lost cash. Besides, I was a little pissed-off that Fred at Pinky’s never called me back. If only I’d let her tie me up.

I drove to Frenchman, parked on the street, and walked over to Pinky’s, the pinup girl winking in neon. It was about 2 on a Sunday and the same British bartender was sweeping up the floor, the radio tuned to some Iggy Pop as he danced with his broom.

When I walked inside, he turned down the radio and held the broom close to his chest. “We’re closed.”

“Back to see Fred.”

“Fred’s asleep.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs,” he said, giving me that “you dumb-ass” look. “Where else?”

He pointed to a flight of stairs hidden behind the bar by neatly spaced spindles. Above the rows of multicolored bottles sat a small shrine made from skulls, cow bones, and a large pentagram. Someone burned incense in the mouth of the skull.

I bounded up the creaking steps covered in mildewed red carpet and knocked on a door that was already ajar. Near the door was a neat grouping of old plaid furniture and a coffee table made with legs from a mannequin. The more I opened the door, the more mannequins I saw. Black and white. Male and female. Some with pants. Some with whips. Some with bright green wigs, others with dated sixties hair. Even one dressed as a nurse.

I knocked on the door, hearing a woman giggle in the back.

A teenage girl, who looked about fifteen, a little plump with black nails and cherry-red hair, bounded out of the room wearing nothing but a long Jazzfest T and said, “You’re not Bob.”