Ace Atkins - Dirty South

“How’d your brother know Christian?”

She held her stare. “My daddy doesn’t like you too much.”

“He thinks I’m trying to save your soul.”

“Too far gone for that.” She pushed out her lower lip with mock sadness.

“Calvin was the real thing.”

“Calvin was a genius,” she said. “He was tested when we was kids and he was off the charts. My daddy tole me they put him in a room with a bunch of toys to figure things out. You know triangle to triangle? Circle to circle? He did all right till he clocked some poor child in the head with a block.”

“Couldn’t stay straight?”

“Hell, no,” she said. She looked at me, suddenly reminded of who I was and backed off. “Oh no. That’s enough. Take what you got and leave.”

“Let me come inside.”

“That just leads to bad things.”

“Not for me.”

“Don’t you like women?” she asked, brushing my chin with her index fingers.

“I like ’em too much,” I said. “They get me in trouble.”

“You got a woman now?”

“Yep.”

“Where she at?”

“She’s waiting on me,” I said. “I can’t leave till I find out what happened with Dio.”

“Dio,” she said. “Shit. Calvin wouldn’t ever taken no name like that. That was his invention.”

“When did you find out?” I asked, leading her into an area I didn’t know myself.

“Last year,” she said. “When he was dead.”

“Dio?”

“The one they called Dio.”

“They used him and killed him.”

She smiled and patted my face. “Right.”

She walked up some concrete blocks and into her house. I followed. She had her back turned to me leaning over her cast-iron sink. Her blue-jean shorts hugged her rounded thighs and her shoulder blades stretched under her brown skin. I was drawn to her neck, the beads of moisture collecting right among the tiny, soft hairs.

“They pay you to be quiet?”

“When I heard those rhymes, I knew,” she said. “Calvin had been workin’ on them since he was twelve. He had notebooks full of ’em. He wrote in them all the time. Made hand copies and sent them to me, even in jail. The ones that came out. The ones about Uptown life and all that? That was him. They didn’t change a word. His heart lived in those old ragged notebooks. We may have moved on, but his soul was still in Calliope where we was raised.”

“What happened?”

“A guard scrambled his brains,” she said, turning her back to me. She was crying. She tilted her head into her hands. Sunlight skimmed through the oaks and broke apart in strobe flashes across her face. Her back door kept slamming open and shut in the summer wind.

I could still smell the jasmine. So sweet and rich.

“I heard he filled the guard’s water bottle with horse shit,” she said. “The guard later said Calvin had tried to kill him with a broken piece of glass.”

I nodded, leaning against the back wall of the tiny kitchen. The ragged wallpaper made soft rubbing sounds.

“So his cellmate was Christian Chase,” I said.

She nodded.

“He pay you for keeping quiet?”

“Trey Brill did,” she said. “I came to them quick and asked for a cut. They let me in. They took me to dinner and later out to clubs with them.”

“And whose idea was it to work ALIAS?”

She shook her head.

“Come on,” I said. “You’ve come this far.”

“They fucked me,” she said. “Both of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They played with me for ten months,” she said. “I came to them whenever they wanted me. They put me on video and would make me sit there while I watched it with their friends. But they didn’t know who I was inside. It was my goddamn idea to run the kid. Marion and I got the idea when he came into the club that night. Kid was fifteen with millions. He had time to make it back. Besides, that was money built on my brother’s soul. Without Calvin, you wouldn’t have no ALIAS.”

“Come with me,” I said. “I need you to tell this to a friend of mine.”

“I’m not talking to the police.”

“Shit,” I said, grabbing her hand. “Come on.”

She twisted her head back and forth like a child. “No.”

“Did you know this guy, Dio? The one who used your brother’s lyrics?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Of course.”

Her eyes narrowed. I was losing her.

“They killed him and Malcolm.”

“They didn’t kill him,” she said.

I looked at her. The door kept slamming shut and she walked over and latched it, the wind still blowing through the screen.

She grabbed my hand. “Come lie down with me.”

“I think you’re sick, Dahlia,” I said. “You need to find comfort in yourself.”

“Just lie down,” she said.

“What did Trey and Christian pay you?”

“Seven thousand to keep quiet,” she said. “Trey said he knew a man who could make me disappear. He said the man liked to be paid in soiled money left on top of folks’ graves.”

“What about ALIAS’s money?”

She stared at me and shook her head. “Trey got it,” she said. “He said he could double my money if he put it all in stocks. I tried to get it back the other night when I seen him out. I ain’t ever seein’ that money. Yeah, he knew about ALIAS.”

“Talk to my friend,” I said. “He’s a good man. We need to know who killed Malcolm and Dio.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “Dio ain’t dead. What you think happen to a boy in prison over six years? You think he might change a bit? Maybe get his teeth knocked out. Get branded. Maybe if he grow a beard and sport some jewelry and earrings, that even his own folks don’t know who he is.”

I couldn’t breathe.

I was afraid she would stop.

“That Christian Chase don’t have a soul,” she said. “I told him I loved him once. He told me I was just loving my own brother ’cause that’s who he’d become.”

TREY WAS SOMETIMES AMAZED by his own intelligence. He’d have a few glasses of good red wine or a few Amstel Lights and sit back and smile at how it all had played out. He grew the business from one player in the NFL to ten pro players, four rappers, an entire label, and eighteen high-level Uptown clients, including a city councilman and the heir to a hot-pepper-sauce franchise. He stared out from his window in the CBD down at a billboard on Canal for Cartier watches and another for a new line from Victoria’s Secret, the woman’s stomach as flat as a plate, her hips expansive. The night was purple, fluorescent lights flickering on the wide boulevard.

He opened his humidor on his desk and clipped off the end of a cigar. He thought ole Chase might want to hit Cobalt tonight. Molly was out of town and he’d line up a couple of dates from a score he’d made at Lucy’s last week.

He checked his properly mussed hair in the mirror and lost the tie.

“Hey, dog,” Trey said as Christian crossed the room in a black sleeveless T and tight khakis with sandals. He’d cut his hair so close that he was starting to look like that rat from Angola Trey had picked up at the bus station two years ago.

“He knows,” Christian said. “He fucking got to Dahlia. I told you, you stupid fuck, we should have axed her ass two months ago.”

“She was your punch,” Trey said. “He doesn’t know shit.”

“That was my dad on the phone,” Christian said. “Told me not to come home ever again. Said two detectives just showed up at his office asking about my relationship with Calvin Jacobs. What the fuck, man? What the fuck did you do?”

“Calm down,” Trey said, pouring himself a few fingers of Knob Creek. “It’ll work out.”

“What!” Christian screamed. “Are you goddamn crazy?”