Ace Atkins - Dirty South

“All right, let’s think. How do you even know this had something to do with Dahlia?”

“Who else could lead them to us?” he said. “It’s all your fault. It’s all your fucking fault. We had goddamn everything we wanted and you had to go in with that cunt to take ALIAS.”

“She wanted a cut of something.”

“Then give her some of your money.”

“I wanted her to get dirty, too,” Trey said. “You know how that works.”

“Like we all get dirty?” Christian asked. “Like how you had Redbone make that con man from the strip club disappear after you took ALIAS. Sometimes it doesn’t play out like that.”

“What?” Trey said, mussing his hair in the mirror again. “You getting all street on me again. Don’t confuse yourself. You know where you come from. Don’t start actin’ like some stupid nigger.”

Christian balled his hands at his side and ran for Trey. He stood so close that their noses touched. The foulness in Christian’s breath and the fear that poured from his own skin made Trey’s heart race.

He tried to calm himself. “Just chill out.”

“Some of us don’t have our daddy to hold our hands.”

“Hey, man,” Trey said. “Fuck off.”

He turned his back to Christian. He didn’t mean anything by it, but as soon as he pivoted, he knew he’d made a mistake.

“I’m not going back to Angola,” Christian said. “Not for you.”

Christian’s hands darted from his chest and took Trey by the throat. He threw his friend onto his back on the glass desk. Trey felt a heavy split down the middle, cracking like an ice pond from their weight.

Trey’s head rhythmically beat onto the glass.

Trey heard more cracking and tried to yell and scream for help. But he could only think it, his mind unable to control anything. He couldn’t move or speak, only feel the saliva pool on his lips and feel the blood and wetness pour from his mouth and eyes.

“This ain’t your game, dog,” Christian said.

MY CELL PHONE RANG as I headed back from NOPD, where I’d left Dahlia still talking with Jay. I answered, driving with one hand, passing Medina’s on Canal and crossing under I-10. I’d planned to meet JoJo down at Acme for a plate of jambalaya and some oysters. This was their last night in New Orleans. He and Bronco had finished up packing the apartment.

“He’s with me,” the voice said. Cell-phone static crackled over the line.

“Good for you,” I said. “Who is this?”

“Let’s play,” he said. “I have ALIAS, you fucking dumb-ass. I have my goddamn gun screwed in his ear right now. You fucking do one more thing and I’ll drop his ass in the sewer. You fucking hear me?”

“Slow down, Christian.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “Meet me down in the Ninth Ward on Piety. There is a house at-”

“I meet you where I say,” I said. “Fuck no. I’m not meeting you.”

The connection died.

I didn’t breathe for about a minute.

The cell rang again.

A better connection. He didn’t say anything.

“I’ll meet you at your folks’ house,” I said. “In Metairie.”

“No,” he said. “This isn’t about them.”

His voice was strained. The words hard but almost forced from his mouth in a quiet yell.

“That’s it. I’m headed to Old Metairie right now. You can decide on a place. Wait, okay. Yep. Just turned. Headed down I-10. I’ll be there in fifteen.”

I hung up and made a quick phone call.

The cell phone rang as I ran my truck about eighty, skirting the edge of the Metairie Cemetery. High up on the interstate, the mausoleums looked like a small city. Endless rows of crypts.

I answered the phone.

“Where?” he asked.

“You know the country day school?”

He didn’t answer.

“You know, where you and Trey got to be friends?”

“You say my friend’s name again and I’ll kill this little boy with you on the phone.”

METAIRIE COUNTRY DAY sat at the end of a neighborhood cul-de-sac in a large whitewashed brick house with green shutters. Huge magnolias and oaks stood in bright spotlights in the darkness. Behind the main house, classrooms stretched under two porticos separated by a commons. I heard my feet on the brick walk passing the classrooms as the wind scattered in the oak leaves and branches. Newsletters fluttered on a school bulletin board advertising ski trips to Switzerland and on-line shopping for Eddie Bauer, Lands’ End, and L.L. Bean. Elephant ears and monkey grass grew strong in freshly tilled soil.

I was far from JFK High.

I walked to the end of the portico and the last classroom. It was 10 and I didn’t hear anyone.

I looked into a darkened playground at the still swing sets and empty slides and then back at the long open walkway.

I heard a car door slam behind the school and playground and saw the chugging exhaust of an old car’s tailpipe in the brake lights. I reached for the gun tucked in my belt but left it there.

I walked back toward the front of the school and the main house. I stared over a railing at the little cul-de-sac and the houses lining the street. My truck was parked into a little curve under a light.

I looked at my watch and decided to make one more sweep.

I turned on my heel.

A tremendous force whopped my skull.

I tumbled to my knees, trying to gain my balance, but only finding my palms for support.

Everything was black. I could feel the heat of the blood from my skinned hands.

The air smelled of garbage and decaying skin. My eyes rolled and my vision faded from brown to black. I felt wire around my throat and tore at the hands that choked me.

I COULD NOT BREATHE, the air snuffed from inside, my face filling with blood. My gun fell to the ground.

I jabbed my elbow back into the freak’s chest and leaned forward, pulling him off his feet. I pressed my thumb into his wrists and felt his hands open. Bone and gristle snapping. I bent back his hands and butted him in the head.

He staggered back, facedown, slowly getting to his feet. He raised his head. Grayed skin wrinkled and decayed as a dead leaf across his skull. He reached into his coat and pulled out a little revolver.

He smiled with rotten, uneven teeth that looked like a brown picket fence.

I heard the crack of a gun; I closed my eyes.

The freak doubled over and sprinted down under the dark colonnades. I grabbed my Glock and followed a trail of thin, dark blood.

I’d heard the same car running by the playground and practice fields.

I turned the corner and Bronco joined me at my side. He kept pace, a mesh Caterpillar hat scrunched down in his eyes. I was damned glad I’d called them.

“JoJo’s got cover from the back,” he said. Grinning with the hunt. “You want me to drop that man from here?”

The freak was only about ten yards away, running past the darkened shapes of metal ponies and swing sets. His right hand grasping his left arm and staggering.

JoJo crossed before him, a thick shotgun sighted across the freak’s eyes.

Bronco stopped running and held his Colt in his right hand.

We slowed to a walk.

The man wheezed as if broken inside, sputters of air coming from him. His yellow eyes squinted, face twisted into a feral look of an animal cornered. His lips quivered over his broken teeth and he moved his hand to his pocket.

“Where’s the boy?” JoJo asked, pumping the gun.

The man kept wheezing.

Bronco came up fast behind him and slammed a boot into his lower back with a hard steel toe, knocking him to the ground.

He kept his boot there, breathing hard, and shook out a cigarette from a pack, placing it dry into his mouth. “Me and JoJo used to run deer up and down Clarksdale when we was kids. I got to be pretty good. ’Cept JoJo won’t admit it.”