Free Dirty South - v4 by Ace Atkins Page B

took him down. He’s dead. We’ll never find him.”
    “Police said it was you.”
    Malcolm stuck the cigarette in his mouth and inched closer to my face. He mouthed the word “Shit,” and turned his back to me. “Goddamn, I used to respect you,” he said. “You just like ’em all. Fuck this. I don’t care if I told Teddy to find you.”
    He got up and strutted away, his football jersey un-tucked, and took a long swig from his forty before wrapping his long arms around two of the dancers.
    I found and followed a hallway through a back room where flickered patterns of red and blue lights played in small, individual coves.
    ALIAS lay on a round bed with a young girl, really beautiful with her long black hair partially covered in a black bandanna and long slender legs. She stretched out on top of his back, hugging him tight almost like he was a life preserver, as he — oblivious to her — worked out some aggression on a video game with dragons and knights.
    “You ready?” I asked.
    “You get what you need?”
    “No.”
    “I told you, Old School,” he said, pulling on his baseball cap. “You wouldn’t listen. These people done gone. No faces. No names. How you supposed to come through for Teddy? You best call him now and tell him to take a long ride out of New Orleans.”
    “Maybe.”
    “What else you gonna do?”
    “I’m workin’ on it.”
    “Better work fast.”
    “Come on.”
    He patted the young girl’s right hand that gripped him tight, her body prone on his, and she slowly slid off of him. Wordless. Her eyes accusing me for taking him away. She tucked her hair back into her bandanna and stripped off a long shirt to reveal a complicated array of belts, garters, lace, and buckles.
    She was fourteen and then she was an adult.
    ALIAS checked himself in the mirror, grabbed a Saints ball cap that was perched on the edge of the chair, and nodded at me. “Let’s roll.”
     
15
     
    ALIAS WAS HUNGRY and I was fresh out of ideas. But I’d made a ton of calls and hoped Curtis’s countryfied lyin’ ass would come through for once. I checked the cell phone, willing it to ring, but it didn’t while we sat at the counter of the Camellia Grill waiting on ALIAS’s hamburger. I’d ordered an omelette and a cup of coffee. It was about ten o’clock and I was tired. I washed my face in the bathroom with cold water and returned to the seat where ALIAS was already eating. I thought about Maggie’s porch and these great old green chairs she had where we kicked back and talked all night.
    The Camellia Grill was a little diner in a small white house at the end of the streetcar tracks near the turnaround in Carrollton. After being in the humidity all day, the air-conditioning felt nice, and for a long time, ALIAS and I didn’t talk.
    “You trust Malcolm?” I asked.
    He nodded and took another bite.
    “What about Teddy?”
    “Sure.”
    “Malcolm ever ask you for money?”
    He shook his head, looking confused. I passed him some ketchup and asked the waiter for some Crystal sauce. Just right on an omelette.
    “Is Teddy gonna die?” ALIAS asked.
    “No.”
    “How you know?”
    “’Cause Teddy can talk his way out of anything.”
    “What you mean?”
    “I mean Teddy knows how to survive.”
    “So why you workin’ so hard?”
    “Just in case.”
    “Cash is evil.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Me and him know each other. He offered me money to get on his label.”
    “You gonna leave Teddy?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “What do you want to be when you’re grown up?” I asked.
    “I am grown up.”
    “You’re fifteen.”
    “I’m a man,” he said.
    “You like women?”
    “They a’ight.”
    “Just all right.”
    “Yeah, I like them.”
    He looked away from me and dabbled a fry into the ketchup.
    “I have a woman in Mississippi that’s pretty pissed at me.”
    “You fuck someone else?”
    “No.”
    “Get drunk?”
    “No.”
    “Then what she bitchin’ ’bout?”
    “It’s my birthday