Authors: Ace Atkins
“Annie,” I whispered. “Annie. Lay down.”
I pulled the pillows over my head, waiting for the sleep that would come to me so easily from the
tap-tap-tap
of rain against the windows and roof above me. Another flash of lightning broke close and the air became charged with electricity and white light. The brightness startled me and I opened my eyes to see Annie had disappeared.
She was growling near the front door.
I padded my way through the warehouse, scratching the hair that was sticking up on my head and calling her name.
Another flash of lightning.
A man stood in the corner. He had a gray face and wore a tattered overcoat.
He looked to be a thousand years old.
I didn’t even break stride. I ran for the kitchen in the darkness, feeling my way through the drawer where I kept my Glock.
I wanted to make it to the switches and light up the floor. I couldn’t see shit. I thought maybe I was just tired, dreaming of ghosts the same way I did when I was hunting old blues singers. Robert Johnson at the foot of my bed.
But there was a different smell to my room. It smelled of fish oil and mothballs and tattered winter clothes left too long in storage. A musty basement odor.
I held the gun strong in my hand.
Annie kept growling.
Then she yelped.
Hard.
I fired off a round in the direction where I’d seen the apparition. High above the range of my dog.
She trotted back to me and I felt her stand at my side. Her back was wet and sticky.
My eyes adjusting in the darkness and then lit up again with lightning.
The sliding door rolled back. I heard it. I saw a flash of brown coat and then it disappeared into my stairwell.
I ran to the door and flicked on the lights. I stooped down to Annie and looked at her bloody flank. She’s been scratched hard but not deep, like another animal had clawed her.
I left her and ran down the steps with my gun. The door to the street was wide open and I saw a sweeping mist of rain hitting the asphalt outside in the dull glow of the city’s crime lights.
I carefully peered out, making sure I didn’t get my head blown off.
A block away and across the road, I saw the darkened shape of a man in a long tattered coat, his face hidden into the lapels. He seemed to be made of nothing but shadows. His weight did not shift. He did not move.
I squinted into the rain as I walked to him, half in a dream, half expecting his shape to dissolve into my hands when I touched him.
He turned and walked into the hole of another warehouse covered in plywood. The wood over the lower windows ripped away by the homeless. I guess I needed to know if this was one of Cash’s boys back for more or some crack addict from the Hummingbird ready to make a score.
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.”
“That sounds nasty.”
“Wait till you try it,” I said. “Best in the state.”
I imagined ALIAS’s do-rag and thick platinum chains would draw some stares from the truckers who were hunkered over their lunch platters. But I needed some good, warm food and often stopped here on my way to Clarksdale.
I let Annie make a deposit on the grass and left her in the shaded car with the windows down. ALIAS mumbled and planted his feet on the ground outside the truck. He yawned tall and hard and motioned at the windows of the restaurant.
“You takin’ me to a Klan meeting, Old School?”
“Bring your sheet?”
“Come on, man,” he said. He looked at all the spindly pine trees in the forest across the road and pickup trucks in the lot. The air was silent except for the roaring of semis every ten seconds on the interstate.
Two black truckers in tall cowboy hats — toothpicks wandering from the sides of their mouths — pushed the front doors open and gave long looks at ALIAS in his baggy FUBU jersey and low-ridin’ jeans.
I ordered coffee from a teenage waitress who looked as if she’d just woken up and the world held a million possibilities. Her smile plastered and hard, eyes so wide open that they gave me a headache. ALIAS got a Coke.
“That was some fucked-up shit, man, in New Orleans,” ALIAS said, playing games with his fingers. They fought one another as he refused to look me in the eye. “Don’t want to be part of that.”
“I’m sorry about Malcolm.”
ALIAS shrugged. “Nigga made his play.”
“That’s hard.”
“What ain’t?”
He looked away from me for a moment and I nodded.
“You want me to drive?” he asked.
“No one else drives the Ghost.”
“That ole piece of shit?” he asked. “I got some silk underwear that cost more money.”
“Probably runs better too.”
The waitress came back and I asked for the Texas-size chicken-fried steak and ALIAS ordered a cheeseburger and fries.
“You want to tell me more about your buddy Cash?” I asked.
“Cash ain’t my buddy.”
“Teddy heard he was at your place the other night,” I said. “He sent some folks by to find you and they said you were outside smokin’ it up with Cash.”
He didn’t say anything.
We stared out into the parking lot at the trucks until the food arrived.
The country-fried steak sat brown and covered in white peppery gravy in front of me. ALIAS ate a few fries and looked around for a ketchup bottle. There wasn’t one, and he tried to show he was so damned interested in finding the bottle that he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“You made up your mind?”
“Man, Cash want me to join his label,” he said. “You know that? Said I’m a punk for runnin’ to the Ninth Ward when you got a straight-up Calliope brother with L.A. connections.”
I watched his face. He blew out his breath and rubbed the top of his head. He’d quit eating his food.
“So you’re gonna stay with Teddy?”
“I’m gonna do whatever ALIAS want to do.”
“That have anything to do with Tavarius Stovall?”
“Man.”
“You know that your name comes from a plantation where we’re headed.”
“Slave name.”
“Sort of,” I said. “But someone in your family came from Clarksdale. I’d bet money.”
“My people come from Mississippi?”
“Where did you think they came from?”
“All I know is Calliope.”
“Maybe we can stop by,” I said. “Always good for the soul to know your roots.”
He looked up at me, in the eyes, and smiled. “’Cept when those roots are rotten.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Just repeatin’ the words my grandmamma tole me,” he said. “She said my mamma was a drug addict and a whore. Said she was sick in the head and I was just like her.”