Authors: Ace Atkins
“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?”
“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.”
“Bullshit,” JoJo said, dropping the shotgun and sauntering over to the old car.
“Well, hello, Tavarius,” he said so we could all hear.
I followed and found the boy tied with laundry line across his ankles and wrists. A torn piece of brown cloth gouged deep into his mouth. He tore at it with his teeth and tried to break free when he saw JoJo.
JoJo untied him.
I dialed 911.
“What you doin’?” Bronco asked.
“Calling the police.”
“Not on this,” he said, grinding his steel toe into the small of the man’s back. “He’s out of the game.”
He kicked at the man’s head, so quick and violent that I had to turn away.
Bronco picked up the man, as if he was recently found roadkill, and dragged him to the old car. The heels of the killer’s old brogan shoes scuffing behind him. The muscles and veins in Bronco’s huge forearms bulging with his years of strength.
“Get the keys.”
I did, turning off the ignition of the old Pontiac, painted a light gold. Vinyl seats covered in duct tape.
“Pop the trunk,” he said.
I did.
“See you back at the bar,” Bronco said.