Dirty South

“Where were they?” I asked.

“Second floor.”

Upstairs, we found the office. Two Mexican workers were inside cleaning up a mess left by Sheetrock hangers. They swept the floor in their hard hats, T-shirts bulging with cigarette packs. They didn’t even look up at us as we walked over the stained plywood floor. I watched ALIAS taking it all in.

“Tell me what you remember.”

“They had a secretary. Every time I come in, she’d make me sit there awhile and read magazines till Mr. Thompson was ready.”

“Did Mr. Thompson have a first name?”

“Jim. He acted like we was friends.”

“How’d you get here?”

“Drove.”

“By yourself?”

He nodded.

“Anyone know about this besides you?”

“Naw.”

He walked over to a window where you could see the statue of Lee on his pillar. A streetcar lapped him. Clanking bell. Gears changing. You could only see the back of Lee.

“What’d they promise you, kid?”

“ALIAS.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Tavarius.”

“I like that better.”

“Whatever.”

I smiled.

“I got a business card they gave me.”

I shook my head. “Won’t do any good. Were any of these construction crews here when you came in?”

“No.”

“Didn’t see anyone else in this building except Mr. Thompson and this secretary? Who was she?”

“I don’t know. She was just always runnin’ around and answering phones and interruptin’ his meeting with calls from Britney Spears and shit,” he said, dropping his head.

“So how did it work?” I found a huge paint bucket to sit on and nodded to its mate by the window. He seemed pretty embarrassed. He prided himself on being smart and quick-witted. It was his job. He was a rapper.

Basically, this guy said he represented a ton of celebrities and boasted a long list of phony clients that included everyone from B. B. King to the Nevilles. He even had eight-by-ten photos of clients hanging above the secretary’s desk both times ALIAS visited the office. Once for the hook. The second was the yank.

He told ALIAS long stories about his clients losing millions to their record companies – a common and unfortunately all-too-often-true tale of the recording business – and that he wanted to protect him. He said his group – ATU, or Artists Trust Union – would handle the major balance of ALIAS’s earnings that up until that point had been kept in a trust fund because he was a minor. The guy spun wild tales about potential earnings and even hooked ALIAS real good about being able to invest in a private island in the Caribbean. This all sounded like complete 101 con horseshit to me, but then again, I’m not fifteen years old. He exploited every facet of ALIAS’s teenage dreams and paranoid fantasies about Teddy and Malcolm ripping him off.

But the true genius in the plan was that this guy really had to do little work. ALIAS had to break into Teddy’s office and get the bank account numbers for the ALIAS money market account. Mr. Thompson – bless his heart – acted as his legal guardian (with just a little maneuvering or forgery) and siphoned every bit of cash from the fund that was earmarked for the kid when he turned twenty-one.

I told him that I’d start with the owners of the building and look for any short-team leases he probably did not sign. I asked ALIAS more about the woman from the club and the secretary. The club girl was hot. The secretary had a big butt.

“Why an island?” I asked. “Where did that come from?”

“Shit,” he said as we climbed back in the Gray Ghost. The smell of a warm rain mixed with exhaust and heat from the asphalt.

“You sure no one else could’ve seen them?”

He shook his head.

“No one ever came with you? Took a phone call? Vouched for these folks?”

“No one,” he said. He turned the bill of his Saints cap backward and slumped into his passenger seat.

“I’ll have to talk to your friends,” I said, spitting the Bazooka out the window. The gum had lost its taste and I reached for a fresh piece.

“Do what you got to, man,” he said. “My friends got heart.”

He pounded his chest two times and raised his chin into the wind cutting from the road.

6

WHEN JOJO OPENED HIS BUSINESS back in 1965, he hired one of the best bartenders in the Quarter. Felix Wright transcended just pouring Jack into a shot glass or popping the top off a Dixie. He performed. He’d have a cold beer rolled down to you from five feet like in an old Western. He kept a file of New Orleans facts in his head, things about Jean Lafitte or Andrew Jackson. Louis Armstrong or Sidney Bechet. Some of it was probably bullshit. But Felix made you feel welcome. Made you feel like you owned a little bit of JoJo’s, too, while he’d tell you about the night he’d seen Steve McQueen shooting The Cincinnati Kid.

I’d dropped ALIAS back at the Ninth Ward studio and picked up Polk Salad Annie from home. I’d finally taught her to hop up in the Gray Ghost with me. We parked down by the old bar so I could find Felix. Someone had rebuilt the place after the fire last year and turned it into a martini bar where everyone wears all black and compares what they do for a living.