Dirty South

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.

“Wait.”

“Come on, Nick,” JoJo said. “Let’s get this kid safe.”

Tavarius was rubbing his wrists. He refused to look me in the face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know about Dio.”

He shook his head and walked away.

JoJo winked at me and followed.

66

I HEADED STRAIGHT for the Ninth Ward, driving along Claiborne under the interstate, past the old Victorians boarded up and left rotting, their third-story windows only feet from concrete and steel and speeding cars. I passed little community groceries that sold beer from iced trash cans and offered health care through a backroom doctor. Kids on bicycles circled me at street corners. Lazy-eyed crackheads tried to sell me fruit that had been cut and locked into Ziploc bags, and soft-faced women with protruding bellies wandered shoeless out on Elysian Fields. Under the nearby oaks, the ground had been worn as soft as talcum powder in the yards of the rotting antebellum homes.

I crossed over the channel on a short bridge. Cheap little billboards advertised discount cigarettes and beer, a free AIDS hot line. Barges hugged the edge of the docks and mammoth warehouses sat in rusting humps.

I took a turn onto Desire and wound through the little red, blue, and yellow shotguns. Ninth Ward Records sat behind its wrought-iron fence topped with decorative fleur-de-lis in a big squat concrete building of black and gold. Teddy had his electric-blue Bentley parked by the main glass door.

I walked inside and headed straight back to his office.

He was rearranging his CDs when I walked in. Must have been thousands of them in little piles all over the carpet. He had on a black suit with a red shirt and fedora. I noticed he hadn’t shaved in a while and his eyes looked rheumy.

“We need to talk.”

He nodded, moving like he was a hundred back to his big white sofa. He took off his jacket and stretched out his huge arms across its back.

I stood and crossed my arms over my shirt.

I looked down at my boots.

He was silent.

“ALIAS was conned,” I said. “And so were you.”

He moved forward, a big bear finding his place, and rubbed his hands together. “What happened?”

“Dio wasn’t real,” I said. “One of Trey’s buddies just acted it out. He’d stolen this guy’s rhymes when he was in Angola.”

“What the fuck?” Teddy asked, suddenly awake. “Man, what are you talking about, Dio wasn’t real?”

“The real Dio was a guy named Calvin Jacobs. He was killed in prison.”

Teddy shook his head. “I knew that boy. That boy made my company. I was with him when he got jacked by those men at the club.”

“You knew Christian Chase,” I said. “Trey Brill’s buddy? The real Dio’s sister is Dahlia, man. She got in with Brill ’cause she knew the truth. It was her idea to work the con on ALIAS. ALIAS wasn’t lying, man. She roped him in with Trey’s blessing.”

“Slow down,” Teddy said, standing now and pacing. “This don’t make no goddamn sense. Trey Brill set all this up. Did all this to me? Why? He don’t need money. Why he taken me out? And Malcolm. Jesus.”

Teddy started to cry and I made an awkward move for him, patting him a couple times on his back. “Trey got Malcolm killed,” he said, sobbing. “Didn’t he? Malcolm knew about Dio. Malcolm knew.”

“Only thing I can figure.”