“Who have you talked to?”
He stayed silent for a few moments, waiting for the impact his words would bring. “I asked Medeaux why he has a buddy who’d be mixed up with these shitbirds,” the detective said, smiling slightly. “He told me that you played on the Saints with this Teddy Paris guy. Said Paris and his brother Malcolm are hot shit in the record business. So is that it? Money? They payin’ you a bunch to listen to their horseshit?”
I leaned back and let him keep on rolling. The windowsill behind him was caked in dirt and broken concrete. Sunlight had yet to come close to the hulking gray building on Broad Street. Only rain. I waited.
“Just some personal advice,” he said. “Medeaux said you’re smart. But let me ask you a question: If you’re so smart, why didn’t you check out the people you’re working for?”
He tossed a manila file at my hands, stood, and stretched, his bones creaking like old wood, and walked away. “I need some more coffee. I need a smoke and maybe take a dump. Why don’t you read a little bit, Professor.”
He walked to the door, his shoes making ugly thumping sounds. Before he closed the door to his office, he peeked back in. “I know what you think of me. I know how you liberals are. But after you’re done reading, why don’t you think about what made me this way?”
He left. There was silence in the room. Rusted file cabinets and sun-faded posters of crime prevention lined the walls.
I flicked open the file.
It was an investigation into the disappearance of a twenty-year-old named Calvin Jacobs. By the second page, I knew the man had been abducted last January at an Uptown club called Atlanta Nites. I knew that he was better known as Diabolical or “Dio” and he was a rapper employed by Ninth Ward Records. By the twentieth page, scanning through the depositions and detective notes, I knew that Malcolm Paris was the main suspect but they couldn’t find a body. Never really a crime.
One unnamed source said: “Malcolm was bragging that he got enough Dio’s shit on tape to last for years after that motherfucker was gone. Just like Tupac, he’s worth more dead than alive.”
I read back through.
A couple had spotted Malcolm’s Bentley at the club two hours before the abduction by two men in a black van. Teddy had been walking out with Dio when the men appeared and threatened them with their guns.
I read the file again.
The file ended. Dio’s body was never found.
Hiney walked back in and lifted up the blinds in his little office. He was eating a Zagnut bar and had chocolate in his teeth when he smiled at me. “Why don’t you ask me why I don’t like Malcolm Paris?”
“Because he’s black.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” he said. “You work this job for two days and tell me what you see out there. Tell me what it’s all about from the inside of your office at Tulane.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m having to get a fucking subpoena this week because Malcolm Paris is the only shitbird involved in this thing with the kid who won’t let me look at his bank records.”
11
I ran Annie back by the warehouse, ate half of a muffuletta I’d bought at Central on Tuesday, and made a pot of coffee on my stove. A pile of pictures Maggie had sent me a few weeks back lay splayed on the table. Shots of me on her painted horse Tony and a couple of her son catching the football we’d been tossing around her old white farmhouse. One shot had been tucked neatly in the pile, a photo of us down at this catfish restaurant in Taylor, where you ate on plank wood tables and listened to bluegrass. She’d had a few glasses of white wine and was resting her head on my shoulder when a friend of hers had grabbed her Canon. Maggie showing she had her guard down. Black hair and green eyes. Bright white smile. Maggie.
Shit.
I called her. It was almost five, about the time I should’ve been getting into Oxford. Tomorrow I was supposed to help JoJo repair his aging barn.
As the phone rang, I reached underneath the sink and pulled out a Glock 9mm where I’d rested it on a hidden ledge. I was down on my knees peering up into my hiding place by the rusted pipes when she answered.
“Where are you?”
“New Orleans.”
“Nick?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I got held up.”
I explained Teddy’s situation, leaving out the worrisome details.
“Well, I’d already gotten the horses into the trailer and was waiting like a dumb-ass for you to roll down the road,” she said. “Why do you do things like this?”
“He needed help in a bad way.”
“I knew you’d do this to me.”
“Maggie, I swear to you, it’s not that,” I said. “I swear.”
“Well, tomorrow’s your birthday,” she said. “You can fuck it up any way you want.”
I’d forgotten.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “I promise.”
I heard her son Dylan talking to her in the background. She said something short to him and then said to me, “I’ve got to go.”
Dial tone.
Annie barked.
I poured out some dog food and scratched her ears. “You like me. Right?”
I parked beneath the expressway leading up to the Greater New Orleans Bridge about thirty minutes later. Above what felt like a concrete cave with a ceiling of twisting on-ramps, cars and trucks made roaring sounds. I passed by thick columns spray-painted with graffiti and elevation markers and smelled the exhaust. Crime-scene tape marked the set. The light had faded into that summer afternoon golden glow and softened all the asphalt and concrete. The sun touched everything as it grew weak and I sat watching it fade for a few minutes, aware that I was just getting started with my day.
I saw Teddy talking to a skinny black man wearing a Metairie Zephyrs baseball hat backward and a satin Yankees jacket. The man watched a video monitor and pointed to a loose group of dancers surrounding ALIAS. The kid was breathing hard and soaked with sweat in a circle of 1960s American cars with low-rider shocks to make them jump up. About forty women in bikinis, all hard-bodied and sweating, and about fifty or so thugs stood ready to go wild when ALIAS pointed to them. They were at his command and every few minutes he’d flash a gold smile and point to the center of the group just to hear them scream.
During the break, I yelled for Teddy, who gave me the one-minute gesture. Thumping bounce rap music thudded from some speakers near ALIAS and he started into a rolling rap about Reebok sneakers, FUBU shoes, and a whole lotta Cristal was gonna make it real smooth. He bragged about a Mercedes-Benz and two Escalades and how the women who kept his company just couldn’t behave.
He had a roughened, musical voice and worked his tricky lyrics and rhymes as if he were juggling words and verses in midair.
I didn’t know rap but I knew he was good.
“Hey, dog,” Teddy yelled. He wore rimless sunglasses tinted a deep red and a toothpick hung out of his mouth. The rap music was loud and shaking and the red, green, and yellow cars bucked like wild horses, the bikini girls popped their asses, and the posse just shouted and waved black-and-gold bandannas over their heads.
We walked to a far corner of the expressway cavern, behind one of the huge columns, where we were somewhat shielded from the music.
“I know about the cops and Malcolm,” I said.
He was silent.
“You could’ve just dropped a word, man,” I said. “I like to know these things.”
Teddy was six feet six and 300 pounds and loomed over me while I talked. Not a lot of people made me feel so small.
“The cops wanted Malcolm ’cause it was easy,” Teddy said, finally speaking.
The rain from earlier dripped down in dirty beads from underneath the expressway and dropped onto Teddy’s sunglasses. He wiped his face and looked over my shoulder.