Dirty South

10

I tried for forty-five minutes to talk to a human at this super-conglomerate bank in the CDB about Teddy’s account. I held Teddy on the cell for most of the wait to get someone to release the information on the transfer. But after being shuffled around to, no lie, eight people, I was finally told by a vice-president returning from a very late lunch that this was now a police matter, and Teddy’s accounts were confidential, even to him.

The woman wore white makeup, making her almost look like a spooky clown with her dyed black hair, and her face cracked with the stress when she forced a smile on me. I just winked at her and pushed out onto Carondelet where I’d left Annie in the truck with the windows rolled down. I thought about letting her shit in their lobby but decided to take the higher road. Besides, even with all the account information in the world, I didn’t think I’d be able to decipher it. I’d need an accountant to work out the details.

Since it was a police matter and there was someone investigating, I knew I could get access to them through my old roommate at Tulane who was now a detective in homicide. I called Jay from the cell, got voice mail, and heard him give out his beeper number. I beeped him and five minutes later, as I was already headed down Canal toward Broad Street and police headquarters, he called back. A second afternoon shower hit my windshield and I turned on the wipers. Toward the end of Canal I could still see the sun shining.

“Detective Medeaux? I have information on the Fatty Arbuckle case of 1921.”

“Is that right?” he asked, a slight edge in his voice. “Oh yeah, I remember. Asphyxiation by farting.”

“I have some beans and rice that need to be questioned,” I said. My arm was hanging out the truck window and I had on sunglasses looking into the late-afternoon sun. It was almost four.

“You sure? I heard it was carne asada.”

“You ever work a homicide like that?”

“No, but when I was on patrol in the First District, I once saw a homeless dude humping a burrito.”

“Hey, it’s Nick.”

“No shit.”

“Listen, man. I need a big favor. You remember Teddy Paris?”

I told him the whole story in about thirty seconds. I asked him to make a call and put me in touch with whoever was in white-collar crime and was pushing the paper on the ALIAS con.

“Guy named Hiney.”

“Really.”

“Don’t make fun of him. He’s really sensitive about his name. Tries to pronounce it Hi-nay, like he’s fucking French or something.”

“What’s his deal?”

“He’s our Bunco guy, bra,” Jay said in his thick Irish Channel way. “Works all the hotel cons. Real pro, even if he is kind of a dick.”

“You’ll call?”

“When you want to come down?”

“I’ll be there in two minutes.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “If this Cash guy really wants Teddy bad, we can send someone over. Or why doesn’t he just hide out awhile?”

“Good questions,” I said. “But Teddy won’t have it. Says it’s all about rules he laid down.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said.

“Well, if something happens to Teddy, you won’t have to look far.”

I hung up. Five minutes later, I walked the steps to the gray concrete building down by the parish jail. The cell phone rang and Jay said to give my name to the officer at the front desk. “The Hiney is waiting for you.”

“Thought it was Hi-nay?”

“Fuck him. He’s an ass any way you say it.”

A FEW minutes later, Detective Hiney walked in – short dress sleeves and clipped black mustache – and asked me what I knew about these black shitbags in the Ninth Ward. I presumed he meant Teddy and Malcolm. Then the conversation with this guy somehow veered away from the theft of the $500,000 and into his theories on race. I drank a cold Barq’s root beer and watched his eye twitch.

He’d actually divided the blacks of New Orleans into different tribes, and according to him – as I was unaware he’d received a degree in sociology or history – most blacks were the same as they’d been in Africa.

I felt I’d wasted the drive over to Broad Street to his little cop office that he’d had decorated with Norman Rockwell prints and awards he’d received at law enforcement conventions.

“How do you know Medeaux?” he asked.

“He was my roommate in college.”

“He said you played ball. I don’t remember you, but some guys said they kicked you off the Saints. Heard you choked your coach on Monday Night Football.”

I shrugged. “My hands slipped.”

He watched my eyes as if he couldn’t tell if I was joking and gave a half grunt to stay on the safe side either way. I saw a tattoo of an anchor on his hairy forearm when he leaned forward and ran a stubby finger along some notes he’d made.

“Five hundred thousand,” he said, giving a low whistle. “What the hell is a fifteen-year-old gonna do with that kind of money but lose it?”

“He didn’t lose it.”

“He lost it,” he said. “Maybe it didn’t fall out of his pockets. Let’s just say if this kid had a second brain, it would be awful lonely.”

I nodded again, finished the Barq’s, and threw it into a trash can. I watched his face as he spoke. He had to be in his midforties but his skin was worn and sallow. Crumbs caught in his mustache and his breath smelled of wintergreen gum. He kept chewing as he leaned back in his seat and studied me.

“Who in New Orleans has the balls to follow through with that act at Lee Circle?” I asked. “These guys were good.”

“From what you told me, they were all right,” he said. “So you wanna know how many con men in New Orleans would work that game. Maybe fifty? A hundred? Bra, I been workin’ Bunco since ’83. I know a lot of these people. But you got to realize if you hit some kid up for that much, you’re gonna retire. How many scores you think people make like that?”

“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.”