Dirty South

14

I checked with Curtis at his house – and got nowhere – dropped by the warehouse and fed Annie, leaving on Cartoon Network for her to watch Super-friends, and headed out to a strip club in New Orleans East where I knew I’d find ALIAS. It was about eight o’clock and the sky turned black and purple on the horizon as I drove I-10 toward Slidell and found the exit. I passed an old Shoney’s and a now-defunct shopping mall that had become the place for local crack deals and gun-fights. The cops didn’t even like to patrol here anymore.

About ten years ago, New Orleans East was a suburb of corporate apartments and yuppie condos along with the usual strip malls and chain restaurants. But since the Hope VI federal housing initiative took off and local slumlords could get easy money through Section 8 housing grants, New Orleans East had taken over where the now-demolished Magnolia and Desire housing projects had left off.

But instead of brick and mortar sheltering the poor, it was Sheetrock and flimsy plywood – no apartment manager having to answer for shit while the slumlords grew rich and wrote off millions on their taxes.

The Booty Call Club was pretty much black-only with the loose gathering of basic out-of-town white businessmen with per diem cash to spend. Nothing special. A rambling building with no windows next door to a Denny’s. By the parking lot stood an industrial plastic sign of a cartoon black woman covering her breasts with a Mardi Gras mask.

The inside was dark, lit in a few areas with track lighting and neon beer signs. The air smelled like cherry incense and Pine-Sol. Toward a main stage where some woman was twirling on a brass pole to George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog,” I found Malcolm sipping on a forty-ounce and smoking a Newport. His Saints jersey running down to his knees and his Timberland boots propped up in a chair before him. A couple of other teens I’d seen at the video shoot gathered around the girl’s stage and stuck twenties into her garter.

She was brown-eyed and had long curly brown hair. She had a little pooch to her belly and her legs jiggled when she danced. But the more twenties she got, the more she shook it.

I pulled up a chair – the sound of the funk deafening – and leaned into Malcolm. He gave me a pound and offered me a Newport from his pack, his cigarette catching in the side of his mouth by his gold tooth.

“Where’s ALIAS?” I asked. The music shifted to this old Prince tune about not having to watch Dynasty to have an attitude, and Malcolm ran with it, bobbing his head, cigarette dangling from his lips as he listened.

“You gonna get that man that took all that money?” Malcolm took a sip of the beer. He’d been smoking it up and his eyes were a little tight. He just kind of hummed each word out of his mouth. Told me he loved me. Loved me for helping his big brother out. He asked if I wanted a cigarette again and I said I did.

He handed me the pack.

“I know you always bummin’ off people, right.”

I appreciated the gesture; he was into respect. Last year when two shitbags had almost killed Loretta, the Paris brothers were the first at the hospital. Malcolm called me about every day after that wanting to know what he could do. He would’ve killed somebody if I’d asked him.

I took a cigarette and tucked the pack in my jacket.

“I need to borrow ALIAS.”

“Take ’im,” Malcolm said. “Boy played out.”

“Was Dio like that?”

“Dio was nothin’ but heart,” Malcolm said. I still saw the boy’s face in the hardened man. He still had the same soft eyes and nappy hair from when he used to come by practice with Teddy. Fifteen and running errands for his big brother.

Malcolm cupped a cigarette to his face, smoke fingering its way up over the lines and creases the last ten years had left.

“That what killed him?”

“I don’t know what killed him, man,” Malcolm said. He turned away and took a long drag off the Newport and a deep swig off the forty. “I always thought it was Cash that snatched his ass.”

“Looking forward to meeting him.”

“Be careful, brother,” he said. “The man could turn Mike Tyson into his bitch. He likes to make you bow down. Bleed a little bit to his respect.”

“You think Cash took ALIAS for the money?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Naw,” he said. “Didn’t you listen to ALIAS? Some white man worked him. That ain’t Cash. He don’t play.”

“So I heard,” I said. “What happened with Dio?”

His smile turned.

“Couple of men took him last year.”

“Stuffed him in a van at that Uptown club?”

He nodded.

“And you don’t think that’s connected to ALIAS?”

“Why would it be?” he said. “Some hustlers took him down. He’s dead. We’ll never find him.”

“Police said it was you.”

Malcolm stuck the cigarette in his mouth and inched closer to my face. He mouthed the word “Shit,” and turned his back to me. “Goddamn, I used to respect you,” he said. “You just like ’em all. Fuck this. I don’t care if I told Teddy to find you.”

He got up and strutted away, his football jersey un-tucked, and took a long swig from his forty before wrapping his long arms around two of the dancers.

I found and followed a hallway through a back room where flickered patterns of red and blue lights played in small, individual coves.

ALIAS lay on a round bed with a young girl, really beautiful with her long black hair partially covered in a black bandanna and long slender legs. She stretched out on top of his back, hugging him tight almost like he was a life preserver, as he – oblivious to her – worked out some aggression on a video game with dragons and knights.

“You ready?” I asked.

“You get what you need?”

“No.”

“I told you, Old School,” he said, pulling on his baseball cap. “You wouldn’t listen. These people done gone. No faces. No names. How you supposed to come through for Teddy? You best call him now and tell him to take a long ride out of New Orleans.”

“Maybe.”

“What else you gonna do?”

“I’m workin’ on it.”

“Better work fast.”

“Come on.”

He patted the young girl’s right hand that gripped him tight, her body prone on his, and she slowly slid off of him. Wordless. Her eyes accusing me for taking him away. She tucked her hair back into her bandanna and stripped off a long shirt to reveal a complicated array of belts, garters, lace, and buckles.

She was fourteen and then she was an adult.

ALIAS checked himself in the mirror, grabbed a Saints ball cap that was perched on the edge of the chair, and nodded at me. “Let’s roll.”