Dirty South

18

Cash and his entourage drove me over the river to Algiers, where they ate greasy sacks of Burger King, traded stories about women they’d done, and passed around joints as fat as rolls of quarters. All this while I waited for someone to put a bullet in my head. I was too tired to be scared. My hands had stopped shaking a few minutes before and I just listened to the river moving past us and the sound of tugs and faint music from the Quarter. The air smelled of sulfur and old dirt.

We were in the dead zone. Nothing but warehouses and vacant shotguns. Rusted cars and spare parts from the World’s Fair in 1984.

Their Rolls, Ferraris, and Escalades ringed me like some kind of old wagon train. Cash was doing business in his car. Someone had built a fire from some driftwood. I kept thinking about my dog. Wondering why such a group of thugs would’ve let me lock her up before coming along.

Cash climbed out of his ride and strutted over.

“You know you used to could ride over the river in a bucket,” I said, growing tired of the silence.

Cash turned to me. I thought I heard him growl.

“It’s true,” I said. “It was like Disneyland; you could pay a few bucks and get a nice view of the city and everything. Those were what I like to call simpler times.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“You want some of your boys to hold me down while you beat me again?”

“You sayin’ I ain’t hard?”

It was so dark that a few of the thugs had turned on their headlights to spot the high grass where we stood.

“I think you’re a pussy who needs help winning a fight,” I said.

Wrong choice of words. Cash pulled off his net shirt and moved in for me. His fist cocked back, eyes wild. He pushed me with his right hand.

I led with my left and connected with his ear with the right. He leapt on top of me and started hammering at my face, but I kneed him in the nuts and he fell off me. I wrapped his bald animal head into the crook of my elbow and I squeezed until he started trying to gasp for air that would not come.

All his boys circled us, drawing their guns back on me.

I let him go.

He stood, started to laugh, and walked to me with a smile. He bent his neck to the side and I heard his spine pop.

I thought I’d gained his respect up until the point he punched me in the stomach.

I fell. I breathed in as hard as I could, feeling the air narrowly pass into me. I noticed all the lights across the river. Everything grew muffled around me.

“Punk?” Cash yelled. “Punk!”

I used a concrete block to find my feet and I wavered in front of him.

I punched for his temple, but he ducked. I tried another shot and he ducked again.

I gave up on boxing and tackled his legs out from him. All of his boys whooped and hollered as he tried to get off his back like a fallen turtle and I wrapped him up in a headlock. I tasted blood and dirt in my mouth.

“We even,” he said. He spit in my face.

“Stay away from Teddy.”

“Stay away from my boy ALIAS,” he grunted.

I let him go and for several moments we both tried to catch our breath. He paced around and talked a little shit about me being a cheater and then moved in close, his eyes wild like he wanted to go again.

“Teddy needs more time.”

“Fuck him,” Cash said. “Teddy tell me that he need more time too. How come his brother paid off that bitch Nae Nae then? Dropped off a goddamned Mercedes truck yesterday. Now does that sound broke-ass? He just wavin’ that shit in my face. That I cannot stand.”

“Who’s Nae Nae?”

“Stay away from ALIAS,” he said, reaching for a shirt a flunky held open for him. As soon as he looped his arm into the fresh silk, he reached out for the man’s joint and took a hit. “Tell Teddy I’m ready to deal.”

His breath expelled into a big fat ganja cloud and then dissolved into the wind.

“He won’t give you the kid.”

“Well, I ain’t gonna let him fall like Dio. Man, that boy had some heart and he dead ’cause of it. Tell Teddy to stay in the city.”

“Teddy didn’t kill Dio.”

“You sure?”

I looked at him.

He sucked on the joint. “Why you fight me? You crazy in the head?”

“Maybe.”

“Ain’t nobody takes on Cash like that.”

I nodded.

He did too. He looked down at his watch. “That dawn come mighty early. Tell Teddy we lookin’ forward to taking him for a ride.”

“What’d you want with me?”

“How ’bout you just stay home tonight?” he asked. “What happenin’ between me and Teddy is our own thing. This shit been comin’ for a long time. He don’t need to come up with that money. You see?”

I left my hands at my side and Cash shook his head like I’d just given an incredibly stupid answer to a very simple question. He ran his fat tongue over the platinum and diamonds in his mouth. His small pit-bull eyes lazy but still intense.

As he drove away, he threw my Glock 17 into the ditch along the road. I wiped the dirt on the side of my leg and tucked the empty gun into my jacket.

Their wagon train of SUVs and Italian imports looped back onto Powder Street and the old rusted bridge that stretched over to the city. I walked behind them, rubbing the blood from my face, straightening out my clothes and calling a United Cab from the cell still in my pocket.