Dirty South

36

I never heard back from the woman at Pinky’s bar in the Marigny. I never called her and she never called me. No messages, no letters. After Malcolm died, I didn’t see there was much point. Since that morning we’d found him hung in the tree, I’d been bothered. What had happened to the money and the people who’d been working with him? I never was much for neat endings and lost cash. Besides, I was a little pissed-off that Fred at Pinky’s never called me back. If only I’d let her tie me up.

I drove to Frenchman, parked on the street, and walked over to Pinky’s, the pinup girl winking in neon. It was about 2 on a Sunday and the same British bartender was sweeping up the floor, the radio tuned to some Iggy Pop as he danced with his broom.

When I walked inside, he turned down the radio and held the broom close to his chest. “We’re closed.”

“Back to see Fred.”

“Fred’s asleep.”

“Where?”

“Upstairs,” he said, giving me that “you dumb-ass” look. “Where else?”

He pointed to a flight of stairs hidden behind the bar by neatly spaced spindles. Above the rows of multicolored bottles sat a small shrine made from skulls, cow bones, and a large pentagram. Someone burned incense in the mouth of the skull.

I bounded up the creaking steps covered in mildewed red carpet and knocked on a door that was already ajar. Near the door was a neat grouping of old plaid furniture and a coffee table made with legs from a mannequin. The more I opened the door, the more mannequins I saw. Black and white. Male and female. Some with pants. Some with whips. Some with bright green wigs, others with dated sixties hair. Even one dressed as a nurse.

I knocked on the door, hearing a woman giggle in the back.

A teenage girl, who looked about fifteen, a little plump with black nails and cherry-red hair, bounded out of the room wearing nothing but a long Jazzfest T and said, “You’re not Bob.”

“No.”

“Fred?”

Fred emerged from the door wearing a pink terrycloth robe and holding a Snoball, eating off the top. Her white witch-blond hair packed on top of her head. She had a naked Barbie doll clutched in one of her hands.

“Yeah?”

“Nick.”

“Yeah.”

I smiled. She walked back into the bedroom. The girl followed, looking at me. I heard her say, “What’s with the dipshit?”

I crossed my arms on my chest and waited.

Fred came back. Her breath smelled like the Jack distillery in Lynchburg, a brownish coating on the Snoball. In the back, I heard the girl flip the channels from MTV over to a cartoon featuring fighting Japanese robots.

She looked up at me, red-eyed and sneering, and belched.

She stuck a piece of paper in my hand and stumbled back.

“Five hundred for this,” she said. “It’s all I could get you.”

“Let me see if it pans out.”

“It will.”

I nodded.

“I talked to Curtis and he knows where to find you,” she said. “Leave the money with Bob. If you don’t, I’ll have Stella pay you a visit.”

She laughed and left the room. She started giggling and I heard her jumping on the bed with the little girl.

Written in almost illegible cursive were the words Alix Sentry. Orleans Parish Jail. Waiting for you.

I heard the Japanese robots kicking ass in the next room and watched the still mannequins watch me as I left the little apartment, not sure where this was headed.

The Orleans Parish Jail stands right next to the police station down on Broad Street. Someone, probably another inmate, had decided to paint the cinderblock topped in concertina wire with faces out of those eighties Robert Nagel prints, the ones with the women with very white faces and black hair. I walked along the wall and found the front desk, where I checked in with a deputy. I told them I was a friend of Alix Sentry and we had a meeting set up.

He made a call to Sentry’s holding cell.

“You’re going to have to wait,” he said. “Takes us about thirty to bring the prisoners in.”

“What was he charged with?”

The deputy looked down at the computer screen. “Two counts of fraud and four counts of possession of child pornography. Oh, and drug paraphernalia.”

I smiled. “We’re not that good friends,” I said. “Really just acquaintances.”

I waited in a little family-room area close to the desk with two women and five children. One of the women was white and wore a black halter top cut away with straps in the back to show off a tattoo of a dolphin. Her long brown hair had been moussed and puffed up on her head circa 1987 and she’d painted her lips probably a half inch over where they ended. Her kids, I guessed, ran around the sofa while I watched an old console television playing Wheel of Fortune.

Her kids were scrubbed clean and wearing crisp T-shirts and new jeans.

The other woman kept trying to guess the answers with words and phrases that didn’t quite make sense. She became very frustrated when this guy on TV never said “Pretty in Link.”

A deputy called my name and led me through a metal detector. I had to take off my belt buckle and leave my keys in a little plastic bowl on the second try.

“Does anyone ever try the ole nail file in the birthday cake?” I asked.

The guy handed the keys back to me and scratched his hairy neck before leading me into an empty room filled with about ten plastic slots, little cubes where you could talk through the plexiglass. I was hoping to see the woman from Midnight Express pressing her boobs against the glass, but I was going to be alone with Alix Sentry.

The back door opened and a black woman deputy led out a man in handcuffs. His smile so waxen and stiff when he saw me that I had to look away from his face.