Dirty South

43

Two hours later, I sat in the Hummingbird Diner having a late breakfast with a seventy-year-old reporter named Orval Jackson. Apparently the paper had tried to force him into retirement a few years ago by taking his longtime beat. But as a man who’d started covering news when he was sixteen in Kansas and continued with decades at the UPI, he didn’t let a bunch of management assholes tell him what to do. He told me a little about covering the Kennedy White House with Helen Thomas and some about the early days of NASA in the sixties before we got to his stories on Trey Brill and Christian Chase.

“So you remember them?”

“I wish I could forget those two arrogant little pricks.”

“How did Brill get off?”

“His rich daddy.”

Orval had a full head of white hair and clear blue eyes. He wore a short-sleeved blue dress shirt hard pressed and a red tie printed with tiny Tabasco logos. A white Panama hat lay by his elbow where he kept his coffee.

He glanced around the old diner.

“You eat here much?” he asked.

“It’s a block from my warehouse.”

“Hope you have all your shots.”

The Hummingbird was a combination flophouse and diner where you could still get a room for twenty bucks a night. Orange vinyl booths, brown paneled walls, a big board painted with breakfast specials available twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Outside, a red neon sign blinked the word HOTEL. Two homeless men fought outside over a stuffed rabbit and a half-eaten cheese-burger.

We ordered eggs, bacon, and toast. The waitress, a woman I knew named Jennie, plunked down a pot of coffee as a streetcar passed by the windows and shook the glass.

I smoked a cigarette, trying to blow the smoke away from Orval, while we waited for our food.

“Brill just called Daddy from jail,” Orval said. “His father had this lawyer from Baton Rouge named Newcomb swoop in, make a few calls. The boy only spent maybe two minutes in front of a judge before the case was dropped.”

“And Christian Chase?”

“You ever heard of Booker Chase?”

“No.”

“He started his construction company when he was nineteen with one dump truck,” Orval said. “Now most of the new building going on in New Orleans has his name attached. He grew up in the Irish Channel. Scrapped for everything he owned. He expects his kids to hold their water.”

“Didn’t make that call,” I said, stubbing out the cigarette as the plates were laid on the table. I cut into some eggs.

“No, sir,” he said. “Kid got six long years in Angola.”

“Where’s he now?”

“I heard he’s working for his father,” he said. “Booker has the boy driving a dump truck, just like he had to. He’s got an office over in Old Metairie, not far from the country club.”

“Think he’ll talk to me?”

Orval shrugged, buttering his toast and taking a bite. “What’s going on with these kids now?”

“Brill works for a friend of mine,” I said. “His brother was just killed.”

“What’s his name?”

“Teddy Paris.”

“Football player, right?”

I nodded.

“I read about that,” Orval said. “Sounds like his brother was a thug.”

“Yeah, I read that too. The reporter called him a gangster rapper. This kid was a music producer. I’d known him since he was fourteen.”

“Good kid?”

“I liked him a lot,” I said. “He was always respectful and smart. One of those kids wise beyond their age.”

Orval looked at me, still sizing me up, but so good at it that it didn’t show much.

“You work for Teddy Paris?”

“Kind of.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I sometimes research stuff for friends,” I said. “It’s what I do at Tulane and sometimes people hire me for favors.”

“What’s that pay?”

“Teddy bought me a bar in the Quarter.”

Orval nodded. “Maybe I can do something like that when I retire,” he said, taking a bite of toast. “Don’t want to sit on my ass and learn how to drool.”

We ate for a while and I thought about finding Christian.

Orval pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and wrote a few notes on the back. “This is a Belgian beer I’ve been trying to find for ten years. It’s brewed by monks and called Orval, spelled the same way. Can you ask your distributor about it?”

“When I get the bar up and running, I will.”

“When will that be?”

I shrugged.

I looked outside and noticed the sun was gone. Rain began to splat the hoods of Yellow and United cabs parked along St. Charles. The hammering of the hoods grew more intense and I sank into my seat. I knew I’d be soaked all day.

My day was just starting.

“Kid won’t talk to you.”

“I have to try.”

Orval looked around at a prostitute sauntering into the grill with a stained dress and two Japanese tourists in black leather. Both men ordered a couple of Budweisers.

“Jail changes people,” he said. “But you still live a long way from Old Metairie.”