Dirty South

48

Jay Medeaux stood over me in the NOPD homicide bureau in a red-and-white softball uniform complete with cleats and scrunched cotton cap. He was popping a ball into his glove pocket and chomping on Big League Chew while he waited for me to finish my story. Two other detectives scribbled on reports in the pooled desk space, their heads down near banker’s lights glowing green.

“You told two officers in the First District you’d seen a ghost,” Jay said. “They thought you was juiced up.”

Anytime Jay was mad he reverted back to his y’at Irish Channel accent, even though he’d graduated from Tulane with a 4.0. When we were roommates in college, he would rarely go beyond the Boot to drink beer because he was studying history and criminology. But when he was pissed, he went back home.

He tossed me the ball.

“You seen that movie Lord of the Rings?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like you been chased by some of those goblins.”

“I know what I saw.”

Jay was a big guy with sandy-blond hair cut down to the millimeter. In the last couple of years, his linemen’s gut flattened out and his face had grown more hardened.

“Nick, it’s Friday night,” he said. “Why’d you have to pick Friday freakin’ night? We were winning. My wife was there showin’ off her new ta-tas in this sweet tank top.”

“New?”

“They were runnin’ a sale in the paper. You believe that? Like they were selling used cars.”

“Vroom. Vroom.”

“You find JoJo?” he asked.

“Yeah, he picked up the kid.”

“Come on.”

Jay took me into a room where a large woman in blue uniform laid out some plastic binders filled with mug shots. I spent more than an hour flipping the sheets, looking at some wonderful freaks that could make only P. T. Barnum smile. But nothing matched the gray face with the yellow eyes in the window.

Jay walked me to a break room on the eighth floor, where he made some coffee and we sat near a window overlooking the tall Gothic-looking Dixie Brewery. Small mushroom patterns of crime lights shone for miles, seeming to spawn from the brightness of the parish jail. Everything in New Orleans worked from pockets of darkness.

“You really going to open the bar?”

“Why not?” I settled into my seat and used a napkin to clean the gutter grime off my boots.

“What about teaching?”

“I only teach two classes a year.”

“What about all your research in Mississippi?”

“Do you want to be the devil’s advocate or are you just trying to yank my chain?”

“Mainly yanking your chain,” he said. “But I don’t think you know what you’re in for. Bills, loans, payroll. Out of your league.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “I have JoJo for advice. He knows a few things about running a bar.”

“True,” he said.

I looked over at Jay in his red-and-white baseball outfit and started to laugh.

“What?”

“You look like a big candy cane.”

He didn’t laugh.

“Nick?”

“Yeah.”

“You’d tell me, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s all twisted and incestuous, man. Just give me a few days.”

“It’s not my case,” he said. “I just hear things. They just took a bunch of files and shit from that record company in the Ninth Ward.”

“What do they think?”

Jay shrugged.

“I understand,” I said. “Any forensic stuff? DNA, fingerprints?”

“It’s all being run,” he said. “But right now, I don’t see a lot of work being done.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s New Orleans, man,” Jay said. “The dead need to wait in line.”

Just as I began to stand, the officer who’d shown me the photopacks walked into the room and opened a binder to a new page.

“That him?”

I stood and flattened my hands on each side of the book. I began to nod slowly and didn’t say anything. I looked at the dirt on my hands and wiped them on my leg.

“Who is he?” Jay asked.

“Some freak grave robber,” she said. “Remember all those tombs in Metairie that got busted into a few years back? He stole old battle flags and Civil War uniforms. Guys in robbery been looking for him ever since.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“People call him Redbone. The name he gave when he was booked went back to some man he killed. Oh yeah, he kills people for money too. Sounds like a sweet man.”

“Never convicted?”

“This guy in robbery suspects he kills people and lays them in old tombs. How we ever gonna find those bodies?”

Jay whistled low. “I got a couch,” he said to me. “Stay a few.”

“I’ve got the kid.”

“Bring him too.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m used to looking out for myself.”

“Listen, I know they’re looking at this Cash guy hard,” Jay said, exchanging looks with the officer and then back at me. “How ’bout we send a little warning to him?”

“It’s not him.”

“Right.”

“Just give me a few days,” I said.

“You still have that Browning?”

“I have a Glock I picked up in Memphis,” I said. “Holds seventeen rounds. Very handy.”

“Keep it close.”