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.
19
Trey loved that scene from The Grifters. The one when Cusack walks into that TGI Friday’s place and holds a twenty in his fingers but has the folded dollar flipped underneath his palm. When the bartender gets ready to make his change, he coolly flicks out the buck and no one notices a freakin’ thing. Trey didn’t like to keep things from Teddy. Didn’t like to hide things from the big guy. He’d always gotten along with him, enjoyed picking out his clothes, decorating his home, and shaping Ninth Ward into a national company. But Teddy didn’t have to know everything.
Trey looked over at Malcolm, drunk and stoned, sleeping on the couch in Trey’s office in the CBD. He clicked off his e-mail and reached into his desk drawer for two CDs he’d burned earlier today. Nothing but a white paper label.
On his walls hung pictures of his travels with his fraternity brothers from college. All of them in that little bar down in Costa Rica listening to that reggae band and singing like hell. Another of him and Christian in Switzerland when they climbed that mountain and drank some really good German beer, both flashing their wrists with freshly built Rolexes. The good one. The Submariner.
Trey tucked the CDs into Malcolm’s coat pocket and shook him awake. The overhead lights had been shut off by his secretary and only small little table lamps glowed. Malcolm stirred a bit and Trey made himself a Ketel One martini at the minibar. No vermouth. He hated vermouth. A clean twist of lemon.
On the bar, he kept a small CD player and flicked through the CDs. No fucking rap. But he did have some awesome Dave Matthews. A little Widespread Panic and some Limp Bizkit. Great driving music.
He cranked up the Bizkit. It was Friday night. All the offices were closed and he could play a little. Malcolm grabbed a beer beside him and began to wash his face in the tiny marble sink.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleanin’ up,” Malcolm said.
“There’s a bathroom down the hall.”
He began to walk away, shaking his head, his Hornets jersey slipped over a white T with some hundred- dollar jeans. His face covered in shadows.
“Why don’t you turn that shit down?” Malcolm said.
“Check your pockets while you’re out.”
Malcolm looked at Trey for a second and then walked back to his stiff jean jacket, searching through each compartment. When he found the CDs, he froze.
“How many more?”
“Twenty-two tracks, enough for a double album.”
“Don’t make no sense.”
Trey took the martini and walked back to his desk and plunked down the drink on the table. He just started to dance, rocking his head up and down. Feeling that music. All that energy. He might be a businessman but he could still rock.
Malcolm turned down the music. He walked over as Trey started giggling a little and reached his right hand in the air for a high five.
“Where you gettin’ this?”
“His mother.”
“Dio said his mamma died.”
“Then it was his aunt.”
“Damn, man,” he said.
“A little extra kick that we needed,” Trey said. “Right?”
“Teddy will want to know.”
“And you’ll tell him about his aunt,” Trey said. “I keep up with all his family. They’re all part of the estate. Teddy will understand.”
“Is it good?”
“The best.”
“Don’t want to be known for producin’ a dead man all my life.”
“Dio is forever,” Trey said, reaching for Malcolm’s hand.
Malcolm didn’t take it. “You startin’ to make sense.”
Trey stopped smiling and had to catch his breath. “What are you talking about?”
