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.
37
Alix Sentry stood about five feet eight, bald with just wisps of brown hair ringing his head, with small brown eyes and a pointed nose. He sat on the other side of the partition and folded his hands under his chin. He stared right through the glass, twisting his nose like he was trying to smell something. He wore an orange jumpsuit reading ORLEANS PARISH JAIL and watched me in silence.
An intercom system separated us. I waited about thirty seconds for him to talk while he stared.
“You’re a nice-looking man,” he said.
“Aw, shucks,” I said.
He smiled. I leaned back in the seat.
“Maybe we can write,” I said. “Pen pals.”
He smiled. “I’d like that.”
“Fred Moore call you?”
“She’s such a sick little bitch.”
“Everyone likes Barbie,” I said. “A woman on the go.”
“She likes real ones.”
I nodded. “You going to help or not?”
“Depends on what you’ll pay me.”
“Same as Fred, five hundred.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t give up Fred for five hundred.”
“I’m not asking you to give up Fred.”
He started playing with the zipper on the jumpsuit. “Isn’t this thing so ugly? I feel like I should be in the Ice Capades.”
“What do you have?”
“You know what I do?”
“Yes.”
“Then why would you think I’m so fucking stupid?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“You know what they arrested me for?”
“Yeah.”
“Someone set me up,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
He blew out his breath and slumped back into his seat with his arms crossed over his chest. He was so average that I could see him living in Metairie with a wife and a Volvo.
“I want five thousand.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Fred said you did.”
“Fred isn’t my accountant,” I said. “I can pay you if I find the money.”
“That’s a big if.”
I looked over at the female deputy watching us and up at the water-stained tile ceiling buzzing with dull fluorescent light. “You have something else to do?”
He looked at the back of his hands and stretched.
“He sold me out,” he said. “He’s the one that planted those magazines of young boys and all of it. I don’t play like that; I never have. He trashed my house and made a phone call to the police that I’d been harassing his kids. Said he was a concerned father and I’d been walking around in a Speedo giving out toys.”
“What did you do to him?”
He laughed. “Got somewhere first.”
“Where?”
“To this old woman,” he said. “She gave me her jewelry and furs. Made her feel better. I was her friend. He wasn’t.”
I nodded. The room smelled of Lysol and urine. Words had been carved into the stall where I sat. A hundred phone numbers and names, a couple of business cards of attorneys.
“I’ll pay two if I get the money back.”
“Five,” he said. “I know it’s worth that.”
I blew out my breath and rubbed my face with my hands. Stretched the legs.
“I’ve been led to you through a few people and now I feel like I’m bargaining for something that doesn’t exist. I don’t think you know shit. I think you’re bored and just want to practice up while you’re waiting for your court date.”
“ALIAS told you about him, right?”
I leaned in. His eyes grew larger and he moved within inches of the glass. He bit off a cuticle and spit it on the floor.
“He said his ear was bad, right? A really ugly left ear.”
“I can pay you only if the money comes back,” I said. “And I mean all of it.”
“It’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“How do you know?”
“I think he’s gone.”
