by Tony Dunbar
Tubby had never met Twink Beekman, but the president of Save Our River accosted him as soon as he wandered into the cafeteria.
“Mr. Dubonnet?” the tall, serious-looking young man said. He had on gold-rimmed glasses, a red lumberjack plaid shirt, and lots of curly brown hair.
Tubby said yes.
“I recognized you by your suit. You look like a lawyer.”
“Too bad,” Tubby said. He aimed to dress a little less well than his mint-condition colleagues, but by university standards he admitted he looked extra fine. They passed through the line for some swampy and very strong-looking coffee in a paper cup, then sat down at a table by the window with a view of a coed rugby match. A number of students said hi to Twink—some nodded respectfully at the man in the suit. When Tubby was a student they might have shot a straight guy like him the bird.
“Thanks for coming to talk to me, Mr. Dubonnet. Debbie says you’re a great lawyer.”
“My pleasure,” said Tubby. “Tell me about your case.”
“Actually, we’ve got several of them going on at once, but the law center is handling them, or else the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund. They’re really short-handed, though, and won’t even talk to me right now about doing anything else.”
Tubby nodded his head.
“We’ve had a project for the past year, involving making what we call a riverbank directory. The way it works is we map out all the companies and businesses along the riverfront. Right now we’re trying to do all of Orleans Parish. We identify what each business is, like what it makes, and we try to identify what potential hazards it could pose to water quality.”
“When you say water quality, you’re talking about the Mississippi River?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s pretty low quality to start with.”
“Granted, but we’re trying to get a handle on where the really dangerous stuff, like PCB’s and heavy metals, might be getting into the water. And as we get better at it, and get a new crop of students next year, we want to expand the directory system into Jefferson Parish, then right on upriver to Baton Rouge.”
“Very ambitious. How do you do your research?”
“Two ways, mainly. We do some basic mapping using readily available sources like the city directory and even the yellow pages, as well as some studies conducted by the Corps of Engineers, the EPA, and the Regional Planning Commission, and then we send out teams of volunteers to actually visit the businesses, or warehouses, on site, and see what’s going on.”
“And what’s going on?”
“Well, as you might guess, every kind of trash you can think of is going into the river, as well as plenty of gas, diesel oil, and human waste. Most of the discharge we’ve detected is illegal, but it’s relatively small stuff. Not likely to make a dent on the blue heron population of Plaquemines Parish, for example. A certain amount is just carelessness on the docks, or lax enforcement of the rules about bilge flushing, but now and again we run into things that make us perk up our ears.”
“Like what?”
“For instance, just off the top of the list, there’s an outfit called American Retro-Plastics that seems to be storing lots of rusty fifty-five-gallon drums on its property. Then there’s Cargo Planners, which our student reporter says has stacks of wooden crates labeled ‘batteries’ sitting out in the weather. There’s one called Bayou Disposal, which has a trucking depot maybe one or two hundred feet away from the actual water line. These guys collect hazardous waste, liquid by-products of oil refineries mostly, and truck it to an incinerator in northern Mississippi, where we think it’s allowed to poison the atmosphere of most of mid-America. They claim they just use the lot by the river as a maintenance shed, a place to repair their trucks and gas them up, nothing more, but we have information that they might be pumping stuff out of their trucks with hoses right into the river. There are other companies probably doing the same thing. These could be felonies, big time.” Twink rapped his knuckles on the table in his excitement.
“Don’t you turn complaints like that over to the Environmental Protection Agency or something?”
“Yes, but nothing seems to get done.”
“So what’s next?”
“Next is getting you to take the file, see what’s involved, and bring a lawsuit against the offending companies and the EPA. The main objective is to force the EPA to devote resources to investigating the allegations we’ve made and see if a criminal prosecution can be supported.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Tubby said, “but couldn’t that take years?”
“Realistically, yes,” Twink said sadly, “but you do what you can. Maybe we’ll strike a nerve and get quicker results.”
“Strike the government’s nerve? You do that through politics and protest, not lawsuits,” Tubby said. “And the press,” he added, reluctantly remembering Kathy Jeansonne. “The government has lots of lawyers.”
“But it is important, Mr. Dubonnet. If they really are pumping toxic waste straight into the river, it could, depending on what they are, do real damage to oyster harvests in the marshes or maybe even fishing in the Gulf.”
“And kill some people?”
“Yes, if somebody was unlucky enough to drink the stuff or get immersed in it before it was diffused in the current.”
“Okay,” Tubby said. “I’ll take a shot at it. Have you got a file for me to look at?”
“I sure do,” Twink said, and he produced from the floor two accordion binders, each stretched big enough to contain an unabridged Webster’s.
“Whew!”
“This isn’t all of it, of course. We’ve got back-up studies that fill a whole file drawer, but this should get you started. And here’s a list of ten companies we’ve had specific complaints about.”
Tubby inspected the list and put it in his pocket. He accepted the rest of the baggage gracefully. He was doing this one for Debbie. Oh yeah, and the environment.
CHAPTER 16
Tubby lugged the files back to his office and told Cherrylynn to set aside a little time to organize them. As an afterthought he handed her Twink’s list and asked her to begin getting what information she could about each of the companies, from American Retro-Plastics to Z-Train, Incorporated. He suggested that she call the secretary of state and see who ran each one.
He dumped the heavy files on the couch in his office, hung up his jacket, and called his home number. As expected, he got the answering machine. It told him he wasn’t there to take his call but would call back as soon as possible.
“Hello, Tania,” he said after the beep. “Pick it up, please. This is Tubby.”
After a couple of seconds she came on.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hi. I’m just checking in to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine, thank you. I was just straightening up a little bit. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not.” Please do. “Anything unusual around there?”
“Everything is fine. You’ve been so nice. Could I ask you for another favor?”
“What is it?” Tubby asked noncommittally.
“I suppose I have to go home sometime. I wonder if you would mind going with me.”
“Just for company?”
“Just to see how everything looks. I’m very nervous about it.”
“You probably should be nervous. Sure, I’ll go with you. I’ve got a few things to clean up at the office, though.”
“That will be just fine. I kind of feel like I’m on a vacation. I’m watching ‘Oprah’ and ‘Donahue.’”
“Make yourself at home.”
“Thank you,” Tania said again, and they hung up.
Cherrylynn stuck her head in the doorway.
“The secretary of state would only tell me about three companies at a time—some rule they have,” she said.
“Come on in. What did you learn?”
“The first one on the list, American Retro-Plastics, is a Miss
ouri corporation, and has a registered agent in Baton Rouge, George Guyoz.”
“Okay,” Tubby said. Guyoz was a lawyer he knew, and if need be he would call him and perhaps find out what the company did.
“The next two are Bayou Disposal and Cargo Planners,” Cherrylynn continued. “And guess what.”
“I give up.”
“The incorporator of both of them is Bijan Botaswati, and he has an address on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter.”
“Who are the directors?” Tubby asked.
“The only director listed is Bijan Botaswati. He’s also listed as the president and secretary, and he’s also the registered agent of both companies.”
“Any other addresses?”
“Nope. Same address for everything.”
Tubby wrote it down.
“Also a woman named Nicole called to confirm your fishing trip tomorrow.” Cherrylynn’s eyes positively gleamed with curiosity.
“Damn,” Tubby said. “I’d forgotten about that. It’s a sad case. Poor old woman is terminally ill and wants to make plans for her artwork and cats.”
“Fishing?”
“Strange, huh? But it’s one of her only pleasures.” Tubby shook his head at life’s mysteries.
“Well, you might have a problem, boss. The judge signed your writ of habeas corpus for Jerome Rasheed Cook and set it for hearing tomorrow at nine o’clock.”
Now what am I going to do about that? Tubby wondered. Fishing or the cause of justice?
Fortunately be was spared resolving the dilemma because the writ drew a quick response.
Hardly had the smirking Cherrylynn departed the room than she buzzed him to say that Captain Second Grade Passetta, director of Community Corrections, was on the phone.
“Yeah, Mr. Dubonnet,” he began, “We’ve done some research on our end here, on Jerome R. Cook, and looks like we don’t have him.”
“Where is he then?” Tubby demanded.
“He left our facility on June twenty-ninth in the custody of the sheriff of Pearl River County, Mississippi.”
“Why was that?”
“They had a warrant for him for distribution of crack cocaine. I suppose the district attorney or sheriff here decided to let Mississippi have first shot at him.”
“What was the charge against him in Orleans Parish?”
“That I’m not sure of. My records aren’t complete on that. But the main thing is, he ain’t in the custody of the New Orleans Sheriff’s Department.”
So Tubby got the Poplarville, Mississippi, sheriff’s department on the phone. Not so much hassle there. Sheriff Bone came on the line right away.
“Cook?” he inquired loudly. “Yeah, we got Cook. What you want with him?”
“I’m trying to find out what he’s been charged with. Is he serving time?”
“No, he’s just biding time, eating county food. He hasn’t been to trial yet. He’s charged with selling dope.”
“When is his trial date?”
“Now that I wouldn’t know, I just hold ’em. And I’ve been holding him for a long time. Any more questions than that, you’ll just have to take up with the district attorney.”
Assistant District Attorney Sherry Peavine was defensive.
“It does appear that a decision to prosecute should have been made before now. He has been in custody for an unusual amount of time, but there are very often reasons for that. He may have waived his right to a speedy trial.”
“Do you see any waiver in his record?” Tubby asked.
“I don’t really have a full record in front of me, Mr. Dubonnet.”
“Has he been indicted?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find either an indictment or a bill of information, but I’ve only been with this office since I got out of law school last May.”
Tubby used his most magisterial voice.
“Miss Peavine, I’m going to send an associate of mine up to the Poplarville jail tomorrow morning. I expect you to instruct Sheriff Bone to release Mr. Cook forthwith to my associate or else I am prepared to sue your department for one zillion dollars for false imprisonment.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Mr. Dubonnet.”
“You’d better release him tomorrow or be prepared for one hell of a fight to keep him.”
They both hung up in a huff. Tubby felt quite proud of himself. He called Raisin to see if he could drive up to Poplarville in the morning, and Raisin said he could.
Tubby unlocked his front door and called out, very loudly, “Tania, it’s Tubby. I’m home.”
“Okay.” Her voice came from the back of the house.
He found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of tea in front of her, looking happy to see him. She had tied a colorful purple-and-gold scarf she must have found upstairs around her hair, transforming herself into black princess housewife. The room was spotless. He complimented her.
“I wanted to do something to stay busy, and to show my appreciation.”
“Very nice,” he said.
“I’ve got all my things packed,” she said with a laugh, pointing to her nightgown folded neatly on top of Mike’s wife’s coat. “I’ll return the coat tomorrow.”
Tubby smiled. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “I’m glad you’re going with me.”
“It’s no problem,” he said.
“We’ll see when we get there,” she said, and Tubby thought she was trembling a little.
“Just give me a minute.” He went upstairs to get his handgun. He rummaged around for his holster but it had disappeared. He tried sticking the barrel of the pistol through his belt, first in front, then in back. No way. It must weigh ten pounds. I’m going to permanently damage myself with this, he thought. He put the gun back in the drawer and settled for his Uncle Henry pocketknife instead. Now what good would that do? It just made him feel better to have something in his pocket.
He got Tania into the car, and they drove toward the Irish Channel. He told her he had enjoyed her company and, truthfully, he was sorry to see her go. It was nice having somebody to come home to. She didn’t say much. He picked up her scared vibes and turned on the radio, lucking upon Fats Domino. He hummed along to the music.
They had passed the National Maritime Union hall on Washington when she told him to turn off into a neighborhood of double shotguns with lots of gingerbread. She directed him onto Laurel Street and told him to pull over to the curb.
“This is my home,” she said faintly, pointing to a narrow white single story. It was bracketed by nearly identical houses on either side, but Tania’s was especially cozy-looking and had a well-tended flower garden and a sweet olive tree in its tiny front yard. He held open the iron gate for her, but she motioned him to go first.
She followed him up the steps and reached past him to test the door. It was locked, so she found the key under a potted cactus and opened the place up. Tubby went inside ahead of her. She reached around the doorsill and flipped on the lights. The room had been trashed.
Pictures were off the walls and broken, the couch was sliced up, its bright white stuffing haphazardly erupting, and books and magazines covered the floor.
Tania gasped and grabbed Tubby’s arm. Her grip was almost painful. She pushed him forward, as her shield.
The dining room was more of the same. A glass cabinet was broken and what had been nice china was smashed and thrown around. Tubby was propelled into the kitchen, which was similarly ravaged. Tania looked carefully at the floor around the sink, but Tubby didn’t see anything strange. He looked at Tania inquiringly, but she just shook her head in disbelief and pushed on until they were in the bedroom. Here also the mattress had been ripped open with a knife, no doubt, and clothing had been shredded and strewn about. Most of what could be damaged was.
She let his arm go and sank down on the bed, weeping. He sat down beside her to offer some comfort, but she got up right away and began digging out torn ph
otographs from the pile on the floor. She was sobbing in great gulps. She wandered into the kitchen crying, picking up broken things and shaking her fists. Tubby just sat on the bed and listened to her going through the wreckage of her house. It had been a thorough job—a nasty job. The TV was on the floor broken. Destruction, not stealing, was the message.
The crying had stopped so he got up and went to the front of the house. Tania was standing by the front door, looking outside. He went up and stood silently beside her.
“The world’s burdens are heavy,” she said.
Tubby couldn’t think of anything to add to that.
“Would you like me to help you clean up?” he asked.
“Not now. I need to face this on a new day.” She started shivering. “I’m frightened to be here,” she said.
Tubby put his arm around her shoulder and they stood like that for a little while, watching the street get dark.
He felt her reluctance to bring it up.
“Do you want to come back to my place?” he asked.
“That would be awfully nice,” she said, exhausted.
After she gathered up some clothes from the heaps on the floor and found her toothbrush, they locked the house up and drove back to Tubby’s. He ordered pizza from Café Roma, and when it came they ate in front of the TV, watching “Matlock.”
“Do you want to tell me more about how all this involves you?” he asked her once during a commercial.
She looked like she was about to, but then she just shook her head. They didn’t do too much other talking. It was comfortable though, kind of like old friends.
After the news they said goodnight, and Tania went upstairs to bed. Tubby went around the house—checking his perimeter again, then went upstairs himself. This time he got undressed and crawled between the sheets. He was drifting off when he heard Tania moving around. He heard her leave the guest bedroom and walk softly down the hall. She hesitated outside Tubby’s door, then came in. She sat lightly on the bed.