Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 02 - City of Beads

by Tony Dunbar

  “How much do you charge?”

  “You want to be serious about this?”

  She nodded.

  “How about five dollars? And for that you can tell me what is going on with you. After that I’ll decide if I need to charge you more.”

  “Very well.” She fished around in her purse and took out a $10 bill, which she put on the table.

  “I don’t have a five,” she said.

  “We can make change later. So tell me.”

  While Tubby finished his drink in silence, she told him. She covered the murder of her brother, her identification of Charlie Van Dyne’s house, her nights on patrol, and the way she had fired her brother’s pistol at the Bouligny Steak House.

  Tubby was shocked, and strangely fascinated.

  “I know the name Van Dyne” was all he could think of to say. “He sold some bad drugs to a man named Jerome Rasheed Cook.”

  Tania just stared at her hands. They were picking apart the wet napkin under her glass.

  “Do you actually feel what you did was right?” Tubby asked.

  “I feel it was right.” Tania looked up. “But I think it was wrong, if that makes sense. I’m still praying about it.”

  “These men are after you for what? To pay you back for what you did?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to say “for shooting a man dead.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “The police haven’t shown any interest in you?”

  “None at all.”

  “I think I’m going to keep the whole ten dollars. You want another drink?”

  Tania said no.

  “Me neither,” Tubby said. “Okay. Let me think about this a minute.”

  God, what an incredible situation. Tubby searched his memory for a point of reference in the rules of professional conduct. He was familiar with them, but only the big rules, like zealously representing your client and keeping her confidences, came to mind. His thought process kept getting knocked off track by aftershocks from the revelation that pretty, petite, pious Tania could actually shoot a man. Premeditated. At close range.

  “Was it, uh, hard for you to pull the trigger when he turned around and looked at you?”

  “I’d be lying if I said it was hard. It scared me because it was so easy. I’m sad that I have to carry it around with me for the rest of my life. I’ve been talking to the minister at my church about it.”

  “You’re not planning to shoot anybody else, are you?”

  “No,” she said simply.

  “That’s good,” Tubby said.

  “It felt like something or someone was guiding my hand. Now that it’s done, that power isn’t there anymore. I’m back to being me.”

  “It wouldn’t be proper for me to help you conceal your crime, but I’m curious. What did you do with the gun?”

  “I threw it in the trash, and the garbage men took it away.”

  “Oh. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to defend me if I’m caught.”

  “I’ll certainly do that.”

  “Or if I decide to turn myself in to the police.”

  “I would defend you then, too. But my job isn’t to tell you whether or not to turn yourself in.”

  “I understand that.”

  “While you think about it, I’d say you have bigger problems, like staying alive. Is there any reason to think there won’t be more attempts on your life?”

  “Well, I did hurt one of the men pretty bad, I think. I believe they will come back after me, and I won’t lie, I’m very scared.”

  “Do you have any idea who they are?”

  “I think their names are Coco and Hambone, but they work for someone else.”

  “Do you know who that someone else is?”

  “I wish I did. When the people talked about ‘the man,’ they were talking about Charlie Van Dyne. Everybody in the neighborhood thought he was like the godfather, you know. I haven’t any idea who is above him.”

  “Did you ever think, Tania, that you might have been wrong? That Mr. Van Dyne might not have been the godfather at all? I mean, I have heard from someone else that he was involved in dealing drugs, so he probably was. But to kill him? Do you ever think that maybe he didn’t deserve that?”

  “No, I didn’t really ever think that. People knew it was him. The folks in my neighborhood are wrong sometimes, but not about things like that. They are very streetwise. He was the man who killed my brother. And you may not understand what I’m saying, but I was guided to him.”

  “Fine. As long as you’re not guided to anybody else. I’ll be your lawyer, but it won’t be much of a job right now. You call me if you need me. If you find out anything about who Charlie Van Dyne reported to, let me know. And I’ll ask around, too.”

  “Okay.”

  They both stared at their glasses, watching the ice melt.

  “I was always a good girl,” Tania said. “I always tried to please my mama and papa, and do the right things. I tried hard to make a success of myself.”

  “I understand,” Tubby said.

  “I just want to get my life back on track.”

  “I can’t forgive you, Tania. That’s not in my department.”

  “I know that,” she said, and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue wrapped around her finger. “Only Jesus can.”

  Tubby paid at the bar.

  * * *

  Tubby arrived at his office early the next morning, even before Cherrylynn. An acquaintance of his, Nick Nicarro, also known as the Newsman, was on the job early, and Tubby wanted to talk to him on the phone. Nick sold newspapers, magazines, racing forms, and dirty books in the French Quarter, and he tried to read everything that passed through his store. Nick’s mind was a biological filing cabinet of the grotesque, the bizarre, and the outrageously criminal. He digested police stories by the ream and could relate the facts of beheadings, dismemberments, and mutilations from North Carolina to Oregon. He especially liked stories with a local twist, and he could tell you plenty about New Orleans sickos.

  Nick knew his underworld. He did not, however, have much of a file on Charlie Van Dyne.

  “The guy who got killed at Bouligny’s Steak House?” he asked.

  “The same,” Tubby said.

  “I seem to think like he hangs around with the wrong crowd.”

  “You mean like crooks?”

  “Oh, no. I think he’s connected with a lot of cops. He’s some kind of upright citizen.”

  “I heard he had street pushers working for him.”

  “I heard the same,” Nick said.

  “Any idea who Charlie worked for? I mean, he couldn’t have been the top of the heap.”

  “Top of the heap? There’s still plenty of dope on the streets, right. Nobody ever gets to the top of the heap. Van Dyne worked for somebody, sure. It could be any one of three or four different people.”

  “You’re not sure which?”

  “I just know almost everything, Tubby. I ain’t God.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the smartest guy in the world, Nick, when it comes to getting the real nitty-gritty on crime. We all know that.”

  Nick was flattered. “Well, maybe I can ask around and turn something up. If I do, I’ll call you.”

  “I’d appreciate it. You’re a pal.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t ever come by, Tubby. I’m forgetting what you look like. You getting any thinner?”

  “Whatcha mean? I’m in great shape.”

  “Come by the store so I can admire you then. We got some real good exercise books you might like. Richard Simmons, for example, would be perfect for you.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “I’m just thinking about your health.”

  “You and everybody else. I’m in the prime of life.”

  “Anybody breathing can say that. Hey, I got a customer. I’ll call you if I find something.”

  “See you,” Tubby said.

  After he hung up, Tubby paused to look out his window
at the city and river below him. A long yellow tanker with the name STOLT painted in huge letters along its length was being turned in the river and pushed toward a wharf by three tugboats. From up here, this rearrangement of massive tonnage against a powerful current looked as effortless as a twig drifting around in a stream. The beads hanging from his desk lamp captured the day’s early sunshine.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tubby quickly tired of the liquor license project. This was not his strong suit, but from what he could see, the casino had so many permits to sell alcoholic beverages that Leo could open up twenty sidewalk cafés and hang three more off the balcony and still be legal. Surely there was more to the assignment than this. His conscience would bother him if he billed for more than a day’s work. His original concept had been to bill for lots of days’ work. He laid the file aside with a dejected shake of his head and called up Monster Mudbug.

  “Adrian,” he said. “Is your old man still a poll watcher? Is he still active in the Old Regulated Democrats?”

  “I think so,” Adrian said. “He goes to a lot of meetings. I don’t know what they’re for.”

  “I think there’s something you need to check out with your dad.”

  “Okay,” Adrian said.

  “Go tell him the judge in your case is Calabrissi. Ask him has he made any contributions to the judge’s reelection effort. Ask him who the Old Regulateds are supporting.”

  “He’s watching TV in the living room. You want me to go ask him now?”

  “No. I don’t even want to know the answers. Just lay it out for him, and see if he can’t think of something to do about your situation.”

  “Okay, Mr. Tubby. Whatever you say. Sounds like one of them New Orleans kinda things to me.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, Adrian. I’ll see you in court.”

  There was rarely a shortage of things for Tubby to do in the office. He did, however, sometimes complete all of the interesting tasks he could think of and had to decide which boring or difficult project to resurrect from the bottom of the heap. He pulled open his desk drawer, idly hoping for a distraction. He found some old parking receipts and a letter he had never mailed to his ex-wife, but nothing to do. Reluctantly he scanned the various piles of files on the couch and floor, and his eyes stopped at the expandable brown folder that was labeled “Save Our River.” Unexciting though the matter might be, it was at least a file he had not yet read. He got up and brought it over to his desk, emptied its contents, and sorted the folders into neat stacks. Then he sat down to digest.

  Ten minutes into it he had a pretty good idea about what the students were up to. In commendably organized fashion, they had broken the Orleans Parish riverfront, together with the Industrial Canal, the Harvey Canal, and the Intracoastal Waterway as far as the Gulf Outlet, into sections, and had created an “inventory” of all the shippers, warehousers, grain elevators, and stevedores that conducted their dirty and venerable businesses there. Just producing the list must have required a great amount of labor. It was all stored on a computer and updated every six months. Apparently someone had compiled descriptions of what each company did, and scored its “hazard potential,” but Tubby’s file contained only the summaries, not the volumes of lists and raw data.

  Then there were folders marked “Hot Spots” and “Investigation Needed.” Tubby began reading these reports carefully. They weren’t boring.

  Thirty minutes later he found the following, on smudged paper, like it had been typed up in a place where there was a lot of sweat and grime.

  I took the following statement from Mr. Potter Aucoin at Export Products on the Napoleon Avenue wharf on May the 13th.

  Signed: Kelly Stuyvesant, “The Environment and You 203.” Professor: Mr. Strapp.

  My name is Potter Aucoin, and on January 5 and again on about January 17 I observed some workmen from Bayou Disposal run a four-inch hose from one of their red trucks out of their yard and down the riverbank to where there are trees growing out of the water. I was concerned that they might be crossing my property, but I saw that they were crossing the lot next to mine. It looked like the hose filled up, but I couldn’t definitely see anything going into the river because the nozzle of the hose was under the water. After approximately fifteen minutes the men checked the truck from a hatch on the top and then pulled the hose back to their yard. I have no idea what they were draining into the river. I did not talk to any of the workmen. No one else was with me when I saw this. It was probably nothing. It is not really my business.

  Potter Aucoin

  Tubby sat back in shock. It was so unlike Potter to care dippity-do about river pollution.

  He called Debbie’s apartment. No answer. He called Twink Beekman, but the phone just rang. He called Raisin, and got Melinda, the nurse.

  “No, he’s not here, Tubby. He said he was driving down to Plaquemines Parish. I thought he said he was going with one of your daughters.” Tubby detected the small blossom of suspicion in Melinda’s voice.

  “That’s right,” he said quickly. “I was just trying to get them before they left.”

  “Well, you missed them by an hour. He didn’t say when he’d be back,” she said flatly.

  “Would you ask him to call me right away when you hear from him?” She said she would.

  Tubby called Botaswati’s T-shirt shop, and his bar. Both places gave him the same story. Not here. The bartender was more direct.

  “He say not to talk to you,” and she hung up.

  There was nothing to do but fidget. He plowed into his stack of deadly files, killing the hours till he heard from someone.

  CHAPTER 28

  “I’m not sure which way we go here,” Twink said. He and Debbie were driving somewhere south of New Orleans on an old concrete highway fringed with green slime and muddy road litter. Black swamp, dense with crooked trees, elephant ears, and jagged palmettos, came up to the shoulders. An occasional high spot provided enough spongy ground for a seedy roadside tavern or a heap of rusty oilfield drilling pipe. Their bumpy path kept forking, with the right hand curving generally toward the Mississippi River and the left roughly in the direction of the man-made Gulf Outlet, a Corps of Engineers boondoggle that was fast swallowing up what was left of the marsh. Debbie had a map, but none of these details seemed to be on it.

  “I think we should go that way,” she said, pointing westward, “and stay as close to the river levee as possible. That way we know we can’t get too lost.”

  “Are we there yet?” Raisin asked from the backseat. Tubby’s associate had been napping, and snoring gently, ever since their journey had begun.

  “Not yet, Mr. Partlow,” Twink said. “But we should be getting close.” Raisin sat up and rubbed his eyes.

  “You’ll know you went too far if you get to the end of the road,” Raisin said, yawning. On this bank of the river, the end of the line was the courthouse and jail in Pointe à la Hache. The final thirty miles of Louisiana extending past these weathered and humble stone buildings into the Gulf of Mexico were accessible only by boat, a small boat at that.

  “Great navigating,” Twink commented. His bright red Chevy Blazer hopped along the uneven concrete. “Huey Long must have built this road.”

  “Or Leander Perez. My dad tells me he used to be the political kingpin down here.”

  Twink checked his watch. It was about three o’clock.

  “I’d sure hate to get caught down here after dark,” he said. Shadows from the oak trees draped in Spanish moss crowded the road.

  Debbie nodded, but actually the prospect didn’t frighten her. She had been boating and camping in remote places like this many times. It had usually been with her dad, however, and he had usually known where they were, or said he did.

  After rocking along a few more miles the road came out into the light and regained the levee, the tall, grass-covered ridge that forced the river to stay in its channel. The highway traveled along its base, and Debbie pointed out the radio towers of a ship overtaking them
, a surprising optical reminder that the surface of the river was at least five feet higher than the roof of the Blazer.

  They passed square freshwater ponds on the left side of the road, and a sign, PARISH CRAWFISH FARMS, explained what they were. They passed a miniature industrial complex with shiny chrome pipes that apparently existed to pump something gaseous in or out of vessels berthed in the river. Then they went by a cattle farm with a couple of buffalo mixed in. Finally Debbie spotted a painted metal sign to Bayou Disposal.

  An arrow pointed down a shell road away from the levee, and, after exchanging a look with Debbie, Twink turned the Blazer down it. Gravel rattled under the floorboard. Soon they were out of sight of the levee, and after skidding around a turn or two they found the entrance to Bayou Disposal, blocked by a new chain-link fence and a wooden guard shack.

  Twink eased the Blazer up to the gate in the fence. Beyond it they could see a small fleet of red tanker trucks parked in a row beside a mobile home, apparently the office, which was mounted on concrete blocks. There were a couple of men in the distance working around the trucks, but no other visible activity.

  A young man who needed a shave, wearing a brown jacket with a “Security Patrol” patch on the shoulder, leaned out the window of the guard booth.

  “Can I help you?” he called.

  Twink rolled down his window. “Is the office open?” he asked.

  “Not really,” the young man said, “Who are you looking for?”

  “The manager,” Twink said.

  “Joel Proulx?”

  Twink had no idea, but he said, “Yes.”

  “He’s not here today.”

  “Well, is there anybody else in the office?”

  “I’ll call and see. What are your names?”

  “My name’s Beekman. What’s all the security for?”

  “Oh, we’ve had a little trouble lately with vandalism.” The guard pulled his head back inside.

  In a moment he poked it out again.

  “They asked what your business was.”

  “I’m from Tulane University in New Orleans. I just wanted to see how y’all were handling your operation.”