by Tony Dunbar
Though his Monday schedule had been cleared by Angelo’s disappearance, Tubby nonetheless drove his black 1978 Camaro down Poydras Street and into the parking garage of the Place Palais building. Cherrylynn greeted him at the office door, always happy to see him report for duty.
“I thought you had class this morning,” he inquired. Cherrylynn was taking courses at Loyola, determined to get her college degree. It had been a long, slow process, since being a dropout from Tacoma’s Foss High, she had first to earn a GED, which she had done. She was proud, and he was proud, that with industry and application she was now the equivalent of a university junior.
“I’m skipping class,” she said brightly. “It’s philosophy, and I’m acing it. My friend, Betty, will take notes. The lectures are all online anyway.”
After he got to his desk and read the mail, which consisted of a solicitation for a Continuing Legal Education seminar on web pornography, an urgent topic, he checked his email. There was a notice of an electronic filing in a bankruptcy case where he represented the debtor in the Eastern District. A creditor wanted to examine Tubby’s client, Black Energy, LLC, which had failed to pay its bills after blowing through more than three hundred thousand dollars in its attempts to sell movie scripts to the Chinese. Tubby had collected his fees pre-filing, and no one had challenged him yet. That was about it for the daily news.
He dialed E.J. Chaisson.
“Did you see where a beheaded man showed up at your partner’s water well?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Might that affect the claim of pure organic spring water?”
“I’d rather not think about that.”
“Any idea where Angelo might have disappeared to?”
“None, but I certainly hope to hear from him soon. I have a lot of money involved in this.”
“That’s what you said. If he calls you first, please let me know?”
“I will, and you do the same.”
“If I can.”
There was another phone call. This one incoming.
It was Detective Adam Mathewson, and he wanted to talk to Tubby, in person if possible.
“Doesn’t necessarily have to be at the precinct,” he added.
That being the case, Tubby thought it impolite to suggest his own office. There was a coffee shop in the lobby of the Place Palais building, and that’s where they agreed to meet in half an hour.
Mathewson was a big Scot with a ruddy face and an ill-fitting chocolate-hued suit. Once they had carried their steamy cups from the counter and gotten seated, he got quickly to the point.
“You slipped away from our murder scene before I could talk to you,” he said in a loud deep voice. “How’d you happen to be at Angelo’s water works when we got there?”
“Angelo called and said he needed a lawyer. We were supposed to meet at my office this morning, but he was in a hurry. So I went there yesterday.”
“Why?”
“He said somebody was bothering him.”
“Like who?”
“He didn’t tell me. I never met Angelo, and I still haven’t.”
“And when you got there?”
“I went in, found a dead body, and called you.”
“That was your daughter?”
“Yes. Leave her out of this.”
“She’ll corroborate what you say?”
“Of course. She knows less about it than I do. We were just coming from lunch.”
“Do you have any idea where Mr. Spooner might be now?”
Tubby shook his head and studied the cop’s blank eyes.
Mathewson stirred his coffee. Here came the interesting part.
“If he was the killer, he used something like an axe, or a very big knife. Maybe a machete. There was only one blow.”
Tubby nodded. That sure must have been a big machete. Right.
“You know,” the policeman said, “Angelo has a criminal record.”
“I did not know that,” Tubby said staring with innocent eyes over his cup of dark roast.
“Yeah. Car theft and armed robbery. He’s on probation.”
“Did he ever kill anybody?”
“No.”
Tubby shrugged. “Maybe somebody else did it.”
“Any candidates? I’m open.”
“Like I said, I didn’t know the guy. He just called me on Friday.”
“Why you?”
Tubby didn’t plan to direct attention to E.J. Chaisson, whom he regarded as an unlikely candidate to be an axe murderer or an accomplice to anything more secretive than the identity of Comus. He shrugged again. “People get your name in all sorts of places. Maybe in jail.” It could be true.
“You know,” the detective added, “that property is unsecured. We took down the crime scene tape and left it the way we found it.”
That wasn’t good. “I’ll check around and see if anybody might want to lock it up,” Tubby said.
“Sure. And let me know, would you, if you get a lead on your client.”
“Not my client yet,” Tubby repeated.
“There was a card on his desk: ‘New Orleans Smooth Deals, Ltd., Frenchy Dufour, President.’ Mean anything to you?”
“Nope.”
“It does to me. He’s a character. He drove an assassination van. Frenchy thinks he’s a ‘Godfather’.”
Tubby shook his head. “Maybe I should, but I still don’t know him,” he said.
“You ever listen to country music?” Mathewson asked.
“Of course. I grew up in Bunkie.”
“I heard you were a right guy,” Mathewson boomed. He stood up to go. “Maybe we should get together for a beer sometime.”
The lawyer was caught off guard and laughed. “Who’d you hear that from?”
“Some cop you went to law school with.” That would be Fox Lane, who was nearly killed on the job and was now retired from the force.
“Sure,” Tubby said. “We could do that sometime.” Mathewson seemed like an okay guy, too, for a policeman. But he was surprised by the offer of friendship. He hadn’t had one for a while. “I’ll look forward to it,” he said. It never hurt to drink a beer or to know a cop.
* * *
The next day was Tuesday and by the afternoon Tubby found himself home alone. There was still enough daylight at 5 o’clock to undertake an overdue project, so he donned old sneakers, fixed a Bourbon and ice, no mixer, in a plastic Mardi Gras cup, and went outside to clean up his boat. It was a simple and useful vessel, a seventeen-foot Boston Whaler Montauk, and it lived on a trailer in his driveway. This was frowned upon by some of his meddlesome neighbors, but most people didn’t care. It wasn’t against the law anyway.
First there were the ice chests, which were a little funky. He attacked them with a hose and scrub brush until they sparkled. Then his phone beeped. He dried his hands on his jeans.
It was Raisin Partlow, a close friend, and he wanted to go out that night for a couple of drinks and some music. His proposition was the Monkey Business Bar in the Bywater.
“I’m cleaning my boat.”
“That won’t take all night,” Raisin said. “You want to pick me up later?”
“What happened to your wheels?”
“Nothing. I’m just low on gas. Are you taking your boat out tomorrow?”
“I’m thinking about it, if it’s not too windy.”
“I’m free. Maybe we can take the girls.”
“Mine’s back in Folsom for the weekend.”
“Too bad. But we could blow up to Mandeville, and she could meet us there.”
“That would be a very long haul.” As in twenty miles of open water.
“An adventure, my man. So, you want to go out tonight or not?”
“Maybe. Let’s go grab some dinner first.”
* * *
“What do you think of this place?” Tubby asked Raisin. They were dining on Tubby’s dime at Purloo, a new restaurant neither one had been to before.
“Shiny,
bright, modern,” Raisin commented. Indeed it was sort of a film studio space separated by a curtain from the Southern Food Museum. It was clean.
“That means you don’t like it?”
“The jury is still out,” Raisin said. “Interesting menu.”
“What about this Southern Board? Smoked lamb, pimento cheese, devilled eggs, fried pickles, and boiled peanuts.”
“A possibility. Do you see the catch-of-the-day? Smothered oxtails. What are they smothered in, I wonder?”
“They come with black-eyed peas, okra and cornbread. Reminds me of Bolivia.” He was referring to his and Raisin’s brief exodus together a decade before when Tubby had needed to cool off while a Federal investigation passed over his head, and Raisin had gone along with him for the ride.
“That was a trip. Let’s not repeat it.”
“You wanted to stay,” Tubby said. “I had to leave you behind.”
“Which is to say, I missed all the good times of Hurricane Katrina.”
“Yes, you absolutely did.”
“But I had my own adventures.”
“Well, to hear you tell it you narrowly missed spending the rest of your life in a drug lord’s stockade.”
“I was totally innocent.”
“And you still are, right?”
“Totally, counselor.”
“It is so much better to be here in the USA, and to be here in the best city we got.”
“I’ll drink to that. Where do you think our waitress is?”
* * *
Peggy O’Flarity was in the trance she always sank into when crossing the straight, twenty-four mile long, bridge that connects New Orleans to the north shore of the Lake. She was en route to her horse farm near Folsom, and she had a Nevada Barr novel playing on tape. The moon was high.
She failed to notice the towering Silverado pick-up truck painted in camouflage greens and blacks hurtling upon her in the mirror. The large vehicle came alongside and cut her off, causing Peggy instinctively to jerk the wheel right. Instantly she collided with the concrete retaining wall, and her Porsche, showering the roadway with sparks, tried to climb over the barrier and sail into the water below. One tire made it, but the rest of the car couldn’t quite. It came to rest angled toward the sky.
The engine conked out. Peggy watched the taillights of the pick-up truck recede into the distance. A car pulled up behind her and a man ran out and tried to pull Peggy’s door open.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he screamed.
Peggy managed to make her fingers release the steering wheel and push the button to unlock the door.
CHAPTER XIV
Janie’s Monkey Business Bar was almost old enough to qualify as historic, but Janie had only been running the place since right after Katrina when she inherited it from her deceased husband. It was a corner building on St. Claude Avenue, and termites had left it a little bit slanted. The influx of young people into the neighborhood had, however, transformed the tavern from a quiet backwater dive to a gold mine.
A country band was warming up when Raisin and Tubby came through the door at about 8 o’clock, and Janie herself was tending bar. The newcomers crowded into a space around a single stool where they unavoidably brushed butts with a young athlete wearing a cut-off UNO sweatshirt and metallic blue Costa shades. He turned his strong chin to frown over his shoulder and assert himself, but a quick take on Raisin’s weathered brown face and Tubby’s substantial brawn sent him back to his own business.
They got the barmaid’s attention.
“Why, if it ain’t the two handsome preverts,” Janie yelled at the top of her lungs. “Who let you boys out tonight?”
“We just wanted to see you,” Tubby said.
“Well, here I am!” Indeed she was, in a straw wide-brimmed Jazz Fest hat and an extra-large blue Hawaiian shirt, which barely covered her ample bosom. Her spreading hips were constrained in black spandex tights, and she gripped a filtered Virginia Slim among the many rings on her fingers.
“I hope you guys are here to drink?” she said and blew smoke in their faces.
Raisin asked for an Abita beer.
“Old Fashioned with something other than Maker’s Mark,” Tubby requested.
Three bearded guys and a long-haired blond singer were on stage. She was testing her mike while her band hooked up lights and various switches and perked up the energy in the crowd. The club was only about half-full, but it would get wild later.
Tubby and Raisin got their drinks, and Janie hurried off to other customers.
“I wonder where her help is,” Tubby shouted in Raisin’s ear.
He shrugged. “See that singer?” He pointed to the blond on stage.
Tubby nodded. The performer was showing a lot of cleavage under a tight black jacket, mostly unzipped, and highlighted with sparkling silver studs.
“She’s a guy,” Raisin said.
Tubby slugged back some cherry-sweetened bourbon.
Her voice was golden. A sweet rendition of “Red, Red Wine” suddenly swelled from her pink upturned lips, and the guitarist, the bass, and the synthesizer kicked in behind her.
Janie swung past, and they ordered another round. More young people kept crowding through the door while most of the older patrons began saying goodnight and moseying along.
“How do you know she’s a guy?” Tubby yelled.
“I used to play tennis with him. He was good.”
“He’s still good, but in a different way,” Tubby told him.
Janie returned with another beer and another red cocktail for Tubby and set them out on fresh napkins. She rested her elbows on the bar. “What’s new fellas?” she asked and lit another cigarette.
“Why are you still working,” Tubby wanted to know. “Where’s your guy, what’s his name, Jack?”
“He got his nose broke and wanted to stay home, the wimp.” She exhaled a puff. “There’s some shit going around.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to talk to you about it.”
“Okay.”
“But I’m a little busy right now. Stick around.”
Tubby nodded. He was starting to feel pretty good, like he could probably stick around all night. He was ready to start talking about Peggy O’Flarity if anyone would listen to him.
The singer was belting out “Stand By Your Man.”
“I wonder how Janie gets away with smoking cigarettes in here,” Tubby mused.
“Probably because she owns the place,” Raisin said distractedly, patting his shirt pocket for the pack he kept there before he quit.
He tapped the girl beside him on her shoulder and began a conversation.
After a moment he twisted around and whispered, “She’s Russian. Back in a second.”
He went off with the girl to the dance floor.
Janie passed by again.
“What kind of shit is going around?” Tubby asked.
“Oh, just some guys are coming around to the bars trying to buy them out.”
“Did they come here?”
“No, but at other bars some people got roughed up. Makes me wonder who mugged Jack.”
“What does Jack say?”
“He says he didn’t know them. Of course, he may not be telling me the whole story.”
“If there’s anything I can do to help, give me a call.”
“Thanks, but it probably ain’t anything to worry about. Enough about me.” She checked her appearance in the mirror. “How have you been, love?”
“Well, I’ve got a girlfriend.”
“Now, that’s some front page news.”
“It’s going pretty good, I think, but there’s this one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“You see,” Tubby began, but right then the band kicked into “Chantilly Lace” and turned the volume way up. Tubby’s words were lost. Even Janie didn’t hear them. And then she had to serve another customer.
Tubby was left by himself. A little time passed while he sipped
his drink, and another.
Raisin was dancing with the Russian tourist. He had his partner in a clinch, but she didn’t seem to mind. Tubby was getting close to lighting one of Raisin’s forbidden Luckies from the pack he had mysteriously produced and left on the bar. Neither man officially smoked.
A pretty girl with bright cobalt blue hair had shown up to help Janie pass out drinks.
“That’s my daughter, Sophia,” Janie explained. She had come back again and was taking a load off by settling the top half of her body on the mahogany.
“I met her once before,” Tubby observed. “She’s sure growing up.”
“She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.” Janie coughed. “She only likes the bad boys.”
Tubby could certainly comprehend that. He had three daughters of his own.
“Thing is, she’s also leaving town, and my whole operation is getting screwed up, especially with Jack out.”
“Where’s your daughter going?”
“Virginia. Her boyfriend was a security guard over at Walmart, but he’s got a better job with some paramilitary corporation up by Norfolk.”
“What the heck is a paramilitary corporation?” Tubby wanted to know.
“Beats me, but it has to do with the government. He gets to carry a bigger gun is all I can figure. All you men like that, right? He’s up there now being trained. Sophia’s leaving next week to be with ‘her man’.” Janie scoffed.
“Tough break,” Tubby said.
“Yeah, on top of that I need some money. Have you got any?”
Tubby tried to swallow without coughing.
Janie snorted. “Don’t worry, honey. It ain’t life or death. My neighbor, Ashton Monk, who owns the house next door and the vacant lot between us. He wants to sell the lot for a hundred thousand dollars.”