by Tony Dunbar
“Isn’t that steep for this neighborhood?”
“Right, huh? But not really. I could use it for parking or expand the bar.” She lit another smoke and tossed off the match. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money, and I can’t borrow it from any bank I ever heard of.”
“Why not?”
“No credit, baby.”
Tubby knew lots of people who couldn’t get a loan.
“Monk says if I don’t want it he’s going to sell it to the funeral home across the street. That would sure be nice, wouldn’t it?” she asked sarcastically.
“Don’t you drink morticians like to think? I mean don’t you think morticians like to drink?” Tubby was having a little trouble with levity. He was actually having a little trouble focusing on a neon Regal Beer sign.
Janie stubbed out her cigarette. “Is my hat on straight?”
“Looks straight to me.”
“What the fuck do you know?” She barked out a laugh. Tubby sat back.
“Don’t get offended.” She gave him a little finger wave. “You know a hell of a lot about a lot of things.”
He let Janie light the cigarette he extracted with difficulty from Raisin’s pack. Where was Raisin? “You’re a big girl,” he said.
That got him a wet kiss. Janie reared back and sent a jet of Slim smoke to the ceiling. In the dimness Tubby saw Raisin and his cute dance partner working their way back through a jungle of bodies.
The party continued. It got late. Raisin and his date said farewell suddenly, or so it seemed to Tubby. He stood up. It was time to pilot himself out of there.
Tubby remembered getting home, by way of Rampart to Oretha Castle Haley to St. Charles Avenue, he was pretty certain. He didn’t know he was being followed the whole way by a man in a red Impala.
CHAPTER XV
Mr. Momback locked up the Subright store at 11 o’clock p.m. He was shorthanded since Aimee had quit a few days before, after that little incident in the store room. Temporarily at least he was stuck with the job of locking up his own restaurant at closing time.
Two steps down the dark sidewalk there was a tap on his shoulder. It was the second-to-last thing he felt.
“AXE MURDERER STRIKES AGAIN!” the morning paper proclaimed.
* * *
Angelo’s flight had taken him first to a vacant lot by the river where he curled up under a palmetto for the night. At dawn, with his jacket wrapped around his simple possessions and bundled up under his arm, he set out walking. He traversed half the city before ending up at the familiar little psychic shop on Magazine Street. The front door was locked, but he still had a key. The store inside was pitch black but it had that familiar overpowering smell of orangey incense. He flipped a light switch.
In the back room, where Sister Soulace did her therapy, he found her half- seated, half-reclined and half-naked, on her small green couch. She was awake and watching him, totally stoned he quickly determined. She was partial to Captain Morgan, and the bottle nestled under her breast was three-quarters empty.
“Hello, stranger,” she managed to say from under her turban without any expression. “You are on the path to goodness. Come over here. Are you back home to stay?”
Angelo knelt beside her. Sister pulled his head onto her lap. She stroked his hair until she fell asleep and started lightly snoring.
Angelo got up quietly and found her car keys on the hook where he had last left them. He lifted the awesome axe from the umbrella stand by the front door and stowed it in the Caddy’s trunk. The car was parked in the narrow alley at the rear of the building, which had been designed for coal carts. Its borders of soft moss-covered bricks had seen worse villains than him during the last 150 years while they had been silently watching over this back passageway through the Irish Channel.
A glimpse overhead, taking in the silent bell tower of St. Alphonso’s Cathedral silhouetted against the starlit sky, gave him a start. It was an unwelcome reminder of the circumstances surrounding his original revelation. It was a vision that he was somehow destined to lead a significant and meaningful life. Overcome with fear, he fell to his knees to pray, resting his elbow on the Cadillac’s Holy Chrome grill.
The peace came over him and with it a new message, an ordination, as it were. Twice, evil men had tried to hurt Angelo, and twice they had died. The first was the man who tried to take his well away. Dead! And the second was Aimee’s degenerate violator. Dead! In both cases, he realized, these decapitated evil-doers had also hated good Swamp Pop music. It was quite possible, Angelo concluded, that he had personally received the power to put a fatal curse on his enemies.
And there were still more of them out there.
He jammed the keys into the Cadillac ignition, and off he went.
* * *
E.J. Chaisson and a locksmith met Tubby at Angelo’s well.
The lawyer had resisted coming, telling E.J that, “I still don’t represent anyone in this deal.”
Unfortunately, while he had discovered a murder victim and been questioned by the police, he had not received one nickel for his trouble.
“Come anyway,” E.J. said. “We’ll talk.”
While the locksmith put new dead bolts on the front gate and the shed, E.J. offered to engage the lawyer professionally.
“You know, E.J., I charge,” Tubby reminded him.
“I know, cher. But that’s the way it is. I want you to try to find Angelo, both because he is my partner but also to secure my interest in the company and in the ‘Angelo’s Elixir’ name should the poor man go to prison.”
The second part of that was straightforward. The first part of that could be ethically challenging, since a policeman had already made Tubby aware of an active manhunt for this same murder suspect and asked Tubby for assistance in finding him. Nevertheless, Tubby thought he could navigate through it. It wasn’t like he had made any commitments to help with Mathewson’s pursuit, and he certainly did not have any immediate plans to obstruct it. Tubby was an officer of the court, after all. Nothing said he was an officer of the police department.
But he wished he were, less than an hour later, when he got a call from Peggy O’Flarity saying she had spent half the night at a garage with the Mandeville Police.
“Why in the hell didn’t you call me?” he shouted into the phone.
She sought to calm him down by explaining that the accident had left her “sort of like a zombie,” so she hadn’t thought to call Tubby right away. But now she was all right. Her car, on the other hand, was totaled.
“Where are you now?” he demanded to know.
“I’m home drinking a cup of tea.”
“At my house?”
“No, at my house, silly.” Her handyman had been roused out of bed to come after her.
“I’ll drive over there right away,” Tubby told her.
“That would be very nice,” she said. “And if you do come, I’d just love it if you would pick up a bottle of wine on the way.”
CHAPTER XVI
Nordie was quick to report to his employer, Frenchy Dufour, that he had lost his valued lieutenant Mick Battistella. The track record of his gang had not been enhanced by that very unfruitful encounter with the Reverend Randy Esop Horton out at Lake Pontchartrain, but Nordie didn’t bring that one up. He met Dufour at a first-floor office rental in a small building on North Hennessey Street, just off Carrollton Avenue. Dufour was visibly distressed by the news of the beheading. He began pacing the floor around his desk.
“Jesus,” he said. “I can’t believe anybody got killed. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This is a calamity!” Dufour was getting that hemmed-in feeling again, like he had when he was caught behind the wheel of his armored van and had no explanation for where it had come from or what it was for. “What kind of screw-up did you send over there?” he implored Nordie.
“I sent my best man, Mick Battistella.” Nordie protested. “He’s not a trouble-maker. This Angelo Spooner guy must be nuts. He whacked my associate and best friend wi
th an axe, for Christ’s sake. Whose fault is that? You didn’t tell me your proposed business partner was a homicidal screwball.”
“You’re supposed to use discretion! Jesus!” Dufour circled the floor. “What am I supposed to do now?” he moaned. “I’m spending money like crazy on you guys, and all I’ve got is hassle, trouble, and more hassle.”
“Maybe you should change your approach,” Nordie counseled. “What exactly is your business anyway? Maybe I got some ideas.”
Sliding back into the comfort of his sales pitch calmed Dufour down. “Market opportunity. That’s what I’m providing,” he said. “You see, I got to thinking. Why does everything start in California and come east, right? I’m talking about your frozen yogurt stores, your yoga studios, your cupcakes. Your goddamed business incubators, for Christ’s sake.” He had in mind the place where he had first met Cisco Bananza. “All those things come from out West. Don’t people realize there are plenty of original marketing ploys right here in New Orleans? Why can’t we beat the big boys at their game and take our own stuff national?”
“Like Angelo’s Elixir?”
“Sure, why not? See how well Duck Dynasty has sold? These little people just need a creative approach, proper management, and financing.”
“That’s what you want to do? Make New Orleans famous?”
“That’s really all there is to it,” Dufour said. “It would be good for everybody. I’m trying to do the right thing.” He left out the part about laundering cash. This was in fact the whole idea. The thing that would make it work. It was the hook that had brought Cisco and his, rather the movement’s, $100,000 into the picture.
“Obviously not everyone likes your offer,” Nordie observed. He brushed some dust off the sleeve of his leather coat.
“Not so far,” Dufour sadly admitted. “My whole thing was to stay under the radar. Now I have a dead guy and cops.”
“You should probably close up shop until things cool down,” Nordie advised. “Like way down.”
Dufour could not really consider that option. He owed too much money now to his young partner, Cisco, and an unsuspecting Cuban underground. Frenchy had always been the family screw-up. He had been bad at running a stolen-car rehab-shop. Bad at racing horses. Bad at selling drugs. That’s why his brother was running the family’s affairs back home in Arabi. Taking over cash businesses was Frenchy’s best idea yet, and he really had to make this one sizzle. He had already sunk much of Cisco’s “borrowed” hundred grand into his most outstanding prospect, one he hadn’t even told Nordie about. It was a take-out joint called “Ron’s Famous Crawfish,” which did almost all of its business off the register. It was perfect. This one just had to work. It would work!
“I’ll never quit,” Frenchy said valiantly, thrusting out his chin.
“You didn’t give any money to those Vietnamese crawfish peddlers, did you?” Nordie asked. He had been watching Dufour’s movements suspiciously and knew more than his employer thought.
Dufour said nothing.
“That does it,” Nordie said. “I’m out of here. Let’s settle up now.”
Dufour ignored him. “I’ve got to go see a man,” he said.
“Yeah?” Nordie said. “Well, I’ve got to get what’s left of my gang and head for cover. I didn’t sign up to go up against no ethnic mobs.”
Dufour split fast. Nordie almost beat him out the door.
From across the street, parked in a purple Cadillac, Angelo Spooner saw Dufour emerge from his office and hop into his Lexus. It fired off toward Orleans Avenue before Angelo could even think about getting the long Caddy turned around. But a second man also ran out the door and crossed the street to his Jeep, which was serendipitously parked right in back of Angelo’s car. This one he might keep up with.
In his rearview mirror, Angelo watched the man put a phone to his ear and one-handedly navigate down the street and blend into traffic. Carefully, Angelo pulled away from the curb and followed Nordie. He cranked up the radio to Swamp Pop Oldies with Rare On the Air on WWOZ. He had the axe.
* * *
While Dufour was speeding across town to Ron’s Famous Crawfish emporium, its proprietor, Ron Phuong, was being ushered into the backroom of the Empress of Saigon Restaurant in New Orleans East. It was the owner’s office, and to get there you had to pass through the dining room with its sixty tables and enormous fish tank. The office was red and richly furnished with ornately carved chairs and an antique desk inlaid with golden herons which rested on tiger claw feet. There were lacquered paintings and ceramic vases aplenty, and a glass cabinet full of rare coconut bowls. It was where people from the community came to see Mister Minh, known as Bin Minny, when they had a problem they couldn’t handle. Ron Phoung was sporting a bulky manila envelope containing $95,000 in Ben Franklins.
Bin Minny knew this payoff was coming, yet when he opened the envelope and inspected the contents he still smiled with pleasure.
“Good haul,” he beamed. “You kept some for yourself?”
“Yes,” Phoung admitted. He replied in Vietnamese and explained that the gullible American had been completely taken in. Rather than receiving an ownership interest in Ron’s Famous Crawfish on Broad Street he had instead received an artfully forged stock certificate and a handshake for his money.
Phoung had never seriously considered being Dufour’s partner. First and foremost, Dufour wasn’t Vietnamese. Second, Phoung already had partners, as Bin Minny knew well since they were cousins. Together they had set up the great rip-off of the slick man from Arabi.
“He’s a bad crook,” Bin Minny commented, stating the obvious. He carefully placed the envelope into his wall safe.
“Dufour’s plan was to pump cash into my store and use it to open a second one here, a third one there,” Phoung explained in wonderment. “It wasn’t a terrible plan. All the cash that he put in we would claim came from our customers. We’d run all the cash through the books to clean it up. Then we’d pay it out to ourselves as a dividend. That man is fixated on moving cash, so perhaps he deals drugs. He’s instructed me to give him sole signing authority on my company bank account, and he expects to place an employee of his in the store to watch his money.”
Bin Minny scratched his chin. “It had promise,” he said. “Sounds almost like buying and selling tax credits for making movies. But too bad for Dufour that it won’t happen that way. Your dealings with Mr. Frenchy Dufour end as of now. He gets nothing from us but a rude lesson in business.”
“Sure,” Ron Phoung said. “But, Mr. Minh, he’s not going to go quietly. He acts very mob connected.”
“I’ve checked on that,” Bin Minny reassured him, “and I can’t find anybody local behind him. Then there’s that armored car thing. Nobody came to rescue him from that stupidity. I think the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department kept that ridiculous vehicle for their SWAT team.”
“Yet,” Phoung insisted, “he made serious threats against me if I screwed with him.”
“Nothing’s on paper, so he is screwed.”
“He has some men.”
“Let me deal with them.”
“Of course. But I will need protection. I have Charmaine to think about.”
“You should marry that woman. It’s wrong to live in sin even if she is white.” Bin Minny poured himself a cup of tea. He tilted the pot toward his guest, but Phoung politely declined.
“She doesn’t like my mother,” Ron said sadly.
Bin Minny’s eyebrows shot up. “Why? Your mother is a lovely lady.”
“You know how it always is. My mother says Charmaine doesn’t want to take care of the rabbits. Mom is so traditional. We go over for dinner and she wants Charmaine to help her clean fish. I have to take mom aside and explain that Charmaine does not know how to do that.”
“Big deal. The girl can learn.”
“She refuses to, and it’s such a big deal to my mom. She made Charmaine go fishing with her out on the intercoastal. They caught some flounder and mo
m guts them and puts them on the hood of the truck to bake. Charmaine freaked out on the spot.”
Bin Minny laughed, but Ron Phoung didn’t. This problem bothered him lots more than what the stupid American might do.
* * *
The Frenchy Dufour project was clearly a goner, Nordie thought. His best man, poor Mick Battistella— Nordie would have to call on Mick’s girlfriend to commiserate— had been slaughtered like a sheep, cut down like bamboo, while in Nordie’s employ. Things looked grim.
Nordie already had Gums stashed away in a room on the second floor of an Airline Highway motel. This last surviving member of his gang was getting through his idle time nursing his grief over Mike Battistella’s demise with Percocets and Vicodin. The shades were drawn when Nordie joined him. Dr. Phil was on the television.
Taking stock of the situation, Nordie was about to pop a Percocet himself when the door broke open and a fat man swinging a massive axe crashed in. Gums screamed and raised a hand to protect himself and lost a finger. Nordie was quick-thinking enough to bail through the window and escape in a shower of glass. In the two seconds that Angelo was distracted by that, Gums ran bleating out through the open door, spewing blood from his wound.
CHAPTER XVII
Loyola Assistant Professor Oliver Prima had parked his aged Mazda at Dominican Street and Broadway. A paper cup full of take-out CC’s coffee was in his hand, and he was strolling to his office to relax for just a minute before his 8 o’clock lecture on “Comparative Latin American Politics.” A flock of ring-billed gulls passed overhead bound for a fish breakfast in Lake Borgne. He was uplifted by the burst of violet from the Japanese magnolias, the saffron of oak pollen everywhere, and the pink of clover sprouting from the overgrown neutral ground. They meant that the long New Orleans spring had begun, the best time of the year in this city by the muddy Mississippi River.
He only noticed the two men getting out of their car and hurrying across the street because there was no traffic, so he wondered in the back of his mind –why are they hurrying? Totally unexpectedly they emerged from his peripheral vision, surrounded him and started battering him.