by Tony Dunbar
“Why?”
“It’s how you ask for help.”
“OK.” Tubby acquiesced and carefully got down on the rug.
“Now, we will pray!” Holly told him.
“Why aren’t you on your knees?”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t you be, too?”
Holly thought about it for a couple of seconds before sighing and kneeling beside Tubby. “Lord, we have a problem here,” he began.
Some of the rest of the long prayer went over Tubby’s head, but the gist of it was that the fate of his soul wasn’t yet one hundred percent determined, and that he had some work to do to straighten himself out with the big gal in the sky.
“Thanks, Buddy,” he said when they finally got to “amen” and both stood up.
“Don’t you feel better?” the preacher asked.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Tubby admitted.
“Did I hear you say that Faye has a boyfriend?”
“She said so. I met him. A guy named Jack Stolli.”
Holly’s face darkened. “Every one of us needs to be forgiven for something,” he said. “Every one of us is weak.”
“Sure, I know that,” Tubby agreed as they said their good-byes. But he didn’t really believe it. What an interesting experience that had been. It took him back to his adolescence at First Baptist in Bunkie, Louisiana, where prayer was a daily event.
But did he feel forgiven?
* * *
He was still thinking about this same question the next day as he once again floated in circles on the creek. Tubby wasn’t sure whether he would fare better with a male or a female God. But there was one thing Rev. Holly had been quite definite about, Tubby recalled. He had to make amends. He must apologize to Faye for his boorish behavior and wish her well in her new relationship. And he needed to have a conversation with the New Orleans cops.
So that’s what he determined to do.
CHAPTER 4
Back in Louisiana it was nearly midnight. The stretch of St. Bernard Highway by the Chalmette Refinery was empty of traffic so Ednan Amineh made the mistake of punching the gas. Unluckily, just as he passed the parish “ruins,” the last of this locale’s historic planation homes, which had now collapsed into a small heap of stones in the overgrown median separating the lanes of the highway, the terrible flashing blues lit up his rearview mirror.
“Jeez, Louise!” Ednan exclaimed. He had always been unlucky.
The first thing the troopers noticed, while they were watching the suspect searching for wallet and driver’s license, was that there was a neat round hole with a spider web of cracks around it in the passenger side of the front windshield.
“Hey, Ned.” The cop on that side put his pinkie finger into the hole and wiggled it around. His face popped from blue to black as his car lights rotated.
“How’d you get that, sir?” Ned, the policeman at the driver’s window, asked. He peered down at his newly interesting suspect. “Looks sort of like a bullet hole.”
“I don’t know a thing about it,” Ednan said. “It didn’t use to be there.”
“Is that a fact?” Ned commented. “Well, I need you to get out of your vehicle. Very slowly.”
Ednan did as he was told and found himself forced face-down onto the hood and spread out nice and wide for a pat down.
“You got the registration for this car?” the cop asked him. Ednan’s chin and left cheek hugged the smooth warm metal.
“It’s in the glove?” he suggested hopefully.
“We’ll see about that.” The officer rested his hand firmly on the small of Ednan’s back, keeping him in place, while his partner, a young guy whom Ednan thought he recognized from high school, began rummaging through the car.
An automobile passed and honked. Probably somebody he knew. Pretty soon news of this would be all over Chalmette. The detainee could hear a ship’s horn on the river, and the noises of a garbage truck nearby crushing its load. These were comforting sounds somehow. This town of Chalmette, adjacent to New Orleans, was his home.
“Is this your knife?” asked the young cop, dangling in front of the detainee’s nose a blade with a mass of duct tape wrapped around its handle.
“No sir,” Ednan said. “Never saw it before.”
“Is this your car?” the policeman inquired, still polite.
“Not exactly,” Ednan admitted.
“Who does it belong to?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied forlornly. This was all going to be bad.
“Sir, we’re going to need you to sit in the back of our patrol car while we sort this out.” Suddenly he was cuffed and pulled upright.
“I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Ednan protested.
“Roger that,” the young cop said tonelessly. They pulled their suspect into the police car and left him to reflect upon his situation while they got busy on their radio.
And the news was not good. It seems that two deceased Vietnamese, deceased with several bullet holes and possibly knife wounds, had been recently discovered in the West End neighborhood of New Orleans, not far from the yacht harbor. A witness had reported a dark-complected man in a car. Ednan touched both of those bases.
Before he knew it, Ednan was being driven to the St. Bernard Parish line in Arabi to be turned over to the city cops.
“Wrong place and wrong time,” the young man moaned over and over to himself.
CHAPTER 5
In the morning while Ednan was getting his bail set, Tubby Dubonnet dutifully drove slowly back down the washboard gravel road through the pulpwood forests toward Faye Sylvester’s house. He was mulling over how he should apologize and having a hard time of it. She was entitled to her own life, and he was to his, but he had sort of thought that she would be happy to see him and would at least give him the courtesy of a heart-to-heart talk about where their relationship had soured and whether it could be saved, on a friendly basis only of course. But obviously it was not to be.
He wasn’t paying much attention to the road behind him, or in front, for that matter, since he hadn’t seen anything but trees and cow pastures for the past fifteen miles, but a dirt trail into the woods appeared to the side and provided the opportunity for Tubby to pull over and compose himself. And to reflect upon how he hoped this conversation was going to go.
Just as he pulled off, he was nearly blown into the yellow-clay ditch by something that must have been a big pick-up truck blazing at top speed. It went past in a roar, scattering gravel, and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Tubby parked in the thicket and rehearsed.
“Faye, don’t shoot,” his conversation might begin. “I’m just here to say I’m sorry.”
He didn’t get very far with his imaginary conversation, and after ten minutes of internal dialogue he got his car rolling again.
At the cabin, a white car was there, which Tubby now figured must belong to the boyfriend. What was his name? Jerk Off? Something like that.
The dogs were barking when he hit the porch, but nobody came to answer the bell, which was in fact a cow bell hung from a string of glass beads. He knocked on the door, and it opened a crack. Tubby took the chance and poked his head inside to call, “Anybody home?”
Somebody was. Faye was lying face down on her living room rug with her chest in a pool of blood. Her pit bull was dancing around in circles, yapping hysterically.
He ignored both the revulsion in his chest and the frightened dog and knelt beside her. She was warm. He took her shoulder and hip and turned her over. Her face was angry. Her throat had been cut and the blood was just starting to dry.
Tubby abruptly stood up and dug into his pocket for his phone. He called 911.
After the call and while he waited for somebody to show up, the lawyer walked back to the kitchen and found the boyfriend dead on the floor. “Got him with a knife, too,” Tubby said out loud and decided he would wait outside.
Leaning for support against the porch rail he utte
red an angry, intense, and tearful prayer, to whom he couldn’t say.
A mockingbird, pretending to be a blue jay, sang high in a tall pine tree. The morning breeze blew sweetly.
CHAPTER 6
Somehow, E.J. Chaisson got his French Quarter lease done without Tubby’s input, and he got the Prince and his people successfully settled into the three-story house with galleries on Dauphine Street. They plunked down the deposit and their first three months’ rent in cash. Nice crisp Ben Franklins, bills so new they stuck together. E.J. could barely restrain himself from grabbing the exalted figure and embracing him.
After a most cordial parting, Chaisson sped out to the Fairgrounds in his red Cadillac to test his luck with the horses. He got there in time to bet on the ninth race. He lost that one, but didn’t much care. He had been trying for two years to find a tenant for his beautifully-restored old mansion, and finally he had scored. Big time.
Prince Bazaar was E.J.’s new main man, and their conversation, as the money was nonchalantly transferred from one supple leather pouch to another, centered on how the Prince could throw a memorable party, one that would make an enormous impression upon the social leaders of New Orleans.
E.J. was a good person to ask about this, since he had been tracking the mysteries of New Orleans society and pursuing the same goal of acceptance for his entire life. The Prince wanted to meet “fun people, young people.” OK, that eliminated the true social core, the old established set. You could have a good enough time at the Metairie or New Orleans Country Clubs, but not exactly “fun.” Especially not if the hosts were the oddly-dressed characters who made up the Sultan’s crew. These venues had already been grabbed for Mardi Gras balls and events anyway. One just can’t throw a party and expect to enter the mystic world of Carnival. It takes years – years – generations, even, as E.J. well knew – to gain admission to better society. A Deb party? No, the Prince had no available college juniors, and it was way too late in the season anyhow.
“I’ve got it, Your Highness! We’ll throw a charity ball!”
“That sounds fine. But for what charity? What would be good, do you think?”
“Homeless kids and crime fighting are always the best,” E.J. counseled, “but if you want people to be in a happy frame of mind, I’d suggest the arts.”
“Arts would be fine.” The Prince nodded jovially, as if telling himself a private joke.
“Of course, people expect an open bar for a really nice event, and I’m still not sure if booze, you know, lines up with your beliefs.”
“Whether or not it does,” the Prince said solemnly, “we can make accommodations. But, please, no art that insults God. Or the Pope,” he added.
“Hey, that may be a challenge, but we can manage it,” E.J. assured him. “Let me get to work. I want your stay here to be just as you desire it to be in every single detail.”
“That is wonderful, and in our invitation let’s call me the ‘Sultan’.”
“Even better than ‘Prince’,” E.J. gushed.
At the track, where E.J. always did his best thinking, he came up with the name of Peggy O’Flarity. She was, he believed, Tubby Dubonnet’s most recent dating interest, and she was also plugged into all sorts of arts organizations. He would call her as soon as he placed his bets, and she’d give him the low-down.
CHAPTER 7
During the half an hour that Tubby waited at Faye’s cabin for the law to arrive, he thought about many things. His memories of Faye Sylvester, when she was alive and responded to his touch, were the most vivid of those things.
He tried to make those images go away. There was the jasmine in the Mississippi air to think about, for instance, and the quietness of the woods, where the faint hum of distant trucks was overcome by the lazy buzzing of insects and the rustling of the trees when gusts of wind made their tall tops sway.
He also thought about various crime scenes he had been to and the surprising and usually suppressed images of dead bodies he had seen. The less recent corpses were better, he thought bitterly. The ones whose blood had already clotted. The ones too far gone to help or envision as almost alive. The ones unlike Faye Sylvester and that man inside on the kitchen floor. He wished the police would hurry up.
It was so quiet you could hear a mouse pee on cotton, the old expression came to mind, but it didn’t stay that way long.
The flashing lights finally came through the trees, bouncing over the ruts in the winding driveway. Tubby was sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, but he stood up to face the officer who got out of the first vehicle on whose door “Sheriff of Pearl River County” was stenciled. He was a big man, maybe six-four, bigger than Tubby, and he had a “hat just like a Mountie.”
The presumed sheriff spat into the scrubgrass yard and marched up to the porch to see what the call was all about. Another sheriff’s car crunched down the drive, and two men in similar gray uniforms hopped out.
“Tubby Dubonnet,” Tubby said, extending his hand. The other big man took it and said he was Sheriff Brady Stockstill.
“Are you the one who called?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Tubby said. “There’s two of them dead inside.”
The sheriff cocked an eyebrow at the lawyer.
“I didn’t do it,” Tubby said. “I just found them and called you.”
The sheriff motioned his men forward and indicated that one should keep an eye on Dubonnet. He entered the front door with the other. A third police car arrived, and two more men in uniform got out and came to the porch, hands on their holstered weapons, staring hard at the stranger, the attorney.
The Sheriff came back outside. “Two dead,” he said. “One of them’s that teacher down at the church school. Call Doctor James, Darryl. We’re going to be here for a while. Why don’t you have a seat here, Mister… What did you say your name was?”
“Tubby Dubonnet. I’m a lawyer from New Orleans.”
“Is that right? Lawyers are my favorite people. Branscomb, pat him down for me, would you?”
Tubby allowed himself to be felt all over. Branscomb showed palms-up to the Sheriff. Nothing there but a wallet, which he handed to his boss.
The Sheriff looked at it and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, right under his star. He settled heavily into one of the rocking chairs and gestured for Tubby to reclaim his seat in the other.
“So,” he said, rubbing his face with his hands, “tell me why you are here in Pearl River County.”
In this comfortable manner Tubby was interrogated on the porch for quite some time. A doctor arrived, as did an ambulance, and soon the Sylvester yard was full of vehicles and official cars parked all the way to the main road. The lawyer explained things as best he could, keeping it simple as was his training and inclination.
At one point, he mentioned that a New Orleans judge would vouch for his good character, and he was allowed to make a call to verify that. He dialed up Judge Alvin Hughes, who had been a classmate in law school and a long-time friend, but unfortunately the Judge was on the bench. Tubby left a message with the clerk.
He thought another reference, from one Adrian Duplessis, now the Sheriff of Orleans Parish, might be good, and Sheriff Stockstill let him make that call, too. Here Tubby had a little more luck, and got Adrian, whom he had long represented as Monster Mudbug, theatrical float-builder and Mardi Gras extravaganza.
Tubby explained his situation to the new Sheriff Duplessis in a very condensed form.
“Sure, let me talk to him,” Adrian quickly said.
Tubby handed his phone to Sheriff Stockstill. Listening to one end of the conversation he heard:
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. He wants to talk to you.” Stockstill passed the phone back to Tubby.
“Yes, Adrian,” the lawyer said hopefully.
“I told him you’ve been a good attorney for a long time. Ain’t that the truth? Now listen, when you get back to town, I got a guy in here needs to see a lawyer real bad
. I’m taking a special interest in him because I know him from growing up. He’s not a bad guy, just stupid, you know what I mean?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, when you get out of your Mississippi deal, please come see me.”
“Right. Okay.”
They hung up.
“Okay?” Tubby asked.
“Okay. So you’re a legit citizen,” Sheriff Stockstill conceded. “What I’m going to do is have Branscomb here,” he indicated his deputy who stared at Tubby as if he were a venomous lizard, “get all of your pertinent information, but we’re going to let you go on about your business.”
“Thanks,” Tubby said.
The Sheriff nodded. “It’s also important to me,” he said, looking carefully at Tubby, “that they were killed with a sharp instrument, and you don’t have one on you. Of course, you could have thrown it into the trees.” He swept his arm towards the woods. But you don’t really seem to be the type. You’re more of a boxer, aren’t you?”
“I was a wrestler in college,” Tubby said. “But the main thing is, Faye and I were friends.”
“Sure. That’s what you said. Don’t worry. We’ll find out who did it. We always do.” He handed Tubby back his wallet, gave him a handshake designed to crush small bones, and stood up to take a long, deep breath. Without another word he went back inside the house.
The reference to “a sharp object” conjured up an image of Tubby’s recent client, Angelo Spooner, who had wrongly been thought by some to be an axe murderer.
Branscomb got all of Tubby’s particulars down to his shoe size and let him go.
The lawyer walked slowly to his car, navigating a tight passage past several parked police vehicles, reached the blacktop, and floored it.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning, after spending a fitful night in his own bed in New Orleans, Tubby showed up at his office. He was early and arrived before his secretary Cherrylynn. She had, however, left a neatly-stacked pile of messages on his desk, and among these was a note to call E.J. Chaisson with the comment, “Needs A Lease. Paying Job, He Says.” Though he found it intriguing, Tubby had bigger fish to fry.