by Tony Dunbar
“Don’t worry, buddy. I’m gone.”
I’m getting my life in order, Tubby thought. He grabbed a can of Diet 7-Up from the refrigerator and angrily ripped off the top.
***
His lovely, wide-eyed secretary, Cherrylynn, rapped once on the door on her way to hand him some telephone messages. She was a little sour this morning because he had mentioned that she was late. It was true that Cherrylynn was competent at her job and had carried the ball for him a time or two when Tubby had been out of sorts, but if he could get to work on time, why couldn’t she?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dubonnet, but I’m going to be leaving at the end of the month.” Cherrylynn’s brave eyes didn’t blink.
“You’re quitting?” He was astonished.
“Yes, sir, and I’m giving you thirty days notice. Of course, if you don’t want me to stay around that long, I’ll understand.”
“Well, I don’t understand. After all these years. I didn’t know there was a problem.”
“It’s not the same around here anymore,” she said. “It used to be fun. Now it just seems like a lot of pressure. I don’t feel that you have appreciated my work, and I haven’t been looking forward to coming here in the mornings.”
“I don’t know what to say.” He stood up from his desk and almost went to put an arm around her shoulder when something in her expression made him stop. “Is it the money?”
“No, sir.” She was adamant.
“Please stop calling me ‘sir.’ Have you got a better job?”
“I have my resumé out,” she said grimly. “My plan is to take some time off and go to Cancun with a friend of mine.”
“This is all so unexpected.” He spread his hands in supplication. “Where would I get somebody to replace you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, almost crying now. “It won’t be easy.”
She abruptly turned on her heel and left the room. Tubby stared at the empty space. He felt lost.
***
It was not so difficult to locate the woman who had set Al Hughes up. The judge had given him the phone number and the name he knew her by, Sultana Patel. A woman’s recorded voice, in an accent almost British, answered the phone, and Tubby left a message. She called back right away.
“You say you’re Alvin’s lawyer?”
“That’s right, and it’s important that I talk to you.”
“Can I come over to see you right now? I’m feeling a lot of pressure here.”
It must be going around, Tubby thought, and gave her the address. He told Cherrylynn to be on the lookout and asked very politely if she would mind staying in the room while he interviewed the woman.
“As of today, you’re a paralegal,” he told her. “Anything you hear is privileged.”
“Does that involve a raise?” she asked woodenly.
“Does it feel like Christmas?” She didn’t smile, but he thought she might be brightening up a bit.
Sultana Patel showed up within thirty minutes. She did not look at all the way Tubby had pictured her. With a loose brown dress hanging from her skinny shoulders and her jet-black hair pulled back in a bun, she looked like a schoolmarm or a graduate student in art history. Her handshake was polite and her demeanor, while not exactly timid, was closer to a librarian’s than a brazen hussy’s. Something about her also conveyed a great weariness.
“Thank you for coming,” Tubby found himself saying, and he offered her a chair. “This is my legal assistant, Cherrylynn, and I have asked her to join us.”
Sultana nodded and swept her dress underneath her as she slid into the red leather chair. She crossed her hands in her lap and turned her large eyes upon the attorney. It seemed as though she was having trouble breathing.
“Hmmph,” he began. “Well, we have a fine mess here.”
“That’s surely the truth,” she said.
“I understand that you have been interviewed at length by the district attorney, and that you have testified before a grand jury.”
“Yes,” she admitted sadly.
“And in that statement you accused Judge Hughes of certain sex acts.”
“I accused? They did all the accusing. I was threatened with going to jail and being deported. All I did was admit what they already knew, because I couldn’t lie.”
“Really? Well let me start over. What is the truth?”
“The truth is that Alvin and I had some very special moments together, and they would have remained private between us except that somehow these investigators or whatever they are found out about it. I was having lunch with my girlfriend at the mall where I work and this man and woman came right up to my table and said they wanted to talk to me.
“’What about?’ I asked, and they got real nasty and showed me some identification, and my girlfriend got scared and she left, and I tried to leave, too, but they walked right along with me.”
“Who were they?”
“I never got the man’s name, but the woman was Candy Canary. She’s the one who asked me all the questions later when they got me in the room.”
“This lunch you’re speaking about, this was the first time you met them?”
“Yes, and they claimed to know all about me and the judge, and that I had to talk to them at their office. I said I wanted a lawyer, and they said all right, but if I talked to them now I would be rewarded for my cooperation, but they were under time constraints. If I got a lawyer involved, that would slow everything up, and they wouldn’t be able to give me much of a reward.”
“So you talked to them.”
“I started arguing, right? I’m sure I made a real scene. I said I wanted to talk to some of my friends first—”
“Let me guess,” Tubby interrupted. “And they said a twenty-four-year-old girl shouldn’t need somebody to hold her hand.” He had the distinct feeling he had been down this road before.
“That’s right. They said that I had better go with them right there or I would be getting into real trouble. Both of them seemed so deadly serious, and of course I was embarrassed and scared, so I just cried.”
“But eventually you went with them.”
“Yes, I did eventually because I was frightened and because I thought what Alvin and I had done wasn’t really very bad, and maybe I could make them see that. Then they would leave us both alone.”
“Are you saying that you thought you might make things easier for the judge by talking?”
She nodded. “I really care for the man.”
Tubby looked her over carefully. She met his eyes, then looked down. Cherrylynn who was taking notes furiously, shot her a look.
“Where did you go for your conversation,” he asked.
“We got in this car they had parked right out by the front entrance and drove to an office somewhere, the district attorney’s office. That’s where we went.”
“Was Mr. Dementhe, the DA there?”
“He came into the room after it was all over and just looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. Then he left. Then they made me wait until my statement was all typed up, and I signed it. After that they let me go.”
“You never had a lawyer present?”
“Not unless you call them lawyers.”
“I mean, a lawyer on your side.”
“No. I should have, I suppose.”
“Okay. Back at the beginning, how did you meet the judge?”
“At a party they were having for the election,” she said faintly. “It was at Mr. Lucky LaFrene’s house.”
“How did you happen to go to that party?”
“Well…” She hesitated. “Here’s something I didn’t tell them because nobody asked me. It’s the most embarrassing part of all, and I never did tell Alvin.”
Tubby beckoned with his fingers, meaning give it to me.
“I went there because a man asked me to. You see, I was in a sort of escort service.”
“What’s that mean?”
“This is very cheap sounding, but
I had been involved with a man I met through, of all things, a newspaper ad. You know, one of those personal ads? And after we got to know each other, you know, he said he could arrange for people to hire me for escorts to dinner or for parties or for things like that.”
Why is this all sounding familiar? Tubby wondered.
“I needed the money, and he convinced me that all of the men would be gentlemen. He said he would even pay me to go to the first party. That was the one where I met the judge. He told me that was who he wanted me to meet. He also mentioned that the judge was very lonely, and I should volunteer to be around him?”
“He paid you for this?”
“He did, after the party. He gave me one hundred dollars when I told him I had met Alvin and liked him, and that Alvin seemed to like me. He said I should keep up the good work and maybe I could make some more money. I know it sounds terrible, but things haven’t been very good for me lately.”
“Were you asked to be a spy?”
“No, he never talked to me again after that, and he never gave me any more money. And I was glad, you see, because Alvin and I got our own thing going, and I wanted it just to stay that way.”
“Who was this man?”
“He told me his name was Harrell Hardy.”
“How could I find him?”
“I’m not sure. I never saw where he lives.”
“Was he by any chance tan, about six feet tall, black hair combed straight back, dimple on his chin?”
“That’s him,” she said in surprise. “Do you know him?”
“Just by reputation. Now I want to meet him in person.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could help Alvin. I don’t want to cause him any trouble. I’m just sick about the whole thing.”
“Uh, having intercourse is what caused him the trouble.”
“Intercourse? Is that what Alvin told you?”
“You mean he didn’t?”
“Actually, Alvin has this problem…”
Tubby stood up fast. “Cherrylynn, you take over from here,” he said, and he scooted out the door.
“What kind of perfume do you wear,” Cherrylynn asked. “I like it.”
CHAPTER IX
Bourbon Street rarely sleeps, but every morning it freshens up. Soon after the sun peeks over the slate roofs, bar sweeps with wide brooms and squeegees wash the booze off the floors and hose down the sidewalks until the gutters bubble with suds. Garbage men dangling from moving trucks and speaking in strange tongues swoop down and swing black bags and tin cans of refuse into their machines’ great maws where it is compressed for shipment to distant pine barrens. Drunks get rousted from the stoops and alleys where they have fallen. The last of the revelers slip unsteadily back to their hotels, some pausing to compose themselves in doorways. White trucks venting jets of water bathe the street, sending whatever remains in a gurgling tide into the drains and on to Lake Pontchartrain and the sea.
Sapphire and Raisin were taking these moments to stroll hand in hand through the French Quarter. It was her favorite time of the day, when everything got clean again and before she headed back to her apartment to sleep it off and escape the day’s heat.
Near the Old Absinthe House a man and a woman dressed for cocktails— he in a tuxedo and she in a slinky black dress— but both barefoot, crossed their path, arms entwined. They kissed deeply as they meandered and kissed again.
“Young lovers,” said Sapphire, almost to herself.
Flinching inwardly at the word young, Raisin kept his mouth shut. He was dead tired and his feet ached, having picked his girl up from the strip club in the wee hours to spend what was left of the night drinking tequila with her and her pals. Now they were on their way to the Cafe’ du Monde for café-au-lait and beignets for breakfast. He would then sleep over at her place, but so what. He was wiped. The hours were killing him.
“I thought Ambrosia’s dance was so, so, what’s a good word, junglelike,” Sapphire said. “Like a tigress. You know she really practices hard. And some nights she makes more than the rest of the girls combined. Doesn’t that go to show that it’s an art thing and not just boobs? I mean, we all have boobs, but the ones who do really well have some special talent.”
“You’ve got something special,” Raisin told her. He wasn’t really listening but had an automatic pilot that beeped when a compliment was needed.
“Do you really think so?” she asked happily and squeezed his hand. “Sometimes I don’t think so. But I guess I’ve got something on the ball. Do you really think I have something special?”
“No doubt about it,” he said, sidestepping the leftovers of an oyster po’ boy squished on the pavement.
“Then why won’t you come and hear me play anymore?”
“I will if you really want me to. But I told you. I see all the other men’s eyes on your body, and it makes me feel…”
“Jealous?”
“Well, not exactly. I suppose I want to be the only one getting turned on when you’re naked.”
“Even though it’s art?”
He looked at a cat running through a courtyard.
“That’s cute, Raisin. I think it’s cute that you would be jealous.”
She laughed. They walked quietly through the next block, nodding at the shopkeepers and cooks on their way to work, inhaling the temporarily moist clean air.
“Raisin, do you think we have a future?” she asked when they turned the corner at Pat O’Brien’s.
“Everybody has a future, honey.”
She poked him in the ribs. “You know what I mean, or are you being stupid on purpose?”
He tried again. “I think it’s too early to say exactly where we’re going.”
“I’m a girl in a hurry,” she said, and let it drop.
Where I need to go in a hurry is to sleep, Raisin thought to himself.
***
With Raisin evicted, Tubby was finding it a bit lonesome in his empty house. It was Friday. There was nothing he wanted to see on television. He had finished reading about how “Huey Long Invades New Orleans,” and he was happy to have someplace to go, even if it was a “Moonlight Serenade by Judge and Mrs. Alvin Hughes.” This special treat was being held at the Royal Montpelier Hotel for the purpose of retiring the judge’s campaign debts, and the tickets for the event were five hundred dollars a pop. Tubby had served as cochairman of the Hughes Campaign Committee, in which capacity he had managed to avoid actually having to donate any cash. Now that the judge had been elected, however, the invitation was hard to duck. He had examined his bank balance sadly and paid for two.
He thought maybe his daughter Debbie would go along.
“Have you forgotten what it’s like, Daddy?” she demanded in exasperation. “I was up all night feeding Baby Bat. Marcos is crashed out in the living room from studying. I’ve got to fix supper tonight. I don’t have anything in my closet that fits any more. Except for that, I’d love to go.”
“It would be a nice break for you. Can’t Marcos take care of the baby for a couple of hours?”
“Honestly, I’m just not up to it right now. My whole body is tired. Why don’t you ask Mom? She likes those kind of things.”
“Debbie, your mother and I are divorced. That means we don’t go out any more.”
“She’d probably say yes.”
“Forget it.”
“How about Collette or Christine? It would be educational for them.”
“That’s a good idea. By the way, is there any time in your busy schedule, like while the baby is asleep, when we could sit down and have a talk?”
“What about? Is something wrong?”
“No, no. I just feel like talking to you.”
“Well, little Bat usually goes down for a nap at around ten in the morning.”
“That would be good. Maybe I’ll come over tomorrow.”
“Okay. No guarantee that he’ll sleep though.”
“How about if I bring some breakfast? Maybe some of those scones you li
ke from the Daily Grind?”
“Oh, would you?” She was breathless with excitement. “We never go out any more, and I’m absolutely starving for something that tastes really good.”
Those are my genes, he thought proudly. They made a date.
***
Sultana concealed herself in the shadows cast by the shrubbery in front of the white-columned house. She had been fasting to cleanse her soul, and she was weak and light-headed. A slender tree by the driveway gave her some support. But seemingly wasting away, she saw that she was no bigger than a sapling herself.
Through the leaves above, she watched black clouds wash in waves across a smiling moon, and she waited for his car to arrive.
Clutched under her shawl was a curved steel-bladed knife with a brass handle. It had been her father’s, and his father had worn it in a war. She was a shame to them all, and she would use this knife to take her own life. But she did not intend to die alone.
***
Christine did not answer the phone at her apartment. She was a freshman at Tulane now and was always hard to catch. Collette, however, still lived with her mother. He punched in the familiar number prepared to hang up in a hurry if Mattie answered. She was on his case about extra money she thought he ought to contribute for harpsichord lessons or something. On the first ring, however, his daughter picked up. She talked fast so as not to tie up her line with a nonessential call, and said it would be cool to go to the Serenade since, for some reason, she didn’t have any other plans for the evening.
So Tubby arrived at the Royal Montpelier with his youngest daughter beside him in his blue LeBaron. She had on a dress that he had last seen her wear to her middle school graduation party at Antoine’s, and he noticed that she was starting to overflow it.
A turbaned valet wearing the khaki suit of a colonial magistrate offered in a Persian dialect to take the car away. The Dubonnets alighted into the muggy night.
“This sure is a fancy place,” Collette said approvingly, holding up her gown so she wouldn’t trip as they followed the red carpet up the marble steps. She returned a mujahideen’s smile.
“Wait until you see the ballroom. A lot of famous people have performed there.”