by Tony Dunbar
***
Dear Tubby,
I’m coming to the big city next Monday for a conference you might be interested in. I know it isn’t considered polite for a lady to ask a man for a date, but I felt we did not really have a chance to talk when you were here. Want to resume?
Call me if you like. I hope you get this letter in time.
From a peaceful place,
Faye
“She’s coming today,” he said again.
He picked up the phone.
He caught her going out the door.
“Of course it would be great to get together,” he assured her. “What’s the occasion?”
“Buddy asked me to attend a conference today and tomorrow at Loyola on counseling drug abusers through love. Would you like to join me?”
“Gee, that sounds fascinating,” Tubby said, making a face. “Unfortunately, I’m really tied up this afternoon. Would they let you get away for dinner?”
“Sure, I guess so. I’ll have to see what the schedule is, but, sure.”
“We could do something special. I could cook.”
That would be special, she said, and he told her how to find his house.
***
Flowers reported that afternoon that there was indeed a bug in Judge Hughes’s chambers.
He was seated in Tubby’s office dressed easy in khaki slacks and a madras shirt. As always, he looked tan and fit. He was also tall, dark, and handsome, and he liked classical music. Tubby knew that because he had ridden in Flowers’ car. What the detective did at home was a mystery. Tubby had never been invited for a visit.
“It’s not what I’d call a sophisticated device,” Flowers explained. “Just a simple audio pickup right under his chair.”
“You decommissioned it?”
“The judge told me not to. He said it was in the right place for the message he wanted to deliver.”
“Nothing in the phone?”
“There’s really no way to tell. The set itself was clean.”
“What have you got for me on Marcus Dementhe?”
“It’s well known that he’s rich and lives off the fortune his father made building subdivisions in Kenner. Harvard undergraduate and a law degree from California Christian. His radio talk show, Righteous Anger, led the ratings for three years. His campaign literature said divorced, no children. He grew up in Lakeview. If you remember his ads, he promised to clean up the city. That’s a toned-down version of what he used to say on the radio. I tuned him in sometimes when I was working late, and to me he sounded like a Nazi, but that’s just a personal opinion. He pays his bills. He was arrested once when he was on spring break from college, but his record was expunged.”
“Can’t you find any dirt?”
“I’m doing my best, but he seems to be your basic nasty zealot.”
“I wonder what caused him to be so aimlessly hurtful?”
“I’m not a shrink. Possibly he wants to be paid to go away.”
“You’ve lived in Louisiana too long.”
“I’ve got to admit I don’t understand a man like Dementhe,” Flowers said. “There’s a million murderers and rapists out there for a district attorney to prosecute. Why doesn’t he worry about them?”
“You’re not going to charge me for these observations, are you?”
“I wouldn’t pay for them, if I were you.”
“I guess that’s it, then. How’s the rest of your business these days?”
“I’ve got a full plate, but I always give you first priority, you know that. Your jobs are always… ”
“Always what?”
“Strange?”
“That’s me. Anyway, I can’t think of anything else for you to do right now.”
“Call me if you do,” Flowers said.
***
Raisin and Sapphire were having a late afternoon sandwich at Johnny’s Po-Boys on St. Ann Street. Raisin was trying not to notice things like the part in her hair, the way her long fingers held her sandwich, and the line of her jaw as she chewed, because he knew from long experience what his fascination with the little things meant. He was getting hooked, and he knew his heart was about to soften up again. It had happened before, with almost all of his women. He had to fight constantly to stay free.
“I guess you’re hungry,” he said, watching her crunch down a large dill pickle.
“You’re a doll to say that,” she said, obviously in fantasyland too.
“Mustard on my chin?” she asked.
“No. Is your band playing tonight?”
“I’m off tonight, don’t you remember? It’s my last Monday off until two weeks from now when the Hot Rocks from Mobile are coming through town.”
“Maybe I’ll catch your show tomorrow.”
“Oh, would you?” she asked happily. “That would be sweet.”
“You know, they don’t pay you enough for the hours you have to put in.”
“At least they pay us something. The dancers actually have to pay the club to work there.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You didn’t know that?” She raised a surprised eyebrow. “Mr. Bakustan charges each girl thirty dollars a night to work at the club, and they don’t even get free drinks. They’re not even supposed to eat anything from the buffet, but if he likes you he doesn’t say anything.”
“Do you mean all their money comes from tips?”
“You got it. That’s why they dream up these scams like the ‘Super Orgy’ or the ‘Cat Walk’ so they can make some dough.”
“The ‘Super Orgy’ sounds interesting.”
“That’s the way it’s supposed to sound, but it’s a racket. They say to the guy, ‘Do you want to come in the back room with me for an orgy?’ and he thinks, gee, that sounds good. She says, ‘It’s fifty bucks, pay in advance.’ They get the money and take the guys in the back and do some special dances, which are, I am sure, pretty dirty, and they say that’s it. That’s the orgy. The guy is pissed, but by then they’ve already got the money.”
“Don’t they even, you know, give the customer a hand job or something?”
“Not that I know of. You’ve got to go to the massage parlors for that.”
“Or I could take a taxi ride with you.”
“In your dreams. Oh, there’s Twila.” Sapphire leaned over the table, collecting bread crumbs with her ample bosom, and tapped on the glass. She caught the attention of the freckle-faced loiterer.
Twila brightened in recognition and hurried into the restaurant, pushing through the line of people waiting for takeout.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she told Sapphire breathlessly. “I’ve got a line on that creep. I met a girl who works for him.”
Raisin was not sure which creep she meant. He hid behind his sandwich and took a large bite. It was Italian sausage, dressed with lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles.
“The guy who puts the ads in the paper?”
“Yeah. I asked around like you told me to, and one of the girls at the Tomcat Inn recognized him from the description. She’s even been to a party at his house, though it was all straight and aboveboard according to her.”
“My name is Raisin,” Raisin said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce you. Twila is a friend of mine for as long as I’ve lived in the Quarter.”
“Our cats are best friends,” Twila said.
“That’s a bond,” Raisin agreed.
“Who is the guy?”
“I don’t know his name, but this girl Bonnie does. She hangs out with a rave crowd, if you know what I mean. She’ll be at their concert tonight. She’s one of the drummer’s groupies. That’s the best place to find her.”
“Oh, boy,” Sapphire said. “I can’t wait to catch that guy Harrell.”
“What are you going to do when you find him?” Raisin asked.
“You can punch him out for me.”
“If that’s what you want, I’m your guy.” Raisin might have been serious.
&
nbsp; “Or at least tell him we know what he’s doing and we’re going to turn him over to the cops if he keeps putting those advertisements in the newspapers.”
“Punching him out might have a greater effect,” Raisin said.
“But I mainly want to see him in the light of day and just walk right up to him and tell him what a true asshole he is. Will you go with me to find Bonnie?” She was addressing Raisin.
“Why not?” He checked his watch. “I’ve got time.” It would soon be happy hour. He could handle anything after that.
***
Tubby’s plan to cook a special meal for Faye had boiled itself down to picking up a couple of porterhouse steaks at Langensteins to grill in the backyard. First, he had in mind that they would sit outside and eat some cheese and maybe drink a beer; make that lemonade.
He saw Faye’s hippie van when he pulled into his driveway. He had left a key under the mat for her, and she was already inside, poking around in the kitchen.
“You keep a strange pantry,” she told him. Tubby dropped his briefcase on a chair.
“You mean empty?”
“I mean five gallons of olive oil, a huge bag of pistachio nuts, the biggest jar of crushed garlic I’ve ever seen, five kinds of cheese, and two honeydew melons. That’s about it. What do you live on?”
“What you just said. That’s what I eat.” He was a little embarrassed.
“Do you have a name for this diet?”
“Yeah, ‘Garlic-lusters.’ Have you ever heard of that?”
“No. Does it involve a beer? Because I’d like one.”
Tubby fetched a Coke from his grocery bag and offered it apologetically. She shrugged and accepted it with a smile. He got a ginger ale for himself.
“What time do you have to get back to your meeting?”
“There’s a film on at eight o’clock that I’m supposed to see.”
“Has the conference been worthwhile so far?”
“I suppose. What they’re saying we already knew. If everybody lived in a place where they were fed and loved, most of the world’s problems would disappear.”
“Do you think it’s really that simple? Aren’t some people just bad?”
“Yes, there are bad people,” she said thoughtfully, “but I still believe love can help most of us.”
She stood at the back door and looked through the glass at the leaves in the fading sunlight.
“You have a nice yard,” she said.
“Thanks. That reminds me. If you’ve got to get back by eight, I’d better light the coals.”
She put her hand on his chest when he came to the door.
“I hate to tell you this, but I don’t eat meat.”
“Are you a vegetarian?” It was nice to stand this close.
“Sort of,” she said. “Would you like to kiss me?”
He smiled, and she smiled back.
CHAPTER XI
No one ever saw Purvis, and that was a lucky thing. He lived in the crawl space underneath a shotgun house on Burdette Street. He kept to himself and only slipped out at night to raid the Dumpster at the grocery store a few blocks away. Sometimes days passed when he did not emerge, but through a crack under the front porch, he could watch the comings and goings of people’s feet on the sidewalk. Most of the time he just hid.
Purvis sometimes caught a rat, and once he had trapped a cat and eaten it. His drinking supply was a cold-water pipe under the kitchen that dripped into a pet-food can. He could hear the woman’s footsteps on the wooden floor above his head. He could also listen in on her conversations, though they didn’t make much sense to him.
Once he had lived in the upstairs, as it seemed to him, of this house, but that was a long time ago when he was married. Back before his wife had run him off with her lawyer and a dog. He was, in fact, under the impression that the woman thumping about above him was his wife, not realizing that she had moved to Thibodeaux three years before with a man who raised gourds.
The footsteps actually belonged to an old woman who rented the house from a man in Slidell. He kept the rent low because she was on a longshoreman’s pension, but mainly because she never complained about anything like the deteriorating neighborhood or the tall weeds in the tiny yard. Or when her cat disappeared.
The little man only had the vaguest sense of the passage of seasons, but this had been an especially thankful Thanksgiving for him. He had found someone who was even less demanding than he was.
First, on a midnight foray for sustenance, from a hiding place under a bush, he saw a car speed away from the grocery-store parking lot. Then, as he hopped from the shadows into the open door of the Dumpster, there she was. Curled up and still, hair pasted over a still-wet spot on her temple.
With great effort, Purvis dragged and carried his find to his crawl space, careful to stay out of sight. He set her up on his blanket on which was written an inscription he had often puzzled over—FT. WALTO ACH. He shared what he had with her. It gave him great satisfaction to comb her hair and dress and undress her.
There came a time, however, when her very presence seemed to become too large and ripe for his space, and he became concerned about the attraction she seemed to exert upon a great many insects and a neighbor’s dog. Respectfully, he tugged her out one night and laid her gently in the tall weeds growing around a telephone pole by the street. Once back in the solitude of his den he was glad that she was gone. He heard the bedsprings creak above him and laid his head down to sleep.
CHAPTER XII
“This is not for me. I’ve got to tell you that up front.” Raisin was not pretending to enjoy himself.
“You’ve got a bad attitude,” Sapphire told him.
“I may go berserk and embarrass you in front of your friends.”
“Loosen up.” She patted his blue-jeaned butt. They were in a long line waiting to get into the rock scene at an old cotton warehouse that had been converted into a rave hall. The gang of teenagers behind them got into a contest to see who would do the most obnoxious thing with a rubber football, and one of them jostled Sapphire from behind.
“Hey, dude,” Raisin said, but she stepped on his toe and told him to shut up.
Loud music like elephants mating pounded out of the barn doors, which were guarded by a huge bearded man with a cutoff Harley-Davidson T-shirt. He was sitting on a stool and collecting ten-dollar bills.
“Don’t I know you?” Raisin asked, trying to make out the face behind the red sunglasses and tangled yellow beard.
“Da Nang, 1969,” the toad said through a hole in the hair.
“I don’t think so,” Raisin said thoughtfully, but he couldn’t finish the reminiscence before he was herded into the dark hall by the crowd behind him.
“I’m in a generation gap,” Raisin moaned.
“Hold my hand,” Sapphire cried over the music. “The girl we’re looking for has a tattoo of a tongue on her forehead.”
A band called Galactic Fellatio was banging away at one end of the warehouse. A rotating strobe light on the ceiling, that the producers might have rescued from a wedding-reception ballroom, and a thousand handheld glow sticks provided most of the light. Raisin noticed bundles of electrical cables snaking across the floor. The place looked like maybe yesterday longshoremen with forklifts had cleared out all the cotton. Tonight, juiced-up kids were dancing and falling over each other.
“Where’s the bar?” Raisin yelled.
She pointed to the far wall where there was some encouraging neon.
“I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes.” he roared. “Want anything?”
She shook her head. Sapphire was busy scanning the room, jumping from toe to toe, trying to spy her friend— the one who knew where the man from the newspaper lived.
Raisin pushed his way across the floor. The people whose feet he was stepping on were about evenly divided between short-haired types with baseball caps worn backwards and a more diverting breed with spiked hair, acrylic makeup, and ring collections on their
noses and lips. Lots of them had plastic bottles hanging from their necks on nylon cords. The girls wore slips longer than their dresses. Quite a few had baby pacifiers stuck in their mouths, wore pants like potato sacks, and were gyrating like Sufis. He saw tattoos galore. There were flowers and birds and gargoyles, penises and ice cream cones, sunsets and ankhs and thunderbolts, but he didn’t see any tongues.
He reached the tangle where drinks were being served from ice chests tended by a pair of guys with lots of muscles and gold chains.
“Beer!” he bellowed, when one finally looked his way.
“Coke or spring water,” the kid yelled back.
“Ah, shit,” Raisin cursed, and barged away.
“Want to buy some vodka?” a pretty girl with a lip bracelet whispered in his ear. Instead of a blouse she wore lace from Yvonne LaFleur’s. He nodded and she pulled a clear plastic flask out of her floor-length sarong and showed him five fingers twice.
Why not? He dug a bill out of his wallet, and she traded for the bottle. He took the precaution of unscrewing the cap and sniffing before he let the money go. Sure enough, it had that memorable distilled smell. Lots of other people’s money was changing hands around him, he saw. Life savers, breath mints, and match boxes all were being passed around for unusually large sums. Being a streetwise kind of a guy, he suspected these kids were trafficking in the d-word. The fact that there were also funny cigarettes burning everywhere tipped him off too.
A pimply-faced girl naked from the waist up gave him a quick hug and moved on, followed by her fans. He could not see Sapphire anywhere.
Hi-ho, he told himself and tilted his bottle back. Should have got a Coke for a chaser, he thought.
Hi-ho, he said again, as the room morphed into a purple onion. “Should have closed a cockatiel for dinner,” he said out loud.
A stampede of bison pounded past, and he wondered why his eyeballs wouldn’t stay in his head where they were supposed to be. They were bouncing around all the bare-assed Egyptians eating golden apples in the icebox.
Sapphire pressed her nose to his leer, and before their mind-meld became complete she was replaced by a woman with two mouths and a nipple on her lip. She expressed some concern about his condition. He sensed that he might be a lost little boy and was relieved when a hand took his and induced him to walk.