by Tony Dunbar
“Don’t forget you’ve got a phone,” Flowers called through cupped hands. “Call me if you need anything. I don’t know if I can take this up anymore in the wind, but we’ve got some big trucks that will just about go anywhere.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Tubby mouthed. The helicopter lifted away. Why should anyone worry? I can take care of myself. I’ve got three intelligent daughters, and all of them have moved away to safety. Raisin Partlow, Tubby’s running buddy, was still in Bolivia, as safe and sound as one could be in a country paralyzed by strikes. There’s nobody else I’m responsible for, he thought. Let’s enjoy a stroll, get back to the house, curl up with a fifth, and see if the Astros or Braves are on TV.
He hefted up his green bag, took a gulp of steamy air, paused for a brief cool breeze coming from somewhere, and set off for St. Charles Avenue.
It was kind of nice. Very few cars around, so he could jaywalk across Lee Circle. There were, however, a few family groups on the march, bearing plastic supermarket bags full of their stuff, pulling children along, all headed in the opposite direction toward downtown. Tubby stopped to help a lady lift her baby carriage over the curb.
“Where are y’all going?” he asked.
“The Superdome. We all be all right when we get there. Mr. Benson’s got the hot dogs cooking.”
“Sounds nutritious,” Tubby said. He could use a hot dog himself right about now.
He saw a red streetcar clattering Uptown on St. Charles with a “Not in Service” sign on the front. He knew it was going to the Carrollton barn. The old green Perley-Thomas streetcars must already have been put away. It was always prudent to protect the antiques. A hot wind picked up as he proceeded. The Please-U cafe had a “Gone” sign. So did the St. Charles Tavern. That was a bad omen because the $8.95 steaks-and-full-bar tavern never closed. Tubby had hoped to buy a belt there. Maybe walking was a bad idea. His stomach growled.
But Igors, “Free Red Beans on Mondays,” was open. Only it was Sunday.
He saddled up to the bar and dropped his green bag on the floor. The clunk reminded him he was carrying precious ounces of whiskey and a .45. Igors was a dark and smoky place, but a little less in each category because the double-wide French doors were open to the street.
A seedy-looking guy—Tubby thought he might be a former federal prosecutor—was nursing a Budweiser.
“How’s it going?” Tubby inquired politely, looking for the barmaid.
“Magnificent,” the man burped. “Absolutely magnificent.”
Further inside he could see some fellows playing pool. There was also a washing machine flopping clothes around behind a sudsy window. Beyond that the bar became too obscure to see what was going on.
4
Bonner Rivette rode into New Orleans on a Greyhound from Port Allen with a short stop in Baton Rouge. When he boarded the bus, the driver mentioned that this would be the last trip of the day. Everything else into New Orleans was cancelled for the duration of Hurricane Katrina. That was fine with Bonner. Just so long as he got there.
He thought the driver looked at him funny, but what the hell. Everybody else on the bus was stranger than he was. The students talking in a foreign language wore black pantaloons and had tattoos on their wrists. The lady with the baby behind him had eyes popping out of her sockets like a smoked mullet. The fat boy across the aisle took surreptitious drinks from a green medicine bottle and wagged his tongue at Bonner after each swallow. Pretty much the same sort of folks he had endured for two months and three days in the Pointe Croupee Parish pigsty jail.
“There’s a hurricane coming to New Orleans, folks,” the driver lectured them from the front of the bus. “For those of you going through to Hattiesburg, Meridian, Birmingham, and points north to Atlanta, our layover will not be the forty minutes as scheduled. Instead of that, we are dropping off our New Orleans passengers and then getting right back on the road. You will have just enough time to use the rest rooms, if you like, and stretch your legs. We’re only gonna be there about ten minutes, max, so stick close to the bus. This will probably be the last bus into or out of New Orleans.”
Bonner got comfortable in his seat. He liked the excitement in the air. The spirits were alive. Here we go, he thought and winked at the passenger across the aisle with the wiggling tongue.
He just stared out the window, watching the trees go by, all the way to New Orleans. The bus got off the Interstate at Gonzales and grabbed Highway 61 south. The driver told them that he was taking the old road because the eastbound lanes of the Interstate were closed by the State Patrol all the way into the city. Everything going toward New Orleans had to take Airline Highway.
The bus made good time, considering the circumstances. It raced past crab shacks, trailer lots, signs for swamp tours and decrepit strip shopping centers, while the oncoming lanes, those heading out of New Orleans, were stalled with too many cars. The bus driver had a radio which he used constantly, speaking into a mike, getting traffic updates. Bonner heard him say that everybody who got on the bus was accounted for.
Once in the city proper, the streets were all virtually empty, and the bus rolled down Tulane Avenue and straight into the terminal. Bonner was in the middle of the crowd getting off. He didn’t have any luggage so he shuffled along with the other pilgrims arriving at the cavernous station built for trains. He stopped for a second, pretending to gaze at the wall murals, while he got his bearings and checked for exits. He ran his eyes over the people waiting on the benches and then focused on two men coming toward him. One got right in his face and held up a badge.
“New Orleans Police! You’re under arrest, dude,” the man said.
His partner crouched, holding a pistol in two hands which he pointed at Bonner’s face. “Hit the floor, sucker!” he commanded.
Bonner licked his lips and spun around. He bolted toward an exit sign, in a direction that put the man with the badge between Bonner and the gun. He might have made it but for an old codger in a wheelchair who was traveling fast across the floor chasing after a wayward toddler. A second’s detour was all it took for Detective Johnny Vodka to make the tackle and officer Daneel to slam his gun into Bonner’s forehead.
“You’re busted, asshole,” Vodka breathed into his ear, twisting Rivette’s arms around and clamping on the cuffs. “Score another one for the good guys.”
While a dribble of blood caked in the cracks above his right eye, Rivette cursed the cops. They on the other hand joked during the whole ride in the squad car to the Parish Prison that it was just like a dumb bum escapee to grab a Greyhound bus, when his description was all over the state. Just like a stupid recidivist to come to New Orleans where he had lived and been arrested twice before.
“Isn’t that right, excrement for brains?” Vodka laughed. “Weren’t you busted here for assault? See you in court in six months. Or maybe I don’t have to go to court for you. Maybe they’ll send you straight back to Angola.” The cops were happy because they had made a collar of an escaped felon, and no one had gotten hurt in the process.
They took Bonner to Central Lockup and turned him over to the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff’s Department.
Tubby didn’t stay long at Igors. His longest conversation was with the former prosecutor who insisted he had been good at his job because he looked the other way at minor offenses where the accused could make a contribution to the community or was represented by one of the DA’s trusted friends. “Today, nobody’s got any ‘discretion,’” he said, taking care to get the word past his thick tongue. “Just like robots. No ‘discretion’ at all.”
Tubby discreetly departed. He greeted the dusk with bravado. He was only about twenty-five blocks from home.
It was late afternoon now, about five o’clock if his watch could be believed. He had reset it so many times crossing time zones it wasn’t always right. The wind was blowing steadily now. A big storm was definitely on the way. Anybody could feel that now. Hurricane weather felt good.
He fol
lowed the streetcar tracks running down the grassy middle of St. Charles Avenue. The branches of the crape myrtles on the neutral ground and the live oaks on the sidewalk side swung wildly away from each sudden gust. When the tempo slackened again they waved gently to and fro, waltzing to a tune only they could hear.
Other than the trees there wasn’t much action on the street. It was really far too quiet. Tubby noticed that he could hear his own breathing, audible from the exertion of trucking along block after block. There weren’t any cars. He began to hum, and then to sing softly. He saw some young kids, hooded sweatshirts over their heads, running down the block. He felt relieved when they darted down a side street. He passed the K&B—sorry, Rite Aid—at Louisiana Avenue. It was locked down tight. A couple of men were drinking beer in liter bottles hidden by brown paper bags in the parking lot. Tubby gave them a loud “Good evening.” They nodded back.
It was hard to get reacquainted with one’s town when there was no one was around. In fact, New Orleans seemed forlorn and lonesome. Tubby considered slipping a nip from his bag, but a police car, lights atwirl and flashing, came slowly down the Avenue from the direction of the park.
“Mandatory Evacuation!” bleated from the car. Tubby saw a female officer behind the wheel. He smiled and waved as if he understood the rule and knew exactly what he was doing, which he didn’t. “Mandatory Evacuation!” the car repeated. Tubby and the messenger continued in opposite directions.
He had hoped to find Fat Harry’s open, a good place to buy a beer and a burger and maybe pick up another bottle for the house. But the bar was all shuttered up. He could hear music inside, so he beat on the doors. A bearded gentlemen holding a mop cracked open the massive castle-like gates.
“Are you closed?” Tubby knew it was a dumb question.
The man nodded his head and chewed his mustache.
“How about a hamburger? I’ll pay ten bucks.”
The man shook his head.
“How about a bottle of Jack? I’ll pay twenty bucks.”
The man’s eyes crossed. He closed the door. Tubby waited hopefully for a few minutes, then gave it up.
A trash can went rolling down the street. A light rain began to fall, blowing around in swirls. The pedestrian realized it was time to get himself under cover.
Down at Central Lockup, Bonner Rivette was scoping around for an escape plan. That would be the only way he’d ever get out of this joint. They had him again, but they didn’t appreciate what they had.
He asked one of the few guards when he would be arraigned, “You know, booked?” He thought maybe the man with his slick bald head and polyester black uniform might not speak English. Finally the guard looked him over and said, “Screw your arraignment. There ain’t no judges.” That was that.
Bonner was in a cell with eight other men, two whites and six blacks. There were no chairs or benches in the cell, so they sat on the floor or leaned against the wall. Bonner squatted next to one of the white guys, who had long shaggy hair and a face toasted by booze or weather to a radiant shade of purple.
“What’s the deal with food around here?” he asked. “They gonna feed us?”
“Doesn’t look that way,” the man grunted. “Say the kitchen’s closed. They ain’t even got a damn telephone that works.” He gestured to the pay phone bolted to the wall. The steel cable dangled uselessly from the box; there was no handset at the end. “Say there’s nobody around to fix it. Everybody left town. Can’t even call a damn lawyer.”
The man displayed a worn business card in his grimy fingers, Bonner saw the name “Dubonnet & Associates.”
“Is that a good lawyer?” Bonner asked.
“Oh, hell if I know. It’s just something they pass around in here.” He flicked the card onto the concrete floor and closed his eyes. Bonner stretched over to get it. “Tubby Dubonnet,” he read. He noted the address and stuck the card into his shirt pocket.
He heard two guards talking outside the cell and went to the bars to get their attention. “Yo, officer,” he called.
They ignored him.
“Yo, officer,” he repeated, and one came over to the bars.
“Are we gonna, like, get a hearing, or have bail set, or get a lawyer or anything?”
“Beats me, fella,” the guard said. “I’m leaving here in five minutes to go home and protect my family from assholes like you.”
5
Tubby got very little sleep that Sunday night. For a while his television worked just fine, and he could see the ominous approach of Katrina, hour after hour after hour. Just sitting in his kitchen he could see how he was a target. This thing was coming after him personally. And the same message was blaring out of his living room and bedroom. Wherever he went in the house there was a TV. Different channels, but same picture. And he was in the middle of it. It made the adrenaline flow.
Tubby could hear the wind picking up outside, feel the branches of the trees scraping his roof, hear the slamming of loose shutters and shed doors, and the rusty whine of attic ventilators gone crazy. His nerves were winding up. Rain began to come down in loud waves that beat against the sliding glass doors facing the backyard of his house. He tried to make a supper of a can of turtle soup found in the cupboard, but it didn’t satisfy. He finished off his bourbon. The Fritos were history. He looked hungrily at his last can of medium black olives. And the storm was still hours away from land.
He ventured outside from time to time, to gauge the torrent, test his stamina against nature, see what odds and ends were blowing up the street, but each time he retreated quickly back to shelter. Wandering through the house he allowed himself some rare introspective moments, not something he typically indulged. A quick inventory of his life produced some good points, like getting married, raising kids, winning the Hambuckle case, settling Darryl Alvarez, meeting Faye Sylvester, not all so bad. His mind blew past the bad parts, like the end of his partnership with Reggie Turntide, like… He had to stare for a long moment at his hands to see if there was any blood there. He opened a last bottle of red wine. There wasn’t any more booze in the house. He made himself a pot of coffee. At least the gas stove was still working. He tried to call his daughters, but all the phones in the world seemed to be ringing busy.
About midnight the hurricane finally rocked in. Tubby no longer had to watch weather jockeys get blown down the street on his several television sets, now he could hear the wind howl like a jet plane taxiing past his front door and feel his whole house shake. It was deafening and frightening. Burglar alarms went off in houses down the street. Trees snapped and crashed into his home. The floor vibrated. Windows rattled and waves of horizontal rain banged against the few inches of wall that separates any of us from the next life. His neighbor’s big hackberry, must have been forty feet tall, came down and loudly crunched the wooden fence between the houses. The ground, the heart-of-pine floor beneath Tubby’s feet, bounced when the tree hit. There was the sound of breaking glass, and Tubby hurried upstairs to find that a window had blown out and a jet of water as from a fire hose was shooting over his washer and dryer. Rain pellets, or were they shards of glass, burned his face, and he had to withdraw. He heard a transformer pop outside. All the lights went out.
He managed to get downstairs, feeling his way to the living room sofa. He sat down there and leaned his head back against a pillow, waiting to see what would happen next.
Even the walls of Templeman II Prison seemed to shake. Bonner could feel it through the concrete pressing into his back. He listened to the guards talk excitedly outside the cell. Prisoners in other cell blocks were screaming, demanding information. His own group was straining to stay cool, but time was getting short. One guy rocked back and forth on his haunches and appeared ready to spring, teeth bared. Some kept their heads down, covered by elbows and knees. One man paced the room, and another did standing push-ups against the wall.
A dude with a scar on his cheek got in Rivette’s face and called him one ugly honky. Bonner grabbed the big ma
n’s ears and screamed in his face, “I ain’t a honky! I am Katrina,” and he kissed the startled inmate on the lips. The man fell away in terror.
This was a new idea that had just come to Bonner Rivette. He had long identified with the woodland spirits, those who had snuck over from Europe with the white race and found new homes, even in the ravine-etched forests of Louisiana, but he had never felt communion with a salt-water wind from the Gulf of Mexico before. It was an attractive ally, if he could just get close enough to it.
As the other prisoners reasoned-out what they had just seen him do, and shuffled away to their separate corners, Bonner settled back to think.
He was starting to get that good feeling again, when his engines ignited and he could smell the arrival of chaos. Bonner had frequently benefited from chaos. It was his friend. He liked it so well he frequently tried to create his own.
6
Tubby started abruptly awake. He had dozed off on the couch while tree branches banged against his walls. What aroused him was that the storm’s wind had slackened. He looked at his watch. It read 7:39 am. He stretched to work out a kink in his back and limped off to check the perimeter.
The laundry room upstairs was a soggy mess, with glass and leaves blown all over the room and out into the hall. A half-inch of water pooled on the linoleum floor. Through the bedroom windows that were intact he saw only gray sky where once there had been a curtain of trees. On the ground below he saw that his yard was buried in limbs.
Downstairs, some sheetrock from the bathroom ceiling had fallen and made a mess in the tub.
Grim-faced, he went outside. It was still raining lightly and the wind blew steadily but at a refreshing speed. A great magnolia had been uprooted, depositing a twenty-foot-high tangle of leaves and branches between his front steps and the street. The old friend had taken all the electric lines down with it. Tubby was careful where he placed his feet. Climbing through his yard, he got a better view of his neighborhood. Fallen trees covered the whole street. Any cars that might be parked along the curbs were out of sight. The magnificent branch of a century-old live oak had lodged in the roof of the house across from his. But by and large, the old homes all seemed to be still standing. The rain made everything slick and treacherous, however. He climbed back through the brush, casting invectives at the scratches and scrapes, and got back inside.