by Tony Dunbar
Praise for Tony Dunbar
“Dunbar revels in the raffish charm and humor of his famously rambunctious city.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Take one cup of Raymond Chandler, one cup of Tennessee Williams, add a quart of salty humor, and you will get something resembling Dunbar’s crazy mixture of crime and offbeat comedy.”
—The Baltimore Sun
“Dunbar has an excellent ear for dialogue… His stylish take on Big Easy lowlife is reminiscent of the best of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard.”
—Booklist
“…Subtly wry humor, stylish writing, and authentic New Orleans flavor…”
—The New Orleans Times-Picayune
CRIME CZAR
A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery
by Tony Dunbar
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
Crime Czar
Copyright 1998 by Tony Dunbar
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover by Roy Migabon
eBook editions (ePub and Kindle) by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz
ISBN: 9781625172648
www.booksbnimble.com
First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: August 2013
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. There is no Tubby Dubonnet, and the real New Orleans is different from his make-believe city.
Contents
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Full Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
The red glow from the stoplight wrapped around Daisy like a bloody veil. She leaned against the crooked bus-stop sign on Airline Highway, fighting the craving for a cigarette. Crimson nighttime mist swirled about her face. It was warm, almost midnight. She listened for the low mournful horns of the boats on the Mississippi River a mile away and traveled with them down a dark twisting channel in her mind. Her skirt was hiked up high on her thigh. She was working.
The headlamps of the cars driving out of New Orleans became visible when they were still a great distance away. Daisy watched them bear down, and if the light was green, roar past her. The four-lane highway ran straight as an arrow pointed west. It shot past cheap motels and all-night gas stations, then sailed through open marsh and prairie all the way to Baton Rouge. Seeing the lights come, Daisy had time to imagine who might be behind the wheel of this car or that, compose her face, straighten her tired back, and cast what she believed was an inviting look at the dark windshields. She kept one leg forward, displayed on tiptoe, in the belief that that was where men’s eyes focused first. Shadowy heads suddenly materialized behind the glass, and she caught glimpses of faces, but unless someone saw her look, pressed the brake pedal, and rolled the window down, the occupant could have been a movie star or a werewolf for all she knew.
It was an underrated talent, she thought, being able to pose like this in cowgirl boots, big hair in place, smelling good, lipstick fresh, unaffected by semis grinding through their gears and the toot-toot of strangers’ horns. Daisy never had to wait long.
Shortly, some pipeline worker or shipfitter would slow down. The car or the pickup truck would swerve a little bit to check her out in the headlights. She might hear the motor purring and the tires squeak. There would be that moment of suspense, while those ship horns sounded in the distance, until the passenger window slid away, when she could finally see who was in there, who was sizing her up.
Then with a shrug of her bare shoulders, she would push off the bus stop sign, take a step forward, and bend down to show what cleavage she could compress out of her purple vest embroidered with black cats and blue moons.
“How ya doin’?” was Daisy’s icebreaker, if the guy was grinning or drooling too much to think of anything to say. They could usually take it from there. Drive around the block and park. Twenty minutes later, or an hour, depending, she’d be back at the bus stop again.
Daisy felt the wind blow around her legs and lift her skirt. A pickup truck with chrome pipes sticking out above the cab raced by. The boys inside screamed naughty words at her as the engine backfired. She had seen them drive by before— they were too chicken to stop. Daisy flipped them the bird, which they probably couldn’t see. Anybody got too fresh, she kept a can of Mace in her boot, the working girl’s friend.
The lights from a shopping center blazed in the distance. Crickets chirped lazily in the weeds that fought for life through the holes in the sidewalk. On other nights, when it wasn’t so foggy, she could see the glow of downtown New Orleans in the east— somewhere above the point where the black highway met the night sky.
A car roared by like a jet taking off, and she had to reach up with both hands to hold her hair.
“Damn,” she fussed, and almost failed to notice the pickup truck cruising slowly, real close to the curb, until it was almost upon her.
CHAPTER II
Only the guys with shaggy hair and scars on their faces and the girls with the sequined skirts and stars in their eyes remained this late at the Temple of Love Karaoke Bar on Chef Menteur Highway. The last of the paying customers had gone off into the night, tires screeching and CD-players blasting, and Singh Phi Lo was counting out his dough in the back office. His girls, Binh Ho and Oyster Lady, finished their drinks and smokes at the bar, freshened their perfume, and prepared to split. The lonely stretch of reclaimed swamp alongside the Intracoastal Waterway, known to some as Little Saigon, closed up early.
Singh’s son, Xuan, and two of his buddies were hanging around in the parking lot outside. They were shooting the breeze about how much it would cost to put a custom paint job, with pictures of shrimp boats and leaping dolphins and stuff like that, on Xuan’s van. They were all stoned and past drunk and not taking any shit off anybody. The blinking neon sign above the club provided the only light. There was so little traffic on the road that you could hear the lonely ship horns on the waterway and a baby whimpering in a trailer out back.
Xuan saw a nice-looking Plymouth Talon sail past, heading east toward the wilderness of Bayou Sauvage. He noted that it slowed suddenly and pulled off into the drive of an abandoned motel a hundred yards down the highway, but this did not interrupt his train of thought about dolphins.
The Plymouth made a deliberate U-turn, and the headlights lurched back onto the highway. The car’s return got Xuan’s full attention, and he flicked his cigarette in that direction to alert his friends. The little red coal bounced when it hit the asphalt and then lay still.
The Plymouth switched on its high beams and cruised slowly toward the bar. Xuan was checking his pockets for his Marlboros when the side of the vehicle came alive with an earsplitting din and bright orange flames and the back of his head blew off. Running from the searing light and deafening hammering of the guns, his two partners were cut down, and they slammed into the pavement squirming. The Plymouth stopped, and the gunmen inside carefully finished the job, blasting the crawling forms until they were motionless and smashing the painted windows of the tavern. The Temple of Love sign exploded, and a burglar alarm was screaming somewhere inside, demanding help that would not come.
Satisfied, the Plymouth’s driver hit the accelerator, and the car shot down the dark highway toward New Orleans. While the moaning women inside huddled under a cocktail table, Singh Phi Lo crawled out the back fire door, his military .45 clutched in his fist. He pulled himself on his elbows through the oyster shells and broken pop bottles that covered the ground to the corner of the building. He was in time to see a car’s taillights disappear in the di
stance. Then he saw the mess in the parking lot that had been his son. The burglar alarm wound down and in the trailer out back the baby’s wails joined his own.
CHAPTER III
“Shit!” Daisy exclaimed when she spotted the pickup truck nearly upon her. She took a small hop backwards. One heel caught in the uneven sidewalk and she almost fell.
The truck stopped, and she wiped the loose hairs off her forehead, trying to regain her poise.
“Hey, Daisy.” It was a deep male voice.
“Oh, it’s the weirdo,” she said, recovering. She leaned over to peer inside the window. “Looks like you got your hair cut.”
The man inside, whose name was Charlie Autin, grinned and took one hand off the wheel to pat his sideburns.
“Yeah, I’m cleaning up.”
The light changed to green. An old junker dragging its muffler beeped and rattled past in the center lane, but Charlie stayed where he was.
“Nice night,” he said pleasantly.
“You want to have some fun?” She put on her wicked smile.
“Sure. My name’s Charlie, in case you forgot.”
“Sure, Charlie.” She popped open the door. The truck, bright white in the daytime, had turned a disturbing lime sherbet under the traffic light. She climbed in, and her skirt rode up so high in the process that Charlie’s eyes turned into moons.
“What’s the program?” Daisy asked, bouncing onto the seat. She swung around to give her customer the full-court view.
“Uh, same as last time. That was real nice.”
“Hadn’t you better move the truck?” she suggested.
“Right.” He jammed the shifter into gear. The light had turned red again by then, but Charlie ran it anyway.
He wasn’t so hard to look at— a strong jaw and big brown eyes were his best features. And he was built okay, too. At least she remembered that much from last time. Most of her customers were losers— old coots, smelly fat men, stuff like that. Of course, she hadn’t really been at this forever. It was just something she was doing to make ends meet while she got her life back together.
“You been here long?” he asked.
“Couple of hours, maybe. Why?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, turning at the next corner. “Are you, like, from around here?”
“The life story is extra, weirdo. You got a cigarette?”
“No,” he said, hurt. “I don’t smoke. You want to go to Circle K? I’ll buy you a pack.”
Daisy checked her hair in the mirror.
“No,” she said. “I got some in my apartment.” She bit her lip. “I mean, at the motel.” She didn’t want her customers to know she actually lived in the little room at the Tomcat Inn. She didn’t want any surprise visits from the old geezers.
“I grew up on the river in Luling,” he said. “Ever been there?”
“Never heard of it,” she said, staring out the window at the hardware store they were passing. The red signs were pushing Roach Prufe. She had only been in New Orleans a little over a month, and she knew where the river was only because one of the jerks had insisted on doing it on the levee instead of in her bed at the motel. She had gotten eaten up by mosquitoes in very private places and did not plan to go back.
Her room was clean, and Bronstein, the manager, would come to her rescue in a flash if he knew she was in trouble. They had an arrangement that involved an extra twenty bucks a day and a hand job on Sunday morning when Mrs. Bronstein was in church. He was so grateful she felt like a nurse.
Charlie curb-jumped into the Tomcat Inn parking lot and slammed over the speed bump, just like everybody did.
“Yo!” she yelled, almost bouncing into the roof of the cab.
Charlie jerked to a halt and got them parked while she dug her plastic key out of her magical vest.
Three steps and she had it in the door. The interior smelled like potpourri air freshener. If you didn’t like it, too bad.
Charlie stepped lively. Daisy closed the door behind him and slipped on the chain. Usually she left it off, to facilitate a hasty exit if circumstances required, but she was beginning to feel comfortable around Charlie.
She sat down on the bed and began taking off her vest. Underneath she wore a red chemise with CAJUN FEST printed on it. That came off next, then the black Wonder Bra. Charlie sat beside her studying the process, hands clasped between his knees.
“You like what you’re looking at, weirdo?” she asked. She turned to face him, not letting her hair flounce more than she could help it.
He nodded vigorously, his eyes focused below her chin.
“Well, give me your money,” she said.
“Oh, sure.” With difficulty Charlie dug a fat black wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. He already had the bills counted, folded neatly, and stuck into one corner so he would be sure not to spend them on something else. Daisy double-checked his math quickly and poked the wad between the mattress and box spring.
“I guess you want the works,” she said.
He put his hand on her breast and kept it there.
“I really like you, Daisy,” he said, while she unbuttoned his shirt.
It gave her a good feeling to hear him say that, even though she figured it was just his body heat talking. He had plenty of that, her busy fingers quickly discovered.
* * *
Later on, Daisy let him take a shower, because he had been nice and because she had kind of enjoyed it. Then he was gone. He said he was going to show up in the morning and take her out for breakfast, but she blew him off. Another weirdo in her life, she didn’t need. He was probably just bullshitting anyway. Daisy cleaned herself up, mailed herself a kiss in the mirror, and hit the streets.
CHAPTER IV
Tubby Dubonnet had read nearly every magazine in the waiting room. Three hours earlier he had been fresh out of bed, tying a knot in his Tabasco tie and getting ready to go to the office, when his youngest daughter, Collette, called excitedly to report that her sister was deep into labor. She was ready to deliver a baby at any moment.
The lawyer had hurried down to Touro Hospital to find that Debbie was installed in what they called a “birthing room.” It was crowded to overflowing. The victim, in dim surroundings, was moaning in agony, attended by a nurse, a somewhat confused-looking doctor, and Tubby’s ex-wife, Mattie, who was shouting at everyone. Marcos, whom Tubby still had difficulty considering Debbie’s husband, was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, apparently trying to induce a trance by counting backwards from a hundred. Tubby’s other two daughters, Collette and Christine, had been exiled to the waiting room, and he hastily withdrew to join them.
There he learned that Debbie’s labor had been going on for most of the night but no one had thought to call him. He stuffed his large frame into an armchair and retreated behind a Newsweek in a huff. In truth, however, he did not regret that he had missed the chance to spend the night cramped in a hospital room while his former wife told everybody what to do.
The contractions dragged on for a couple more hours anyhow, and Tubby or one of the girls would periodically wander down the hall to check on Debbie’s progress. A nice white-haired lady arrived at around nine-thirty and made a big pot of coffee. She offered everybody a cup. Tubby struck up a conversation with a pipeline worker from Buras who was also waiting for his daughter to give birth. The guy was Tubby’s age and had biceps like volleyballs. Tubby had some muscles, too. He flexed them to be sure.
“My first grandchild,” Tubby told him.
“Me, it’s my tenth,” the guy boasted.
“Almost enough for a football team,” Tubby joked.
“Yeah, I told my wife I’m gonna take ’em to the Superdome an’ see can they whip the Saints.”
“It’s a boy!” Christine cried, skipping down the hall. They all hurried to the nursery to see the little red ball arrive.
It was a stirring moment. It made the grandfather feel like doing some push-ups. Maybe even a couple of cartwheels
.
Later, Tubby was allowed to see Debbie long enough to tell her she had done well. The poor girl was beat and drifting in and out of sleep. Tubby shook Marcos’s hand enthusiastically and told the new father to take good care of that child. “I will, Mr. Tubby,” Marcos said, and there was something in his voice that made it sound like he might actually be up to the challenge. I hope you do a better job than I have, Tubby thought to himself, but he didn’t really mean it. Right now he felt he might have done okay.
Walking to the elevator, he thought back to Debbie’s wedding five months before. She had been a bit oversized walking down the aisle but had a good humor about it. The minister, who had pastored the Dubonnet flock for about twenty years, took it all in stride. He even accommodated the bride’s special request that a second preacher— some guy she liked who ran a homeless shelter over in Mississippi— conduct part of the service. Tubby had never met the new young reverend, who had the improbable name of Buddy Holly, before the rehearsal, and he was not impressed by the sandy blond hair and wrinkled blue jeans. The Reverend Holly redeemed himself on the big day, however, by wearing a proper robe and by gripping Marcos tightly by the elbow just when the groom seemed in danger of tipping over backwards into the flower array. Plus, in marked contrast to everyone else involved in the elaborate production, Buddy Holly said he did weddings for free.
Zoot-suited in a tux, Tubby had marched down the aisle proudly and given away the bride. He had played his part without a hitch, though he wanted to blubber when the bride said, “I do.” It was only after the reception was winding down and Marcos and Debbie had slipped off to a hotel in the French Quarter that he had withdrawn into a corner by himself, clutching a glass of bourbon, and tried to imagine that his daughter had grown up and flown away.
Now it had all worked out fine.
Before leaving the hospital, Tubby rode the elevator up to the next floor to check on another patient. His old friend Dan Haywood was in sad shape— felled by a bullet to the stomach when he inadvertently intervened in a bank heist during the past Mardi Gras. At first it had seemed that all would be well. There had even been moments when Dan returned to consciousness and been lucid enough to speak, though his words made little sense. But then some infection set in and the doctors talked about nerve damage before scurrying away to examine things they understood better.