Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series)

by Tony Dunbar

  “I grew up with lots of kids myself. Mama had four girls and one boy.”

  “That must have been nice.”

  “It was, most of the time. I like a big family.”

  “Didn’t you fight a lot?”

  “You better believe it. But we always made up.”

  “In my family, everybody got their own pork chop. That’s one thing I remember my father used to say. We didn’t have to fight over them, you see?”

  “Weren’t you ever lonesome?”

  “Not really. I played with myself.” Darryl laughed.

  “I can’t imagine having a family without a lot of kids,” she said, trying to get him back on track.

  He didn’t reply, and she had to let it drop. Monique rode her bicycle down to the blue mailbox to send Lisa a postcard of’ the monkeys in the Audubon Zoo. She had written that someday the two of them would visit the zoo together. There was a danger, of course, that her mama would throw the card away, but Monique couldn’t help that. She was pedaling back to her apartment when the driver of a parked car swung his door open, almost causing her to crash into it head first. She had to slide off the seat and put both feet on the ground to stop. She turned on the driver with her mouth open and a yell halfway out, when she saw it was “Jack Daniels,” the guy Darryl had told her to stay away from a couple of months before.

  “Oh, so sorry, Monique,” he said, grinning. He didn’t look sorry, and he looked even more like a cop in the daytime than he did when he was stoned at night. Big guy, long sideburns, giving off asshole, macho vibes. Ned, her ex, had been a small-town cop, giving her an attitude about cops in general, but evidently something about them attracted her, too—a mystery she was trying to work out.

  “I thought it was time maybe we had another date,” Jack Daniels said.

  “That’s a crazy way to ask for it. You could have broken my neck. And, since you asked, I don’t think so.”

  “Come on, baby. Didn’t I prove I was a nice guy? I’ve been missing you.”

  “Sorry, I don’t go in for reruns. It sends the wrong message.”

  “I liked the message you sent the first time.”

  “It will just have to last you.” Monique started to back up on her bike to get away from there.

  “Don’t leave me yet,” he said. “Are you getting all the nose candy you want?”

  “That was just one time, Mr. Jack Daniels. And, yeah, I get everything I need.”

  “I’m sure your probation officer would like to hear that.”

  She stopped and stared at him. He was still grinning with a real sincere look in his eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I’m talking about J. W. Whitley, your probation officer in beautiful Brewton, Alabama, honey, and how you’re violating those important rules he told you about. It’s all in the national crime computer, plain as day. I’m talking about tossing your apartment and busting you, little girl. I’m talking about sending you back to Alabama.”

  This can’t be happening, Monique thought, but I can handle this.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she spat out. “I’ve got friends here. Talk to my lawyer. I don’t need to listen to your bullshit.”

  “Yeah you do, Monique. Ever since our little affair together, I’ve been asking around about you. I know you’re Darryl Alvarez’s special squeeze, though the way he treats you I personally don’t understand. And I’ve talked to, wanna guess? Neddy. Ol’ Officer Ned of the Evergreen, Alabama, PD? He wants custody of a little girl named Lisa. I think when I bust you and send you back that will be very easy for him.”

  A black hole opened up underneath Monique and she fell in. It closed up on top and all the sunlight was gone. It was all darkness and cold, in there, inside her head.

  She stared at the man and tilted her head to one side.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She really had no idea what it could be, what could come out of his mouth, that she didn’t want to hear.

  “Your man, Darryl, is taking a drive down to the Gulf sometime in the next week or two. I want to know when.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Better make it your business to find out. I need to know exactly when he’s going. ”

  “And then what?”

  “And then you call me and ask for Casey. Here, I’ll write it down.” He scribbled on the inside of a matchbook cover: Casey, 555-3233.

  “What do you want to know for?”

  “It’s business. But nothing happens to Darryl. He’ll be fine. Don’t you worry. We’ll talk some more later.”

  He started the car. “Watch out you don’t get run over,” he laughed, and pulled away from the curb while she frantically yanked her bike out of the way.

  Instead of going back to her apartment, Monique rode way out to the end of the rock jetty that protected the boats in the harbor. The day had turned cloudy and windy, and whitecaps rolled across the lake. Most of the sailors were back in, and the stragglers were tacking hard in her direction. A couple of boys on jet skis carved circles through the waves and blasted through the air in earsplitting two-stroker ecstasy. She stayed on the rocks for a long time letting the wind and lake spray blow over her. The water tasted sad. Warm and a little salty, like tears. It was hard to sort things out. She thought about running away again. Back to Alabama, grab Lisa, and then, where? It had taken so much energy to get here, to this little spot in New Orleans. It was very depressing to imagine leaving everything behind and doing it all again.

  Monique couldn’t come to any decision out on the rocks. Except she decided to hope that she never heard from Mr. Casey again, that she never saw him, that he never telephoned. She didn’t know what he was talking about anyway. And he had promised that no harm would come to Darryl. So what could he want?

  Monique went back to work and didn’t say anything. Everything ran smoothly for two days. She began to calm down and think maybe nothing was going to happen.

  Then Darryl brought her into it. After her shift ended on the third day following her talk with Casey, she carried her receipts up to the office as usual. When Darryl finished with the books they often had a few drinks, maybe smoked a joint, and decided whether they would go to his place, her place, or each to their own place.

  “Baby,” he said. “I’d like you to help me with something. It’s a big one.”

  He sounded very serious, so she gave him her full attention. She was ready to do anything he wanted. “Whatever you say, honey. Just ask. You know that.”

  It was a big one. The idea was that Darryl was going to drive a truck down to the boonies on Sunday night. He wanted her to follow him in his Mazda. She would be carrying something. At a certain spot she would park and wait while he went about his business. It might be forty-five minutes. Then, when he called her on the car phone, she would come on and meet him.

  “It’s that simple.” Darryl spread his hands to show her that was all there was to it.

  “I really hate to ask you,” he said, “but there’s nobody else I trust.”

  Monique felt terrible.

  That was on a Thursday. Thinking about Darryl’s trip tormented Monique so much that she stayed home from work the next night. She huddled up in her bed and watched television, trying not to think any thoughts, and drinking wine coolers till she really did feel ill.

  Casey the cop called on Saturday morning.

  “You’re missing work. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m just sick. Are you watching me?”

  “You bet. And I know something’s cooking. When is Darryl taking a trip?”

  “I don’t know. Leave me alone,” she sniffled.

  Casey got loud. He threatened her and went over her options. One, she could be the subject of an intense police investigation. Casey was stretching things here. He had some pals on the NOPD who might knock on her door and ask about the aroma of dope if he called them, but
they wouldn’t stick their necks out too far for free. Two, he could arrange it so that someone else, not him personally of course, beat the living shit out of her. That would be a good job for Freddie, or he could even tap Bin Minny, but then he’d have to cut the big guy in. Third, he would let her mother and everybody in Evergreen know that Monique was a coke-snorting hooker in a New Orleans bar so that even little Lisa would be afraid of catching some disease from her. Four, all of the above.

  Or, she could tip him off and he wouldn’t bother her anymore.

  Freddie, listening to Casey’s end of this conversation at BB Bonds, got so excited he jumped out of his chair and punched the air.

  “I’m not going to leave you fucking alone,” Casey told Monique. “I’m going to be on you like a fly on shit until you tell me when the fuck Darryl is taking his trip.”

  “He doesn’t let me know that stuff,” she bluffed, but Casey knew from the way she said it that she was lying.

  “Bitch—listen to what I’m telling you. There’s nobody standing between you and me. I’m your bad dream. This is the law talking. I’m going to come down there and whip your ass and bust your ass all the way back to Alabama.”

  “Go away, you bastard,” she cried.

  Casey was quiet for a moment. Then he said, softly, “You are not going to deny me or get past me. I’m going to see that you do time in some really terrible joint. Where, it doesn’t matter. And I’m going to personally see to it that your little baby girl has an extremely sick and warped childhood.”

  She couldn’t hold out after that. It took just a couple of seconds for her to tell him that Darryl had said something about taking a ride on Sunday. She didn’t tell him where Darryl was going, that she would be going along, or anything else. Casey poked a little more, but he was satisfied. It would be easy to trail Darryl. He’d been promised the cooperation of certain people in the DEA, and those guys had radar, helicopters, the works. This was turning out to be a piece of cake.

  After Casey hung up, Monique prayed to the telephone that it would all work out okay. He had said no harm would come to Darryl. Would he lie? There was no way she was going to tell Darryl what she had done. She crossed her knees like a yogi and closed her eyes. She put her mind on hold and let winds of guilt and fear whip around her. She finally calmed down enough to turn on the TV and fall asleep.

  SEVEN

  On Sunday morning, bright and early, Tubby picked up his youngest daughter, Collette, for church. It was something they had been doing together for a month now, motivated by Collette. Tubby wasn’t sure why a fourteen-year-old girl had a renewed interest in church attendance, but it was more than all right with him. Other girls her age were smoking crack and dropping out of school. If she wanted to join the Young Republicans he would pay the dues, though his upstate relatives had voted Democrat since before the war. The services were relaxing, too. The organ music and the rituals smoothed out his mental wrinkles, and he wondered why he had not bothered to come for so many years. It filled up a day that was often empty of late.

  At the conclusion of the service, after shaking hands with the priest and promising to come back, they walked over to Audubon Park and took a stroll around the lagoon. It was a pretty morning, and they shared the pathways with joggers and Rollerbladers in colorful attire and young mothers, in pairs, giving their Newman-bound babies some air.

  They went down to the graveled edge of the pond to watch a small boy feed the ducks. A fat old drake with muddy feet boldly waddled over to them to investigate the food possibilities. Collette tossed a dandelion in its direction. It pecked the flower, then made a clumsy departure.

  “Do these ducks live here, or are they just passing through?” she asked.

  “The white ones live here. I think the ones with the green heads are migrating. They’re probably very happy to find a place where nobody is shooting at them.”

  “Who would shoot such pretty birds?” she mused to herself.

  Tubby didn’t remind her about his own hunting trips.

  “What are you doing this afternoon?” he asked. He was thinking he might invite her to go to the movies or go skating or something.

  “Mom and I are going shopping for a prom dress. My prom is Friday night.”

  “You can’t have a prom in the eighth grade,” he said.

  “Of course we do.” Obviously a stupid statement.

  “Who are you going with, Jeffrey?” That was a safe bet. She had been friends with Jeffrey for years. He was a Ben Franklin student. And he had a driver’s license.

  “Yes, there are four of us going together. It’s all very well organized and properly chaperoned.” She had the bases covered.

  “Well, call me if you need anything.”

  “You mean, like, money?”

  “Heck no, not money.”

  “What else would I need?”

  “You never can tell.”

  “Oh, you mean like the time you rescued Debbie?”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “Something like that.” He had been at a deposition. His client had been in the “hot seat.” For some reason, either because the opposing attorney was from out of town or because there was a hearing set for the next day—Tubby couldn’t remember—they were holding the deposition after hours. The issue was a commercial real-estate transaction gone sour. The plaintiff thought Tubby’s client—who was Monster Mudbug’s father—had promised to sell him a building, then broken his word and sold it to someone else. He believed he was aggrieved by all the profits he would have made if he had been able to purchase the building, then tear it down and put up a hotel. It was dragging along past nine o’clock, and the questioning from opposing counsel, Bob Thomas, had degenerated into something like:

  “I’ll show you Deposition Exhibit Four. This is Branscomb’s letter to you dated August second. I’ll ask you to look at it.”

  “Okay,” said Tubby’s client.

  “Do you remember it?”

  “Sort of. It looks like a million other letters.”

  “Did you have any discussions between Exhibit Three and Exhibit Four—with Branscomb, that is? Think hard and tell me.”

  “What are you saying?” the witness asked.

  “Wait,” Tubby cut in. “Objection that the question is too confusing to follow and is not even a question.”

  “I don’t know what he means,” Adrian’s father said to the court reporter, like perhaps she could explain it. She faithfully took down every word, smiling at him sympathetically while she did so.

  “Maybe you could put all those letters in a row on the table,” Tubby suggested, “and we could all understand better what you are asking about.”

  “I’m trying to be precise,” Thomas said in exasperation, “and I’ll ask that you resist the temptation to interrupt at every question.”

  “I’m not interrupting,” Tubby protested hotly. “I’m objecting, and it’s not a temptation, it’s my responsibility as this man’s lawyer.”

  Before Tubby could get on a roll with his speech, the telephone in the conference room rang, and the court reporter was distracted. Tubby took a deep breath and went to the credenza to pick it up. It was his answering service, and a woman told him that his daughter was on the line.

  “Put her through,” he said.

  “Hello, Daddy? This is Debbie.” He remembered that it was Debbie’s first prom—not at her own school but at her date’s. Tubby had asked Mattie to be sure to get a picture of her in her gown—parenting by proxy.

  “Hi, Debbie. What’s wrong?”

  “Can you come get me?”

  “Why—where are you?”

  “I’m at the Marriott. I’m stranded. Josh got drunk and drove off, and I don’t know anybody here, and I’m very upset.”

  “Sure, honey. Can you take a cab?”

  “I don’t have any money with me. I called home already but nobody answered.”

  “Are you in the lobby?”

  “Yes,” she snuffled.

 
“Go out by the front door, where the doorman in the red coat is standing. I’ll pick up the car and be around in about ten minutes.”

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  Tubby hung up and got his coat.

  “Sorry. Illness in the family. We’re going to have to reconvene at a later date.”

  “What? You can’t do that,” the opposition insisted.

  “Let’s go,” Tubby said to his client, who also got up and grabbed his smokes.

  “My apologies, counselor, family emergency,” Tubby said.

  “What is this? Is somebody in the hospital? What’s going on?” Thomas sputtered.

  “Can you show him the way out, please?” Tubby asked the court reporter. “And please turn off the lights.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Goodnight, everybody,” Tubby said as he went out the door with his client in tow.

  In the elevator Adrian’s father said, “That was a neat trick, Tubby. He was getting me all mixed up. You want to go catch a couple of drinks?”

  “No, really, Sid. I have to go pick up my daughter. She got marooned at the prom.”

  “Hey, whatever works.”

  That’s how you got a reputation as a smart lawyer.

  Quacking and beating the air frantically with their wings, the ducks scattered away from a huge Labrador retriever who splashed happily into the lagoon. The birds settled into the water a few yards away and then led the snorting beast, his head sticking out of the pea green water, in circles around and around the pond.

  “Anyhow, call me if you need me,” Tubby told Collette.

  That Sunday night Monique followed Darryl across the Mississippi on the Huey P. Long Bridge. Monique, behind the wheel of the Mazda, had never been this way before, and she was thrilled to be so high up, like riding a Ferris wheel. The chemical plants and shipyards far below lit up the river like the midway of a carnival she had been to as a child. After they got across and were pointed southwest on Highway 90, Darryl instructed her, on the car phone, to slow down and let him get about a mile ahead. He asked if she was doing all right, and she said yes. She really did feel good. It was an adventure. Darryl had tossed a blue gym bag in the backseat. That was what she was supposed to bring him later.