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

by Tony Dunbar

  Tubby studied his choices. “How’s business?” he asked.

  “Business isn’t never much good. I’m getting whooped by them vending machines inside.”

  “Why don’t you move up by the bus stop?”

  “They run me off up there. Or them kids try to steal whatever little I got. Down here they leave me alone. Besides, I got a godson in there.” She pointed across the street. “I think maybe he can see me.”

  “Your godson’s in jail?” Tubby picked out the one he wanted.

  “Yes, I’m sorry to say it.” She handed Tubby a caramel-colored praline, thick with pecan halves coated with sugar melted in cream and vanilla.

  “How long has he been in?”

  “Oh, I’d say better than a year.”

  “And he’s still here? I didn’t think they stayed that long in the jail. Maybe he’s been sent to one of the prisons.”

  “I couldn’t say. That’s where he went in, though, and he hasn’t come out.”

  Tubby bit his praline. A piece cracked off and Tubby grabbed at it and missed. He sadly watched it hit the sidewalk.

  “What’s your godson’s name?” he asked.

  “Jerome, Jerome Cook,” she said.

  “Well, I hope he gets out soon.”

  “I sure hope so, too,” she said.

  Tubby nodded to her and walked back across the street. Going up the wide steps to the Correctional Center he passed a group of guards standing around eating candy bars together. Their black uniforms made him nervous. They herded, washed, fed, and processed the five thousand or so prisoners, more than most countries confined, which Orleans Parish held on a daily basis, rode in Mardi Gras parades on horseback, and campaigned for Sheriff Mulé every four years. The sheriff reigned over them, dozens of public buildings, tent cities full of inmates, and millions of dollars. Mulé was a man to be reckoned with.

  The guard at the front desk told Tubby to have a seat, which he was glad to do until the perspiration chilled off his forehead. After a minute he got up and went back to the desk.

  “I need to see if you’ve got a man in here,” he told the guard.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jerome Cook.”

  “Okay, let’s see.” The guard tapped information into his computer console, whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

  “Jerome Rasheed Cook,” he said. “Yep, we got him.”

  “What’s he charged with?” Tubby asked.

  Clickety-click, the man’s fingers moved over the keys.

  “That’s funny. I can’t exactly tell you. It doesn’t seem to be on the screen.”

  “How long has he been in here?”

  “I don’t know that either. ‘This doesn’t show any information on him.” He looked up at Tubby and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what the problem is.”

  “Can you deliver something to him?”

  “You’re a lawyer, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you want to leave for him?”

  “Just give him my card.” Tubby reached into his coat for his wallet and slipped out his white business card. The guard took it.

  “Will you see that he gets this?”

  “Sure,” said the guard. “There’ll be someone going up to the cells in a few minutes. I’ll have them carry it up.”

  “Thanks,” Tubby said and sat back down. After a few more minutes, the guard’s phone rang and his name was called. The guard pointed him toward the elevator that led to the sheriff’s executive offices above. A quick ride later he was greeted by an attractive woman with a pile of curly blond hair, also in a black uniform, who took him through the door to the sheriff’s splendid office. You could hold court in here, Tubby thought. The city skyline could be admired through its picture windows. The floor was thickly carpeted, and the walls were covered with hunting trophies—cats, big birds, a bear’s head, even a stuffed alligator. Mulé, a small man, peeked above his desk twenty paces from the door. He was almost hidden behind an enormous stuffed bird of prey.

  Mulé stood up and extended his hand when Tubby came in. He was wearing a suit, brown as mud, with wide lapels.

  “Howya doing, Tubby? Thanks for coming by.”

  “Sure, Sheriff. You could have just picked up the phone.”

  “No, I wanted to have a face-to-face, and I heard you were coming down today.”

  “You’ve really got your antennae up.”

  “I try to take care of my friends. It ain’t always easy. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  Mulé pushed a button on his telephone and an inmate cautiously opened the door.

  “For this man, coffee, Pedro.”

  Tubby told him to make it black, and Pedro disappeared.

  “I see where Darryl Alvarez got shot,” Mulé said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he ever say who his business associates were?”

  “Not to me. What’s your interest in this, Sheriff?”

  “My interest is in keeping drugs off the streets. Also, he was one of my campaign supporters. I hate to see any of my supporters go like ‘that.”

  “Yeah. It’s a shame. He had a lot of friends.”

  “I know you were one of them.”

  “Not really. I got the case through Reggie Turntide, my partner. He doesn’t do criminal work.”

  “That’s right,” the sheriff beamed. “Darryl hadn’t made his deal with the U.S. Attorney, had he?”

  “No. You could ask the U.S. Attorney the same thing.”

  “My relations with the man aren’t that good,” the sheriff said with a grimace. That sounded right. A couple of weeks before the Times-Picayune had leaked the news that a federal grand jury was investigating various allegations of unconstitutional behavior at the jail.

  “Any idea who he was working for?”

  “Hell no, Sheriff, and I don’t even speculate. The last thing I want is to be hauled before some grand jury investigating organized crime.”

  “Right. That’s just the way it should be.”

  The sheriff stood up and circled his desk. He put his hand on Tubby’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, almost as if he wanted to pick him out of the chair.

  “Thanks for coming by, Tubby. I really appreciate your help.”

  Tubby, rising, said, “I don’t know what help I gave you.”

  “You satisfied my curiosity. At least part of it.”

  Mulé showed Tubby the door. Exiting, Tubby almost collided with Pedro returning with a Styrofoam cup of coffee on a tray. “I had to make it fresh, sir,” he said.

  “That’s okay. Maybe the sheriff would like it.”

  “No, sir. He don’t drink nothing but Kool-Aid.”

  That was baloney, Tubby knew. Sheriff Mulé had twice hit the papers for being drunk and highly disorderly in very odd unsherifflike places, but he had yet to get locked up in his own jail.

  Tubby smiled again at the receptionist with the big hair, thinking that the black uniforms certainly looked sexier on the women than the men, and he got the elevator back to the ground floor. It was a relief to step out the front door into the free world. Mulé had showed an awful lot of interest in one crooked bartender. He did not like any part of his conversation with the sheriff. The man was connected – to the good guys and also to some characters too shadowy to classify. He had goons working for him who beat on prisoners, or so it was rumored. Maybe all jailers did. But there was also a newspaper reporter who had written about sex and drug rackets in the jail and who had been mugged so badly that he lost sight in one eye, culprits unknown. He had left town for a safer assignment. There was the uppity jailhouse lawyer who had filed dozens of suits over conditions at the jail, who was found with his throat slashed in the shower, done in, said the authorities, by his fellow inmates. All this was smoke, rumors, or allegations the sheriff had defeated in lawsuits. On the flip side was the celebrated community service—no charity gala was complete without him—b
ut still it made you think.

  Tubby figured he needed to do something about the money soon. He was coming to the conclusion that there was something he wanted and something he did not want. He did not want the gym bag to be in his boat much longer. He did want the money.

  A once-pretty redhead on the downside of thirty shook her fanny, cellulite and all, in the face of an old Cuban stuffing an ashtray full of cigarettes in one of the seedy strip joints that had survived on upper Decatur Street. A couple of cop types Ali knew were at a tiny round table in the dark, leaning against the wall, having a private conversation. The taller of the two, a man they called Casey, waved Ali over.

  “You used to have a girl named Monique work here?” he asked.

  “We get lots of girls. About when would that be?”

  “About a year ago. You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Not really.”

  “Brown hair, healthy-looking, real country, all-American type. I’m sure she was real popular.”

  “Okay, yeah. I might remember her.”

  “You probably fucked her,” said the short fat guy with Casey. He was called Freddie, and he always had a radio or a pair of handcuffs hanging off his belt to show he was in law enforcement. Freddie burped up Budweiser.

  Ali didn’t say anything.

  “She turned tricks with the customers, didn’t she?” Casey asked.

  Ali shrugged.

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “If we’re talking about the same girl, not since she quit.”

  “You wouldn’t be fooling me now, would you, Ali? She wouldn’t have come by and given you something to keep for her, would she?”

  “No.”

  “This is a big investigation. It’s not just me asking, it’s the Sheriff.”

  Ali didn’t know if that was bullshit or not. These half-assed policemen always talked like that, but Sheriff Mulé had once been in the joint in Casey’s company, so it was a possibility. Mulé had tipped well. It didn’t matter either way to Ali. He didn’t give a rat’s ass for Sheriff Mulé and the answer was the same anyway.

  “She didn’t leave me nothing.”

  Casey turned to look at Freddie, and Ali walked away. They might not be finished talking, but he was. He moved softly around the dingy room, emptying ashtrays, guiding his bulk by memory and night radar.

  “She’s got to have hidden it somewhere at Champs,” Freddie told Casey. “She don’t go nowhere else.”

  “That’s real smart, Freddie. Of course, we would have had the money by now if you weren’t such an incredibly dumb fuck.”

  “Hey, he had a gun. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Not cut his head off, asshole. They can’t talk that way.”

  “I didn’t know that fucking gun would shoot like that. We didn’t have anything that would fire so fast when I was growing up.”

  “You should have told me if you didn’t know what you were doing, Freddie. I could have got you a .45 or something.”

  “If we was to do it now, I’d do it right. I’d have it set on single shot.”

  “Let’s roll back the camera and you can do it right this time.”

  “We all make mistakes, Casey.”

  “Gimme a break, Freddie. We’re supposed to be professionals. You can’t hold yourself up as a professional and say things like ‘We all make mistakes.’”

  Freddie looked glum.

  “We all make mistakes,” mimicked Casey. “For Christ’s sake, let’s get out of here.”

  “I really am sorry.”

  Casey put his hand on Freddie’s wrist. “I forgive you. Everybody forgives you. Just concentrate a little more in the future.”

  Freddie said he would do that.

  After they left, Ali called Monique on the phone. He told her about Casey’s and Freddie’s visit and the parts of their conversation he had overheard.

  “Those are the same fucks who killed Darryl,” she said.

  * * *

  Tubby crossed over the Interstate on the Broad Street overpass and drove back to his house. The route took him past the Wembley tie plant, which always reminded him to check his own for gravy spots. Damn! What a stupid place to wear a fifty-dollar piece of silk. He parked and climbed into the boat. The bag was where he had left it. That was a small surprise considering it was in an unlocked compartment on a boat sitting outdoors in a quasi-major American city. Tubby had been half hoping it would be gone and he would be relieved of the responsibility of deciding what to do with it. Maybe, he thought, the fact that the money was still there was an omen he should keep it.

  After checking to see that the bag was still full, he counted out some of the cash and stuck it in his pocket. He zipped the bag up and tossed it in the trunk of his car. The day was going from extremely hot to extremely hot and muggy, so he switched on the air-conditioning as high as it would go. Then he drove to a bank branch in his neighborhood. Inside, after waiting a minute for another customer to conclude her business, he presented himself to a young woman seated at a desk whose name was Miss Bates, Assistant Manager, according to her plastic nameplate.

  “I’d like to open an account,” he told her.

  “Do you already have one with us?” She smiled.

  Tubby said he did not, though he had always meant to have one.

  “How much do you plan to open it for?” she asked.

  “One hundred thousand dollars,” Tubby said. He had formed a plan to open accounts of this size at every bank in town.

  “Oh my, my,” Miss Bates exclaimed. “You realize, of course, that it may take a week to ten days before your funds are available to write checks on, depending on where the bank your check is drawn on is located.”

  “I plan to deposit cash.”

  Miss Bates looked disturbed. “There’s a form we need you to fill out in that case. We have to report to the IRS any cash transactions over ten thousand dollars.” She rustled around in her desk. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to get one in the back. I won’t be a minute. You can be filling out the account agreement.”

  Tubby was on the street in seconds, mopping sweat from behind his ears with his handkerchief, an uncomfortable bulge still in his pocket. He wished he had a female confidante. They were much better at this kind of thing than he was.

  From a pay phone outside a Burger King, Tubby called his friend, Jerry Molideau, a financial advisor whose talent was to impress well-heeled businessmen and help them shield their valuable assets from creditors, the tax man, and spouses. He sent business to Tubby, and vice versa.

  He got past the secretary, and Jerry came on the line. They said hello.

  “A guy just asked me a question, Jerry. I don’t want to look dumb, so I thought I’d better call someone who knows the answer.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “My guy’s got a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and he wants to put it where no one can find it. Any advice?”

  “Sure. Open a Chinese restaurant and put all your cash receipts in your pocket. But seriously, that’s an interesting question, and I’d be glad to talk it over in person. On the telephone my best suggestions are to bury it in a tin can in his backyard, or buy Krugerrands and stick them in a safe-deposit box.”

  “Have you ever heard of a rule where you have to report big cash transactions to the IRS?”

  “Sure. If he buys his Krugerrands from a legitimate dealer, the dealer has to report all cash sales above ten thousand dollars to the government, just like a bank.”

  “Do dealers actually do that?”

  “Most do. Your average jeweler or boat salesman is marginally more afraid of the IRS than he is of losing a customer.”

  “Sounds un-American.”

  “Big Brother is here, Tubby.” Tubby said he might drop by to discuss this further and hung up. What to do, what to do? The problem was not paying taxes on the money. It was that he could not think how he could explain to the IRS, or anybody else who might ask him, where he got $950,000.<
br />
  It suddenly struck Tubby that a great many desirable things cost less than $10,000. If he wandered through downtown, where he had frequented the same shops for years, dropping wads of cash, his visits would definitely be long remembered. He had a reputation for being tight with a dollar. There were all sorts of shopping malls in the suburbs, however, and today would be just ideal to visit them.

  Driving west on the Interstate he checked in with Cherrylynn on the car phone. All of his messages were routine but one. His ex-wife had called, but he would deal with her later. He told Cherrylynn he was feeling a little down in the dumps and thought he might spend the rest of the day at the track. She could take the afternoon off, he said. She was too stunned to object. After he hung up, he realized how out of character he was acting. Well, that’s what financial freedom is all about. Destination Esplanade Mall. That was someplace he had never been.

  Several hectic hours later he was sitting in a bistro on Veterans Boulevard called Hooters, being waited on by Hooter Girls. He was on his fourth margarita, letting the good feelings build. In the trunk of his car, besides a bag full of money, were wrapped packages containing three diamond bracelets, which Tubby planned to give to his daughters, some incredible lingerie, for a person unknown but coincidentally of a size he imagined would fit Jynx Margolis, four sports jackets for himself, some nice shoes, a pile of hardcovers he wanted to read, and a pair of tickets for a Caribbean cruise.

  He had even popped into Andrea’s on impulse and had a wonderful plate of crawfish ravioli and a glass of red Beneventum that cost almost as much as the food. Reinvigorated, he cruised Veterans, looking for just the right thing. And there it was. The Harley-Davidson he ordered would take about a month to come in, but it was more bike than any man could tame. He had managed to get rid of only about $48,000, which was a little disappointing, but he felt great.

  It was exhilarating, not so much spending the money, but suspending the moral judgment he had carried with him since his North Louisiana Sunday School teachers, not to mention his parents, got through with him. It had followed him through law school and was at the guilty heart of the majestic law he had bound himself to. Now, on a pretty day, it had lifted off his shoulders like a helium balloon lost at the fair. His judgment was out there somewhere, he was sure, circling around like an angry crow, but he felt as free as the last man on Earth. He leered at the Hooter Girls with their copious bosoms and cantilevered asses, breasts pointed eagerly outward like the outstretched arms of a revival preacher, welcoming, warming. They wanted him to think they liked him, and by God they were succeeding.