Duby's Doctor

by Iris Chacon

  Dubreau quickly gathered her tennis gear from the floor and followed her.

  Within the hour, Dubreau was waiting beside the limo when Carinne emerged from the front door of the mansion and sulked all the way to the car. Dubreau did not wink or smile or even relax his posture. He simply opened the car door in a formal manner and helped her into the back seat.

  From Averell’s office window, Rico watched Dubreau leave with Carinne. Averell sat at his desk, reading and annotating documents for his afternoon meeting to come.

  “You know I’m better than he is,” Rico said.

  “Are you?” Averell sounded skeptical and a little amused.

  “You don’t really need both of us.”

  “You keep each other sharp, Rico. And, the constant circling is fun to watch. Someday I may throw you both into a pit and see who comes out alive. For now, you each have a job. Do it.”

  CHAPTER 14 – REVELATION

  The Averell mansion glowed and glistened like a fairy tale castle in the sultry Florida evening. Inside, people bustled about with last-minute preparations. Tonight’s dinner for a South American potential client was to be lavish and impressive. Kyle Averell knew how to wine and dine in a manner that guaranteed a favorable result. The pending contractual arrangements were important to Averell, and he was pulling out all the stops to make tonight’s guest a very happy – and agreeable – man.

  Carinne had been swathed in the best designer gown money could buy. Her hair and makeup had been styled and applied by highly paid professionals. Her father intended her to be the centerpiece of the evening, the shining prize to be dangled before a drooling client. He couldn’t dangle her until he could find her, however. A search had begun.

  It was Rico who found her, in her evening gown and near-priceless jewelry, visiting the rabbit hutch near the tennis courts.

  Carinne cuddled and cooed at the newest baby rabbits until a shadow fell over her. The frightened bunnies fled to the far corners of their hutch, and Carinne turned to look up into Rico’s frown.

  “They’re waiting for you,” he said.

  Averell and Iglesias, the client’s representative, sipped cocktails in the elegant formal living room. Iglesias’ bodyguard stood sentinel on one side of the room’s entrance, Dubreau stood on the other side. Rico entered, directing Carinne ahead of him with his hand on her elbow. She looked beautiful, of course, and she wore her carefully perfect smile, but she felt as if she were being led to her own execution.

  Her father and his guest stood from their chairs when she came into the room. Her father’s smile was too sweet, letting her know she was in disfavor and had better toe the line for the remainder of the evening. He stepped toward her. “Ah, here she is! Always fashionably late.”

  Rico delivered her hand into her father’s.

  Her father, in turn, placed her hand into the outstretched palm of Iglesias.

  “Definitely worth waiting for,” said Iglesias, bowing and placing a kiss on her hand.

  Averell set his cocktail glass on the nearest end table and extended an arm toward the door. “Now that everyone is here, let’s eat dinner, so these two young people can get to the theater before the curtain goes up.”

  Dubreau drove the couple from Coconut Grove to a theatre in Miami Beach, that night. When the play ended and Iglesias escorted Carinne from the theater, Dubreau waited at the curb, standing at attention beside the limousine. Stiffly formal, he opened the back door and helped Carinne into the car.

  Before joining Carinne in the vehicle, Iglesias slipped some paper money into Duby’s hand.

  “Mathieson Hammock,” the man said as he settled himself on the seat.

  “Oui, monsieur.” Dubreau closed the car door.

  The sandy beach and meandering paths of Mathieson Hammock were popular with boaters, swimmers, and nature enthusiasts. But, only one vehicle was parked beneath the overhanging royal poinciana and banyan trees this night. Mathieson Hammock Park officially closed at dusk, but a determined driver could wrangle his vehicle past the flimsy gate, and Dubreau had no trouble getting in and driving all the way to the end of the park, where the road ended and the beach began.

  Thus it was that the Averell limo was the only vehicle for miles. It squatted, black and silent, only twenty white-sand feet from the gently lapping bay waters.

  Dubreau sat stiff-necked in the front seat, trying to ignore sounds coming from behind him.

  Hidden from the chauffeur’s view by the car’s black-tinted, bullet-proof privacy panel, Iglesias didn’t wait long before making his move. He began with soft words, and followed that with tentative touching. A hand on the knee. Fingertips on the back of her neck. And, soon the hands were moving from her extremities toward the center of her body, and from the outside of her clothing toward openings to the inside.

  Carinne strove to keep her clothes and her dignity intact. “Mister Iglesias!”

  “Before I met you, your father told me you were lovely...”

  “Please, don’t!”

  “... but this is better than I expected.”

  “No! Please!”

  “In my country, a woman your age would be married already.”

  A car door slammed. Iglesias was glad the driver had been discreet enough to leave the vehicle. He pressed himself upon the squirming, protesting Carinne, but suddenly felt a rush of air as the door behind him swung open. Something yanked him backward by his collar and dragged him out of the car, dumping him onto the beach sand.

  “Mademoiselle said not tonight,” said the man standing over him.

  Duby then lifted Iglesias by the lapels, set him on his feet, and released him. “Why don’t we just take a walk and cool off,” Duby suggested.

  Iglesias swung his fist in a roundhouse punch designed to take off the chauffeur’s head. Mistake. With effortless grace, Duby blocked the incoming blow and delivered three counter-punches in rapid succession.

  Staggering backward, anger somehow keeping him upright, Iglesias fumbled a pistol from a holster at the small of his back. Swaying on his feet, he grasped the weapon in both hands and aimed carefully at Dubreau. Before he could pull the trigger, however, his opponent’s well-placed kick sent the pistol south and Iglesias’ jaw north, in a blurry-fast double whammy.

  Both men were still standing, and they came at one another like grizzlies, scrabbling in circles while locked together, chest to chest, each man’s hands clutching his foe’s shoulders. Together, they had stumbled to the water’s edge when Iglesias shoved free and launched a killer roundhouse punch. Dubreau ducked it, allowing Iglesias to whirl himself right into the bay.

  Iglesias lay panting in water three inches deep. For a moment, he worked to get back into his lungs the precious air his fall had knocked out of him. In seconds, he was able to focus again on the chauffeur. With a snarl, Iglesias heaved himself to his feet and took two sloshing steps toward his opponent. Dubreau brought a left uppercut out of nowhere. It met Iglesias’ chin and lifted him onto his toes before dropping him like an anvil. The well-dressed anvil did not move. Tiny wavelets less than two inches high lapped against the sides of his inert form.

  The man was indeed fortunate to have landed face-up in the extremely shallow water at the shoreline. He could easily have drowned, if his nose and mouth had been submerged. And, Dubreau would not have taken the trouble to turn him over, though he did take the trouble to remove a cellphone from the man’s pocket and toss it fifty yards out into the bay.

  Duby looked up from the downed man to see Carinne standing a few yards away, hugging herself and trembling. He went to her and touched her elbow, turning her toward the limousine.

  “Wh-, what will you do with him?” Carinne whispered.

  “Nothing, mademoiselle. He will wake, or he will not. If he does, he can hitchhike back to town. Come, I will take you home.”

  “No! I can’t go home yet. It’s too early.” She shivered, but the air was warm. Her eyes were wide, and she chewed at her lips. “I’m suppose
d to ‘entertain’ him after the play. If I go home now, Daddy will know something went wrong.”

  “He will know that pretty soon anyway, I think.” Duby gestured toward Iglesias. “You should get to your father before he does.”

  She shook her head.

  “But, you must tell your father how this man mistreated you,” Dubreau insisted.

  “You are a kind man,” she said. “You cannot understand a man like my father. His business is everything to him. People are merely tools to get the job done. My mother, before she died, and now me. My father meant me as a treat for Señor Iglesias tonight. It was part of a big business deal they are doing together. I did not do what was expected of me. Which of us do you think my father will say was treated unfairly?”

  Dubreau’s face was stony. He gave no answer.

  “Please,” she said, begging with her eyes. “I need to get my head together for a little while, first.”

  The chauffeur hesitated, no doubt mentally listing at least a dozen reasons this was a bad idea. He made the decision anyhow. “You can come to my place,” he said.

  Coconut Grove could be loud and lively, even very late at night. Laughing revelers crowded the sidewalk restaurants, and well-amplified live music barged into the street whenever a nightclub door opened and closed. Every lamppost, awning, doorway, and even every plant was lit with neon or floodlights or tiny, twinkling LED bulbs.

  But, at the bend of the road where Dinner Key Marina lay, the lights were fewer and dimmer; the voices, music, and traffic were muted. Aboard a sailboat, the Do Bee 2, moored sixty yards offshore, only giggling and low voices could have been heard – but there was no one around to hear them. The lights from the main cabin shone from its windows and reached only far enough to pick out the rowboat tethered alongside.

  In the cabin, Carinne and Dubreau sipped hot tea at the galley table. The boat’s interior was clean enough, but it had the sloppy/homey look of a boat that was lived in. This was no shiny, weekend hobby toy.

  Dubreau was amusing Carinne by drawing caricatures on pages from a sketchpad. She was nervous at first, but he beguiled her into enjoying a sort of revenge upon her enemies without exposing herself to any danger. At least, for now.

  He began with her tennis coach, the housekeeping and gardening staff, the chef – all people she knew and did not fear. Then, when he felt she would be able to laugh and not cry, he created a wolf-like cartoon–Iglesias. When she smiled at that, he went on to draw her father, Kyle Averell, as a wacky Attilla, the Hun. Finally, he made a joke of putting his own face onto a silly super-hero labeled The Masked Avenger.

  They laughed together as he closed the sketchpad and left the table to refill their tea mugs. Carinne flipped back through older pages of his pad, while his back was turned. She found a drawing of Agent Frank Stone.

  “Uncle Francis!” she cried in surprise.

  Duby gave a quick glance and turned away again. “Ah, oui. The policeman from the cemetery. I did not know his name. Is he always so bad tempered?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, moving on to other pages. “I don’t see my mother’s family much.”

  Dubreau brought their mugs back to the table and took his seat again. Carinne had found a self-portrait of Dubreau’s head on the body of a sphinx. She showed him, and he nodded.

  “Why don’t you just run away, cheri? Your uncle is a policeman. He would help you, no?”

  “You sound like Uncle Francis. What you don’t understand is ... I know my father does bad things, and I can’t stop him. But, my father needs me. I know he does. And he loves me, and I’m all the family he’s got now.”

  “And you love him.”

  “He is my father.” Her tone said the discussion was over.

  Dubreau thought through the situation and decided to take another tack.

  “What do you want, mon petit? From your father. From life.”

  Carinne closed the sketchpad and looked at him, taking a few seconds to consider his question carefully.

  He waited, quiet as a sphinx.

  “I wanted to finish college. I was thinking of becoming a veterinarian, you know? Taking care of animals.” Her eyelids drooped and she looked downcast, but she straightened her shoulders and continued with greater energy. “And, I’ll do that someday. Just, not right now. Daddy needs me now.” She looked into his eyes. “You can understand that, can’t you?”

  The sphinx did not answer that question.

  “If you change your mind,” he said evenly, “you must tell me. Tell me if you ever decide you want to leave. C'est bien?”

  Carinne reached out to where his hand sat beside his tea mug on the table. With a firm grip on his hand, she urged him: “Don’t take my side. I can secretly think of you as a friend, but my father must not think you are for me, because then he will say you are against him. You never want him to think that. Never. Once, one of the men took up for my mother, and then he ... he was just gone. She didn’t come out of her room for weeks after that.”

  Pulling his hand away gently, Dubreau left the table and paced around the small galley/cabin. With his back to her, he gritted out the words, “I was younger than you are now when I left Quebec. I loved my father, too, but I was finally big enough to hit back. I knew, the next time he came at me in a drunken rage, I would kill him.”

  He turned to look at Carinne, took a deep breath, and continued in a voice empty of emotion. “I had no Uncle Francis policeman to help me. I spent years in the streets, moving south for the warm winters, working my way through school, becoming a citizen. It was hard. It made me hard. I would hate to see that happen to you, chéri.”

  Carinne was moved by his sincere concern for her. She rose from the table, walked to him, and took his massive hands into her small ones. “I’ve never had a best friend before, have you?”

  He shook his head. Like a sphinx, he allowed no sentiment to cross his visage, neither positive nor negative.

  Carinne smiled at him. “Well, I guess we’ve both got one now, want ‘em or not.”

  He freed one hand and used it to tousle her hair as if he were a big brother.

  In the pre-dawn twilight, Dubreau piloted the limousine up the front driveway of the Averell mansion. After parking at the entrance to the home, he left the driver’s seat and went to open the rear passenger door for Carinne.

  He maintained his professional, aloof manner, waiting at attention by the open door. She emerged from the car, ignoring him as was proper and customary. An instant before he would have closed the door, however, she turned back and delivered a shy peck to his cheek.

  Then she entered the house, and the chauffeur continued about his normal duties.

  It was late afternoon of the following day when Iglesias, sporting a fresh set of cuts and bruises, relaxed, smirking, in a leather guest chair in Kyle Averell’s opulent office. He was not sure how long he had been unconscious or how long he had walked along the highway before getting a ride. He knew he had spent two unhappy hours with a doctor and several more hours sleeping off his ordeal – a painful one in many different ways.

  At any rate, he had finally made his way to the Averell mansion, determined to share his news in person. He expected that Averell would have heard some version of the debacle from his daughter, already, and he was right.

  With such an important business agreement in the balance, however, he was not surprised that Averell was eager to hear the other side of the story. While Iglesias had told his version of the previous night’s events – in elaborate and lurid detail – Averell had paced the Oriental carpet, listening.

  The account finished, Iglesias reached for his cup and took a sip of espresso. He winced when the hot liquid touched his split lip.

  Averell had come to a standstill in the center of the room, facing Iglesias. Behind the guest’s chair, Rico stood against the far wall, looking very pleased.

  Averell eyed Rico and barked, “Where is Dubreau?”

  “In the gym,” said Rico, “tr
aining the new man.”

  Averell nodded. “Have Guillermo take Carinne on an extended shopping trip, at least four hours. As soon as they’re gone, bring Dubreau to me.”

  Rico left the office a happy man.

  Frank Stone’s office was in a bad part of town. At least, it was made to look like a bad part of town. The buildings resembled a cross between industrial park and ghost town. The only color was the green of grassy weeds springing up between the irregular cracks in the pavement. Empty parking lots surrounded peeling, rusting, sometimes leaning, corrugated metal walls.

  The lots were empty because the employees parked inside the buildings. Entry doors, sheltered on walls not visible from the street, were raised and lowered by security officers. Those allowed to enter were few and, even though familiar faces, were required to provide proper identification badges to gain access.

  Inside, however, was a different world, one in which state-of-the-art electronics combined with government-drab furniture.

  Stone’s jowly face was reflected in the computer screen on his desk. A schematic of the Averell estate appeared on the screen.

  A glass wall separated Stone’s desk from a room full of similar desks, with telephones and computer screens as well as briefing folders. Dozens of men and women, all of them younger than Stone, worked at the desks in that room.

  A young agent whose nametag read “Agee” set a cup of coffee down between Stone and his computer keyboard and then stood across the desk, sipping his own coffee. “Give it up, Stoney,” Agee said. “The guy is like Osama Bin Laden. You’re not gonna get to him.”

  Stone pointed to the drawings of Averell’s house. “You know who he’s got in there now? Iglesias. Friggin’ Iglesias, himself. Next week he’ll be having a fish fry with Castro.”