4 Shelter From The Storm (20 page)

“It’s just gotten to me,” Tubby said.

“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen, buddy,” Fox said. She hunched over, hands clasped and elbows on knees, just like Tubby.

“There’s far too much violence in this city,” he said.

“Yeah, but nothing new about that.”

“The thing is, there is something new here,” Tubby explained fervently. “I’m feeling like there’s some kind of evil hand at work all around us.”

Fox looked at him sharply.

“Some kind of force that can set up a heist at a bank, that does deals with big oil companies, that can reach into a major hospital and kill a man. Somebody’s pulling the strings.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, then remembered she was a cop and took it off.

“I’ve lived in this city for more than twenty years,” he said. “Almost everything I care about is here. I can’t let him ruin it for me.”

“What are you talking about, Tubby?”

“I know why they robbed the bank vault. It was just to get Noel Parvelle’s counterletter. All the other stuff they took was just lagniappe. He needed that counterletter to put together his oil deal. He, they, the mastermind. They killed one, two, three people to get that letter. If Dan doesn’t make it, that’ll be another person they just whacked out of the way. I know the ‘why,’ I just don’t know the ‘who,’”

“You’re jumping around a lot, Tubby. You don’t know all those things are connected.”

“Hell, I know it, and you know it,” he yelled. “There’s a goddamn evil hand at work here.”

“Oh, knock it off! Granted, there’s always been someone behind the scenes calling the shots in New Orleans. That’s how this place works. That’s how it’s always worked. But I wouldn’t call it an ‘evil hand.’”

“It hasn’t always been this way,” he insisted, too loudly. Seeing her expression he lowered his voice. “Nobody’s ever been allowed to steal anything he wants, kill anybody he doesn’t like, and get away with it.”

“Tubby, this is not like you. You’re more, I don’t know, reasonable than this.”

“To hell with that. Dan is in the hospital. Mrs. Lostus is dead. Monk is dead. Darryl Alvarez is dead. Tania’s brother is dead. Hell, they probably even killed Joe Caponata. You can’t call this business as usual.”

“What are you babbling about? I don’t even know who half of these people are,” she said.

“Well I do!” he shouted.

She shook her head and looked at the sandy dirt, the ants crawling over a lollipop.

“You’re hopeless.”

“Maybe, but I’m going to get the sons of bitches, whoever they are.” There was great intensity in his voice.

“And what’s any of this got to do with Joe Caponata’s death? That old mafioso got run over by a car.”

“Yeah? Yeah?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you excited like this. You were always the calm one.”

“I haven’t always played by the rules, Fox, but I’ve never screwed a client or lied to the judge. But that’s just not enough to cut it anymore.” He spread his hands helplessly. Then he looked away. “This has been a very disturbing year for me,” he said, almost to himself.

“So take a vacation,” the detective spoke softly.

“I’m just not in the mood for that kind of advice.” Tubby fixed his eyes on hers.

“Suit yourself,” she said, and stood up. “I’ve got to go to work.”

Tubby followed her down the sidewalk.

“I’m asking you to help me with this,” he told her back. “It might reach into Texas and the Gulf Coast. It could be national.”

“You must think I’m as nuts as you are,” Fox said. “You go messing around with some ol’ evil hand and it’s liable to snuff you out like a candle in church. I already saved your life once this week. I’m not gonna do it again.”

That shut Tubby up, for a moment.

“I can’t just take a vacation while the city I live in— supposedly the best and friendliest city anywhere— is being poisoned to death,” he said finally, almost inaudibly.

“You’re way too worked up.” Fox had reached her car. She turned to face Tubby. “When I was a little girl, my mother used to sing a blues song. It went like this:

“Dark green trees

Swaying in the summer breeze.

Love’s so sweet

When strangers meet.

Little baby cries

Hearing young men’s lies.

Fish are cooking,

My man’s sure good-looking.

I might be your Queen,

Or your bad dream.

Nobody ain’t seen

Mama’s New Orleans.”

“Your mother was a blues singer?”

“My mother was a homemaker. She raised us kids and never worked for anybody else. My father was a Pullman porter.”

“ ‘I might be your Queen’?”

“Those are the words.”

“The point being, what?”

“You figure it out. The point being, you can dwell on what’s good, or you can dwell on what’s bad. There’s plenty of both. But take it from a cop. You can’t lift all the world’s problems on your shoulders.”

She got in her car.

“I think you’ll feel better tomorrow. Really,” she told him.

Finally, his feet were getting dry. Elvin could smell the leather of his old worn-out shoes baking where they leaned precariously up against a hunk of driftwood beside the fire. His socks, suspended in the smoke and flying sparks on a green willow branch, gave off a rich scented steam like a boiling fish. Above his head, the dense trees stirred, scattering stray droplets of yesterday’s storm.

Elvin’s simple camp in the woods by the river, near the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers, had taken a beating from the rain. The blue plastic tarp that provided his shelter had ripped loose from its bits of rope and flown like a great wounded bird through the jungle until it wrapped itself fast around a high cypress branch. It remained there flapping annoyingly at him.

His small store of usable clothes was drenched and muddy. What he regretted most was the loss of his two rolls of toilet paper— now sodden lumps covered with brown leaves. That and the toll two days of cloudburst had taken on his feet, which were itching to distraction, until finally he had managed to get his campfire lighted with the help of a quart of motor oil he had swiped from the Corps.

Through the bushes he could watch a long line of blue barges being pushed upriver by a fiery red tugboat. The captain was looking at him, and at the smoke from his fire, but neither man acknowledged the other.

All of a sudden Elvin heard a branch snap behind him. Twisting his head in fear, he beheld not what he expected— some rangy dog set loose in the woods for exercise— but a thin figure of a man, peculiar ears protruding beneath a brown cowboy hat, held on by a green band he thought, standing motionless not five feet away and watching him with expressionless eyes.

“Ooh, scared me, neighbor,” Elvin said, trying to quiet his own raspy breathing. He attempted to rise.

The strange man did not speak, and his gaze did not leave Elvin. Then, quick as a snake, he cocked back a length of tree branch and swung it like a baseball bat at Elvin’s face. It connected solidly with a blast of pain. The vagabond fell to his knees and would have screamed but the branch fell upon his head again and again.

The bludgeoning continued until the features of Elvin’s head were flattened and crushed together in a stew of red flesh. His lifeless form was then roughly lifted and dumped headfirst into the coals, causing a great eruption of sparks that danced away in the breeze as quiet returned to the woods.

Calmly, the tramp’s attacker poured the remains of a can of oil over the body and watched the fire gain new life. Then he sat down on the log where Elvin had been resting and pulled off his own muddy boots. He laid them by the fire as if to dry and picked up one of Elvin’s cracked brogans. He debated whether to put the stinking things on his feet or to just hike barefoot out of the woods. After he rested, that is. He felt very sleepy.

* * *

Detective Kronke was polite enough to interview Tubby at his office. The building was back in service again— elevator’s running and lights responding— though the halls were nearly empty. Many people were staying close to home, sorting out their private catastrophes.

Tubby’s secretary, Cherrylynn, had not made an appearance. There was not even a message from her on his voice mail, which had him a little worried.

The policeman arrived alone, promptly at twelve o’clock as he said he would. Tubby showed him the way in and invited him to sit in one of his leather chairs.

“Terrible flood,” the detective observed, extracting a pad and pen from his pocket.

“Yes, it was,” Tubby said. “How did you make out?”

“Personally? Oh, my car is shot for the second time in three years. All the rugs are going to have to come out of my house. Typical. You?”

“No real problem. Just water in my yard.”

“I think it was worse downtown than out where I live in Gentilly.”

“Possibly,” Tubby agreed.

“Anyway, to the business at hand. I understand that you were kidnapped by a group of men who shot a woman passing in the street, and they also shot a man who was trying to rescue you. These are probably the same boys who broke into the First Alluvial Bank. I know you’ve already given your statement to Homicide. I’m just trying to find out what I can about the robbery.”

Tubby listened in silence.

“As of now,” the detective continued, “we do not have a complete list of what was stolen. The bank is still in the process of notifying its customers and so forth. They’re supplying lists of what they claim was in the safe-deposit boxes. True? Who knows.” Kronke shrugged. “Right now it doesn’t look like very much will be recovered.”

Tubby nodded.

“I am told that you saw some of the stuff that was stolen from the bank.”

“Yes, if that’s what it was. They had a canvas bag, and I saw some jewelry that looked like diamonds and some other things. It was all in a pile.” The vague response did not seem to bother the cop.

“Now it looks like, when the leader of the gang was making his escape, he actually started throwing this jewelry around in Jackson Square. He created quite a mob scene.”

“I wasn’t there,” Tubby said.

“No. You took a little swim in the river, didn’t you?” The detective chuckled.

Tubby rubbed his eyes and recalled the weight of the waves closing over his head.

“Anyhow, he got away,” Kronke resumed. “And may or may not have escaped with any of his loot. Anybody who got their hands on any of the stolen property in Jackson Square got out of the area as quick as they could. Would you recognize this guy again?”

“Yes. No doubt. I gave his description to Fox Lane, and she ran it through the computer. She told me nothing came up.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’m just covering the same ground. Now let’s see— there were also two fellers and a woman taken hostage with you.”

“Yes.”

“These two men say that the only particular items they saw that might have come from the bank were a watch one of the bad guys had on and a diamond necklace another one had.”

“Okay.”

“As far as the woman, they say they don’t know who she was. They say she came with you.”

“That’s right. She was someone I met at the Royal Montpelier the night of the flood. She gave me shelter from the storm. Her name was Marguerite. I’m not sure how you spell her last name. You could get it from the hotel.”

“Yeah. I already did. She checked out and apparently went home to Chicago. I got her address from the credit card she used, and we’ll be calling her. I don’t expect her to tell us much except maybe what a sick city this is.”

“No.”

“You got anything to add?”

“Like what?”

“Hell if I know. None of this leads anywhere. We may just have to wait and see if anything turns up that we can identify as coming from the bank. Or maybe the guy who got away will trip up and get caught. Right now it’s just more forms for me to fill out.”

Tubby escorted the detective back to the door and watched him slouch down the hall to the elevators.

What was that son of a bitch really after, he asked himself. Is he part of it, too? Does he work for the guy who hired the crooks? Is he trying to find out what I know about Russell Ligi and his oil deal?

Too paranoid to stay long in one spot, Tubby locked his office up tight and hustled off to the parking garage where he could get his car and drive— anywhere.

The telephone rang too loudly.

“This is Fox,” the voice on the other end said.

“I got up this morning, and I didn’t feel any better,” Tubby replied. He stared at his own bleary, unshaven face in the bedroom mirror. He had been about to go to bed.

“Maybe this will help. Your mystery man cowboy is dead.”

“Roux?”

“Or whatever his name is. Some bird-watchers found him in the hobo jungle on the other side of the levee near the Corps of Engineers. He’d been beaten to death and partly burned up in a bonfire.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“The cowboy boots that you described were there. So was the hat with the green band, and the wet clothes. And so was an old pocket watch with the name Dubonnet etched on it.”

“That’s my grandfather’s watch. I’m grateful that you found it.”

“So, anyway, he’s in the morgue.”

“Have you learned his identity?”

“We’ve run what’s left of his prints, but so far there’s no match.”

“Who killed him?”

“No idea yet, and we may not ever know. It could have been another sicko living down on the batture. It could have been somebody off a boat.”

“It was probably the big-money people who planned this whole thing,” Tubby said, his voice rising.

“Yeah, I guess that could be it, too,” Fox sighed.

“Where do you go from here?” he asked.

“We’ll keep the file open,” she replied. He could visualize her shrugging. “But right now, Tubby, it’s three for three. Everybody implicated in the murder of Mrs. Lostus, everybody involved in the assault on Dan Haygood, has now gone to their reward.”

“And is burning in hell.”

“Maybe.”

“You know, don’t you, there was more to it than those three men.”

“Goodbye, Tubby.”

“Thanks for calling.”