Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series) (18 page)

The phone rang again.

“Hello, Daddy.”

“Hi, Debbie, what’s going on?”

“I’m going to come downtown in a little bit to see if Hiller’s can fix the gold chain you gave me for Christmas. I thought maybe you would have time for a cup of coffee.”

“Why, sure I would. What time do you think you’ll be here?”

“Maybe three-thirty. Should I come up?”

“Yeah, sure. Come on up and rescue me. We’ll go out and get something to eat or drink, you name it.”

“All right, Daddy, see ya.”

And the phone rang again.

It was Cherrylynn, reporting that Jynx Margolis wanted to talk to him. He said he would take the call.

“Hello, Tubby. What the hell is that?”

“What?” Tubby was confused.

“Some kind of damn roach just ran through my kitchen. Just a minute. Arlene! Arlene, did you see that enormous roach over there? See if you can’t capture that creature and show him the way home. Tubby, doesn’t this city drive you nuts? My house is clean, but they come in off the streets.”

“They must know where the best places are to eat. Take it as a compliment, Jynx.”

“I guess I might as well. Tubby, the reason I called is I need some money. You can understand that, I know. When are we going to make that pissant pay me?”

“The hearing is,” Tubby checked his calendar, “the sixteenth. But look, toots, you need to get all your bills together. You need to be able to lay it all out why three thousand-dollars-a-month alimony pendente lite isn’t enough to get by on.”

“I’d like to see you, or Byron, or Judge whatever-his-name-is get by on that.”

“I didn’t say we could, but you need to get your bills together anyway. Byron is paying the mortgage, and I can’t promise you that the judge will think you’re getting shorted. You’ll have to make a case.”

“I have plenty of bills, but they’re all in a box.”

“Well, get them out. You know, your hairdresser bill from Salon Senoj, your manicure bill, the French spa, all those important expenses.”

“Tubby, you’re fantastic.”

“Come see me next week. I’ll take you to lunch.”

“Okay, dear.” She hung up. Tubby started to plan his evening, but the phone rang again.

Debbie suggested La Madeleine in Jackson Square, but Tubby did not want to go so near the scene of last night’s violence. There had been nothing about it in the newspapers. He was still shaking, and it would have helped him to see the whole thing objectified in print. Instead, he and Debbie walked to a pastry shop on Gravier Street, where both ordered coffee and almond croissants. Tubby slathered butter on his.

“You don’t seem like you’re really here today, Daddy.”

“Sorry, lots of work. Ignore it.”

“Mother said you’re paying for Christine’s trip to Europe.”

“That’s right.”

“I think it’s so neat she’s getting to go.”

“Me, too. I wish you’d had the chance in high school.”

“I’m thinking of going next year after I graduate.”

“Let’s talk about it when the time gets a little closer. How is summer school going?”

“Okay, I guess. Lots of term papers to write. My problem isn’t with school.”

“What’s your problem with?”

“I probably shouldn’t tell you. I’m not sure Mom wants you to know, but it’s Harold. He’s been staying at my apartment for nearly a month now. I told him he could stay there while he looked for a place to live, which I thought might take him a week or two, but he’s moved in nearly everything he owns. I can hardly walk around in there, and I don’t know what to do.”

You would think if you got divorced you wouldn’t have to worry about your ex-wife’s deadbeat brother, but no such luck.

“Have you tried asking him to leave?”

“Yes, but he’s very good at ignoring me. It’s hard to evict your uncle. But I’m going to have to get him out of there, or my landlord is going to kick me out.”

“What for?”

“This is the part I’m probably not supposed to tell you. Evidently Harold has been dealing drugs, which I knew nothing about, honestly. He got in a big fight with some guys he brought to my apartment last week while I was at school. The landlord called the police.”

“Did they come out?”

“Yes, and they got everybody to quiet down. They didn’t arrest anybody or anything, but my landlord is really uptight about it, and really, Daddy, I don’t need this going on at my apartment.”

“You want me to help you throw him out?”

“I feel so bad saying it, Daddy, but what else am I supposed to do?”

“Look, you tell him he has to move out immediately. If that doesn’t work, I’ll come over this weekend and put his stuff on the street. You can mention that to him.”

“Thanks, Daddy. It’s just that it sounds so mean. I don’t know where he’s going to go.”

“Harold is almost thirty. He can figure it out.”

“I guess.” She was happier now. They finished their coffee, and Tubby walked her back to her car.

Over the throb of “Shake Your Body for Me,” Ali heard one of the girls scream in the back. He moved fast, leaving the bar and its sad-eyed customers to fend for themselves. He stepped past the sign marked PRIVATE and pushed open one after another of the doors to the rooms where the girls got dressed and sometimes gave quickies to the men who wanted them. Behind the third door a black girl named Jodi was sprawled on the floor, bleeding from her nose, shaking the cobwebs out of her head.

Standing over her was the short, fat deputy named Freddie.

Freddie swung around menacingly. “Get the fuck out of here,” he yelled at Ali.

“I know you, asshole,” Ali said to Freddie as he stepped in and swung his big right fist, holding a banana-sized leather-covered blackjack in a wide arc that ended right between Freddie’s eyes. Freddie’s legs gave way, and he collapsed with a soft thud on the floor.

“Go somewhere else,” Ali told the lady.

He picked up Freddie and slung him over his shoulders. The back door opened onto an alley. In the daytime, when the ice-cream shop next door was open, it was a tourist byway. At night, only things with four feet skittered through. Ali stuck his head outside and saw no one. He ran with the body about twenty yards and dropped it in a pile on the cobblestones. Then he ran back inside his club and bolted the door.

A little later a city policeman on horseback clopped slowly down the street. The horse, more than the officer, found the body, and lowered his nose to investigate. After inspecting the heap from his saddle for a full minute, the policeman dismounted. He rolled Freddie over, compared notes with his horse, and then radioed for backup and an ambulance to the morgue.

For an hour, the alley was full of people and flashing lights, then it was empty and dark again.

“The little fat fuck had an accident,” Ali told Monique on the telephone.

Tubby pulled in to the parking lot at the K&B drugstore and cruised around to a space some distance away from the store as he had been told. He parked directly under a street lamp. He waited, watching cars come and go. Some kids, who should have been home at that hour, coasted through on bikes. Last-minute shoppers went in and out of the store. On the streetcorner a fat lady with a pink dress, wearing a frayed straw sombrero, was selling hot tamales from a banged-up wagon. Her stand was illuminated by the hot phosphorous glow of a camping lantern. Tubby was checking out an old man pushing a shopping cart up the broken sidewalk, when a tap on the passenger window startled him. His partner, Reggie, opened the door and got in beside him.

“Hello, Tubby,” Reggie said softly.

Tubby was almost too surprised to speak, but he managed, “Hello, Reggie. I didn’t really expect to see you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the way the King Cake crumbles.” He looked in the backseat and saw the gym bag. “Is that the money?” he asked.

“Most of it. You know we could have done this at the office, or your house or mine.”

“This is the way they wanted it, Tubby. I’m just doing as I’m instructed.”

“What’s your interest?”

“That’s a little complicated, Tubby.”

“Are you just the money handler, Reggie?”

“You could put it that way. Sometimes you get messed up in things that won’t let go of you.”

“And that’s when you need a lawyer.”

“I need a priest, not a lawyer, Tubby. When the DEA boys show up as planned but the treasure chest is completely empty, and suspicious people think it’s your fault, you need more than a lawyer. Let’s see what’s in the bag.”

Tubby turned around and got it out of the backseat.

“You sure got me this time,” he said to Reggie and handed over the prize. Reggie settled it on his lap and unzipped it. He took a quick look inside.

“That’s a lot of cash,” he said to himself. He didn’t dig around; he just rubbed his chin and looked at Tubby. He took off his glasses.

“Would you do me a favor?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“Drive up Napoleon Avenue until I tell you to stop. I’ve got to turn this over to somebody else.”

“I’m not leaving here, Reggie. I’ve gone as far with this as I want to go.”

“It’s not like anything is going to happen to you. I mean, what worse could happen? I’m sorry about your chair and the painting. Honestly, Tubby, I only just found out a little while ago about your trouble in the French Quarter. I had nothing to do with that. I think they were kind of afraid to send another stranger to see you. They thought maybe you’d go off your rocker.”

“So they sent someone I trusted?”

“That’s basically it. But they really don’t trust me too much, and I’ve got to take them seriously. I’m scared as shit myself. They told me to get you to drop me off at a particular place on Napoleon, and then you drive away. That’s how I’m supposed to take the money to them. I’m the one taking the risk. It’s not like I get to make the rules. I’m under a little stress here, too.”

“Shit,” Tubby said. He started the car.

“Thanks, Tubby,” Reggie said. He zipped up the bag and put it between them on the seat. “Just drive up Napoleon toward the Lake.”

Tubby rolled out of the lot. A block from the drugstore the wide street turned residential, and a ceiling of live oaks absorbed the streetlights and urban sounds and restored the tropical night. There wasn’t much traffic.

“Where to?”

“Right up to the end, by all that construction.”

He was talking about an area where two boulevards intersected, and where the city had kept the streets torn up forever for a drainage-improvement project. No one could say when it would be finished.

“Give me a little background here, Reggie. How did you get into this?”

“Just doing what I do best,” Reggie sighed. “Putting Larry, Curly, and Moe together. You know me—slide in, slide out. Only this time I haven’t been able to slide out yet.”

“It looks like you’ve got more hands-on involvement than is your usual style, Reggie.”

“Yeah, Tubby. I made a mistake there. What I did wrong was I tipped off our esteemed Sheriff to the transaction. He has such a twisted mind, much more so than mine. He immediately liked the idea of ripping off the whole gang of thieves. Several of them were his friends, of course, but they hadn’t cut him in, so taking their money appealed to the Sheriff’s sense of justice. It was only a game to him, though. He didn’t have to put up anything to play. He just donated some dim-bulb muscle men who transformed a profitable investment venture into a murder case.”

“What were you going to get out of it, Reggie?”

“Money. Half of what’s in this bag. As you know, I love money. Now I’ll be lucky to get out of this with my good name and reputation intact. Nobody better find out about my side deal with the Sheriff.” He looked soberly at Tubby, who stared straight ahead, driving carefully.

“You were going to screw your clients,” Tubby mused.

“That I was.”

“Well, you fooled me, Reggie. You turned out to be an asshole after all.” Now what is he going to do about me? Tubby wondered.

“Right over there. That’s the spot.” Reggie directed Tubby into a sort of cul de sac where the road was supposed to go but was now blocked by a steep pile of dirt. Traffic had been routed away onto a long crescent of temporary blacktop around the construction.

Tubby stopped the car and let it idle. It was very dark. “This is far enough for me,” Tubby said.

“Take a walk with me,” Reggie said. He had put his glasses back on.

Tubby looked at him and shook his head.

“Let’s go,” Reggie told him. He showed Tubby the gun he was holding in his lap. It was a medium-size .38, and Reggie cocked it.

“Why, Reggie, you surprise me again. I guess this means our partnership is over. You can have my clients.”

“Thanks a million, Tubby. A joke a minute, right? I need you to get out of the car with me.”

“If you’re going to shoot that thing, go ahead. I’m not getting out of the car.”

“If you make me shoot you here, which I will, it’s going to mess up my plans, and I’m going to have to take it out on one of your darling girls. I’m not saying which one. You want to pick her right now?”

Tubby was looking at a fiercer face than he had ever seen on his partner before. Did Reggie have this much backbone, or was he bluffing? Their eyes held. Tubby blinked first. He turned away and opened the door.

“That’s two for you tonight, Reggie. You’re showing me talent for chicanery and deception I didn’t know you had.”

“Thanks, Tub. Just keep on talking.”

They both got out of the car. Reggie pointed with his gun into the darkness, in the direction of a path around the sand pile.

“You might as well carry this for me,” he said, handing Tubby the gym bag. Tubby started walking where he was told to walk, with Reggie behind him.

The whole area was surrounded with bright-red plastic fencing, and what had formerly been a wide street was now an excavation twenty feet deep and twice that wide. Like many New Orleans boulevards, these streets were built on top of vast concrete tunnels designed to carry off millions of gallons of rainwater. In a typical deluge they would fill up quickly. If it lasted more than thirty minutes or so, the pumping stations that forced the water uphill to Lake Pontchartrain six miles away would reach capacity, the tunnels would back up, manhole covers would pop off and release geysers, and the streets would start to overflow onto lawns and over doorsills. The city’s effort to increase pumping capacity and build ever-greater drainage systems was an engineering drama that had been going on for three hundred years. The project on Napoleon Avenue seemed to local residents to have been going on for much of that time.