Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) (3 page)

Tubby was impressed.

More food came.

The BBQ Shrimp were suitably jumbo and drenched in a rich, spicy brown sauce, spiked with local beer and accompanied by a snowy scoop of stone–ground grits. A fragrant mist arose from the plate.

Tubby’s three tiny filets were served over house-made potato frites with a Creole wine sauce and, for extra measure, a sauce béarnaise. It was all almost too pretty to eat.

“So, to continue,” E.J. went on while they both dug in, “I have invested money in a young man in the Bywater who is producing ‘Angelo’s Elixir,’ and he has been distributing it to great applause at a few of the neighborhood corner stores.”

“It sounds like a winner, but is it safe to drink?”

“We have the tests we need,” E.J. said evasively. “And we’re ready to step up to the big time. So what I’d like is for you to talk to the proprietor, Angelo Spooner.”

“Talk about what?”

“About protecting his rights, his copyrights, his trademarks.”

To Tubby, a new client was better than a serving of prime steak, but he saw a problem.

“Do you want me to represent him, or you?” He didn’t relish trying to collect any money from E.J.

“Well, Angelo’s going to pay you.”

“All right. Would you like to bring him to see me?”

“I think he would rather come alone. I’ll get him to call you.”

That was satisfactory, and the meal ended well. E.J. picked up the tab.

But, despite the well-laid plans, Angelo was mistrustful of lawyers and never called.

* * *

By then Angelo had other things on his mind. He had just met Sister Soulace’s sister, Aimee Thaw, who seemed to warm up to him. She worked at a Subright Sandwich shop not too far away, and Angelo had met her when she dropped by to visit her sister. He started going over to the restaurant for breakfast almost every day. She said a Subright diet would help him lose weight. Angelo really didn’t like egg whites on a roll, but he did like having a pretty friend who showed an interest in talking to him.

They didn’t try any deep conversation— mostly “How’ya doin’?” and “It’s supposed to rain this weekend,” but he finally got up the nerve to ask her out. Sister Soulace approved of the budding relationship. She loved her sister, and she had come to love Angelo. So she lent him her purple Caddy to pick Aimee up from her Cadiz Street rental. Angelo took his date to dinner at New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company on St. Charles Avenue.

They were both big fans of the thin-fried catfish served there and the garlicky buttery potatoes. Tentatively, they ventured deeper and shared some truths about growing up. Angelo reminisced about his own childhood in Chalmette, when his dad would boil crawfish in the yard, but he didn’t reveal his criminal past. She told about her happy girlhood in St. Stephen’s Parish, leaving out an abusive uncle and an older sister often zonked out on hallucinogens. He asked how she liked her job, and Aimee became silent and picked at her fish.

“I hate it worse than anything,” she said flatly.

This sent Angelo into a spin thinking about what he hated the most, which was deceitfulness in the face of the fearsome Lord, but to keep himself from coming clean about his jail-time he blurted out, “Do you like music?”

Aimee wasn’t perplexed by this change of topic. “Sure," she said. “I love it.”

“Me, too,” Angelo said enthusiastically. “I like Swamp Pop. What’s your favorite?”

“I love Zydeco!” she exclaimed. “I know it sounds funny. But I also love Swamp Pop.”

“Me, too.” Angelo couldn’t believe this. “I like Zydeco, but Swamp Pop hits the spot for me. Boozoo Chavis and Buddy Charles had a lot in common.”

“See ya’ later alligator,” Aimee giggled.

“I’ve got a paper in my shoe,” Angelo came back. “How come you know old stuff like that?”

“I just do,” Aimee said.

Together they were a hit. Suddenly Angelo had a girlfriend to go with his new business, and his new life.

As a small boy Nordie Magee had in mind creating a paradise for birds. With his mother’s help he planted bamboo in the backyard during the summer when school was out. By the time Labor Day rolled around green shoots had exploded everywhere and raced up to the roofline. Whole flocks of colorful blue jays, mocking birds, starlings and cardinals moved in, and their songs made him and his mother laugh as they sat outside drinking Cokes on upturned sheetrock-mud tubs.

But on Halloween, Nordie remembered that day well, his father got out of prison. One of the first things the old man said when he got his bearings was, “This fucking dump looks like a jungle.” He got a machete and while Nordie was passing around the tiny pink eggshells he had collected for the other 4th graders to see at show-and-tell, his dad whacked and whacked at the tall canes until their limp branches and slender leaves were piled in heaps all over the yard.

As for dad, after spending the next day looking at the mess he had created, he got into a shouting match with his wife, pounded her senseless, and moved out never to be seen again. Though he was out of the picture, the steam that had been pent up inside the old man was injected straight into Nordie.

The piles stayed where they were, turning yellow, making the backyard impenetrable. They remained there for a long time, until his mom found a boyfriend who liked to work and sweat outside when he wasn’t driving his taxi cab about the city. The yard looked better after a few weeks, but the useless destruction of his bamboo and his non-existent father left Nordie tragically furious at life itself.

He became withdrawn in school. He started pushing kids around. He smoked cigarettes when he was ten and pot when he was eleven. Graduating high school was not so much a milestone of achievement as it was a stage from which to take stock of the collection of adolescent thugs and dope dealers he had gathered around him. He intended to carry them on to much higher things.

But he needed a job or a cover, and he got what he needed when, courtesy of a cousin, he received an offer to become a “correctional officer” in the jails of Criminal Sheriff Frank Mulé. The possibilities in these institutions for graft, extortion, and networking were unlimited. He passed the civil service test and bought the requisite black uniform at American Police Equipment.

Nordie earned his spurs doing anything his captain told him the Sheriff wanted done. Mostly that was beating the crap out of inmates who complained about conditions or who just pissed off one of the important guards. And if an inmate had any money and wanted some other guy put in isolation or taught a lesson, Nordie was the go-to guard. He got promoted and was able to expand his enterprise.

“I took a vow to obey the Sheriff,” he would say over beers and Trout Almandines at Mandina’s. “I didn’t take no vow of poverty.”

The advent of cell phones opened up a significant new line of work for Nordie Magee. Jail inmates would pay practically anything for one, and some of these guys had heavy-duty “friends” on the outside who had no problem coming up with the cash. Nordie had his old high school buddies like “Gums” Bigelow, who had been kicked off the oil rigs for stealing from his mates, and Mick Battistella, who sold pot to youngsters outside of the Pick Up & Go on Magazine. Both of them followed Nordie to work on the Sheriff’s payroll.

He would dispatch one or the other to meet with the inmate’s “friend” at a neutral spot, like Verret’s Lounge on Washington Avenue, and pick up the payoff and the phone. If the friend didn’t have a clean phone of her own, the officers had a box full of them for sale, which they had acquired for free by confiscating them in shakedowns from other inmates. Smuggling them into the jail was as easy as sticking them into your nylon holster, right next to the can of pepper spray. The guard who checked jailers in for their shifts was too intimidated by Nordie and his muscular bros to even lift his head.

Nordie bought an RV where he could park his girlfriends, and a new house out by the Lake for himself and his mother, who was having arthritis problems and needed a place with no stairs. He took vacations to Vegas with his gang and went sailing on a cruise to Cancun with a Decatur Street stripper. Life was great, but it all went to hell when Sheriff Mulé, the “Crime Czar” himself, was shot and killed at the Alliance for Reformed Government pre-election gala. His opponent, who had only picked up about two hundred votes, got to be Sheriff by default. This was some tow-truck driver named Adrian Duplessis, more popularly known as Monster Mudbug. He wasn’t very smart, in Nordie’s book, but he had grown up in Algiers with half the guys who worked at the jail, and those guys ratted out Nordie and his cronies.

Before long, instead of beating up complainers, the new Sheriff was letting these same unhappy prisoners file lawsuits in Federal Court. Nordie even got called to testify by some bitch with a British accent from the Louisiana Coalition on Jails and Prisons.

At the end of all this, there was a consent decree, and Nordie was out. They even tried to take his pension away, but he got it back from Civil Service. No credible proof of any malfeasance, they said. And they were right about that, but Nordie had to look for another career.

In the course of his jail management, Nordie had met a few high rollers at gambling halls and gentlemen’s clubs, so he felt pretty confident that something would turn up. Nevertheless, it was a low period. He had always been a big boy. Over 180 pounds in high school. But now he ballooned up to 215, and his mother said she was going to stop making him any more of his favorites, like macaroni and cheese for breakfast, gumbo with potato salad for lunch, and three-bean dip for Saints games.

* * *

Aimee Thaw, now Angelo’s girlfriend, had grown up in a funny household. Her father was a longshoreman who liked Kurt Vonnegut and her mother was a poet who liked Lawrence Welk and spent her days draped in a gauzy white dress with her hair pinned up by silk flowers.

There had been a brother but he died of the flu, and then there was her sister who had begun to dress in black and zone out nonstop on the Grateful Dead. The death of the brother drove Aimee’s sister to run away to Memphis for two years. She returned as Sister Soulace with a whole new even nuttier and spacier personality. “Sister” said she was staying in contact with their dead brother through “the ethers.” Aimee remained at home during these troubles and cared for her mom who often experienced extreme distress from the unprettiness of the world. But after Sister returned, she and mom would smoke pot together and talk continuously to the spirits of the dead, while Aimee sang folksongs to them and dreamed of a career as a recording artist.

She still had the dream, but so far it hadn’t worked out. Instead, she got waitress jobs, dated a disk jockey, and moved into her own apartment. Now the disk jockey was gone, and Aimee still got by with serving food. For the past three months she had been building sandwiches on the bread of your choice at Subright. The problem, which she had been ready to tell Angelo about, was that Mister Momback, her manager, was hitting on her big time. He would follow her into the stock room where they kept all the freezers and cleaning supplies and try to feel her up. When she resisted he put her on the wake-up shift, which meant getting to the store at six in the morning. This was extra tough because of another thing she hadn’t told Angelo about. Aimee had a four-year-old at home, the fruit of the disk jockey and their brief and very unsatisfactory relationship. So far Mister Momback had succeeded in getting his hand under the apron and even up her shirt. She had slapped him away, but she needed the job.

When Aimee revealed this tormenting relationship to her sister, Sister Soulace put a voodoo, flavored with Hindoo, curse on Mister Momback. What the hell good was that going to do?

Tubby Dubonnet was sitting comfortably in his office on the 43rd floor of the Place Palais skyscraper with its mellow coral-colored walls and panoramic view of the French Quarter and the crescent of the Mississippi River, waiting for a visitor.

Cherrylynn, his longtime secretary, had brewed a pot of Community chicory coffee and seemed to have shown an unusual interest in this meeting.

When the guest, a professor of Latin American politics from Loyola University, arrived she showed him into Tubby’s presence with a graciousness at odds with her normal, often spunky impertinence. Undoubtedly it was because she was taking a course with this very same professor.

“Would you like me to stay, boss?” she asked, her innocent eyes set off by her freckles and red hair that was swept away from her shoulders by green bands.

“No. We’ll be fine,” he said with some surprise. “Do you want some coffee or water, Professor Prima?”

“Can’t do it. Already had plenty this morning.” The professor was a thin, good-looking young man with broad shoulders and a head of black hair. He settled into the upholstered leather chair in front of Tubby’s desk. Cherrylynn, who was also good-looking but a bit older than her instructor, retreated sullenly and closed the door behind her.

“You’ve got a great view,” he said, taking in the expanse of blue sky, the flat gray of Lake Pontchartrain to the north, the hint of marshland and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and a river running through it.

Tubby acknowledged the compliment. “Is everything going well at your school?” he asked. He feared that perhaps the purpose of this visit was to hit him up for funds.

“We’re going through some cutbacks,” Prima said cheerfully, “but I think the institution will survive. Things have been quite routine since all the excitement you caused.”

“What excitement was that?”

“Finding those historic old papers and turning them over to the Tulane library.”

The professor was referring to the strange events of the past fall when Tubby had delivered to the Tulane library, for safekeeping and historical analysis, a number of plastic bins crammed with records kept by a secretive group of Cuban exiles whom Tubby believed had had a hand in a murder of great concern to him. Of more historical significance, the papers appeared to contain hitherto unknown facts about the existence of a clandestine society of militant Latinos and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Within hours of his delivery of the papers to the university library, however, a person or persons unknown broke into the huge campus building and stole them under cover of darkness. This had received some attention in the
New Orleans Advocate
, but the story didn’t last.