Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8) (17 page)

They each got out, and Sandoval got out. Unlike at their last meeting at the bar, the policeman was fully uniformed and wearing his intimidating belt with its gun, radio, night stick, handcuffs, and Taser.

“Hey,” Tubby said, extending his hand. Sandoval looked at it for a second before he shook it. The two men were almost eye-to-eye. Tubby was heavier across the middle. Sandoval was squared off like a solid block of wood.

“Who’s this guy?” Sandoval asked.

“He’s Sanré Fueres, a private detective. He worked some with Ireanous Babineaux.”

“Hi,” Flowers said. They didn’t shake hands.

“I’ve got one file. It’s in the back seat.” The cop opened the rear door of his NOPD Crown Vic. “Get in and we can talk.”

Flowers was shaking his head, but Tubby slid into the seat and reached for the manila folder.

Sandoval slammed the door.

“Beat it!” he told Flowers.

“No way! Let him out of there!”

Tubby had found that the folder contained blank sheets of paper. He was beating on the window.

Sandoval pulled out his badge and shoved it into Flowers’ face.

“He’s a suspect. Illegal possession of records. You are, too. Bend it over!” He pushed Flowers over the trunk of his police car. “I’m going to arrest you,” he said. “Spread those legs.” He had a hand on his Taser.

This wasn’t Flowers’ first rodeo. Tubby watched as Flowers complied, grim-faced, but without protest. Sandoval efficiently patted him down, then yanked the detective’s arms back and slapped cuffs on his wrists.

“Now,” the cop said. “We’re going back to your car.” Tubby was trying to kick out the glass.

“Keep it up and you’re in the hospital,” Sandoval yelled over his shoulder. He pushed Flowers into the back seat of the detective’s big GMC Yukon.

“Your PI license is on the line, dude,” Sandoval told him. “And there’s a special place in the Mississippi River for private dicks who get in my way.” He slammed the door.

Returning to his police car, Sandoval straightened his shirt and gave his backseat passenger a glare. He checked the vicinity to see if anyone was watching, which apparently they were not, then got in and started up.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tubby demanded from behind him, imprisoned by the mesh shield. “I’m a lawyer!”

“I don’t care what you are,” Sandoval told him. “Shut up or I’ll tase your pecker.”

Tubby swallowed the several paragraphs about Constitutional rights he was about to deliver and shut up. Squirming around to look, he saw Flowers’ parked car recede in the distance. Sandoval took a right on Magazine and headed toward Audubon Park.

They got to River Road, up near Cooter Brown’s, and Sandoval slowed down. Right before Carrollton Avenue, he entered a cramped parking lot outside a small concrete block building badly in need of paint. There was a sign outside that read, “For Rent,” with a suggestion after that: “Mardi Gras Floats?”

Sandoval pulled Tubby out of the cruiser at gunpoint, used a key to unlock the solid steel door, and pushed Tubby inside. It was dark, but the cop popped a switch, and the dingy space was brightened with fluorescent ceiling lights that hissed. There were no Mardi Gras floats there. Tubby’s focus was on a single chair in the middle on the concrete floor.

“Have a seat,” Sandoval said as he pulled the metal door shut with a clang.

Tubby rushed the cop and got a nightstick in the nose for his trouble. He staggered back and would have fallen on the concrete if he hadn’t hit the chair first.

“Let’s reach an understanding,” Sandoval said, wiping his lips with his hand. “This is going to hurt you a lot worse than it hurts me.”

Blood dripped from the lawyer’s nose, but he held his head up.

“Ah. Ah,” he sighed, trying to shake off the pain.

“You’re in a bad place, counselor,” Sandoval said. He produced a rope from somewhere in the confined room.

Approaching Tubby, he explained, “I’m going to tie you up. If you don’t like it I’ll bust a couple of your ribs first. Believe me, there are no cameras in here.”

Tubby submitted, his head swirling too fast to think of an alternative. Quickly, his hands were bound together, then to the chair. Then his legs were tied together. He had never in his life felt so helpless, except maybe when one of his MP wrestling buddies had squashed his face into the mat.

Mission accomplished, Sandoval went to a corner and spoke into his phone.

“Relax,” he said when he came back. “You’ve got a few minutes.”

* * *

There had been an afternoon, back in Naples, when it was raining and the wind was blowing, making white caps in the bay and tossing the palms around like mop heads. Tubby, secure behind the glass doors to the balcony, thought that maybe he would like it here. The condo towers were obscured by low clouds, the Jaguars on the street had retired, and the sea, with its stirring elemental power, reminded him that this was a real place and not a mere movie set. It was seductive to watch the torrential rain washing over the porch and cascading down in tropical waterfalls from the balcony above.

Marguerite’s larder in the coziness of her apartment was filled with expensive cheeses and wine. On the kitchen counter was a bag of fresh stone crabs just waiting to be cracked and eaten.

Now, tied to a folding chair in a barren concrete warehouse, he could not remember why he had thrown away the chance to live amidst such heavenly delights. In utopia. What could he have been thinking?

* * *

The door creaked open and admitted Carlos Pancera. Tubby knew him only from pictures, but the man had a fierce presence that was memorable and commanded respect. There were two others with him, both of them old-timers like Pancera. One was slender, with gray hair and a deeply lined face. He wore a clerical collar. The other was big, like Tubby, and red-faced with jowls that sagged over a large neck. He was wearing a black Saints sweatshirt over a major potbelly. He looked vaguely familiar. Tubby wondered whether Jason Boaz might be the next one through the door.

The three men huddled with Sandoval for a minute, conversing in low voices out of Tubby’s hearing, though he picked up faint allusions to “asshole” and “troublemaker.” Sandoval fetched more folding chairs from a stack by the wall and arranged them in a half-circle facing their captive. In the spare shadowy room, Tubby was reminded of a séance he had once witnessed while working on a case. Perhaps José Marti would be summoned from the great beyond. Or Fulgencio Batista. Or Parker.

“Who are you guys?” he asked. His mouth was dry. Blood was caking on his lips.

“You know who I am,” Pancera said, his voice like a hammer. “You’ve been asking all over town about me. And who are you? Some unimportant person who can’t mind his own business?”

“You want to know who shot that hippie forty years ago?” Sandoval demanded. “Well, I did.”

“No, you didn’t. It was me,” the fat man said, and Tubby could have believed him. He had mean pig eyes. There was just a hint in that boozy face of the angry boy he might have been.

“Enough from both of you,” Pancera ordered. “The point is that it was a patriotic act. It instilled fear in the enemy.”

“He was just a kid,” Tubby said, exploring the knots binding his wrists with his fingertips, seeking a flaw.

“None of us were kids,” Pancera said scornfully. “We were all young men with brothers and fathers dying around the world fighting socialism. What matter if you killed the enemy in Bolivia or Southeast Asia or New Orleans? It was war.”

“Yeah? Who won?” Tubby baited him.

“We did,” the fat man said.

“What about Cuba?” Tubby asked. “It’s still the same as it was fifty years ago.”

Pancera answered him. “That cause is still unfinished, but one day Cuba will be free. The men you see here now are not too old to fight, and we also have resources.”

The priest, silent till now, added, “I will say Mass again in Havana. I can promise you that. In the very church where I took my first communion.”

“What’s your part in this, Sandoval?” Tubby asked the cop. “Why did you turn over the police file to me?”

“Shut up, turd!” Sandoval stole a quick glance at Pancera and the fat man, who also looked momentarily puzzled. “I’m the one who protects this group by rooting out infiltrators and eliminating little worms like you.”

“Eliminate me!” Tubby blustered. “My detective saw you taking me away.”

“You died trying to escape, and he will also, soon enough.”

“If you’re going to kill me, what’s all this hocus-pocus about?”

“Who are you working for, Mister Dubonnet?” the priest asked gently, resuming the interrogation.

“I’m a lawyer,” Tubby said. “I work for clients.”

“You’re a crud communist,” the fat man said. “I can smell one in a crowd. Who do you really work for?”

“Nobody. I’m not working for anybody. To me this is only about seeing justice done. Don’t you get it? This kid died in my arms.”

“Ah, so you say you just happened to be walking down the street when a gun went off?”

“No, I was with the demonstrators, but…”

“You admit it!”

“We were all kids. I went into the Army.”

“Do you work for the government?” Pancera wanted to know. “Hollywood? Are you writing a book? Is it the Kennedy assassination you are investigating?”

“I have no interest whatsoever in the Kennedy assassination. I think it happened when I was in third grade.”

“You lie through your teeth,” Sandoval grumbled.

“What’s the connection? I just don’t get it.”

“I think he needs a couple of whacks,” the fat man said.

Desperate to change the direction this interrogation was taking, Tubby broke in with, “Why did Officer Babineaux have to die?”

“He was like you and stuck his nose into places it didn’t belong,” Sandoval said.

“But he was your partner, your friend.”

“You think that,” Sandoval said angrily. “He tried to blackmail me into dumping our union president. Alonzo was cutting him out of the business and keeping me in. Babineaux didn’t go for that and threatened me. Some friend, huh?”

“What could he threaten you with?”

Pancera held up his hand palm out to stop the talk. He addressed Tubby. “Let’s just say that we have records going back many years. Our struggle will be chronicled one day in the history books. But the time to make those records public has not yet come. Unfortunately, that black policeman Babineaux you speak of had been given those records for safekeeping by Mister Sandoval after the levees broke during Katrina, since Officer Sandoval’s house was severely flooded. Babineaux was high and dry uptown, and he was heavily fortified in his house. Unfortunately for your policeman, he had too much time on his hands and read those records. He decided to use them for his own purpose, which was to threaten, I’ll call it blackmail, Officer Sandoval for personal advantage. This had to do with some petty dispute he and Sandoval were having about controlling off-duty police assignments. None of that had or has a thing to do with the rest of our group or the historic movement we have been a small part of. Those records are invaluable and of vital interest to us and to history. It was very unwise of him to threaten us in that way.”

“So you killed him?”

Tubby directed that at Pancera, but the policeman and the fat man both laughed.

“No,” Pancera said drily. “I can’t say that I killed anyone. But I was happy to see him gone. I was happy to see our records returned to us for our posterity.”

“Perhaps,” the priest broke in, “this man is not going to answer our questions.”

“I can make him talk,” Sandoval said.

The priest rose from his folding chair and straightened his back. “Life is full of mysteries,” he said vaguely. “We may have to live with the mystery of this man and his motives, even after he has gone to his grave. But,” he added, “if you want to try to pry it out of him, my strong friend, I won’t stop you. I, however, am leaving.”

“I’m staying,” the fat man said.

“I will drive Father home,” Pancera told the group. “You two can take care of everything here.”

When Flowers drove up to the warehouse, he saw Sandoval’s police car parked in the small lot in front of the building and a Mercedes Benz pulling away, with a hood ornament to rival the Vince Lombardi Trophy. He considered following the car but decided to stick with the cop. He rolled slowly into the lot. As he parked, he saw a figure dash furtively from the shadows and disappear behind the police car.

Flowers got out and approached with caution. Jason Boaz stood up and showed himself. He raised his hands.

“What’s going on?” Flowers asked, showing a gun.

“He’s in there,” Boaz whispered. “I have a key.”

Flowers took it out of Boaz’s hand and popped the door open as quietly as he could. The scene inside was two big men slapping Tubby around. Flowers pushed Jason out of the way and walked in with his gun waving wildly.

“Up! Up!” he yelled.

The bigger man did not appear to be armed. He stepped back from Tubby, who had his bloody chin on his chest. As he tried to raise it, Flowers saw Tubby’s tongue moving around in his cheeks, counting teeth. Blood had collected on his shirt.

“This is police business, asshole!” Sandoval protested. “Stay out of it!”

“Bullshit,” Flowers said calmly, taking two steps forward. “Boaz, do you have a camera?”

The inventor stepped into the room and his phone flashed.

“Both of you boys step back,” Flowers ordered. “Officer Sandoval, remove your firearm from your belt and place it carefully on Mr. Dubonnet’s lap.”

Reluctantly they did what they were told. “Both of you, out the door,” Flowers said, scooping the .40 caliber.

Sandoval affected a swagger as he walked past the detective, and the fat one audibly growled, but they moved toward the exit with Flowers a pace behind. The detective was sure that Sandoval had more weapons on his person and probably more in his police car.

“Get Tubby untied,” he told Boaz over his shoulder. With care, he escorted the policeman and his hood friend to Sandoval’s official vehicle.

Jason succeeded in cutting Tubby loose with the Leatherman Super Tool he always carried.