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

“Of course I do.” Jason spared him from having to display the limits of his knowledge by launching into a discourse on his date with Norella. They had danced till three in the morning and made love on her living room floor. At least that’s what Jason thought had happened.

Before more was revealed, the food arrived.

“Hot plates,” the waiter warned. Jason’s steak sizzled. Tubby’s quail steamed. They stopped talking for a few minutes and ate. The small toasty brown bird was served on a glacé of black cherries and wilted spinach, and with the rice sausage spilling onto the plate it sent out mists of wonderful spicy flavors. It was a shame to pierce it with a fork.

“Mine’s excellent. How’s your steak?” Tubby finally managed to ask.

“
Très Bien
. So, what else are you working on these days? Any more New Orleans political intrigues or gruesome murders?”

“One of each, actually. The intrigue may involve organized crime and our city police department. I shouldn’t have taken the case, but it promises to be another fascinating glimpse into what makes our very warm and moist small town work. The murder, on the other hand, happened forty years ago, and is personal to me.”

“Really? Who got killed?”

“A young boy. I never actually learned his full name. They called him Parker. It was at a public demonstration. I was there. Someone pulled up in a car and shot him.”

Jason’s ruddy face paled. He took a pull on his drink and signaled the waiter for a refill.

“This was back in the days of anti-war demonstrations. I just happened to get involved during a brief but very, uh, experimental period in my life.”

“You were there when it happened?” Jason’s voice sounded strained.

“Yeah. The kid died, practically in my arms. I never knew who did it or why. Is there something wrong with your food?”

Jason had quietly set down his fork, and he dropped his chin as if in prayer.

“How do you plan to find the answers to your questions?”

“I’ll dig up what can be dug up. Granted, it was a long time ago. But I’m a resourceful person.”

Jason raised his head and met Tubby’s eyes.

“You should leave this in the past, my friend. The people who did this are loco crazy. They were crazy then, and they are crazy now.”

Tubby was astonished. “You actually know something about this event?”

Jason just shook his head sadly.

* * *

The taxi dropped Cherrylynn off on Broad across the street from the jail. She had to fork over most of her cash because the swarthy driver with the tiny mustache claimed that his credit card machine was broken. Flustered, she hurried up the wide steps and spied, across the plaza, a sentry-like uniformed policeman who was indeed smoking a cigarette. Getting closer, she observed that he was surrounded by a ring of smashed butts which blended into the gum-stained concrete. He was holding a manila envelope.

“Officer Sandoval?” she inquired.

He looked her up and down and grunted, “You ain’t bad looking.”

“I’m Mister Dubonnet’s secretary,” she said, inexplicably not feeling insulted by his forwardness. “Do you have something for him?”

The policeman stuck out his arm, big as both of hers, and handed over the envelope.

“Tell him this is all there is.” He shrugged. “It was a long time ago and things get lost. This is the original file, and I’d like it back.”

Sandoval ground what was left of his smoke into the pavement with all the rest.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Secretary.” He turned abruptly and walked back into the glass building.

“Thank you,” Cherrylynn called after him.

She turned the envelope over. There were no markings on it. She noted that the flap was clipped shut but not sealed. Holding it against her chest with an elbow, she searched through her purse until she found a dollar and a quarter. Great! At least she could afford to take a bus back downtown.

Soon, sitting in air-conditioned comfort on the crowded Number 30, she gave in to temptation and unfastened the clasp. She peeked inside. There was a ragged worn folder— so this was indeed the original— and just a few pieces of paper. The top one had a Police Department letterhead.

Her seatmate, a fat lady with a Bible on her lap, was watching this out of the corner of her eye. Cherrylynn closed the envelope and stared out the window at the chicken shacks and drug clinics they were rolling past. She hopped off on St. Charles Avenue and was unlocking the DUBONNET & ASSOCIATES offices five minutes later. Obviously, Tubby had not yet returned.

No doubt the boss would expect her to inventory the contents and transfer them into a file. This would also satisfy her curiosity. She extracted the pages and spread them out on her desk.

Here’s what she found:

A worn dirty manila file folder with a tag pasted to it that read: “No. JDX2374.”

A form releasing the body of John Doe to the Dennis Mortuary on Louisiana Avenue, signed by Frank Minyard, the Parish Coroner.

A copy of a piece of paper with a handwritten name on it. It was Bert Haggarty, followed by “Indiana.”

The official Police Department document was a short report. It had one paragraph, denoted as “SUMMARY.” It read:

“Deceased John Doe, wounds possibly self-inflicted. Subversive anti-war buttons, vagrant, possible altercation with unknown parties. Possible drug deal. One marijuana cigarette in pants pocket, sent to evidence. Prints taken. No known match. Photo of body shows gunshot.”

There was no marijuana cigarette, and there were no prints. There was no photograph of the body.

Cherrylynn inspected the pages carefully. She turned them over and scanned the backs. Nothing. The manila folder, except for the file number and a small blue ink doodle on the inside that resembled a spider, was blank. But wait, near the doodle there was an indentation likely made by a pen or pencil writing on something with the folder underneath. She got out the magnifying glass she sometimes used to check her skin and made out a name. It appeared to be “Carlos Pancera,” and beside that a phone number with a five-o-four area code. She jotted it down.

Cherrylynn put everything back into the envelope and locked it in her desk. After checking her phone and picking some dead leaves off the ficus plant in the corner, she couldn’t think of anything else to do. So she opened up her Philosophy reading,
Critique of Pure Reason
by Immanuel Kant, and gave it a try. “That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.” Okay, so far. “So how is it possible that the faculty of cognition should be awakened into exercise other than by means of objects which affect our senses, and partly of themselves produce representation…” She closed the text. Critique of Poor Reason, maybe. She could get this, she knew. But not now.

Tapping on her laptop, she Googled “New Orleans Police Officer P. Kronke.”

It didn’t take long. He was in the White Pages.

* * *

At Galatoire’s 33, the diners’ conversation languished. What remained of their meal passed in strained silence. Jason Boaz and his guest both said no to the waiter’s offer to serve them additional drinks. The last bite of quail remained on the plate. Dessert, sadly, was forgotten.

“Jason. That was a very important event in my life,” Tubby pointed out, signaling the waiter that they were done. “I’m not going to let it go.”

“I beg you, my friend. Let it alone.”

“No. It’s not going to end here,” the lawyer insisted.

“
Eres hombre muerto
.”

Tubby didn’t know what that meant, but he stood up.

Jason pulled out his credit card and paid while his friend left.

When the mystified boss got back to the office Cherrylynn announced, “I have some news for you.”

She told him what she had learned at the library, showed him the picture she had taken of the brief death announcement in the
Times-Picayune
, and produced the file that Officer Sandoval had given her.

“He expects it back,” she said, laying out the pages on the desk for him to read.

She showed him the faint scratches on the file folder and wrote out her interpretation for him.

“This is really great work,” he told her. Tubby felt odd, seeing the police report and Kronke’s name. It was if the past was rising back up with disturbing power, made more eerie by Jason Boaz’s strange reaction at lunch. Kronke and he had crossed paths before.

“We tend to minimize the passion and danger and violence of our youth, as we get older, as we get good at adult games,” he said to Cherrylynn.

They stared at each other. Neither was sure what he was talking about.

“I’m getting out of here,” he said. “And I’ll take this with me.”

Raisin Partlow had tried to live an uncomplicated life. He had gone back to school after the war and collected his degrees, but he had never done a thing with them. His major achievements were in the realms of tennis and boating, two careers where you could wear shorts, and over the years he had formed attachments with a number of accomplished women. He was usually serious enough about a girlfriend to move in with her, which saved him a lot of overhead.

The war now came back only as fitful dreams for Raisin. It didn’t actually seem true-to-life anymore, but was as if it had happened to someone else who might have died years ago. It did, however, always feature helicopters. Sometimes he was in the middle of the drama, giving the high sign on a cloudy day to a young pilot carrying a fresh rifle squad into battle. Sometimes he saw himself running out onto the tarmac when a bird flapped home carrying its cargo of bloody warriors. Sometimes a careless soldier dropped a match, and flames raced faster than they could run, and they were blown away by exploding aircraft. Those were his standard three dreams. Sometimes, he could mentally skip to the end and wake himself up.

Or, if it was bad, he yelled, or struggled, and Sadie shook him till he sat up awake.

“What was that?” she would ask him, frightened.

It didn’t happen every night. Not nearly every night. Raisin totally rejected the role of victim. He had a superior life and an enviable backhand on the tennis courts. He thought about Marlboros, which he was trying to beat for the twentieth time, a lot more than he thought about Vietnam. America had had a lot of wars since then. It made him feel old to think about his own, so he made an effort not to.

He buried his face in Sadie’s breasts while he caught his breath. This was just an afternoon’s nap that had gotten out of control, but now he was in the embrace of a beautiful scented woman, and in the present moment he could thrive.

An hour later, when they began to think about their evening plans, Raisin remembered that he had promised Janie he would go, again, to the Monkey Business for some event that very night. But lying in the bed with Sadie, he didn’t feel up to it.

Pulling a white towel around himself, he found his phone and called Tubby.

“I made a promise I can’t keep,” he said, and told Tubby about the benefit. It was an early show. A bunch of “fabulous musicians” were playing for free to raise money for some artist who was in jail for public indecency. Whatever that was. Something about street art. The event would show off the bar at its best. Could Tubby possibly attend? There might even be newspaper and blogger attention that would help his tavern-owning client in the important realm of community affection. Raisin was a good salesman, and Tubby said he would be sure to drop in for a few minutes.

* * *

Tubby arrived while Andy J. Forest was playing harmonica, backed up by a bass guitar and a drummer. This was good, reliable, high-class New Orleans music, and he relaxed immediately about the whole noise-level thing. He needed a few soothing moments after his disturbing lunch with Jason Boaz. Bad enough to spoil a stuffed quail. Bad, too, to think that Jason was linked to an old atrocity. But what stung most was being shut out by a client whom he had long thought of as a friend. This bugged him greatly. He was quick to search out a drink.

There was a big crowd in the bar. Evidently whoever was in jail had some supporters. There were actually banker types wearing suits and ties in here. Make that bowties. The artist must have tapped into a well-to-do following. The cover at the door was twenty dollars.

Tubby threaded his way to the bar and wedged himself between a tall boy with the beard of a goat-farming Mennonite and a blond woman in a tight white dress with some sparkle to it, cut above the knees, whose back was to him.

“Old Fashioned!” he yelled at Jack, who gave him a slight nod.

The Regal Beer sign flashed on and off. Andy Forest was into “God Will Understand.” Tubby turned his attention to the blond woman, whose rear end was bumping against his right thigh.

She was engaged in conversation with another lady, brown-haired with a brown business suit, who looked as though she might have spent her day firing people. Her eyes happened to pass his. “Hi, ladies,” he said.

The woman in the suit smiled at him. The blond looked over her shoulder and turned partway around. She was a very appealing, very attractive woman about his own age with unusually clear skin, blue eyes, and bright red lipstick.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Tubby.” He sucked in his gut and grabbed the glass that had miraculously appeared. “I’m a lawyer. You?”

“Peggy. Peggy O’Flarity.” She touched her hair. “And this is Caroline.”

Tubby reached over and shook Caroline’s hand. Then he offered his to Peggy. “What brings you here?” he asked.

Her fingers were long and cool. He was sorry to let them go.

“I volunteer at the Contemporary Arts Center,” she said a little loudly because the band was heating up. “We are one of the sponsors of this event.”

“Great. I’ve gotta admit I’m not familiar with… the artist that this is for. What’s his name?”

“Dinky Bacon. He does studio art, but he’s also a street performer.”

“What did he do to get into trouble?”

“He’s been incorporating male burlesque into his music and sometimes in his gallery exhibitions. Basically he just got a little too naked in Jackson Square.”