Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 07 - Tubby Meets Katrina (9 page)

“Yaaah!” Tubby cried, watching chimneys and the tops of cypress trees pass below his feet. He clutched Pookie tightly for protection. “Yaaah!” They crossed the Seventeenth Street Canal, and the men in hard hats stared up at him shielding their eyes with their hands. He had a fine view of the lake and the wet churches and apartments on Metairie Road, when he dared to open his eyes. This wasn’t so bad.

He twirled slowly and thought it was sort of like the time he was in the revolving bar at the World Trade Center. He took in the landscape of missing roofs and toppled billboards. Behind him was New Orleans. Over there was the sublimely peaceful Lake Pontchartrain. The fine homes and golf courses of Old Metairie had flooded. Now that was interesting. Where was Flowers taking him?

To Lakeside Shopping Center, it turned out. Right by JCPenney’s. Right down to the big parking lot. Gently, Tubby’s feet touched the ground. Flowers brought it a little lower, and Tubby could get out of the harness. He had to sit on the pavement, keeping his grip on the dog. Once he was inert, the copter could move away to land. The woman took her time getting out, and shook herself like a bird ruffling its feathers. When she felt sufficiently composed she ran across the parking lot. Flowers hurried behind her, coming to check on his human yo-yo.

“Pookie,” the woman cried. She had to peel the dog out of Tubby’s arms, and when she had her furry love she showered it with kisses.

“Are you all right, boss?” Flowers asked, poking Tubby’s shoulder to get a reaction.

“I’m fine.” He couldn’t move yet. “Just a little windblown. Can you help me up?”

Flowers helped them all get straightened out. “I saw a police check-point at the other side of the shopping center when we came down,” he said. “I’ll run over there and see if they’ll take this woman somewhere.”

While Flowers was gone, Tubby and the woman walked in little circles, getting used to being alive and safe.

“What’s your name?” the lady asked.

Tubby told her.

“Mine’s Theresa Campbell, and I’ve never been in one of them things before.”

“How long had you been on that roof?” Tubby asked.

“I’m not sure, what day is this?”

“Thursday, I think.”

“Then two days. I was up in the attic for one day, I’m pretty sure. And then I figured no one was going to find me there. If I wanted to keep living, I’d have to get where someone could see me. And here I am,” she said with satisfaction.

“And here you are. How’d you get out of the attic?”

“Why, I had to knock out a little window in the front of my house and swim for it. It was a pretty stained-glass window, but I guess we can’t worry about things like that now.”

“I guess not. Why didn’t you evacuate ahead of the storm?”

“I didn’t expect this,” she said simply. “And I love my little house. Isn’t that right, Pookie? Mama almost got us both drowned.”

Flowers rode back in a Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s car. They loaded Ms. Campbell and her dog and took them away.

“Are you all right, man?” Flowers asked Tubby. “You look a little seasick.”

“You try riding in that saddle. They ought to turn it into some kind of Olympic event— Yow!”

His pocket was buzzing. Tubby dug out the cell phone, surprised that it worked.

He listened a second.

“Yes, this is Tubby Dubonnet. Who is this?”

“Let me speak to her.”

“Hello, Christine?”

“How’re you doing, baby? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Say it again. Where are you?”

“Hey, put my daughter back on.”

“Yes, of course I understand. And listen, if she gets hurt in the least… hello? Hello?”

Tubby snapped the phone shut.

“Some guy has kidnapped Christine,” he told Flowers.

“Say that again?”

“He’s got her at my office downtown, and she says I should come and get her.”

“Who is this guy?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t recognize his voice. He just sounded… cold.”

“Then let’s go get her.”

“He didn’t say what he wanted with me.”

“Maybe money.”

“He didn’t ask for money.”

“So we should fly the bird back downtown?”

Tubby nodded his head. Together they trotted back to the tired helicopter.

The great pan of New Orleans had turned upside down. From the sky, it was a shock to see. The flood waters, bright emerald where they flowed in from the lake through the breaches, became as brown as desert sands as they spread for miles through the neighborhoods, absorbing the sediment of civilization. The treetops, always green in New Orleans, had likewise turned brown from the stress of hundred mile per hour winds or airborne salt. Tubby’s mood was likewise brown, from fatigue and anxiety. They shared the sky with a dozen other helicopters, hell bent on missions of their own.

“No gulls,” Flowers observed.

“Huh?”

“You always watch for birds around here when you fly these things. Seagulls, ducks, cormorants, whatever. There aren’t any birds.”

“Must have blown away,” Tubby said.

“Must have. I’m going to set this down on top of the building again, right?”

“Yeah,” Tubby told him. “I don’t know if you should even get out. We may need to make a quick getaway. You know, I left my .45 back at Petrofoods.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of firepower,” Flowers said. “You want a gun?”

“No, you should keep it. I’m so excited I’d shoot myself.”

“I don’t think guns are your style anyway, boss. There’s some kind of knife in the kit box there. Help yourself if you want.”

Tubby checked and found a worn Uncle Henry pocket knife. He remembered these from his youth, growing up in north Louisiana. “Guaranteed against loss,” he reminisced. “I guess I will take that.”

“What’s the plan?” Flowers asked.

“I don’t have one. He just said he had her, come get her. I suppose he’s an intelligent person who wants something in exchange. I’m sure he’s not interested in surrendering to us. Perhaps it’s cash.”

“Do you have any?”

“I got a couple of hundred. Then there’s checks and credit cards, but that probably won’t help us.”

“I’ve got a few bucks, too,” Flowers said. “But maybe we can arrange for him to fall off the building.”

They set down on the roof, cut the motor, and disembarked. Tubby tried the door, but it was locked. Now what?

“Call them on the cell phone,” Flowers instructed.

Tubby did, having trouble mashing the right buttons with his big fingers. Christine answered right away.

“How are you?” he asked immediately.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she reassured him.

“We’re on the roof,” Tubby told her.

“Of the building?”

“Yes.”

Tubby could hear the muffled voices as she reported this to her captor.

“He wants to know why you’re on the roof.”

“We have a helicopter.”

More garbled voices.

“He wants to know who is up there with you.”

“Just me and the pilot. No police or anything. It’s the only way I could get down here. I can’t get to my car.” Another pause.

“He says that’s okay. Just wait for us. And I think everything will be cool if you guys are cool.”

“We’ll be very cool,” Tubby said.

“They’re coming up,” he told Flowers. “We’re supposed to be cool.”

Flowers nodded. He leaned out the hatch of the Airodream, looking cool. Tubby hopped around nervously, fingering the Uncle Henry knife in his pocket.

Finally the metal door from the stairwell opened a crack. After a moment while someone concealed inside obviously inspected the surroundings, the door creaked open wider, and Christine came out. She was wearing a collar, made of a leather belt, and the man who appeared behind her had the end of the belt in one hand and a gun in the other. The weapon had belonged to Manuel, the security man, but now it was Bonner Rivette’s.

Tubby’s eyes closed to slits as he watched his daughter and the thug approach. Ten feet away, Rivette jerked Christine to a halt, which caused her head to snap back. Pointing his gun at her ear, he took his time looking around the roof for hidden danger.

“Who’s Dubonnet?” he asked.

Tubby identified himself. “What do you want?”

“Out of here. Are you the pilot?” he asked Flowers.

Flowers nodded.

“Let’s fly away then,” Bonner said. He nudged Christine in the direction of the Airodream.

“Wait just a minute,” Tubby demanded. “She stays here.”

Rivette lowered the gun and targeted the lawyer’s midsection. Tubby studied the man intently and saw hot blank eyes, like an alligator’s or a cornered raccoon’s, staring back at him. “No. She goes with me,” Rivette said.

“Then I guess you know how to fly this thing?” Flowers interjected. “Because I follow Mr. Dubonnet’s orders.”

“She goes with me,” Rivette insisted. “Take me where I tell you to and I’ll let her go. Otherwise let’s get it on right here.”

“Who are you?” Tubby asked.

“His name is Bonner Rivette,” Christine said loudly.

Rivette jerked the leash again. “No fair giving away my secrets,” he said. “I am who I am. Your daughter will be safe with me.”

“Take that leash off her,” Tubby said.

“Once we’re all in the helicopter, I might.”

“Okay, let’s all get in,” Tubby said.

Bonner pushed Christine toward the hatch.

“Can you help me out of a legal jam?” he asked Tubby in all seriousness, though he was holding the lawyer’s daughter on a leash.

Daddy didn’t miss a beat. “Quite possibly,” he said. “What’s the charge?”

“Assault and kidnapping.”

“I’m a witness to that. I can’t be your lawyer,” Tubby said automatically.

“Then I don’t need you. He stays here,” he told Flowers.

“Like hell,” Tubby said.

“Hey, boss,” Flowers called. “I’m not sure this baby can carry us all anyway.”

“This is no good,” Tubby objected. “I can’t sit here while this man flies off with my daughter.”

“You ain’t got a choice,” the criminal said.

“I’ll take care of her,” Flowers promised. “And I won’t forget you here.”

The criminal pushed Christine into the helicopter.

“Wait a second!” Tubby yelled.

Flowers started the blades whirling. The lawyer saw the gun pointed at his daughter’s head. He protested some more. The Airodream began to lift off. Christine mouthed, “I love you…”

Tubby ran for the helicopter and tried to jump aboard, but Rivette’s foot caught him in the chin and he fell backwards. Flowers rattled higher, and Tubby watched them go where he could not follow.

He gripped his Uncle Henry knife helplessly in his fist.

The helicopter swung toward the south and flew away, into the sky from whence Hurricane Katrina had come.

Tubby knew he had not been a perfect father. He had made mistakes, though sitting on a roof forty-nine flights up, he couldn’t actually think of any. Well, there was the time he had passed out on Christmas Eve, but how minor was that? He had worked hard, in spurts, and provided for the family. He should have spent more time with the girls. Well, in all honesty, he had spent a lot of time with Debbie, the oldest. He had taken her to Tulane football games and helped her with her homework, because she needed it. And Debbie had gotten pregnant and then married, so he had a grandchild, and he just seemed to see a lot of Debbie.

And of course, Monique, the youngest, was so darn pretty and inquisitive that he had always found it easy to spend time just talking to her. But Christine was right in the middle, and maybe he had let her down. Christine always seemed to be in charge, and in a way she took after her mother. Not her mother’s bad traits, which in Tubby’s mind included being whiny, disloyal, irresponsible and greedy, but the good traits like being strong-willed, and self-confident, and determined to get what she wanted out of life. He had just taken Christine for granted, he told himself. Such a wonderful child. He should have protected her more.

Peering into the empty sky where the helicopter had disappeared, he tried praying.

The Airodream came back just before dark.

Tubby jumped up and waited anxiously for Flowers to land and report on what had happened. When the helicopter settled on the roof, Tubby rushed forward and grabbed his friend’s arm even before the props were still, and he would have physically squeezed words out of the detective had he not suddenly seen Christine anxiously reaching for him in the passenger seat.

She smiled when she stumbled out of the hatch. Father and daughter ran together and hugged. Tubby smoothed her hair down the back of her neck and cried.

When they were all back at the Petrofoods warehouse Tubby drew Christine aside into an aisle of canned green beans and potato chips.

“What did he do to you?” he asked.

“Nothing, Daddy, we just fought.”

“Did he hit you? Did he hurt you? Your face is bruised.”

“Yes, he hit me, but I’m okay.”

“Should we go to a doctor?”

“Where would we find one?” she spread out her hands to make the point.

“We have a helicopter. We have trucks. We can find a doctor.”

“I’ll be okay.” She turned away.

“You’re not telling me everything!” He was exasperated. He wanted to crush a gallon of green beans like Popeye crushed spinach.

“I’m very hungry,” she told him.

“I’m going to going to get that man,” Tubby promised her.

“Let’s rest now,” she said.

“Okay,” he conceded, but he was wondering where she got such inner strength.

She was thinking, I’ve got to protect Daddy or else he’ll get himself killed protecting me.

Sitting around the campfire-in-a grill tended by Steve, Christine told some of her story. Flowers was out on the lot, gassing up his ride. He had finally taken off his sunglasses. The night was peaceful.

Wood smoke blew through the warehouse. Steve had planks of frozen rib-eyes in plastic packages defrosting. Hope Lestella and Gastro had been mixing the ingredients for an industrial-size coconut cake to be baked in an aluminum turkey pan all courtesy of the Petrofoods company, but they stopped when Christine emerged from the “field shower.” It consisted of a bench and plastic jugs of water surrounded by a tarp. She looked refreshed and ready to talk. Tubby had sat down on a lawn chair with his eyes closed, and he was nursing a cup of Flowers’s rum.

Christine took the chair Steve offered and accepted a handful of smoked almonds from the gallon jar they had opened.

“It wasn’t too bad, once the fighting stopped. I’m not going into that right now. I’m the one who told Rivette to call my father. It turned out to be the only good idea I had. So when we got into the helicopter, Flowers asked Rivette where he wanted to go. He said he just wanted to get away from the flood.

“We went out to, like, Metairie, and Flowers said he wanted to land at Lakeside Shopping Center, but Bonner suspected a trick. He told Flowers to fly him all the way out of town. Flowers said he didn’t have that much fuel, but he would take him down by the levee.

“So we flew over to the river, where there’s nothing but trees between the levee and the bank. Bonner said it looked okay, he’d tell Flowers when to stop. We flew almost to the Huey Long Bridge before Bonner saw a place he wanted to be put down. We landed right on top of the levee in the grass where they have that bike trail, and Bonner jumps out. He still had his belt around my neck, and he tried to yank me after him. Flowers suddenly pulls out this gun and shoots right at Bonner.

“Bonner ducked, but he had to let go of me, and Flowers pulled me back into the helicopter. I felt like I was in the middle of a tug of war. Bonner shot at us, too, but Flowers got the helicopter off the ground, and we could see Bonner running into the woods. And Flowers flew after him with the helicopter and kept shooting at him, but he kept missing. I told him to stop. Just let him go. Bonner got under the trees, and we couldn’t see him anymore. So then Flowers turned around and took us back to get Daddy. And then we all flew back here.”

“Shouldn’t you see a doctor, dear?” Hope asked.

“No. I’m all right,” Christine said. Tubby heaved himself out of his chair and went to take her hand.

“You’re sure?” he asked. “You don’t look so hot.” Her face was bruised.

“I’ll be okay, Dad,” she said. “I think I did everything I was supposed to.” She was starting to stutter a little, like she was cold.

“Yes you did, honey.” He hugged her again. “We’ll eat some supper and you can get a good night’s rest. I’m going to track that son of a bitch down and…”

“You’d better leave him alone, Daddy. He can be very mean, and I think he was telling the truth about killing people.”

“How you gonna find him anyway?” Steve asked.

Tubby kept those thoughts to himself. He went outside to stare at the stars and the red running lights of helicopters streaking through the skies on their missions of mercy. Was the President up there among them, he wondered, bringing help?

“You had it rough,” Gastro said to Christine. He was touched by this pretty, resilient girl with blonde hair and a serious face. She was tall and looked physically strong, like his mother. Gastro had lived on the streets since his mother died and his father kicked him out, and he thought he knew how rough, indeed, life could be. To make it in New Orleans, you had to be tough. This girl he saw as a contender.

“I bet you never thought you would have such a day as this,” Steve Oubre said. He was a friendly, red-headed giant from the country, and he liked overalls. His limited experience in New Orleans had led him to believe that all the white people in the city were rich and powerful and unaccustomed to having bad things happen to them.

“It’s been kind of humiliating,” she whispered. And no one could think of anything to say about that.

The crew made a good meal of the steaks, under a full moon and the Milky Way. You never saw that in the city, not for a hundred years, but now the city was turned off, and the stars could shine again. They blazed across the sky. Some more rum appeared, and they all passed around the bottle and the cans of Coke. Steve kept tossing pieces of busted pallets on the fire, and he found a guitar somewhere. It turned out that Flowers, properly encouraged, could even play a little.

“I only know a couple of songs,” he admitted modestly, and strummed out a decent version of “Guantanamera.” And he sang, softly,

“
Yo soy un hombre sincero
,

“From the land of the palm trees,

“And before dying

“I want to share these poems of my soul.

“My poems are soft green.

“My poems are also flaming crimson.

“My poems are like a wounded fawn

“Seeking refuge in the forest.

“With the poor people of the land

“I want to share my fate.

“The streambed of the mountain

“Pleases me more than the sea…”

Steve hummed along and Hope joined in on the chorus. Gastro tried to find the beat.

Flowers received their applause when he was finished.

“That was José Martí. How about some Radiators?” Flowers asked and got their enthusiastic consent.

“There’s no life, like that low life,” he crooned. “And that low life, it’s a wild life.”

They got down with that.

They set up cots for Christine and Hope off in the nacho cheese aisle, and there were plenty of blankets fresh out of the package, still smelling of the Chinese factory perfume. Christine crawled under the covers and was out like a light.

Hope lay still, looking at the ceiling, her mind full of chaotic visions of the past few days. She wondered what had become of her house on Banks Street and all the little things she had collected in life. Her father’s pipe. Her mother’s wedding dress. Her refrigerator magnets. She wondered if her son, a writer of sorts who lived in the northern California redwood-and-wine country, even knew about the hurricane. She wondered how her students in the Advanced English class at Delgado College, whom she had taught for just one week before the storm hit, had made out. She wondered, she wondered… She heard some rustling about an aisle or two over and feared it might be rats. Since she couldn’t sleep anyway, she finally mustered her nerve and got out of her cot to investigate.

She caught Gastro in the act of rifling through some cardboard containers.

“What’s going on?” she asked, and he jumped about a foot.

“I’m, uh, just getting some writing stuff,” he said, jamming things into his pockets.

Hope got closer and took a better look. It seemed to her that the open boxes contained calculators and electronic gear.

“I just wanted some paper,” Gastro explained, displaying a yellow pad and a handful of pens.

“What are you writing?” she asked.

“Oh, you know, I keep a journal, poetry, stuff like that.”

“Really? I’d like to read some, if you ever want me to. I teach students your age.”

“Yeah? Well, nobody reads my stuff. So good night, lady.” Gastro melted back into the shadows.

Hope shrugged. This hurricane had turned everything upside down. Who knew what belonged to anybody anymore. Maybe we all just had to take what we needed to get through. Suddenly tired, she went back to bed.