by Tony Dunbar
There had been a long dry spell until the second time, and it had come up unexpectedly just two months before. A large sum of money, more than $300,000, had come into his hands in the course of events he still kept to himself. Not even Raisin knew about them. They involved a death never reported to the police. The good part of the story was that his client, Sandy Shandell, an exotic dancer in the French Quarter, had won twice that much as compensation for the unattractive consequences of a botched cosmetic surgery operation designed to make her skin the color of rich café au lait. When last heard from, Sandy had bought a house on Bayou St. John, invested wisely in a Merrill Lynch mutual fund, and headed off to Sweden to have his or her gender improved. And Tubby was left with a nice nest egg, even after taking care of Uncle Sam. He could leave it in the bank and enjoy the unfamiliar feeling of security.
Or he could buy a bar.
Or he could keep running off to Florida, or maybe take some trips to places his rich friends gushed about, like Montserrat or Vittoriosa, wherever the hell they were. The only problem was he didn’t want to go to any of those places. To be honest about it, he didn’t have anybody to go with. He found himself fantasizing about Nicole Normande. He wondered if his daughters would like her.
He drove past a two-story home on Henry Clay that had once housed a rowdy college fraternity. When Raisin was a member they dug a pit in the yard on Halloween, filled it with water and goo, and enticed students and neighborhood urchins to jump in. They were so boisterous and offensive that the university, and eventually even their national fraternal headquarters, had put the whammy on them. Tubby was thinking maybe he could buy the place, dig a mudhole, and throw wild parties—shake the block up. It was fun daydreaming about things he could do, now that he had money in the bank.
CHAPTER 8
Tania Thompson had been waiting almost motionless in the front seat of her car for nearly an hour. Every so often her toe would get loose and tap itself against the brake pedal, but she would calmly tell it to stop. Be a part of the wall, she reminded herself, even though there was no wall on this particular street. That was what she had successfully done for most of her life, but here it was no simple matter. Women didn’t sit by themselves in parked cars on Persephonie Street after nightfall. People in this neighborhood of pretty Victorian homes, built close together like petit fours in a gift box, separated by tall hedges and bamboo, sat indoors at night. They didn’t stay in their cars keeping their eyes on a quiet two-story house with green shutters.
There was even less of a reason for an African-American lady to be there, on this particular block. Lucky she was hard to see. It was after eight o’clock at night, and Tania’s parking place was shielded from the distant street lamp by overhanging tree branches. She was a small person and hoped she blended into the shadow of her seat.
A man and a woman passed by, walking their dog. She heard a fragment of their conversation.
“Her dress was slit way up her thigh,” the man said, but they did not notice Tania. She was used to that.
Tania was studying about a problem, which was how to kill Charlie Van Dyne. It was not an easy question because Charlie Van Dyne was a careful man and surely well guarded. He was powerful, and she was small potatoes. But she approached it analytically and optimistically, which was her nature. Tania had learned a lot of practical survival skills in her thirty-one years. Though she had never left the Irish Channel where her mother had raised her, she had grown up to be a branch manager for First Alluvial National Bank. She had not worked herself into that position on her good looks, though she was very pretty, and prim like a schoolteacher. She was just a competent manager and could make her boss look good.
You solved problems, she knew, by thinking them through, by keeping your cool. Holding your reactions under control. Quite a talent to have when you had seen your own baby brother nearly chopped in half, until that moment having a good time watching the Saints game on her front porch with the whole family hanging around, by 9 millimeter bullets spat out from some gun that when the police named it sounded like a kind of computer or foreign car.
Tania had been coming out the front door, bringing chips and dip, when the car drove by and her brother began howling and spouting blood all over the shiny white siding of the house. Somehow she didn’t remember hearing any shots, but she remembered the excited, serious face of the man leaning out the car window with his gun on fire. She didn’t know the man, but it was the same ugly, nameless, violent face she had secretly been afraid of all her life.
At the hospital, then the police station, then the wake, she heard several possible gunslingers mentioned. Her brother Kip had been dealing drugs on the street. Tania had known that for a long time. She thought he had quit, but she had just been misled by his bullshit and her affection for him. From various relatives and friends of Kip’s she picked up clues to the identity of her brother’s assassins, names like Coco and Hambone, and for the first time she heard the name Charlie Van Dyne. That name wasn’t mentioned to the police, but her brother’s grieving widow, Charmaine, damned Charlie Van Dyne from the lonely privacy of her tiny living room, accusing him of being the boss who ran things, or at least the boss that Kip knew about. It was Van Dyne or someone higher whom Kip had offended, and he had ordered her man killed.
Tania thought about her loss, the injustice of it, almost all the time. Even when she was carrying out her duties at the bank she dwelt upon it. The police had made no discernible progress. In fact, they seemed to lose all interest after the first day. Just one more drive-by shooting, one more horrible homicide in what was shaping up to be a record year in the Big Bad Easy.
“This city is a dangerous place.” That’s what the police detective had told her when she had last called to see if they were getting closer to arresting anybody.
“People think New Orleans is just Mardi Gras beads and Bourbon Street, but there’s a world of hurt out there, too. I don’t have to tell you,” the policeman said sadly.
She knew all about that hurt. The unsolved crime insulted her sense of rightness, and she stayed awake at night, unable to fit it into her life.
She wished all sorts of evil on Coco and Hambone. They came to her in nightmares. Tania prayed almost constantly about what to do.
Finally, one Sunday morning during services at the church in the neighborhood where she had always gone and where they called her Sister Thompson, a peaceful sensation washed over her in the middle of the preacher’s sermon. Her muscles relaxed and the creases disappeared from her forehead. She exhaled a great gust of anger and it was gone. In no more time than it took to inhale again, she was able to forgive Coco and Hambone. They were God’s children, too, and God’s business. They would haunt her dreams nevermore. Charlie Van Dyne, on the other hand, was her personal responsibility. He was beyond the reach of the law, and he deserved to die.
There was no Charlie Van Dyne in the phone book, however. According to her sister-in-law, Van Dyne lived somewhere uptown off Jefferson Avenue. At least that’s what Charmaine recalled Kip saying. On her lunch break, Tania went to the public library and studied the city directory. Every house in the whole city was listed by house number, as well as the name of the person who lived there. She checked the addresses on Jefferson from the river to Tonti Street, but no Van Dyne was to be found. Tania kept at it, and she finally discovered one R. C. Van Dyne on Persephonie Street, just a few blocks from Jefferson.
The next night after work, and after she had eaten a light supper, Tania drove up and down Persephonie until she found the address. The house was hidden behind a tall hedge but you could see it was well lit up. A semicircular driveway permitted direct entry into the front door from a car.
Tania parked where she could watch the door. A compact black Cadillac sat empty in the driveway. Barely had she cut off her engine, however, when two men in loud suits came outside. One opened the passenger-side door for the other, let him in, then came around and got behind the wheel. The Cadillac started, headligh
ts came on, and it swung around the driveway suddenly, its lights sweeping over Tania. She was too surprised to do anything but stare straight ahead. The Cadillac accelerated up the street. Tania got her own mind working quickly, and pulled out to follow.
Assuming that Van Dyne was the passenger, she now knew that he was handsome, tall, and strong-looking. She followed the Cadillac to Derbigny Street, then across Tulane to Mid City. It pulled into the dim parking lot of the Bouligny Steak House, and Tania, from across the street, watched the two men get out and go into the neon-lit restaurant.
Tania parked outside under the streetlights for almost an hour and a half. A panhandler spotted her and tried to engage her in conversation, but she refused to open the car window. After tapping on the glass and making a face he went away. To occupy herself she went over the day’s events, thought about a customer who had complained about one of her tellers, and wondered where she would get a gun.
Finally the two men came outside again, laughing. Charlie paused to light a cigarette. Then he was let back into the Cadillac. They drove away, and Tania followed them back uptown to Persephonie Street. The car entered the driveway, and the men got out and went back inside the house. She maintained her vigil outside until almost eleven o’clock. When she caught herself falling asleep, she decided to go home.
She repeated much the same program on the following two nights, and Charlie’s routine stayed constant, except that he went to Ruth’s Chris one night and Pascal’s Manale the next. He was a very satisfied-looking man.
A plan began to form in Tania’s mind. It was nothing complicated, because she had learned in her professional life that the simplest approach was the one most likely to succeed. And she remembered where to get a gun. Her brother Kip had had one. He kept it in the table beside his bed. Tania went calling on the widow Charmaine that evening after supper, and, when she was left alone for a minute, she found the pistol and furtively put it in her pocketbook. Things were falling into place, and she went to bed that night eager to wake up and face the day.
Her boss came by her desk and complimented her.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“Busy,” she said with a smile.
“You know I always think you do a good job, Tania, but lately I’ve thought you’re putting out some real extra effort, like you are enjoying your work.”
“Why, thank you, Jerry,” she said.
“I just wanted you to know I noticed,” Jerry said.
CHAPTER 9
On the day following Tubby’s return from Florida, after he had made his visit to the morgue, slept and washed the stars out of his eyes, he had called up his oldest daughter, Debbie, to invite her out for a meal. It took them about a week to get together. They met for an early supper at Crêpe Nanou uptown, a favorite of hers. He ordered crabmeat crêpes, and he had to admit that, though real men had trouble pronouncing “crêpe,” they weren’t bad. The spicy mixture wrapped in a light pancake was quite tasty. Debbie liked sweets, and tonight she had crêpes with sour cream and peaches. She dug in while he told her about Florida, and seemed to enjoy her choice immensely.
“It sounds like the two of you had a lot of man-fun,” she said, smirking as if she knew what that was.
“That about sums it up,” Tubby said. “Much more fun and we couldn’t have made it back.”
“Did Raisin have a good time?”
“The best.”
“Doesn’t he have a girlfriend now?” Debbie always seemed interested in Raisin. A lot of people did. How did he get away without ever having a steady job? How the hell did he pull it off? Seeing him any day of the week looking fit on the tennis courts at Tulane or the club on Jefferson Avenue was enough to make accountants and doctors shake their heads in wonder. Tubby knew Raisin’s secret. Don’t worry. Be happy. Just say No.
“Yeah. Melinda. She’s a nurse at Hotel Dieu.”
“She must be very tolerant,” Debbie pried.
“It’s hard to say.” Tubby tried to be noncommittal about Raisin, the reason being he’d known the guy for over twenty years and still couldn’t predict what he’d do next. No doubt this was the feature that attracted more than a few women to Raisin—even those in the pre-geriatric set they were starting to run with.
“But you had a terrible homecoming.” She sat back and pushed aside her plate, on which she had abandoned a tiny crisp of her supper. “What an awful way to die.” Debbie had inherited bluntness from her mother.
“They think he was dead before he was dropped in the oil, but anyhow you’re right. It sure isn’t like dying at home in your sleep. Potter was a good guy. We had some real nice times together.”
“Do you remember the time Mr. Aucoin brought me home from the French Quarter?” she asked.
“I sure do. I respected him for that.”
“I guess I do, too, now,” she laughed. “He really said some things that made me think a lot about drugs.”
“Whatever happened to your date from that night?” Tubby asked.
“Arn? He got married. He’s studying art at UNO and living with her parents. He turned out to be a jerk.”
Tubby nodded, his judgment about boyfriends again confirmed.
“Mrs. Aucoin, she must be in shock.”
“Actually she’s coping pretty well,” Tubby said, patting his lips with a napkin. “She was down at the morgue when I got there. Dr. Jazz came by to pay his respects. She was calm and went home with her brother and sister. She was great at the funeral, making all the people feel better. I called her today about the estate and everything. I don’t think it’s completely hit her yet.”
“What do the police say?” she asked.
Tubby waved the waiter over and ordered coffee. What kind of dessert did you have at a crêpe restaurant? Maybe they could go someplace else.
“They’re still looking for some kind of motive. There’s not a whole lot to steal in a shipping office, especially not the kind of popgun operation Potter ran. And the cops haven’t the slightest clue as to what his business was about, so they can’t really investigate that too much. But really, who steals peanut oil? Their first thought was maybe he fell in the hold of that barge all by himself, but that was a dumb idea. Potter wouldn’t even step on his barges ’cause he didn’t like to get dirty. Anyway, the coroner nipped that since there was a head wound nobody could miss. I don’t think they have any leads at all. Except for the fact that Potter knew a couple of important people, like from card games, they wouldn’t even be going through the motions.”
“Can you do something?”
“Hey, I’m not a sleuth. I’m a lawyer.”
“Yo” was all Debbie had to say to that. She sipped her coffee. “I wish you would help me with a legal problem, Daddy.”
Tubby was immediately alarmed. “What’s the trouble, honey? Of course I’ll help.”
“Oh, not me,” she said quickly. “It’s this group at school, Save Our River. They’ve been trying to find a volunteer lawyer to file a case against some polluters.”
“Well, let’s see. I don’t know anything about environmental law,” Tubby hedged. “Don’t they have a law clinic at Tulane for that sort of thing?”
“Yes they do, Daddy, but they’ve run out of money or something. They’re not taking on any new cases right now.”
“I didn’t know you were involved in environmental work. Is it some kind of club or something?”
“It’s a real organization,” she said defensively. “It’s mostly people from school, but they have members from all over.”
“Tell me more about it. When did you get involved?”
“I’ve been going to meetings for a couple of weeks. Marcos took me to one. His roommate’s the chairman.”
Oh, that explained things. Marcos was a boyfriend. He was a permanent student, on sabbatical from his family estates in Mexico, with an interest in biology. He was good-looking, well off, always polite, spoke English beautifully, and Tubby was running out of reasons not to approve
of him.
“The main objectives,” Debbie continued, “are to get the river cleaned up and to catch the major polluters.”
“That’s kind of hard,” Tubby said, “since we are at the tail end of a two-thousand-mile open drainage ditch that starts in garden spots like Pittsburgh and the copper mines of Butte, Montana. And along whose shores any ship or barge that wants to can just flush its hold and send a highly toxic surge toward New Orleans. How are you going to police that?”
“You have to try, don’t you? A lot of that chemical waste comes from right here, so we’re responsible. For goodness sakes, we drink that stuff.”
Shocking, but true. Over the levee at Oak Street, there they were. Big pipes sucking in the brown muck of the river, happy with fish and swirling with an occasional rainbow, all pumped into the treatment plant. There it was given a rest, laced with chlorine, treated to sunshine, and sent out to fertilize the populace. Those who could afford it drank bottled water from some less urban aquifer up north, or drank wine.
“It’s a big problem, to be sure,” Tubby hemmed.
“Couldn’t you help, Daddy? I know you’re busy, but I bet you could make a big difference.”
Actually he was not very busy. If he didn’t get motivated he was going to find himself without any clients.
“What do I have to do?” he asked.
“Just be a lawyer. I’ll tell Twink Beckman. He’s the president. I don’t know the details of the case since I just joined the group. I’ve only been to one meeting actually, and I heard them say they needed lawyers. I’m sure he’ll call you soon.”
