Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8)

by Tony Dunbar

“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 ar
e 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.”

  XXVII

  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.

  “Glad to see you,” his former lawyer mumbled.

  “I just couldn’t let this happen,” Jason told him. “Can you walk?”

  “Babe, I can run,” Tubby said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  With a little help, the lawyer made it out the door and into the parking lot to see Flowers holding the cop and the fat man in front of the cruiser. “Get in my car, Tubby,” Flowers instructed, and then addressed Sandoval. “I’ve got pictures. They’re on the Cloud now. Whether they stay there all nice and quiet depends on you. I know you have a gun in your car. Or several. But what’s done is done. Just drive away. Right?”

  Sandoval sneered while the fat man got into the passenger seat. “I’ll get back to you another day,” he whispered to Flowers.

  “Tu mama es una piruja,” Flowers whispered back.

  Red-faced, the policeman got behind the wheel and Flowers quickly stepped behind his own car to protect himself. He braced his elbows on the hood and leveled his pistol at the cop’s shady face behind the windshield.

  But there was no gunfire. The cop and the fat man peeled off onto River Road. Flowers, with Jason Boaz looking over his shoulder, watched the tail lights recede. But just a couple of blocks away, the car slowed and cut left across a curb. It stopped in the gravel beside the Public Belt Railroad tracks. He couldn’t tell if anyone got in or out.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Flowers said.

  “Wait,” Boaz said.

  A flash of light enveloped the police car. A split second later a wave of hot air and the crash of the explosion hit them. Both men fell to the ground instinctively.

  “What was that?” Flowers shouted, almost unable to hear himself.

  “We should get out of here,” Jason said.

  The police car was a flaming wreck.

  “Copy that!” Flowers yelled, lunging behind the wheel of his SUV, where Tubby was huddled in the passenger seat, bleary with one eye shut.

  “Did you do that?” the detective cried out the window to Boaz.

  “Yes, I did,” Jason said. “I’ve learned how to control the device better now.”

  He waved goodbye to Flowers, or maybe to the youth movement he had been a part of so many years ago, and faded back into the darkness.

  Flowers wasted no time aiming his vehicle back toward Audubon Park. Behind him he could see people running toward the burning car. Sirens were coming from everywhere.

  “Jesus,” Flowers said to Tubby. “Your friends.”

  “Strange bunch, aren’t they?” Tubby gave a small laugh, which ended in a cough.

  Police cars and an EMT van passed them going in the other direction. Tubby’s own car was still in the bar’s dark parking lot, where he had left it.

  “Can you drive?” Flowers asked. “Do you want to go to the hospital or anything?”

  “No, I think I can make it.” He had been feeling his jaw, around his eyes and his rib cage. “I don’t think they broke anything. In fact, I feel pretty good.”

  “Were others there?” Flowers asked. “I saw a big Mercedes leaving when I drove up.”

  “That was Carlos Pancera and some very bad priest,” Tubby told him. “Call Jason tomorrow and make him give you the man’s name. They didn’t hang around for the dirty work.”

  “Who was that guy with Sandoval, the one who got blown up?”

  “We were never introduced, but I heard him called ‘Jefé’. I think he was the ‘Leader.’ ”

  “And Pancera?”

  “I’m told he was the ‘Recorder.’ ”

  “And Sandoval?”

  “Security.”

  “Who was the Night Watchman?”

  “I’m not sure, but maybe the one who killed Babineaux, blew up Cherrylynn’s car, and tried to get me. That vicious priest is a likely candidate.”

  “Okay, that’s clear as mud. I’ll follow you home.”

  “No need for that.”

  “I’ll follow you, anyway.”

  “How did you find me?” Tubby asked.

  “After I unlocked the cuffs, which I must say is a pretty extraordinary feat, I tracked his police car on my GPS. He’s got a built-in buzzer, like all the cops, and I have the code. I could know where every police car in the city is, if I wanted to.”

  “Really? Well, good night.”

  With Flowers trailing behind, the lawyer drove home for some liquid painkiller.

  XXVIII

  The next morning Tubby arrived at his office late with a black eye. Cherrylynn made over him like an Ursulines nun until he demanded that she get back to her desk and find some work to do.

  The news on the radio, web, and TV had a lot of misinformation about the explosion that had killed a police officer. Only one victim was mentioned. The head of the police union was demanding that locals
be permitted to conduct the investigation without involving any federal “gestapo” from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

  Flowers called to say that Boaz would not answer the phone, but he had another idea.

  “I sent you an email,” the detective said. “It’s a copy of a page from the St. Agapius Church website with a picture of the last priest, who retired. His name is Escobar. If you can open it up, it might be your man.”

  Tubby powered up his laptop and took a look. A slightly younger and more trustworthy-looking image of his interrogator appeared. “That’s him,” he said. “Can you find out where he lives?”

  “I already know that. It’s on Belfast Street, up by St. Rita’s.”

  “I’d like to get inside his house when he’s not there.”

  “Easy enough. For what?”

  “Old records. They said they had records going back decades. Ireanous Babineaux had them, and he got killed for them. What better place to keep them now than with the Night Watchman?”

  “You think he’s the one? I’ll see if I can get inside today.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I get paid for taking risks like that.”

  “It was me who got my head pounded. You keep watch on the house. Tell me when it’s clear. I’ll be close, and my phone is in my pocket.”

  * * *

  Father Escobar had a friend, a church sexton named Marcos, who picked the priest up most afternoons to go shopping and visit sick people. Flowers deduced that within six hours. On the following day he had Tubby meet him on Belfast at 1:30. Sure enough, the sexton appeared on schedule and parked his white Saturn in front of Father Escobar’s house. Marcos got out, a tired-looking man in a rumpled brown suit, and approached the front door. He was admitted and a few minutes later reemerged with the priest behind him. They got into the Saturn and drove away toward Fontainebleau.

  Observing this from a block away, Tubby and his sleuth exited the detective’s Jimmy SUV and casually strolled along the sidewalk. They were surprised by a young jogger in sweats who passed them pushing her red baby stroller. She barely seemed to notice them. She had a phone to her ear.