Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8)

by Tony Dunbar

  She bent over, careful not to spill the contents of her plastic cup.

  “It’s some old building?” she ventured.

  “Doesn’t that look familiar to you?” They were cheek to cheek. “See that door? See that window? I’m pretty sure that’s an old photograph of Janie’s bar, the Monkey Business.”

  “You could be right.”

  “Look over the door. Doesn’t that say ‘Club Caragliano’?”

  “It could say that. I’d need my glasses.” Tubby didn’t know that Peggy wore glasses, but never mind.

  “And there’s a poster on the door.” Tubby pushed his nose up to the picture. “I think it says ‘Vince Vance and the Valiants. No Cover’.”

  “Okay. So?” Peggy wasn’t getting it.

  “What it means,” Tubby shouted in his excitement, “is that there was live music in Janie’s bar back in the days of Polaroids. She’s going to win her case. Let’s go find Dinky before he sells this contraption to somebody.”

  XXX

  Cherrylynn’s day at the office got off to a bad start. Tubby didn’t show up, and he was short with her when she took the initiative and called him to ask if there were any assignments for her.

  “Use the time for studying,” he said. That was nice, since she was on the clock, but not so nice because studying for eight hours was going to be extremely boring. The ringing telephone gave her hope.

  The man’s voice at the other end said, “My brother got a call from this number, asking about a boy who disappeared back in the 1970s.”

  All boredom vanished.

  “That was from me. Who’s calling, please?”

  “This is Mister Haggarty. To whom am I speaking?”

  “My name is Cherrylynn. I’m a legal secretary, and my boss Tubby Dubonnet is investigating the shooting of a young man that took place here in New Orleans during that period.”

  “Shooting, huh? That’s what my brother said.” The voice was unemotional.

  “Yes, a boy who was killed in a demonstration.”

  “Was it some kind of civil rights protest?”

  “No, I think it was against the war.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Parker. He was a troubled youth, not like his kid sister. He didn’t seem to want to get along here in Muncie. As soon as he turned seventeen, he hitched a ride out of town. We got one postcard from him about a year later, and it was from New Orleans. After that, we ain’t heard a thing.”

  “Are you his father?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Spencer R. Haggarty.”

  “And his name was?”

  “Parker M. Haggarty.”

  “I’m real sorry to say that this could be the same boy. I hate to be the one telling you this news. I can have Mister Dubonnet call you as soon as he comes in. I’m sure he can tell you more.”

  “No need for that. Parker never wanted us to know his business, and if he’s dead, he’s dead. If his sister wants, she can call you.”

  Cherrylynn didn’t know what to say.

  “Well, you be good,” the man said, and he hung up.

  XXXI

  Tubby finally connected with the Tulane Library and arranged to drop off the bins. With some effort, and help from a passing undergraduate, he hauled them up the steps to the circulation desk. He asked the student behind it to summon Dr. Sternwick. The librarian appeared quickly and helped Tubby move the boxes into one of the offices. The lawyer took a chair and gave the doctor a quick summary of what he thought he had found.

  “Do you mean the JFK assassination?” the librarian asked doubtfully.

  “Yes,” Tubby said. “And more.” He popped open one of the plastic covers and flipped open one of the folders that referenced Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Sternwick’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the pages more closely.

  “There’s lots more in there,” Tubby repeated. “You’ve got material on Judge Leander Perez down in Plaquemines Parish. There’s this money trail to Dallas. There’s evidence of shootings and beatings and other crimes. And how the police gave cover to the whole thing.”

  “How would we authenticate any of this material?” the skeptical librarian wondered out loud.

  “I guess you could get together some scholars. I’ll tell them what I know and who else they ought to talk to.”

  “We do have local scholars,” Sternwick said, thinking out loud. “There’s a Professor Prima over at Loyola. I’ll call him right away and tell him what we think we have. And there are, of course, people here at Tulane, too, I’m sure.”

  Tubby just nodded along. He was content that the wheels were at last beginning to turn.

  “How did you get these papers?” the librarian asked.

  “That’s a long story,” Tubby said. “I might want to have my own lawyer in the room when I tell it. But if you decide that these records are real and want to open them up to the world, I’d like to give them a name.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d call it the ‘Parker M. Haggarty Collection.’ ”

  * * *

  Since Jason Boaz wouldn’t answer his phone, Tubby resorted to beating on the inventor’s door.

  A timid cry from within asked, “Who’s there?” and Tubby told him. He was admitted. Boaz was dressed very properly in a newly-pressed black suit and blue-striped tie.

  “Whose funeral?” Tubby asked.

  “I’m preparing for my own,” Jason said morosely. Tubby followed him back to the kitchen where Boaz had pancakes on the griddle. “I don’t know what to make of the world, Tubby,” he said and flipped his breakfast onto a waiting china plate. “I think I may be out of place in this space and time.”

  Tubby took a chair at the small kitchen table. “You have been acting unbalanced, Jason,” he acknowledged.

  “Yes, I suppose I have.”

  “You are in a lot of trouble,” the lawyer went on. “You killed a policeman, and whoever that other man was with him, the fat one.”

  “His name is not important, and never was. To us he was just the ‘Leader.’ ”

  “And you tried to kill me, and you almost got Raisin.”

  “You’ll get me out of this, won’t you, Tubby?” Boaz poured syrup liberally over his pancakes. “You always have.”

  “I can’t be your lawyer this go-round, Jason. That should be pretty obvious.”

  “Oh well, it probably doesn’t matter. He’ll catch up with me soon enough.”

  “Who?”

  “The Night Watchman, of course.”

  “You mean the priest, Father Escobar?”

  Jason looked at Tubby as if he were psycho.

  “That’s a ridiculous idea, Tubby. What does that venial-sinful individual know about shooting policemen, or putting a bomb in a car, for Heaven’s sake?” Thinking that he had made a pun, Jason broke out in laughter, which he squelched with a large forkful of his dripping confection.

  Tubby was taken aback. “I was sure it was the priest. There was a passage in the minutes where it said that the ‘Night Watchman’ said the benediction.”

  “That means nothing,” Jason scoffed. “We were all very religious in those days. Any one of us could offer a proper prayer. The task rotated from meeting to meeting.”

  “So, who did all those things? Who tried to run me off the road in Folsom?”

  “I didn’t know about that, but can you imagine Father Escobar driving to the Northshore?” Jason scoffed.

  “So who was it? Was it always the policeman, Rick Sandoval?”

  “Rick was very mean,” Boaz said sadly. “May he rest in peace. No, Rick couldn’t be every place at once. He was a working man with a schedule to keep.”

  “So who was it? Who was the Night Watchman? Who killed Parker Haggarty?”

  “There were generations of Night Watchmen.”

  “Never mind that. Who killed Parker Haggarty?”

  “Paul Kronke, of course. Our other faithful policeman. And he may kill me for telling you.”

  “Detectiv
e Kronke?” the lawyer was flabbergasted. “Why, he’s not even Cuban.”

  “Naturally not,” Jason said, spreading his hands. “No Cuban would be so brutish and, what’s the word, unsubtle.”

  * * *

  “He said it was Detective Kronke, now retired,” Tubby told Raisin. They had taken a table at Janie’s bar on St. Claude. The place was dead. They were the only customers in it. “Sandoval was apparently Kronke’s mentor and preceded him onto the police force by about a year. Because of Kronke’s family connections on the force, they could both be instrumental in keeping the youth group and its activities protected.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a Latin name to me,” Raisin said. “Kronke, what’s that?”

  “I don’t know. German, maybe. Jason just said that Kronke’s family was very anti-Communist. Actually, he said, ‘anti-Bolshevik.’ The youth group appealed to all kinds.”

  “Probably an FBI plant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you remember? In those days the most rabid provocateurs were actually undercover FBI agents.”

  “The funny thing is,” Tubby said, “Kronke made the same accusation about Rick Sandoval.”

  “Really? Did you tell Jason Boaz that he may have blown up an undercover agent?”

  “Yes, I did. He said it couldn’t be true. He even laughed about it. Then he started crying. That’s when I left him.”

  “A movement rife with CIA and FBI men is certainly an interesting proposition, but how would we ever know?”

  “We won’t. And we’ve got a bigger problem than figuring that out.”

  “What’s that.”

  “Kronke is still on the loose.” Tubby stared at the wall, trying to imagine what further mayhem the retired homicidal detective might still be capable of. “You know,” the morose lawyer continued, “there is evil out there.”

  “That’s where I’ve always questioned you, buddy,” Raisin complained. “Statements just like that.”

  “You disagree?”

  “No— but I wouldn’t say it.”

  “Because it’s too true?” Tubby was insistent.

  “No, because it just doesn’t sound grown up.”

  Tubby was offended. “Well, what if I said it this way? The world is depressingly full of mindless brutality.”

  “That’s a lot better.”

  “And the worst of that brutality is committed by the male half of the population,” Tubby mused.

  Raisin slouched in his chair. “Now you’re getting too philosophical,” he said.

  “You disagree with that?”

  Raisin shrugged. “The record is pretty clear, but I’d have to add something, based on my own life’s experiences.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can’t just put it all on ‘the men’ or on ‘the world.’ ” He put quotation marks around the words with his fingers. “Sometimes the bad stuff is committed by each of us.”

  “As in you and me?”

  “I’m not excluding anybody.”

  “You want a drink?” Tubby asked.

  “Not at this very moment.” Knowing him as well as he did, Tubby figured what he wanted was a cigarette. “Has your determination to nail the guy who killed that boy Parker been satisfied?” Raisin asked, evidently to change the subject.

  “No. It’s not over yet. Sandoval, Pancera, and the fat man are all gone, that’s true. But the others in the car, that priest, Escobar, and Detective Kronke, who pulled the trigger, haven’t yet been brought to justice.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “I think the papers I gave to Tulane will hang them.” Tubby’s spirits revived just thinking about it.

  “What about Jason Boaz?”

  “I’m not sure.” Tubby frowned. “I reckon he kept me from being beaten to death at the warehouse.”

  “After he tried to kill you with a bomb.”

  “There’s that.”

  “And you know he committed a murder. He blew up Rick Sandoval.”

  “There’s that, too. Maybe he’s insane,” Tubby said hopefully.

  “I doubt that.” Raisin wasn’t buying it. “He’s just a wicked dude.”

  “Didn’t you just say we’re all evil?”

  “Not all the time. Just on special occasions.”

  “Hell, I’m going to have a drink.”

  “Ok. I’ll join you.”

  Tubby rapped on the table to wake up Jack, who had been dreaming about hiking in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

  The street door opened and a burly man with a fringe of white hair was silhouetted by the sun.

  Raisin recognized the neighbor with whom he’d shared Maker’s Mark the week before.

  “Mr. Monk!” he called out.

  The man looked about slowly, taking the place in, before he decided to approach them.

  “Hello,” Raisin said. “This is my friend, Tubby Dubonnet. Have a seat with us.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. They call me Monk,” Monk said. He pulled out a wooden chair and squared himself away in the seat.

  “What are you drinking?” Raisin asked.

  “I’ll do the same as before,” their guest said obligingly.

  Jack came over and all three men ordered different concoctions.

  “First time I’ve been in here in twenty years,” Monk observed. He looked around to reacquaint himself with the room. “I saw your car outside,” he added, meaning Raisin’s sporty ride.

  “What do you think of it?” Raisin asked.

  “It ain’t changed much,” he said with approval. “It’s not too bad when it’s quiet like this.”

  “Has the noise problem gotten any better?”

  “Maybe a little.” Monk accepted his glass and took a deep swallow. “But not all the way better.”

  Tubby took a sip. “Maybe there’s something we could do to work that out,” he suggested quietly.

  Monk eyed him suspiciously. “Maybe,” he said. “Like what? And who’s ‘we’?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud,” Tubby said, staring into his glass. “Maybe a free bar tab on whatever your favorite afternoon is. Something along those lines. You know, for being a good neighbor and keeping an eye on the place in the daytime. I said ‘we’ because I’m the owner’s lawyer.”

  “Could maybe work something out,” Monk took another swallow, “along those lines. You say you’re a lawyer?”

  “Yes, I am,” Tubby acknowledged.

  “Is that right? Well, listen, I’ve got this legal problem you might want to hear about.”

  Tubby rubbed his eyes. Raisin broke out laughing and raised his glass to toast the table.

  * * *

  In the moonlight, parked at the Fly where Audubon Park touches the black void of the Mississippi River, three men were having a quiet conversation. It did not worry them that the park was closed and empty, except for the animals asleep in the zoo. Two of the three carried a badge.

  “I’m not going to miss either of those cops, Babineaux or Sandoval,” Archie Alonzo said. He pronounced each word carefully so they could be understood through the brace which had been clamped around his neck to support his jaw.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Trey Caponata agreed. “More pie for us.”

  “That’s what it’s all about, right? I’ve still got a union to run.”

  “So long as you provide uniformed officers to guard all my private functions, we’ll get along just fine,” Caponata said.

  “It’s going to be easier than it was before,” Alonzo assured him. “My eventual goal is to privatize the whole police force. Run it just like a business.”

  “A legitimate business,” Detective Kronke added. “Where everybody pays for what they get.”

  “The cops will end up better off in the long run,” Alonzo insisted through his brace. “They’ll make lots more money.”

  “If you want police protection, you ought to pony up for it,” Caponata added, laughing. “The more you pay,
the more you get.”

  “And I’ll be in charge of seeing that everybody pays their rightful share!” Kronke announced triumphantly. He might be old, but he definitely knew how to get things done.

  * * *

  Though some of the bad guys were still out there, Tubby was feeling victorious on all fronts. To a large degree, the Parker Haggarty murder had been avenged and, in short order, the remaining perpetrators would almost certainly be exposed and convicted for their past crimes. Maybe history would even be rewritten when the “Haggarty Collection” was made public.

  The Monkey Business bar now had the upper hand in its dispute with the city, though no one could ever predict what twists and turns New Orleans zoning politics could take. And Dinky Bacon’s electric and trendy career had survived its run-in with heretofore unknown public obscenity laws. They were even thinking about doing an article about him in The New Yorker magazine.

  In a good mood, enjoying the spectacle of a Lykes 20,000-ton container ship far below his window carefully navigating the riverbend at Algiers, Tubby decided to do something he always professionally avoided— solicit— no, almost solicit— a client. But since Jane Smith had certainly been wronged, probably needed help, and almost certainly wouldn’t pay him, this might be all right, if he was very subtle about it.

  He banished his doubts and called the quality-of-life officer on her cell.

  “This is Tubby Dubonnet,” he told her when she answered. “You may remember me.”

  “Right. I do. The lawyer.” Her voice was flat.

  “That’s me. A lot has happened since we last spoke about the Monkey Business bar.”

  “That has nothing to do with me now. I’ve got a desk job at headquarters.”

  “Is that a good or a bad thing?”

  “I’ll deal with it,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will. You seemed quite competent to me.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got some charges going on with Internal Affairs. You don’t handle that kind of stuff, do you?”

  Ah, the opening he had hoped for.

  “I handle just about everything, Officer Smith,” he said with conviction. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounded weary, as if resigned to an unfavorable outcome in life. “It’s probably nothing you would be interested in. It has to do with my sex…”