by Tony Dunbar
CHAPTER XX
Out of the corner of his eye, Dufour saw someone go into Ron’s Famous Crawfish, and he thought it might be Ron himself. He hopped out of the car and hastened inside. There was the familiar smell of the sea, and a steaming pile of red crawfish was displayed behind the glass, but something was different. There were no customers.
As soon as the door banged shut behind Dufour, with the ring of a bell, the woman behind the counter also disappeared.
“Hey, who’s here?” he shouted. “Ron?”
A burly Asian of indeterminate age dressed in a shiny silver suit came out from the back and entered Dufour’s personal space. His eyes were hidden behind mirror sunglasses.
“You guys ought to franchise this look,” Dufour began, but the man pressed up against his chest and began patting him down.
“I mean, seriously, you look good,” Dufour said as fingers probed in his clothes. “But what’s going on here, bud? Where’s Ron?”
“He’s gone out of business,” the touchy-feely men said. He lifted his sunglasses and parked them in his jet black hair. His black eyes, sunk deeply in the holes above his sharp cheekbones, stared without emotion into those of the would-be entrepreneur. Dufour’s spirits sank to his socks.
The man feigned puzzlement. “We’re in charge here now. Who are you?”
“Me? I’m Frenchy Dufour. I’m buying this store from Ron.”
“That deal is off,” the man said. “You need to disappear like lettuce in a soup or else you’ll be hurt.”
“Hurt? Me? I’ve got money tied up in this place! I’ve paid Ron for it.”
“Bad investment,” the man said. He cut the conversation short by slugging Dufour in the gut.
Dufour bent but did not break. He came up fists flaying like a windmill, the maneuver he had learned in high school, but the guy in the suit quickly wrapped him up, slapped him around, kneed him in the nuts several times, and hustled him out of the store through the back door. Dufour was stripped of his money pouch, which contained almost a grand, and thrown outside beside the dumpster.
It took several minutes for the crippling pain to begin to go away. As it passed, he regained awareness that traffic was passing in the street and that a man on a bicycle had paused to nudge him with his sneaker to see if he was breathing and then had ridden on.
Dufour got back to his feet and tried to wipe the seafood grime off his tailored jacket. He had no immediate desire to investigate who his attacker was or where he might have gone. It was clear as a sunny day that his chances of recovering Cisco’s investment or his own money belt were highly doubtful.
Regaining his composure, Dufour walked awkwardly back to his car.
“Out of misfortune comes opportunity,” he reminded himself while he got behind the wheel and drove across town. That advice had come from a fortune cookie he had found with his fried rice years before, and the message had stuck with him. So he ran through various ways this situation might be salvaged.
Losing Cisco’s money was not necessarily an end-of-life event, after all. Cisco seemed like a nasty little brat, nothing more. On the other hand, he had alluded to powerful financial backers. Dufour considered that if he made a clean breast of things, he could probably still pay the dough back over a year or two, if he had enough good days at the track, if he scored a couple of big drug deals. But becoming a desperate criminal again, the life he had outgrown, really was a miserable prospect. Even thinking about it made him sicker than he already was. Have some balls! he exhorted himself. Don’t be a dummy! Double down!
* * *
Bin Minny wasn’t totally satisfied that a sufficient message had been delivered to Frenchy Dufour.
“Wait a day or two,” he instructed his man in the silver suit. “Then go back and check on Mr. Dufour’s attitude.”
The hood, “Dapa Jack” Nguyen, said, “An ox will stand on his tongue.”
“Take some men with you next time,” Bin Minny said. “Run him off for good.”
* * *
For his day job, when he wasn’t playing the market, Cisco sold cars at Lucky LaFrene’s Chevrolet, Hyundai, Nissan and Isuzu on Veterans Highway, and that’s where Dufour found him, waiting on a customer. Cisco told another salesman to park Frenchy in a glass-walled office.
“Shouldn’t take too long,” the salesman said. “Mr. Bananza is a real fast talker.”
Frenchy sat down on a folding chair. He longed for a vodka and tonic to calm his nerves after his rough ejection from the crawfish shack. He tried to put his thoughts into good order while inspecting his clothes for lingering dirt. Take deep breaths, that’s the best thing.
“How’s it going, Frenchy?” The voice caught him by surprise.
“Hey, Cisco,” he said swinging around. The kid looked pretty good in his blue suede jacket. He had that car dealer’s expression on his face projecting confidence that any problem could be solved. He sat across the plain metal desk and opened with, “How are things? Frenchy? Any new prospects?”
Dufour took a last restorative deep breath and laid it all out. Just the way he imagined things should have gone.
Business was great! he said. Ron’s Famous Crawfish store was in the bag, and the Ron’s brand could easily be expanded soon. The first new location would probably be in Jackson, Mississippi, where there was plenty of pent-up demand for all things Cajun.
Dufour elaborated further. The original crawfish location on Broad Street could probably suck up $10,000 per week from Cisco’s pot, which could immediately be turned around into legitimate money in the bank. The Reverend Horton’s Divine Immersion funeral business up at Lake Pontchartrain also was a good prospect, though the owner wasn’t quite on board yet. No pun intended, ha, ha. All in all, Cisco would soon see not just a plethora of reliable outlets for some of his excess dollars but there were also more deals on the horizon.
That was the reason for this meeting. One particular new and excellent opportunity was staring Dufour right in the face.
“I’ve got a booming bar lined up to join the conglomerate,” he lied. “A joint on St. Claude Avenue that’s got a great name and is primed to grow. Right now it brings in maybe $5,000 cash per week. Nobody would notice a thing if we upped that to $10,000, and this joint just exudes vibe. We can package and reproduce it— in someplace that needs a major dose of cool, like Knoxville or Little Rock, and just keep spreading out from there.”
“Go on,” Cisco said. He liked what he was hearing, but he was waiting for the ask.
The ask this time was for $250,000. In cash, since that’s what these little business people liked.
“Do you know what Cisco means in Spanish?” he asked Dufour, who did not.
“It means Frenchman,” Cisco said. Frenchy and Cisco smiled warmly at each other.
The discussion went back and forth, but Cisco was quite impressed with the ideas he was hearing. It looked like a sure-fire way to put a lot of cash into circulation, run it through the register, deposit it into a bank as legitimate business income, convert it to legal money, and make a handsome profit.
“If I take a chance, it’s you personally on the hook,” he reminded Dufour.
“Oh, sure, I’m clear on that,” Dufour said from the depths of his heart. As he saw it, young Cisco was the one who was taking the hook.
Frenchy might be in a deep hole, but with just a little more scratch to play with he could close all the deals he needed to get back to the surface and make everyone happy, very happy.
Cisco told him to come back later. Frenchy did as he was told, and he was handed an alligator skin attaché case chock full of Ben Franklins. “Screw those Vietnamese,” he thought. Frenchy had a brand new lease on life.
CHAPTER XXI
In response to their request, Detective Mathewson admitted Tubby and Cherrylynn into police headquarters to see a video that had been shot from a camera on Broadway Street.
“It won’t show you anything,” Mathewson warned them ahead of time.
&nbs
p; It was indeed very grainy footage of the Prima beating. The lawyer and his secretary peered over the detective’s wide shoulders while the video played on his computer screen. They could see an automobile passing on a gray street. A man on a sidewalk advanced toward the camera.
“That’s Oliver,” Cherrylynn said. Tubby couldn’t even be sure of that.
From the left, two figures appeared and crossed the street, their steps made jerky by the camera. Silently they bracketed the man, knocked him to the ground, kicked him and ran back as they had come, out of the camera’s sight. Their victim was curled up on the sidewalk motionless.
“Want to see it again?” Mathewson asked.
Cherrylynn sucked up her gut. “Can you blow it up?” she requested weakly.
The policeman made it larger and ran it again. You could see the hint of a face on the bigger of the two thugs. Black chin whiskers. It was possible to make out a profile. The other assailant was just a blur, though he might have had dark hair.
“Can we get a shot where we could make a still photo of these guys?” Cherrylynn asked.
“I don’t see why not, but you won’t see much.” Mathewson froze the screen and blew it up.
“What’s it say on the big man’s T-shirt?” Tubby asked, pointing.
“I see what could be ‘Friends’,” Cherrylynn said.
“I see ‘Friends of the P— something.’ Maybe ‘Public.’ Could it be a political group?”
“There’s a ‘Friends of the Public Library,’ ” Cherrylynn suggested.
“It could be that,” Mathewson acknowledged without much enthusiasm. “I think it’s a dead end.”
“I’ll run with it,” Cherrylynn offered.
The policeman seemed bored. He shrugged. “Hell, maybe the perp is a booklover.”
Cherrylynn was a booklover, and she had seen T-shirts like that one for sale at the downtown public library when she was doing research on one of Tubby’s more esoteric cases. She took her photograph there first and showed it to the check-out ladies.
“Not much to see,” one of them commented. That was certainly true. All that could really be made out was that one of the men was big and the other wore a baseball cap. On the bigger guy, a scruff of black hair and a tiny slice of a profile suggesting a prominent chin were visible. Also, that snatch of a red T-shirt. The more Cherrylynn studied it the more she thought that maybe the shirt wasn’t really such a great clue. It could be advertising the “friends” of almost anything, any place.
Nevertheless she asked for and got Tubby’s okay to drive around town to some of the smaller library locations. After all, it was Saturday.
At the Mid-City branch on Orleans Avenue she received the same blank stares— until she showed it to the librarian at the circulation desk. He was a young man with lush brown hair, heavy eyebrows and a full beard which hid his chin. She found all that hair somewhat intriguing.
“I can’t tell you who that man is,” the librarian said, “but that T-shirt is not one of ours. Looks to me like it’s ‘Friends of the Pub’. They sell them at an Irish bar on Bienville called Paddy’s.” Even though Cherrylynn’s interpretation of the T-shirt’s message seemed to be incorrect, this was still a great result. The librarian helpfully provided directions and said maybe he would see her there later. He got off at five. It wasn’t very far away— up near Delgado Community College.
Cherrylynn zipped down Canal Street. It was so nice to be out of the office, not at school, not at home, and doing detective work on a Saturday. Through her cracked car window she took in the intoxicating brisk air of the soon-to-be-forgotten winter. Screeching to the curb under a huge live oak tree she faced the tavern, a classic neighborhood joint painted blue as an Easter egg. She bounced out of the car with her photograph in hand and stepped gingerly over the broken concrete sidewalk. It was just after three o’clock in the afternoon.
Abandoning her normal caution about being an unaccompanied woman in an unfamiliar bar, she rose to her full five-foot-two inch height and assertively opened the door. She found herself in a smoke-flavored space lit by a Creature From the Black Lagoon pinball game and by the dim fluorescence of a wall-length beer cooler standing behind a long bar that was decorated with Christmas stockings and Saints banners. Two guys in jeans were playing darts and gave her the onceover. A couple of promising young men sat at the bar, on either side of a woman with jet black hair and lavender eyelids who was wearing a purple party frock over her black fishnet stockings and sequined high heels. They all shot warning glances her way.
The bartender appeared from a shadowy back room where there were sofas, possibly with people resting on them. He had to step over two cats tearing across the floor. The bartender had the same profile as the man in her picture, except that he was clean shaven.
“Your pleasure, ma’am?” he asked, and she was lifted by that smooth voice at least three inches off the vinyl pillow of her stool.
“A beer, I guess.” She blushed because why else would you come into a bar. She hoped no one noticed her discomposure in the dimness. She was trying to be afraid of this man but finding it hard.
“Should I pick one out for you or do you have one in mind?” He was smiling kindly at her.
She came up with, “I guess I should have an Irish beer.” She was aware that her selection was probably being noted by everyone in the place.
“Okay. Well, I like the Harp.” His voice was mellow and sweet as the powdered sugar dust on a beignet.
“That’s just what I want,” she said quickly. “Only I couldn’t think of the name.”
They had it on draft, and it came back to her in a chilled pint mug, which he set upon a square coaster. She noticed that “I Love My Pub” was printed on the cardboard.
The bartender rested his elbows on the bar, offering an ear if she wanted to talk.
“I’m from Washington State,” she said for no particular reason. “Are you from here?”
“Yes, I am. My whole family lives within a few blocks of this bar. But they are from Cuba originally, with a few Hondurans mixed in.”
“So, why? Why are you working in an Irish Bar?”
“Irish is a state of mind, yes? And what brings you in here?”
“Maybe I’m just looking for a good T-shirt,” she said. “Do you sell them?” Her eyes scanned over the walls, the parts not hidden by baseball team photos, dart boards, and drinking party memorabilia.
The bartender stroked his chin and winked. “We used to have some, but they’re all gone. Wait till St. Patrick’s Day and we’ll have them back. You don’t like your beer?”
Cherrylynn took a sip and wiped foam from her lip. “I thought you sold some ‘Friends of the Pub’ shirts,” she said. “Red ones.”
“That we did. It was for our anniversary not very long ago. Not sure which anniversary it was. Excuse me.” He moved away to the trio who had raised empty glasses. This was the place! He was the guy! She should probably put in a call to Tubby, who had no idea where she was. But she didn’t, yet.
Cherrylynn considered other conversation topics. The décor suggested many, with its posters of dead rock stars and an old Pac Man machine. The bartender came back.
“Do you ever have live music?” came into her mind.
“Usually on Fridays. Last night we had an Irish special, John Williams from Chicago. He’s a legend.”
“I’m sorry I missed it. Maybe next week. What’s your name?”
“Victor Guerrero.”
“I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“Could be. Or maybe my brother José. We’re twins. Where was it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I go to Loyola, so maybe around campus.”
Victor shrugged and polished a glass. He didn’t look guilty. “Most likely José and not me. He’s the smart guy. I’m just a down-and-out musician trying to make a buck. José sells insurance. He’s already finished with his college, but maybe he was at Loyola on business.”
Cherrylynn slid o
ff her stool and made her way to the tiny ladies’ room in the back. She called Tubby.
She reported in a hushed voice. “The man in the red T-shirt is named José Guerrero.”
“Are you sure?” Tubby asked.
“I’m almost positive. I’ve got his brother here and he’s nearly a dead ringer.”
“That video didn’t show much,” Tubby pointed out.
“Well anyhow,” she said exasperated, “I have a feeling.”
“That’s good enough for me. I’ll see if I can trace him. Consider yourself done for the day.”
“Works for me,” Cherrylynn said and rang off.
“Did you like your beer?” Victor asked when Cherrylynn returned.
“It’s very Irish. I think I’ll have one more.” Victor was cool. Hey, maybe the reference librarian would show up. Suddenly, she remembered the pain being suffered by Oliver Prima, and gave herself a deserved mental slap on the cheek.
* * *
It was nearly midnight when Cherrylynn left the bar. Fortunately, her car was parked under the tree right out front. The bearded librarian, whose name might have been Luke, had shown up and entertained her for hours playing darts, and they had even slow-danced to Irish music on the juke box. It was research, she told herself, but as the night wore on thoughts of poor Ollie Prima lying in his hospital bed weighed upon her more and more.
Yet, it was her drinking companion who announced at last that the party was over. The library was open on Sunday afternoon, and he needed to get some sleep.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked. “I live close by.”
Cherrylynn got the silent invitation, and declined— though it took more resolve than she cared to admit. Anyway, leaving Professor Prima out of the equation, it was against her principles to sleep with bearded men on the first date when she was a bit tight and actually quite worn out. However, it had been a fun night. They exchanged phone numbers and he walked her to her car.
Once she was behind the wheel, he rambled away. Absorbed by fishing for her keys in her purse, she didn’t see the man approach from the shadows until he jerked the door open and slapped her hard.
