by Tony Dunbar
Tubby didn’t answer.
“I do,” the retiree resumed. “There are a lot of people and things I don’t really like. Some right-thinking young hombres like I got, and I’m not talking about any Mexican-lovers, could mop out the alleys, so to speak, of some very bad people. If they had the finances and the fire-power, which they will have.”
“You’re a crazy, dangerous nut, you know that?” Tubby said, shaking his head.
“I think I may have mentioned that I have anger issues,” Mathewson told him.
“Yes.”
“My boys won’t be coming after you, Dubonnet. You’re a tough dude, not a bleeding heart, and I respect you. And I don’t intend to give you up to Johnny Vodka.”
“Great.”
“Maybe I’ll just save you for myself.”
Tubby didn’t know whether Mathewson meant it or not, but he did know he didn’t want to be his friend. He paid up and left the bar.
* * *
Tubby rang up Flowers to see if he could get a phone number for the pesky Ohio detective Willie Hines. Flowers already knew it. He also had some other information.
“Do you remember those two Vietnamese kids who were knifed to death out in West End, the ones they wanted to pin on your client Ednan?”
The lawyer said he did.
“My sources tell me it’s the start of a battle for turf in that community – young hotheads versus the old order.”
“The old order being Bin Minney?” Tubby asked, referring to the powerful community kingpin and reputed crime boss of a large part of New Orleans East.
“That’s right. Seems it was two of his boys got hit.”
“Really. If that’s the case, there will be a lot more violence to come.”
“The district attorney has quietly appointed one of his assistants, some woman, to head up a task force.”
“Maybe I know her,” Tubby said.
“I didn’t catch her name,” Flowers admitted, “but the police are worrying about an all-out war.”
“A war for the corrupt soul of the city that care forgot,” Tubby said grimly.
“Yeah. Right, boss. See you.” Flowers hung up.
* * *
That night, Peggy told Tubby, almost sheepishly, that she thought she needed him, in her life. It was his invitation to say it back.
“Well, you know I…” was all he managed to get out.
Peggy shook her head but gave him a squeeze anyway. “We’ll work on it,” she said.
* * *
Tubby made a call to Willie Himes, the interfering private detective, at the cell phone number Flowers had provided.
“So nice to hear from you, Mr. Dubonnet,” Hines spouted quickly. “Marina is right here, making us a beautiful supper.”
“Glad to know things are working out,” Tubby told him. “I suppose I’m surprised to hear that you are still in the area, now that your client, Doctor Kabatsin, is gone, along with his fortune.”
“No fortune? Is that what you hear?”
“Yes, that’s what I hear.”
“Yes, it is very disappointing,” Hines said, “but tomorrow is another day.”
“I don’t actually respect you and your profession, Hines, but I do happen to know of another potential pot of gold you might be interested in.”
“What’s that?” Hines asked, his boisterous voice suddenly lowering to a whisper.
“It involves someone you met at the Mississippi cabin, or maybe before. He’s a retired New Orleans police lieutenant named Adam Mathewson, and he hangs out at a dive named Priebus’s Trumpet Lounge.”
“Never heard of it,” Hines lied.
“He’s got a gang of dangerous delinquents, and he has, or may soon have, his hands on a very impressive pile of cash. I know your line of work involves abusing confidences and trying to enrich yourself. So you’d want to know this. It’s all untraceable money, and its existence is known only to a few. There’s probably a cache of valuable armaments as well, similarly abandoned, forgotten, and available.”
“Do you want to hire me to go after it?” Tubby heard the hunger in his voice.
“No, sir. I want nothing to do with it,” Tubby told him. “Think of it as a present to you. A consolation prize for losing the Sultan’s treasure.”
“And the catch is?”
“Well, if he thinks you’re a liberal, he might shoot you.”
Willie Hines had nothing to say to that.
“Or anyone he thinks is coming between him and that money. Or Mexican-lovers.”
“What’s a Mexican?” Hines asked.
“You may be the guy for the job. I hope not to ever see you again.” Tubby hung up.
With any luck he figured, Hines and Mathewson would take each other out.
CHAPTER 29
Dijon had arranged for a private talk with his daughter Ayana in her bedroom. This rarely happened, so she knew it was something important.
“I know you’re having a baby,” he began, and she looked down at her lap. “That’s going to change a lot of things,” he said sadly. “Like graduating from high school and going to college. I know how much you wanted that.”
She nodded and began to weep a bit.
“Did I ever tell you what your name means, Ayana?”
“I think maybe, once.”
“Well, in case you forgot, it means ‘Flower.’ You’re my flower, baby.”
Now she was really starting to cry.
“Well,” her father continued, “you can still have those things you want. I’m here to help you every way I can. But you need a man, and that baby needs a father.”
She raised her chin and simply said, “Yes.”
“That boy Stroker is no man, you understand me? He’ll never be worth a dime, and he’ll just hurt you.”
Ayana started to say something, but Dijon cut her off. “You need a husband who will work, and make a living, and stay by you. And who can be a part of this family. You know what I mean?”
She did.
“And you’re gonna get that diploma, and you’re going to go somewhere in life. Got that?” He cradled his bawling child in his arms.
* * *
“The older you get, the more you want to get things right with your life,” Tubby explained to Raisin. They were each having some Oysters Bienville followed by a good bowl of gumbo at Pascal’s Manale on Napoleon Avenue uptown.
“You’re obviously talking about you, not me,” Raisin pointed out.
Tubby trudged on. “I mean you look to see how you’re shaping up in relation to whatever guiding principles you might have. Could be the Bible, or Kant, or Justinian, or Benjamin Franklin, or…”
“Or Lena Horn,” Raisin added.
“Or whatever,” Tubby went on. “You start to realize that you’re not going to go on forever. There will be a terminus. You have to think about how you want the final picture to look.”
“Too much introspection,” Raisin said. “Is that why you’re never satisfied?”
“Why do you say I’m never satisfied?”
“You never look satisfied.”
“Have I always been that way?” Tubby stopped eating his soup.
“I think so, even in college. You’ve always had some higher ideal to strive for. But, guess what? The life you’re living ain’t so bad.”
“Sure, that’s right. But you know, as you get older you have to think.”
“You have kids. That’s a huge achievement,” Raisin reminded him.
“Right. And they’re great. But you always know you haven’t done all you’re supposed to do for them.”
“Really. Hmmm. I don’t have kids. And I haven’t been married for many a blessed year. So what does that make me? Where am I on the scale of human achievement?”
“I don’t mean to impose my philosophical questions on you,” Tubby said, staring at the chunk of French bread he had in his hand.
“In a way, Tubby, that’s one of my more interesting pursuits,” Raisin told him
.
“Thinking about your philosophical questions?”
“No, thinking about yours.”
Tubby started to say something smart, but a sense of gratitude washed over him. It was true. Raisin had almost always been there.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s forget this subject.”
“You may live another fifty years, dude.”
“If that’s true for me, it could be true for you, too. Don’t you have a girlfriend? Someone you mentioned, named Jenny?”
“No, that was just a brief affair.” Raisin shrugged. “She’s called to say the circus left town, and she’s gone with it.”
“Too bad.”
“Not really.” Raisin speared an oyster which he took in one bite. He worked through it, and resumed. “She was a little strange. She broke into my apartment one night and said she’s done some bad things. Who hasn’t? But, it’s probably better that she’s gone away, far away.”
“What bad things?”
“Didn’t say.”
“When was that?” Tubby asked.
“More than a week ago, I guess,” Raisin told him. “She told me she fixed ’em good.” Then he added, “We didn’t know each other for very long.”
“She was in the circus?” Tubby asked.
“Yeah. She was a, you know, contortionist, and even a sword swallower.”
“I’ve never seen….”
“Me neither,” Raisin said, and cut the discussion off.
“Anyway, she’s gone,” Raisin concluded.
Tubby had other things on his mind and let it go.
“You may yet get married again,” he speculated, “and have a whole brood of children.”
Raisin had to laugh at that. That wasn’t going to happen. “You think entirely too much, my friend.”
“Searching for the foundations of that proposition, I can find none which may pretend a color of right or reason,” Tubby told him.
“Huh?”
“Query Thirteen.”
“Are you doing Thomas Jefferson again?” Raisin tossed down his spoon.
“What does it hurt? It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
“You are doing it! How about this? ‘You ought to quit it, if you can’t do nothin’ wit’ it.’ ”
Tubby just looked at him.
“Moms Mabley,” Raisin enlightened him.
“I think I may take up the keyboards, or the steel guitar,” Tubby mused.
“Lost me there, pard,” Raisin told him.
“I guess I’m talking about things I might do, just to avoid talking about death.”
“Right. The grim reaper.”
“Yeah. I think I need to leave him alone for a while.”
“Don’t rile him up?”
“That’s right. I’m on break.”
CHAPTER 30
Not long after the prisoner’s homecoming, there was a wedding. Ayana and Ednan were getting married. Tubby was there, along with his secretary Cherrylynn, and Flowers, and Peggy O’Flarity. And at least ten members of Dijon’s gang who, because of their flamboyant feathery colorings, thought it inappropriate if not impossible to sit in the sanctuary and were instead milling about at the back until the service ended. Then they would lead the wedding party on a parade around the block, following a loud tuba, to escort the bride and groom to a rented limo which would take them away to their one-night honeymoon at the Canal Street Marriott.
The church was the Second Memorial Independent & Divisional Baptist off Rampart Street. They had a good turnout. Maybe a hundred people in the pews, and Peanut was the best man. Ednan’s mother, Jewel, in a beautiful sky-blue robe, sat up front with another queen or two. The father of the bride, however, was not there. Dijon was nowhere to be seen.
He was in the back, in the pastor’s private men’s room, with Ednan, giving him some last words of advice.
“You will treat my daughter right.” That was his advice.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Ednan nodded his head painfully. He was in a borrowed tux, and the collar of the starched shirt was cutting off his circulation.
“And you will work hard and support that baby.”
More grimaces and nods.
“I’ll tell you this, boy. Don’t you ever hang out with people with no education. People with no spirituality.”
“I won’t,” Ednan promised.
“Don’t associate with those kinds of people. They’ll kill you for a dollar. Now, who’s got the ring?”
“Peanut.”
“And you’re going to raise that baby like your own. I mean, it is your own, yes?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ednan said. He looked uncomfortable.
“You want to be the Flag Boy, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
“That’s good. Because you know, the Flag Boy, he’s the one who always gets the flower.”
“The what?”
“You’ll have my flower, young man.”
“I think I get it,” Ednan told him. It was probably the smartest thing he ever said.
THE END
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What they said about CROOKED MAN:
“The wacky but gentle sensibilities of Tubby Dubonnet reflect the crazed, kind heart of New Orleans better than any other mystery series.”
—The New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Dunbar catches the rich, dark spirit of New Orleans better than anyone.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Take one cup of Raymond Chandler, one cup of Tennessee Williams, add a quart of salty humor, and you will get something resembling Dunbar’s crazy mixture of crime and offbeat comedy.”
—Baltimore Sun
Also by Tony Dunbar:
The Tubby Dubonnet Series (in order of publication)
CROOKED MAN
CITY OF BEADS
TRICK QUESTION
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
CRIME CZAR
LUCKY MAN
TUBBY MEETS KATRINA
NIGHT WATCHMAN
FAT MAN BLUES
Other Works by Tony Dunbar
American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril
Where We Stand: Voices of Southern Dissent
Delta Time
Our Land Too
Against the Grain: Southern Radicals and Prophets, 1929-1959
Hard Traveling: Migrant Farm Workers in America
About the Author
TONY DUNBAR is a lawyer who lives in New Orleans, the mirthful and menacing city in which the Tubby Dubonnet mystery series is set. In addition to the mysteries, which have been nominated for the Anthony Boucher and the Edgar Allan Poe awards, he is also the Lillian Smith Book Award-winning author of books about the South, civil rights and protest. He has an abiding interest in the Battle of New Orleans and other grand dramas in the city’s colorful history and imaginative culture.
