[Tubby Dubonnet 01.0] Trick Question

by Tony Dunbar

  Tubby sighed in appreciation of the cloth napkins at the venerable diner shadowed by the avenue’s towering royal palms. He signaled for coffee just to watch the graying black waiter pour a steady sable stream from two feet above the cup. Not a drop did he splash. Pleased with his stunt, the man gave Cherrylynn a kindly wink.

  “Coffee or tea, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Tea,” she giggled.

  “Where’s Harry?” Tubby asked, referring to the waiter who had been a fixture in the place since Tubby was in law school.

  “Harry retired,” the waiter reported, “after forty-six years. We got a sandwich on the menu named in his honor.”

  “I’ll have that,” Tubby said.

  Cherrylynn ordered a turkey club, Flowers the Doc Brinker’s special double cheeseburger on rye, very rare, and a chocolate freeze.

  The streetcar rumbled by outside.

  “I guess we need to work,” Tubby said grudgingly. “What happened to you?” he asked Flowers.

  “I dropped Cherrylynn off with Magenta Reilly, Dr. Valentine’s favorite student. Then I called on Ira Bennett, chiropractor. Who do you want to hear from first?”

  “Cherrylynn, since she’s the new kid on the block.”

  “Okay. Here I go.” Cherrylynn told how she had gone into the laundromat on Tonti Street, how she had met Magenta by pretending to notice her hospital clothes, and how they had gone next door for a cup of coffee.

  “I kind of worked around the subject of how hard medical school was and how it left so little time for a real life. I asked her right out if she ever had a chance to go out on dates. She almost started to cry, the poor thing. What she said was, ‘No, there’s never any time. You just have to realize that that part of your life is totally over.’ I asked if she meant that it was on hold, instead of over, but she just looked real sad.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much. She told me she studied diseases because she wanted to make the world a more livable place. It seems she grew up in the projects and wants to, like, help people.”

  “I gather it was not your impression that she killed the doctor?”

  “Not at all.” Cherrylynn looked shocked. “She’s real nice. And she seemed too sad and, well, meek.”

  “Okay.”

  “I do remember one other thing,” she said.

  Flowers and Tubby waited.

  “She said she’s learned that doctors are almost all assholes.”

  “A sweeping statement,” Tubby murmured.

  “No argument from me,” Flowers said.

  Their food came. The sandwich named for Harry turned out to be roast beef on a seeded roll with melted Swiss and grilled onions covered with mushroom sauce. Tubby showed it to everyone to make them envious.

  “So what have you got?” he asked Flowers.

  “I’ve got a scrawny, bearded, slick-talking slimeball. That’s my initial unbiased impression. His office is uptown on Prytania Street. He advertises himself as a chiropractor for professionals. I don’t think he’s doing so good because there was no one in his waiting room. His receptionist told me there had been a cancellation, so the doctor could make an exception and see me without an appointment. I had to sit in an examining room and wait for fifteen minutes. You know, they’ve got this strange chart of the human anatomy, according to the science of chiropractic, that shows how we’ve really got only one single great big nerve running through our entire body. Can you believe that? When Bennett came in I introduced myself and told him what case I’m working on.”

  “What reaction?”

  “He pretended not to know what I was talking about and took offense that I wasn’t there to have my spine adjusted. So I tried the direct approach and told him I’d heard he was having an affair with the widow Valentine. He got very huffy and asked how dare I insinuate such a thing. Basically he blew a fuse and ordered me out of his office, so I went peacefully.”

  Tubby chewed his sandwich thoughtfully. There was some garlic in there somewhere. “Good,” he remarked. “I mean, it’s good we’re making our presence known. What time was it when you left Bennett’s office?”

  “Let’s see.” Flowers consulted a little notebook he kept in his pocket. “Twenty minutes past eleven,” he reported.

  “That probably explains what happened to me. Mrs. Valentine agreed to see me for a few minutes at her house. She’s nice-looking, as you said, but kind of plump. She sat me down in the kitchen and fixed me coffee. I told her how sorry I was about her terrible loss and explained I’m just searching for another possible explanation of her husband’s murder – one that doesn’t point a finger at my client.

  “She said she understood that this is my job, but she knows no one who disliked her husband. He never complained about anyone at work, or at the medical school, or anywhere else. They were extremely happy and hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Then the telephone rang and she took it there in the kitchen. When she came back she told me forcefully that she had spent as much time talking to me as she was going to. I also went peacefully.”

  “So now we have two great suspects who won’t talk to us,” Flowers commented.

  “What does it all add up to, Mr. D?” Cherrylynn asked.

  “Not a big hill of red beans.”

  A crowd had built up outside the restaurant. People loved the place, just because it served big portions of real food and was clean. A child outside, nose pressed to the window, watched the three of them sitting there. Please get up, those eyes said, so I can come inside for a piece of pie.

  “Let’s go,” Tubby said.

  He paid at the register and followed his two investigators outside. The waiting crowd parted, happy to see them leave.

  “Cherrylynn, you can go to the office now, or in the morning,” Tubby said, “but I want you to draw up subpoenas for all three of them, Ruby Valentine, the slimy Dr. Bennett, and your buddy Magenta. Get the sheriff to serve them first thing Monday morning. And I also want you to subpoena Auchinschloss, the head of the laboratory. And Dr. Randolph Swincter, Valentine’s colleague, and anybody else I think of between now and then.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Flowers asked.

  “Just keep a watch on Bennett and Mrs. Valentine. And see if you can think of any way to lay off some of your expenses on another client.”

  “Understood,” Flowers said. “Where can I reach you?”

  “Actually, that may be hard. I’m going to visit Busters again and then probably just go fishing and think about the problem.” And about that damn Harold. And about Debbie. “Cherrylynn can take messages.”

  His secretary just shook her head.

  CHAPTER 17

  Cletus Busters was a little happier on the second visit because Tubby brought him a pack of Camels and a lighter.

  He lit up immediately and, between long puffs, asked Tubby how the case was coming. Tubby told him what they had done and whom they had talked to.

  “Doesn’t sound like much,” was Busters’s comment.

  Tubby ignored him. “Were you working the Friday before you found Valentine’s body?” he asked.

  “I work every night but Saturday,” Busters said, blowing a thin stream of smoke past Tubby’s right ear.

  “The coroner believes that Dr. Valentine’s body had to be put into the freezer on Friday, or even earlier in the week, to freeze as solid as it did.”

  “So what you want to know?”

  “First, did you see anything unusual on Friday, or earlier in the week?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it. Can you remember anything on that Friday?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Work backwards in your mind from the Sunday night you found the body. Can you remember what you did Sunday during the day, before you went to work?”

  “Yes.” But Cletus didn’t offer to say what he could recall.

  After letting the pause linger, Tubby prompted him further.

  “How about
the Saturday before you found the body, and the Friday before that?”

  “It don’t come to mind. One day’s just like another.”

  “Did you see anybody else in the laboratory when you were working?”

  “Maybe one of the other doctors, like Dr. Tessier. They is there sometimes on a weeknight. You don’t ever see them in there on a Sunday.”

  “Did you see one of them on the night before your arrest?”

  “No.”

  This was a waste of time.

  “The police found some drugs, some barbiturates, at your house. They came from the hospital.”

  “So?”

  “Come on, Cletus. It would help if you would open up to your lawyer just a little bit.”

  “Do they say I took that stuff from the hospital?”

  “Yes sir,” Tubby said patiently. “That’s exactly what they say. What do you say?”

  “They planted it.” Cletus rocked back and forth and sucked deeply on his Camel.

  Tubby just stared at him.

  “Tell me about the cures you do for people.”

  “Say what?” Cletus’s chair came back down to the floor with a loud clank.

  “You know, the ritual services you do. Are they for healing people or, like, to cast spells? Come on, tell me.”

  Cletus looked at him in disbelief. Tubby thought he was going to get up and leave.

  “Who you been talking to?” he demanded.

  “Your neighbors, for Christ’s sake, Cletus. What is it with you? You don’t care if they kill you? Do you have some foolproof escape planned? Is that the reason you won’t talk to me?”

  “I don’t like people getting into my business,” Cletus shouted.

  Outside the window, the guard showed his face. Tubby waved him away.

  “Isn’t that kind of a free-world luxury? You’re in jail, and they tell you when to eat, sleep, and take a crap. They know what chemicals are in your urine. You’re in danger of being strapped to a hospital gurney and getting an IV needle full of sandman drops stuck right up your business. It takes about a minute for it to work before your brain shuts off, and you can take your secrets into the next world with you.”

  “I don’t fear the grave.”

  “Then I won’t feel so bad about losing your case, but it’s a shame, don’t you think, to let somebody get away with murdering Dr. Valentine?”

  Busters lit another cigarette and thought things over.

  “I’d rather die some other way,” he conceded.

  “Sure you would,” Tubby encouraged him.

  “I have powers that was taught to me. I can cure people and tell you what fork in the road will lead you where you want to go. I can also help you with your love problems.”

  “All right. People pay you for that?”

  “Some do.”

  “Did you take drugs from the hospital?”

  “Maybe a few.”

  “Why?”

  “To use in a ceremony.”

  “Do you ever use body parts in a ceremony?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Like a head?”

  “I never had no head to use.”

  “Well, excuse me, but you were caught holding one.”

  Cletus had no comment.

  “Did you use mice or animals from the labs?” Tubby resumed.

  “I never troubled the mice but to play with them.”

  “You don’t use animals in your ceremonies?”

  “Sometimes I might, but it’s very rare. And I don’t torture ’em none. They go quiet and quick. You want to see animals suffer, go see those with the sores and infections at that Moskowitz lab. You’ll see plenty of ’em like that there.”

  “You disapproved of that?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Did you argue with Dr. Valentine about it?”

  “He might’ve argued. I didn’t.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you put him in the freezer?”

  “Course not.”

  “Why’d you open that door up?”

  “To look at the bodies or whatever they had in there.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I get a lot of my understanding of nature and power from what I see. I was studying.”

  “You don’t know how Dr. Valentine got into the freezer?”

  The sound of gospel music on the radio drifted up from the cell blocks. It was very mournful.

  “No.”

  “You don’t have any idea who put him in there?”

  “No.”

  “Do you like white people in general, Cletus?”

  Busters smiled with his lips, but Tubby wasn’t sure about his eyes.

  “Not generally, no. Some is probably all right.”

  “You weren’t casting spells on Dr. Valentine.”

  “Not any big ones.”

  “How about on the other doctors?”

  “They never bothered me except that Swink or whatever his name is.”

  “If you can tell people what fork in the road to take, why can’t you see into space and tell me who killed Dr. Valentine?”

  “I ain’t tried.”

  “Well, as a favor to me, now that we’ve had this little talk, why not try?”

  “It’d be hard to do in here.”

  “There’s nothing easy in lockup, Cletus, especially opening the lock, but that’s what you’ve got to do.”

  Tubby left Cletus Busters to commune with his spirits. It was, as always, an enormous relief to step outside into the littered, cluttered, loud, and busy free world and get away from doors that clanked when they closed. It was no easier out here to find the right fork in the road, but at least if you happened to stumble on it, you could take it.

  CHAPTER 18

  The two boxers danced lightly around the ring and then slammed into each other in a flurry of elbows and fists. Stung, they stepped apart and danced some more. They wore fat red gloves and sparring helmets as a concession to safety and brightly colored shorts, one lavender and the other yellow. Pink tassels flew from their high-top shoes. What was unusual was that they were not barechested, like your regular, sweaty prizefighters, but wore vinyl pads on top that laced up the back. And they had long hair escaping from beneath their helmets.

  Again the sudden collision of arms and gloves, and one of the girls sprawled head over heels onto the mat. She shook her head to clear it and jumped back up. A cut was bleeding over her left eye.

  The coach was in the ring waving his arms.

  “Too rough for sparring,” he said, getting between them.

  “The idea is to work and learn, in and out, dodge the punch, not to hurt anybody. Here, Denise,” he said to the one who had done the socking, pushing her back toward a corner.

  “You keep your left out further, all the time, like this. Don’t let her get so close to you.”

  He turned back to the other woman, the one with the cut.

  “You okay, Carmella? Nothing too serious, is it?” He wrapped an arm over her shoulder and walked her over to the corner away from Denise. “That looked good, the way you jumped back up. That shows it was just a lucky fluke. All right, everybody, take a break. Hit the bag. Nobody gets hurt here unless they’re getting paid.”

  Tubby recognized one of the boxers as Denise DiMaggio, the woman who had come to his office. She had walked over to a portable cooler and was pouring water into a paper Kentwood cup. She was breathing hard and sweaty, but Tubby thought she smelled pleasantly like mushrooms on a good steak with maybe a vodka tonic to sip.

  “Hi, Denise,” he said.

  She turned and looked him over.

  “Mr. Dubonnet, you look like my high school principal in here.”

  “Well, gee, that really deflates a guy.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just the way you’re dressed.”

  Tubby looked down at his gray suit, red tie with pictures of an endangered species printed on i
t, hard-soled, polished, wing-tip shoes. Then he pulled his stomach in. “I had to go to the jail to see somebody,” he said. “They want lawyers to look like this, even though it’s Sunday. You look different too. A lot more physical than at my office.”

  “This is what I’m doing every chance I get. Meet my coach.”

  Tubby looked around to find a bald young man wearing a tight black T-shirt over lots of shoulders coming toward them.

  “Coach, this is my lawyer, Mr. Dubonnet. And this is Coach Baxter Sharpe.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He studied Tubby suspiciously.

  “You also take divorce cases, don’t you, Mr. D?” Denise asked pointedly.

  “Sometimes,” Tubby said.

  “Well, Coach Sharpe has a problem he might like to talk to you about.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the coach said, “but I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Here’s my card anyway, Mr. Sharpe,” Tubby said. “Give me a call anytime.”

  “I’ll do that,” Sharpe promised, and retreated toward the ring.

  Denise led her lawyer away.

  “I hope you didn’t mind,” she said. “I know you must get referrals all the time.”

  “I don’t mind at all.” Praise the Lord.

  “I’m kind of excited you came down here. We don’t get many spectators. I mean, ones we want.”

  “It’s a first for me. Don’t you get hurt?”

  “Sometimes. Not very feminine, huh?”

  “Sure it’s feminine. Well, no, I guess I don’t think of it exactly as feminine. It’s not like I’m stuck on the weaker-sex thing. My girls, when they were little, beat on each other plenty of times. Heck no, it’s probably good exercise for you.”

  She laughed at his confusion.

  “It really is good exercise,” she said. “Most of us get into this as part of our overall training program. And most of us work with Coach Sharpe. The money part of it is just now starting to happen.”

  “Is there a recognized league or something?”

  “They’re just beginning to get that organized. It’s gonna be great. Right now we gotta wear these chest protectors.”

  Tubby followed the pointed finger to her chest. “It’s really uncomfortable.”

  “You’d, uh, prefer to box without it?”