[Tubby Dubonnet 01.0] Trick Question

by Tony Dunbar

  “Let’s bring ’em in,” the judge shouted.

  The clerk gestured to the bailiff, who gestured to the policeman at the rear, and he pushed open the tall wooden doors to admit the first of the herd.

  “This should take all day – maybe tomorrow, too,” Tubby confided to his client.

  It took an hour and ten minutes.

  The first group of twenty potential jurors yielded nine winners. The next group filled out the dozen.

  With jarring regularity, almost all of the candidates seemed to be unemployed, retired, or otherwise available and anxious to do their civic duty for ten dollars a day and lunch from Mandina’s. Few had the wit to come up with an excuse that would prevent them from serving on a jury. The only good line came from a local writer who, rubbing his wrinkled forehead to squeeze out the words, said that he could not differentiate between fantasy and the real world, and that when confronted with unpleasantness, he chose fantasy. Judge Stifflemire scolded him, and then let him go.

  The judge asked the next guy in line if he had any problem that might prevent jury service.

  “Yeah, what he said,” the man exclaimed hopefully, pointing at the departing writer.

  Stifflemire tossed his gavel in the air, caught it, and gave the whole courtroom a lecture for that.

  Tubby only exercised two peremptory challenges – one on a severe French lady who glared at Cletus until she made him squirm, the other on a Presbyterian minister who benignly promised to look upon all witnesses with equal love and trust. Tubby was afraid the pastor might disapprove of Cletus’s personal religious preferences if by some unhappy turn of events these came out in court.

  The district attorney excused a black man who seemed to do nothing more offensive than answer the judge’s questions in an angry tone. Tubby let it pass. That’s what peremptory challenges were for.

  The rest the judge released because they had recently had a loved one murdered, because they would lose their jobs if they missed work, or because they seemed to have difficulty comprehending questions in the English language.

  Tubby was satisfied when it was done. He had ten blacks and two whites. You always made those kinds of observations in New Orleans, even if you didn’t know how to interpret the data. It was a mixed group – a taxi driver, a housewife or two, an unemployed barber, a night clerk at a French Quarter hotel, an old seaman, a retired nurse. Cherrylynn was taking copious notes about everyone for him to study later.

  Time for lunch? Nope.

  “Let the jurors go out and relax,” Stifflemire said. “Let’s have your motion, Mr. Dubonnet.”

  “Ah yes, Your Honor,” he began after the jury shambled out. “The state has noticed its intent to present evidence of the defendant’s prior conviction for sale of a controlled substance. It’s entirely unrelated to the matter at hand and could obviously be very prejudicial to the jury. You have my brief, Judge. We move to suppress the prior.”

  “I follow, Mr. Dubonnet. How do you respond, Mr. Snedley?”

  “We’re going to show that the motive for the defendant’s murder of Dr. Valentine was that the doctor caught the defendant stealing drugs from the Moskowitz medical laboratory. The prior for drug sales is directly related and shows the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the crime. Res gestae, Judge.”

  “Yeah, I think it’s res gestae,” the judge said, scratching his chin.

  “Race what?” Cletus whispered.

  “Motion denied!” the judge ruled. “We’ll take an hour and a half for lunch. Then, Mr. Snedley, you can begin to call your witnesses.”

  “But, Your Honor…” Tubby pleaded.

  “I already ruled,” Stifflemire said, on his way out the door.

  Cletus looked at Tubby, a frightened expression on his face. “Race what?” he asked again.

  “Res gestae. He means your state of mind,” Tubby told him.

  “Mine’s bad,” Cletus said.

  A deputy sheriff led the disconsolate prisoner away to the courthouse jail downstairs. Tubby collected Cherrylynn, and they walked over to Ditcharo’s for a sandwich. Even the cheerful hellos from the ladies behind the counter didn’t brighten their mood. Steaming red beans and rice, a shot of hot sauce, some French bread, a nice piece of smoked sausage, and a bowl of bread pudding for after helped a little.

  “Golly, I almost forgot.” Tubby went to the booth to make a call.

  “Hello, Denise? Listen, I’m still in the middle of my trial, but I did talk to your Uncle Roger’s lawyer. We’ve made a lot of progress.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Well, I told him I could prove your stock certificate for a thousand shares was good, and I had the law to back it up. I explained how we would decimate him in court. After quite a bit of argument, he finally offered to split the company fifty-fifty. You would have a thousand shares and so would Uncle Roger.”

  “That sounds fine.”

  “Not so fast. Don’t forget you have that extra certificate for a hundred shares. We could hold out for control of the company, but Guyoz made it clear they will fight us in court for that.”

  “I’m willing to forget the hundred shares, Mr. Dubonnet. Roger is still family, and I’ll give up a little.”

  “He also wants to keep getting his salary from the company.”

  “Tell him that’s okay too, but I want the same salary.”

  “Sure, fine.” Tubby liked that. “Guyoz says he wants to settle right away because there’s an oil-drilling contract to finalize.”

  “I’m aware of it. The driller wants to pay us two hundred thousand this year with options for the next six years.”

  “With that kind of money, you won’t have to keep boxing.”

  “I wouldn’t give up boxing if I made a million bucks, Mr. Dubonnet. It’s just something I really like to do.”

  “You may be the richest female fighter in Louisiana.”

  “Don’t forget, I have to pay one quarter to you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tubby said – like he would forget that.

  “Mr. Dubonnet, thanks for staying in my corner.”

  “You were vouched for,” he said.

  “I heard,” she said. “Can you come see me at Coconut Casino Saturday night?” Her voice was eager.

  “Not unless my murder trial ends tomorrow, and that won’t happen unless someone confesses.”

  “Then I hope they confess.”

  “The guilty always should,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got a meal on the table. I’ll call you when I know something else.”

  She hung up, and Tubby hurried back to his lunch.

  A bearded man wearing a black leather vest and a pound of silver buckles and buttons sat on the wall and played his guitar softly. He was trying out “Mr. Bojangles.” He had placed a soft hat on the pavement, begging for change, and pigeons walked around it eating crumbs.

  There were not so many tourists today in Spanish Plaza, where Canal Street meets the Mississippi River. Three Japanese couples were shooting photographs of each other by the fountain. Had they looked closely, they would have seen in the background two nicely dressed men leaning on the rail over by the water, deep in conversation.

  “Many things in life do not go as we would hope,” Mr. Flick was saying. His eyes followed a bright red towboat, radar revolving, churning upstream.

  Walter was thinking that Flick’s age was showing. He had observed the concern his employer exhibited over those little crevices around his eyes and lips – the care he took to avoid letting the muscles of his face do what they pleased when they tried to express what Flick felt. But whatever creams and tonics the man worked into his flesh had failed him this afternoon. He was revealing some very unattractive tension.

  “I have always looked forward to my visits to New Orleans,” Flick continued. “It’s the sense you get of unreality. Something that is very difficult to induce in Fort Worth.”

  What’s wrong with reality? Walter was thinking. He stood a head taller than Flick. H
e was keenly aware of his own ability to survive in a world that favored strong, handsome, fast, and smart men.

  “It is possible to lose yourself here, and at the same time look for who you are, if you follow.”

  Walter nodded. He tapped his shoe on the concrete to warn away a pigeon that was pecking about too close.

  “And I don’t want to let that go, Walter.” Flick turned away from the river and looked at the young man. “I cannot bear the thought of losing this.”

  Walter saw the anger behind Mr. Flick’s pale blue eyes, and he felt suddenly nervous.

  He kept his voice steady, however, when he said, “I’m not making any excuses. I took the best opportunity that presented itself. It was nothing short of a miracle that the lawyer walked away from the accident. If you had been there you would see I’m right.”

  Flick shuddered.

  “I have no wish ever to be there,” he said. “I am deathly afraid that I have already involved myself too deeply. You may know that my least favorite emotion is fear. It was your task, Walter, to protect me from fear.”

  “I’m sorry if you feel I’ve let you down,” Walter said earnestly. “I guarantee it won’t happen again. I’ll take care of him tonight – simple as that.”

  “It’s too late,” Flick said sharply. “If he gets killed now, there’s bound to be some inquiry. At the very least it will delay the trial. That’s the problem, Walter.” He spread out the fingers of his hand and pressed them gently against Walter’s chest, as if he might conjure him over the railing and into the water.

  “We can solve the problem,” Walter pleaded, mad at himself for letting his composure crack.

  “Come walk with me,” Flick said. He set off, strolling slowly in the direction of the landing for the ferry to Algiers.

  “I think that what we must do now is destroy all of the evidence.”

  “You mean in the lab?” Walter asked, trying to follow.

  “Exactly,” Flick said. “Now put your mind to work figuring out how to accomplish that.”

  A panhandler with burgundy pants and a pink tank top noticed their approach and came to life to intercept them.

  “Betcha I can tell you where you got them shoes.” He grinned desperately.

  Flick pressed a dollar into the thin hand and brushed past. Walter gave the man a menacing scowl and a push.

  “Well, access to the lab should be no problem,” he began as they walked on, leaving the vagrant teetering on wobbly legs.

  “Hush, Walter,” Flick interrupted him. “I don’t want to know your plan. Your future with me is determined by your success, not by the means you employ to achieve it.”

  “I understand,” Walter said.

  “But do it quickly. I cannot tell you what this means to me.” The sweep of his hand took in the approaching ferry boat, horn blasting, the seagulls squawking above it; the Asian children running across the plaza to an ice cream vendor; the faces in the clouds; two lovers with rings in their lips telling secrets on a bench. “Please approach this as if your life depended on it.”

  “Consider it done,” Walter said. He wished now he had never gotten mixed up with this crazy old man.

  That afternoon the wheels of justice rolled relentlessly on. Clayton Snedley began to deal out his cards. The case of the headless ice man was interesting enough to merit the attention of the parish’s chief medical examiner, who so proficiently and methodically described the frozen state of the body and the interesting phenomenon of its head cracking off like an icicle that there was hardly anyplace to go on cross-examination. The jury was entranced. Since Tubby knew the good Dr. Jazz socially, he asked only a couple of perfunctory questions. Their purpose was to let the jury see that the defense counsel was the kind of man who received cordial and respectful treatment from bigwigs like the coroner.

  “So the actual cause of death was not the freezing, nor the head falling off. It was a stab wound in the neck, am I right?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Dubonnet.”

  “Which could have been a scalpel.”

  “A scalpel would certainly fit the bill, yes sir.”

  It was just for show.

  The next witness was the security guard, who told about finding Cletus holding Dr. Valentine’s head.

  “He looked to me like he was leaving the room with it,” guard Josef Malouf testified.

  “On the Friday before you found the defendant and the body, were you on duty?” Tubby asked on cross-examination.

  “Sure was.”

  “Did you see Mr. Busters enter the lab?”

  “I imagine I did. He worked Fridays.”

  “But you don’t remember really seeing him?”

  “Can’t say that I do, exactly.”

  “Who did enter the lab?”

  “I didn’t keep a list of everyone.”

  “Isn’t it a fact that lots of nurses and doctors and orderlies pass right by your station in the corridor?”

  “Yeah, but not so much at night.”

  “On that Friday, you don’t remember who went in and out, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Almost anybody outfitted in hospital-type clothing could have passed you without causing you to notice, right?”

  “Sure I would notice. That’s what I get paid for.”

  “Do you remember who went in and out or don’t you?”

  Malouf looked uncomfortable. “Not exactly, no.”

  “Okay, now you said that when you went into the lab on Sunday night and met Mr. Busters, he seemed to be leaving the room.”

  “You mean when I saw Cletus with Dr. Valentine’s head?”

  “Yes,” Tubby said testily.

  “He looked to me like he was leaving the lab with the head.”

  “Did it occur to you he might be on his way to find you, the security guard?”

  Malouf puckered his lips and shook his head violently.

  “You have to say your answer, not just move your head,” Judge Stifflemire lectured.

  “If he was coming to get me, he didn’t look very happy when he saw me standing in the doorway.”

  Tubby used the walk back to the counsel table to compose his face.

  “No more questions,” he proclaimed triumphantly.

  “That was good?” Cletus asked as guard Malouf walked past. Tubby looked at him and crossed his eyes. Then he turned around and smiled at the jury.

  “Good as a sharp stick in the eye,” he whispered between his teeth.

  To nail the coffin, Snedley called Detective Porknoy of the New Orleans Police Department.

  CHAPTER 28

  The district attorney warmed Porknoy up with a couple of easy questions to establish his impressive credentials as one of the city’s foremost crime fighters. Fourteen years on the force. Three in homicide. Porknoy, who never seemed too moved by anything, seemed animated, almost human, when he talked about himself.

  He told about how he got a call on Sunday night at 11:03 p.m. about an incident at the Moskowitz – which he pronounced “Mass-kee-witz” – lab. How he and Detective Ike Canteberry had responded, and how they finally found their way into the correct wing of the labyrinth. Joe Malouf was watching the door, and Cletus Busters was inside, sitting quietly on a stool and waiting for them. Right by the doorway, on a trolley cart full of cleaning supplies, was a rather pale and wet-looking human head.

  On the floor, approximately twenty-four feet in front of the door, was the body itself.

  Having brought Porknoy to his climax, Snedley asked, “Whose body was it?”

  “Didn’t know at the time,” Porknoy said sullenly, provoking a glare from the DA.

  “Well, who did you determine it to be?”

  “Whitney Valentine, M.D. He was identified by a Dean Auchinschloss, head man of the place.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about him?”

  “He was frozen solid.”

  “Objection,” Tubby cried.

  “Why?” the judge aske
d.

  “He’s no doctor. Neither is he a weatherman.”

  “Oh well, okay, sustained.”

  “After you found the body, what did you do?” Snedley resumed.

  “I had the scene secured and called in the forensics unit. Then I interviewed the defendant.”

  “Cletus Busters?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He claimed to have discovered the body by accident,” Porknoy said incredulously.

  “How did the defendant seem to you?”

  “Agitated. Excited.”

  “Did he give you his version of what happened?”

  “Objection,” Tubby erupted.

  The judge looked curious.

  “Improper form of question. The word ‘version’ suggests the defendant was not telling the truth exactly like it happened.”

  “I don’t think that’s improper. I’ll permit the question.”

  “So what was his version, Officer Porknoy?”

  “He said he was cleaning up the room. He opened the door to this walk-in freezer, and the body of Dr. Valentine fell out, striking the floor, with the resulting head dismemberment.”

  The DA chewed on that word. He straightened his tie, walked around in a circle, and cleared his throat. “Did you ask him why he opened the door to the freezer?” he resumed.

  “I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He stopped answering my questions.”

  “Did you subsequently run a check to see whether the defendant had a prior arrest record?”

  “Objection,” Tubby yelled.

  “I’ve already ruled, Mr. Dubonnet, that the prior record is admissible.”

  “But any prior encounters with the law have absolutely nothing to do with this case and are only intended to paint this man black and suggest to the good people of the jury that one mistake in life condemns you forever,” Tubby exclaimed excitedly.

  “Objection!” Snedley was waving papers, arms spread wide, pleading. “He’s arguing his case -”

  “Enough!” the judge bellowed. “Everybody sit down. Mr. Dubonnet’s objection is overruled and will not be repeated. No, stand up again. I want to see counsel up at the bench.”

  Snedley and Tubby approached the judge humbly and craned their necks to hear what he had to say in private.