by Tony Dunbar
“Good morning, Chad.”
“Hey, you’re back. I’ve got a lot of stuff for you. Just give me a minute and I’ll go get it.”
Tubby offered to lend him a hand and together they got the plywood nailed over a window frame.
“This is getting to be a habit,” Rouseau said. “Twice already this season. You gonna board your place up?”
“I should, but I’ve never done that.” One reason was that it was hard to nail plywood over eighteen windows and doors, eight of them being close to thirty feet off the ground. Another reason was it seemed to him that the plywood was unlikely to make a difference. Winds high enough to blow out glass might just as easily tear off the roof. Maybe he was just too lazy for the job.
“Are you going to leave?” Chad asked. This was getting to be the standard question.
“No, I don’t plan to. What about you?”
“I’m going over to my sister’s in Lafayette as soon as I finish up here. I’m driving out Highway 90 on the West Bank because the I-10 is filling up fast. The news just said the mayor’s going to declare a mandatory evacuation around noon.”
“Wow. That’s a first.”
They got the plywood up, and Chad brought Tubby a big brown Lagenstein’s grocery bag full of mail.
“Good luck on your drive,” Tubby said.
“Same to you. We’ll all probably be back tomorrow.”
Tubby carried the sack of mail back to the house. He poured himself a cup of coffee and idly picked through the stuff to ascertain that it was largely junk. On television, the big storm was still making its slow circle in the Gulf.
It made you nervous, the way it kept turning around and around and getting closer. Tubby put the mail aside and decided it was time to retrieve his car. The Chrysler was not in his driveway, unfortunately, but at a gas station down on Magazine Street where, over the last few months, they had basically overhauled his entire engine and installed new brakes all around. He had spoken to Max, the mechanic just last week. It had been an expensive long-distance call, but worth it. Max said the car was all done and running great. He would have it gassed up and ready when Tubby showed up to claim it.
Good for him that the station was open on Sundays.
But when Tubby got there he found it wasn’t open after all. A cardboard sign hung over one of the pumps. “Sorry. Out of Gas.” And there was Tubby’s Chrysler, sitting parked in the lot and polished, just like Max said it would be. The only problem was that it was hemmed in between a dumpster and the wall of the garage, and its forward motion was blocked by an enormous green GMC Yukon. This was typical of the massive cars preferred by the women of the neighborhood for carrying their children to school.
Tubby had a key and could get into his own car, which he did. It roared to life at the merest tap on the switch, but the Yukon was in front and a wooden fence was behind. Tubby got out to inspect. The fence was actually built atop a foot-tall concrete block foundation. Getting rid of that would require a sledge hammer. He looked inside the smoked windows of the Yukon. The doors were definitely locked. When he jerked on one, the car alarm went off.
Whoop, Whoop, Wheep, Wheep. It echoed up and down the street. Tubby waited patiently in front of the gas station. He expected management, the car owner, or the police to respond quickly to the alarm. After ten minutes the noise finally stopped. No one had showed up. Tubby reached the conclusion that his Chrysler was not going to take him anywhere today.
There was an emergency number taped to the inside of the station’s door, and Tubby memorized it. He walked home where he would find the nearest phone. But that number didn’t give satisfaction either. It just rang. Now it was past noon, and the TV news was a little more alarming. In a press conference that morning, the mayor had told everybody to leave the city. The Superdome had been opened as a “shelter of last resort,” and reporters were interviewing the people who were beginning to stream out of the French Quarter, pulling luggage on wheels and clutching pillowcases stuffed with their possessions. Here were two Dutch students, giddy with being young and on an adventure, who had been in town for only two days.
“The hotel is closing, and we will be fine,” the girl with long blonde hair told the camera confidently, flashing a blinding North Sea smile.
“How have you liked New Orleans so far?” the reporter asked her male companion.
“It is very hot here,” he laughed, “but we love it so well.”
Aerial footage of the Interstate showed a sluggish river of cars. They crept along notwithstanding “counterflow” measures which pointed all lanes out of town.
Tubby finally started thinking hurricane. He looked into the pantry for bottled water and canned goods. He found red wine, liver pâté and cranberry sauce from Thanksgivings past.
He called Flowers.
Flowers was a resourceful man. He was Tubby’s private detective and his friend. His real name was Sanré Fueres, but everyone called him Flowers.
“Yo,” came the familiar voice.
“Hey, Flowers, this is Tubby.”
“Where are you, boss?” Flowers shouted. “Stateside?”
“I’m here, at my house, without transportation.”
“You want to stay? You want to leave town? I got transportation.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m here for the duration. My agency is under contract to guard the Petrofoods Helicopters field in Kenner. They moved their personnel and most of their stuff over to their base in Lafayette. There’s just a few choice items here. I’ve got a crane, I’ve got a truck, I’ve got…”
“Can you pick me up?”
“Sure. You want to grab your stuff? Then hike over to Claiborne Avenue and meet me on the neutral ground.”
The neutral ground? What’s that all about?
Tubby dumped out his green flight bag, which was full of dirty clothes from Bolivia and the talons of an unspecified predatory bird, a souvenir he had purchased from a stall at the Santa Cruz airport. He raided his dresser and stuffed in some clean underwear, pants, and a shirt. He reached into the bottom drawer and extricated a handgun. It was a Smith & Wesson .45, still in its original black leather holster, an old weapon from an earlier time. He stared at it carefully, turning it over in his hand, before he put it in his pack. The lawyer did not normally carry a gun. He didn’t believe in violence.
Walking downstairs he passed the framed photograph of his three daughters, taken at Debbie’s graduation from high school. He touched it, paused, and considered whether he should take it along. Descending the stair wall were other framed pictures: his parents, his grandparents, baby pictures of the girls. He couldn’t take them all, so he left them there and continued on his way.
In the kitchen he looked for food. There was an opened bag of Fritos. He stuck that under his arm. A half-finished bottle of bourbon. He pushed that into his green bag. Behind The Joy of Cooking was a stack of twenty-dollar bills. He fanned that like a deck of cards and stuck it into the pocket of his jeans. Flight bag in one hand, sack of Fritos held between his teeth, he went out the front door, found his keys, and locked the place up. Off to Claiborne Avenue.
Flowers’s arrival in a C-12 Airodream helicopter on the wide gassy median between the lanes of Business Route 90, also known as Claiborne Avenue, would have attracted more attention had there been any people around. As it was, the city had become deserted this hot and sunny Sunday afternoon. There were lots of cars parked on the median, or neutral ground as locals referred to it, deposited there by owners hoping to avoid damage from the anticipated inundation of rain. After all, a typical summer storm in this neighborhood could put four inches of water in the streets, and a good hurricane might lay down a foot. The highest ground around was the city property in the middle of the street. Flowers had no trouble locating a big enough spot to land, however. The helicopter came down surprisingly easy, with plenty of satisfactory clatter, in front of Ursulines Academy which had just completed construction of a new gymnasium
. On the other side of the Avenue, the churches might have had early services that morning, but they were boarded up now as if some dictator had outlawed all religious observance.
Flowers gestured for Tubby to climb aboard. The detective was wearing mirror sunglasses and looked as happy as a World War Two ace ready to down Jerries over London.
“Get in,” he yelled, but the noise was too great to do more than read lips. The lawyer figured it out and lifted his slightly overweight self into the passenger side of the two-seater. Actually, there was another seat behind, but it was full of ropes and gear.
“Welcome to the Cajun Airforce,” Flowers yelled. “Cocktails are four dollars.” He didn’t wait for Tubby to strap himself in before he yanked the stick and the helicopter swooped up into the air.
Claiborne Avenue, and Tubby’s neighborhood, swiftly got smaller. What got larger was the Superdome and, as they soared west, the traffic jam still working itself out on the I-10.
“That’s the long way to get to Houston,” Flowers yelled, pointing at the cars.
Tubby’s stomach wasn’t feeling so great. “God, there’s a lot of them,” he said. The line of traffic stretched as far as the eye could see. “Where are we going?” he shouted.
“I was going to take you back to my base, but no hurry. Have you got someplace else you want to go?”
“I haven’t seen my office in a long time.”
“We can do that,” Flowers said, and he maneuvered their craft into another big arc. The Superdome and the New Orleans skyline came back to the foreground, and rushed closer.
“Look at that.” Flowers pointed off the side to the lines of refugees circling the football stadium.
“So many people,” Tubby said. “What are they going to eat in there?”
“MREs, probably.”
“What’s that?”
“Meals Ready to Eat. The military and FEMA say they’ve got it all under control. Plenty of rations for everybody.”
“How are we going to land at my building?”
“Right on top is the plan,” Flowers said.
And he succeeded, gently dropping his Airodream into the circle painted on the roof of the forty-nine-story Place Palais.
He cut the engine, and as the blades gradually ran down the men relished the returning silence and lack of vibration. Tubby took a few deep breaths. They disembarked. It was a hot afternoon. The view of the city gripping the banks of the Mississippi River was spectacular. Tall clouds commanded the sky, however. Some had sharp claws like immense prehistoric birds, migrating westward, and the breeze was picking up.
“The clouds get darker the farther south you look,” Tubby observed.
“Yep, it’s coming in,” Flowers said. He stood a lean six foot-five. Tubby was used to seeing him in a sports jacket, but Flowers looked pretty cool in jeans and a Perlis sports shirt marked with a crawfish. Tubby thought he personally looked pretty tough, too, facing the wind on top of this skyscraper, at least when he sucked in his gut.
“How the hell do you suppose we can get inside?” he asked.
“Let’s see if Manuel is here.” Flowers flipped open his cell phone and pressed the buttons. Tubby knew Manuel. He was the building’s chief of security. Tubby gave him a fruit basket every year at Christmas. He didn’t realize that Flowers knew him on a first-name basis.
Part of the conversation was in Spanish. The lawyer wasn’t fluent, not by a long shot, but he had learned how to obtain life’s necessities while in Bolivia mainly by watching the TV news and trying to follow what was happening in the world. The gist was Flowers’s request to “Abre la Puerta!”
The detective closed his phone. “I’d be lost without this,” he commented to himself.
“I still don’t have one,” Tubby said.
“No? You ought to. Take mine till the hurricane’s over.” He handed Tubby the compact stainless steel contraption.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.” Tubby turned the little machine over in his palm.
“You’ll figure it out. I’ll write the number down for you. I’ve got another one in my pocket and that’s what my men call me on. It’s unsafe for you to be out here without any communications.”
The rusty metal door at the top of the staircase groaned open, and Manuel was there.
“Nice wheels,” he said, admiring the helicopter.
“It gets you there in a hurry,” Flowers said. “Mr. Dubonnet wants to see his office.”
“The building is closed, but I will let you in. Please make your visit quick though because I am soon setting all of the alarms.”
“Are you leaving?”
“No, I will be here. My family is gone back to Texas. But I’m staying here in the building. Maybe we can open back up for business tomorrow or Tuesday.”
He led them down one flight of stairs to an elevator, which he summoned with his key and a plastic card. He pushed the button for the forty-third floor.
“You remembered,” Tubby said happily.
“Sure, I know where your office is, Mr. Dubonnet. You been gone?”
“Yeah, five months almost, down to South America.”
“Really, what country?”
“Bolivia.”
“I have never been there. My family is from Nicaragua. We have only been north, never south. I have seen your secretary Cherrylynn many times. She comes to work while you are gone?”
“Oh, yes. That’s quite all right. Cherrylynn has the run of the place.” Thank goodness. Cherrylynn was the only one who knew what was going on most of the time. She was a single woman, a refugee from some relationship in the Great Northwest, and she was determined to carve out a life for herself without male assistance in New Orleans. She did, however, accept the assistance of a job with Tubby, and he knew that he received more from her than he paid for. She had also always had a crush on Flowers. Tubby had last spoken with her a week ago. He expected that Cherrylynn had taken herself off to somewhere safe. That girl could take care of herself.
The elevator doors opened, and there were the big glass doors with dubonnet & associates printed in gold. There were not really any associates, since Tubby’s last partner, Reggie Turntide, had met an unfortunate death years before, but it sounded better to have associates.
Tubby found that he was glad to see it all again. He had a key card for the doors.
“You guys can make yourselves at home,” the attorney said as he walked through his reception area and into the corridor behind. The detective and security man shrugged. There wasn’t much to do in a lawyer’s office. Manuel took his leave. He told Flowers that the elevator would be open for him. They could get back to the roof the same way they came down.
“Just don’t try to go to no other floors,” he cautioned.
“No problema,” Flowers replied. He plopped himself down in Tubby’s easy chair and opened a six-month-old New Orleans CitiBusiness.
Tubby walked to his office at the back. His desk was just as he had left it. The same files were on top. Even one marked Cowappatack Tribal Casino. He shuddered. That one was better shredded. But he didn’t shred it or anything else. Instead he walked to his window with the panoramic view of the French Quarter and the majestic bend of the Mississippi River. The black clouds coming across the horizon from the direction of the Gulf of Mexico made the scene quite dramatic. His city looked just about the same as he remembered it, though. A towboat was pushing a string of barges slowly upriver. In the French Quarter, street lights were flickering on. It was a great city. He had missed it. Nowhere was life so sweet as in New Orleans. Nowhere could you find a better and more tolerant population. It had its problems, sure. New Orleans had its Bolivia-like absurdity and inefficiency. But people here contributed to life much more than they took away. Once this storm passed, he planned to spend some quality time rediscovering his city.
All of a sudden the idea of evacuating it now didn’t seem to make much sense.
“Let’s go,” he told Flowers.
&nbs
p; “That’s it?” The detective uncurled from his chair and stretched.
“Yep. It’s pretty much the way I left it, I’m happy to say.”
They went into the outside hall, and Tubby locked up. “What did you say my cell phone number is?” he asked Flowers.
Flowers told him again, and Tubby scribbled it on one of his cards, which he stuck in the crack of the door.
“Just for Cherrylynn,” he said. “In case she shows up.”
They took the elevator back to the roof.
“You can bunk down in Kenner with me,” Flowers said when they reached the open air. “We’ve got a whole warehouse to call home. There’s always room for one more.”
“You know, I think I’ll stay at my house. This may sound crazy, but I’d like to be there if our storm turns into something big. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got a lot of stuff to look after.”
“You already packed your bag.” Flowers sounded disappointed and concerned.
“Yeah, but I changed my mind. I’ve been away so long, I just think I might stay to see what happens here. One night in my own bed just wasn’t enough.”
“Well, hell, boss, I’ve got to get this baby back to base. This wind is getting bad. I’m supposed to guard the plant. Otherwise I’d join you.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m not worried about this hurricane. In fact, while I’ve still got a little daylight, I’d kind of like to walk around. Do you suppose you could put me back on the street?” He was thinking, if I’m going to rediscover my city, why not do it now?
“On the street? We’ll see.”
They climbed aboard and Flowers started the big prop. With the flapping of a hundred mad condors, the Airodream lifted off.
“How far do you want to walk?” Flowers yelled.
“Just put me down the first place you see!” Tubby shouted back.
“How about right there?” Flowers pointed to the parking lot beside the Amtrak station. It was virtually empty.
Tubby made the okay sign with his fingers, and the big bird descended to asphalt. When they thumped down Tubby grabbed his green bag and jumped out.
