by Tony Dunbar
“Crooked Man is the literary equivalent of film noir—fast, tough, tense, and darkly funny… with an ending so deeply satisfying …that a reader might well disturb the midnight silence with laughter.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The sense of place in Crooked Man is so thick you can smell the chicory in the coffee.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Dunbar’s first novel is a deliciously witty caper through the idiosyncratic landscape of New Orleans with a conclusion that’s as cleverly convoluted and amusing as the rest of this tale.” —Publishers Weekly
“…an entertaining, exciting mystery debut, with (the author’s) savvy sassy legal alter ego Tubby Dubonnet taking readers on a fast-paced tour of the glittering surfaces and dirty underside of New Orleans.” —New Orleans Times-Picayune
“…as crisp as fried catfish, as tasty as soft-shelled crab. Tubby Dubbonnet is sly, tricky, sentimental—yet very tough…a stellar debut.” —Edgar-winner Joe Gores
Crooked Man, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1994) is the FIRST IN THE SERIES.
Other Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries:
City of Beads, G.P. Putnam’s (New York, 1995)
Trick Question, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1996)
Shelter From the Storm, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1997)
The Crime Czar, Dell Publishing (New York, 1998)
Lucky Man, Dell Publishing (New York, 1999)
Tubby Meets Katrina, NewSouth Books (Montgomery, 2006)
For more about the next Tubby Dubonnet book, CITY OF BEADS, go to www.booksBnimble.com
Other Books by Tony Dunbar
Our Land Too, Pantheon Books (New York, 1971); Vintage Books (New York, 1972)
Hard Traveling: Migrant Farm Workers in America, Ballinger (Cambridge, 1976; Co-Authored with Linda Kravitz)
Against the Grain, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1981)
Delta Time, A Journey through Mississippi, Pantheon Books (New York 1990)
Where We Stand, Voices of Southern Dissent (Editor), NewSouth Books (Montgomery 2004), Foreword by President Jimmy Carter
American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril (Editor), NewSouth Books (Montgomery 2008), Foreword by Ray Marshall
Crooked Man: A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery
Copyright 1994 by Tony Dunbar
Cover by Kit Wohl
eBook ISBN 9781617507236
www.booksbnimble.com
Originally published by:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: April 2012
This book is fiction. All of the characters and settings are purely imaginary. There is no Tubby Dubonnet or Sheriff Mulé, and the real New Orleans is different from their make-believe city.
Digital editions by eBooks by Barb for booknook.biz
Contents
Praise
Other Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries
Other Books by Tony Dunbar
Title Page
Copyright Page
PREFACE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries
About the Author
PREFACE
The pain that said he was drinking too much started creeping up behind Tubby’s ears. Raisin Partlow, his drinking buddy, had given up trying to make conversation with him and was puffing on a cigarette in the exaggerated way that irregular smokers do. The dusty, barely lit tavern was thinning out, leaving just a few whiskered pool players chalking up a last game and a pair of busty girls sharing confidences with the even heftier dame behind the bar.
“Never screw a client and never lie to the judge,” Tubby said abruptly.
It took Raisin a second to break through to the surface.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“That’s all of the so-called legal ethics that make sense to me. The rest of it is just so many little rules you can twist around to suit whatever you want to do.”
“Well, you know, Tubby, I lied to a judge just last week.” Raisin expelled a wobbly smoke ring and smiled in satisfaction. “Old ‘Fuzzy’ Baer appointed me to represent the fool who shot a fourteen-year-old girl, after he raped her and her mother. He asks me, ‘Mr. Partlow, can you put aside your personal feelings and represent this man to the best of your goddamn abilities?’”
The bartender broke off her conversation to look in their direction. Tubby raised his fingers an inch off the scarred oak surface, so cool to the touch, and shook his head, no. The familiar pain of too much whiskey and too much sweet Coca-Cola had already spread over to the top of his skull.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him, ‘Yes, Your Honor. The man deserves his day in court.’ I should have told him, ‘Fuck no, Judge. I hate this guy. Take him away where I don’t have to look at him. Christ, sir, I’ll be embarrassed to admit to my godchildren that I was even in the same room with the guy.’ But I knew that was the wrong answer to the question.”
“You should have told him the truth,” Tubby said.
“Like what?”
“You should have said, ‘Heck no, Judge. But I’ll do a better job than anybody else you’re likely to get.”
Raisin shrugged and waved at the bartender. Tubby slid off his stool and grabbed the bar for support.
“I’m out of here,” he said.
Raisin looked concerned about being left alone.
“Let me buy you one more,” he said. “The night is still young.”
“No, I’m good. Tomorrow is a school day.” Tubby let go of the bar to test his footing. So far, so good. He laid two dollar bills on his wet napkin and waved goodbye to the barmaid. He patted Raisin on the back and suddenly found himself on the sidewalk outside. A DIXIE BEER sign blinked and crickets sang in the weeds sprouting from the curb. All the houses were closed up tight, and the only people around were a couple of shadowy heads in a parked car down the street. Tubby located his own car, but had a hard time getting the key into the door lock. His head was pounding and he bent over to rest it on the smooth metal roof, misted with dew, until the night air restored his vision.
He conceded to himself that he had lost another round in his ongoing battle with the great drug alcohol, but he decided not to let this be his final encounter. Jamming his keys back into his pants pocket, Tubby began an unsteady march away from the river and in the general direction of home. Dogs barked through curtained windows at him, and stray cats peered around the tires of parked cars to watch his progress.
What was it, maybe thirty-five blocks? Just a couple of miles. Maybe he would be sobered up by the time he got there. Maybe he’d try jogging it. Better save his energy in case he needed to run for real. He picked up the pace anyway, and his course straightened—a solitary lawyer bobbing along through dark neighborhoods, n
avigating by the moon.
ONE
“Man, it’s hard to get up for work when it’s raining like this.” Freddie took a bite out of his bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and stared morosely at the rain coming down in sheets outside the McDonald’s on Carrollton Avenue.
“As little work as you do, Freddie, I wouldn’t complain,” the big man sitting across the plastic table said. He had broad, square shoulders, and his fingers wrapped entirely around the cup of coffee he was holding.
“What job did you ever put me on that I didn’t do? I’m asking you.” Freddie looked offended.
“Sure, you do everything right, but I have to keep my eyes on you the whole time.”
“That ain’t fair, Casey.”
Casey took a sip of coffee. He watched some telephone company workers run from their truck into the restaurant. They were slinging rainwater off their sleeves when they passed, and a couple of drops caught Casey on the cheek.
“Christ!” he protested, but the men paid no attention to him. He contemplated Freddie, who was pushing the last of the biscuit into his mouth.
“Okay. Here’s a job for you, Freddie. We’re going to take some money away from a drug runner.”
Freddie gulped down what he was chewing. “Huh?” he said. He poked a finger in his mouth to search.
“That’s a bad habit you have, making me repeat everything. It’s an important job I’m talking about. We can see what you’re capable of doing.”
“What do you mean, drugs? Wouldn’t it, you know, look bad for us to be doing drug stuff?”
“Listen up, Freddie.” Casey leaned across the table to get closer to Freddie’s face. “I don’t give a shit about drugs. We’re just going to take the criminals’ money. We’re the good guys.”
“Oh,” Freddie nodded. “How much money?” he asked.
“You’ll get enough. I’ll take care of you.”
“What’s my job?”
“Backup. Enforcement. Whatever the fuck I tell you to do.”
“Could somebody get hurt?” Freddie asked, which was a dumb question.
“Oh, yeah,” Casey said. “I think it’s a distinct possibility there could be some mayhem involved with this. Maybe a little blood on the streets, here and there. You’d be up for that, wouldn’t you?”
Freddie thought for a second, but not very deeply.
“Just tell me what to do, boss.” He put on a goofy grin and rolled his eyes back in his head, like a comedian he had seen on TV, trying to get a chuckle out of Casey.
Casey wouldn’t give it to him.
“Just finish your fucking McMuffin, Freddie, and let’s get out of here.”
TWO
Tubby Dubonnet toyed with a silver salad fork, heavy as a sugar bowl. “This is the most complicated appetizer I’ve ever seen,” he told Dr. Feingold. The arrangement that the black-vested waiter had just placed in front of him involved three almost-round crawfish beignets flecked with tiny specks of pimento. They were accompanied by a second plate decorated with skinny fettuccine noodles, lettuce leaves, and curled ribbons of carrots. The waiter was explaining that the chef suggested taking each beignet, rolling it and the vegetables up in a lettuce leaf, and dipping it all into a little china bowl of orange sauce, which completed the dish. There were also mint leaves, but Tubby missed what he was supposed to do with those.
“It is a little work,” Dr. Feingold said when the waiter departed, “but I think you’ll find it very refreshing. Don’t you love what they’ve done with this place?”
“Very nice,” Tubby agreed. The air floated gently from the ceiling fans rotating lazily over the newly painted dining room with its rows of windows along St. Charles Avenue. A casual mix of coat-and-tie office workers and the homeless, civilization’s stragglers, looking for shade, a handout, or a little hope, drifted through the heat outside. Now and then traveling teenagers carrying backpacks passed – Europeans, maybe, but so many kids had started wearing black you couldn’t really tell. The diners, cool and tranquil, watched the passersby like fish, observing the world from inside the glass of an aquarium. Every ten minutes or so a streetcar rumbled by.
The old hotel upstairs had struggled for years. It had been kept alive by Governor Edwards and his legion of lawyers who occupied an entire one of its floors for months while the Governor was on trial for bribery. His acquittal had suddenly left the place empty, but a bankruptcy or two later, it was making a celebrated comeback. Now aproned waiters scattered warm pistolettes of French bread and rosettes of iced butter before an appreciative flock of feasting gastronomes with heavy-metal credit cards.
Tubby ordered a duo of softshell crabs. Dr. Feingold had the trout. The crabs came with a creamy herb sauce on the side, which Tubby dolloped lavishly on his plate with only a twinge of guilt. I’m not in such bad shape after forty-five years and roughly half as many Mardi Gras, he told himself. A small paunch, maybe, but I can still go out on a public beach. He still had most of his thick blond hair, and he was vain enough to think that the way it turned golden in the summer sunshine complimented his skin. By nature, Tubby took a charitable view of both himself and others. He had a sportsman’s face, blue eyes spaced far apart in a guileless countenance that could not conceal a blush. Suit jackets strained against his broad shoulders and barrel chest, and often people’s first impression of him was correct—he was their college football lineman, domesticated and brought into harness. His nails were even and clean, as a lawyer’s should be, though his knuckles showed surprising scars. Tubby had not worn jewelry on his hands since he took off his wedding ring.
“How was your trip?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” Dr. Feingold said enthusiastically. “Costa Rica is such a beautiful country. We stayed in a fantastic hotel, and nearby there was a crystal clear lagoon, a perfect blue, with superb snorkeling. It was lovely. Have you ever snorkeled, Tubby?”
“Sure, when I was a kid. But I didn’t even know grown-ups did it for fun until you started going on about it.”
“It’s a great sport. You see things you never imagined.”
“Actually, Marty, I get enough of that in my law practice. What I see walking around on the streets amazes me on a daily basis. But I know what you mean.”
“You ought to give it a try. Live a little. You would enjoy the peace and quiet.”
“I’m sure I would. Too bad you have to submerge yourself in the ocean to get some.”
“Let’s talk about my case,” Dr. Feingold said, slipping an ivory bit of fish on his fork. “I really feel bad about Sandy, but don’t you think his demands are just a wee bit outrageous?”
“It does look like you botched the operation up, Marty. In all honesty, I feel funny representing him.”
“You shouldn’t. I’m much more comfortable with you doing it than one of those ambulance-chasers out there. I trust you to treat me fairly.”
“It just seems strange to me that when a guy thinks you’ve destroyed his epidermis he’d still take your recommendation for a lawyer.”
Sandy Shandell was an exotic. The first time he had come into Tubby’s office, Cherrylynn, Tubby’s secretary, had shown him to a chair and then breathlessly rushed in to tell her boss, shutting the door behind her so that Sandy wouldn’t hear, “Mr. Dubonnet. There is a man outside to see you, and he’s wearing makeup.”
“He’s an entertainer. They all wear stuff on their faces.”
“I’d sure like to see the entertainment he puts on. He’s wearing the same eye shadow as me,” she giggled, and blushed.
“Calm down, Cherrylynn. Just show him in.”
She did, but as she stood behind Sandy, a tall sinewy man who did indeed paint his face, she made hand signals and, eyes big as pies, silently mouthed, “Do you see?”
“Hold my calls,” Tubby said and closed the door on her.
The next time Sandy came for an office visit he presented Cherrylynn with a tiny cloisonné pin.
“I just thought it would match your hair,” he
said, and she was completely won over. After that when he called or came by the office, he and Cherrylynn would chat like sisters until Tubby would break them up so he could get some work done.
“Sure it sounds funny for a patient to ask his doctor to suggest a malpractice lawyer,” Dr. Feingold continued, “but Sandy has this unshakable conviction, formed years ago when I adjusted his nose, that I’m the most intelligent person he knows. He still relies on me, even if the skin-darkening treatments were less than totally successful.”
“He should have been satisfied with the way he was,” Tubby said philosophically as he tried with little success to spear a pod of snowpeas.
“If everybody felt that way, Tubby, plastic surgeons would be out of a job. We exist because it is a human instinct to want to change. We aspire. Sandy’s hero, for example, is a television show cop, some guy—I can’t think of his name—with a real Caribbean, coffee-and-cream look. But Sandy’s natural pigment is paler than mine. He didn’t just want to look tan, mind you. I could have handled that easy. He wanted to look like a Creole gambler. Those were his words to me. That enchanting picture inspired me, and it’s what got me into this mess.”
“He’s kind of splotchy now,” Tubby observed.
“I told him the treatments were experimental,” Dr. Feingold said defensively. “I told him there was very little literature in the area. I told him there was a chance this could happen. God knows, I feel sorry about it.”
Tubby patted his lips with his napkin. “Look out, Marty. Sandy has got a good case. My first job is to do right by him. You and I have been friends for a long time, but I’ve got to represent Sandy to the best of my ability, just like I do every other client.”
“I understand that, and I wouldn’t expect anything less, knowing you as I do. But surely Sandy Shandell does not have a three-million-dollar case.”
Marty Feingold had sad puppy eyes below bushy eyebrows, and Tubby felt them probing his, looking for pity.
“Who knows. More than a hundred grand, probably. Juries are unpredictable. If Sandy can keep it together on the stand, those twelve noble citizens in the jury box could do you some real damage.”
