Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series) (3 page)

“Jesus, I told you to clean up, Adrian.”

“Couldn’t, Mr. Tubby. I was working.”

“You must have been working under a car.”

“Yeah, there was a three-car wreck up on the high rise. Two other guys beat me there, so I had to scoop the worst car, which had both its front tires completely mangled. First I had to wait for the ambulance and the rescue guys to get the people out.”

“Were they hurt?”

“Yeah, pretty bad. The guy was some kind of preacher, and these leaflets about a revival or something were blowing out of his car and all over the highway. This pretty lady that was in the car with him got banged on the head. She was walking around in circles saying, ‘Reverend James, Reverend James.’” Adrian tried to imitate her. “She had blood just dripping off her.”

Tubby shook his head in sympathy. “Listen, Adrian…” he began.

“Yeah, I was kind of worried that the old man might be dead. The ambulance driver said he’d pull through, though. But I guess if he’d of died he would have gone straight to heaven. Don’t you think? Baptists believe in heaven, don’t they?”

“Sure they do, Adrian. Did you think it was just a Catholic thing? But now that you’re here, did you bring proof of insurance?”

“Yeah, sixty days.”

“I don’t know if they’ll take that. You need real insurance.”

“It’s hard to get insurance on the Rolling Boiler,” Adrian lamented. He was speaking about a chopped-down Ford Escort chassis he had decorated with papier-mâché and sheet metal to look like a huge crawfish pot. He had girls, pretty ones if he could get them, dress up like crawfish and jump around in the pot. He used it for parties and parades and was trying to get recognized as a local character.

“I’ll bet the Moss Man doesn’t have insurance,” he complained.

“I know the Moss Man, and he does have insurance,” Tubby told him. “Plus he has a brake tag, too.”

“I’d like to know where he gets it. They’d just laugh at me if I pulled into a brake tag station. Can you imagine?”

“Give me your certificate of insurance and I’ll see what I can do.”

Adrian sat on the bench while Tubby squeezed through the crowd to the hallway behind the courtroom where whatever assistant city attorney had the duty that day met with lawyers and regular folks to conduct the real business of the court, which was to hammer out guilty pleas. Today he found Risi Shexnayder, a young lawyer he had seen before over at the law school, sitting behind a little desk, interrogating a fat black teenager while a policeman, lounging on a folding chair in the corner, picked his teeth with a wooden match.

The teenager was telling a story about why he ran a stop sign. The cop interrupted to say he didn’t believe the kid then and he didn’t believe him now, and, in any case, running a stop sign was against the law, so why not cut the crap. The kid finally agreed to pay a fine, but he was mad about it. He collected his papers and strutted out. Shexnayder waved Tubby toward the empty chair. She was in her twenties but was already getting the worn-and-tired appearance that comes from spending too much time cooped up in windowless rooms with petty offenders and cops.

“Hey, Mr. Dubonnet, where y’at? I know it must be a major bust for a big shot like you to be down here.”

“No, this is not a big deal, Risi. Today I represent Monster Mudbug. Grabbed for no insurance, tag, or title on his way to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in the Irish Channel.”

“Yeah. I saw him in that parade. He wears this big chef’s hat and was throwing boiled crawfish and potatoes, right? That’s a crazy guy. Is that stuff legal? It must be a health-code violation. So what do you want me to do?”

“Forget the whole thing. No one gets title or tags on something like that. I mean, it’s a float, really. And anyway he’s got insurance.”

The assistant city attorney inspected the insurance certificate Tubby pushed across her desk.

“This is from Blue Streak Insurance Company,” she said. “They’ve been out of business for months. This is no good.”

Tubby looked at it again. “So, you’re right. But that’s not the kid’s fault. See, he paid the premium.”

“I hope he can get his money back. Judge is hard on no insurance, but I guess maybe this counts for something. Monster Mudbug has to have a license tag, though. If it runs on gas and rolls down the street you gotta put a tag on it. We’ll throw everything else out if he pays a hundred and twenty-five dollars plus costs.”

“Okay,” Tubby said. The prosecutor scribbled some notes on the tickets and handed them to Tubby.

“Take these to the clerk, and it’s all taken care of. And say hello to Reggie Turntide for me.” Reggie was Tubby’s partner.

“You know Reggie?” Tubby was surprised because Reggie had probably never ventured into Traffic Court.

“I met him at the fish fry my boss, the City Attorney, has every summer for all of us and the politicians. Reggie was really sweet. He played with my little boy for about two hours.”

“Yeah, Reggie really likes kids.”

“He seemed to. You can tell Monster Mudbug I think his whole, uh, presentation is outasight. People go crazy trying to catch those crawfish. They had a good flavor, too.”

“You ate them?”

“Sure, I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time.”

“I’ll tell him he has an admirer in Traffic Court.” Tubby grabbed the tickets and was out the door. The next lawyer in line stepped forward quickly and sat on the chair. One more man with a story to tell.

Adrian had found some friends in the courtroom, and they were all talking to each other in whispers, out of respect for where they were, but there was still no judge in sight.

“I got her to throw out the no title, no brake tag, and no insurance,” Tubby told him, “but you’ll have to pay a hundred and twenty-five dollars plus costs for no license tag.” Adrian’s friends were impressed.

“That’s good,” Adrian said. “I brought two hundred dollars with me just in case.”

“What you do is pay your lawyer first. Give me the two hundred dollars.”

“What do I pay the fine with?”

“They’ll give you time. Go to the back and work it out with the lady. Pay me the two hundred dollars. And get some real insurance. The city attorney back there likes you. She caught your show and loved it, but there’s a price for fame. You can’t let down all the people who are getting behind you. Monster Mudbug is the kind of guy who has insurance.”

“I see that, Mr. Tubby. I can’t be getting into legal hassles all the time. I gotta think about my fans. There’s a lot of young people who look up to me.”

“Right, Adrian. You gotta be an example to them.”

“Sure. Thanks for everything, Mr. Tubby.” They said goodbye and parted ways.

How did I ever get into this line of work? Tubby asked himself as he pushed open the glass doors to the world outside. He gave a couple of bucks to the young lad who was watching his car and got a barely perceptible nod in return. He wasn’t sure, but it looked to Tubby as though his wheel covers had been shined.

Monique was a small-town girl. She had come to what to her was the big city of New Orleans from Evergreen, Alabama, home of a million slash pine trees and a Holiday Inn. She was running away from home at age twenty-three.

The immediate goal was to get away from Ned, her ex-husband, who liked to punch her about once a week while they were married and periodically came around for similar recreation after they got divorced. She got started on her escape after he almost ran her off the Interstate one night with his four-by-four pickup truck, pushing her onto the shoulder, saved only by an exit ramp which appeared just in time. She swerved up it and took refuge under the dusty vapor lamps of an all-night convenience store, leaving Ned to clip the signpost and navigate his drunken way north. Then she shook and shook, waiting for her mother to get her landlord to come and escort her home. She stared at the pretty faces beckoning from the shiny magazine covers on the rack by the phone and decided that her only hope for a real life lay in flight.

As soon as she was convoyed back to her trailer she dragged out her most precious belongings and threw them into her dented, still-not-paid-for Rabbit. She dropped the keys to her mobile home in the manager’s mailbox, drove out to Interstate 65 and turned south, for no reason but that Ned lived five miles to the north in Owassa and she was taking no chances on running into him again that night. A long two hours later, when only eighteen-wheelers and other lonely pilgrims were on the highway, a slender corridor through dark miles of uninhabited and forbidding pine forests, she stopped for gas and cigarettes in Mobile. Mixed in with the truck fumes she could smell the salt in the air. The road east went to Pensacola, where she and Ned had once taken a beach trip during their brief courtship. The sign to the west said New Orleans. She had never been there. It sounded a lot better than anyplace she had ever gone with Ned. If she didn’t find something there, like safety, a place to work, or romance, then she could just keep going to Texas, or maybe even California.

“How many hours is it to New Orleans?” she asked the sleepy-looking man behind the counter.

“About three, if you don’t stop,” he said. “Are you planning on going all the way through tonight?”

“Yep.” She made up her mind.

“You reckon that car of yours will make it that far?” he asked.

“It had better,” she said, pocketing her change.

“I’m just pointing out, ladies have to be careful at night. There ain’t much out there but dark for the next hundred and forty miles.”

“Thanks, I’m not worried,” she said. And the surprising thing was she really wasn’t worried. “Couldn’t I walk a hundred and forty miles?” she asked herself as she settled back behind the wheel.

Coming over a high-rise bridge into the city at daybreak took her breath away. The tall buildings, rising up in the new sun, the graceful outline of the suspension bridges over the Mississippi River, the brawling morning traffic, made a promise to her – a promise of possibilities. She opened the window to let in the cool, clean Gulf of Mexico air, exited at Franklin Avenue, and fell asleep parked in a neighborhood of proud oak trees and old brick houses.

She was rousted by a policeman at around ten a.m. He ascertained that she was alive and told her politely that she needed to move along. After they talked a little, he with his blond mustache and bulky blue jacket, she with sleepy eyes and tangled hair, he suggested a rooming house on Canal Street. He gave her directions and waved when she puttered away. She found the place without trouble. It was a lovely old mansion with a big yard, owned by a blue-haired lady who showed Monique to an immaculate room, furnished with a bed, a dresser, a television, a cherry-red throw rug, and a vase of fresh flowers. It cost as much for a week as her trailer in Evergreen had cost for a month. It was her first house in New Orleans, and there were roses in bloom outside her window.

Monique made her way. Right off the bat her car got towed from a freight-loading zone while she was using a pay phone, and she never went to pick it up. She was afraid that the finance company might have reported it stolen, and she’d get arrested. She learned the bus routes and found a job as an exotic dancer in a foul-smelling club on Decatur Street. Ali, the linebacker-sized barman, made sure the customers didn’t touch her unless she allowed them to, and the money was okay. It was basically good exercise, except that the air in the place, from the customers’ cigarettes and other noxious emissions, was roughly the flavor of car exhaust.

She moved out of the rooming house and into a cheap apartment in the French Quarter. It was nice being able to explore the Quarter before work, to walk down to the river and watch the freighters with names of countries she had never heard of painted on their bows, to mingle with tourists and sometimes buy a muffuletta, packed with Italian ham and olive salad, and eat it outdoors in Jackson Square. She bought a bike. She did what she needed to do to get by. She made some friends and picked up a little cocaine habit. A job waiting tables in a bacon-and-eggs joint on Chartres Street opened up, and she took it even though it paid less than dancing. When she walked out of the strip joint, she gave Ali her falsies and G-string, and he got a huge laugh out of that.

Monique did not consider herself to be a genius by any means. Sometimes she wondered if God had given her any brains at all. But when she met Darryl Alvarez at a party her boss threw, she was smart enough to know that he was a step up. He was a little short for her taste, and he had kind of a Spanish look that was new to her, but he seemed real sure of himself and he said a lot of interesting things.

They left the party early and went out and had a few drinks in a crowded bar Uptown run by a friend of his. The drinks were on the house, which was impressive, and Darryl left a fat tip for the waitress, which was even more so. He was fun. They stopped off at his apartment right on Lake Pontchartrain, overlooking what he said was the yacht harbor, to snort a little coke together. His apartment wasn’t furnished like the ones most of her previous boyfriends lived in. There weren’t any Mexican bullfight pictures on the wall, for one thing. It was all very modern and clean and had wall-to-wall carpet. There was a big wooden cabinet that when he opened it revealed a television and a stereo and some carved black statues from Africa of fierce naked men and women, and he had a thick glass coffee table. She checked out the medicine cabinet while she was in the bathroom and found out that Darryl used Mitchum, Colgate, and Drakkar Noir. It was clean in there, too, which was mighty unusual for a man, and she thought he must have a maid.

Darryl pulled the curtains open, and she could see, across the street and the floodwall, all the sailboats berthed in their little slips in the harbor, illuminated by tiny lights strung along the piers. It was very romantic.

“I’ll make it a little darker and you can see the view better,” he said, and she giggled.

“That’s funny?” he asked, switching off a lamp. “What can I fix for you?”

“Oh, a beer, I guess. I don’t care.”

“Here’s a Miller Lite,” he said, handing her a pony bottle, “so you can keep your beautiful figure.”