5 Crime Czar (18 page)

“But I haven’t been able to fully investigate Worldwide Women’s Boxing.” Banks hesitated. “There hasn’t been sufficient time.”

“You have all the figures. You’ve got my jewels as collateral. You know the profit potential of the franchise. You’ll have to fish or cut bait. That’s all there is to it. Let’s pretend that the check for five hundred thousand dollars is in my pocket right now. If you’ll endorse the back of it, so I know it’s your money, not Mulé’s, I’ll send it off today. That will hold them until you can convert my stuff into cash.”

“I’m not sure where your jewels are at present,” Banks reflected, almost to himself. “Frank got them and they haven’t been seen since.” He rubbed his smooth chin. “Okay,” he said finally. “I guess you have to trust somebody sometime. Besides, you’d have to be a very naive individual to think you could get way with cheating us.”

That’s me, naive, Tubby thought as he watched Banks sign his name to the back of the check. Now where would the trail point when the team’s bloodhounds came sniffing? He folded then yellow paper carefully and stuck it in his wallet.

“I’ll see that it gets delivered,” Tubby said.

Banks’s brow was furrowed as he watched his partner drive away. He would have to commence a thorough scrutiny of Worldwide Women’s Boxing right away.

Tubby went directly to his office. He was fully aware that Banks, not being as easily distracted by sweaty muscular females as the sheriff had been, would soon expose his dummy boxing corporation. Tubby pressed his lips to the check and kissed it good-bye. To keep it was to go to jail, and his price for such a dishonor was higher than half a million bucks. Instead, he addressed a plain white envelop to Bureau of Finance, City of New Orleans. He put a yellow sticker on the check and wrote on it, as anonymously as possible, “Here’s my contribution to the City’s general fund. Keep up the good work.”

Based upon his experiences with City Hall, odds were good that whichever lowly-paid employee opened the envelope would either steal the check or would deposit it into the city treasury without further inquiry. In either case, the money might possibly do some good.

And in either case, Banks would have a hell of a time getting it back. Tubby had once overpaid his occupational license fee and it had taken three years to get his ninety-eight-dollar refund. Clifford’s own backers might not be that patient.

Walking away from the mailbox on the corner, Tubby wondered whether he ought not take an extended trip.

Cherrylynn could run the office while he was away.

For finances he had all of Marguerite’s jewels.

For the rest of today, however, he was going home and catch some rest— maybe watch some college football games on television— anything but watch the news.

* * *

Tulane was beating LSU 40 to 3 in the fourth quarter when the real world intruded. Tubby tried to ignore the telephone, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. Finally, thinking it might be a family emergency, he reached for the handset. He regretted it at once.

“Hey, Mr. Tubby, it’s me, Monster Mudbug.”

“Yes, Adrian, what’s the problem now?”

“No problem at all, Mr. Tubby. I just got elected sheriff. It’s because Sheriff Mulé got shot. I got more than two hundred votes.”

Tubby set the phone down on the couch pillow and started laughing.

“Can you believe that, Mr. Tubby?” he heard the Monster crowing. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do now?”

“Free the captives,” Tubby wheezed into the phone. “That’s what the good book says.”

“I know you’re kidding, Mr. Tubby. Listen, do you know where that girl Daisy went to? We kind of hit it off right after your party, and I’d really like to find her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Adrian. If I talk to her, I’ll let her know about your interest, but I gotta warn you. She kisses for keeps.”

* * *

On the Southwest flight to Santa Fe, Marguerite and Daisy relaxed with little green bottles of California Chardonnay.

“I’ve never been so far west before,” Daisy said, looking at the sky full of stars outside the plane’s window.

“Could be the beginning of a brand-new life for you,” Marguerite said, smiling faintly.

“Oh, I don’t think so. You have to live your same life anywhere you go. And I won’t have a job or anything right away.”

“I’ll help you get settled in.” Marguerite sipped from her plastic cup. “Then we’ll just have to see what happens.”

“I just want some time off without hassles,” Daisy said. “You know what I mean? And no heavy love affairs. I just lose my grip when I fall in love.”

“It’s hard for a woman to maintain her identity in a man’s world,” Marguerite said.

“Where’s all the so-called men?”

“Everywhere you look.”

“Nowhere I looked, except for Charlie. You don’t like Tubby?”

“I’ll answer that when we get to know each other better.”

“I try to keep my eyes open for the good things in life that are supposed to be free, but there’s always this money thing.”

“Right now money is the least of our worries.” Marguerite patted the lumpy purse that rested heavily in her lap. “And I think your sentiments are just fine. We’re going to get along okay.”

Tubby wanted to get a closer look at his treasure— to experience in solitude the feel of diamonds and gold running through his fingers. He went to the pantry for the coffee can where Marguerite and he had secreted the jewels, but as soon as he lifted it from the shelf, he knew there was a problem. The can was empty but for a note.

“You will always be my dreamer,” it said. “Love, Marguerite.”

A little later, Tubby called Al Hughes at home to congratulate him on his reelection victory.

“Your good wishes are appreciated, Counselor, but I’ll have to be honest. I don’t think I’m going to ask you to be chairman of any more of my campaigns.”

“Once was enough for me, too, Al. You just go out there and be a good judge, and I’ll be happy.”

“There was never any question about that,” Hughes said firmly. “And there ain’t going to be.”

“You swamped Benny Bloom.”

“Shows the voters aren’t always stupid.”

“I never did understand why he wanted the job anyway.”

“My sources say he handled payoffs for certain of my colleagues on the bench. He wanted to eliminate the middleman and get the money himself.”

“What?” Tubby asked in astonishment. “Other than maybe Trapani, there are other judges taking payoffs to fix cases?”

“Yes, according to our reporter friend Kathy Jeansonne. I’m not going to talk about it on the telephone.”

“But you’re going to report it to someone?”

“I’m going to do something, but I’m not prepared to say what. First, I’m going to wait and see if the shooting has stopped. This is a scary time to be a politician.”

“Just take care of yourself.”

“That’s Mrs. Hughes’s job. Mine is to wear the robe.”

The ghoulish visitors that had troubled Tubby’s slumbers did not visit him that night. Not even LaRue came to call. The sleeper sensed that they were gone. In their place came more pleasant images of people still warm with life. His attention, focused for too long on the dead and undeserving, returned now to the living. He breathed easily and woke up with an appetite.

* * *

It was blue skies, cool, and sunny over the Rigolets in the early morning. Two fishermen reclining in chairs at either end of a fourteen-foot fiberglass skiff cast lazily at the tall grass along the marshy shore. Mesmerized by the tiny waves rolling past the clear thread of his fishing line, Tubby Dubonnet whistled a tune.

“You’re going to scare the specks,” Raisin called from the front of the boat.

“I don’t think there are any fish around here, anyway.” The thought did not bother Tubby. He had not shaved that morning, and the hair under his hat was unbrushed. He felt good.

There had been no mention in the newspaper about the death of Willie LaRue. Running over the maniac had been an act of self-defense, Tubby was pretty sure of that. Still, this was the one part of the story that he had not shared with anyone, not even Raisin.

“I think I’m going to cut back on the booze,” Tubby said.

“That’s a damn good idea,” Raisin said. “How about tossing me a beer.”

Tubby leaned over to the ice chest and dredged out a silver can. He tossed it to his partner, who deftly snagged it with one hand, and he opened another for himself.

“I feel like I’ve just been lost in a thick fog for the past six months. Now I’m ready to get back into the world again.”

“No more talk about the crime czar?”

“It’s a committee. How can you fight a committee? A group of nameless individuals not one of whom has the guts to be the baddest guy in town? They’re not worth my time.”

“Whatever you say.” Raisin twitched his pole left and right and gently reeled in his line.

“It’s like my daughter said, ‘Daddy, it’s time you got a life’.”

“Seems to me you might worry about what the committee’s going to do to you,” Raisin said.

“I doubt they’ll come after me,” Tubby said, more bravely than he felt. If they did, he would just have to take his chances. “Committees don’t feel human emotions like revenge. Now, Frank Mulé would have burned me alive. He was a man with emotions. I think the board of directors will look at the bottom line and see there’s no profit in messing with me.” They might have enough to worry about with Bin Minny on the loose.

“You’re just a small fry.”

“Exactly. Of course they might demote Clifford Banks.”

“So what’s next?”

“I plan to get my law practice back together and start spending some more time with my girls and my new grandson.”

“Just lead the straight life.”

“That’s right.”

A white egret circled the boat and landed in the marsh grass a hundred yards away. It stood tall on one leg and pointed its beak at the fishermen, eyes searching for bait.

“Have you had the chance to look at that video tape your detective swiped from Clifford Banks’ office yet?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“It’d give us something to do when we get home,” Raisin suggested.

“No man, we’re going to be frying fish,” Tubby said with confidence. His line went taut and his rod bowed. The egret’s beak twitched, imagining lunch.

THE END

To Sam, Sam,

the working man.

I gratefully acknowledge the thoughtful comments of Hugh Knox and Linda Kravitz, the tavern of Ned Hobgood, and the coffee of Theone Perloff-Velez.

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Lucky Man

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American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril

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Delta Time

Our Land Too

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TONY DUNBAR started writing at quite a young age. When he was 12, growing up in Atlanta, he told people that he was going to be a writer, but it took him until the age of 19 to publish his first book, Our Land Too, based on his civil rights experiences in the Mississippi delta. For entertainment, Tony turned not to television but to reading mysteries such as dozens of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Among his favorites are: Dashiell Hammett, author of
The Maltese Falcon
, and Tony Hillerman, and John D. MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane, and…