5 Crime Czar (3 page)

“Good afternoon, Mr. Dubonnet,” Cherrylynn said lightly. There was no mistaking, however, the worry in her eyes.

“Good afternoon,” he replied. “Guess who’s a grandfather.”

“Ooh!” she squealed. All of her freckles danced. “Debbie had her baby!”

“Yep,” Tubby said proudly. “Nine pounds and it’s a boy.”

“What’s his name?”

“She hasn’t decided yet.”

“Everything is fine?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s just worn out.”

“What time did the baby come?” Cherrylynn wanted all the details. Part of her function as Tubby’s receptionist, secretary, and, let’s face it, manager of his law practice, was to try to get the whole picture.

“At about ten o’clock this morning,” he told her before he recognized the trap.

His manager checked her watch.

“I had a meeting… to go to,” he said and marched toward his private office. “Any phone messages?”

“They’re all arranged on your desk, boss.” He knew they would be. She was such a valuable person to have around that he would have to put in a couple of hours work just so he could afford to pay her.

He looked warily around his office, waiting for the inevitable stress to set in. The familiar things— the worn cypress desk, the leather-upholstered chair, the pictures of his children— were comforting, but in this season he was weary of being a lawyer. He had felt that way ever since Dan got shot, since it had been driven home to him how casually lives could be thrown away if they interfered with making big bucks in the Big Easy. It was not that he was naive. It was just that he was programmed to right the wrongs around him. This time he did not know how, and he wasn’t coping very well with the frustration.

Tubby tossed his briefcase on the desk and went to the window to squint through his red telescope. Ah, two ladies in colorful bikinis were sunning themselves beside the bright blue pool situated on the roof of the Fairmont Hotel. That could still get a rise out of him, so he must not be depressed, exactly, he thought while adjusting the knob. He was just pissed off at the whole damn city.

“Mr. Dubonnet.” Cherrylynn was standing in the doorway. “Judge Hughes called this morning. He said it was important.”

She was fretting, as if perhaps Tubby had missed a court date or forgotten to file a brief.

“Really?” Tubby took his eye away from the telescope. The day had cleared, and he could see the city stretching out below him from Lake Pontchartrain to the yellow-and-blue marshes past Chalmette. He had an eagle’s eye view of the French Quarter, the sharp curve of the Mississippi where the river ate a channel six hundred feet deep, the last point of land at the Rigolets, and the endless water beyond.

“I’ll call him right away.” Tubby smiled at his secretary reassuringly, and she nodded and slipped away. She need not have worried about him messing up his docket.
Never screw a client and never lie to the judge
were still his guidelines. And, of late, he had been avoiding taking on clients with the kind of problems he could screw up.

“Mrs. Evans, this is Tubby Dubonnet. May I speak to the judge?” Tubby was gingerly seated at his desk, flipping nervously through a thick pile of pink message slips.

“Counselor,” Judge Hughes’s voice boomed into his ear. “How are you today?”

“Fine, Judge. My daughter just had a baby.”

He got to tell the story again.

“The Bible says ‘Fruitful will be thy issue.’ I feel this will be the first of many fine grandchildren for you.”

“You could be right,” Tubby said, trying to sound jovial. Christine was seventeen and Collette was fifteen, and he wasn’t ready to think about either one of them getting pregnant just yet. Hell, Debbie had just turned twenty-one, but she had always been headstrong, and…

“I’ll tell you why I called.” The judge cut into his reverie. “I want you to be the cochairman of my reelection campaign.”

“What!” Tubby exclaimed. “Is it time for you to run again?”

“Every seven years I must go among the public, regular as a plague of locusts.”

“Is anybody actually going to oppose you?”

“I’ve heard they will,” the judge said, lowering his voice. “The one that I know of is Benny Bloom.”

“Yeah?” Tubby could see where there might be a problem. Benny Bloom was a brash young attorney who ran spectacular ads on television where oil rigs caught fire and blew up. In the next scene, Benny is handing out checks to lots of smiling widows and guys wearing hard hats. He had all sorts of name recognition.

“Why would he want to be a judge? He’d have to take a huge cut in salary.”

“That’s what I can’t figure out,” Hughes said sourly. “He says he wants to pay the community back, some crap like that. I really don’t know what his angle is.”

“Well, I’ll help you in any way that I can, Al, but what does a cochairman have to do? I’ve never been one before.”

“Oh, you know, you sign your name to all my fundraising letters, and you go to the rubber chicken dinners, and call all the right people. Nothing too strenuous.”

“What about the fact that I’m white?”

The judge thought that was funny. “Hell, Tubby, I don’t hold that against you. You remember the first time I ran, when you took me around and introduced me to all those high-class lawyers in the big firms downtown?”

“Sure.”

“It helped me then. I want you to do the same thing this time, only on a different level. Anyway, my other cochairman is gonna be black.”

“Who’s that?”

“Reverend Horace Weems, only he doesn’t know it yet. I’m gonna call him next.”

“I don’t believe I know the reverend.”

“He pastors St. Pious the Third Evangelist Baptist on Orleans Avenue. He’s a fine man. And listen, I’ve got a campaign manager, too, and I’m getting a media consultant. They’re going to be doing all the nuts and bolts work.”

“And me and the Reverend Weems?”

“You and the reverend are going to help me figure out how to pay for it all.”

“I’m flattered, Al.” And he was. “I could probably find the time.” Since he didn’t have any clients. “But as far as my personal financial contribution…”

Judge Hughes laughed so loud Tubby had to jerk the phone away from his ear.

“I don’t need your money, Tubby,” he roared. “I want you to help me get all those other lawyers’ money.”

Relieved, Tubby laughed with the judge. “Sure, Al,” he said. “I’ll be glad to do it.”

“I knew you would. Either I or Mrs. Evans will call you in a day or two and set up a first campaign meeting.”

“So soon?” It was still summertime, for chrissake.

“Soon? The primary is in September. I don’t plan to lose this race.”

Tubby told the judge he was with him all the way, and he had a smug expression on his face when he hung up the phone.

“Hey, guess what, Cherrylynn,” he called out loud. “I’m going to be cochairman of the Judge Hughes Reelection Campaign!”

She ran in to hear the news. He did not immediately realize it, but his mental fog was starting to lift. She spotted it right away.

Charlie Autin was into martial arts, and he was usually never happier than when he was rearing back and kicking someone— laying a mountszu on them. Until he got involved with Daisy, and then she was the only thing on his mind.

He thought she must be older than she said she was, which was twenty-two, because she seemed so experienced about everything. The way she told it, she had only been on the streets a couple of nights before Charlie picked her up that first time. Even allowing for a certain understandable fibbing in that area, it was just amazing what she knew. Tarot cards, for instance. She could predict the future. He had tested her, like on the outcome of a Zephyrs baseball game— they would lose— and again on whether Charlie’s boss would give him Saturday afternoon off— no— and she was right both times. She had traveled more than Charlie and had even been to the casinos on the Gulf Coast. And sex was just crazy, it was so good. She could make Charlie crawl on the floor and beg for more.

Other girls he had dated lacked all of those abilities.

She agreed to come over and see his apartment on a side street near Bonnabel Avenue in Metairie. It was in the back of a brick house with a little yard, and the owner lived up front. Daisy looked real hot when he picked her up, tight red slacks with some kind of gold fringe on them, and a low-cut white tank top that showed off a herd of brown freckles on her neck. They rode off into the deep canyon hidden in the lacy pink bra that peeked out around all the edges of her shirt. He had to sneak her up the driveway to his door in the back so old Mrs. Winters wouldn’t have a heart attack.

“It’s nice,” she said, looking around the low-ceilinged living room furnished with a big TV, a glass-topped table, and his weight set.

He showed her the kitchen, which had a window looking out to the backyard where Mrs. Winters was just now clipping the flowers off her ligustrum hedge. Charlie quickly closed the curtains. He let her see the bedroom next, which was filled almost wall-to-wall with his waterbed. Charlie’s idea had been to get Daisy into that immediately, but she backed away from the bed quickly and returned to the kitchen, bouncing her hips. He followed like a puppy dog.

“What you got to drink, Charlie?” she asked.

“Oh beer, and Gatorade. I maybe got some Dr. Pepper.” He bent down and looked into the refrigerator.

“What kind of beer?”

“Some tall cans of Bud,” he said, pulling one out of its plastic noose.

“I’ll split that one with you.” She sat down on the only chair in the room and crossed her legs.

“Sure,” he said, popping the top. Daisy frowned when he started to hand her the can, and he got the message. She watched him trying to locate two glasses and shook her head.

“This place sure could use a woman’s hand.” It surprised her when she said that, because it sounded like something her mother would have said.

“I do all right,” Charlie said.

“Who does your cooking?”

“Popeye’s.” He laughed and poured her beer into a plastic Endymion cup. He gave up trying to find another for himself and leaned against the stove holding the can.

“Hrumph,” she snorted. “You can’t live on that.”

“To tell you the truth, when I get off work I’m not hungry a lot of the time. It’s all the fumes from the spray paint. I always want a couple of beers, but I usually ain’t that hungry.”

“You ever think that job might be bad for you?”

“Yeah, but it’s what I know how to do. I’m sort of good at it, too,” Charlie said proudly.

“How’d you learn how to paint cars in the first place?”

“My father and brother did it back home in Luling. I could have worked for them, but I got tired of living at home. You know.”

“I know what you mean,” Daisy said.

“Is that why you came to New Orleans, to get away from home?”

She studied her beer and her pink fingernails.

“Something like that, Charlie. I didn’t really have no home. You ever heard that country song, ‘Fancy’? ‘Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down’?”

“Not really.”

Daisy shrugged. “It’s just a song. Let’s say there wasn’t much for me in Alabama, and they didn’t line up to say good-bye when I caught the bus.”

“I had a big family,” Charlie said. “We get together sometimes and cook, man. They make lots of food— gumbo and shrimp, and they fry up lots of fish. Man, it’s good.”

“Maybe you ought to go back out to the country and live.”

“No, there’s no work. And a lot of people ain’t too friendly to my family. I had a little trouble back home, too. My dad said it was time to get away and let it all cool down.”

“What kind of trouble?” Daisy was interested.

“Nothing. I got caught with some dope. Nothing bad.”

“You still mess with that?” Daisy asked. “ ’Cause I don’t.”

Charlie, who had been about to pull open a drawer and offer her a joint he had rolled this afternoon, shook his head. “No way,” he said emphatically.

“Good,” she said, and smiled at him for the first time.

“You like living out there at the motel?” he asked.

“It’s all right. I miss having a stove…”

“Well, you could come over here and cook, whenever you wanted to.”

She laughed, and he thought her teeth looked very pretty, even though one was missing way in the back.

“I imagine you’d like having a cook around,” Daisy said.

“Really, Daisy,” he said. “You could come over here any time you wanted to. You wouldn’t have to cook.” Charlie blushed. Mrs. Winters would blow a fuse if she caught on, but he would think of something.

Daisy stood up and crossed the room to face him. She took his fingers in hers and looked up into his eyes.

“Don’t get cozy with me, weirdo, unless you mean it,” she said in a husky voice. “The only kind of man I want is one who can keep on caring.”

Charlie swelled up with caring. He gripped her shoulders through the soft cotton top and pressed them tightly. “I ain’t never felt this way about nobody before,” he managed to get out.

“Just so you understand,” she said, and gave him a hard squeeze below the belt.

“C’mon,” she said and led him out of the kitchen.

* * *

“It’s good to be surrounded by such a brain trust,” Judge Hughes leaned back in his pillowy leather armchair, hands clasped over his ample middle, and smiled affectionately at his guests. Tubby Dubonnet and the Reverend Horace Weems filled two of the large chairs in front of the judge’s desk in his chambers at the Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Tubby had also just been introduced to a slender black man wearing a pinstriped gray suit, who now sat at attention in a smaller chair back in the corner underneath a lopsided ficus tree that touched the ceiling. His wire-rimmed spectacles were tinted a brilliant shade of orange.

“Mr. Dubonnet and Reverend Weems, as the co-chairmen of this mighty campaign into the future, you will, I am sure, carry this enterprise to its inevitable successful conclusion, guided and assisted by the all wise and knowing Deon Percy, who has agreed to serve as my campaign manager.” He indicated the man under the ficus.

“Always glad to do my part, Alvin,” coughed the Reverend Weems. He wiped his wide brow, the color and dimension of a hickory stump, with the spotless white handkerchief that he plucked from the breast pocket of his lavender suit of sturdy blended fabrics. He had a mustache like a medium-sized paintbrush, and he rubbed it with his free hand while he turned to inspect Tubby. “This is the first time I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Dubonnet, but I am looking forward to sharing the task ahead with you, sir.” He coughed again. “A touch of allergies,” he added.