Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 02 - City of Beads (2 page)

Headlights swept over the clock, followed by a spotlight. It was the Harbor Policeman, making his rounds, eating a Popeye’s chicken thigh while he looked over his dark domain, castles built of fifty-five-gallon drums, great spools of cable as thick as your wrist, crates of car parts it would take a crane to lift. He was feeling sorry for himself, thinking it was lonely out here—that there was nothing lonelier than prowling at night by yourself alone, listening to the drumbeat of your tires against the wooden planks, echoing off all that deep water. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary here. Lost in thought about scary things that could happen to a cop working solo, he drove on.

“Shit,” Francis and Courtney both muttered together. They got busy again, pulling Potter to the edge of the wharf, then trying to slide him down the ladder. Finally they just let him drop the few feet onto the steel lid of the floating barge. He didn’t make much noise.

It required only brute strength to roll the hatch cover back. The barge was not empty. It lay low in the water, topped with a pond of top-grade peanut oil from Georgia, refined in Cincinnati, brought down the river for shipment to Honduras as part of America’s foreign aid to that country. That was the business of Export Products. Francis and Courtney had no idea what the barge held, but the big man gave out another expletive when he stuck his arm into the black hole to investigate and it came up dripping.

“Is this acid?” he gasped in a panic, looking toward the starry sky while his arm dripped all over his pants. “Good God, please let this not be acid. Let’s please just get this over with.”

With Francis pushing and Courtney steering, they got Potter over the open hatch and pointed downward.

“Heave-ho,” Courtney whispered, and Potter slid silently into the black hold.

“Can you see him?” Francis asked.

“I never expect to see him again,” Courtney said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He pulled the hatch cover shut.

Up the ladder they crept. A quick look showed no threats on the wharf, save the work crew on the distant crane, silhouetted by sodium vapor spotlights. Like mice scampering from the scene of some midnight mischief, the two jogged away leaving behind only a trail of oily droplets.

A few moments later an engine came alive, faintly, and a pickup truck rolled out of the shadows of the warehouse, crossed the Public Belt Railroad tracks, and drove away into uptown New Orleans. The wee-hours crowd lined up outside Tipitina’s to hear Marcia Ball’s second set paid them no attention.

Grubby and over their legal limits, Tubby and Raisin were finally back in New Orleans. They exited the interstate on Claiborne on a weekend morning about the time the parishioners were making early Mass. Tubby dropped Raisin off at his girlfriend’s house and drove off as soon as she answered the door. He did not wait to witness the joyous reception. He made it home and opened the place up. No one was there to greet him, which was just as well because he did not look his best.

There were twenty-four messages on his answering machine. He listened to them idly, sipping a last beer, ruminating on how the world kept running along even when you stepped off it for a while. The last message was only a couple of hours old. It was the hysterical voice of Edith Aucoin. Potter, her husband, had been found dead, down at the Napoleon Avenue wharf. Come right away, she cried.

Tubby shaved quickly and put on a fresh shirt from his closet. He left the Town Car, with its litter of dirty laundry, maps, beer cans, and fishing rods, in the driveway and took his own car, the Corvair Spyder convertible, which he had bought on a whim when his Thunderbird’s motor started knocking. The autumn morning was coming on hot, with silver clouds moving fast in the blue sky like mythical gods attacking the sun. The shocking pink crape myrtles waved in the morning breeze as he drove down the avenue toward the river.

Potter’s business was right past the railroad tracks. He had found his niche there. He brought corn oil, peanut oil, and soybean oil down the river, poured it into metal drums, and shipped it off to Mexico and Central America. The operation was really as hole-in-the-wall as you could get, especially compared to the major port activity going on all around it. The last time Tubby had visited this wharf he had seen a couple of Potter’s whiskery workmen, wearing white oysterman’s boots and wielding squeegees, swab the last puddle of some gray oily glop off the hull of a barge and pump it into five-gallon plastic jugs marked USDA GRADE AA.

“Does anybody, you know, strain that stuff before it goes to Mexico?” he asked Potter. He hadn’t known at the time how ironic the question was.

Potter had just shrugged and scratched his chin. Whenever the Coast Guard, or anyone else from the government, passed by, he was gone. He had little use for any restraints on his God-given right of free enterprise. He saluted the flag. Potter took care of most of his business his way, with a phone in his car and a fax machine at his house.

He had gone missing about a month earlier, before Tubby had begun his Florida journey. Edith Aucoin had called Tubby and all of Potter’s other friends. She said he had disappeared a couple of times before, but only for a night at a time. She was getting worried. None of them could tell her anything, so she called the police. They checked around in the desultory way they pursue missing husbands, but had no success. Tubby hadn’t heard any more about it, and actually he had forgotten the whole thing until he got Edith’s message on the machine. The Aucoins weren’t people he saw every day.

Early on a Sunday there was more activity on the river than on the city streets. Tubby had to wait for a Public Belt Railway train to clank past. The brakeman hanging on the last car waved him through.

As soon as he drove through the gate in the floodwall Tubby could see the police and emergency vehicles gathered on the wharf around the Export Products shop. Only the ambulance had its flashing light on. Its two operators were sitting inside, running the engine with the windows rolled up, in a hurry to go nowhere. A Sheriff’s Department car and a Harbor Police car were parked off to one side, and uniformed men lounged around both, talking quietly, in repose. The only hustle and bustle was at dockside, where some cops were working the area, measuring and observing things and taking notes. Below them, on the deck of a barge, a pair of detectives were walking around looking for whatever they could find. Seagulls trailing an upriver-bound ship hovered over their heads laughing for handouts.

One of the uniformed policemen, a young blond kid with an oversized hat, noticed Tubby.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“My name is Tubby Dubonnet. I’m a lawyer. Potter Aucoin is my client. His wife asked me to come down.”

“This is a crime investigation. You need to move away.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yeah, he’s dead. What is your name again, sir?”

“Who is that?” one of the detectives below called up.

“He says he’s a lawyer,” the policeman yelled.

“Hang onto him,” said the detective, and started up the ladder. He got to the top panting.

“Put your yellow tape all around the area, and the shed,” he told the officer. “We’re going to have to secure it until we can pump out the whole damn barge.” He turned to Tubby. “What’s your interest?” he asked.

“My name’s Tubby Dubonnet. I’m a lawyer and friend of the Aucoin family. His wife called and told me to come down.”

“Well, she’s not here. She’s down at the coroner’s office probably, waiting for the body.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know yet, but we fished your friend out of a barge of oil.”

“Did he drown?”

“Maybe. He’s got some funny bruises, too.”

“When did it happen?”

“We don’t know yet. Something can stay fresh packed in oil a long time. Do you want to see him, Mr. Dubonnet?”

Tubby thought about that.

“I guess,” he said.

The detective led Tubby to the ambulance and opened the back door.

Tubby could see the stretcher inside with a sheet covering it. The sheet was wet. The detective beckoned, and Tubby climbed inside, bending over. The two EMTs in the front seat turned around to watch but didn’t say anything. Tubby pulled back the sheet, and there was the glossy face of his friend, open-eyed and serene, making a puddle on the floor.

“Peanut oil, I think,” the detective said.

Tubby didn’t reply. He closed his eyes and tried to collect himself. He started to pull the sheet back up neatly, but couldn’t because he had to get some air. He climbed outside the van and steadied himself against the side. The day was starting to get very hot. The sound of distant thunder rolled across the river.

“Is that Potter Aucoin?” the detective asked.

“Yeah, it was,” Tubby said. He was in a little swoon, aware of all the beer pitching around in his stomach.

“When did you see him last?” the detective asked, inspecting Tubby carefully.

“It’s probably been two months. I’ve been out of town for a while.”

“When did you get back?”

“Just this morning. Can we do this somewhere else? I need to go find Edith.”

“Sure. You got a card or something? My name’s Kronke. We can talk later.”

Tubby found one in his wallet and handed it over.

“You think they’ll still use the oil?” he heard one of the officers ask.

“Undoubtedly,” said another. “Who’s going to know?”

Tubby got in his car and backed out, almost colliding with a forklift coming down the wharf.

* * *

Tubby had always looked up to Potter. He had seemed older and wiser in some way, though he wasn’t really either. But Potter had men working for him. He moved big barges up and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and shipped tons of vegetable oil out of the country. Nobody else Tubby knew did that, or understood how to do it. Tubby sure didn’t understand how Potter did it.

He had known Potter from college, and even then he was in business—selling T-shirts that advertised a list of “BEST BARS” on the back and featured announcements like “I Fear No Beer” on the front. Master Potter wholesaled to the bars and retailed to the students, and he still passed his courses. He organized private parties at the Lions Club hall at which the Irish Rovers or Ramblers or Renegades, Tubby couldn’t remember, played, and he collected a substantial cover at the door from kids who would get carded other places. He was a great hustler, and the remarkable thing was he pulled his crazy deals off.

They lost track of each other for a few years after college. Then Potter called one day and they had lunch at Copeland’s on Napoleon and St. Charles. Tubby fondly recalled the crisp little popcorn shrimp, with that tangy sauce. Potter’s idea then was to get a group of inventors, innovators, and daring businessmen together to improve the city’s business climate.

“The chamber of commerce is just a bunch of old guys,” he said. “They don’t understand that this is already the twenty-first century, and we’re just part of a world economy.”

“How would you know?” Tubby asked. “I didn’t think you were a member of the chamber.”

“I’m not, actually,” Potter had to admit, “but I want to start something new.

So Tubby had gone to the first meeting in the living room of Potter’s house on Henry Clay. He took along Jason Boaz, a client of his who was the wild-haired inventor of Fruity Swizzles, with which you could stir a Coke and turn it cherry, as well as Men’s Total Body Spray, which you could use to deodorize yourself from chin to toenail. Jason made big money off his ideas, in sudden spurts, then he would lose it all at the track.

Potter also had recruited a couple of others. One was a guy named Farron, who had a growing business designing T-shirts and posters with your basic New Orleans themes—jazz, booze, and seafood. Another, named Booker, owned a jazz bar where he served booze and seafood. Booker and Farron got along fine. In fact, everybody had a good time swapping stories and knocking back the drinks that Potter’s wife, Edith, kept serving them. Then someone brought out a deck of cards with pictures of Earl Long on the backs, and they had to teach Farron how to play bourré. The evening ended well, though expensively, for Tubby, who dropped about $80.

The project never really developed. Tubby incorporated the Progressive Business Alliance, and Potter printed some stationery, but basically the group played cards. Potter sometimes used the stationery to write letters to the editor of the
Times-Picayune
condemning higher taxes and social welfare programs, which was a little embarrassing to Tubby.

“What’s all this reactionary BS you’re spouting these days?” he asked Potter once after seeing some outrageously bitter broadside in the newspaper flailing at the City for supporting its minority business forum.

Potter was insulted.

“Reactionary, hell. I’m standing up for free enterprise. The government has no business getting involved in these causes. And I’ll tell you, the closer you work with the government, the more you see that scares the hell out of you.”

Potter was not interested in fishing, and Tubby probably might have let him lapse as a friend if he hadn’t once seen another side of Potter’s nature.

Before they got divorced, Tubby’s wife, Mattie, orchestrated a pretty active social life. She invited Potter and Edith over a few times for dinner, and the ladies hit it off. Potter was an entertaining guy, and he really liked the three Dubonnet girls, Debbie, Christine, and Collette. The oldest, Debbie, who was a bit of a rebellious teenager then, seemed amused by Potter’s irreverent opinions about everything. For some reason, the Aucoins couldn’t have children of their own.

One weekend night Debbie went out on a date with some clod named Arn, who in Tubby’s opinion was way too old and shaggy but was a real catch in Debbie’s eyes. She came home around eleven o’clock, and Tubby wouldn’t have known anything was wrong if he hadn’t been walking the family’s faithful retriever and seen Potter’s car drive up and park in front of his house.

Tubby strolled up just as Debbie got out, and he heard Potter say to her, “You can talk to me about this anytime.”