Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 02 - City of Beads (3 page)

“What’s wrong?” Tubby asked, surprising them both. Debbie had left with “Nothing, Daddy. Mr. Aucoin just brought me home.”

Tubby bent down to look at Potter behind the wheel. The face was guilty. “What became of Arn?” he asked Debbie.

“We got separated,” Debbie said, avoiding his eyes. “It’s no big deal. Good night, Mr. Aucoin,” and she skedaddled up the walk.

“What’s going on?” Tubby asked, studying Potter suspiciously.

“It would be better if she told you, Tubby. I just tried to help her out.”

“Out of what?” Tubby demanded.

“Look. She’s okay. It really isn’t my place to tell you the story. You should talk to her about it.”

Potter drove off. Tubby was mad.

Debbie was holed up in the bathroom upstairs, so he had to get Mattie out of bed, where she’d been propped up watching a late movie, and send her in to get the scoop.

She was gone about an hour, while Tubby tried to cure his frustration with J. W Dant. The story Mattie came out with, told while she and Tubby held hands on the edge of the bed, was that Arn had taken Debbie to a bar in their neighborhood where teenagers could get served. After they hung out there for a while, Arn suggested visiting a friend of his who lived in the French Quarter. The friend sold pot and cocaine, but Debbie said she didn’t know that at the time. It was an upstairs garret with a balcony overlooking an old courtyard. It felt like an adventure just climbing up the narrow dark stairs, smelling the mossy bricks and the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine. They knocked, and Arn’s friend, an older man with. a full white beard, let them in and took them back to his kitchen. What a surprise to find Mr. Aucoin sitting there.

“Debbie Dubonnet,” he said. “You’re going home!”

He told the host that Debbie was only sixteen, the daughter of a friend of his, and they’d be leaving now.

The white-bearded man got mad at Arn, and they started arguing. While that was going on Potter took Debbie, who was completely bewildered by the scene, firmly by the elbow and escorted her downstairs and out to the street. As he steered her down the block to his car, he explained that Arn’s friend sold drugs, and his apartment was no place for an underage girl to be.

She protested, but Potter got her into the car and drove her straight home. On the way he confided that he had done some drugs in the past, and he gave her various reasons why she should stay away from them. By the time they got back Uptown they were friends again, but she did wonder what had become of Arn.

“I think it was very sweet of Potter to do that,” Mattie said.

“Yeah, so do I, but what the hell was he doing there?”

Tubby went over to see Potter the next day. It wasn’t the kind of thing you discussed on the telephone. He repeated Debbie’s version of events to Potter, and asked him the same question.

“I know the guy who lives there,” Potter explained. “I’ve known him for a long time. There was a period after I got married when I was into cocaine. That’s all ancient history now, thank God, but I go over to visit sometimes to replay the old days.”

“Does he still deal?”

“Maybe. I mean, sure he does, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be his friend. It’s his business, not mine.”

“Then why did you make Debbie leave?”

“I knew you’d kill me if I didn’t,” Potter said simply.

Tubby thought about that for a minute.

“Why did you get into drugs?” he asked.

“Who knows,” Potter said. “Me and Edith were having some problems. We’d just found out we couldn’t have kids, and I took that kind of hard. And I was making too much money for my own good. A lot of things.”

“What made you stop?”

“There’s no profit in self-destruction,” Potter said virtuously. “And,” he added, “I suppose I like myself too much.”

“Well, thanks for what you did,” Tubby said. “It makes me trust you.”

“Okay, but I’m a crazy, independent fool if there ever was one.”

“No joke,” Tubby said. “But you’re all right by me.”

After that he thought of Potter as someone he could rely upon, if ever the need arose.

The Morgue was in the basement of Charity Hospital downtown. Why are they always underground? Tubby wondered in the elevator. Because that’s where you store things you don’t need? Because the dead don’t require a room with a view? The door clunked open and Tubby stepped out into a tiled hallway, brightly lit and clinically clean. It was empty and quiet. A plastic sign pointed down the hall to the coroner’s office. He followed the arrow.

Edith Aucoin was sitting in the small waiting area between a man and a woman who bore a distinct family resemblance to her. The widow’s unlined face was strained and her eyes were red. Her black hair, normally loose about her shoulders, was tied back and hidden in a purple scarf.

Tubby took the hand she offered and kissed her cheek. He murmured how sorry he was, and she thanked him for coming. She introduced her sister, who said they had met, and her brother, who gave Tubby’s hand a firm shake.

“Is there anything I can do?” Tubby asked.

“Just be here awhile,” she said. “They told me they would be bringing him soon.”

“I stopped by the shop on the way over,” Tubby told her. “The ambulance was about ready to leave,”

“Did you see him?”

“Yes, I did,” Tubby said after a pause.

“How did he look?”

Tubby shrugged. “Very peaceful.” Surely the crew would clean up the body before showing it to the wife.

“He would still be in that hideous barge if Broussard hadn’t checked on things. I laid him off when Potter disappeared, but he still passed by the shop every so often to see if anybody was stealing stuff.”

“Broussard looked inside the barge?” Tubby asked.

“Yes, I don’t know why, but he did. He said he saw Potter’s hair floating. And he called me from a pay phone.”

“I know this is just terrible for you,” Tubby said.

“He was a good man,” Edith sighed, and started to weep. Her brother and sister both surrounded her with their arms.

“Yes he was,” Tubby said simply. He was moved and very uncomfortable. An attendant pushed open a swinging door and asked Mrs. Aucoin to come with him. She got up, straightened her shoulders, and walked inside with her family. Tubby remained behind in one of the red plastic chairs.

In a few minutes Edith was back. Her face was flushed and angry. She sat down hard beside Tubby and clutched his hand. Her blue eyes -gone gray -locked on his.

“Who did it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Will you find out for me?”

“Well, I’ll sure try,” Tubby said doubtfully. “I’m just a lawyer, though, Edith, not a detective. For detective work I call on pros like Sanre Flowers.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just all so distressing. You’ll help, won’t you, settle the estate and figure out what to do with the business?”

“Of course.” He patted her hand.

“Thank you, Tubby. You were his friend.”

After that she had to fill out some forms. The coroner passed by to express his personal sympathy. He took Edith into his office, maybe for an official purpose or perhaps to offer her a drink.

Tubby was discussing what a shame it was to the brother and sister when a newspaper reporter he knew, Kathy Jeansonne, walked into the room.

“Ah, hello, Tubby,” she said, surveying him with interest, hoping she had caught him in the act of creating news. She was tall and was wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans. She was a veteran crime reporter for the
Times-Picayune
, and Tubby was not glad to see her.

“Hello, Kathy. What brings you to the basement?”

“I picked up some reports on the police radio about someone dying in a barrel of oil, and I thought there might be a story in it.”

“It was a barge of oil, Kathy. Try not to get too graphic. These are the relatives.”

“Oh?” She licked her lips and moved in to introduce herself. Tubby had a problem with this reporter, and it stemmed from a case long ago. She had covered his client’s murder trial and reported, unfairly he thought, that his client was “wild-eyed and jittery” when he testified about the shoot-out he was accused of instigating.

“You need your contacts checked,” Tubby had complained at the time. “The man was not ‘wild-eyed.’ He was just broken up over his poor friend who got shot.”

“Yeah, like an alligator is sad when it eats its young,” she retorted sarcastically.

They hadn’t spoken much after that.

“Excuse me a minute, please,” he said, leaving the greedy newshound alone with Edith’s brother and sister. Tubby walked down the hall to the coroner’s office and poked his head inside. Edith was sipping a cup of coffee, and the doctor was signing his name to some documents on his desk.

“We’re just finishing up, Tubby,” she said.

“Are you the lawyer for the family?” the coroner asked.

Tubby said he was.

“I’ll call you after the police give me the okay and tell you the results.”

“Thanks, Doctor. Could you do me a favor? We’ve got a reporter out here. I really don’t want her pestering the family right now. Could you bring Edith’s brother and sister back and show them all out of the delivery entrance, or something, while I keep her busy up front?”

“Sure, no problem,” the coroner said. “We’re finished here. Why don’t you go and send them in?”

Tubby told Edith’s relatives that the doctor wanted them. While the Aucoins were making their escape, Tubby told Ms. Jeansonne what little he knew about Potter’s death and about the export business he had run before he died.

“Thanks for the background, Tubby,” she said. “Why so cooperative?”

“I want to know who did it. I know you can’t be beat when you put your nose to the ground.”

“I’m glad you think I have some skills as a reporter.”

“Just because I don’t always like the way you write doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re smart,” Tubby said. Her chest expanded at the compliment.

“You want to go with me and look at where the body was found?” he asked.

“No, I’m going to wait here and talk to the widow.”

“Okay, see you later,” Tubby said. Good luck, he thought, and walked off down the empty hallway to the elevator back to the world.

“Who may I say is calling?” the young lady asked.

“This is Frank Mulé.”

“Just a moment, sir. I’ll see if I can find him.”

Mulé fiddled with an extremely sharp letter opener on his desk while he waited.

“Why, hello, Sheriff,” Caponata’s voice boomed. “Am I in trouble?”

“You know that better than me, Joe. I just wanted to pass along a little something to you.”

“Sure, what’s that.”

“You know Potter Aucoin, the guy who got killed?”

“No, I don’t believe so,” Caponata said.

“Yeah, he turned up down by the river in a vat of some kind of vegetable oil. It was in the papers.”

“I might have read something about that.”

“There’s a lawyer, Tubby Dubonnet, interested in the case. He was down there before they even took the body away. I just thought you might want to know that.”

“Never heard of him. Is he somebody to worry about?”

“It’s hard to say. He pops up at the wrong times. You might want to keep an eye on him.”

“Probably not, Frank, but thanks for the call.”

“Anytime, Joe. Give my very best to Helen.”

“Certainly. Let’s have lunch.”

“Maybe next week. Be my guest.”

Both men hung up. Caponata brushed some cookie crumbs off his ample chest. He picked up the phone again and stuck it under his second chin. With the other hand he reached again into the cookie jar to see what was there. One thing he liked was his wife’s sesame seed biscotti.

Mike’s Bar was a fixture on Annunciation Street, and Annunciation Street was the heart of the Irish Channel. Like the telephone poles with old campaign posters stapled to them and fire hydrants that were hooded and locked so the kids couldn’t open them, Mike’s was a part of the permanent background in this neighborhood, not something you noticed driving by. You’d be too busy looking out for boys on bikes and old ladies pushing Schwegmann’s shopping carts around the potholes. Only regulars went to Mike’s. A lot of times the door was locked and you had to get beeped inside. The only advertisement on the street was a faded gold Falstaff beer sign, swinging from a pole.

You could get lost for a spell at Mike’s. The neighborhood of shotgun houses was run down now and a little bleak. It was mixed—white and black together. The parish cathedral had plywood over some of its stained-glass windows, but inside Mike’s your spirits might get a lift. Today, however, Tubby was afraid it was not going to work out that way since Mike had a sad tale to tell.

Other than the mahogany bar running the length of one dim wall, the attractions of Mike’s consisted of a jukebox that still played Perry Como records, three round tables, and a wall full of photographs of old politicians and little-known minor-league baseball players who had long since been put out to pasture. When holding court at the table in the back, Mike was Mr. Mike, presiding over the old-timers who kept a quiet game of bourré, pinochle, or down the river going almost around the clock, six days a week. Mr. Mike observed the Sabbath.

Walking in from the harsh light of the sidewalk, Tubby had to stop a second to adjust to the darkroom lighting of Mike’s. Once he could make out the major features of things he shuffled directly to the corner table to pay his respects to the owner.

“Well, if it ain’t the great shyster, Mr. Tubby Dubonnet,” Mr. Mike said with pleasure, expelling a ball of Chesterfield smoke.

“Nice to see you, too, Mr. Mike,” Tubby said, giving a squeeze to the old man’s well-padded shoulder. “You’re looking very handsome.” There were four card players at the table, a bald man with one glass eye who greeted Tubby by nodding, a pillowy grand dame with a pile of yellow hair, who might have been his wife, a younger guy wearing a Saints cap backward, who must have been somebody’s son, and Charlie Duzet, who was a criminal court judge.

“Howya doin’, judge?” Tubby said, and shook the man’s thin hand.

“You got some money? You wanna play some cards?” the judge asked.