Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 03 - Trick Question (24 page)

“Introduce me to some and I might get inspired.” He patted his stomach. “Maybe I’d start exercising again.”

Monique stared at him for a second, then half rose from her chair and leaned across the table to hug him.

“It’s just always so good to see you, Tubby,” she said.

He was still blushing when Denise returned.

“I’ve almost convinced Mr. Dubonnet to be your manager,” Monique proclaimed.

“I might actually need a manager,” Denise said. “I’m getting some offers to fight. I’m also gonna need a new trainer.”

“I’m so glad you got rid of Baxter Sharpe.” Monique beamed.

“I always knew what the right decision was. It just took me a long time to make it. There’s this other trainer, Franklin, that some of the girls use. He’s got a better disposition than Baxter. He’s bigger than Baxter, too,” she added.

“You’re entitled to some kindness, that’s for sure.”

“Baxter was sometimes nice, but it was always just a ploy, to keep me in his power.”

“What did he ever do nice?” Monique demanded.

“When I cut my knuckles in that fight with Mr. Dubonnet,” Denise continued, “Baxter gave me his driving gloves to wear.”

“Driving gloves,” Monique sneered. “Those cost about eighty-nine cents at Pep Boys.”

“If your point is he’s a jerk, you’re right.”

Tubby ate a cracker and gazed off the porch at the seagulls resting on a row of old pilings left over from a collapsed dock, broken black spears in the flashing blue water.

“How did he take it?” Monique asked.

“Oh, he was real cracked up.” Denise laughed ruefully. “Now he’s gone to work on Carmella, my old sparring partner. They’ve already been out to Amberjacks, one of Baxter’s favorite sports bars.”

“Poor girl,” Monique said.

“Do you still have the gloves?” Tubby asked suddenly.

“Right here,” Denise said, fishing them out of her purse.

“Could I borrow them?” Tubby asked.

“What for?” Denise was surprised. Monique looked at him curiously.

“‘Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept / Her faith, and trusted that her way, / So dark, would somewhere meet the day.’ Whittier,” Tubby said.

“One more time?” Monique inquired politely.

“You know I wrecked my car,” Tubby said. “Maybe they’ll improve my driving.”

“Okay,” Denise said. “I don’t really have any use for them.”

She handed the gloves to Tubby, who slid them off the table and into his pocket.

“The guy’s a jerk,” Monique repeated.

“Am I arguing with you?” Denise asked.

THE END

My special thanks to Mary Abell, M.D., David Flockhart, M.D., and Laurie A. White, Esq., for their good-natured comments about how greatly incidents in this book differ from the real world of medicine and boxing; to Linda Kravitz, Kristin Lindstrom, and Heather Kennedy for reading early drafts and being generous with their criticism, and to Carrie Lee Pierson for translating this from a long-lost computer language into a modern dialect.

We’ll give you your money back if you find as many as five errors in this book. (That’s five
verified
errors—punctuation or spelling that leaves no room for judgment calls or alternatives.)

If you find more than five, we’ll give you a dollar for every one you catch up to twenty.

More than that and we reproof and remake the book. Email
[email protected]
and it shall be done!

The first two Tubby Dubonnet mysteries, CROOKED MAN and CITY OF BEADS, are also available as ebooks. Find out more at
www.booksbnimble.com
 and
www.tonydunbar.com

Tubby Dubonnet Mysteries

Crooked Man, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1994)

City of Beads, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1995)

Trick Question, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1996)

Shelter From the Storm, G.P. Putnam’s Sons (New York, 1997)

The Crime Czar, Dell Publishing (New York, 1998)

Lucky Man, Dell Publishing (New York, 1999)

Tubby Meets Katrina, NewSouth Books (Montgomery, 2006)

Our Land Too, Pantheon Books (New York, 1971); Vintage Books (New York, 1972)

Hard Traveling: Migrant Farm Workers in America, Ballinger (Cambridge, 1976; Co-authored with Linda Kravitz)

Against the Grain, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, 1981)

Delta Time, A Journey through Mississippi, Pantheon Books (New York 1990)

Where We Stand, Voices of Southern Dissent (Editor), New South Books (Montgomery 2004), Foreword by President Jimmy Carter

American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril (Editor), NewSouth Books (Montgomery 2008), Foreword by Ray Marshall

And don’t miss ENVISION THIS, a new Tubby Dubonnet short story!

www.booksbnimble.com

TONY DUNBAR is a lawyer and the author of the Tubby Dubonnet mystery series set in New Orleans. The seventh episode,
Tubby Meets Katrina
, was the first novel set in the city to be published after the storm. He is the winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, and his mysteries have been nominated for the Anthony and the Edgar Allen Poe “Edgar” Awards. He has also written non-fiction books about the South and civil rights and has lived for more than thirty years in this beautiful and complicated city.