Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 03 - Trick Question (3 page)

“I’ll just talk to him tomorrow and figure something out. We’ll get the trial postponed.”

“What do you think of that story about his rich Aunt Anne?” Raisin asked.

“It’s gonna snow Big Shot soda on St. Charles Avenue in August,” Tubby replied.

“How was your weekend?” the lawyer behind Tubby in the elevator asked the person next to him.

“Nice,” a woman replied. “We spent Saturday in Pass Christian. But the traffic. It’s all the casinos. Lord, what a mess.”

“It’s really too bad,” the man agreed. “Gambling has just about destroyed the Gulf Coast.”

What is he talking about? Tubby wondered. The world’s funkiest, most hurricane-blasted, totally man-made beach could not be much damaged by the bright lights of dockside gambling. His recent experiences representing a mob-infested and now defunct New Orleans casino might have soured him on the industry, but jeez, gimme a break. Ruin the Mississippi Gulf Coast?

The elevator door opened and he stood aside to let the couple pass. Both of them were well scrubbed and attractive, both carrying bulky briefcases, full of weighty legal matters.

The doors slid shut, and Tubby ascended to the forty-third floor. Out the doors, two right turns, and he reached the offices of Dubonnet & Associates, designated in large gold letters on a pair of solid maple doors.

Inside, Cherrylynn looked up from her desk.

“Morning, boss,” she called cheerfully. “Good to see you.”

Was she being sarcastic? She made a little fun of the hours he’d been keeping lately, and he was getting sensitive. It seemed to have placed some kind of a strain on his secretary that he was not working overtime every day.

“Lots of messages for you. I put them on your desk. How’s the bar business?”

Now he knew she was being sarcastic.

“Just fine,” Tubby said stiffly, and went into his office. Cherrylynn was a mite wild herself, at age twenty-six, but over the past three years working for Tubby she had decided that one of her functions was assuring that he stayed on a straight and narrow course. She could be a pain, but he realized that he probably needed a pain like her around sometimes.

He liked his office. Its best features were the simple wooden desk and the window through which he could see most of the universe he cared about – the cracked tile roofs of the historic buildings in the French Quarter, the steady bustle of Canal Street, ships navigating the hairpin bend of the Mississippi River, and a thousand blocks of old neighborhoods stretching away to the seawall around Lake Pontchartrain. He could make out the sails of a few pleasure boats and started imagining what a day of fishing for his supper would feel like. Right now a morning rainstorm was breaking up over the Industrial Canal, dark clouds thinning out to blue, while downtown the sun shone on office workers shuffling miserably along the sidewalks.

“Knock, knock,” Cherrylynn said from the doorway. Tubby reluctantly stepped back from the window.

“Can I ask you a question, boss?”

“Sure,” he said, taking off his coat and dropping it on one of the two armchairs facing his desk. “You want to sit down?”

She lowered herself gently onto the other chair, smoothing out her dress underneath.

“This feels like I’m a client,” she giggled. She had freckles, and they blended together when she did that. Tubby had described his secretary as “pert,” a quality she had brought with her from Puget Sound. She had a well-scrubbed northwoods glow that set her apart from many a well-powdered New Orleans lady, but she liked to smile, which looked right at home in the city that care forgot. She complained that she had a drawerful of sweaters and nowhere to wear them. There had once been an oilfield roustabout in her life, a boyfriend or maybe even a boy-husband. Cherrylynn didn’t talk about him, but she maintained an unlisted phone number.

Tubby took his familiar place behind the desk and folded his hands on its well-worn top of ruddy cypress. He looked at her benignly.

“What’s up?”

“Okay,” she began seriously. “I didn’t say anything when you bought the bar.” That wasn’t true. “But now you’ve had it a couple of months, and it seems to me you’re spending more and more time over there, like every afternoon.”

“Are you worrying about me drinking too much?”

“I always worry about that, but that’s really your business, boss. I just want to know how I fit in and what the future holds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, are you thinking about closing down your law practice, or anything like that? Should I be looking around for a new job?”

Tubby thought a moment before he answered. Had things really gotten so bad?

“No,” he said finally. “I think I’m stuck with being a lawyer. I’ll be honest with you. I get tired of all the conflict sometimes and like to dream about just lying out on a beach chair, sipping exotic fluids and watching the waves roll in. But I think I’m not ready to retire yet. I like being involved in people’s lives too much.”

“Yeah, I know you’re that way,” Cherrylynn agreed. “You’re good at talking to people. I just wondered if maybe you weren’t getting all the conversation you needed at Mike’s Bar.”

Tubby smiled. “I get plenty there, all right. But the relationship I have with people as a lawyer is a lot different than a bartender has. Being a lawyer is like a holy trust, Cherrylynn. That sounds like bull, I know, but when a client tells me something it’s private, and no judge can make me divulge my clients’ secrets. Let’s just say I don’t always like what I do, but I still love the profession. I’m not about to close up shop as long as I can pay the rent.”

“Okay,” Cherrylynn said.

“And one reason I can leave early in the afternoon is because I have you to rely on, so I hope you stick around.”

“I don’t have any plans to leave, Mr. D.” Cherrylynn was glowing. She popped up. “That’s all I wanted to know,” she said, dancing out.

Tubby waved goodbye to her. How much of that was true? he asked himself. Did he really think it was a holy trust? He had forgotten most of the zillion ethical rules he had once sworn to uphold, but he did believe you should never screw a client. And never lie to the judge. And always try to get paid. That was holy enough for him.

Tubby forced himself to look at the pile of mail Cherrylynn had stacked neatly by the telephone.

He found a couple of bills, which he glared at and tossed back into her box to take care of later. And an interesting square pink envelope with his address neatly written in a childlike hand.

He tore it open and found:

Sunday

Dear Mr. Dubonnet,

How are you? I am writing because a friend of mine has a problem. Her name is Denise DiMaggio. And it involves her father’s business. She will tell you about it. She has lots of problems.

I told her she could call you. I hope you don’t mind. She doesn’t have a lot of money, but I might be able to help pay your fee.

Everything is going fine with me. Lisa is in school in Lakecrest Elementary and likes New Orleans. She is making friends and is happy to be with me. I will always be grateful to you for getting her back for me. If I ever have another child, I will name him Tubby if it is a boy. I don’t know what if it’s a girl.

I would like for you to come out and see us sometimes.

Love Always,

Monique Alvarez

Tubby read the letter again and got a bit misty-eyed. Such a nice girl, Monique. A sweetheart. She ran a bar called Champs. Her boyfriend, Darryl Alvarez, had been shot to death right by the cash register. Monique had seen the whole thing. Then she took over the bar, and apparently Darryl’s last name as well, which was news to Tubby. He kept meaning to drop in and see how she was doing. He liked Monique because she had grit.

He buckled down to work, running through his mail, marking his upcoming court appearances on his calendar, and reading with mounting irritation a bogus set of eight exceptions an opposing counsel had filed to delay and obstruct a perfectly legitimate lawsuit Tubby had filed to assert his client’s right to a family fortune.

“I’m having lunch today with Mickey O’Rourke,” Tubby told Cherrylynn on the way out the door. “Can I bring you anything from Ditcharo’s?”

“Nope, I brought my nuke food,” Cherrylynn called, referring to her Weight Watchers microwave casserole of low-cal glop.

“Ugh,” he muttered, and walked to the elevator thinking about fried oysters. The Ricca family did a great job with any kind of seafood, stewed chicken, stuffed peppers, any kind of regular food you could name. Just what Mickey needed to soak up all that booze. They kept the place simple. No fancy art on the walls; just a few letters from the fans. The menu hanging over the counter hardly ever changed, and instead of decor, the restaurant offered the kind of aroma that made you want to push the guy ahead of you out of line.

But Mickey was late. Tubby was starting on the second half of his muffaletta, immensely enjoying the spicy olive salad, ham, and salami in the crusty Italian roll, and reading about Tulane basketball in the Times-Picayune sports section, when O’Rourke, looking winded, finally made an appearance.

“Sorry to be late,” he said. “My car battery died,”

“No problem, Mickey. Go get some lunch. I’ll wait.”

“Maybe a little something. My stomach has been acting up.” He went to the counter and came back with a mug of coffee.

“You should eat,” Tubby said, concerned.

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t have much of an appetite. I think it’s all the pressure I’ve been under. I can’t remember it ever being like this before.”

“You probably never hit the bottle so hard before.”

“There’s been a few other times…” Mickey’s voice trailed off.

A guy with a tray full of sandwiches and gumbo backed into their table and apologized for spilling O’Rourke’s coffee, but Mickey didn’t seem to notice.

“About your murder trial, Mickey. You told judge Stifflemire your problem, and he still wouldn’t let you withdraw from the case?”

“He wasn’t nasty about it.” Mickey found a cigarette in his pocket and began tapping it on the table. “They let you smoke in here?” Tubby shrugged. Mickey lit up. “He gave me several reasons. He said whenever he appoints someone in a criminal case, they always try to get out of it, and his policy is to just refuse them all. Then he tells me about the Speedy Trial Act, and how the DA has to get this guy to trial soon or let him go. Then he says to me that as long as a lawyer can breathe and stay awake at least half the time, he thinks the law and the jurisprudence hold him competent to appear in court.”

“I think he’s right about that.” Tubby scooped up a little olive salad that was trying to get away.

“Yeah? Well, then he says, ‘Good luck, Mr. O’Rourke. I’m counting on you.’”

“Geez, was he just being an asshole? He didn’t give you much relief, did he? When was this?”

“Just last week. And since then it’s like I can’t concentrate. I know I got a real problem. I’m drinking all the time. Coming here to meet you is like being on a vacation, but I’m going to start drinking as soon as I leave here. I need to be in a hospital somewhere.”

“Maybe that’s your solution. I don’t think you can expect another lawyer to step in this late in the game.”

“I know it would be hard. But it’s such a weird case.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get this. The deceased is frozen – I mean solid – in a damn specimen case at the university hospital. My man opens the door. The corpse comes out, like ‘Timber,’ and his damn head snaps off and goes rolling around the room like a bowling ball.”

“You’re kidding me! The head comes off?” There could be some publicity value in this case.

“Is this wild? This is one guy they aren’t going to thaw out in a hundred years and bring back to life. He was a rising-star doctor, too. An Irish guy,” Mickey added.

“The, uh, stiff?”

“Yeah. Good joke, huh?”

Tubby was thinking that the news media, properly primed, would likely follow this trial very closely.

“Tell me,” he asked, “was there anything to your story about inheriting lots of money?”

“Yes and no,” Mickey admitted. “Aunt Anne’s rich as God, but she ain’t sick. She’s gonna outlive us both.”

Tubby considered that. Of course, showbiz law had its own rewards.

“What did your man do when the head popped off?” he asked.

“He tells me he tried to put the damn thing back on. Picture that. Pick up a frozen head and try to put Humpty Dumpty together again. I think he ought to get some kind of reward for his heroism.” Mickey coughed from his cigarette. His face was white with lots of red spots. “Instead they charge him with murder.”

“Because of… why?”

“They say he was pilfering drugs from the hospital. They found some in his house.”

“But why did he kill the doctor?”

“That’s where it breaks down into pure speculation. The DA’s theory is, the doctor caught him stealing dope and therefore my guy killed him.”

“Then why does he go back later and open the door?”

“Really! There are some holes in their scenario.”

“I can’t understand why I never read about this case.”

“It was in the papers and on the news, Tubby. Have you been out of the country?”

“This was in September? It must have been when me and Raisin drove over to Florida. We were gone about a month.”

“That’s what I need. A long vacation.”

“It helps. Have you done any discovery – looked at the district attorney’s evidence and all that?”

Mickey was shaking visibly now. First his shoulders, then his face.

“I haven’t done shit. I can’t handle this right now. That’s why I’m asking you for help.”

Tubby watched the ladies behind the counter dishing out platters of trout and shrimp. He rubbed his chin.

“How far did the head actually roll?” he asked.

“About eight feet.” O’Rourke lit up another smoke and squinted at the match.

“Wow!” Tubby said to no one in particular. This could be a headliner. “Okay. Get me the file.”

Tubby got to Compagno’s, New Orleans’s smallest Italian restaurant, a little later than he had promised. His eldest, Debbie, was already seated at a table in the back, underneath the Loyola and LSU pennants, the oil painting of Al Hirt at the old Sugar Bowl, and the faded black-and-white photographs of Boy Scouts of generations past. Tubby waved at Sal, the owner, who also tended bar, and spread his hands in apology to his daughter.