Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) (11 page)

“Yet,” Phoung insisted, “he made serious threats against me if I screwed with him.”

“Nothing’s on paper, so he is screwed.”

“He has some men.”

“Let me deal with them.”

“Of course. But I will need protection. I have Charmaine to think about.”

“You should marry that woman. It’s wrong to live in sin even if she is white.” Bin Minny poured himself a cup of tea. He tilted the pot toward his guest, but Phoung politely declined.

“She doesn’t like my mother,” Ron said sadly.

Bin Minny’s eyebrows shot up. “Why? Your mother is a lovely lady.”

“You know how it always is. My mother says Charmaine doesn’t want to take care of the rabbits. Mom is so traditional. We go over for dinner and she wants Charmaine to help her clean fish. I have to take mom aside and explain that Charmaine does not know how to do that.”

“Big deal. The girl can learn.”

“She refuses to, and it’s such a big deal to my mom. She made Charmaine go fishing with her out on the intercoastal. They caught some flounder and mom guts them and puts them on the hood of the truck to bake. Charmaine freaked out on the spot.”

Bin Minny laughed, but Ron Phoung didn’t. This problem bothered him lots more than what the stupid American might do.

* * *

The Frenchy Dufour project was clearly a goner, Nordie thought. His best man, poor Mick Battistella— Nordie would have to call on Mick’s girlfriend to commiserate— had been slaughtered like a sheep, cut down like bamboo, while in Nordie’s employ. Things looked grim.

Nordie already had Gums stashed away in a room on the second floor of an Airline Highway motel. This last surviving member of his gang was getting through his idle time nursing his grief over Mike Battistella’s demise with Percocets and Vicodin. The shades were drawn when Nordie joined him. Dr. Phil was on the television.

Taking stock of the situation, Nordie was about to pop a Percocet himself when the door broke open and a fat man swinging a massive axe crashed in. Gums screamed and raised a hand to protect himself and lost a finger. Nordie was quick-thinking enough to bail through the window and escape in a shower of glass. In the two seconds that Angelo was distracted by that, Gums ran bleating out through the open door, spewing blood from his wound.

Loyola Assistant Professor Oliver Prima had parked his aged Mazda at Dominican Street and Broadway. A paper cup full of take-out CC’s coffee was in his hand, and he was strolling to his office to relax for just a minute before his 8 o’clock lecture on “Comparative Latin American Politics.” A flock of ring-billed gulls passed overhead bound for a fish breakfast in Lake Borgne. He was uplifted by the burst of violet from the Japanese magnolias, the saffron of oak pollen everywhere, and the pink of clover sprouting from the overgrown neutral ground. They meant that the long New Orleans spring had begun, the best time of the year in this city by the muddy Mississippi River.

He only noticed the two men getting out of their car and hurrying across the street because there was no traffic, so he wondered in the back of his mind –why are they hurrying? Totally unexpectedly they emerged from his peripheral vision, surrounded him and started battering him.

Professor Prima went down quickly. His lights clicked off with the first kick to the head. His assailants kept up the pummeling long after the professor had stopped moving.

They did not bother to take his watch or his wallet but trotted back across Broadway to their car and quickly drove away. They had intended to “degrade his capacity” to interfere and believed they had succeeded.

* * *

At Touro Infirmary’s Emergency they wouldn’t let Cherrylynn back to see Professor Prima until she lied and claimed to be his sister.

He was unconscious, covered in bandages, and still under a starched white sheet. Separated from them by a curtain, a woman in the adjoining bed moaned over and over about her pain and someone named Gabriel. While the nurse turned her attention to the woman, Cherrylynn edged closer to Prima. She made sure he was breathing and whispered in his ear, “Hey, Ollie, baby. It’s me. Cherrylynn.”

But he did not respond. There was no chair in the room so she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. She resolutely stayed there all morning until a doctor came and briskly took the patient’s vitals.

“If he wakes up,” she told Cherrylynn, “he will probably recover in time.”

At lunchtime his real sister showed up and broke out immediately into loud crying. Cherrylynn exchanged names with her and quietly slipped away. Prima hadn’t moved the whole time she was there.

* * *

Tubby was back from Peggy O’Flarity’s farm. She had declined to return with him to New Orleans, saying she needed a little time to recuperate in the fresh air from her near-death experience. He told Peggy that he suspected the crash was intentional.

“Do you carry a gun?” she had asked Tubby. “Because I never have.”

“I keep an old .45 in my nightstand, just in case I ever need to protect you. And a twelve-gauge in the closet, in case any deer invade the house, but they’re never with me when I need them.”

“I don’t feel very safe,” she said. “I have a .22 pistol in the attic my father gave me for target practice.”

“Would that have helped you stop that guy who tried to run you off the road?” Tubby immediately regretted asking that.

Finally she said, “No, but what do you think I should do?”

“Let me work on it,” Tubby said. “It’s about me, not you.”

“I want to get back to my life.”

“I know that.” He was tormented, trying to think of the right answer. “Just be as watchful as you can be.”

* * *

“You thought it was over with those Cubans, but it’s not!” Cherrylynn went on. “This is one hundred percent related to those old records.”

Tubby was forced to agree. In fact, instead of being over, it might be just beginning.

“Who are these guys?” he asked out loud. He studied the rain clouds out the window. A deluge was clobbering Algiers Point across the river. “I thought those dudes were all dead.”

Cherrylynn started crying.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be a tough cookie,” he reminded her. But she sobbed louder. He put an arm around her and she got his shoulder wet.

He had never seen her break like this in all their years together. Now, he was getting seriously pissed. His secretary was absolutely indispensable. His girlfriend was becoming that way. He would have to put the pursuit of Angelo and his axe on the back burner and concentrate on these new threats.

He sent Cherrylynn home for the day and immediately called Sanré Fueres, known as “Flowers,” the private detective whom Tubby trusted. But Flowers’ voicemail came on, and the message was not like one the lawyer had ever heard from him before.

“I am out of the country this week,” Flowers’ voice said, “and will have limited phone contact.”

This was totally unprecedented. Flowers was relentless about always staying connected with his work. Tubby started pecking away at an email.

“Flowers! What? Where are you? I need you.”

He was rewarded with, “Buenos Dias. I am in Victoria de Durango, Mexico.”

Tubby knew that Flowers had originally come from somewhere “down there”, but his detective’s actually traveling out of the country was a new thing.

“What’s wrong?” he typed. “Is someone ill?”

“No one sick. I brought a friend to meet my mother. We are eating breakfast.”

A friend? A girl friend? Flowers had not previously mentioned a girlfriend. He had not even mentioned his mother. This was a shock and bad timing. “When are you coming back?” he typed.

“In four or five days, I think.”

The lawyer’s mind was working fast, trying to figure a way out of this. Flowers was one of his major assets.

“Am I missing something important?” appeared on the screen.

Tubby finally typed, “No big deal. What’s for breakfast?”

“Chilaquiles and fried eggs, tortillas and beans,” came back.

“Enjoy,” Tubby wrote, and signed off.

Tubby immediately called Detective Mathewson. “Let’s follow up on your idea to hoist a couple together,” he proposed. Mathewson accepted.

The bar selected was Robert’s on Calhoun Street, a congenial spot anytime it wasn’t overrun by college students. At five in the afternoon it was usually a safe place for two large adults to have a friendly conversation.

Tubby got there first and grabbed a stool by the pool table. Nobody was playing. There was a couple of Entergy lineman at the bar, bathed in sunshine from the front door. In a minute he saw the cop in silhouette come through it— broad shoulders at six-feet with receding curly brown hair above his red face. He lumbered past the bar, getting his bearings.

“Seedy place,” Mathewson commented, looking around before sitting down. “Know it well.”

Somehow that was funny. Tubby chuckled, relieved finally to have something to laugh at.

George Jones was on the jukebox. Two young women in halter tops emerged from the ladies room and racked in their quarters to play pool. The uniformed guys at the bar were deep in a private conversation while the barmaid was busy drying glasses. For the rest of the world, it was a lazy spring day.

“What’s your pleasure?” Tubby asked.

“I wonder if they have Guinness,” Mathewson grunted.

“Probably. I’ll get a round.” Tubby went to the bar and placed the order.

Mathewson checked his phone while the lawyer declined mugs and collected two bottles.

“Mighty nice of you,” the detective acknowledged when Tubby returned with the beer. He courteously pocketed his phone. “Cheers!” he announced and hoisted his brew and then took down about a third of it. “Anyway,” he said, wiping his lips, “what do you do? Criminal law?”

“Not so much of that,” Tubby explained. “But I’m a solo, so I take a look at whatever walks in the door.”

“A solo, huh? That’s me, too.”

“How do you mean?” Tubby asked. He had ordered an Abita Golden, a rare beer which this bar stocked.

“I’ve outlasted everyone on the police force who has any sense.” Mathewson smiled, but it wasn’t a funny smile. “Or, I could say everyone else who had any sense has long since quit or retired— so I guess they must have more brains than me.”

“You must be building a very good pension,” Tubby said positively.

“Hell, no,” Mathewson said, flattening it out. “I do this because it’s all I know how to do. If I was home alone, I’d probably blow my brains out.”

The lawyer’s eyebrows shot up. Mathewson was serious. The cop nodded to show how serious he was and finished another third of his bottle.

The girls were giggling over their pool game, and the Entergy linemen had swiveled around to pay attention.

“Things aren’t going so well for me right now,” Tubby said.

“What’s up?”

“My secretary Cherrylynn is good friends with a professor over at Loyola. He got beat up very badly this morning.”

“Yeah, I know about the case,” Lt. Mathewson said. “It’s mine. Attempted murder. We’re looking into it.”

“Right. That beating may be connected to an old case I was working on.”

“I’d like to hear about it,’ Mathewson said, “but not right now.” There were other things on his mind.

“Okay. And then, night before last…” Tubby was not to be deflected, “…a lady friend of mine was run off the Causeway and nearly killed. I think that it was intentional and that someone is trying to get at me through her.”

“That’s outside of my jurisdiction.”

“Could you look into it?”

“I suppose I might, but you’re asking for a lot of favors here.”

“I guess I am,” Tubby said. “I’m used to having a private detective at my disposal, but my guy has run off with some woman to Mexico.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Mathewson said.

“You don’t have a family?” Tubby asked.

“Naw. Divorced.”

“That makes two of us,” Tubby said.

“Yeah, I figured. That’s why you’re allowed to have a beer after work while the sun still shines.”

They drank to that. Tubby was thinking maybe this guy would be interesting to play poker with. “Do you like being a cop?” he asked.

The detective shrugged. “It’s all right, I guess. Putting bad guys away.”

“Isn’t that gratifying?”

Mathewson just poured the rest of his beer down his throat.

The silence dragged on. “Step right up. Come on in…” George sang from the jukebox.

“I’m in this anger management class,” the policeman said, looking away at the juke box as if help might come from there.

“Yeah? Was that some problem with your ex-wife?”

“Shit, no,” Mathewson said angrily. “I mean, yes. Of course. But no, that’s not why I’m in ‘group’.” He made quotation marks with his fingers and rotated his eyes to show he didn’t think much of the idea.

“So? What was it?”

“I shot a guy in the leg who was running away. It was justified, since he had a big ol’ knife in his hand, which he had just shoplifted.”

“Preventing danger to the public. I can see that,” Tubby said.

“Nope. Truth is I shot the dude just ’cause he made me mad, being so stupid as to steal a knife from a convenience store with me parked right outside.”

Tubby couldn’t think of a reply to that so he just finished his beer.

“But that’s not what really did it,” Mathewson continued. He paused and looked at his empty bottle. “I also got into a broo-ha-ha with this other officer over his smoking cigarettes in the locker room. One thing led to another. He took a swing at me. I pulled my service revolver on him.” He wiped his forehead. “There was this red cloud came over my eyes,” the detective growled like a dog hit by a car. “I’ve tasted my own blood a few times,” he added.

Tubby flashed back to the few times when that red cloud had descended on him. That cloud foreshadowed coming brutality. “Did you shoot the cop?” he asked gruffly.

“No, thank God. But now I get to go to class.” Mathewson was rubbing his knuckles angrily.

“Class might help,” Tubby suggested.

“Could be,” Mathewson said doubtfully. “But you know what the shrink wants me to do?”