Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8) (18 page)

“Glad to see you,” his former lawyer mumbled.

“I just couldn’t let this happen,” Jason told him. “Can you walk?”

“Babe, I can run,” Tubby said. “Let’s get out of here.”

With a little help, the lawyer made it out the door and into the parking lot to see Flowers holding the cop and the fat man in front of the cruiser. “Get in my car, Tubby,” Flowers instructed, and then addressed Sandoval. “I’ve got pictures. They’re on the Cloud now. Whether they stay there all nice and quiet depends on you. I know you have a gun in your car. Or several. But what’s done is done. Just drive away. Right?”

Sandoval sneered while the fat man got into the passenger seat. “I’ll get back to you another day,” he whispered to Flowers.

“
Tu mama es una piruja
,” Flowers whispered back.

Red-faced, the policeman got behind the wheel and Flowers quickly stepped behind his own car to protect himself. He braced his elbows on the hood and leveled his pistol at the cop’s shady face behind the windshield.

But there was no gunfire. The cop and the fat man peeled off onto River Road. Flowers, with Jason Boaz looking over his shoulder, watched the tail lights recede. But just a couple of blocks away, the car slowed and cut left across a curb. It stopped in the gravel beside the Public Belt Railroad tracks. He couldn’t tell if anyone got in or out.

“That doesn’t look good,” Flowers said.

“Wait,” Boaz said.

A flash of light enveloped the police car. A split second later a wave of hot air and the crash of the explosion hit them. Both men fell to the ground instinctively.

“What was that?” Flowers shouted, almost unable to hear himself.

“We should get out of here,” Jason said.

The police car was a flaming wreck.

“Copy that!” Flowers yelled, lunging behind the wheel of his SUV, where Tubby was huddled in the passenger seat, bleary with one eye shut.

“Did you do that?” the detective cried out the window to Boaz.

“Yes, I did,” Jason said. “I’ve learned how to control the device better now.”

He waved goodbye to Flowers, or maybe to the youth movement he had been a part of so many years ago, and faded back into the darkness.

Flowers wasted no time aiming his vehicle back toward Audubon Park. Behind him he could see people running toward the burning car. Sirens were coming from everywhere.

“Jesus,” Flowers said to Tubby. “Your friends.”

“Strange bunch, aren’t they?” Tubby gave a small laugh, which ended in a cough.

Police cars and an EMT van passed them going in the other direction. Tubby’s own car was still in the bar’s dark parking lot, where he had left it.

“Can you drive?” Flowers asked. “Do you want to go to the hospital or anything?”

“No, I think I can make it.” He had been feeling his jaw, around his eyes and his rib cage. “I don’t think they broke anything. In fact, I feel pretty good.”

“Were others there?” Flowers asked. “I saw a big Mercedes leaving when I drove up.”

“That was Carlos Pancera and some very bad priest,” Tubby told him. “Call Jason tomorrow and make him give you the man’s name. They didn’t hang around for the dirty work.”

“Who was that guy with Sandoval, the one who got blown up?”

“We were never introduced, but I heard him called ‘Jefé’. I think he was the ‘Leader.’ ”

“And Pancera?”

“I’m told he was the ‘Recorder.’ ”

“And Sandoval?”

“Security.”

“Who was the Night Watchman?”

“I’m not sure, but maybe the one who killed Babineaux, blew up Cherrylynn’s car, and tried to get me. That vicious priest is a likely candidate.”

“Okay, that’s clear as mud. I’ll follow you home.”

“No need for that.”

“I’ll follow you, anyway.”

“How did you find me?” Tubby asked.

“After I unlocked the cuffs, which I must say is a pretty extraordinary feat, I tracked his police car on my GPS. He’s got a built-in buzzer, like all the cops, and I have the code. I could know where every police car in the city is, if I wanted to.”

“Really? Well, good night.”

With Flowers trailing behind, the lawyer drove home for some liquid painkiller.

The next morning Tubby arrived at his office late with a black eye. Cherrylynn made over him like an Ursulines nun until he demanded that she get back to her desk and find some work to do.

The news on the radio, web, and TV had a lot of misinformation about the explosion that had killed a police officer. Only one victim was mentioned. The head of the police union was demanding that locals be permitted to conduct the investigation without involving any federal “gestapo” from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Flowers called to say that Boaz would not answer the phone, but he had another idea.

“I sent you an email,” the detective said. “It’s a copy of a page from the St. Agapius Church website with a picture of the last priest, who retired. His name is Escobar. If you can open it up, it might be your man.”

Tubby powered up his laptop and took a look. A slightly younger and more trustworthy-looking image of his interrogator appeared. “That’s him,” he said. “Can you find out where he lives?”

“I already know that. It’s on Belfast Street, up by St. Rita’s.”

“I’d like to get inside his house when he’s not there.”

“Easy enough. For what?”

“Old records. They said they had records going back decades. Ireanous Babineaux had them, and he got killed for them. What better place to keep them now than with the Night Watchman?”

“You think he’s the one? I’ll see if I can get inside today.”

“I’m going with you.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I get paid for taking risks like that.”

“It was me who got my head pounded. You keep watch on the house. Tell me when it’s clear. I’ll be close, and my phone is in my pocket.”

* * *

Father Escobar had a friend, a church sexton named Marcos, who picked the priest up most afternoons to go shopping and visit sick people. Flowers deduced that within six hours. On the following day he had Tubby meet him on Belfast at 1:30. Sure enough, the sexton appeared on schedule and parked his white Saturn in front of Father Escobar’s house. Marcos got out, a tired-looking man in a rumpled brown suit, and approached the front door. He was admitted and a few minutes later reemerged with the priest behind him. They got into the Saturn and drove away toward Fontainebleau.

Observing this from a block away, Tubby and his sleuth exited the detective’s Jimmy SUV and casually strolled along the sidewalk. They were surprised by a young jogger in sweats who passed them pushing her red baby stroller. She barely seemed to notice them. She had a phone to her ear.

Flowers turned into the priest’s driveway, which served as the divider between their target and the neighbor’s house. Tubby fell in step. At the rear of the house narrow concrete steps led up to a back entrance sheltered under a dirty aluminum awning. Flowers ascended in one long stride and, so swiftly that Tubby didn’t even see it, he torqued open the back door and slipped inside. The lawyer hurried in after him.

They were in a small laundry room adjoining an old-fashioned kitchen, the kind common in New Orleans houses that haven’t been renovated since the fifties. It had wooden kitchen cabinets painted in lime sherbet, a black and white tiled linoleum floor, a small rickety yellow table with the morning breakfast dishes still on it, and a white enameled sink, its discolored chrome fixtures dotted with corrosion. The room was lit by a pair of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling that buzzed and blinked faintly when Flowers clicked on the switch.

“Not a rich man,” the detective whispered. He seemed relieved. If one dug deeply, which Tubby had, one would find that Flowers came from a culture that didn’t believe that priests, even the bad ones, should ever be rich.

The next dim room was being used as an office. Past it, through tall French doors, was the parlor and beyond that the front door to the street. The office had intriguing filing cabinets, a desk and a large bookcase stuffed with magazines, and a stairway, marked by carved newel posts, led upwards.

Flowers ascended it. Tubby paused to size up the office and think about the man who worked here. There were a number of Bibles. The blinds were pulled down to shut out the sun. A ceiling fixture of slender plastic wands tipped with yellow candle-flame-shaped bulbs provided less light than what little sneaked around the curtains. The man who worked here had no great interest in the world outside. Was he inflicting punishment on himself?

Tubby went looking for Flowers.

There was a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Its door hung open, revealing walls tiled in pink. A stained white curtain covered a little window. Tubby moved past that private spot and found Flowers poking around in the priest’s bedroom.

It, too, was simple enough. A single bed, properly made up, a tidy bedside table with a goose neck lamp, a towering dark mahogany dresser, and prints on the wall of religious figures, all men, some with halos. All were totally unknown to Tubby who, unlike Flowers, was a Protestant.

Even though the old fanatic had abandoned Tubby to be eliminated, the lawyer had the sense that there was something sacrilegious about invading the priest’s private space.

“Let’s get out of here, man,” he whispered to the detective, who was on his knees looking under the bed. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“Wait just a second,” Flowers said, his voice muffled under the mattress. “What have we here?”

He backed out, dragging with him a long plastic bin, the kind that might store extra blankets or winter sweaters. It rolled on little wheels.

“Looks like papers of some kind.” He pushed it in Tubby’s direction. “There’s another one under here.” The top half of the detective disappeared again.

Plastic clamps fastened each end of the bin, and Tubby wasted no time popping them open. Inside were dozens of neatly stacked file folders and ledger books, packed tightly next to each other. Tubby extracted the first one on top.

The folder was labeled, “March 1961.” Inside were carbon copies of “Minutes,” and on the first sheet he saw, after the date and a list of names who were “In Attendance,” a “Discussion of Castro Nationalizing Church Property.” He gave it a quick read, which revealed that the discussion detailed efforts to lobby Florida Senator Smathers and Louisiana Senator Long for military intervention in Cuba.

Flowers dragged out the other box. Tubby grabbed it and looked inside. On top was a folder labeled “March 25, 1963.” And the first item, also called “Minutes,” stated that, “The application of Lee H. Oswald is tabled. Donation of $200 from Judge Perez accepted. Bookkeeper will acknowledge.” Tubby replaced the cover on the bin.

“This could be very heavy stuff,” he said hoarsely.

“We can carry them.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tubby said.

“Want to take them?” Flowers asked.

The lawyer pondered. The material wasn’t theirs, of course, but it had unmistakable historical significance. This priest and his friends had possibly killed a police officer to keep it hidden. And it was stuff that Tubby would really like to read.

He nodded, and the two men, each carrying one of the long bins, shuffled down the steps.

Flowers clicked off the lights as they went, and they exited from the back. Catching his breath, Tubby waited with the boxes in the driveway, looking as inconspicuous as a stranger can look standing beside a priest’s house in a residential neighborhood at two in the afternoon, while Flowers brought the Yukon around. They made quick work of storing the boxes in the back, and both men jumped inside. Flowers circled the block so that Tubby could hop into his own car, and they were out of there.

* * *

The two bins ended up at Tubby’s home, which the lawyer deemed the most secure location immediately available.

He searched in his mind for the name of any history scholar he might know, and came up empty. So he called the Dean of the Tulane Law School and asked him to whom he ought to speak about an important collection of Louisiana documents urgently needing preservation.

He got the name of a Dr. Sternwick, who was in charge of one of the university Library departments, and he called the man right away. Getting a voicemail, Tubby left his name and number, dropping the Dean’s name liberally.

Then he took a quick shower.

Peggy O’Flarity had said she might stop in for a glass of wine before driving back to the Northshore, and he had a lot to tell her.

* * *

The morning paper brought the news that Carlos Pancera had died from what appeared to be a self–inflicted gunshot. He was described as “a prominent Latin American civic leader.”

Had the disappearance of his files pushed Pancera over the edge? Tubby wondered about that, and also whether someone might have found it expedient to eliminate him. Pancera was survived by a big family.

During the day, Tubby had been leafing through the bins, and Peggy, who had changed her plans and stayed with him, brought coffee. She entertained herself tending to Tubby’s bruises, answering emails, and reading the news on her laptop.

“Look at this,” she interrupted early in the afternoon, plunking her screen in front of Tubby.

An obituary was posted in the online version of the paper. The reference to “self-inflicted wound” had been deleted entirely. The service was going to be held next Sunday at the St. Agapius Church. It would be performed by ‘Father Escobar (ret)’.

“This priest,” Tubby said. “I see him talked about in the minutes. Let me read you something.” He located one folder from the pile. “October 15, 1963,” he read. “It says: ‘The Special Mission to Texas is underway.’ Could they be talking about killing the President? And at the end it says: ‘Our work was blessed by the Night Watchman.’ ”

“And you think… what?” she asked.

“It’s plain,” Tubby said. “Who else would give the benediction but a priest? I think I’ve found the ‘Night Watchman!’ ”

Peggy left later that afternoon. She had children coming in the morning to ride the horses and she had to get ready for them. Tubby regretted her departure. He had enjoyed their unexpected night together, in his house, and appreciated her concern for his injuries. Now the place felt empty. He looked around the kitchen and found that the refrigerator was also empty. Making a quick mental list of things he needed to pick at Langensteins, he grabbed his keys.