Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 02 - City of Beads (13 page)

A wind picked up while their battle with the stingray was raging, and the boat began to bounce around in an unhealthy way. Little whitecaps came rolling across the lake.

“Maybe we better go back in,” Tubby said. Nicole was hanging on with both hands.

The ride back up the bayou was rocky but they enjoyed flying with the wind behind them. Even though the sun stayed bright, they were both cold, shaken up, and wet by the time they made it back to the boat launch.

“Great fun,” Nicole said, as she clambered out of the boat, shivering.

“Yeah, but I kinda wish we’d caught a fish,” Tubby said grumpily.

They stopped off at a restaurant named Ivanho’s on the way back, and had a hearty meal of grilled redfish and pompano from the kitchen. The hush puppies were the fluffiest he had ever had. Tubby told her a little about the Save Our River case. She seemed to be interested in a lot of the same things he was. A couple of beers apiece, and they were both feeling cheerfully tired by the time Tubby navigated back to Royal Street and Nicole’s front door.

“Would you like to come up and see the place?” she asked.

The opportunity of a lifetime, but Tubby’s brain was hopelessly confused. Two superlative women at once was an awful lot to grasp.

Nicole laid her hand on his. “I had a wonderful time. Would you like to come in for a beer?”

“I’ve really got to go,” Tubby said gruffly. “I have to get the boat put away. I had a good time, too. I’ll call you. We’ll do it again.”

“Okay.” She withdrew her hand, collected her purse, and got out of the car.

“Bye,” she said succinctly, and ran up the steps to her building. Tubby watched her unlock the door and disappear inside.

“Bye,” he said.

Tubby got the boat back home and unhitched. He stowed the gear, and then he went to the house.

“Tania,” he called when he opened the door. “It’s Tubby.” No answer.

On the kitchen table there was a note.

Dear Tubby,

Thank you for everything. You were a big help.

Tania

Deflated, Tubby walked distractedly around the downstairs of his home. He sat at the kitchen table and thought. Then he gave it up and phoned Cherrylynn for his messages. She reported that Raisin was on his way in from Mississippi.

Raisin delivered Jerome Rasheed Cook up to the forty-third floor. Cherrylynn announced them, victory making the pitch of her voice rise to a new high, and Raisin rolled Jerome through the door like a new car he’d just won on a quiz show.

Jerome was a short fellow, dressed in oversized blue jeans and a T-shirt, probably the same clothes he’d been arrested in more than six months before. He looked around the room slowly and uncertainly, dazed by the sudden transition into freedom.

Tubby came around the desk to shake his hand. Jerome’s grip was a little weak, but his eyes said he was ready to be happy.

“Sit down, man,” Tubby offered. “Let’s hear your story.”

Cherrylynn brought coffee.

Jerome didn’t mind talking. He had been waiting a long time.

“I sold some stuff,” he said. “It was only the one time. Really. But it was bad, and the people I sold it to turned me in. It wasn’t my fault it was bad. The man I got it from set me up. He’s the one that ought to pay.”

He had told that to a sheriff’s investigator at the Orleans Parish jail. He had named the man he bought drugs from. The investigator suggested maybe they would just let Jerome go, but Jerome said that, when they did, he was going after his supplier. That had been a mistake. Next, he was handcuffed in the backseat of a police car headed out of town. They had been met by a Mississippi sheriff at the Pearl River turnaround, and he was transferred to the sheriff’s car. For the past six months he had been sitting around in the Poplarville jail.

“Who was your supplier?” Tubby asked.

“A guy they called Charlie Van Dyne,” Jerome said, “and he deserves whatever he gets.”

“I never heard of him,” Tubby said.

“I ain’t going to bother about him,” Jerome said. “If he leaves me alone, I’ll leave him alone. How’d you find me?”

Tubby told him about the praline lady’s vigil outside the jail at Tulane and Broad, and Jerome covered his face with his hands and cried like a baby.

“She’s the sweetest lady,” he finally said, “She loved me all my life.”

“Go see her right now and promise her you won’t sell drugs anymore.”

“I sure will,” Jerome said. “I’ll never forget her, or you.”

“After you say your hellos, I want you to come back and see me, Jerome. You’ve got a lawsuit against the sheriff I want to talk to you about.”

“Yes, sir. What do I owe you now?”

“That’s what the lawsuit is for.”

Raisin said he would run Jerome up to Tulane and Broad. “I don’t guess he remembers how to ride the bus,” he said, to explain his kindness.

On a Saturday morning Tubby went shopping in the French Market for a few of the things he liked to buy there: some nice big garlic, loaves of fresh seeded bread, a can of virgin olive oil, and some red peppers from the Progress Grocery. The market smelled like New Orleans should, a mixture concocted of crates of garden produce, coffee brewing, beignets coming out of the cooker, and the river rolling on just a few arpents away.

He felt “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” as his father used to say, and he realized that he had Jerome Rasheed Cook to thank for that. It was just amazing what a win could do. He was interested in being a lawyer again.

The enthusiasm was so strong that Tubby thought he might check in on the mysterious Bijan Botaswati, incorporator of Bayou Disposal and Cargo Planners, as long as he was already in the Quarter and legally parked.

The address on Burgundy was a bar called The Hard Rider. The neighborhood here was mostly residential, a lot of gays, a lot of medical students, a lot of time-shares, and a lot of shuttered courtyards that told you nothing, just as intended. The bar was open, but not hopping. Tubby made out two fellas yinning and yanging at the dark end. There were a couple of Foosball tables in the center and some hanging ferns for decor. It smelled like smoke.

Tubby took one of the tall chairs and ordered a Dixie beer, just to be sociable. The bartender was a small Vietnamese woman wearing black pants with suspenders over a frilly white shirt.

“No Dixie,” she said, mopping up in front of him with a towel.

“Make it a Bud then.” The whole world served your basic Bud.

She brought him a bottle and a glass.

“Two dollars,” she said, and he handed her a five.

When she came back with the change he asked, “Is Mr. Botaswati here?”

“Not here. Three, four, five.” She counted out his change.

“Can you tell me where I might find him?”

“Not here. He’s got many businesses.”

“Do you think he might be in today?”

“Sometime he comes by,” she said with a shrug. “Sometime no.”

“It’s very important that I talk to him. If he is the same Bijan Botaswati I think he is, there are some people in Pakistan who want to do business with him. There could be a lot of money in it. Will you tell him?”

“Yeah, sure. If I see him I tell him.”

“Here’s my card.” Tubby took one from his wallet and wrote on the back, “
Important proposition
.”

“Tell him he must call me soon.”

“Okay,” she said, taking the card and moving away toward her two other customers.

Tubby drank his beer and looked around the place. New Orleans prints on the wall. Wineglasses hanging from the ceiling on a wooden rack. How would this atmosphere work in Mike’s Bar? He flinched. The old-timers would curse and shun him. He left the three dollars on the bar in hopes that she would remember to deliver his card and walked out.

Tubby recalled that he had not had any lunch. A beer in the middle of the day was not routine for him, and it put him in a mind to stroll around the Quarter and forget life’s troubles. Surely there would be no harm in detouring up Bourbon Street to take in the sights.

He walked around the corner on St. Ann, sidestepping a curvaceous woman wearing hot pants who cast him an alluring eye. Was she nothing but misfortune and trouble, or was she a lonesome tourist from Germany, anxious to find Pat O’Brien’s? Always hard to tell.

He passed her by with a polite smile. In the curbside litter he saw the sparkle of a strand of beads. In New Orleans you see beads on the street all the time, and you don’t know until you stop and pick them up whether they’re extremely valuable, like pearls a movie star might have dropped, or funky Mardi Gras beads from Taiwan. Tubby bent over. These were sort of neat, a string of multicolored glass and clay. There was something he liked about them, so he absently slipped them into his pocket and walked on. He was just about to Bourbon Street when he heard a familiar voice calling his name.

Tubby turned around and saw Nicole Normande, wearing a red dress tied at the waist that made his eyes pop out.

“Hello, fishing buddy,” she said. “What brings you out to the French Quarter?” She looked bright and sunny.

“I was just thinking about lunch. And you?”

“Running an errand for Jake. Meeting with a nonprofit group that asked us for a contribution. And thinking about lunch.”

“Well, why don’t you join me?”

“I’d love to.” She smiled.

“How about Mr. B’s?”

“That sounds just perfect.”

“Then here we go.” Tubby offered an arm and she took it firmly. Together they strolled among the frolickers of Bourbon Street, chatting like old chums.

“I’m rarely disappointed here,” Tubby remarked contentedly, watching the waiter place a china plate of shrimp stuffed with crabmeat in front of him and a cool fried-chicken salad in front of Nicole. He spread the last of his baked Brie on a bit of French bread and popped it into his mouth. He motioned for the waiter to take the empty plate away.

“I think it’s so cute the way they make carrots curl up,” she said, pointing with her fork.

He was distracted by the cherry tomato she slid past her perfect lips.

“Do you come here often?”

“As often as I can,” Tubby recovered. “Thank you,” he said to the waiter, who poured the water and sank the slice of lemon in his glass.

“Mine is delicious. Would you like a taste?”

“Sure.”

She filled her fork carefully and then extended her arm quickly across the table and fed him.

It was a most pleasant experience, the personal delivery more than the tasty food.

“Very good,” he sighed.

“Have some more.”

“No.” He couldn’t.

“It’s almost a shame to use up your appetite,” he said. “They serve great desserts.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said.

And she was true to her word. When the tiny remains of his fish had been cleared away, she happily ordered a white chocolate brownie covered with fudge and ice cream, and Tubby, challenged, called for bananas Foster shortcake. She ate hers all up and sat back, coffee cup in hand, looking like she could do it again. Tubby was blissed out on sweetness.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I suppose I should show my face at the casino,” she said. “Would you like to keep me company?”

“I really ought to go home and mow the grass, or something. There are things I need to do.” But he couldn’t actually think of any.

“Oh, come on. Think of it as work if you want to. Legal research. You need to get to know your client better.”

He smiled at her, thinking it over.

“You can even bill your time. This should be a money-making relationship for you.”

That did it. “I’d be delighted.” He beamed.

Tubby paid the check, and they went out the revolving doors onto Royal Street, where patrons of costly antique shops dressed in tweeds with elbow patches mixed with teenagers wearing ripped blue jeans and silver rings in their noses.

It was just a few blocks walk to the casino. There were some fears, before the first one opened, that round-the-clock gambling would absorb all the tourist dollars that were the life’s blood of the Vieux Carré, and still the reviews were mixed. Some of the club owners complained. Others were happy. The French Quarter had survived war, epidemic, and fire. It had hidden queer joints, quadroon balls, and whorehouses aplenty. It ought to be able to handle a few li’l ol’ casinos.

They enjoyed the walk, and Tubby was even telling jokes by the time they entered the lavish halls of Casino Mall Grande. The white-suited attendants, the plainclothesmen, even the waitresses acknowledged Nicole when she came in—the pretty boss in the red dress.

“Where should I begin my research?” he asked.

“I’ll show you,” she said, and led him through a maze of tables to one on a platform where they were playing blackjack. There was an empty seat, in contrast to most of the tables, where people watched and waited for a chance to sit down and wager. “Here’s where you start,” she said.

Tubby sat. He noticed the gold sign by the dealer that said the minimum bet was $100 and the limit was $5,000. This could be why there was an available chair.

“Uh, Nicole,” he began.

“Hush,” she said, rubbing him on the shoulder. She reached over him and placed a stack of black chips by his fingertips.

“Now let’s see what a lucky man you are,” she whispered in his ear.

She stood behind him, occasionally pressed against his back, and even through the fabric of his suit he got a sensation that was extremely exciting.

Tubby blackjacked on his first hand.

“Oh, goody,” he said.

“You’re starting out hot,” Nicole laughed.

He doubled up on the next hand and won again. A waitress placed a cocktail by his elbow and miraculously he discovered that he was thirsty for it.

He doubled up and won. His adrenaline rushed. Nicole was giggling and squeezing his shoulder. The other players were nodding in appreciation and envy.

Time flashed by and his stack grew into a pile. He didn’t win every hand, but he was marvelously lucky. When he passed $30,000 he started betting the limit on each hand and doubling up at every opportunity. Nicole stayed at his back and got him whatever he wanted from the bar. He tipped the waitress with $20 chips and she stayed very close by. He was afraid to pause, or even go to the bathroom, for fear of ending the streak.