5 Crime Czar (8 page)

“Hello, Sheriff.”

“Counselor, I see you’re in politics now.”

“Just helping out where I can.”

“Good, ’cause Al Hughes is going to need all the help he can get if he wants to be reelected. I’m tilting his way, but I need to know if he’s going to line up behind me. Is he for me or against me?”

“Are you expecting any opposition?” Tubby asked, being cagey.

“No. I just found out that that nutcake Monster Mudbug has qualified, but he’s just a joke. I don’t think anyone else is stupid enough to run against me. But I’m not sitting on my hands. I want one hundred percent support from every elected official in the parish.”

“I’ll sure let the judge know that.”

“I’m calling you because every time I see your name there’s some kind of a fuckup.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Sheriff?”

“You know you’ve been messing with me. You defended that drug pusher Darryl Alvarez. You dropped that habeas corpus on me that time I got some drug-dealing asshole locked up in Mississippi. I keep score. I know you’ve been a pain in my butt. I’m calling you now to be sure everything is lined up. I got nothing against Al Hughes. But if him, or any of his people, are gonna fuck with me, I’m gonna push back hard, no crap.”

“Cool down, Sheriff,” Tubby said. “I don’t have a problem with you. I’ll give the judge your message.”

“You do that,” Sheriff Mulé said and hung up.

He’s a whacko, Tubby said to himself, and he took a deep breath to try to calm down. A scary whacko.

* * *

Daisy didn’t remember the part where they pumped out her stomach. She woke up, drowsy from drugs, in a room without windows, and it took her a couple of days to convince the shrinks and the social worker that she could walk down a public sidewalk without jumping in front of the first truck that passed. The cops were understanding. The same ones who had come to the parking lot when Charlie Autin had been shot came to visit her in the hospital. Both were big guys, and they acted like they felt guilty, maybe, for just letting her go home after they took her statement and she cleaned the blood off her face the night of Charlie’s death. She could have used a social worker then.

Daisy could remember drifting along the streets and crying. If she had encountered somebody selling crack on the corner, she would have copped it in a minute, wiping out a year of getting straight. That’s how sick she felt. But all she found was cheap whiskey.

She had no explanation for how she got way out to the Lake, but she remembered jumping in. The sensation, when the warm water closed over her head, was of ultimate pain relief. They told her that a woman named Monique Alvarez pulled her out. Now that Daisy was starting to get her mind sorted out again, she planned to make her amends.

After a long bus ride from Canal Street, she got off on Robert E. Lee and asked directions to Champs Bar. The air conditioning, when she pushed open the door, felt harsh to her. It was midafternoon, and the place was not crowded. A hippie bartender pointed out a slender brunette sitting at a table in the corner by a window full of sunlight, bending over a notebook.

Daisy walked up and cleared her throat.

Monique started. “Yes?” she inquired.

“Are you the one who pulled me out of the water?”

Monique’s eyes rounded. “I sure am, honey. Won’t you sit down?”

“Okay,” Daisy said, pulling out a chair. “I came by to apologize for causing you so much trouble.”

“Oh, no,” Monique said. She reached out to pat Daisy’s hand, but her visitor jerked it back. “That’s such a strange thing to say. It wasn’t any trouble, really. I’m just glad I was there to see you when you jumped in. You did jump, didn’t you?”

Daisy nodded. “I wasn’t in my right mind exactly. You see, my boyfriend got killed that day.”

“How horrible,” Monique said slowly. “Can you talk about it?”

“I don’t want to burden you with my troubles.”

“Honey, your accent is getting to me. Where are you from?”

“Loxley, Alabama, if that means anything to you.”

“This is totally odd,” Monique said. “I’m from Brewton. Did you go to high school in Epps?”

“Sure.”

“What year did you graduate?”

The two women covered that territory, finally coming up with the name of a guy they both vaguely knew, and Monique got Jimmy to bring them both glasses of Perrier and lemon.

“I was glad to get the hell out of Alabama,” Monique said, playing with the water droplets on the table’s smooth surface.

“With me, it was more of a case of had-to-go,” Daisy said.

“Have you been in New Orleans long?”

“Just a couple of months. I was thinking about moving on when I met Charlie.” She sniffled.

“So what happened?”

“Two men shot him in front of my motel, right in the head. I was sitting right beside him in his truck. He didn’t do nothing. He was just standing up for me.”

Monique started shaking, though so quietly it was hard to notice.

“That’s horrible. I know what you must be feeling.”

“How could you?” Daisy demanded angrily.

“My fiancé was killed right behind you at that bar,” Monique said. “His name was Darryl Alvarez. I was upstairs when it happened.”

“Damn. Did you see who did it?”

“Yes. I think I know who it was. One of them got killed in the French Quarter. The other one is probably still around. It takes a long time to get over it.”

“Have you?”

“I still think about Darryl. I didn’t know him that long, but he was good to me. He left me this bar.”

“I didn’t know Charlie but two weeks.” Daisy began to sob softly. “And he didn’t have nothin’ to leave.”

“There, there.” Monique patted her shoulder.

Later, after they had talked some more, Monique told Daisy that there was a lawyer named Tubby Dubonnet who might help her. He had helped Monique get her affairs straightened out. Perhaps he could kick the police in the butt until they brought Charlie’s killers to justice.

“I ain’t interested in no lawyer,” Daisy said.

“He’s actually more like a friend.”

Daisy shook her head.

“I got my own plans,” she said. “Lying in that hospital bed, I had a chance to think. What I came up with is I’m gonna get the son of a bitch that pulled the trigger myself. That’s what made me get up and get out.”

“Just how are you going to do that?”

“I don’t exactly know yet, but I will.”

Monique told her if she needed any help, just pick up the phone.

“I lost him. That’s all there is to it,” Flowers told Tubby. His face registered his discomfort. “He passed a truck, and for a split second I couldn’t see him. So I passed the truck, and he wasn’t there. Obviously, he turned right when I was out of sight. Juvenile mistake on my part.” Flowers was troubled. “Fucking
diablo
,” he muttered.

“What?” Tubby asked.

Flowers shook his head.

“It could happen to anybody,” the lawyer consoled him.

“I guess,” Flowers replied. “I’ve got my man, Jackson, watching LaRue’s house, which turns out to be his mother’s house. There’s a nurse at the old folks home who promised to beep me if LaRue shows up there again.”

“Just let me know when you find him.”

“What will we be doing then?” Flowers, always curious, inquired.

“I’m going to try to arrange a meeting with him and talk him into leading me to his boss.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.” Tubby leaned back in his leather chair and stared at the painting behind Flowers’s head. “I’ll have to think up something that appeals to his nature.”

“Might be better to break his legs first.”

“That’s a possibility. LaRue trusts me just a little bit though, from the last time we met. When he kidnapped me, I led him to believe I might be somewhat crooked. A lot of the loot from his bank robbery was never recovered. LaRue may think I ended up with it. If I did, he’d be really impressed with me.”

“But you actually didn’t.”

Tubby smiled and shook his head. A lady tourist named Marguerite Patino had managed to get out of town with a sack of Krugerrands, diamonds, and Rolex watches that LaRue and his men had stolen from the safe-deposit vault at First Alluvial Bank. More power to her.

“It’s not my business, Tubby, but why don’t you just turn LaRue over to the police?”

“How am I gonna turn him in? You don’t even know where he is. But even if you did, most of the witnesses against him are dead or way out of state. I’m sure he has a convincing alibi, and the people he works for are powerful enough to manipulate the police and the court system.” Truth was, the police were tired of hearing Tubby’s theories about a crime czar.

“That’s a hypothesis?” Flowers asked.

“That’s my working assumption,” Tubby said firmly. “There’s some sick, dangerous mind, some menacing force, at the core of our city. That’s what I want to root out, Flowers.”

“Whew,” The detective gently lowered his pen. He wasn’t positive, but he thought Tubby was serious. “That’s a very tall order. Usually I just bust people for cheating on their wives.”

Tubby studied Flowers’s face to see if he was being cute, but all he got back was that wide-eyed innocent stare.

“Yeah, well you got to do something with your life,” the lawyer said. “You can’t just steal widows’ pensions and get criminals off all the time.”

“So we’re going to do good?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Tubby tried not to smile. “There may be a way to make some money out of it.”

“You’re the boss. If you want to clean up the city, sounds like kicks to me.”

“The first step is to find LaRue. Again.”

“I’ll find him. He has stung my professional pride.”

“God help him, then.”

Flowers got up, and Tubby followed him out. He had a Judge Hughes campaign meeting to go to— another investment in good government.

He would cash it in one day.

The Al Hughes Campaign was excited to locate its cochairman. A meeting of the entire brain trust was scheduled for that very afternoon in the Fellowship Hall of Reverend Weems’s St. Pious the Third Church. Although frazzled by his emergence from the alcohol-based cocoon in which he had dwelled for the past month, Tubby promised to be there.

The aging brick edifice of the St. Pious the Third Church rose high above the slate roofs of the shotgun houses on Orleans Avenue. Many of the residences needed paint. A stray dog investigated the dented trash cans on the sidewalk. But the church itself glowed with respectable prosperity.

New black asphalt covered the parking lot, the lines freshly painted yellow. The first half-dozen spaces were reserved, according to neatly printed signs stuck in the flowery border, for the pastor, the associate pastor, the music director, the chairman of the deacon board, the church secretary, and the custodian. The lot was half full, and Tubby saw Deon trotting up the concrete steps to a solid metal door, open at the side of the building. He followed and entered the long pea-green hallway festooned with children’s drawings in time to see the campaign manager huddle with Reverend Weems beneath the framed portrait of a brown-skinned Jesus. He could not hear what they were saying, but his “Good morning, gentlemen,” caused the Reverend Weems to jump.

“Mr. Dubonnet, so good to see you, so good to see you,” the reverend said warmly and clasped the lawyer’s hand in both of his own. He pumped heartily. “Go right into our meeting room. Have some coffee, and we’ll be underway shortly.”

Judge Hughes, three men whom Tubby did not know, and Kathy Jeansonne, a newspaper reporter, were standing around a silver urn swapping jokes and grinning like crocodiles. He went to join them.

There were hellos and introductions all around, and Tubby shook hands with Lewis Pardee of the political action group COMP, Amadee Nesterverne from DINERO, and Johnny Papaya “from the mayor’s office.”

“And I know this lady. How are you, Kathy?”

“Fine, Tubby.” The tall redhead eyed him suspiciously. Tubby did not usually call her a lady. “I look forward to working with you,” she managed.

“What?” he asked in surprise. “Aren’t you still with the
Times-Picayune
?” Jeansonne had on occasion reported unfavorably on Tubby’s clients, and he had, in the spirit of revenge, fed her irresistible tidbits of misinformation.

“I took a leave of absence to work as press liaison on the campaign,” she explained.

“Reporters can do that?” he asked, but her answer was cut off when Reverend Weems and the campaign manager joined the party. Judge Hughes suggested that everyone find a chair and get down to business.

“Ahem,” the Judge began from his place at the head of the table. “Deon, why don’t you take us away.”

“Greetings everybody,” Deon told the room, his eyes fixed on a pile of notes. “Since our last meeting, which most of you were able to attend”— he shot a significant glance at Tubby— “we have made steady progress. We have identified those sectors of the community where we must target our greatest efforts, and we have begun to build our war chest. Brother Pardee, maybe you and Brother Nesterverne can report on the efforts to secure the endorsements of your respective political organizations.”

Brother Pardee, a gentleman in his thirties with a well cut, three-piece black needle-striped suit of admirable fabric, gold rings, and wristwatch, and a face as smooth and brown as a chestnut, looked troubled when he said that no firm decision had yet been made by COMP (Communities Organized for Maximum Progress). In fact, he expected a tough fight from certain forces within the organization who supported the judge’s opponent, Benny Bloom.

“What’s it going to take for the COMP endorsement?” Deon wanted to know.

“I’d say about six thousand dollars.”

Tubby woke up.

“The regular contribution is five thousand dollars for city races,” Pardee continued, “but where there’s some opposition within the organization I estimate that an extra thousand dollars will be needed to smooth the wrinkles away.”

“I guess we all knew this race wouldn’t be cheap,” Deon said. “Okay, Brother Nesterverne, how are your people looking?”

“Our executive board met last night,” said the slight gray man with a wispy goatee, whose hands waved constantly in the air while he spoke, smoothing ruffled feathers. “I was able to bring the vote around to Judge Hughes— unanimously, I might add.”