Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) (7 page)

Peggy did as she was told, and the soap continued its journey through the swollen folds and crevices of her body. When completed, Tubby took her shoulders and firmly turned her around. He placed her hands on the wall of the shower and bent her slightly forward. “Just let me finish up,” he said… and he did… giving the back of her body the same solicitous treatment he had given her front.

A certain urgency was developing between them, and Tubby turned off the water and led her out of the shower, grabbing one of his new, plush bath towels and wrapping it around her. Her eyes were closed, and she relaxed back against the vanity while he slowly patted her body dry. He dropped to his knees on the matching bath mat. Peggy shivered and pressed her legs closer together. “Come on, baby, just for a minute… you know what it means to me.” He kissed her belly and Peggy felt her defenses melting. Her legs parted and Tubby explored the same crevices and folds that he had just so thoughtfully washed.

Peggy’s knees weakened and she had to clutch Tubby’s shoulders to keep from sinking to the floor. With shocking speed, her body tensed and she came, pulsating wildly as his hands pulled her hips close to him and his tongue circled her relentlessly.

When her waves of pleasure ebbed, her lover stood up slowly, turned her around, and firmly bent her over the vanity. Her eyes opened briefly and locked with his in the mirror. Neither one of them smiled. She closed her eyes.

When it was over, he gathered her in his arms and carried her to his bed, tucked her under the covers with a promise to return shortly. She awoke an hour later to the smell of steaks sizzling on the grill.

Professor Prima walked across the Loyola campus carrying his thermos of tea and some salad and granola from the Danna Center. He met Cherrylynn under the lions at the entrance to Audubon Park. The pair had begun lunching together occasionally since discovering their mutual interest in the Latin history and politics of New Orleans. Prima was an authority on this subject, having also had access to family members and acquaintances who had emigrated to New Orleans after the Cuban revolution and who had created a cauldron of anti-Castro and anti-Socialist agitation and scheming, some of it very well-funded.

Cherrylynn’s interest was far more recent. It began with her tantalizing glimpses into the records of “
La Asociación para la Infanteria Nacionalista Cubano,
” which some called the Papal Scrolls and which Mr. Dubonnet had found, then quickly lost.

What the papers purported to show was the existence of a cell of ardent plotters whose below-the-radar activities touched upon the Bay of Pigs invasion and even the Kennedy and Oswald assassinations. The era of the sixties and seventies was full of conflict and mystery everywhere in America, and New Orleans was not an exception. For those who had a professional interest in solving historical mysteries, there was nothing better than a local one.

“If the old guys stole their papers back from the library, who would they have used for the job?” Cherrylynn asked. “Where would they have hidden their records once they got them back?” Those were the questions she posed while watching kindergarten children feed Bunny Bread to the white ducks in the lagoon.

“Carlos Pancera was the key, the ‘Recorder’,” Prima said, “but he’s dead.”

“He killed himself, right?” she asked.

“So they say.”

“If he’s the one who ordered the papers stolen before he died, where did they go?”

“To a church somewhere, I’d guess. Pancera was very big in Catholic circles.”

“Or maybe he had them destroyed.”

“They would never do that. They were too proud of their achievements. Their contribution to history.” Prima was sure of that. He remembered how his own father had felt about “The Movement.”

“Or, it could be the…”

“CIA? That’s always a convenient answer,” Professor Prima said. “But from an intellectual perspective it’s far too convenient. What can’t you blame on the CIA? That answer is also unsatisfactory from a researcher’s point of view since, if it’s true, our pursuit of the documents would be entirely unsuccessful and therefore pointless.”

Cherrylynn nodded thoughtfully and munched her celery sticks. “If these guys from your father’s generation were deeply involved in the Bay of Pigs and killing the president wouldn’t you think that they would have needed a lot of money?”

The question triggered a memory of a party given for Prima’s father when he retired from the American Can Company on Orleans Avenue. It had been held in the Primas’ little living room on Toulouse Street. Oliver’s father had enjoyed a few glasses of wine before he pushed his chair back and offered a toast.

“To the heroes of the past,” Oliver’s father had begun unsteadily. “And to those in whom we entrust their memory.” Gaining strength, he nodded to his son. “And may they make good use of the resources we will leave in their care!”

Oliver Prima had occasionally wondered about what his father meant. Unfortunately the beloved patriarch had suffered a heart attack about a week later. After that the family got by on a little Social Security and his mother’s wages selling ladies garments at D.H. Holmes. Oliver had thought that the inherited “resources” his father had spoken of were the honest upbringing his family gave him in the church and his American citizenship. With those things he had been content.

Cherrylynn, however, had asked a good question. Where had all that money for anti-Castro propaganda come from, and where had it gone?

* * *

It was Friday, when all the restaurants served fish, and Tubby made his own lunch plans. He invited Peggy O’Flarity to what he promised would be a fabulous meal at Parasol’s. She had been on some tour of fancy homes in the Garden District, but it was drawing to a close and she agreed to meet him at the restaurant. She had never been there before but thought she could find it with her GPS.

All but one of the half-a-dozen tables in the small Irish Channel po-boy shop were occupied, and they grabbed it. After discussing the menu, Peggy guarded their space while Tubby went to the counter to order. For the table he got the Irish Sundae, which was potato salad topped with bits of roast beef and smothered in gravy and, for himself, a meatball on French bread dressed with extra Marinara and provolone. For her it was the Firecracker Shrimp. From experience he knew that the portions were out of control.

They made small talk while waiting for their food. She revealed some of the intrigue about the politics of which galleries would get featured in Steven Forster’s “Party Central,” and then she said, as if an afterthought, “I thought that was quite beautiful last night.”

“It was indeed.” Tubby smiled.

Peggy blushed and toyed with her napkin.

“Things seem to be moving rather quickly,” she said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“You just want to be careful, right?” Tubby asked.

“That’s me,” she said. Embarrassed now, she looked longingly toward the counter hoping that their sandwiches would appear.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Tubby said.

“I’m right here,” she replied with a smile.

A bell rang and their orders were ready.

Two wonderful po-boys appeared. Peggy seemed to find their abundance as stimulating as he did. They dug in, and while under the spell of their indulgence, they made plans for later that evening. Somehow, Tubby never got around to what he wanted to talk about.

They were oblivious to the man waiting in the take-out line who was watching them intently. He might have liked it if they had looked over and seen him.

* * *

Cisco and a few other dedicated descendants of the original patriots knew the answers to some of the questions Cherrylynn had posed to Professor Prima. They knew that their noble but oft-defeated tradition had begun in the days of the Cuban Revolution with the heroes who splashed ashore at the Bay of Pigs. The patriots would have reclaimed the homeland but for the betrayal of their crusade by John F. Kennedy and the rest of his worthless administration.

With an unspent cache of weapons and money, and propaganda and blood, the older generation had continued the fight against the relentless cancer of creeping worldwide socialism. Their mission had passed to their children. Now it was supposed to be the grandchildren’s turn.

It was a cause you were born into, not one you could join. But it was hard, Cisco knew, to get the boys motivated.

Most of the grandkids, “the guys,” as Cisco, referred to them, had kids of their own. While they all greatly admired their heritage, the fact was that school, dads’ clubs, and sports kept getting in the way of world revolution and so many other things. Generally speaking, their wives got along well, so they all often managed to get together for barbeques, Saints games, and birthday parties. But politics? Not so much.

But if they did want to talk seriously, it was easy enough to meet at their kids’ soccer matches, which seemed to occur two or three times a week and could eat up entire weekends.

This Saturday, by the river in Audubon Park, Cisco’s eight-year-old was playing along with José’s godchild for the St. Germaine Sentinels against the Pius School Princes, on which two of the other guys’ boys were “all stars.” The Princes had just raised the score to 2 to 0, thanks to a spectacular header by José’s little nephew. Cisco rose from his lawn chair to stretch his legs.

“How about some fries?” he asked his wife, who shook her head.

“I’m watching my waist, honey,” she said.

Cisco beckoned to José, and together they walked to the Princes’s cheering section where they collected the other guys.

“Your kid’s a fucking monster,” José commented to Cisco as they drifted out of the lights and away from the field.

When they were assembled, Cisco huddled them up and said he had another message from their priest.

“Father wants us to get serious,” he explained.

José was big as an NFL lineman, ex-Army and divorced. He liked things that went boom and was usually game for just about anything that gave him a rush. “What does our good priest have in mind?” he asked eagerly.

The others listened warily. They all had kids and dull jobs and had to be more cautious in their commitments.

“That’s just the problem,” Cisco said. “Father Escobar wants us to show some initiative. He thinks we need to bring the movement forward, with something relevant to today, you know?”

“What’s he mean by that?” one of the dads asked. “Boosting the Papal Scrolls wasn’t serious? We had to steal a van. We had to turn off the alarms. We had to break into the Tulane University library. What’s not serious?”

“That was such a blast!” José shouted and pumped his fist. They all bumped knuckles in agreement.

“But there are still real threats,” Cisco reminded them, “and a bigger movement to think about. We probably do lack the vision thing. Father wants to know if we’re serious about the overall mission.”

“Does he still want to reclaim Cuba?” one of the group asked. He was anxious to get back to the game. “I think we did our thing recovering those papers. Wouldn’t it make sense to cool it for a while? You know, I got the wife. I got the…”

“Well, yes,” Cisco cut him off. “But we also have our obligations to the cause. For example, Father is seriously pissed off about Oliver Prima for planning to write a book about him and our parents, as if they were some ancient history. Believe me, Prima won’t portray our families as politically correct trailblazers either.”

“We could easily knock off Prima,” José suggested. “I know where he lives.” José favored T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up. He spent a lot of time at the gym working on his biceps. “And you know, we do have a whole lot of guns in the ‘Guard’s Room’. What do you guys want to do with those?”

“We’ll need those when Obama comes for us,” one of them theorized. “Cuba is a lost cause, anyway. I gotta go.” He slipped away to watch the kids play.

“I don’t know about that,” another said, “but I do know business opportunities are opening up down there now.”

Cisco sought to bring the dwindling group together. “I don’t disagree with Father that we should devote some time to defining our vision thing,” he said.

“That’s a good idea, but I’d suggest we secure our perimeter while we think this out,” José suggested.

“Meaning what?” Cisco prodded.

“Shut Prima’s mouth while we give this ‘big picture’ more discussion.”

“That may be the best idea,” Cisco agreed, since this was his viewpoint as well. As functional leader of the group, he was very practical when it came to planning the revolution and even more practical when it came to protecting the money in the Rosary Box.

Another covert action and a commitment to planning for the movement of the future would, he was sure, make Father Escobar happy. It would also buy Cisco some time to straighten out the books and replenish a certain shortfall in the Box. “Okay,” he said. “So here’s the deal.”

* * *

Later, in a dark room across town, the Night Watchman reported to Father Escobar that he planned soon to make his “effective” and long-promised move on the meddlesome lawyer, Tubby Dubonnet.

“You’ll never get any action out of your little boys,” he added.

The daggers in his voice bugged Father Escobar sometimes, though he had played a role in training the hit man. He wondered sometimes what truly motivated his henchman. There had been whispers once that he was a spy for the FBI. The Night Watchman had so brutally assassinated those who dared spread such rumors that the talk simply went away. Escobar was personally grateful that they were on the same side.

It had become ten in the morning on Sunday, and Tubby had a date. She was his middle daughter, who was in graduate school at LSU in Baton Rouge but was back in New Orleans visiting her mother for the weekend. She had surprisingly agreed to have lunch with him, and he told her to pick the place, expecting something vegan featuring a menu dominated by kale. But her diet had changed remarkably.

“Dat Dog?” he exclaimed in surprise. “That definitely works for me. I’ll swing by and pick you up around noon.”