Fat Man Blues: A Hard-Boiled and Humorous Mystery (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 9) (15 page)

“Right. And how do you think that happened?”

“Maybe somebody in our group is talking too much,” José suggested.

“You’re saying one of us is a snitch?” another protested in disbelief.

“Nothing is impossible,” José said darkly, “but what I was talking about was one of us blabbing to the wife or something like that.” He looked around the circle meaningfully.

“I don’t have a wife,” one protested.

“I’m just saying…”

Cisco held up his hand. “Guys. Time out. There could be any number of ways this guy Dubonnet got José’s name. And if he got José’s name maybe he’s got the rest of us, too. Or, he could just be shooting in the dark. But he’s not the police. He seems to be snooping around on his own. What do you fellows think he wants?”

“He probably wants those papers back, duh,” was José’s idea.

“Money is more like it,” another said. “He’s a lawyer isn’t he?”

“We haven’t got any money,” José complained. “I don’t know about you guys, but all I got is credit card bills and Obamacare taxes.”

There was actually money, and plenty of it, but only Cisco knew the full story on that. Hopefully the lawyer wasn’t tipped off to the Rosary Box. In any case…

“In any case,” Cisco told the group, “he has to go.”

“How?” José asked, cracking his knuckles.

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Cisco said. He puffed on his cigar and stuck it in the corner of this mouth. The others, all but José, looked uncomfortable. Cisco knew they were soft.

“Let me think about this,” he said. “I’ll talk it over with Father.”

There was only one among them he could count on to get things done, but Father Escobar didn’t need to know that.

“Back to the party?” José suggested.

“Let’s put out the fire,” Cisco said and poured the rest of his drink over the grill.

The coals flared up, sizzled in a mist, and expired.

Cisco didn’t have to get permission from Father. He knew exactly what his group had to do, which was to remove the opposition and keep the money and the guns. The one he trusted the most to do dirty work was José, who had no family of his own and was all the time pumping iron. Or researching ISIS, planting pro-Tenth Amendment posts in unusual places, and trying to find deals on more firearms for his personal arsenal. José was also the one Cisco cared about. The one he had always cared about since they were kids.

Had José’s activities tripped some Homeland Security sensor? The thought had occurred to Cisco, but he had dismissed it— the lawyer wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t Homeland Security. So who was he? Or, who was he before he got unfortunately eliminated?

José’s schedule was flexible. Given the green light by Cisco, he assigned himself the task of figuring out the lawyer’s routine.

But Cisco did promise Father Escobar that his boys would take care of Tubby Dubonnet. The Night Watchman had made the same promise to the priest, who thought it would be interesting to see which one got the job done.

Just to needle him, Father Escobar called the retired cop, Paul Kronke. “My little boys are going to do what you couldn’t,” he crowed.

“They’ll screw it up,” Kronke said with certainty. “They don’t have the ability, the commitment or the balls.”

“Why do you say that? They got back the Papal Scrolls. The took care of Prima didn’t they?”

“Sure, they held up a library and picked up some boxes of records. Then they beat up a little man because you told them to. He wasn’t going to do you any harm.”

“You haven’t any idea about the importance of the war of ideas. You must understand the harm that an intellectual can do to our movement!”

“I guess you’re right. They mugged a harmless professor. Such big men.”

“Well, it was critically important to make him shut up. They did that!” the priest exclaimed.

“No, you’re wrong. He’s still alive and getting well. And the boys were caught on camera.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because old men like me know things.”

“Maybe it’s time for the old men to retire and let the young guys take charge.”

“Not on your life,” Kronke said. “As for those kids killing Dubonnet? It ain’t going to happen.”

Retired Detective Kronke had a Chinese Korean War bayonet that he liked to sharpen and shine. He wasn’t sure who he’d rather use it on— the youngsters who had inherited the movement, the lawyer who was embarrassing him, or the musty Father Escobar who had forgotten that fire, not talk, won wars. He foresaw a role for the good Escobar, however, so it would be better if he lived, for a while.

Tubby and Cherrylynn talked more on Monday morning. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

She assured him that she was. He thought he heard a man’s voice in the background asking about eggs and bacon.

“Is somebody there? Anyway, listen. You stay low. Don’t worry about work. Just look after yourself for a few days. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to prevent this happening again.”

“I’m working the internet, Mr. Dubonnet. I’m not going to let go of these guys until we have them all.”

“That’s fine, Cherrylynn. You do that.”

And she did, calling him at least once an hour with her latest discoveries of tidbits and clues about all manner of underground groups operating below the pretty streetlamps of the Crescent City.

* * *

Tubby called on Detective Mathewson and got lucky. Going up the steps to police headquarters Mathewson almost collided with him coming down.

Tubby laid a hand on the policeman’s shoulder.

“Hey, did you know…” He asked the policeman if he was aware of the attack on Cherrylynn at the bar, and the policeman said no. “I think it’s related to the whole other thing, the beating of the Loyola Professor Prima, my girlfriend, the whole Cuba thing. I’m sure now that it involves that retired cop Kronke.”

“Very interesting,” Mathewson said. He blew past it. “I’m more concerned with axe murderers. Have you had any further contract with Angelo Spooner?”

The lawyer replied truthfully that he had not.

“We’ve linked Spooner to the second killing, the Subright manager. Angelo seems to have a girlfriend, and she works at that same Subright.”

“Worked,” Tubby corrected.

“Huh? What do you know about it?”

“Her name is Aimee Thaw. She came to see me.”

“And why would that be?”

“To retain me.”

“To do what!” Mathewson demanded. “Why didn’t you report this to me?”

“I can tell you this. She did not hire me to defend her in connection with a murder charge. I’m sure she had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Beyond that, what we talked about is not police business.”

“You’re obstructing justice!” Mathewson sputtered. “And after I let you into my police station to see my video.”

“I’m not obstructing anything!” Tubby shouted back. “Has she been charged with anything? Is there a warrant out for her?”

“I’m going to have to start having you watched.”

“I can only tell you as much as my ethics allow.”

“That is such bull!” Mathewson thundered and stomped down the steps.

Tubby did not have a chance to tell Detective Mathewson about his visit to José’s backyard. He did, however, tell Cherrylynn on the phone while walking back to his car.

And her first question was whether he had told the police.

“We don’t have much definitive information yet, do we?”

Tubby sensed her eyebrows arching. “Chin whiskers. A red T-shirt?” she reminded him. “Same nose and profile? And how about Detective Kronke, the whole Night Watchman thing? Did you tell him about that?”

“I did, sort of, but Mathewson has a lot of stuff going on in his brain,” Tubby unlocked his car. “I just don’t know if he really gives a hoot about his cases anymore. I mean, he said he likes me, but is it just hot air? Is he still turned on by the dogged pursuit of justice?”

“The what, sir?” She had rarely, if ever, called him “sir.”

“Never mind. I probably will change my mind and tell him about José Guerrero, depending on how events unfold. But you are a top-notch researcher, Cherrylynn.” He was behind the wheel. “Stick with the internet and see if you can associate this José Guerrero, who I concede looks guilty as hell, with anybody else. Especially with the fellow who drives a Chevrolet Traverse with license tag INCA1961.”

“I’m on it, boss.”

In no time, Cherrylynn came up with several names. She found a cluster of cute little guys who had all been altar boys at St. Agapius Church. There were color pictures of them, but that was just the icing on the cake. What linked those pictures up with today’s young hooligans, all likely candidates for the assault on poor Ollie Prima, was discovering that one of these altar boys, Francisco Bananza, was listed as a coach on the widely published roster of the major interfaith soccer league. So was José Guerrero. Another of the boys, now grown up, had been listed as a financial contributor, along with Cisco, to the “Cuban Youth League.” Francisco Bananza also showed up in the secretary of state records as the organizer and agent for service of process for Legitimacy, LLC, whatever that was. So she now had what she believed to be the names of the whole militia group, but what they were sneaking around and doing, however, was beyond the pale of the public records.

José and Cisco met up at the Lock-It-All Public Warehouse on Tchoupitoulas Street. The guys had a huge climate controlled unit on the second floor, which they paid for by the year, and it was a handy place to store their arsenal, otherwise referred to as the “Guard’s Room.” The members could, of course, acquire whatever personal armaments they wished on their own dime, but as a group they were heir to a substantial cache of weaponry collected by their parents and grandparents with the intention of arming an outright insurrection abroad, though now contemplations included the homeland. The variety of ordnance in the warehouse was a gun collector’s dream, ArmaLite AR-15’s from the 1950s, Vietnam-era M4 rifles, and Cold War M240 machine guns, to name just a few.

There were more than twelve-dozen crates of guns and hundreds of ammunition cases. Most of the guns were “outdated” by current military standards, but every single one of them was a collector’s item. The rarest were stored in rigid plastic cases and kept near the front for ready access. Every so often one of the guys would sneak a few of the coolest items out of the warehouse and take the firearms to a range in Mississippi where they could blast away by the hour. The assumption was that all of their firepower was untraceable since it had originally come, so tradition had it, from Langley, Virginia.

Two items in particular, an Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun and a CheyTac Intervention sniper rifle, were intriguing as the possible agents for dispatching the inquisitive lawyer— one for close range and one for distance— depending on which opportunity presented itself.

José ran a red bandana down the barrel of the Intervention.

“Sweet,” he crooned. “This is to me the essence of reality.”

Cisco gave him a hug. “I want you to be very careful,” he whispered into his ear. “We can’t lose you.”

There was a purple Cadillac parked in front of Tubby’s house when he came down the steps for a late afternoon stroll in the park to work off his lunch.

The passenger window came rolling down and a heavy pink hand stretched out to wave him over.

“You’re my lawyer,” the occupant said.

“Not on your life,” Tubby replied. “Do I know you?”

“I’m Angelo. Angelo Spooner.”

Tubby peered hard through the window. The man behind the wheel was certainly fat and had the plump face that was wrapped around numerous water bottles. There was a look of frantic desperation on that face. The man’s hair was plastered to both sides of his head. There was also a huge double-bladed axe in plain sight on the wide front seat.

“Angelo, my man.” Tubby took a step backwards. “What’s going on?”

“Everything is getting out of hand,” Angelo whimpered.

“That’s definitely true, buddy. I couldn’t agree more. But keep your head on your shoulders.” Whoops! “Don’t you think it’s time to lay down that hatchet there and turn yourself in before anyone else gets hurt?”

“I didn’t do it! Are you on my side?” He appeared to be on the verge of tearing across the seat and launching himself out of the window.

“I’ll sure try to be,” Tubby said. There were clear escape paths down the sidewalk in both directions, assuming he could outrun the fat man. “But it’s a little hard to talk about this while you’ve got that scimitar right beside you.”

Angelo didn’t seem to be aware of his cleaver. Instead he slumped and raised both hands to wipe his eyes.

“I sent my girlfriend, Aimee, to see you,” he said through his fingers.

“Right,” Tubby said. “And I’m going to take her case. We’ll hold somebody responsible for what happened to her. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Have you ever seen my holy well?” Angelo was staring wistfully at something in the far distance, beyond the opulent hood of his Brougham.

“I have, Angelo. It’s a beautiful thing.” Except for the chopped up dead man in the shed. “We need to get you straight with the cops as soon as possible so you can get back to work again.”

Angelo nodded as if in agreement, but then he shook his large head vigorously.

“There’s something I need to attend to first,” he said.

“What’s that?” Tubby was all ears and ready to bolt.

Angelo looked at him directly for the first time.

“There’s a man who says he wants to ‘do for’ me, but all he really wants is to steal my well,” he told Tubby earnestly. “And he’s behind all of this. I would appreciate it very much if you would take care of Aimee. Tell her I wish we could both live together in a different and better world.”

“Okay, I’ll try to remember that, but…” The rest of Tubby’s words were lost. The Cadillac’s vintage automatic window squeaked shut. The car slipped silently from the curb and zoomed down Henry Clay.

Tubby ran back to his house to grab his car keys. He backed out of his drive and set off in pursuit of Angelo. He didn’t notice that he also was being followed.