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

  Praise for TONY DUNBAR and the Tubby Dubonnet series:

  “Hair-Raising… Dunbar revels in the raffish charm and humor of his famously rambunctious city.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “From the Bywater… to Uptown, Tubby eats and drinks his way through interrogations and rendezvous, and it’s all delicious. Packed with contemporary New Orleans culture and plenty of humor from the quirky characters.”

  —New Orleans Advocate

  “…reminiscent of the best of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard.”

  —Booklist

  “An enjoyable romp through a city that makes Los Angeles seem normal.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “The literary equivalent of a film noir— fast, tough, tense, and darkly funny… so deeply satisfying in the settling of the story’s several scores that a reader might well disturb the midnight silence with laughter.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  FAT MAN BLUES

  A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery

  BY

  TONY DUNBAR

  booksBnimble Publishing

  New Orleans, La.

  Fat Man Blues

  Copyright 2016 by Tony Dunbar

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9973630-0-5

  www.booksbnimble.com

  First booksBnimble electronic publication: August 2016

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  cette chanson est dédiée à celui que j’aime

  PROLOGUE

  Did you know that in 1919 New Orleans had an axe murderer? They say it’s true. He was never caught. It’s funny what you pick up when you’re Googling around on your phone and waiting for your trial to start, which was what “Fat Man” Spooner was doing.

  They think the axe man, but it could have been a woman, killed seven or more people— across the river, Uptown, downtown, all around the town. That’s the end of the story because they never caught the killer. Some say he only murdered and threatened people who didn’t like jazz music, so maybe he favored that style. Personally, the Fat Man didn’t care for jazz.

  Judge White called the case and handed him a year and a day at hard labor for armed robbery. Spooner had no priors.

  The guards lifted his phone, never to be seen again, but the Fat Man was facing easy time. All of it would be spent at the B.B. “Sixty” Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, and nine months later he’d be back on the streets of New Orleans.

  That was what life was like for a fat man who had made a mistake. Just trying to get by, robbing people.

  The time passed.

  CHAPTER I

  The two hoods had just gotten out of prison. Wearing baseball ball caps and shades, they cut through the little padlock on the Constance Street side of the Church of St. Howard and gained access to a long narrow alleyway between the church and the sidewalk. It was Saturday afternoon, almost time for Mass, but they didn’t know that. They were thinking about breaking into the church, or finding something lying around in the yard they could make off with, just in the hunt for targets of opportunity.

  In the last rays of daylight flickering through the timeless live oak trees came a lady walking home from borrowing books at the children’s library on Napoleon Avenue. When she was abreast, the two hoods snatched her off the sidewalk and dragged into the alleyway. She might have seen them in time to protect herself had she not been absorbed in messages from her girlfriends on her iPhone. Forcing a sock into her mouth, the robbers— they weren’t after sex— stripped away her phone and the wallet in her purse. They left her the library books and pushed her to the concrete where she skinned her elbows and knees.

  Her cries were muffled by the sock and by the bells of the church, which began at that moment loudly sounding the evening mass.

  “You just shut up, and nothing will happen,” the smaller one shouted, over the cacophony of the bells. Holding their meager loot, he took off fast, followed by his borderline-obese partner who waddled after him toward the street.

  High above, there was the loud crack of an old oaken timber. One of the great iron bells broke free from its ancient binding and sailed through the sky. Guided by an unseen hand toward a deserving target, it made a direct hit on the smaller robber in front and flattened him. The bell showed no signs of damage, but the legs sticking out from under it didn’t even have enough life left in them to twitch.

  The robbery victim staggered to her feet, spat out the sock and cheered. The surviving crook backed away from the scene and began running awkwardly into the neighborhood.

  From the rear of the church a priest rushed out to see what had happened. He stooped to console the woman. Suddenly he noticed the legs nearby protruding from within the cast iron chime, and he fainted. Passersby, also attracted by the thunderous crash, assembled and peered anxiously down the alleyway. Blood pooled around the pitted iron lip of the noble gong.

  In a very short time the crushed robber’s family found a lawyer (but not Tubby Dubonnet) who was happy to bring a wrongful death suit against the diocese for this unfortunate accident.

  * * *

  Instead, Tubby Dubonnet was stuck with defending a crack-smoking, but sweetheart, mother of three named Carrie Mae Sunshine. She was charged with a crime against nature, accused of offering oral sex to a man in a car, who was unfortunately an undercover cop. Tubby thought she was a nice enough lady, but obviously not exceptionally astute when it came to knowing where her best interests lay. A friend of his, Janie Caragliano, owner of the Monkey Business Bar and a sometimes client of Tubby’s, had asked him to take the case. Janie and Ms. Sunshine were distantly related in some way.

  Unfortunately, this was not his client’s first offense for a crime of this sort, and she was facing “boxcars,” as in twenty years at “hard labor,” in St. Gabriel’s Women’s Correctional Institute halfway upriver toward Baton Rouge. Had she been charged with simple prostitution, which was for regular heterosexual sex, the downside would have been more like thirty days�
� probation. This was but one of the quirks of Title 14, Louisiana’s Criminal Law.

  The arresting policeman was Y.A. Tuttle, and he was on the witness stand. The courtroom was mostly empty, since all of the defendants in other cases had pleaded guilty and had already been disposed of by being sent back to jail. A young Assistant District Attorney was slowly walking the officer through his testimony. Tubby was impatient, having had no lunch. Instead, before the trial he had been worriedly waiting in the hall for his bailed-out client to show up, and the microwave snacks at the convenience store across Tulane Avenue held no allure.

  “Then what happened?” the Assistant District Attorney asked Officer Tuttle.

  “I rolled down the window, and she said, ‘Hey!’” the officer replied earnestly.

  “Was it the defendant who said, ‘Hey’?”

  “Objection, leading,” Tubby chimed in.

  The judge, Jasper-Johnson, roused up to say, “Sustained.”

  Contented, Tubby sat back down. His client gazed at him with worried doleful eyes. Her black eyelashes were a little akilter.

  “OK, Your Honor,” the ADA conceded with poor grace. “Rephrasing. Who was outside the window?”

  “The defendant, right there.” Officer Tuttle pointed at Tubby’s client, who bowed her head in shame. The policeman in his rumpled blue uniform was thick of body and slow of speech. After twenty-six years on the force, he was extremely wary of courtrooms.

  “At that time, what was said?”

  Tubby thought about objecting again, but didn’t.

  “She said she would do ‘the act’ for $40.”

  “Did you reply?”

  “Yeah, I invited her to get into the car. And when she did I placed her under arrest.”

  “Did you give her the warnings?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s what we do.”

  “Did she thereafter speak?”

  “Not really. She just cried and went on about how she had three kids. I brought her to the station.”

  The ADA was satisfied. “Okay,” she said. “I’m finished with Officer Tuttle.”

  Tubby pulled himself up. He cut an imposing figure, big and solid in a three-piece suit. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was well known around these environs. But he was mystified when trying to remember what had provoked him to take this case to trial. His client was not exactly a young innocent. Maybe it was because the best he had been offered for a guilty plea was seven years on probation. There was no way Sunshine would stay out of trouble for seven years. Maybe he was just hoping for a miracle, such as the cop not showing up. But, unfortunately, here he was.

  He approached the witness, stood close to him, and smiled in a friendly way.

  “Tell us again, Officer, if you will, what exactly did the defendant say to you?”

  “Yeah. So she said, ‘Hey, babe, do you want to do the act?’ I said, ‘How much?’ And she said, ‘Forty dollars.’ I might have joked something, like, ‘Do you take credit cards?’ Just to lighten things up and put her at ease. Which it did. She laughed and said, ‘No, babe, don’t you have any cash?’ I showed her two twenties, and she got into the car.”

  “Did you do ‘the act’?” Tubby asked sternly.

  “Of course not.” Officer Tuttle was offended. “I’m married. I told her she was under arrest.”

  “She didn’t try to touch your body?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “And you didn’t touch her?”

  “Just to put on the handcuffs.”

  “She didn’t disrobe, or undo any buttons or anything?”

  “Well, she had on a miniskirt and her blouse was pretty much already unbuttoned. But no.”

  “What happened when you told her she was under arrest?”

  “She just started crying, and she kept crying all the way to the station.”

  Tubby turned away and took a few steps as if to think. Then he swung back around. The maneuver seemed of mild interest to the judge.

  “Officer Tuttle,” Tubby asked sweetly, “what was this ‘Act’?”

  “Well, you know. Everybody knows. I’ve been around a long time, and I know what the girls do for forty dollars.”

  “Oh, really? I don’t know. Maybe she’s an ‘act-tress’? Could she have been offering to light your cigar? Could she have wanted to barbeque hot dogs with you?” Tubby’s voice was rising. “Could she have wanted to read your palm? Could she have wanted to shine your shoes?”

  “Now hold on…” the judge began.

  “No, of course not!” Officer Tuttle exploded. “She was offering, you know, unnatural sex!”

  “What kind of sex exactly?”

  “I don’t like to say the words.”

  “Did she ever say the words?”

  “No. I told you…”

  “Judge,” Tubby interrupted, “the defense moves for a dismissal.”

  The judge shook her head and stared at the policeman.

  “Your Honor…” The ADA was on her feet, but the judge halted her with an upraised hand.

  “You don’t want to say the words, Officer?” she inquired politely.

  “Not really, ma’am.”

  “And she didn’t say anything more descriptive than ‘the act’?”

  “I guess not, Judge, but we both know what she meant.”

  Her Honor took a deep breath. “Case dismissed,” she said. And the gavel came down.

  Out in the hall, the Assistant DA was stuffing papers into her briefcase and scowling.

  “Can you believe that?” she asked Tubby.

  He just shrugged. She shouldn’t have brought the case to trial in the first place.

  Carrie Mae wanted to hug him. “Does this mean it’s over? I’m free?”

  “Free as a bird,” Tubby told her.

  “You are a great, great lawyer!”

  “Thanks. Now about my bill…”

  “Oh, I’ll get the money,” Ms. Sunshine said, grinning broadly with full red lips and arching a crooked eyebrow. “And it won’t take me long.”

  He watched her hurry though the hallway, out the doors and down the twenty-four granite steps to the sunny, hot and free streets of New Orleans.

  The lawyer gave her a minute, then threw back his shoulders and marched briskly after her. He had, after all, just won a trial, and he had every right to strut and smile.

  CHAPTER II

  The incident with the church bell made a great difference in “Fat Man” Spooner’s life. To begin with, he stopped answering to “Fat Man” and became again Angelo. Other transitions also came quickly.

  Immediately after his former partner and Correctional Center cellmate got squashed, Angelo had wandered aimlessly through Uptown neighborhoods, stunned and oblivious to his surroundings. He eventually found himself sitting in a cramped coffee house on St. Andrew Street. He recalled staring into his coffee cup, swirling the sugar around, looking for a message from God. He had, of course, already gotten a big one, but he was looking for some inner meaning in an otherwise unfathomable event, something that could serve as a signpost for the rest of his life.

  He became aware, in time, that his eyes were fixed on a small yellow brochure tacked to a bulletin board hanging beside his table. The words slowly came into focus:

  LOOKING FOR LIFE’S MEANING?

  POTIONS AND CHARMS

  LOVE INCENSE

  HOLY WATER

  PALM READINGS (SECOND OPINIONS)

  There was an address for Sister Soulace on Magazine Street, and it wasn’t far away.

  Angelo dropped a few coins on the table, got his ungainly body in motion, and set off searching for his purpose.

  Sister Soulace helped him out. After a brief interview she welcomed this fresh innocent into her store and put him to work. And she gave him a little room in the back, since he was afraid the police would be looking for him at his own small apartment in Mid-City.

  She was thin, not much bigger than Angelo’s arm, and she was often quite witchlike in appearan
ce, covered in silk batik robes and wearing a small red turban wound tightly around her head. But when she let her black hair fall to her shoulders in the evenings and offered him a glass of Captain Morgan or peppermint schnapps, she was sultry and not unattractive.

  She owned a 1988 Cadillac Brougham that had started out burgundy in color but had mellowed to purple. Sister Soulace was afraid to drive it so Angelo was tasked with delivering the many products she sold to her bedridden customers’ homes. He learned all he could about each item of merchandise so that he could interest the customers in trying the whole line, sales for which he earned a commission. He was convinced that he was atoning for his errant past and doing good for people.

  Sister kept her fortune telling, or “therapy sessions” as she called them, to herself, and exiled him to the outer showroom when her special clients arrived. But Sister was generous with information about the sources of her candles and oils, the formulas she used in making some of the medicines she concocted herself, and the beneficial properties of her Holy Water.

  The Holy Water intrigued him the most, since it was intended to purify the mind and the body and produce good fortune in life, all things that Angelo craved. Sister said it came from a spring near Picayune, Mississippi, and had been blessed by a priest in Waveland. Angelo sold it at the store for three dollars a cupful, and he delivered plastic liter bottles of it to shut-ins all over the Irish Channel for which he collected ten dollars apiece. People swore by it. The infirm tended to get well.

  There came a time when Sister Soulace asked Angelo to drive her to Mississippi to get a new supply of Holy Water for her shelves. The drive up Interstate 59 and through the piney woods had a spiritual component, in that Sister pointed out various small shrines of significance such as a lone, tung nut tree here and an isolated eagle’s nest there, which, she solemnly confided, carried metaphysical meaning— “authority” she called it. However, the Holy Water source itself was a great disappointment.

  It was, in essence, a white plastic pipe protruding horizontally from the leafy bank of a creek called Boley, from which flowed a steady stream of water. It was clear of debris, no doubt, but the pipe was presided over by a red-bearded hermit who looked anything but holy. He wore a sweat-stained T-shirt and torn, smelly jeans and he appeared to be drunk.