“It’s a package, and I don’t like keeping it around here.”

“I am Mister Dubonnet’s confidential secretary. If it is important I can pick up the package myself and see that it’s kept in a safe place.”

“I’d say it’s important to him. I’m at police headquarters.”

“I could be there in about twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be outside on the steps taking a cigarette break.”

Cherrylynn wasted no time locking up and grabbing an elevator. There was a cab stand down at the street.

XIII

Tubby swung open the gold-handled door at the restaurant on Bourbon Street and was immediately soothed by the elegant décor, the magnificently long bar, and the subdued lights and soft ragtime music. This was an offshoot of the original Galatoire’s next door, which the lawyer regarded as one of the finest establishments on the planet, but not the sort of place you went to on a whim. He saw Jason sitting with his back to the mahogany-paneled wall. He had an ample martini to his lips. He stood up to greet Tubby, showing how tall and thin he was. Though his beard and black hair were neat, the heavy black-framed glasses he wore and his rumpled trousers and jacket made him look like a college professor.

“Gin or vodka?” Tubby asked. He slid into a chair to face his host.

“A Beefeater’s, my friend. What’s your poison?”

“I’ll follow suit.” A waiter appeared. “Whatever the gentleman is having,” Tubby instructed. He laid the proffered menu aside. “You had a good day with the ponies?”

“A very good day. A little filly named Trailer Trash came in to win the third race at Saratoga at thirteen to one. I’ve been following her for weeks, and she’s always coming in fourth or fifth, every single race. I figured the jockeys were holding her back, and I was right. I nailed that one, then, bless my heart, I won the daily double!”

“Very exciting.” Tubby also liked nothing better than a day at the races, but he wasn’t a fan of off-track betting parlors. They were now basically given over to video poker and slot machines. The traditional clientele had disappeared almost entirely. “How often do you wager?” he asked.

“I dabble in something every day. It’s an addiction, I know. I keep two bookies busy. I even gambled online for a while, but then I got hacked. That was a learning experience.”

The waiter came back with a pair of drinks and offered to take their orders.

“A sixteen-ounce strip, garçon.” Jason tossed back his first drink and reached for his fresh one. “Medium rare. And your potatoes au gratin and brown butter mushrooms.”

Tubby scanned the menu quickly.

“I’ll try your House Boudin-Stuffed Roasted Quail.”

“With a salad or soup?”

“Why yes, please. I’ll have your turtle soup.”

“What about the horseradish-crusted bone marrow?” Jason asked.

“Sounds fulfilling, doesn’t it, but not today. I’d better stick to my diet.”

“Save some space for the peach cobbler. It’s pretty damn good.”

“Let’s do this every week,” his guest suggested.

Jason laughed and took another gulp. “Now, what did you call me about?”

“An old friend of mine owns a bar and music club.”

“No surprise there.”

“Yeah. Well, she needs to be able to measure the decibel levels outside her bar while a band is playing. I thought you might have an idea about how to do that.”

“You use a sound level meter, which I imagine you can probably buy at Radio Shack. Above ninety decibels, something like that, is bad for you.” Jason turned thoughtful. “But that seems like a very old-school way to go about it. How can you demonstrate what and where you took a reading?”

He pulled out his phone and began thumbing away.

“You know, I don’t see that there’s an app being offered for this.” He started humming.

“What are you talking about?”

“It seems to me that what you’d want, for evidentiary purposes as it were, is an app that lets you take a picture of the bar in real time and display the decibel rating on the screen in a way you could save it. It would record the place, the time and the sound. But I don’t see that such an app is available.”

“Too bad.”

“Not bad at all. I’ll play around with this tonight and see if I can’t create one. Who knows, this could be another big idea.”

“Don’t forget where you got it.”

Jason resurfaced to focus on Tubby. He laughed. “You don’t even know what an app is,” he said.

“Of course I do.” Jason spared him from having to display the limits of his knowledge by launching into a discourse on his date with Norella. They had danced till three in the morning and made love on her living room floor. At least that’s what Jason thought had happened.

Before more was revealed, the food arrived.

“Hot plates,” the waiter warned. Jason’s steak sizzled. Tubby’s quail steamed. They stopped talking for a few minutes and ate. The small toasty brown bird was served on a glacé of black cherries and wilted spinach, and with the rice sausage spilling onto the plate it sent out mists of wonderful spicy flavors. It was a shame to pierce it with a fork.

“Mine’s excellent. How’s your steak?” Tubby finally managed to ask.

“Très Bien. So, what else are you working on these days? Any more New Orleans political intrigues or gruesome murders?”

“One of each, actually. The intrigue may involve organized crime and our city police department. I shouldn’t have taken the case, but it promises to be another fascinating glimpse into what makes our very warm and moist small town work. The murder, on the other hand, happened forty years ago, and is personal to me.”

“Really? Who got killed?”

“A young boy. I never actually learned his full name. They called him Parker. It was at a public demonstration. I was there. Someone pulled up in a car and shot him.”

Jason’s ruddy face paled. He took a pull on his drink and signaled the waiter for a refill.

“This was back in the days of anti-war demonstrations. I just happened to get involved during a brief but very, uh, experimental period in my life.”

“You were there when it happened?” Jason’s voice sounded strained.

“Yeah. The kid died, practically in my arms. I never knew who did it or why. Is there something wrong with your food?”

Jason had quietly set down his fork, and he dropped his chin as if in prayer.

“How do you plan to find the answers to your questions?”

“I’ll dig up what can be dug up. Granted, it was a long time ago. But I’m a resourceful person.”

Jason raised his head and met Tubby’s eyes.

“You should leave this in the past, my friend. The people who did this are loco crazy. They were crazy then, and they are crazy now.”

Tubby was astonished. “You actually know something about this event?”

Jason just shook his head sadly.

* * *

The taxi dropped Cherrylynn off on Broad across the street from the jail. She had to fork over most of her cash because the swarthy driver with the tiny mustache claimed that his credit card machine was broken. Flustered, she hurried up the wide steps and spied, across the plaza, a sentry-like uniformed policeman who was indeed smoking a cigarette. Getting closer, she observed that he was surrounded by a ring of smashed butts which blended into the gum-stained concrete. He was holding a manila envelope.

“Officer Sandoval?” she inquired.

He looked her up and down and grunted, “You ain’t bad looking.”

“I’m Mister Dubonnet’s secretary,” she said, inexplicably not feeling insulted by his forwardness. “Do you have something for him?”

The policeman stuck out his arm, big as both of hers, and handed over the envelope.

“Tell him this is all there is.” He shrugged. “It was a long time ago and things get lost. This is the original file, and I’d like it back.”