* * *

Tubby arrived while Andy J. Forest was playing harmonica, backed up by a bass guitar and a drummer. This was good, reliable, high-class New Orleans music, and he relaxed immediately about the whole noise-level thing. He needed a few soothing moments after his disturbing lunch with Jason Boaz. Bad enough to spoil a stuffed quail. Bad, too, to think that Jason was linked to an old atrocity. But what stung most was being shut out by a client whom he had long thought of as a friend. This bugged him greatly. He was quick to search out a drink.

There was a big crowd in the bar. Evidently whoever was in jail had some supporters. There were actually banker types wearing suits and ties in here. Make that bowties. The artist must have tapped into a well-to-do following. The cover at the door was twenty dollars.

Tubby threaded his way to the bar and wedged himself between a tall boy with the beard of a goat-farming Mennonite and a blond woman in a tight white dress with some sparkle to it, cut above the knees, whose back was to him.

“Old Fashioned!” he yelled at Jack, who gave him a slight nod.

The Regal Beer sign flashed on and off. Andy Forest was into “God Will Understand.” Tubby turned his attention to the blond woman, whose rear end was bumping against his right thigh.

She was engaged in conversation with another lady, brown-haired with a brown business suit, who looked as though she might have spent her day firing people. Her eyes happened to pass his. “Hi, ladies,” he said.

The woman in the suit smiled at him. The blond looked over her shoulder and turned partway around. She was a very appealing, very attractive woman about his own age with unusually clear skin, blue eyes, and bright red lipstick.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Tubby.” He sucked in his gut and grabbed the glass that had miraculously appeared. “I’m a lawyer. You?”

“Peggy. Peggy O’Flarity.” She touched her hair. “And this is Caroline.”

Tubby reached over and shook Caroline’s hand. Then he offered his to Peggy. “What brings you here?” he asked.

Her fingers were long and cool. He was sorry to let them go.

“I volunteer at the Contemporary Arts Center,” she said a little loudly because the band was heating up. “We are one of the sponsors of this event.”

“Great. I’ve gotta admit I’m not familiar with… the artist that this is for. What’s his name?”

“Dinky Bacon. He does studio art, but he’s also a street performer.”

“What did he do to get into trouble?”

“He’s been incorporating male burlesque into his music and sometimes in his gallery exhibitions. Basically he just got a little too naked in Jackson Square.”

That was funny, and Tubby laughed. He clinked glasses with Peggy, who was drinking a beer.

“It’s a great city,” he said. “You come here much?”

“First time.” Her mate, Caroline, had rotated to pay attention to a nearby woman with spiked purple hair and an aqua tutu. “Seems like a nice enough place,” Peggy observed. “It somehow feels familiar to me.”

“I think it’s a great establishment,” Tubby said. “I represent the owner.”

“That’s right, you said you were a lawyer. I don’t like lawyers.”

“Neither do I. Why don’t you?”

“My ex, I guess.” She smiled again and finished her beer.

“Let me buy a round,” Tubby suggested. “I’d like to know more about our honoree and why the arts center thinks he is worth supporting.”

“He’s actually internationally famous,” she said. “But admittedly, that’s mostly through the Internet since until recently he didn’t believe in displaying his pieces for sale.”

“Will he be here tonight?”

“Not unless he gets out of jail. The point of this whole thing is bail money.”

“I suppose he has a lawyer.” A frolicking drunk smashed into them and apologized. Tubby mopped Old Fashioned off his shirt.

Peggy used her napkin to help him a little. “I suppose he must,” she mused.

Tubby let the subject drop. He had enough hopeless causes. Still, it looked like a lot of twenty-dollar bills had walked through the door.

He was able to get a few more details about the lady. Peggy lived far, far away on the Northshore. Actually, she owned horses.

“I know all about horses,” he boasted. He was thinking about horse races, of course. But when he was ten he had had a pony.

Her kids were scattered, one in Nashville, and one in D.C.

Her ex still lived in New Orleans in their old house. She got the horse farm. And the horses.

And Tubby got her phone number, written on the back of a CAC flyer promoting “Bourbon and Burlesque.”

Peggy O’Flarity had to leave early because of her long drive home. He walked her to her car, a BMW.

Back in the bar he knew only Caroline, who was at this point fully occupied by colorful people whom Tubby didn’t find to be his type. Janie never made an appearance. Tubby drifted outside to compose himself in the dark. Only a few low-decibel sounds escaped from the bar, and he could hear train cars clanking in the distance. He decided that this would be a good time to drive home, after pausing for a few slow and deep inhales of rich Mississippi River air.

When he reached his house, he found a message on his land line from Marguerite. All was still well in sunny Florida, but why hadn’t she heard from him? She couldn’t understand. Was he all right? She was just worried about him, that’s all.

He liked his Florida lady. That much was true. The chemistry was there, but ever since she had moved south from Chicago, she seemed to have developed a nesting instinct. Naples was her nest and Tubby wasn’t at all sure he wanted to be an egg.

That picture was wrong on several levels, including the one that was his life, here in New Orleans, close to his girls, his law practice, and etcetera. She was also a Yankee, but what did that matter?

Nevertheless, he didn’t call her back and went to bed.

It bothered him when he woke up before six, and it bothered him while he stoked up a pot of Community coffee. Eventually, after he had made some toast and eaten a Satsuma, he hit reply and let the phone ring. To his great relief, he got her voicemail.

But he didn’t leave a message.

He felt bad about that, too.

XV

The lawyer got to the office a little early, even before Cherrylynn. After leafing through The Advocate, where he learned that murders in New Orleans were on a pace to match 2004, a record year for homicides, and after checking his emails, he decided to follow up on the information Cherrylynn had given him.

Tubby knew the policeman, Kronke, who back in the distant past had done the so-called investigation into the death of John Doe. In recent years this same officer had interrogated Tubby when a client showed up dead in a Place Palais elevator minutes after visiting Tubby’s office on the 43rd floor. Later on still, Tubby had questioned the policeman, during the crazy period when he was on the trail of the Crime Czar. Tubby regretted that he had once told Kronke to screw himself. Maybe the policeman had forgotten that, but Tubby doubted it.

He pressed in the number that Cherrylynn had given him.

“Hello,” Kronke answered. He sounded grumpy, like he had just woken up.

“Hello, detective, this is Tubby Dubonnet…”

“The attorney,” Kronke said flatly.

“Hey, you remembered. It’s been quite some time.”

“I’m off the force, so why could you be calling me?”

“You quit?”

“I retired. I was out of there at sixty. All I do now is kill skeet and chase the ladies.”

“Good for you. Yeah, well, I’ve got a couple of years to go. You know, I’ve still got one kid in college. So I’m still practicing law.”

“Enough of this old time’s sake,” Kronke cut him off. “Why did you call?”

“I’ve gotten interested in a case, a very old one. Back in the early 1970’s. There was a shooting at a demonstration on Canal Street. A young kid was killed in a drive-by.”