The Author's Cut discussion

Maybe I’ll Be Sober When I Get There

The pain that said he was drinking too much started creeping up behind Tubby’s ears. Raisin Partlow, his drinking buddy, had given up trying to make conversation with him and was puffing on a cigarette in the exaggerated way that irregular smokers do. The dusty, barely lit tavern was thinning out, leaving just a few whiskered pool players chalking up a last game and a pair of busty girls sharing confidences with the even heftier dame behind the bar.

“Never screw a client and never lie to the judge,” Tubby said abruptly.

It took Raisin a second to break through to the surface.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s all of the so-called legal ethics that make sense to me. The rest of it is just so many little rules you can twist around to suit whatever you want to do.”

“Well, you know, Tubby, I lied to a judge just last week.” Raisin expelled a wobbly smoke ring and smiled in satisfaction. “Old ‘Fuzzy’ Baer appointed me to represent the fool who shot a fourteen-year-old girl, after he raped her and her mother. He asks me, ‘Mr. Partlow, can you put aside your personal feelings and represent this man to the best of your goddamn abilities?’”

The bartender broke off her conversation to look in their direction. Tubby raised his fingers an inch off the scarred oak surface, so cool to the touch, and shook his head, no. The familiar pain of too much whiskey and too much sweet Coca-Cola had already spread over to the top of his skull.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him, ‘Yes, Your Honor. The man deserves his day in court.’ I should have told him, ‘Fuck no, Judge. I hate this guy. Take him away where I don’t have to look at him. Christ, sir, I’ll be embarrassed to admit to my godchildren that I was even in the same room with the guy.’ But I knew that was the wrong answer to the question.”

“You should have told him the truth,” Tubby said.

“Like what?”

“You should have said, ‘Heck no, Judge. But I’ll do a better job than anybody else you’re likely to get.”

Raisin shrugged and waved at the bartender. Tubby slid off his stool and grabbed the bar for support.

“I’m out of here,” he said.

Raisin looked concerned about being left alone.

“Let me buy you one more,” he said. “The night is still young.”

“No, I’m good. Tomorrow is a school day.” Tubby let go of the bar to test his footing. So far, so good. He laid two dollar bills on his wet napkin and waved goodbye to the barmaid. He patted Raisin on the back and suddenly found himself on the sidewalk outside. A DIXIE BEER sign blinked and crickets sang in the weeds sprouting from the curb. All the houses were closed up tight, and the only people around were a couple of shadowy heads in a parked car down the street. Tubby located his own car, but had a hard time getting the key into the door lock. His head was pounding and he bent over to rest it on the smooth metal roof, misted with dew, until the night air restored his vision.

He conceded to himself that he had lost another round in his ongoing battle with the great drug alcohol, but he decided not to let this be his final encounter. Jamming his keys back into his pants pocket, Tubby began an unsteady march away from the river and in the general direction of home. Dogs barked through curtained windows at him, and stray cats peered around the tires of parked cars to watch his progress.

What was it, maybe thirty-five blocks? Just a couple of miles. Maybe he would be sobered up by the time he got there. Maybe he’d try jogging it. Better save his energy in case he needed to run for real. He picked up the pace anyway, and his course straightened—a solitary lawyer bobbing along through dark neighborhoods, navigating by the moon.


Tony Dunbar

Monster Mudbug’s Rolling Boiler
***

People often asked Tubby what his day was like—how it was being a lawyer in a city like New Orleans. He knew there was no way to describe it, all the sad and comic touches. He just knew he wasn’t often bored.

He parked his red Thunderbird convertible by the abandoned, boarded-up Falstaff brewery off Broad Street and scrambled across four busy lanes to the plaza in front of Traffic Court. Inside the masses were gathering for afternoon services, reduced to the common denominator of having to explain away yellow lights that turned red, school-zone signs hidden behind crepe myrtle trees, and Breathalyzer machines that gave out faulty readings.

Courtroom C was filled with at least a hundred people, each waiting for his name to be called by the clerk up front, a balding man with a lumpy nose and a wrinkled tie named Moses Seamster, who had mastered an attitude of total indifference to everything. His foghorn voice summoned a few more offenders every few minutes to come forward and plead with him about their cases. He disposed of the vast majority in ten seconds and fewer words, accepting their plea, fixing their fine, and sending them off to pay. The judge was nowhere to be seen. A handful of bored-looking lawyers hung out on the front row and around a door leading to the back room where an assistant city attorney considered more grievous offenses and dealt with citizens who refused to plead guilty. Tubby was acquainted with a bunch of the regulars, and he walked up to join them.

“Hiya, Walter, whatcha got today?” he asked an older attorney he knew, a tall gentleman wearing a shiny gray suit and holding his briefcase across his narrow chest like it might stop a bullet.

“Hey, Tubby. DWI. Drove into the bushes off Wisner into City Park. My issue is no one saw him actually driving the vehicle, and he wasn’t on a public thoroughfare when the cops pulled him out of the shrubbery. So where’s the crime? It’s bullshit, maybe, but we’ll see. What’s yours?”

“My client is Monster Mudbug,” Tubby said.

“What, the guy you see at Mardi Gras?”

“That’s him. Oh no, here he is.”

Monster Mudbug drove a tow truck by trade. He had spotted Tubby and was walking up the aisle dressed in dusty blue jeans, a spray-painted surfer shirt, and blue sunglasses. He paused at the swinging wooden gate and waved, and Tubby went over to collect him.

“Jesus, I told you to clean up, Adrian.”

“Couldn’t, Mr. Tubby. I was working.”

“You must have been working under a car.”

“Yeah, there was a three-car wreck up on the high rise. Two other guys beat me there, so I had to scoop the worst car, which had both its front tires completely mangled. First I had to wait for the ambulance and the rescue guys to get the people out.”

“Were they hurt?”

“Yeah, pretty bad. The guy was some kind of preacher, and these leaflets about a revival or something were blowing out of his car and all over the highway. This pretty lady that was in the car with him got banged on the head. She was walking around in circles saying, ‘Reverend James, Reverend James.’” Adrian tried to imitate her. “She had blood just dripping off her.”

Tubby shook his head in sympathy. “Listen, Adrian…” he began.

“Yeah, I was kind of worried that the old man might be dead. The ambulance driver said he’d pull through, though. But I guess if he’d of died he would have gone straight to heaven. Don’t you think? Baptists believe in heaven, don’t they?”

“Sure they do, Adrian. Did you think it was just a Catholic thing? But now that you’re here, did you bring proof of insurance?”

“Yeah, sixty days.”

“I don’t know if they’ll take that. You need real insurance.”

“It’s hard to get insurance on the Rolling Boiler,” Adrian lamented. He was speaking about a chopped-down Ford Escort chassis he had decorated with papier-mâché and sheet metal to look like a huge crawfish pot. He had girls, pretty ones if he could get them, dress up like crawfish and jump around in the pot. He used it for parties and parades and was trying to get recognized as a local character.

“I’ll bet the Moss Man doesn’t have insurance,” he complained.

“I know the Moss Man, and he does have insurance,” Tubby told him. “Plus he has a brake tag, too.”

“I’d like to know where he gets it. They’d just laugh at me if I pulled into a brake tag station. Can you imagine?”

“Give me your certificate of insurance and I’ll see what I can do.”

Adrian sat on the bench while Tubby squeezed through the crowd to the hallway behind the courtroom where whatever assistant city attorney had the duty that day met with lawyers and regular folks to conduct the real business of the court, which was to hammer out guilty pleas. Today he found Risi Shexnayder, a young lawyer he had seen before over at the law school, sitting behind a little desk, interrogating a fat black teenager while a policeman, lounging on a folding chair in the corner, picked his teeth with a wooden match.

The teenager was telling a story about why he ran a stop sign. The cop interrupted to say he didn’t believe the kid then and he didn’t believe him now, and, in any case, running a stop sign was against the law, so why not cut the crap. The kid finally agreed to pay a fine, but he was mad about it. He collected his papers and strutted out. Shexnayder waved Tubby toward the empty chair. She was in her twenties but was already getting the worn-and-tired appearance that comes from spending too much time cooped up in windowless rooms with petty offenders and cops.

“Hey, Mr. Dubonnet, where y’at? I know it must be a major bust for a big shot like you to be down here.”

“No, this is not a big deal, Risi. Today I represent Monster Mudbug. Grabbed for no insurance, tag, or title on his way to the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in the Irish Channel.”

“Yeah. I saw him in that parade. He wears this big chef’s hat and was throwing boiled crawfish and potatoes, right? That’s a crazy guy. Is that stuff legal? It must be a health-code violation. So what do you want me to do?”

“Forget the whole thing. No one gets title or tags on something like that. I mean, it’s a float, really. And anyway he’s got insurance.”

The assistant city attorney inspected the insurance certificate Tubby pushed across her desk.

“This is from Blue Streak Insurance Company,” she said. “They’ve been out of business for months. This is no good.”

Tubby looked at it again. “So, you’re right. But that’s not the kid’s fault. See, he paid the premium.”

“I hope he can get his money back. Judge is hard on no insurance, but I guess maybe this counts for something. Monster Mudbug has to have a license tag, though. If it runs on gas and rolls down the street you gotta put a tag on it. We’ll throw everything else out if he pays a hundred and twenty-five dollars plus costs.”

“Okay,” Tubby said. The prosecutor scribbled some notes on the tickets and handed them to Tubby.

“Take these to the clerk, and it’s all taken care of. And say hello to Reggie Turntide for me.” Reggie was Tubby’s partner.

“You know Reggie?” Tubby was surprised because Reggie had probably never ventured into Traffic Court.

“I met him at the fish fry my boss, the City Attorney, has every summer for all of us and the politicians. Reggie was really sweet. He played with my little boy for about two hours.”

“Yeah, Reggie really likes kids.”

“He seemed to. You can tell Monster Mudbug I think his whole, uh, presentation is outasight. People go crazy trying to catch those crawfish. They had a good flavor, too.”

“You ate them?”

“Sure, I wasn’t thinking too clearly at the time.”

“I’ll tell him he has an admirer in Traffic Court.” Tubby grabbed the tickets and was out the door. The next lawyer in line stepped forward quickly and sat on the chair. One more man with a story to tell.

Adrian had found some friends in the courtroom, and they were all talking to each other in whispers, out of respect for where they were, but there was still no judge in sight.

“I got her to throw out the no title, no brake tag, and no insurance,” Tubby told him, “but you’ll have to pay a hundred and twenty-five dollars plus costs for no license tag.” Adrian’s friends were impressed.

“That’s good,” Adrian said. “I brought two hundred dollars with me just in case.”

“What you do is pay your lawyer first. Give me the two hundred dollars.”

“What do I pay the fine with?”

“They’ll give you time. Go to the back and work it out with the lady. Pay me the two hundred dollars. And get some real insurance. The city attorney back there likes you. She caught your show and loved it, but there’s a price for fame. You can’t let down all the people who are getting behind you. Monster Mudbug is the kind of guy who has insurance.”

“I see that, Mr. Tubby. I can’t be getting into legal hassles all the time. I gotta think about my fans. There’s a lot of young people who look up to me.”

“Right, Adrian. You gotta be an example to them.”

“Sure. Thanks for everything, Mr. Tubby.” They said goodbye and parted ways.

How did I ever get into this line of work? Tubby asked himself as he pushed open the glass doors to the world outside. He gave a couple of bucks to the young lad who was watching his car and got a barely perceptible nod in return. He wasn’t sure, but it looked to Tubby as though his wheel covers had been shined.

Excerpt 3: Eighteen Wheelers and Other Lonely Pilgrims
***

Monique was a small-town girl. She had come to what to her was the big city of New Orleans from Evergreen, Alabama, home of a million slash pine trees and a Holiday Inn. She was running away from home at age twenty-three.

The immediate goal was to get away from Ned, her ex-husband, who liked to punch her about once a week while they were married and periodically came around for similar recreation after they got divorced. She got started on her escape after he almost ran her off the Interstate one night with his four-by-four pickup truck, pushing her onto the shoulder, saved only by an exit ramp which appeared just in time. She swerved up it and took refuge under the dusty vapor lamps of an all-night convenience store, leaving Ned to clip the signpost and navigate his drunken way north. Then she shook and shook, waiting for her mother to get her landlord to come and escort her home. She stared at the pretty faces beckoning from the shiny magazine covers on the rack by the phone and decided that her only hope for a real life lay in flight.

As soon as she was convoyed back to her trailer she dragged out her most precious belongings and threw them into her dented, still-not-paid-for Rabbit. She dropped the keys to her mobile home in the manager’s mailbox, drove out to Interstate 65 and turned south, for no reason but that Ned lived five miles to the north in Owassa and she was taking no chances on running into him again that night. A long two hours later, when only eighteen-wheelers and other lonely pilgrims were on the highway, a slender corridor through dark miles of uninhabited and forbidding pine forests, she stopped for gas and cigarettes in Mobile. Mixed in with the truck fumes she could smell the salt in the air. The road east went to Pensacola, where she and Ned had once taken a beach trip during their brief courtship. The sign to the west said New Orleans. She had never been there. It sounded a lot better than anyplace she had ever gone with Ned. If she didn’t find something there, like safety, a place to work, or romance, then she could just keep going to Texas, or maybe even California.

“How many hours is it to New Orleans?” she asked the sleepy-looking man behind the counter.

“About three, if you don’t stop,” he said. “Are you planning on going all the way through tonight?”

“Yep.” She made up her mind.

“You reckon that car of yours will make it that far?” he asked.

“It had better,” she said, pocketing her change.

“I’m just pointing out, ladies have to be careful at night. There ain’t much out there but dark for the next hundred and forty miles.”

“Thanks, I’m not worried,” she said. And the surprising thing was she really wasn’t worried. “Couldn’t I walk a hundred and forty miles?” she asked herself as she settled back behind the wheel.

Coming over a high-rise bridge into the city at daybreak took her breath away. The tall buildings, rising up in the new sun, the graceful outline of the suspension bridges over the Mississippi River, the brawling morning traffic, made a promise to her – a promise of possibilities. She opened the window to let in the cool, clean Gulf of Mexico air, exited at Franklin Avenue, and fell asleep parked in a neighborhood of proud oak trees and old brick houses.

She was rousted by a policeman at around ten a.m. He ascertained that she was alive and told her politely that she needed to move along. After they talked a little, he with his blond mustache and bulky blue jacket, she with sleepy eyes and tangled hair, he suggested a rooming house on Canal Street. He gave her directions and waved when she puttered away. She found the place without trouble. It was a lovely old mansion with a big yard, owned by a blue-haired lady who showed Monique to an immaculate room, furnished with a bed, a dresser, a television, a cherry-red throw rug, and a vase of fresh flowers. It cost as much for a week as her trailer in Evergreen had cost for a month. It was her first house in New Orleans, and there were roses in bloom outside her window.

Monique made her way. Right off the bat her car got towed from a freight-loading zone while she was using a pay phone, and she never went to pick it up. She was afraid that the finance company might have reported it stolen, and she’d get arrested. She learned the bus routes and found a job as an exotic dancer in a foul-smelling club on Decatur Street. Ali, the linebacker-sized barman, made sure the customers didn’t touch her unless she allowed them to, and the money was okay. It was basically good exercise, except that the air in the place, from the customers’ cigarettes and other noxious emissions, was roughly the flavor of car exhaust.

She moved out of the rooming house and into a cheap apartment in the French Quarter. It was nice being able to explore the Quarter before work, to walk down to the river and watch the freighters with names of countries she had never heard of painted on their bows, to mingle with tourists and sometimes buy a muffuletta, packed with Italian ham and olive salad, and eat it outdoors in Jackson Square. She bought a bike. She did what she needed to do to get by. She made some friends and picked up a little cocaine habit. A job waiting tables in a bacon-and-eggs joint on Chartres Street opened up, and she took it even though it paid less than dancing. When she walked out of the strip joint, she gave Ali her falsies and G-string, and he got a huge laugh out of that.

Monique did not consider herself to be a genius by any means. Sometimes she wondered if God had given her any brains at all. But when she met Darryl Alvarez at a party her boss threw, she was smart enough to know that he was a step up. He was a little short for her taste, and he had kind of a Spanish look that was new to her, but he seemed real sure of himself and he said a lot of interesting things.

They left the party early and went out and had a few drinks in a crowded bar Uptown run by a friend of his. The drinks were on the house, which was impressive, and Darryl left a fat tip for the waitress, which was even more so. He was fun. They stopped off at his apartment right on Lake Pontchartrain, overlooking what he said was the yacht harbor, to snort a little coke together. His apartment wasn’t furnished like the ones most of her previous boyfriends lived in. There weren’t any Mexican bullfight pictures on the wall, for one thing. It was all very modern and clean and had wall-to-wall carpet. There was a big wooden cabinet that when he opened it revealed a television and a stereo and some carved black statues from Africa of fierce naked men and women, and he had a thick glass coffee table. She checked out the medicine cabinet while she was in the bathroom and found out that Darryl used Mitchum, Colgate, and Drakkar Noir. It was clean in there, too, which was mighty unusual for a man, and she thought he must have a maid.

Darryl pulled the curtains open, and she could see, across the street and the floodwall, all the sailboats berthed in their little slips in the harbor, illuminated by tiny lights strung along the piers. It was very romantic.

“I’ll make it a little darker and you can see the view better,” he said, and she giggled.

“That’s funny?” he asked, switching off a lamp. “What can I fix for you?”

“Oh, a beer, I guess. I don’t care.”

“Here’s a Miller Lite,” he said, handing her a pony bottle, “so you can keep your beautiful figure.”

“Thank you. What do you do to stay in shape?”

“I chase after love,” he said, and he kissed her on the back of her neck. A shiver ran all the way down her. “It’s wonderful exercise.”

She ended up spending the night.

In the morning he drove her back downtown to her apartment. He was polite enough to wait until she got inside her gate before he drove away, but she was afraid that would be the end of Darryl. No problem, it had been for kicks. But surprise, he called her later in the week and offered her a job waiting tables at Champs, which turned out to be his restaurant and bar out by the lake.

“I don’t know if you’re interested,” he said.

“Sure, I’d be interested. What nights would I work?”

“Seven nights a week, if you want to. We just had a girl quit. You can do three or four, it’s up to you.” With Darryl, she would find out, a lot of things would be up to her.

“You want to come in tomorrow night and see how it goes?” he asked.

“Sure, fine,” she said.

“Okay. Be here at four o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.” She had to look in the Yellow Pages to find out where the bar was. Then she called RTA to learn how to get there on a bus. You had to go to Canal, then out to the Lake, then take a bus out Robert E. Lee. Wow! That could take two hours. She told her boss she was sorry, but she was quitting, and she dropped her green apron on the counter.

Excerpt 4: The Blue Bag
***

That Sunday night Monique followed Darryl across the Mississippi on the Huey P. Long Bridge. Monique, behind the wheel of the Mazda, had never been this way before, and she was thrilled to be so high up, like riding a Ferris wheel. The chemical plants and shipyards far below lit up the river like the midway of a carnival she had been to as a child. After they got across and were pointed southwest on Highway 90, Darryl instructed her, on the car phone, to slow down and let him get about a mile ahead. He asked if she was doing all right, and she said yes. She really did feel good. It was an adventure. Darryl had tossed a blue gym bag in the backseat. That was what she was supposed to bring him later.

Darryl had installed a fantastic Sony compact disc player in the car, and she listened to Garth Brooks and Willie Nelson. She smoked cigarettes and tapped the wheel with her nails. The Rex and Endymion beads hanging on the rearview mirror danced back and forth. Darryl checked in every five minutes or so when he saw something interesting. He pointed out a restaurant he said the Mafia owned, and when they drove through a swamp he told her to look out for alligators, you might see the car lights reflected in their eyes. He also asked if she saw anybody following them. She hadn’t really been paying any attention, but she told him no. After that she started checking her mirror, but she didn’t know how you could tell one pair of headlights from another.

They drove through the town of Houma, on the bypass, and then turned left onto a narrow blacktop running in a direct line south, to the sea. It was dark, but Monique could tell that the land they were passing through was perfectly flat. Darryl told her it was nothing but rice fields and marshes. The flashing lights in the far distance could be oil rigs out on the Gulf, he said, or maybe power lines or boats. Finally he said he was pulling over, and in a minute she saw his lights off to the side. He was idling behind a trash Dumpster in what looked to be the middle of nowhere. She crushed onto the gravel and pulled in beside him.

Darryl got out of the truck and came around, and she rolled down her window.

“I’m going down about five miles,” he said. “You come to a place where this road makes a T almost. The main road hooks off to the right, and there’s another road that goes left. It’s gravel. It goes to some fishing camps, maybe two miles down the road. When I call you, just drive down there and meet me. Remember, straight to the fork. Turn off left. Come to me, two miles. When you leave, just go out the way you came in. You’re just bringing me the bag. Don’t hang around. Don’t get out of the car. Nobody needs to see you. I’ll call in about an hour. You got it? Can you wait that long?”

Monique nodded. “I live for you,” she said.

Darryl’s eyebrows seemed to pinch together, and his eyes twitched a little bit. “You’re the one, Monique,” he said, and kissed her. “Just do like I told you.”

He winked at her and got back in the truck. She cut off her lights and engine. Darryl rolled off, and in a couple of minutes the sound of his motor disappeared. Monique was all alone on a slender bridge of asphalt in the center of a million miles of marsh grass, salt air, and the biggest, blackest sky she could ever remember seeing. There were some stars, but no moon. It was so quiet she became conscious of the sound of her own breathing. Then some night insects, or frogs, began croaking at one another, and a mosquito hummed into the car. Something rustled around in the Dumpster. Maybe a raccoon, she thought. It sounded bigger than a raccoon. She rolled up the window quickly, put Wynonna Judd on the Discman, and smoked. She kept checking her watch.

Because she had the music on, Monique didn’t hear the car coming. It raced past with its headlights off, and scared the bejeezus out of her. Right behind it came two more cars, whoosh, whoosh, no lights. It was black as coal outside, but she thought she saw bubble-gum machines on top. She immediately killed the stereo and slumped down in the seat. The night swallowed the sounds of the car engines, and it became as quiet as the inside of a coffin. She chewed off most of her fingernails. The phone didn’t beep. She waited an hour, and then some. When she couldn’t stand it anymore she started the car up and backed out onto the roadway. She thought for a moment about going straight back to New Orleans, but she couldn’t just desert Darryl, so she turned to the right. She kept her lights off, too. Nobody was coming, and the road went straight as a bullet. After driving five minutes she reached the T and stopped to look around. Way down the gravel road she could see lights, flashing blue ones and one steady bright white one, like she had seen on a movie set once on Canal Street. They might have been a couple of miles away, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on.

Monique jammed the shifter into the slot marked “R” and peeled out backwards. She pointed the Mazda due north and mashed the gas pedal down flat.

She got back home in a lot less time than the trip out had taken. After riding around her block, looking for things suspicious, she parked the car and ran into her apartment carrying the blue bag, which she pushed under her bed. Then she sat in front of the TV, rocking back and forth with her arms tight around her knees. There was no one she could call.

Monique woke up at around noon on Monday, got dressed, and went over to the restaurant. The bartender, a guy named Larry, filled her in on the news. Darryl had been busted down in the bayou. Larry didn’t know too many details yet, but it had made the radio. She tried to act as though she was extremely shocked. She made a scene about being upset, then drove back to her apartment in the Mazda and waited. She was preparing to go to work at four o’clock when the phone finally rang.

“Hey, babe,” he said. He sounded really tired.

“Hi, honey. Where are you?”

“In jail. The good officer here is letting me make a phone call.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yeah,” he sighed. “I’m fine. Here’s what I need you to do. I want you to go to the safe in the office and take out fifteen thousand dollars. There should be that much there. Give it to Jimmy. It’s for my bail. He’ll know what to do. He ought to have me home by tomorrow.”

She liked the way he said “home.”

“Have you got my car in a safe place?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s parked right outside. Everything is okay.”

“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here,” she told him.

Excerpt 5: The Twin Brother Defense
***

This morning Reggie was in Tubby’s office wanting to talk about Darryl Alvarez, a client he had given to Tubby. Darryl, Tubby knew, was the manager of a bar at the lakefront and always had plenty of cash. He flashed it for lots of politicos and Jefferson Parish real estate developers, who all loved Darryl, and since Reggie hung out with the same group of pals, he loved Darryl, too. Darryl was great for free meals, tickets to Saints games at the Dome, and tips on horse races. He also made a buena margarita. But, Reggie had sadly told Tubby a couple of weeks before, Darryl had a problem.

He had been caught with a new Ford wide-body pickup truck in Terrebonne Parish, unloading fifteen bales of marijuana from a shrimp boat. Where it had started its journey was anybody’s guess, but it ended with Darryl staring into a DEA agent’s spotlight. He called Reggie from the Parish Jail. Reggie, like most of Darryl’s buddies, suddenly didn’t want to know him at all, but he did at least wake Tubby up at home. Tubby drove down early in the morning. It took a while, but he eventually got the bond lowered from its initial million dollars to a measly $150,000. By some means Tubby never learned about, Darryl got a bondsman to post the bail, and he was soon back in his nightclub.

Reggie wanted to know how Darryl’s case was coming, and Tubby told him.

“I offered Fred Stanley, the U.S. Attorney, five years, simple possession, but he laughed. He’s trying for life. What he wants is for Darryl to turn around.”

“Turn around on whom?”

“I don’t know. I guess whoever he bought the pot from. He hasn’t told me.”

“No chance of getting him off?”

“He’s working on the ‘It was my twin brother’ defense, and the ‘I thought it was hay for a Halloween hayride’ defense. So far no takers.”

“I appreciate your handling this, Tubby. Has he been paying you?”

“No problem there. He’s ahead of the game. When he comes in this afternoon I may ask for another deposit.”

“That’s great.” Reggie did his little finger-flutter, taken from the “itsy-bitsy spider,” meaning here comes more manna from the sky.

“These pennies ain’t from heaven,” Tubby said.

Reggie laughed and was still chuckling merrily when he went off down the hall toward his office. Defending Darryl did not bother Tubby. He had always liked the kid, too.

Darryl came by after lunchtime, which for Tubby had been fried oysters on French with melted butter and lemon juice. Cherrylynn had bought it at The Pearl down the street. Tubby ate the sandwich, all fourteen inches of it, at his desk, brushing the crumbs off a Memorandum in Support of Exception of Vagueness he was reading. He wondered how Californians got by on raspberry yogurt or Whoppers or whatever it was they ate for lunch.

Darryl came in carrying a blue gym bag, the kind a lot of people now showed off to suggest that they had spent their lunch hour working out at an executive spa. Despite his wavy black hair and the two gold chains around his neck, Darryl did not look so hot. A little frayed, maybe. But he flashed his big smile when he asked, “How’s it going today, Tubby?”

“I’m staying busy. Have a seat.” Darryl was pretty fidgety. Maybe facing prison time did that to you. Tubby told him about his talk with the U.S. Attorney.

“You think they’ve got a case?” Darryl asked.

“I don’t see how a first-year law student could miss landing you, Darryl. All they’ve got to do is show the videotape of you waving at the camera with your hand on a ton of marijuana while a shrimp boat disappears into the Gulf. I’m just giving you the straight poop. They misspelled a few words in the indictment, but I don’t think that’s going to save you. They read you your rights four times. If you don’t want to take the hit, you’re going to have to tell them what you haven’t told me. Who were you selling it to? Or, who were you working for?”

Darryl sighed. “If I told you that, I’d have a lot more problems than I have now. So what are we talking about if I get convicted?”

“The penalty for possession of that much pot with intention to sell is a minimum of twenty-five years, up to life. Except for your little cocaine bust in 1985, this is your only offense. Because I’m such a good lawyer, I think you’ll get the twenty-five years and serve about eight.”

Darryl sighed again. “Monique would shit over that.”

“Who is Monique?” Tubby asked.

“Aw, she’s my girlfriend. We’re probably getting married. She’s my night manager at Champs. I told her I might have to do six months. I think she might get another job if I got eight years.”

“Give me something to tell the U.S. Attorney and let’s make a deal. Then everybody’s happy.”

“Not as happy as you might think,” Darryl muttered. “I’ll see if maybe the Governor will commute my sentence. I contributed enough.”

“Not even the Governor can commute a federal sentence. He just can’t reach over to Pensacola and say, ‘You’ve got one of my very best friends locked up in your very comfy prison. Please cut him loose and send him home to the ‘Gret Stet’ of Louisiana.’”

“No? Okay, I guess not. What happens next?”

“I’m going to file discovery motions and see what the rest of their evidence is—other than catching you with several bales of grass in your truck. They’ll set it for trial in September, October maybe. There’s not much for you to do now but look after your business. And maybe you should take a little time off and spend it with Monique.”

“I’ve been thinking about doing that, too. Maybe run over to Gulf Shores or, who knows, fly up to Canada.”

“Whereabouts in Canada?”

“Heck if I know. Monique says she wants to go to the Yukon and see the Mounties.” Darryl shook his head. “Listen, Tubby, could I leave this with you?” He plunked the gym bag down on Tubby’s desk. The way he lifted it made it look heavy. “It’s important that it be in a safe place.”

“What is it?” Tubby didn’t want to touch it.

“It’s a lot of my business records. And some personal stuff to do with Monique. I’ve been getting things organized for going away, and this is stuff I don’t want to leave lying around. I was thinking you probably got some room in your safe. I wouldn’t want to leave it here more than a week. After that, I’ve made other arrangements.”

“Let me see what’s in it.”

“I don’t want to open it, Tubby, and I don’t think you want to see this stuff. I swear it’s just papers. Nothing illegal at all.”

“Is there anything that might be thought of as evidence of a crime in that bag?” Tubby was wondering if this conversation might be being tape-recorded. He had recently sat through a few hours of a local judge’s bribery trial, based largely on taped telephone conversations, and now he was paranoid whenever a client made any unusual suggestions. It cramped his spontaneity, since his clients were coming up with wild ideas all the time, but you had to be careful.

Darryl looked indignant. “Heck no,” he protested. “You think I’m crazy? You’re a lawyer. I know you don’t want any bad stuff. And by the way, I brought you the rest of your retainer. I made out the check for fifteen thousand dollars. Is that okay?” He pulled an envelope from his blazer pocket and offered it to Tubby.

Tubby got a warm feeling from Darryl. “Yes, that’s fine.” What the hell, he thought. “Sure, you can leave the bag here. Try to get it out this week, though. I may need to fit something into my safe that’s actually related to my law practice, you understand.”

“Tubby, it’s not going to be a problem. I really appreciate it. Look, I got to run. Call me at the bar if you hear anything. And you know I always got a table reserved for you.”

“Sure, Darryl. And think about your situation a little bit. Call me if you have something I can deal with. Say hi to Monique.”

After Darryl left, Tubby picked up the bag and squeezed it with his fingers. He couldn’t tell much about what was inside, but he was pretty sure it was paper. He held it up to the light but nothing showed through the fabric. He smelled it. The zipper had a tiny lock on it. Easy enough to force. Tubby shook his head at his own foolishness in accepting responsibility for anything that belonged to Darryl, but he did try to accommodate his paying clients. He opened the safe built into the cupboard below the bookshelves and stowed the bag inside next to a stack of wills. He spent a moment watching an old man and a young girl play a graceful game of tennis on the hotel roof below, then forced himself to go back to reading his vagueness exception. So much of the law was really a drag, he thought. It took straightforward disagreements and drew them out so much that the litigants finally screamed for relief or surrender, whichever would make it all stop. As an alternative to gun battles in the street, it was pretty good, but hardly anybody ever felt like a winner and absolutely nobody appreciated the lawyers. It was easy to feel sorry for yourself in this game.

But then look at Darryl. Tubby’s father had told him, whenever he got down in the dumps, to think about people with real problems. He did, and it helped.