Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series) by Tony Dunbar Page B

Branscomb’s letter to you dated August second. I’ll ask you to look at it.”
    “Okay,” said Tubby’s client.
    “Do you remember it?”
    “Sort of. It looks like a million other letters.”
    “Did you have any discussions between Exhibit Three and Exhibit Four—with Branscomb, that is? Think hard and tell me.”
    “What are you saying?” the witness asked.
    “Wait,” Tubby cut in. “Objection that the question is too confusing to follow and is not even a question.”
    “I don’t know what he means,” Adrian’s father said to the court reporter, like perhaps she could explain it. She faithfully took down every word, smiling at him sympathetically while she did so.
    “Maybe you could put all those letters in a row on the table,” Tubby suggested, “and we could all understand better what you are asking about.”
    “I’m trying to be precise,” Thomas said in exasperation, “and I’ll ask that you resist the temptation to interrupt at every question.”
    “I’m not interrupting,” Tubby protested hotly. “I’m objecting, and it’s not a temptation, it’s my responsibility as this man’s lawyer.”
    Before Tubby could get on a roll with his speech, the telephone in the conference room rang, and the court reporter was distracted. Tubby took a deep breath and went to the credenza to pick it up. It was his answering service, and a woman told him that his daughter was on the line.
    “Put her through,” he said.
    “Hello, Daddy? This is Debbie.” He remembered that it was Debbie’s first prom—not at her own school but at her date’s. Tubby had asked Mattie to be sure to get a picture of her in her gown—parenting by proxy.
    “Hi, Debbie. What’s wrong?”
    “Can you come get me?”
    “Why—where are you?”
    “I’m at the Marriott. I’m stranded. Josh got drunk and drove off, and I don’t know anybody here, and I’m very upset.”
    “Sure, honey. Can you take a cab?”
    “I don’t have any money with me. I called home already but nobody answered.”
    “Are you in the lobby?”
    “Yes,” she snuffled.
    “Go out by the front door, where the doorman in the red coat is standing. I’ll pick up the car and be around in about ten minutes.”
    “Thank you, Daddy.”
    Tubby hung up and got his coat.
    “Sorry. Illness in the family. We’re going to have to reconvene at a later date.”
    “What? You can’t do that,” the opposition insisted.
    “Let’s go,” Tubby said to his client, who also got up and grabbed his smokes.
    “My apologies, counselor, family emergency,” Tubby said.
    “What is this? Is somebody in the hospital? What’s going on?” Thomas sputtered.
    “Can you show him the way out, please?” Tubby asked the court reporter. “And please turn off the lights.”
    “Yes, sir,” she said.
    “Goodnight, everybody,” Tubby said as he went out the door with his client in tow.
    In the elevator Adrian’s father said, “That was a neat trick, Tubby. He was getting me all mixed up. You want to go catch a couple of drinks?”
    “No, really, Sid. I have to go pick up my daughter. She got marooned at the prom.”
    “Hey, whatever works.”
    That’s how you got a reputation as a smart lawyer.
    Quacking and beating the air frantically with their wings, the ducks scattered away from a huge Labrador retriever who splashed happily into the lagoon. The birds settled into the water a few yards away and then led the snorting beast, his head sticking out of the pea green water, in circles around and around the pond.
    “Anyhow, call me if you need me,” Tubby told Collette.
    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