Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8) Read Online Free PDF Page A

urban planners, filmmakers, and start-up entrepreneurs had moved in, creating the newest outer fringe of hip culture in New Orleans.
    Tubby’s detour to the office was uneventful. Cherrylynn, his long-time secretary, had kept up with the phone and emails for the past two weeks with her usual competence. Quite honestly, Tubby hadn’t really been working his law practice for a couple of years, so her job wasn’t full-time-interesting nowadays. In fact, he was considering bringing in a young lawyer to keep her occupied and to handle the business that Tubby fancied he could generate if he really put his mind to it. In the interim Cherrylynn had been taking afternoon classes at Loyola University studying philosophy, politics, and economics. Only thirty-two more credits to a college degree.
    He had also picked a very good time to go on a Florida vacation. To say that August was a slow time at the courthouse would be an insult to stoned sloths. There were summer days when you couldn’t find a member of the judiciary anywhere in the building, not even at their normal midday rendezvous presiding over raw oysters and Trout Meuniere at Mandina’s.
    Monkey Business, the bar, encroached on the sidewalk and was almost in the street. Its warped cypress siding was painted white with a faded advertisement for Regal Beer, a defunct brand, and it even boasted a sprayed-on “X” in a circle, the red mark left by Katrina’s first responders indicating the number of bodies and abandoned pets found within.
    “This is a classic joint,” Tubby said appreciatively as he got out of the car. “Do they actually serve lunch?”
    “Good fried shrimp,” Raisin replied, climbing out from behind the wheel of the used red Miata his girlfriend had picked up for him. Tubby stretched mightily, afraid he might have thrown his back out just getting into the damned thing.
    Coming in from the blazing sun it was dark in the bar. When his eyes adjusted Tubby beheld a comfortably familiar layout. A long bar trailed off into a back room fitted with a stage, a handful of tables. A few patrons sat at the bar or at tables, concentrating on their beers and their private conversations.
    Bustling toward these arrivals came a large brassy woman wearing an x-tra large lumberjack shirt, a dirty white Stetson hat, and flip flops.
    “Here they are, the old sexy dudes!” she brayed, and gave them each a crushing hug. Tubby hadn’t seen Janie for years, since way before the hurricane. Those intervening years of two packs a day had made her voice even huskier. The dimness of her professional environment had made her skin even whiter. Her merry face was crisscrossed with tiny pink veins. The beer had made her even stouter. He wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle her.
    “It’s so good to see you again, Tubby,” she rejoiced.
    “What about me?” Raisin asked.
    “You, too, but I already seen you last week. Here it is. My new place!” She swept it all up in the sails of her arms. “It ain’t much, but we’re doing all right. Come on. Pick a table and get a seat.”
    They settled in, scratching their chairs along the wooden floor.
    “Jack!” she yelled. “Bring us all a drink. I’m going to have one, too.” She winked at Tubby. “This is a reunion, right, darlin’?”
    The drinks came quickly. Jack was a young guy with a plaid shirt and a trim beard who looked like he had just flown in from Portland. He was in shape. A capable bouncer, Tubby speculated.
    “So, what’s been going on with you, my love?” Janie asked loudly. “Raisin tells me you’re still the best lawyer in town.”
    Tubby went over it – how he had fared in the hurricane, what he had been doing since, how his kids had grown up. “I had a bar of my own, too,” he told her. “Mike’s, down in the Irish Channel.”
    “I heard about that,” Janie said. “Sorry I never made it over. You don’t still own it?”
    “Yes, he does,” Raisin put in.
    “No, I don’t. I sold it to Pinky