Night Watchman

“No need for that.”

“I’ll follow you, anyway.”

“How did you find me?” Tubby asked.

“After I unlocked the cuffs, which I must say is a pretty extraordinary feat, I tracked his police car on my GPS. He’s got a built-in buzzer, like all the cops, and I have the code. I could know where every police car in the city is, if I wanted to.”

“Really? Well, good night.”

With Flowers trailing behind, the lawyer drove home for some liquid painkiller.

XXVIII

The next morning Tubby arrived at his office late with a black eye. Cherryly

The news on the radio, web, and TV had a lot of misinformation about the explosion that had killed a police officer. Only one victim was mentioned. The head of the police union was demanding that locals be permitted to conduct the investigation without involving any federal “gestapo” from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Flowers called to say that Boaz would not answer the phone, but he had another idea.

“I sent you an email,” the detective said. “It’s a copy of a page from the St. Agapius Church website with a picture of the last priest, who retired. His name is Escobar. If you can open it up, it might be your man.”

Tubby powered up his laptop and took a look. A slightly younger and more trustworthy-looking image of his interrogator appeared. “That’s him,” he said. “Can you find out where he lives?”

“I already know that. It’s on Belfast Street, up by St. Rita’s.”

“I’d like to get inside his house when he’s not there.”

“Easy enough. For what?”

“Old records. They said they had records going back decades. Ireanous Babineaux had them, and he got killed for them. What better place to keep them now than with the Night Watchman?”

“You think he’s the one? I’ll see if I can get inside today.”

“I’m going with you.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I get paid for taking risks like that.”

“It was me who got my head pounded. You keep watch on the house. Tell me when it’s clear. I’ll be close, and my phone is in my pocket.”

* * *

Father Escobar had a friend, a church sexton named Marcos, who picked the priest up most afternoons to go shopping and visit sick people. Flowers deduced that within six hours. On the following day he had Tubby meet him on Belfast at 1:30. Sure enough, the sexton appeared on schedule and parked his white Saturn in front of Father Escobar’s house. Marcos got out, a tired-looking man in a rumpled brown suit, and approached the front door. He was admitted and a few minutes later reemerged with the priest behind him. They got into the Saturn and drove away toward Fontainebleau.

Observing this from a block away, Tubby and his sleuth exited the detective’s Jimmy SUV and casually strolled along the sidewalk. They were surprised by a young jogger in sweats who passed them pushing her red baby stroller. She barely seemed to notice them. She had a phone to her ear.

Flowers turned into the priest’s driveway, which served as the divider between their target and the neighbor’s house. Tubby fell in step. At the rear of the house narrow concrete steps led up to a back entrance sheltered under a dirty aluminum awning. Flowers ascended in one long stride and, so swiftly that Tubby didn’t even see it, he torqued open the back door and slipped inside. The lawyer hurried in after him.

They were in a small laundry room adjoining an old-fashioned kitchen, the kind common in New Orleans houses that haven’t been renovated since the fifties. It had wooden kitchen cabinets painted in lime sherbet, a black and white tiled linoleum floor, a small rickety yellow table with the morning breakfast dishes still on it, and a white enameled sink, its discolored chrome fixtures dotted with corrosion. The room was lit by a pair of fluorescent tubes on the ceiling that buzzed and blinked faintly when Flowers clicked on the switch.

“Not a rich man,” the detective whispered. He seemed relieved. If one dug deeply, which Tubby had, one would find that Flowers came from a culture that didn’t believe that priests, even the bad ones, should ever be rich.

The next dim room was being used as an office. Past it, through tall French doors, was the parlor and beyond that the front door to the street. The office had intriguing filing cabinets, a desk and a large bookcase stuffed with magazines, and a stairway, marked by carved newel posts, led upwards.

Flowers ascended it. Tubby paused to size up the office and think about the man who worked here. There were a number of Bibles. The blinds were pulled down to shut out the sun. A ceiling fixture of slender plastic wands tipped with yellow candle-flame-shaped bulbs provided less light than what little sneaked around the curtains. The man who worked here had no great interest in the world outside. Was he inflicting punishment on himself?

Tubby went looking for Flowers.

There was a bathroom at the top of the stairs. Its door hung open, revealing walls tiled in pink. A stained white curtain covered a little window. Tubby moved past that private spot and found Flowers poking around in the priest’s bedroom.

It, too, was simple enough. A single bed, properly made up, a tidy bedside table with a goose neck lamp, a towering dark mahogany dresser, and prints on the wall of religious figures, all men, some with halos. All were totally unknown to Tubby who, unlike Flowers, was a Protestant.

Even though the old fanatic had abandoned Tubby to be eliminated, the lawyer had the sense that there was something sacrilegious about invading the priest’s private space.

“Let’s get out of here, man,” he whispered to the detective, who was on his knees looking under the bed. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“Wait just a second,” Flowers said, his voice muffled under the mattress. “What have we here?”

He backed out, dragging with him a long plastic bin, the kind that might store extra blankets or winter sweaters. It rolled on little wheels.

“Looks like papers of some kind.” He pushed it in Tubby’s direction. “There’s another one under here.” The top half of the detective disappeared again.

Plastic clamps fastened each end of the bin, and Tubby wasted no time popping them open. Inside were dozens of neatly stacked file folders and ledger books, packed tightly next to each other. Tubby extracted the first one on top.

The folder was labeled, “March 1961.” Inside were carbon copies of “Minutes,” and on the first sheet he saw, after the date and a list of names who were “In Attendance,” a “Discussion of Castro Nationalizing Church Property.” He gave it a quick read, which revealed that the discussion detailed efforts to lobby Florida Senator Smathers and Louisiana Senator Long for military intervention in Cuba.

Flowers dragged out the other box. Tubby grabbed it and looked inside. On top was a folder labeled “March 25, 1963.” And the first item, also called “Minutes,” stated that, “The application of Lee H. Oswald is tabled. Donation of $200 from Judge Perez accepted. Bookkeeper will acknowledge.” Tubby replaced the cover on the bin.

“This could be very heavy stuff,” he said hoarsely.

“We can carry them.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Tubby said.

“Want to take them?” Flowers asked.

The lawyer pondered. The material wasn’t theirs, of course, but it had unmistakable historical significance. This priest and his friends had possibly killed a police officer to keep it hidden. And it was stuff that Tubby would really like to read.

He nodded, and the two men, each carrying one of the long bins, shuffled down the steps.

Flowers clicked off the lights as they went, and they exited from the back. Catching his breath, Tubby waited with the boxes in the driveway, looking as inconspicuous as a stranger can look standing beside a priest’s house in a residential neighborhood at two in the afternoon, while Flowers brought the Yukon around. They made quick work of storing the boxes in the back, and both men jumped inside. Flowers circled the block so that Tubby could hop into his own car, and they were out of there.