Night Watchman

XXXI

Tubby finally co

“Do you mean the JFK assassination?” the librarian asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” Tubby said. “And more.” He popped open one of the plastic covers and flipped open one of the folders that referenced Lee Harvey Oswald.

Sternwick’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the pages more closely.

“There’s lots more in there,” Tubby repeated. “You’ve got material on Judge Leander Perez down in Plaquemines Parish. There’s this money trail to Dallas. There’s evidence of shootings and beatings and other crimes. And how the police gave cover to the whole thing.”

“How would we authenticate any of this material?” the skeptical librarian wondered out loud.

“I guess you could get together some scholars. I’ll tell them what I know and who else they ought to talk to.”

“We do have local scholars,” Sternwick said, thinking out loud. “There’s a Professor Prima over at Loyola. I’ll call him right away and tell him what we think we have. And there are, of course, people here at Tulane, too, I’m sure.”

Tubby just nodded along. He was content that the wheels were at last begi

“How did you get these papers?” the librarian asked.

“That’s a long story,” Tubby said. “I might want to have my own lawyer in the room when I tell it. But if you decide that these records are real and want to open them up to the world, I’d like to give them a name.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d call it the ‘Parker M. Haggarty Collection.’ ”

* * *

Since Jason Boaz wouldn’t answer his phone, Tubby resorted to beating on the inventor’s door.

A timid cry from within asked, “Who’s there?” and Tubby told him. He was admitted. Boaz was dressed very properly in a newly-pressed black suit and blue-striped tie.

“Whose funeral?” Tubby asked.

“I’m preparing for my own,” Jason said morosely. Tubby followed him back to the kitchen where Boaz had pancakes on the griddle. “I don’t know what to make of the world, Tubby,” he said and flipped his breakfast onto a waiting china plate. “I think I may be out of place in this space and time.”

Tubby took a chair at the small kitchen table. “You have been acting unbalanced, Jason,” he acknowledged.

“Yes, I suppose I have.”

“You are in a lot of trouble,” the lawyer went on. “You killed a policeman, and whoever that other man was with him, the fat one.”

“His name is not important, and never was. To us he was just the ‘Leader.’ ”

“And you tried to kill me, and you almost got Raisin.”

“You’ll get me out of this, won’t you, Tubby?” Boaz poured syrup liberally over his pancakes. “You always have.”

“I can’t be your lawyer this go-round, Jason. That should be pretty obvious.”

“Oh well, it probably doesn’t matter. He’ll catch up with me soon enough.”

“Who?”

“The Night Watchman, of course.”

“You mean the priest, Father Escobar?”

Jason looked at Tubby as if he were psycho.

“That’s a ridiculous idea, Tubby. What does that venial-sinful individual know about shooting policemen, or putting a bomb in a car, for Heaven’s sake?” Thinking that he had made a pun, Jason broke out in laughter, which he squelched with a large forkful of his dripping confection.

Tubby was taken aback. “I was sure it was the priest. There was a passage in the minutes where it said that the ‘Night Watchman’ said the benediction.”

“That means nothing,” Jason scoffed. “We were all very religious in those days. Any one of us could offer a proper prayer. The task rotated from meeting to meeting.”

“So, who did all those things? Who tried to run me off the road in Folsom?”

“I didn’t know about that, but can you imagine Father Escobar driving to the Northshore?” Jason scoffed.

“So who was it? Was it always the policeman, Rick Sandoval?”

“Rick was very mean,” Boaz said sadly. “May he rest in peace. No, Rick couldn’t be every place at once. He was a working man with a schedule to keep.”

“So who was it? Who was the Night Watchman? Who killed Parker Haggarty?”

“There were generations of Night Watchmen.”

“Never mind that. Who killed Parker Haggarty?”

“Paul Kronke, of course. Our other faithful policeman. And he may kill me for telling you.”

“Detective Kronke?” the lawyer was flabbergasted. “Why, he’s not even Cuban.”

“Naturally not,” Jason said, spreading his hands. “No Cuban would be so brutish and, what’s the word, unsubtle.”

* * *

“He said it was Detective Kronke, now retired,” Tubby told Raisin. They had taken a table at Janie’s bar on St. Claude. The place was dead. They were the only customers in it. “Sandoval was apparently Kronke’s mentor and preceded him onto the police force by about a year. Because of Kronke’s family co

“Doesn’t sound like a Latin name to me,” Raisin said. “Kronke, what’s that?”

“I don’t know. German, maybe. Jason just said that Kronke’s family was very anti-Communist. Actually, he said, ‘anti-Bolshevik.’ The youth group appealed to all kinds.”

“Probably an FBI plant.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember? In those days the most rabid provocateurs were actually undercover FBI agents.”

“The fu

“Really? Did you tell Jason Boaz that he may have blown up an undercover agent?”

“Yes, I did. He said it couldn’t be true. He even laughed about it. Then he started crying. That’s when I left him.”

“A movement rife with CIA and FBI men is certainly an interesting proposition, but how would we ever know?”

“We won’t. And we’ve got a bigger problem than figuring that out.”

“What’s that.”

“Kronke is still on the loose.” Tubby stared at the wall, trying to imagine what further mayhem the retired homicidal detective might still be capable of. “You know,” the morose lawyer continued, “there is evil out there.”

“That’s where I’ve always questioned you, buddy,” Raisin complained. “Statements just like that.”

“You disagree?”

“No— but I wouldn’t say it.”

“Because it’s too true?” Tubby was insistent.

“No, because it just doesn’t sound grown up.”

Tubby was offended. “Well, what if I said it this way? The world is depressingly full of mindless brutality.”

“That’s a lot better.”

“And the worst of that brutality is committed by the male half of the population,” Tubby mused.

Raisin slouched in his chair. “Now you’re getting too philosophical,” he said.

“You disagree with that?”

Raisin shrugged. “The record is pretty clear, but I’d have to add something, based on my own life’s experiences.”

“What’s that?”

“You can’t just put it all on ‘the men’ or on ‘the world.’ ” He put quotation marks around the words with his fingers. “Sometimes the bad stuff is committed by each of us.”

“As in you and me?”

“I’m not excluding anybody.”

“You want a drink?” Tubby asked.

“Not at this very moment.” Knowing him as well as he did, Tubby figured what he wanted was a cigarette. “Has your determination to nail the guy who killed that boy Parker been satisfied?” Raisin asked, evidently to change the subject.

“No. It’s not over yet. Sandoval, Pancera, and the fat man are all gone, that’s true. But the others in the car, that priest, Escobar, and Detective Kronke, who pulled the trigger, haven’t yet been brought to justice.”