Big Easy Bonanza

drifted over the things he was supposed to do that day. Then it settled for a moment on Jynx Margolis. Was there some chemistry there? It had been so long since he had dated anybody that he had forgotten how to read the signs. She was certainly appealing, in a good, clean, middle-aged fun kind of way, a nicely tanned and very fragrant kind of way. Problems did not weigh heavily on Jynx’s shoulders. Marriage to her would be difficult, he imagined. She was irrepressibly self-indulgent and sort of an airhead sometimes. But who was talking marriage? Could she really find him attractive? Hard to tell with Jynx what was actually a magnetic field and what was simply her flirtatious nature. Maybe with her it didn’t matter. She was a mystery to Tubby, a bit exotic. It was flattering having an exotic try to flirt with you.
    Tubby was lost in thought when E. J. Chaisson came through the door. He was slight and dapper, combing his thin blond hair straight back to accentuate his large eyes and smooth, angular face, like a hungry street kid who had picked up good manners. He wore Italian suits from Rubenstein Brothers on Canal Street and always carried a cane or umbrella. Today it was a thin brown stick with an ivory handle that Tubby saw was a carved alligator, its tail curving around and gripping the wood. E.J. hung it with a flourish on the back of the empty chair between them.
    “Tubby, I intended to arrive early and hold a table for you. Did you wait long?”
    “Not at all. I’ve just ordered a drink. Join me.” Tubby waved at the waiter.
    “How have you been? A Sazerac, please,” Chaisson told the man who appeared beside him.
    “Busy, but that’s what pays the bills.”
    “I’ve also been busy. I’m going into radio.”
    “Are you going to be explaining legal issues to the public?”
    “That’s certainly a good idea.” His drink arrived. E.J. took a sip and nodded to show that it was agreeable. “No, I’m starting to advertise—in Vietnamese.”
    “You speak Vietnamese?”
    “Heck no, but my yard man does. He’s been working for me for a year, and one day we start to talking about what I do. He tells me, guess what, there’s about twenty thousand boat people in New Orleans who he is related to, and not one of them knows an attorney.”
    E.J. grinned suddenly, showing his pointed white teeth, and winked. For emphasis he snapped a little bread stick from the basket the waiter put before him, stuck a scoop of fresh butter on the end, and waved it like a conductor’s baton. “He’s going to bring me clients. Plus interpret for them. If I take a case, he gets a piece of the action.”
    Tubby finished his drink.
    “The Bar Association won’t like that.” Tubby was an expert on things the Bar Association would and wouldn’t like. He’d run several moneymaking ideas past its ethics committee, and each time had been advised to steer clear. He was sensitive because of a problem he had had over the Pan Am crash. After Tubby had signed up one of the victims, a downtown attorney had complained that Tubby was hustling clients in the hospital. Tubby had explained, in a letter to the Bar, that the referral had come quite innocently from one of the physicians treating the poor man, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Feingold. Tubby also immediately stopped his check to the doctor, even though it was just a token of friendship. He heard no more about it from the Bar, but he had heard about the check from Dr. Feingold ever since.
    “The thing is, you can’t split your fees with a nonlawyer. It’s unethical.”
    “Are you sure about that?” E.J. asked.
    “Oh yeah, positive. Look it up in the rules.”
    “We didn’t have to learn that stuff to pass the bar exam when I was in law school.”
    The waiter returned and took their orders. The oysters were salty, and E.J. ordered his en brochette. Tubby chose trout meunière amandine. “Look,” said Tubby, “there’s ways around it. Why not just call your guy a paralegal and put him on a nice salary?”
    “I don’t think so,” E.J. said sourly. “I’m afraid his appetite is a little bigger than that. He wants to be on the incentive plan.”
    “Send him to law school.”
    “Can’t do that,” E.J. said between bites of bread. “Then what would he need me for?”
    “Okay, try this. Suppose you set him up an advertising company. Immigrants all love to own a company. Do you agree?” E.J. nodded. “He broadcasts advertisements in Vietnamese for your law