Big Easy Bonanza

fact, ridiculous, not to say dangerous. Hughes was one of the first blacks to make a serious run for Civil District Court, and Tubby had walked him around to meet a lot of the white lawyers in town.
    “I can get out of your hair,” Tubby said.
    “No, let them suffer. I need a breather. That’s why I told Mrs. Carlozzi to bring you on in. So what’s new?”
    “I got a little problem.”
    “What kind of problem? How can I help you?”
    “It’s an ethical problem. It seems I’ve got something I don’t own, and I’m not sure who it belongs to.”
    The judge leaned back in his chair. “So what is it?” he asked.
    “You don’t want to know. Well, maybe later, but not now.
    “So you keep it, what’s the problem? After a while it’s yours by acquisitive prescription.”
    “There may not be a problem. I don’t think anybody has a legitimate claim to it, at least not better than my claim. The police might like to know about it. I don’t know for sure.”
    “You mean it’s involved in a crime?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t know that.”
    “Are the police looking for it?”
    “Not so far as I know, and I doubt it.”
    “They haven’t asked you for it.”
    “Certainly not.”
    “So what’s the big deal? If the police want something, they’re not shy, they’ll ask for it. If they don’t ask, fuck them.”
    “That’s about where I’m coming out.”
    “If nobody’s asking for it, and you don’t know who it belongs to, keep it.”
    “Okay.”
    “Hypothetically speaking, of course.” The judge grinned.
    “Right. I realize you don’t have all the facts.”
    “Just declare it on your income tax so you don’t get Uncle on your tail.”
    “Hmmm.”
    “So what else you got?”
    “I got this urge to proposition my daughter’s sixteen year-old girlfriend. Is that all right? No, just kidding. I think that’s about it. I’ll be going.”
    “I saw Mattie at the Gibsons’ party,” the judge said. “She looked good. Divorcing you seems to have agreed with her.”
    “Yeah. I saw her this week. She is looking good.”
    “Let’s have lunch one day.”
    “Okay, Al, maybe Friday. I’ll be kind of busy until then.”
    “Call me Friday morning.”
    “You got it.”
    Tubby rose from his chair and started out, but Judge Hughes held up a hand to stop him.
    “Do you know what I tell judges from all over the country when I go to the Bar Association meetings and all those judicial conferences?”
    “No, what?” Tubby asked.
    “I tell them to come to New Orleans to see the prettiest girls in the world; do you agree?”
    “Sure,” Tubby said.
    “Well,” said the judge, getting up and stretching. He came around his desk to face Tubby. “You may or may not actually agree, but if you count the Vietnamese girls and the brown girls and the white girls and the black girls, you know I’m right. Just look around you. And what makes them so pretty is that they smile. I don’t know if it’s what we put in the water or what. In New Orleans, the girls smile. That’s why they’re so beautiful.” He squeezed Tubby’s arm. “You’ve got to keep smiling, Tubby. That’s my moral. And on your way out would you ask Mrs. Carlozzi to send in the TRO?”
    “Sure, see you, Al.”
    * * *
    Tubby made it to the Central Grocery before it closed, double-parked, and picked up a can of olive oil and a large sack of pistachios. The olive oil was for cooking and the pistachio nuts were for writing briefs. Since he’d started doing all of his own shopping and cooking, he ate much better things.
    After he got his groceries, he drove around the French Quarter to the old D. H. Holmes department store parking garage on Iberville Street. You parked your own car and took the keys with you. With almost a million dollars in the trunk, he was not about to turn the wheel over to some kid. Also it was rush hour, and he didn’t want to get tied up in business-district traffic driving across Canal to the Fairmont parking lot. It was just a short walk to the hotel.
    The Fairmont’s narrow lobby ran the length of the block. Since they tore down the St. Charles, this was really the only one of the grand hotels left. Carnival’s first royalty held court here, though they called it the Grunewald then, and Huey Long plotted upstairs to beat the New Orleans machine. The scheme for his famous “Round Robin,” which scuttled his impeachment, was hatched upstairs, so they said, and in a nearby room his