Free Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series) by Tony Dunbar

favorite clients were local and state politicos, and the kind of people who hung around them, and he had made his reputation in zoning permits, municipal ordinances, and state construction regulations. He had a keen eye for the fine line dividing permitted public profiteering from out-right fraud, and he got paid to show it to his clients before they heard it from the state attorney general.
    Reggie liked to say he complemented Tubby. Rarely did their work overlap. They had started off as social friends, through their wives, before they had been law partners. What Tubby liked about Reggie was his gift for gab and his unshakable cynicism. Reggie could walk into any room full of people and find hands to shake. He would have been naturally suited to politics if he hadn’t thought it was beneath him. He liked to be the guy who put things together, and he was out for bigger game—bigger money—than public office offered, even in Louisiana, where it offered a lot.
    The only time Tubby had ever seen Reggie nonplussed was when they were both in moot court back in law school. The occasion was a trial—not a real one but a student enactment to learn from experience the feel of the courtroom—but the judge’s role was being played by an honest-to-God federal judge named Sealey, whose teaching method was to kick ass. Tubby was one of the jurors, and Reggie was the defense attorney. When time came for his opening statement, Reggie came from behind his counsel table and approached the jury. As the words, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” came out of his mouth, he lazily took off his jacket—with visions, no doubt, of a folksy William Jennings Bryan clouding his senses. Judge Sealey’s eyes bugged out. Reggie popped his suspenders and got no further than, “This case is about greed,” when the judge began pounding his gavel on the bench, like there was a rattlesnake he wanted dead, and bellowed, “Young man, turn around.”
    Reggie complied so swiftly that he almost tripped and had to brace himself against the jury box for support. Great circles of perspiration suddenly appeared on his shirt.
    “You will never,” shouted the judge, “never, never, take off your coat in my courtroom. If you ever seek to practice in my courtroom again without your coat on, I will cite you for contempt and have you ejected by the bailiff.” Never mind that there was no bailiff present among the dramatis personae; the point was made. Reggie dove for his coat and got into it posthaste.
    “You may continue,” the judge said, mildly. And Reggie did, in a weak voice, but he kept it short. He never repeated the mistake. In fact, Tubby noticed that over the years, you hardly ever saw Reggie without a coat, a blazer, or at least a sweater covering his shoulders. If he was caught somewhere where it would look odd, like on a beach or a golf course, Reggie might let his shirtsleeves show, but he seemed ill at ease when he did.
    Tubby and Reggie rarely crossed paths after graduation, since Tubby concentrated on trial work and Reggie was generally allergic to courtrooms. They kept track of each other through their wives, who were both active in the Friends of the New Orleans Museum of Art. The Pan Am airplane crash in Kenner brought them back together professionally.
    Reggie had inserted himself into the plaintiffs’ team, though he made no pretense—to the other lawyers at least—that he knew anything whatsoever about personal injury law. One of the bereaved families there were about two hundred of them had hired Reggie, due to some misunderstanding of his competence, which gave him the right to sit at the counsel table. He immediately began organizing the lawyers, moderating such questions as to how to apportion shares of the recovery and who would do the actual work, and negotiating with insurance companies. Whenever there is money in the parish, the politicians get theirs, and Reggie helped to cut up and serve that piece of the soufflé, too.