Read Online Night Watchman (The Tubby Dubonnet Series Book 8) by Tony Dunbar - Free Book Online Page B

subdued lights and soft ragtime music. This was an offshoot of the original Galatoire’s next door, which the lawyer regarded as one of the finest establishments on the planet, but not the sort of place you went to on a whim. He saw Jason sitting with his back to the mahogany-paneled wall. He had an ample martini to his lips. He stood up to greet Tubby, showing how tall and thin he was. Though his beard and black hair were neat, the heavy black-framed glasses he wore and his rumpled trousers and jacket made him look like a college professor.
    “Gin or vodka?” Tubby asked. He slid into a chair to face his host.
    “A Beefeater’s, my friend. What’s your poison?”
    “I’ll follow suit.” A waiter appeared. “Whatever the gentleman is having,” Tubby instructed. He laid the proffered menu aside. “You had a good day with the ponies?”
    “A very good day. A little filly named Trailer Trash came in to win the third race at Saratoga at thirteen to one. I’ve been following her for weeks, and she’s always coming in fourth or fifth, every single race. I figured the jockeys were holding her back, and I was right. I nailed that one, then, bless my heart, I won the daily double!”
    “Very exciting.” Tubby also liked nothing better than a day at the races, but he wasn’t a fan of off-track betting parlors. They were now basically given over to video poker and slot machines. The traditional clientele had disappeared almost entirely. “How often do you wager?” he asked.
    “I dabble in something every day. It’s an addiction, I know. I keep two bookies busy. I even gambled online for a while, but then I got hacked. That was a learning experience.”
    The waiter came back with a pair of drinks and offered to take their orders.
    “A sixteen-ounce strip, garçon.” Jason tossed back his first drink and reached for his fresh one. “Medium rare. And your
potatoes au gratin
and brown butter mushrooms.”
    Tubby scanned the menu quickly.
    “I’ll try your House Boudin-Stuffed Roasted Quail.”
    “With a salad or soup?”
    “Why yes, please. I’ll have your turtle soup.”
    “What about the horseradish-crusted bone marrow?” Jason asked.
    “Sounds fulfilling, doesn’t it, but not today. I’d better stick to my diet.”
    “Save some space for the peach cobbler. It’s pretty damn good.”
    “Let’s do this every week,” his guest suggested.
    Jason laughed and took another gulp. “Now, what did you call me about?”
    “An old friend of mine owns a bar and music club.”
    “No surprise there.”
    “Yeah. Well, she needs to be able to measure the decibel levels outside her bar while a band is playing. I thought you might have an idea about how to do that.”
    “You use a sound level meter, which I imagine you can probably buy at Radio Shack. Above ninety decibels, something like that, is bad for you.” Jason turned thoughtful. “But that seems like a very old-school way to go about it. How can you demonstrate what and where you took a reading?”
    He pulled out his phone and began thumbing away.
    “You know, I don’t see that there’s an app being offered for this.” He started humming.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “It seems to me that what you’d want, for evidentiary purposes as it were, is an app that lets you take a picture of the bar in real time and display the decibel rating on the screen in a way you could save it. It would record the place, the time and the sound. But I don’t see that such an app is available.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Not bad at all. I’ll play around with this tonight and see if I can’t create one. Who knows, this could be another big idea.”
    “Don’t forget where you got it.”
    Jason resurfaced to focus on Tubby. He laughed. “You don’t even know what an app is,” he said.
    “Of course I do.” Jason spared him from having to display the limits of his knowledge by launching into a discourse on his date with Norella. They had danced till three in