Little Easter

Dark Pride

The only thing working hard the next morning was my dialing finger. O’Toole had finally given me some meat for my table. But when you spilled out all the fat and reduced it over high heat, there really wasn’t much to chew on. I’d gotten just enough to eat to let let me know how hungry I really was.

I punched up Larry Feld’s office. Much to my chagrin, his secretary was still alive. She didn’t exactly treat my call like the second coming, but Mary managed to put me through before any more of my hair turned gray or fell out. I knew it was in my head, but the phone got cold against my ear when Larry spoke. I bit my lip and thanked the man for his guide to the Diamond Exchange and the list of Johnny’s cop mates. Before he could ask, I admitted both seeds had borne fruit. Larry lied about being happy to help. Larry didn’t understand happy, but even at this distance I could hear him tallying up the payback. Larry understood debt. I decided to increase mine.

There was just one more little favor I had to ask. I gave him as much as I could about Kate Barnum. I needed to know more. I needed to know why she was dumped from the Times. I wanted the inside skinny on her husband’s suicide. I needed to know about any dirt, about anything that could hurt or stop her. Larry didn’t respond immediately, but I could swear I heard his fangs clicking against the phone. Larry didn’t have to ask why. He understood about blackmail and painting people into corners. Some people painted corners of their own.

Kate Barnum’s number came quickly enough to my finger. I’d just dictated it to Larry. I got in half a ring before her smoky voice interrupted.

“Your hand surgically attached to the phone?”

“God,” she coughed, “I wish I could be so witty. Do you think you could teach me?” Barnum moved on without waiting for my answer. “I got prelims on the deceased bird collector. Want it now or in person?” This time she waited.

“Give me the basics now and we can get particular later,” I spoke, expecting the dead woman to have; ‘. . some kinda funny name. Something biblical. An-drella, maybe.’ That’s what O’Toole had prepared me for. It’s not what I got.

“Carlene Carstead. 1422 General Lee Boulevard, Biloxi, Mississippi. Forty-four years of age. Unmarried. No children. Assistant manager Dixieland Pig and Whistle, 2001 Delta Avenue, Biloxi. .”

She droned on like that for some time. I’m not sure when I stopped paying attention. My mind was racing fast enough to lap itself. I tried recalling the dead woman’s made-up orange face and her self-possessed tone of voice when asking for Johnny Blue. Somehow my recollections of her didn’t add up to the deep south. South Brooklyn maybe, but not the deep south.

“Do you have a place of birth down there?” I shouted into the mouthpiece.

“Wait. . Yeah, right here; Baptist and Saviour Hospital, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 4/1/45. Why?” Barnum had picked up on my frantic curiosity for a fact which shouldn’t have mattered much.

“Nothin’,” I did my best stage yawn.

“Nothing my ass, Klein,” the reporter didn’t care much for my acting.

“Speaking of your ass. .” I injected, trying another tack.

“Later. Tonight around eight?” she agreed too readily, figuring she’d have more success with me in person.

“Eight it is. Make me up a copy of your little fact sheet. Okay?”

“It’ll be here. Klein!” she screamed, sensing me about to hang up.

“Yeah?” I pulled the phone back to my ear.

“What do you suppose a glorified grocery clerk from Biloxi was doing in Sound Hill, Long Island, New York on Christmas Eve? And what do you suppose she did to make someone mad enough at her to blow an access road through her skull and then pave it with golden feathers? Klein,” she paused, waiting for an answer that wasn’t forthcoming. “You’re not the only mathematician in town. Pretty soon the whole neighborhood’s gonna be working on this equation. I’ve already started putting some twos and twos together myself.”

“And what’d’ya get?” I played along.

“A headache. But my best hunches come on the heels of headaches. Work fast, Klein,” Barnum’s voice dropped into a more serious octave. “I don’t think we’re alone in this anymore.” I listened to her phone rattle back into its cradle.

I waited for a dial tone and punched up long distance info. Both numbers were listed. They would be. I knew that. Now the ugly part would follow; the scamming, the half-truths, the things that I’d fooled myself I’d left behind. I felt an old need. I brewed some coffee.

I liked coffee less these days. Maybe it was just less important. When I did insurance work, coffee kept me company. When I was an ambulance chaser’s best friend, trailing broken necks to make certain they were wearing their braces, most of my blood was bagel-shop Java. When I had to pretend about who I was and what I wanted and why, coffee straightened my face, stiffened my spine, told some of the better lies. And when the deception was done, I could piss my spent muscle into the empty cup it’d come in. Now this stuff with Johnny had brought it all back; the lies, the scamming and the coffee.

If they could swat a ball around like they bounced my call back and forth, the folks at Baptist and Saviour Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana would have one hell of a volleyball squad. One thing you have to give those Cajuns though, they were polite about fucking up. At least I got to the office I wanted without speaking to any patients.

“Patient Records, Marie Antoinette Gilbeau speakin’. How can we help y’all today?” a voice as bright as the noonday sun wanted to know.

“Hey, yo, Marie Antoinette,” I laid on the Brook-lynspeak thicker than the walls of a fallout shelter. “Let ‘em eat cake, right baby?”

“I suppose,” her tone darkened at the repetition of a bad joke she’d probably heard every day of her life since she was three.

“Sorry ‘bout dat,” I confessed. “Forgive an old cop for his stupidity?” The lie came to my lips easy enough.

“Cop!” Miss Guilbeau seemed impressed. “Y’ain’t no local lawman. Dat tone a your’s ‘bout as Yankee as dey come.”

“Sharp, baby. Very sharp. You gotta good ear,” I complimented, noting to myself that her dialect and mine weren’t that different. “Detective Bob Bosco, New York City Police, Missing Persons.” I left it there. If the hunch I was playing had any merit, she’d supply the momentum.

“I gotta go have my palm read or sometin’. You de third person from New York I spoke wid dis week.” My hunch had merit. “Seems some woman born down dis way been murdered up north. Cryin’ shame, de value a life dese days.”

“Sickening.” No need to lie about that.

“Ain’t it? You wouldn’t be callin’ bout de same woman, would ya?”

“Carlene Carstead, born 4/1-”

“Dat’s her, sure ‘nough,” Marie cut me off. “April Fools Baby.” I hadn’t realized, but Miss Antoinette’s observation was quite right. “I imagine it’s cruel a me to say, but someone’s been playin’ an awful joke wid dat poor baby’s memory.”

“I’m sorry, Marie, but you just lost me,” I admitted. “What baby? We’re talkin’ about a woman in her forties.”

“Maybe you are, but dat dead woman ya got up dere ain’t de same one got born in dis here hospital. “No sir,” my phone pal proclaimed indignantly.

“How’s dat?” I pushed her for an explanation I’d already guessed at.

“Now I ain’t a curious Cajun by nature,” Marie Antoinette offered her disclaimer, “but dem two phone calls got to workin’ on my mind. I did some back checkin’ and ya know what I found?”

“What’d’ya find?” I fed her the line she was hungry for.

“De Carlene Carstead dat was brought ta God’s green earth in dis hospital was pronounced D.O.A. here five years later,” she paused to give her words a chance for maximum impact. “I pulled a copy a de death certificate myself. Death by drowning. I read de whole report. Playin’ wid her olda sista down ta Ponsichatchi Creek. Sista was revived. Ya know, Detective Bosco, y’all don’t seem very surprised by any dis,” the not-so-curious Cajun noted with a ring of suspicion in her voice.

“I said you was a sharp one. It’s all de years on de job,” I confided. “God it wears ya down. Sometimes I gotta pinch myself ta make sure I still got feelins.”

“I know how it is,” she commiserated. “Doctors ‘round here say de same tins ‘bout what dey doin’.” Then, switching gears, the former queen of France asked: “Ya gonna find who’s playin’ dis awful joke wid dat sweet baby’s memory?”

“I’m gonna try, Marie Antoinette. I am gonna try.”

“Ya find out. I gotta sense ‘bout it dat ya will.”

“One more item,” I threw in before our farewells. “Can ya name the other people who called about Carlene?”

“Sure can. First one was a woman reporter name a Kate Barnum. Second was a Detective Mickelson from out your way.”

“Does anyone else besides us know the truth about Carlene?” I wondered.

“No Detective Bosco, uh uh, nobody.”

“If ya want me ta find out who de joker is, let’s keep it dat way. It’s our secret for now,” I spoke it like an oath.

“Our secret,” she repeated.

With that vow and a few bonding good-byes, our conversation ended. I poured some fresh coffee down into my suddenly empty soul. It wasn’t the lying and scamming that hurt me so much, but rather the dark pride I took in it. I thought about the price I paid for denial. I thought about my contempt for Lawrence Solomon Feld and about how you hate things in other people you can’t bear about yourself. I thought about confirming my hunches and dialing the Dixieland Pig and Whistle in Biloxi. Oddly, I thought about Kate Barnum’s smoky breath and her appetite for hurt. My chirping phone prevented further progress into the abyss. Sometimes, I liked the phone.

It was MacClough wanting me to stop by the Scupper. He wanted help with this or that. Some table had to come up from downstairs. I should come in via the alleyway. It wasn’t an unusual request. Speech came slowly to me. I was like a stroke victim struggling with aphasia, groping for words and a tone which had once come to my lips without thought. It was one thing to scam a stranger over two thousand miles of phone line. It was quite another to fool your best friend who just happened to be an ex-detective. Johnny didn’t seem to notice my aphasia and promised me a week of drinks for my trouble. I put down the phone, smiling with dark pride.