Little Easter (17 page)

“Like my jaw? I don’t think I want to see you yet, Dylan.”

“Fine. ’Bye.”

Actually, in spite of my one word of feigned disappointment, I was glad that Kate Barnum would be out at Dugan’s Dump all day. I had some questions to ask her boss. They were the kinds of questions I couldn’t ask with her there to listen. They were the kinds of questions that had to do with hunches.

To play another hunch, I fetched my phone book and looked up a Louisiana exchange. I started to punch in the numbers for Baptist and Saviour Hospital in Baton Rouge when something paralyzed my finger. The number. There was something about the number. I’d seen it written someplace else, written in another hand. I shot up like I’d just sat on a skunk. I ran over to my writing desk where all the photos and files and articles were. I pulled out a list of phone numbers. Some were old and smudged and in pencil. Some were more recent and written in pen. And two of the numbers matched numbers in my phone book; one for Baptist and Saviour, the other for the Dixieland Pig and Whistle in Biloxi, Mississippi.

What an idiot I’d been not to make the connection until now. The day I found O’Toole dead, I had looked right at the sheet of phone numbers. Nothing had clicked then. It clicked now. MacClough’s late partner had been sniffing along the same trail as me. That much was clear. What I needed to know currently was if he had followed me down that trail or had I followed him. If the latter was true, I’d have to do some serious rethinking about Terrence O’Toole’s part in all of this. I put my fingers to the phone buttons again. This time I finished punching.

“Patient Records, Marie Antoinette Gilbeau speakin’,” I would have recognized that bright voice even if she had omitted her name.

“Hey, yo, Marie Antoinette.”

“Officer Bosco?” she hesitated.

“Detective Bosco, but dat’s good. I said ya had a good ear, didn’t I?” I couldn’t give her roses so a compliment was the best I could do.

“Did y’all ever catch dat—”

“S’why I’m callin’,” I cut her off to add to the sense of urgency. “We are real close, Marie Antoinette. I got an important question for ya.”

“Anytin’, detective, jus’ ask.”

“Ya said ya got two calls besides mine about Carlene Carstead; one from a reporta and one from a cop.”

“Dat’s right as mud on de delta,” she confirmed.

“Now try and go back, way before my call or de ones we just mentioned. As far as a year ago, did anyone else evuh make inquiries about Carlene Carstead by phone or in person?”

She didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it added to my already high opinion of the queen of France.

“Sorry, Detective Bosco, but d’answer gotta be no,” she sounded hurt.

“Hey, don’t sweat it. I ap—”

“Ya know,” Marie stepped on my words,“even folks workin’ in dem hospitals been takin’ sick days every now and den. Let me check wid de girl dat sits fa me when I’m out.”

“It might speed stuff up some if I describe de suspect I’m wonderin’ about.”

Marie Antoinette agreed with that notion. I described O’Toole as best I could and said he might’ve claimed to have been a cop. She offered to call me back, but I told her the New York taxpayers wouldn’t mind me waiting on hold. Besides, I didn’t feel like explaining my Long Island area code to her.

“Shaw ’nough, detective, dat man been here. Priscilla Odile’s positive. Big man wid a nose as red as boiled crawfish, even had a New York policeman’s badge. Priscilla say she know dat from de television. She recalls him askin’ ’bout dat little girl.”

“Does she remember when?” a stream of sweat was running alone my spine.

“Dat would be ’round deterd week in August, lass year. I was down de bayou visitin’ and Priscilla Odile had my desk dat whole week.”

“I could kiss ya, Marie Antoinette.” I could have.

“Well, if ya down Louisiana and ya don’t . . .” she trailed off.

We spent a few minutes on the good-byes. I determined that if and when things got settled, I’d write her a letter explaining what had really gone on and who I really was. There are just some people on this earth that deserve to understand.

I understood now that O’Toole had flushed Azrael out of hiding. He had tracked her down. But why? It was hard for me to accept that he woke up one August day and decided he had nothing better to do. No, someone had come to him. But who? And why O’Toole? I was pretty sure it wasn’t Dante Gandolfo. If he had wanted Azrael’s hide, he’d have better resources than some broken-down drunk of a retired cop. The truth is, I was convinced Don Juan had no part in whacking his old flame. Oh, I didn’t buy that bullshit about his not caring or knowing whether Azrael was amongst the dead or the living. But if it wasn’t Gandolfo . . .

I made a call to the Dixieland Pig and Whistle, the place Azrael, alias Carlene Carstead, once managed. I originally had planned it as a call of discovery, but talking with Marie Antoinette had transformed it into a call of confirmation. The new manager was a nice fellow and he was a sucker for my Brooklynese and New York Detective schtick. They all were. I spoke to about ten employees before I found one who could remember another Yankee cop fishing around about Carlene. Sue Anne Maples, an assistant manager, told me that the Yankee cop had called a few times and once even spoke to Carlene herself. Carlene had been real upset by that call. About a week later, she took a leave of absence. They all wished me luck in finding Carlene’s killer. I didn’t bother explaining that Carlene Carstead had drowned a very long time ago.

Okay, someone approaches O’Toole to track down Azrael. He finds her in Biloxi, Mississippi. But instead of going to his employer, O’Toole talks to her on the phone, warns her she’s been found. That’s the first thing that doesn’t make any sense. The second is that instead of going to her guardians at Witness Protection and letting them know she’s been found out, she runs straight back to New York. It’s tantamount to pouring antelope blood over your head and running into a lion’s den after twenty years of hiding in the tall grass. What could O’Toole have said to her? What did he know? I thought about the blurry woman and wondered if O’Toole’s call had been about her. I went and got her picture again.

I called the other numbers on the sheet. One was disconnected. One was for Delta Airlines reservations. One was a local liquor store. Gee, what a surprise. And one was either a bust or a revelation. I couldn’t know that yet.

“Hello, I’m—”

“Uncle Jack,” a little boy shouted in my ear. “Mommy, it’s Uncle Jack.” The excitement in the boy’s voice told me Jack had a nephew who loved him.

“Sorry, son, but I’m not—”

“Hello, Jack,” Mommy got on the phone. “Jack, are you in New York or calling from the office?” Mommy had a throaty, inviting voice with a bit of sadness around the edges.

I looked at the picture in my palm and decided to drag out Detective Bosco, N. Y.P.D., yet again. If it ain’t broke, so the saying goes. But I would have to tone down the “dems and dose.” New Yorkers can spot a fellow New Yorker’s theatrical Brooklyn accent faster than a pig finding fungus in a truffle truck.

“Sorry to disappoint you and your son, ma’am, but I’m not Uncle Jack.”

That was followed with a few seconds of confused breathing and silence. When the woman at the other end refused to pick up the baton, I introduced myself as Detective Bosco. Not of Missing Persons this time, but of Homicide.

“Homicide?” she repeated with equal parts of shock and skepticism.

Beside the delicate dialect problem, skepticism was something else I was likely to encounter with a New Yorker. After only three syllables, I could tell this wasn’t going to go as smoothly as my calls below the Mason-Dixon line. Hey, no knock on southerners. It’s nice to deal with people who don’t consider trust passe. Growing up in New York, you lose your diapers and then you lose your capacity to trust. Maybe it has to do with how we’re toilet trained.

“You must be mistaken, Detective Bosco,” she assured me with grave certainty. Then the ramifications of who I was pretending to be sank in. “God, nothing’s happened to my parents. God!” she was panicking. I could hear her son in the background asking if everything was okay with Uncle Jack. “It’s not Uncle Jack, Max. Please, shut up for a minute,” she screamed at the poor kid. He was crying now. I was feeling pretty low.

“No. No. Nothing’s wrong with your parents,” I tried sounding as reassuring as a Hollywood priest. And, before she could ask: “And as far as I know, everyone else in your family is fine, Missus . . .” I wanted her to fill in the blank.

“You don’t know my name?” the panic was replaced by a mixture of anger and good old skepticism. “How dare you call me up and scare me like that? I want your badge number. What kinda cop are you?” She went on that way for a minute or two. I let her. I deserved it.

After she calmed down, I explained that her phone number was included on a list the police had found at the scene of a homicide and that it was my job to check all the numbers out. She wanted to know who’d been murdered. I told her. She didn’t know any Terrence O’Tooles or Johnny MacCloughs. She had never heard the name Azrael before, but liked it. She’d heard the name Gandolfo before: “Doesn’t he pitch for the Mets?”

I laughed. She laughed. She told me her name: Leyna Morton. It was unfamiliar to me and I was certain she didn’t pitch for the Mets. I suggested that her husband might have a connection to some of the people I’d mentioned. She thought it unlikely. In any case, they were divorced and he didn’t have access to her phone number. It had been an ugly affair, their divorce; custody battle et al.

My heart sank when I heard that. I’d found a painfully logical reason for Leyna Morton’s number to appear on a sheet of paper in a dead cop’s abode. It wasn’t the reason I’d been fishing for. So much for my hunches. Nostradamus was safe. Obviously, Mrs. Morton’s ex had hired O’Toole to do a little divorce work. Divorce work is pretty profitable and lots of cops do it on the sly. You see, it’s easy for cops, even retired ones, to acquire unlisted phone numbers and addresses.

“Do you have work and home numbers for Mr. Morton?” I went through the motions of getting info on her ex-husband. I’d call him and coerce him into admitting he’d hired O’Toole. Detective Bosco strikes again!”

“His name’s not Morton,” my phone companion informed me. “It’s Tanzer. Mine’s not Morton either really,” Leyna swallowed her words. “I’m a little punchy from the divorce and I wanted to make certain you really were a cop and not some guy my ex-husband hired to track me down,” it was irony worthy of Dickens. “My name’s Leyna Brimmer.”

“It’s okay. I understand,” I was the Hollywood priest again.

“It’s funny,” she said more to herself than to me.

“What is?”

“I don’t really know my family name. I’m adopted,” she sighed. “You try not to think about it, but—”

“Please hold,” I put the receiver down, ran back to my files and did some quick arithmetic. “I’m gonna ask you a strange question, Miss Brimmer,” I wasn’t in the mood to get permission. “Were you born in March of nineteen sixty-seven.”

“Good guess,” she sounded wary, “but no cigar. April sixty-seven. Why do you ask?”

“Just a hunch.”

So full of my own genius, I got off the phone without getting the husband’s numbers. Unconsciously, I guess, I didn’t want to speak with him. No. I didn’t want to hear him contradict my theories. Because, if I was right, the blurry picture in my palm had just sharpened considerably. Some questions would be answered and others would simply disintegrate like cotton candy in your mouth. I might even be able to answer the question that had plagued Leyna Brimmer her whole life.

Their Own Shadows

I did a rarely sensible thing and paid a visit to my safe deposit box. In it I placed the pertinent documentation I’d gathered, stolen, or stumbled onto since the night before Christ’s birthday. I also managed to squeeze in two other items; a few neatly word-processed sheets outlining what the hell I thought was going on and the bundle of one hundred large in its original envelope. In a giddy moment, I’d entertained thoughts of just depositing the big money directly into my account and giving the teller apoplexy. Even in these days of junk bonds, arbitrage and leveraged buyouts, a hundred thousand dollar cash deposit will raise eyebrows and blood pressures. And let’s face it, Suffolk Midfork Trust ain’t the Bank of England.

I stood out in the street and the snow for a minute, admiring the bank. The bold Victorian dated back to the dying reign of Conrad Dugan. This quirky conglomeration of clapboards, granite, gingerbread spindles, turrets and a widow’s watch was to have been Dugan’s great house. His empire failed before he’d slept a night inside. The bank took it. The bank kept it. It had been a bank, with one name or another, ever since. I wondered what Conrad Dugan would think of automatic teller machines in the pantry. I think he’d probably like them.

I turned my back on the bank and trudged down Main Street to the less than considerable offices of the
Sound Hill Whaler.
I’d been in bigger cab stands and in train station toilets that were cleaner and less cluttered. But the first amendment says something about the press being free, not clean. An acne-faced teen-age boy I took to be a high school intern sat at a computer terminal mesmerized by its orange light, picking unconsciously at his acne-ravaged nose. Whistina Knox, the
Whaler’s
waspy, matronly business manager, was on the phone arguing the merits of advertising in her publication as opposed to the local pennysaver. She didn’t seem to be winning, but managed to smile at me politely and acknowledge my existence. I pointed to my left and mouthed the name, “Ben,” to her. She smirked and waved me in.

Ben Vandermeer’s family went back to a time when most Long Islanders wore feathers and buckskins and Jay Gatsby was still a few centuries away from moving to West Egg. Vandermeer’s family had been old money, but thanks to Black Tuesday, only the old remained. Ben learned his craft at the
News,
the
Brooklyn Eagle
and the
Tribune.
Mailroom clerk to managing editor; he’d done it all. In the late sixties he bought the
Whaler
and has been its only editor ever since.