“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.
Penelope and Ulysses
Smack! A fist, a 2 X 4 or a low flying aircraft made square contact with my unsuspecting face. I went down like a sack of farm stand potatoes, blood filling my mouth even before my cut lips could kiss the floor of Johnny’s back room. Exploding tears burned my blind eyes. Streams of unrestrained mucous gushed out of my flattened nose onto the floor, over my mustache and into the wet jungle of my beard.
All at once the world was deafeningly quiet and quietly deafening. The silence was broken soon enough. Stabbing rings of pain bounced like a pendulum between my eardrums as my breakfast coffee and chunks of semidigested twelve grain toast rocketed up out of my stomach, through my bloody mouth and onto the old wood floor. The sour smell of my own guts brought up whatever was left.
I felt, more than heard, heels moving along the floor beside me. Suddenly the pain in my head moved downstairs. My ribs flexed with the kick, but whatever air had managed to stick in my lungs through the facial assault and vomiting, escaped. I tensed the parts of me that still worked, readying for a follow-up kick. None came, that I remember. Only blackness. Only blackness came.
I might have been there a week or three centuries. I don’t know. Maybe it just felt like forever. Cold water washed down over me, bits of jagged ice pinging off my sore neck. The chilly water resurrected more than simply me. The smell of my stale throw-up rose up like a rotting corpse from the New Testament to tug at my intestines. The dry retching seemed almost worse than the original attack. Almost.
Johnny MacClough, dressed in fog and holding a bucket, stood now just before me. A second freezing shower rained down, the ice pecking at my goose bumpy skin like the sharp beaks of angry birds. The empty bucket fell. I held an arm up to him that he should help me stand. Oh, he helped me stand all right. He twisted my coat and shirt collars up in his hard fingers and pulled my face to his. I could see my distorted reflection in a stainless steel counter over MacClough’s shoulder. I cringed. Even through the fog and cobwebs and distortion, I could see I was a mess. I thought it an odd time to discover vanity. The thought made me smile. The smile caused the fresh scabs on my lips to split.
“What’s so funny, Klein?” Johnny seemed unnerved by my inappropriateness.
“My face, Johnny. My face,” I gasped as my tender ribs scolded me for speaking. MacClough turned his still foggy visage away from my sour breath.
“Did you really think you could go to my ex-partners behind my back and not have me find out about it? Did you?” He tightened his grip.
“We live in hope, MacClough,” I smiled some more. “I guess one of ’em called you about our chat.”
“More than one,” he shook his head sadly. “You’re my friend, Klein. Why you snoopin’ around behind my back about things that don’t concern you?”
“If it concerns you, MacClough, it concerns me.”
“Not this, Klein. Not this time.” He loosened his hold, but not completely.
“Back in Brooklyn, friendship and loyalty had nothin’ to do with pickin’ and choosin’ your spots. I also don’t recall havin’ my friends kick the shit outta me.” That was all the heroic speech I could muster.
“Stay out of this, Klein,” MacClough looked me in the eyes and and released his grip. “You can’t help me. Stay out.”
I stepped back and walked around MacClough into the empty barroom. It was still an hour till the opening bell. My hands held what was left of my ribs together. They made a lousy patch. Most of the fog in my head had lifted, leaving only a migraine as a residue of its visit. I waited for MacClough to follow. He did not. He would not.
“I know about her, Johnny, about who Carlene Carstead wasn’t,” I shouted through the door, not certain my sparring partner was still back there to hear me. “I know who she was to you,” I paused waiting for him to stir. I might’ve waited forever. I took up again: “Ya know, MacClough,” I got conversational; loud, but conversational, “I’m no stud at crossword puzzles, but even I couldn’t trip over my own dick on this one. Down or across, it spells ‘Witness Protection Program,’” I finally gave voice to the hunch I’d been playing all morning.
Still, there was no answer. Outside, beyond the windows, brass-handled doors and neon beer signs, a winter fishing boat blew a mournful horn for some nautical reason beyond my citified comprehension or maybe just to protest the long hush of winter. But its protest had come too late. Christmas Eve gunfire had already broken that long silence.
“There’s some stuff, alotta stuff, I haven’t worked out yet,” I continued ray one-way discussion with the walls. “I don’t know who she rolled over on or when. Christ, MacClough, I don’t even know her real name. But something made her come outta hiding, something made her come looking for Johnny Blue. What was it?” I paused to give space for an answer that would not fill it.