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!”