Little Easter by Reed Farrel Coleman Page B

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