The Frumious Bandersnatch (20 page)

SPECIAL AGENT HARVEY JONES
definitely thought he saw cockroaches in the hallway. Which was better than rats, he supposed. His cousin was an agent in Los Angeles, and she told him there were rats in Beverly Hills. Driven down into populated areas because of the drought. Drinking from rich people's swimming pools. Imagine you're a movie star and you go out for your early morning swim in your big private walled pool and a hundred rats are in the water with you! In this part of the city you expected rats—although all Jones had seen so far were cockroaches. In Beverly Hills, you didn't expect rats. Jones had grown up with both cockroaches and rats; he was sensitive to both.

This part of the city was familiarly called
La Perlita,
after an erst-while notorious slum in San Juan cynically named
La Perla,
which was Spanish for “The Pearl,” and some pearl it had been, honey. The reincarnation here wasn't much better. Nicknamed by the so-called Marine Tigers who'd first migrated from the island in the early forties (aboard a vessel called the
Marine Tiger,
hence the derogatory appellation),
La Perlita
was still predominantly Puerto Rican and somewhat dangerous, even for four men carrying guns and badges.

A lot in this city had changed since the forties but not
La Perlita.
Maybe nowadays, third-and fourth-generation Puerto Ricans no longer sounded like
banditos.
Maybe nowadays, men going to work in business suits weren't necessarily hit men for drug posses. And maybe nowadays teenage girls wearing short tight satin skirts and stiletto-heeled sandals were only heading to the prom and not the nearest street corner to peddle their wares. But however you looked at it,
La Perlita
was still a sprawling slum rife with drugs, prostitution, and…yes, rats. Come to think of it, it was a lot like Beverly Hills, don't write me letters, Jones thought.

As they climbed to the fourth floor of the tenement at 3215 Noble Street, the four men were discussing a TV show Special Agent Forbes had seen on television. Special Agent Forbes was saying he'd been watching this writer on C-Span the other night, giving a book talk in a book store in Seattle someplace, and the writer was telling the audience that he once got a letter from some lady who said she wasn't going to read his books anymore because there were too many
people
in them.

“Can you imagine that?” Forbes asked. “Too many
people
in them?”

“No, I can't,” Jones said, shaking his head in agreement and amazement. “In fact, one of the things I like most about this job is
meeting
different people. So how can there be too many people in a
book?
”

“Besides, they aren't
people,
” Detective/First Grade Lonigan said, “they're
characters.
”

“Who was this writer, anyway?” Detective/Second Grade Feingold asked.

“Some mystery writer,” Forbes said.

“Well, that's different,” Lonigan said, changing his mind. “In a mystery, you can't have too many people, that's right. That's because all the people are suspects…”

“The characters, you mean.”

“Are suspects, correct. So if you can't keep track of them, then you can't possibly figure out who committed the murder, which is the whole point of a mystery, anyway, isn't it?”

Listening, Jones wondered if that was the whole point of a mystery, anyway.

“I still think he was right,” Forbes said. “A woman telling him there's too many
people
in his book. If she wants fewer people, she should go read ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' ”

Or “The Three Little Pigs,” Jones thought, and all four men stopped outside the door to apartment 4C. Because they'd had experience in such matters, they listened at the wood before they knocked. Because they'd had experience in such matters, they also drew their weapons. This was maybe an accomplice to a kidnapping behind this door here.

“Yes?”

A woman's voice. Sounded young. No Spanish accent despite the Spanish handle. Forbes looked at the computer printout again. Rosalita Guadajillo.

“Miss Goo-ah-duh-Jello?” he asked.

“Gwa-da-hee-yo, sí,”
she said, correcting his pronunciation. “Who is it?”

“FBI,” Forbes said. “Want to open the door, please?”

There was a moment's hesitation. FBI?
What!
The reaction was always the same. You could almost visualize the silence behind the closed wooden door, as if the words were popping up in a comic strip balloon. What the…! ! ! !

The door opened just a crack, held by a night chain. In the wedge, they could see part of a narrow foxlike face.

“Let me see some ID,” the woman said. Perfect English. Not a trace of an accent.

Jones held up his badge. So did Forbes. Gold, with a spread-winged eagle crowning what looked like a true warrior's shield, dominated by the large letters
U.S.
engraved midway between the smaller words
Federal Bureau of Investigation
above and
Department of Justice
below. Not at all like the hanging plastic ID badges they carried on “X-Files,” those so-called Burbank Studio FBI Cards. Behind the two agents, the city dicks flashed their gold, blue-enameled shields.

The overwhelming ID had no effect.

The door remained fastened by the chain.

“What do you want here?” the woman asked.

“Are you Rosalita Guadajillo?” Jones asked, having no better luck with the name than Forbes had.

“Yes? What is it you want?”

“Few questions we need to ask you, Miss,” Forbes said. “Could you please open the door?”

There was another hesitation, and then a short sharp click as she closed the door. Forbes figured it wouldn't open again. He was thinking they'd have to come back later, with a warrant, when all at once he heard the chain rattling loose, and the door opened wide, surprising him.

Rosalita Guadajillo was a slender woman in her early twenties, they guessed, some five-feet-six-inches tall, obviously dressed to go out on this Monday at almost twelve noon. Her hair was black, her eyes brown and lined with a greenish tint. She was wearing bright red lipstick and round plastic earrings of the same color, high-heeled strappy black sandals, a short, tight black skirt, and a crisp white blouse unbuttoned some three buttons down to reveal somewhat exuberant cleavage cushioning a red plastic necklace that matched the earrings. Both Jones and Forbes figured her for a hooker, so much for profiling.

“May we come in?” Forbes asked.

He wasn't being polite. He was protecting their asses against future claims of forced entry, these days.

“What's this about?” Rosalita asked, stepping aside to allow them entry. She was not unmindful of the display of big hardware, but this was
La Perlita
and guns were as common here as
cuchi frito
joints. They walked into a small kitchen still set with that morning's breakfast dishes. Living room with a thrift-shop three-piece set of stuffed furniture. Doors opening on two small bedrooms. Closed door probably led to the bathroom. One of the detectives opened the door. Nobody in there, thank God.

“This your phone number, Miss Guadajillo?” Forbes asked. He was getting close to the correct pronunciation, but still no cigar.

She looked at the printout.

“Yes?” she said.

“You make a call from this phone at noon today?”

“No.”

“To a man named Barney Loomis…”

“No.”

“At Bison Records?”

“No. I haven't even tried to use that phone since late last night.”

“You know exactly when you used it last, is that it?” Jones asked.

“Yes, it so happens I do,” she said, getting all huffy. “Because that was when I tried to call my sitter, and I discovered it was missing.”

“Missing, huh?”

“The phone, huh?”

“Your sitter, huh?”

“I have two kids,” Rosalita said. “A sitter was with them last night. When I tried to call her, my phone was gone.”

“You have two kids, huh?” Lonigan said.

“Eight and six. A boy and a girl.”

Meant she'd been knocked up the first time when she was sixteen or thereabouts, Lonigan figured.

“Where are these kids now?”

“My mother has them. She keeps them all day. While I work.”

“Doing what, Miss Guadajillo?”

Lonigan figured he already knew.

“I have a boutique on Mason and Sixth.”

“A boutique, huh?” Feingold said.

“Yes. I sell costume jewelry. These earrings are from my shop.”

“Is that a fact?” Forbes said skeptically.

“Yes, it's a fact,” Rosalita said. “Why do you want to know about my phone?”

“Did you happen to
report
it missing?”

“I just learned about it late last night.”

“What time last night?”

“Around ten-thirty. When we got out of the movies. That's when I tried to call home to see how the kids were.”

“Who's we?” Forbes asked.

“What movie?” Jones asked.

“My boyfriend,” Rosalita said. “The new Tom Cruise movie.”

“But your phone was missing, huh?”

“My phone was missing, yes. I think I may have left it at the shop. Or else somebody stole it from my bag.”

“You going to the shop now?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't we just come with you?” Forbes suggested. “See if maybe you left the phone there.”

“Por que es ese putó selular tan importante después de todo?”
Rosalita asked—which was incidentally Spanish, which neither the agents nor the detectives understood, incidentally.

Besides, it didn't really matter, did it?

The fucking phone wasn't in her shop, anyway.

BECAUSE BOTH MEN
were downtown to testify in two separate court cases that Monday morning, Detectives Andy Parker and Ollie Weeks happened to run into each other at the Criminal Courts Building when their respective judges called lunch breaks. Both detectives normally enjoyed testifying since it gave them a chance to bask in the glory spotlight for a few hours, even though they felt the system was designed to put dangerous criminals back on the street again as soon as possible. A trip downtown took them away from the humdrum daily grinds of the 8-7 and the 8-8. Down here in the halls of so-called justice, they almost felt it was all worthwhile.

“Ollie, hey!” Parker called.

“Andy,
vee gates?
” Ollie said, meaning to say
“wie gehts,”
an expression he'd picked up from his lieutenant, but only to prove to all these Jewish lawyers down here in these hallowed marble corridors just how tolerant he was of the Hebrew faith. Ollie guessed the expression meant “How goes it?” Parker didn't know what it meant, so Ollie could just as well have been saying
“Veh farblondjet,”
which meant “Get lost,” but which he hadn't yet learned.

Both men were wearing suits and ties. When these shrewd defense-lawyer shysters started working you over, it was always best for the jury to think you were gentlemen instead of roughnecks or rogues like some of the cops you saw on television these days. Actually, Parker and Weeks did occasionally behave like roughnecks and/or rogues, but it didn't pay to let the jury know this when you were testifying that you went in with all the proper No-Knock documentation.

“You feel like Chink's?” Parker asked.

Both men were consummate bigots.

“I know a great place,” Ollie said.

The two detectives strolled in bright May sunshine toward a Chinese restaurant in nearby Hull Street. They could have been bankers or lawyers or stock brokers, they looked that dandy. Parker had even shaved for the occasion of his court appearance. He told Ollie the 8-7 had caught a spectacular case this past Saturday night, had Ollie seen the tape on TV? Ollie said he had. In fact, he was sick and tired of seeing Tamar Valparaiso on television day and night.

“Did you know somebody stole my book?” he asked.

“No!” Parker said, looking appalled. “What book?”

“This book I wrote.”

“
You
wrote a book?” Parker said. He considered this something of an oddity, like an elephant in the jungle writing a book. With his right tusk. Or perhaps his trunk.

“Yeah, a novel,” Ollie said. “
Report to the Commissioner.
Some illiterate scumbag stole it from my car.”

“Did you get the guy?”

“Not yet. But I will. Oh, I will, I promise you.”

“I always thought I myself could write a book, some of this crap you read nowadays,” Parker said. “If only I could find the time.”

Because he didn't wish to rain on Parker's parade, Ollie didn't mention that it also took talent. Instead, he said, “It does take time, m'friend, ah yes.” What was taking most of his own time these days was trying to remember the exact language in the stolen manuscript, which happened to be the only copy Ollie had, every word of which he felt was perfect. Since Ollie didn't know any professional writers but himself, he didn't realize that what he was doing was called “rewriting.” And since he had nothing against which to compare his new pages, he had no idea that they were really much better than what he'd originally written. In all truth, it wasn't too difficult to write pages that were better than the original ones, but Ollie didn't know that, either.

“Yeah, this half-spic, half-Russian singer, her parents anyway,” Parker said, getting back to the kidnapping because Ollie's novel was of no interest to him whatsoever. “You should try to catch the tape on TV,” he said. “She's half-naked, these great tits spilling all over the place.”

“I
did
catch it,” Ollie said. “You ever eat here before?” he asked, salivating and shoving through a door that was made of wood but that looked like a beaded curtain.

At noontime, the place was crowded with many of the employees who kept the city's judicial and financial systems running. A hostess wearing a green silk Suzie Wong gown slit to the thigh on her left leg seated the men in a booth some ten feet from the entrance doors, and handed them menus. Parker watched her slitted thigh as she went back to her station. Ollie was already looking at his menu.

“She gets raped by this spade twice her size,” Parker said. “Tamar whatever the fuck her name is.”

“You wanna try some dim sum?” Ollie asked.

“What's that, them dim sum?” Parker said.

“Or how about some of the specials?”

“Why don't you order?” Parker said. “I trust you.”

“I do happen to be an expert on Chinese coo-zeen,” Ollie said.

“So order, go on. He's got muscles on his muscles, this jig, prolly got them in the prison gym.”

A waiter padded over to their table. To start, Ollie ordered eight golden puffed shrimp, six chicken fingers, six pan-fried pork dumplings, and two five-piece orders of barbecued spare ribs. Then he ordered the Hot Lovers Chicken, which was deep-fried chicken sautéed with snow peas, baby corn, and straw mushrooms in a spicy tangy sauce, and the Dry Sautéed Beef, Szechuan Style…

“This is real Chinese home cooking,” he told Parker.

…and the Mee Goreng, which were spaghetti-style noodles sautéed with various exotic spices, shrimp, tomatoes, eggs, and vegetables…

“A specialty in Singapore,” Ollie explained.

…and then the Young Ginger Beef, and the Scallops with Lemon Sauce, and the Broccoli with Garlic Sauce, and the Sautéed Fresh Spinach.

“I hope that'll be enough,” he told Parker. “We can always order more later, if we need it.”

The waiter wagged his head in wonder and went off.

“Why do they always look like they're pissed off?” Parker asked.

“Who?” Ollie said.

“Chinese waiters. They always look like they got a hair across their ass.”

“It ain't that,” Ollie explained. “It's they got these squinty eyes makes them look like they're frowning.”

“He prac'ly tears off all her clothes,” Parker said.

“Who does?”

“This rapist.”

“You know,” Ollie said, “sometimes I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

Parker explained that on Saturday night, just as the new shift was coming on at eleven-forty, he answered a phone call from this captain in Harbor Patrol who asked to talk to the detective on duty…

“So like a jackass, I handed the phone to Carella who was just walking in, and gave away the biggest case we've had all year.”

“A rape case? That's big in the Eight-Seven? In the Eight-Eight, we get ten, twelve rape cases every ten, twelve minutes.”

“A
kidnapping!
” Parker said. “Of a goddamn rock star! It's been all over television. Don't you watch television? They been playing the tape every ten minutes. It's getting more plays than the attack on the World Trade Center.”

“I saw it, I saw it,” Ollie said. “Ah,” he said and spread his hands wide in greeting. The waiter had just arrived with their appetizers.

“What happened,” Parker said, helping himself to the puffed shrimp, “was this roving reporter from Channel Four was there to tape this girl doing a song from her album…you want some of these?”

“Thanks,” Ollie said. He was shoveling chicken fingers and dumplings onto his plate.

“And what should happen but these two black dudes…”

“Big surprise,” Ollie said.

“…come marching in and grab the girl. It's the biggest thing hit this city since that fuckin councilman got shot. And like a jerk I handed it to Carella on a silver platter.”

“Well, you couldn'ta known,” Ollie said. “The Harbor Patrol, it coulda been a jumper.”

“Exactly what I thought.”

“Sure, the Harbor Patrol. What else could it be?”

“Or some kinda boating accident.”

“Right, a boating accident.”

Now that food was on the table, he was even less interested in Parker's rape or kidnapping or whatever it was. When food was on the table, Ollie was hardly ever interested in anything else. Which was why it still surprised him that he'd been so interested in Patricia Gomez this past Saturday night when, after all, food had been on the table then, too. By coincidence, he supposed, Parker chose that moment to ask, “What'd you do this weekend?”

“How do you like this food, huh?” Ollie said, gnawing on a spare rib. “Is it something, or what?”

“Terrific,” Parker said. “So what'd you do this weekend?”

“I went out Saturday night.”

“Where'd you go?”

“Billy Barnacles.”

“No kidding?” Parker said. “They got a band there, don't they?”

“Yeah, the River Rats.”

“So what'd you do, you went there with a girl?”

“No, I went out dancin all by myself,” Ollie said.

“Hey,
that's
right!” Parker said, pointing a spare rib at him. “That little spic uniform up your precinct!”

He was referring to Patricia Gomez, Ollie figured.

“That was Saturday night, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, I remember you telling me,” Parker said, and looked sternly across the table at him. “You went out with her after all, huh? Even though I warned you.”

“Yeah, I went out with her.”

“I lived with a Spanish girl for six months,” Parker said. “In the end, she cut off my dick for a nickel and sold it to a
cuchi frito
joint.”

“I guess you mean that figuratively,” Ollie said, using a literary term he didn't expect Parker to understand.

“I mean it however you wish to take it,” Parker said, sounding offended. “You want to go out with Spanish girls, then you better go hide your
cojones
in the olive jar.”

“Anyway, Patricia ain't Spanish, she's Puerto Rican.”

“What do you think I'm talking about? What are Puerto Ricans if not Spanish? Where do you think the term ‘Hispanic' comes from, if not Spanish? This girl I lived with, her name was Catalina Herrera, they called her Cathy, all her spic friends. They all sound so fuckin
American
nowadays, you sometimes forget they came from some shack on the side of a hill in Mayagüez. I met her when we were chasing the Graffiti Killer, you remember that case? Man, he was up to all kinds of mischief, killed four fuckin people before we got him. Her son was the first victim, a bona fide wall-writer. Cathy was divorced from some guy went back to live in Santo Domingo. Anyway, to make a long story short, one thing led to another, and this and that, and eventually we started living together.”

“So what happened?” Ollie asked. “Do you wear a prosthesis now?”

Parker didn't know what a prosthesis was. He didn't laugh. Ollie was laughing at his own joke, though.

“What's so fuckin funny?” Parker asked. “What happened was we had this big drug bust set up for a Tuesday night, and I happened to mention this to Cathy while we were in bed the night before, little pillow talk, you know? She listened very carefully, they have this way of listening, Spanish girls, but who suspects anything, am I right? I mean, we're
living
together, we're like man and wife. Okay, Tuesday night rolls around, we put on the vests, we break out the assault rifles, we're six guys strong who go out to raid this posse run by a guy we know only as
El Zorro Canoso,
which means ‘The Gray Fox' in case your girlfriend ain't teaching you too much Spanish these days…”

“She ain't my girlfriend,” Ollie said. “We only went out once togeth…”

“
El Zorro Canoso.
Twenty-four years old, he's got a full head of gray hair already, probably because he's worried about being sent upstate for a long time. But guess what? Nobody's home. We go in with a warrant, but nobody's there. The place is empty.
El Zorro Canoso
has flown El Coopo. Next thing I know, Cathy comes around wearing a silk Fuck-Me dress she bought at Juno's on Jeff Av, and these high-heeled whore shoes that are all straps, I ask her did somebody die and leave her a fortune? She tells me she hit the numbers, which was bullshit because I knew she never played the numbers. What it turns out…”

“She ratted out your bust,” Ollie said.

“How'd you guess? The morning after I told her about it, Tuesday morning this is, the day of the bust this is, she runs to her former husband's cousin, whose name happens to be Bernardo Herrera, who is guess who?”