that Tigo was on a fishing expedition and that what he was fishing for was an admission of murder. But Wiggins had something else on his mind, and as the detectives listened and ate—Ollie’s banana was particularly tasty with a baloney sandwich smothered in mustard—they began to become more and more interested in what Wiggins was saying than in Gomez’s inept attempts to wring a confession from him.
Since Gomez’s voice was the only one they’d heard before now, they cleverly detected which of the two speakers was the one wearing the wire and doing the fishing, which easily enabled them to assign the other voice to Wiggins. And since both detectives were used toreading transcripts of tapes, they automatically beganlistening that way, labeling each voice as it came from the recorder. They were frankly getting bored stiff with Tigo’s clumsy interrogation, expecting Wiggy to yell “The fuck youdoin, man?” and shoot the silly jackass dead, when all at once Wiggy began talking about the computers he’d tapped into up at Wadsworth and Dodds. Ollie wondered what the man had been doing up there at his future publishing house, but Wiggy wasn’t about to explain that. Instead, he began talking about what he’d found on the computers. Ollie looked at Carella. Carella shrugged.
WIGGY:
All these files labeled with girls’ names.
TIGO:
Whut you mean names?
WIGGY:
Rina and Bela and Ada and Gina and Tessie, and here’s the one really got me … Diana.
TIGO:
Like Princess Di?
WIGGY:
Yeah, but it’s Diamondback. It’s code for Diamondback.
TIGO:
How you know that, Wigg?
WIGGY:
It was on the PC. Man left it wide open for me when I showed him the ugly. D-I-A-N-A. Right there in the name Diamondback, juss mixed up and turned all aroun, is all.
TIGO:
If the man put a code in there, why he want to gosplain it to you?
WIGGY:
Nobody splained it to me, man. I doped it out all by myself. Same as how B-E-L-A is for Lebanon. And G-I- N-A is for Nicaragua.
TIGO:
Why they want to do that for, Wigg?
WIGGY:
To hide what theydoin in those places. Man, don’t get me wrong. I don’t give a shit bout the mischief they into anyplace else. But when they buyin dope in Mexico and sellin it up here in Diamondback …
TIGO:
We selling dope here, too, Wigg.
WIGGY:
It ain’t the same thing, man. They sellin dope up here for altogether different reasons. Man, they shittin on us black folk is what they doin.
TIGO:
I just don’t know, Wigg. I mean …
WIGGY:
What is it you don’t know? I justtole you what’s happening, what is it you don’t unnerstan?
There was a long silence on the tape. Ollie peeled another banana. He looked at Carella again. Carella shrugged again.
TIGO:
You really think all this is true, huh? Cause to me …
WIGGY:
Man, I was lookin straight in they computer! I seed all this stuff with my own eyes!
TIGO:
It just sounds, you know, like science-fiction, you know? This file named Mothah you can’t open cause you need a password, an all this money floatin aroun, and these people causin trouble all over the world, an tryin’a fuck us right here in Diamon’back, I mean, man, it sounds like suppin you’d see in amovie, you know what I’m sayin, man?
WIGGY:
It’d make agood movie, that’s for damn sure, but it’strue, man! I got it from theycomputer
TIGO:
That don’t mean it couldn’t of been garbage in there.
WIGGY:
The point is, whut we gonnado about it, Tigo? I mean, these guys are messin with ourpeople!
There was another long silence.
“What the hell’s he talkin about?” Ollie asked.
“Shhh,” Carella said.
WIGGY:
I think we should go to the police, tellthem the story.
“Good idea,” Ollie said to the tape.
There was the sound of a phone being dialed.
