The Frumious Bandersnatch

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 acuchi 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 yourcojones 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 fuckinAmerican nowadays, you sometimes forget they came from some shack on the side of a hill in Mayaguez. 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’reliving 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 asEl 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?”

“Zorro.”

“Bingo, you shoulda been a detective. Her ex-hubby’s fuckin cousin isEl Zorro Canoso, who runs the posse we’re about to bust! He thanks her for being such a good relative, and then he lays five bills on her, which is what I meant when I said she’ll cut off your dick for a nickel and sell it to acuchi frito joint.”

“Well, Patricia didn’t cut off my dick,” Ollie said. “For a nickel or however much. In fact, she doesn’t evenlike cuchi frito. ”

“You’re missing my point, friend. And what’s this on the platter here? It looks like somebody cut off thechef’s dick.”

“That’s the Szechuan beef.”

“It looks like it.”

The men were silent for several moments, eating.

“So did you get in?” Parker asked.

“Come on, what kind of talk is that?”

“I’m curious,” Parker said, and lowered his voice, and leaned across the table, and said, “Well, didja?”

“Come on, Andy,” Ollie said, and sort of jerked his head over his shoulder and slitted his eyes at the booth behind him.

“Nobody can hear us,” Parker said.

“We better hurry here,” Ollie said. “The judge said one-thirty, didn’t he?”

Parker looked at him.

“What?” Ollie said.

Parker kept looking at him.

“Nothing,” he said at last, and went back to his lunch.

FOR THE FIRST TIMEin fifteen years, Carella wanted to smoke a cigarette.

Anything but sitting here on his hands.

The four men who’d been sent to find Rosalita Guadajillo were back.

“Lady’s clean as a whistle,” Forbes reported. “She runs a little jewelry boutique on Mason Avenue, up there inLa Perlita, sells mostly cheap crap from third-world countries. She went to call her kids last night around ten-thirty, fished in her handbag, no cell phone. Somebody stole it.”

“Our man,” Corcoran said, nodding.

“Smart,” Endicott said.

“He knew we’d be tracing the call…”

“Even if he made it from a mobile…”

“So he made it from somebodyelse’s phone…”

“Which is now undoubtedly at the bottom of the river,” Endicott concluded.

“Which means all your equipment here is worthless,” Loomis said, waving his hand at the gear they’d set up all over the room.

“Not entirely,” Endicott said. “When he calls again…”

“Ifhe calls again,” Loomis said.

“Oh, he’ll call,” Corcoran said. “The name of the game is money. Until he gets his money, he’ll keep calling.”

“And when he calls, we’ll be taping it,” Endicott said. “Voice prints are admissible evidence. We take this guy to trial…”

“I don’t care about taking him to trial,” Loomis said. “I already told you that. All I want is Tamar back.”