The Frumious Bandersnatch полностью

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?”