The Frumious Bandersnatch полностью

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 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 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…”