Oh, that poor son of a bitch. I like that guy. There are cops who don't like him, but I do, and I wouldn't have another skipper if he came gold-plated. But what's he going through right now? What's he going through, with some bastard sitting out there and dangling a carrot in front of his nose, what's he…
He spotted the boy.
The same boy he'd talked to yesterday afternoon, only the boy wasn't heading for the lion house this time. Was it possible that run-in with the patrolman yesterday had scared Gonzo into calling the meet for elsewhere in the park?
The boy had not seen him, and chances were he would not recognize him even if he did see him. Carella was wearing a battered felt hat with the rim rolled down front, sides, and back. He wore a wide box raincoat which gave him an appearance of girth. And, even though it made him feel a little silly, he was wearing a false mustache. The raincoat was buttoned from top to bottom; Carella's .38 was in the right-hand pocket.
Quickly, he took off after the boy.
The boy seemed to be in a hurry. He walked straight past the lion house, up the knoll in the path, and then hesitated at a sign which read—pointing in several directions—Seals, Reptiles, Children's Zoo. The boy nodded, and then began walking in the direction of the reptiles.
Carella thought of overtaking the boy and asking him some pointed questions. But if the boy were rushing to meet Gonzo, wouldn't it be a little ridiculous to stop him? The object all sublime was to net a pusher who may have had something to do with the demise of Aníbal Hernandez. Junkies making buys could be had by the basketful. Gonzo was the important character in this business transaction, and so Carella bided his time, following the blond boy and waiting for the big deal the way a stockbroker waits for a merger between Ford and Chrysler.
The boy seemed in no particular hurry. He seemed intent, instead, on making a thorough inspection of what the zoo offered. Wherever there was an animal, the boy stopped to look at it. Occasionally, he glanced over his shoulder. Once he stopped to consult a big clock set in the face of the monkeys', apes' and gorillas' house. He nodded and then moved on.
Apparently, there was still time. Apparently, the meet had been called for—what time was it now? Carella looked at his watch. It was three fifteen. Was three thirty a safe estimate? Was that why his young friend was dawdling all over the park?
The dawdling eventually took the blond boy to the men's room. He walked up the flag-covered path, and Carella watched him. As soon as the boy entered the building, Carella circled it, checking for a second exit door. There was none. Satisfied that the boy could not leave the building in any way but through the door by which he had entered, Carella sat on a bench and prepared to wait out the vagaries of nature.
He waited for five minutes. At the end of that time, the boy reappeared and began traveling at a fast trot in the direction of the reptile house. Whatever other faults there may have been in the boy's judgment, Carella could not venture to guess. But he had certainly been astute in choosing the snake pit as an appropriate spot to meet a pusher. Carella grinned and followed toward the snakes, a sudden gay mood overtaking him. He was looking forward to the pinch, the way a good coon dog looks forward to the moment of the kill, just before the wounded coon drops out of the tree.
As if to add to his sudden happy outlook, a crowd magically appeared. It was as if a movie director cued his musicians for a crescendo, and then signaled for throngs to swarm out of the hills, building to a climactic scene.
The people who suddenly appeared were not exactly what Carella would have called throngs. They were, instead, the students of a junior high school class, led by a slightly embarrassed-looking male teacher whose principal had undoubtedly decided his charges were not getting enough "real" experience. The principal had decided to introduce them to "life," so the science teacher had probably been asked to take his class to the zoo, where they could smell the animals. The teacher's face bore the expression of a man sitting next to two drunks in a subway; his mouth yearned to shout, "They're not with me!"
But, unfortunately, the kids were with him, and they were the noisiest damn kids Carella had ever seen or heard. He did not mind the noise because there was a noise within him now, an excitement that mounted as he followed his prey past the school kids and hurried down the path toward the reptile house.
Behind him, one of the kids was saying, "They got a snake in there can eat a pig whole, how about that?"
Another kid answered, "There ain't no snakes can eat pigs whole."
"No? That's how much you know. My father saw a Frank Buck pitcher where the snake eats a pig whole. And they got that snake here."
"The same snake?"
"Not the one in the pitcher, stupid. But a snake like him."
"Then how do you know this one can eat pigs?"
Fascinated as Carella was, he concentrated on his quarry. His quarry was entering the house with the snakes, and Carella did not want to lose him. For a ridiculous moment, he had the sneaking suspicion his mustache was falling off. He stopped, touched the area beneath his nose, and then satisfied, entered the building. The boy seemed to know exactly where he was going. He didn't look at any of the snakes he passed, even though the zoo officials had gone to considerable expense in capturing, transporting and suitably enclosing the reptiles. He walked directly to a cage behind whose thick plate-glass window lay two cobras. He stood watching the cobras, fascinated—or at least seemingly fascinated. Once or twice, he rapped on the glass.
Carella took up a station alongside a small glass-front cage that contained a Rocky Mountain rattler. The snake was asleep, or dead, or some damn thing. It lay in a despondent coil, looking for all the world as if an earthquake would not have disturbed it. But Carella was not interested in the snake. Carella was interested in the color of the glass cage that held the snake. For the back wall of that cage was painted a deep green, and from where Carella was standing, the plate-glass front combined with the green back wall to provide an excellent mirror effect. He could, while ostensibly marveling over the rattle on the surely dead snake in the cage, study the boy across the room with considerable ease.
The boy was undoubtedly a snake lover. He was making sounds at the cobra cage, and he was rapping on the plate-glass front again, and he looked something like a new father in a hospital nursery, making an ass of himself through the nursery window.
The boy did not make an ass of himself for long, nor was he alone for very much longer. Carella couldn't hear any of the sounds emanating from the vicinity of the cobra cage because the junior high school class suddenly burst into the reptile house en masse, and the resultant chaos was a tribute to the city's school system. But Carella's quarry was no longer rapping on the glass. A second boy had come up to the cobra cage, a boy with a mane of wild black hair, wearing a black leather jacket, wearing black pegged trousers and black shoes.
Carella took one look at the newcomer and instantly thought: Gonzo.
Gonzo or not, the newcomer was the person Carella's young friend had been waiting for. Still unable to hear anything because of the science class, Carella was nonetheless able to witness a quick shaking of hands. Then both boys reached into their pockets simultaneously, and then there was another shaking of hands, and Carella knew the junk and the money for the junk had been exchanged.
Carella was no longer interested in his young friend. He was now interested in the boy with the black leather jacket. The blond boy he'd been following grinned, turned, and headed off in one direction. Carella let him go. The other boy lifted the collar of his black jacket, hesitated just a moment, and then headed off in the opposite direction. It was Carella's devout wish to collar him with a pile of narcotics on his person. It was also his desire to get him in the Squad Room and question him about the late Aníbal Hernandez.