“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 lettersU.S. engraved midway between the smaller wordsFederal Bureau of Investigation above andDepartment 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?”
There was another hesitation, and then a short sharp click as she closed the door. Forbes figured it wouldn’t open again. He was thinking they’d have to come back later, with a warrant, when all at once he heard the chain rattling loose, and the door opened wide, surprising him.
Rosalita Guadajillo was a slender woman in her early twenties, they guessed, some five-feet-six-inches tall, obviously dressed to go out on this Monday at almost twelve noon. Her hair was black, her eyes brown and lined with a greenish tint. She was wearing bright red lipstick and round plastic earrings of the same color, high-heeled strappy black sandals, a short, tight black skirt, and a crisp white blouse unbuttoned some three buttons down to reveal somewhat exuberant cleavage cushioning a red plastic necklace that matched the earrings. Both Jones and Forbes figured her for a hooker, so much for profiling.
“May we come in?” Forbes asked.
He wasn’t being polite. He was protecting their asses against future claims of forced entry, these days.
“What’s this about?” Rosalita asked, stepping aside to allow them entry. She was not unmindful of the display of big hardware, but this wasLa Perlita and guns were as common here ascuchi frito joints. They walked into a small kitchen still set with that morning’s breakfast dishes. Living room with a thrift-shop three-piece set of stuffed furniture. Doors opening on two small bedrooms. Closed door probably led to the bathroom. One of the detectives opened the door. Nobody in there, thank God.
“This your phone number, Miss Guadajillo?” Forbes asked. He was getting close to the correct pronunciation, but still no cigar.
She looked at the printout.
“Yes?” she said.
“You make a call from this phone at noon today?”
“No.”
“To a man named Barney Loomis…”
“No.”
“At Bison Records?”
“No. I haven’t even tried to use that phone since late last night.”
“You know exactly when you used it last, is that it?” Jones asked.
“Yes, it so happens I do,” she said, getting all huffy. “Because that was when I tried to call my sitter, and I discovered it was missing.”
“Missing, huh?”
“The phone, huh?”
“Your sitter, huh?”
“I have two kids,” Rosalita said. “A sitter was with them last night. When I tried to call her, my phone was gone.”
“You have two kids, huh?” Lonigan said.
“Eight and six. A boy and a girl.”
Meant she’d been knocked up the first time when she was sixteen or thereabouts, Lonigan figured.
“Where are these kids now?”
“My mother has them. She keeps them all day. While I work.”
“Doing what, Miss Guadajillo?”
Lonigan figured he already knew.
“I have a boutique on Mason and Sixth.”
“A boutique, huh?” Feingold said.
“Yes. I sell costume jewelry. These earrings are from my shop.”
“Is that a fact?” Forbes said skeptically.
“Yes, it’s a fact,” Rosalita said. “Why do you want to know about my phone?”
“Did you happen toreport it missing?”
“I just learned about it late last night.”
“What time last night?”
“Around ten-thirty. When we got out of the movies. That’s when I tried to call home to see how the kids were.”
“Who’s we?” Forbes asked.
“What movie?” Jones asked.
“My boyfriend,” Rosalita said. “The new Tom Cruise movie.”
“But your phone was missing, huh?”
“My phone was missing, yes. I think I may have left it at the shop. Or else somebody stole it from my bag.”
“You going to the shop now?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t we just come with you?” Forbes suggested. “See if maybe you left the phone there.”
“Por que es ese putó selular tan importante después de todo?”Rosalita asked—which was incidentally Spanish, which neither the agents nor the detectives understood, incidentally.
Besides, it didn’t really matter, did it?
The fucking phone wasn’t in her shop, anyway.
8
BECAUSE BOTH MENwere downtown to testify in two separate court cases that Monday morning, Detectives Andy Parker and Ollie Weeks happened to run into each other at the Criminal Courts Building when their respective judges called lunch breaks. Both detectives normally enjoyed testifying since it gave them a chance to bask in the glory spotlight for a few hours, even though they felt the system was designed to put dangerous criminals back on the street again as soon as possible. A trip downtown took them away from the humdrum daily grinds of the 8-7 and the 8-8. Down here in the halls of so-called justice, they almost felt it was all worthwhile.
“Ollie, hey!” Parker called.
“Andy,vee gates? ” Ollie said, meaning to say“wie gehts,” an expression he’d picked up from his lieutenant, but only to prove to all these Jewish lawyers down here in these hallowed marble corridors just how tolerant he was of the Hebrew faith. Ollie guessed the expression meant “How goes it?” Parker didn’t know what it meant, so Ollie could just as well have been saying“Veh farblondjet,” which meant “Get lost,” but which he hadn’t yet learned.
Both men were wearing suits and ties. When these shrewd defense-lawyer shysters started working you over, it was always best for the jury to think you were gentlemen instead of roughnecks or rogues like some of the cops you saw on television these days. Actually, Parker and Weeks did occasionally behave like roughnecks and/or rogues, but it didn’t pay to let the jury know this when you were testifying that you went in with all the proper No-Knock documentation.
“You feel like Chink’s?” Parker asked.
Both men were consummate bigots.
“I know a great place,” Ollie said.
The two detectives strolled in bright May sunshine toward a Chinese restaurant in nearby Hull Street. They could have been bankers or lawyers or stock brokers, they looked that dandy. Parker had even shaved for the occasion of his court appearance. He told Ollie the 8-7 had caught a spectacular case this past Saturday night, had Ollie seen the tape on TV? Ollie said he had. In fact, he was sick and tired of seeing Tamar Valparaiso on television day and night.