“Did you know somebody stole my book?” he asked.
“No!” Parker said, looking appalled. “What book?”
“This book I wrote.”
“Youwrote a book?” Parker said. He considered this something of an oddity, like an elephant in the jungle writing a book. With his right tusk. Or perhaps his trunk.
“Yeah, a novel,” Ollie said. “Report to the Commissioner.Some illiterate scumbag stole it from my car.”
“Did you get the guy?”
“Not yet. But I will. Oh, I will, I promise you.”
“I always thought I myself could write a book, some of this crap you read nowadays,” Parker said. “If only I could find the time.”
Because he didn’t wish to rain on Parker’s parade, Ollie didn’t mention that it also took talent. Instead, he said, “It does take time, m’friend, ah yes.” What was taking most of his own time these days was trying to remember the exact language in the stolen manuscript, which happened to be the only copy Ollie had, every word of which he felt was perfect. Since Ollie didn’t know any professional writers but himself, he didn’t realize that what he was doing was called “rewriting.” And since he had nothing against which to compare his new pages, he had no idea that they were really much better than what he’d originally written. In all truth, it wasn’t too difficult to write pages that were better than the original ones, but Ollie didn’t know that, either.
“Yeah, this half-spic, half-Russian singer, her parents anyway,” Parker said, getting back to the kidnapping because Ollie’s novel was of no interest to him whatsoever. “You should try to catch the tape on TV,” he said. “She’s half-naked, these great tits spilling all over the place.”
“Idid catch it,” Ollie said. “You ever eat here before?” he asked, salivating and shoving through a door that was made of wood but that looked like a beaded curtain.
At noontime, the place was crowded with many of the employees who kept the city’s judicial and financial systems running. A hostess wearing a green silk Suzie Wong gown slit to the thigh on her left leg seated the men in a booth some ten feet from the entrance doors, and handed them menus. Parker watched her slitted thigh as she went back to her station. Ollie was already looking at his menu.
“She gets raped by this spade twice her size,” Parker said. “Tamar whatever the fuck her name is.”
“You wanna try some dim sum?” Ollie asked.
“What’s that, them dim sum?” Parker said.
“Or how about some of the specials?”
“Why don’t you order?” Parker said. “I trust you.”
“I do happen to be an expert on Chinese coo-zeen,” Ollie said.
“So order, go on. He’s got muscles on his muscles, this jig, prolly got them in the prison gym.”
A waiter padded over to their table. To start, Ollie ordered eight golden puffed shrimp, six chicken fingers, six pan-fried pork dumplings, and two five-piece orders of barbecued spare ribs. Then he ordered the Hot Lovers Chicken, which was deep-fried chicken sautéed with snow peas, baby corn, and straw mushrooms in a spicy tangy sauce, and the Dry Sautéed Beef, Szechuan Style…
“This is real Chinese home cooking,” he told Parker.
…and the Mee Goreng, which were spaghetti-style noodles sautéed with various exotic spices, shrimp, tomatoes, eggs, and vegetables…
“A specialty in Singapore,” Ollie explained.
…and then the Young Ginger Beef, and the Scallops with Lemon Sauce, and the Broccoli with Garlic Sauce, and the Sautéed Fresh Spinach.
“I hope that’ll be enough,” he told Parker. “We can always order more later, if we need it.”
The waiter wagged his head in wonder and went off.
“Why do they always look like they’re pissed off?” Parker asked.
“Who?” Ollie said.
“Chinese waiters. They always look like they got a hair across their ass.”
“It ain’t that,” Ollie explained. “It’s they got these squinty eyes makes them look like they’re frowning.”
“He prac’ly tears off all her clothes,” Parker said.
“Who does?”
“This rapist.”
“You know,” Ollie said, “sometimes I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
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.”
“Akidnapping! ” 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.”