Box Nine

Chapter Seven

Rollie’s Grill is a classic Quinsigamond Lunchcar Company diner circa 1925. It now rests on the original site where it was put down years ago. It was moved twice in the course of its life, but now it’s back where it belongs on the corner of Frenchman’s Boulevard and Fourier Avenue.

The current owner, a Cambodian who calls himself Harry, has done pretty well since he hauled ass out of his homeland in ’75, just steps ahead of the bloody knives of the Khmer Rouge. Improbable as it might sound, he married a Puerto Rican girl named Isabelle and they’ve got quite the family now — four little girls who are always playing in the last booth next to the exit. Harry has trained them to scream when someone tries to bolt on a check.

Harry and Isabelle own an ark of a house, a sprawling three-decker crammed with people spanning almost a hundred years in age. It sits like a mirage behind the diner in a state of perpetual renovation. Harry’s rounded up a few cousins who managed to escape genocide and he’s trained them, made them into solid short-order cooks, though he thinks Lon is a little inconsistent on the omelettes. Isabelle, for her part, has a huge extended family, all of whom seem to work at irregular intervals, in one capacity or another, at the diner. The air during the dinner rush is a wild mixture of Spanish, Cambodian, and a fractured but street-hip English. The menu, scrawled at the start of each day on an enormous chalkboard that hangs by a chain from the barreled ceiling, often features an unlikely combination of paella, Kompong Som soufflé, and franks and beans.

Isabelle has done wonders with the diner. She’s got a real knack, a genuine instinct for design and color. The Grill had become tired and shabby when Harry picked it up from its previous owner. In the past year the place has come back to life. While Harry secured iffy bank loans and scrounged for secondhand kitchen equipment, his wife retooled the whole of the diner. Isabelle swears she had no plan in mind besides restoring cleanliness and order, but one look inside Rollie’s and you’re forced to doubt her. She went back to the basics, scrubbed and rescrubbed the tilework and taught herself how to regrout. She stripped an awful yellow paint job from the booths, brought them down to the original wood, and then stained them into a subtle sheen. She recovered the torn stools, sanded down windowsills, spent hours scraping grease from the grill’s backing wall.

And when everything passed her severe standards, she took the diner a step further. She branded it with the stamp of Harry and Isabelle, personalized it, made it unquestionably theirs. She went about this last step with the devotion and scrupulousness of a borderline fanatic. She mined their native cultures and combined the results for a weird but pleasing style. Two framed and matted maps of Cambodia and Puerto Rico now hang over each doorway. Shelves are crammed with carvings, curios, talismans from each homeland. The cash register is watched over by statues of both the Buddha and St. Anthony. It’s as if Isabelle has formed a tiny new nation composed of artifacts from two very different worlds. And it’s as if this minute, barrel-roofed nation immediately transcended its origins and wound up stronger and more peaceful than its forebears.

Dr. Woo has been waiting ten minutes, studying the decor, when Lenore comes through the door. She’d given him directions that were a little more vague than was necessary and she’d wondered more than once about whether he’d make it. She says, “How goes the war?” to Harry’s cousin Lon as she walks past the counter and slides into Woo’s booth. Lon closes his eyes, grows a huge smile, and nods rapidly. Lenore thinks he’s got a monster crush on her.

“Any trouble finding the place?” Lenore asks, sliding out of her jacket. The diner is always a little bit overheated.

“Not at all,” Woo says too fast. “You give excellent directions. One of the benefits of police experience, I suppose.”

Lenore grimaces and makes a fast, reflexive shushing sound. She realizes she’ll have to explain this, though she doesn’t want to.

Woo looks around and asks, “Have I said something wrong?”

Lenore raises her eyebrows. “It’s just that nobody here knows I’m a cop and, I don’t know, I’d rather keep it that way.”

Woo looks interested. He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “You think that their attitude toward you would change if they knew you were a police officer?”

Lenore shrugs. “No idea. Probably not. I don’t know. I just like this place. I kind of stumbled upon it and so far it isn’t real popular. It hasn’t been profiled in the newspaper yet. It’s still mine right now. I just don’t want to endanger — what is this?”

Woo doesn’t know how to answer the question. This woman suddenly seems a lot more erratic than he’d thought at the briefing.

“What is what?” he finally says, trying to show the confusion on his face.

Lenore lets out a deep breath. “Look, I’m working on a few hours of sleep here. A few hours out of like the past twenty-four. I mean, you asked me to lunch, remember. I assumed there was something you wanted to discuss regarding the briefing. I knew this wasn’t a good idea.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Miss Thomas,” Woo begins, but Lenore interrupts, saying, “It’s Detective Thomas,” then she hesitates and softens slightly, “or Lenore. Just call me Lenore, okay?”

“And you may call me Fred,” Woo says.

“Are you serious?” Lenore asks.

“I don’t understand,” Woo says.

“Whatever you say. Freddy it is. Your friends call you that?”

Woo is on the verge of being affronted. He says simply, “That is my name.”

By way of a semi-apology, Lenore mumbles, “Tell you the truth, I’ve never been crazy about ‘Lenore,’ you know?”

There’s a couple of seconds of silence as they both stare sideways up at the menu board. Then Woo asks, “How did you find this place?”

Lenore smiles, indicating that she likes the question, and Woo is pleased. “Okay,” she says, “my old man was a mailman, right? This neighborhood was one of his routes. And a couple times a week he’d eat lunch in here. Always the same thing. Cup of ham and bean soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Back then it was owned by Rollie. The original Rollie. From the name, you know? So my father took us, my brother and my mom, here once or twice. I was pretty young. Then Rollie died and the place closed down for a while. Then it reopened and changed owners about every other year. Got real run-down. Got to look like a place you just didn’t want to eat in. Then Harry and Isabelle bought it and cleaned it up again. I was working one night, over a year ago I guess, and I could not stay awake. I usually don’t have that problem, but this one night, Jesus, I was just out. I was working, stakeout, you know, about a block away from here. Down off Ironhouse Avenue. And I came in here for a coffee. And that was it.”

“That was it,” Woo repeats.

Lenore nods. “Yeah. The coffee was great and the place was great. And Harry was wonderful. I mean, charming. That’s the word I would have to use. Charming. So I started coming in a couple of times a week for lunch …”

“Just like your father,” Woo inserts, pleased with himself.

“Yeah, right,” Lenore says. “Just like my old man. And I got to know Isabelle, and then a bunch of the relatives.”

“And now,” Woo says, vaguely gesturing with his hands, “you’re a regular.”

“I guess so,” Lenore says flatly, secretly pleased by the comment.

“So what’s good?” Woo asks, and it’s a second before Lenore understands that he’s referring to the lunch menu.

“Oh,” she says, “just about anything. I’m going to go with the Monday Special and a black coffee.”

Woo raises his eyes to ask for more details.

“It’s sort of this fried-rice goulash. Mostly vegetarian. Water chestnuts, onion, pepper, pineapple. You know what I’m saying.”

“Do they use MSG?” Woo asks.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do,” Lenore says.

“Doesn’t affect you?”

“I think it gives me a boost.”

“I think I’ll have the tuna melt,” Woo says.

Lenore calls the order over to Lon, who starts putting it together immediately. She wonders if he’s upset about her bringing another man into the place. She’s never taken Zarelli here. Now she’s glad about that.

“The reason I asked if we could have lunch,” Woo says, lowering his voice substantially to indicate his seriousness, “is because I sensed a certain degree of, perhaps, hostility, at the briefing.”

“You did,” Lenore says blandly, showing a real disinterest. She wonders as she answers if a guy who’s an expert on language can figure out what she’s really thinking.

“Yes,” Woo says. “I was thinking that, possibly, we could talk about that. In light of the seriousness of the situation and the fact that, whether either one of us likes it or not, I’ll be consulting on this case, and most likely spending a good deal of time in your company, well, I was thinking that the way to proceed at this point might be to clear up any acrimony right at the start.”

“Acrimony,” Lenore says.

“Let me make a guess here,” Woo says. “Permit me some groundless speculation for a moment, please. I was watching you this morning and I was wondering how many reasons could there be for your distaste of that meeting, and the presence of Agent Lehmann and Mayor Welby and myself …”

“Lehmann I know,” Lenore interrupts. “Believe me, I’ve got my reasons for being hostile to Lehmann.”

“All right, fine,” Woo says. “That still leaves the mayor and myself. Let me just tell you what I was thinking on the drive over here. I was thinking you’d be justified in some resentment. That some resentment of this morning’s proceedings would be only logical. I was thinking how I might feel in your position. This is your line of work, your expertise, your city. You’ve got a long and proven history in dealing with narcotics and Bangkok Park. You’ve taken quite a few risks over the years, done what was asked of you and then, perhaps, a bit more. And this morning an image-obsessed politician and an ivory-tower academic come into your life and tell you what’s new and what you’re to do about it. It’s patently unjust.”

Lon brings their food to the counter and Lenore, without taking her eyes off Woo, leans out and grabs the plates and brings them down to their table. She’s got a frozen and bemused look on her face. She grabs the pepper shaker and puts a blanket of black powder over her rice, then mixes it up with her fork, still staring at him, until Woo starts to fidget and clear his throat.

“What?” he finally says. “Have I offended you somehow?”

Lenore shakes her head no, slowly, a logy swing from side to side. Woo finds her bizarre, decides the lunch date was a mistake.

“You are slick, Dr. Woo,” she says. “Very sharp, a very slick character.”

“I don’t understand,” Woo says, fingering his tuna melt.

“No, no,” Lenore says, “don’t get me wrong here. This is refreshing. Trust me. I could tell you stories. The men I’ve known. God. No one has made this much of an effort in ages. I mean, I’m used to Zarelli trying to tease me like a sixteen-year-old, for Christ sake. I mean, this is an event. Really, Doc, you’ve achieved the effect you were going for. The closest I come to being flattered these days is from the Spanish pimps down Club 62.”

“I’m not sure I …” Woo begins, but Lenore waves his words away.

“No, I swear to you, Freddy, this is a compliment. Hey, this is the high point of the month, you know.”

Woo says, “Lenore …” then just leaves his lips open slightly and she can see his tongue resting like a pink carpet in the valley of his mouth.

Lenore begins to laugh quieriy, a low, guttural, staccato laugh that actually scares Woo a little. She takes in a mouthful of rice, sits back in her seat, and chews slowly, nodding and staring at him. Then, finally, she swallows and says, “Here’s how I see it, Freddy. I don’t really care one way or the other about you or the mayor being at the briefing this morning. Just doesn’t matter to me. I have other things to think about. The mayor just wasted a little of everyone’s time, but no big deal. And you, I guess, might actually prove useful. At least that’s what Lehmann and DEA seem to think. And Lehmann is an asshole, but he’s not stupid. I’d like to say he was, but it’s just not the case.”

She takes another helping of rice and pineapple, chews, swallows, breathes, and continues.

“But your version of things is very workable. You’ve got logic on your side and you bet that that was enough. Good bet. I would have sized things up in roughly the same way if I were in your shoes, so to speak. You figure you’ll call me hostile, then, before I can get defensive, you’ll acknowledge the correctness of my hostility, sort of putting us on the same side of the fence. Instant-comrades kind of thing. It’s a nice maneuver. Got a lot of things going for it. It’s kind of compressed, you know. Uses a domino effect. You call out a personality flaw in me, defuse it by labeling the reasons it’s justified, disarm my reaction to it by allying yourself on my side of the fence, and come off like a real sensitive guy, all in one shot. Very good. Let me ask you, is that your standard approach for picking up women? Because I’m sure, God knows, it’s effective, but it just seems like a little bit of overkill, you know. Like using a howitzer to kill a housefly. Haven’t you ever just offered to buy someone a drink? What got to you, anyway? What, did you figure that same ‘hostility’ that annoyed you so much in the briefing room would be a real different thing in the sack?”

She stares at him. She holds her fork out, halfway across the table, like a crude weapon. She can almost see his brain struggling to make a fast decision, whether to continue trying to feign innocence or turn the whole thing into a laugh on him, a “you’ve got my number,” “we can be buddies now” strategy.

He tries a third ploy. He says, “You’re a stunning woman.”

Lenore says, “Yeah, I’m a real piece of work.”

Woo picks up his tuna melt, takes a tiny bite, puts it back on his plate, and wipes his mouth with the paper napkin. They’re both quiet, sizing up the situation. Then Woo says, “What I mean is that you’re correct. I thought I was telling the truth about the nature of your feelings toward the outsiders at this morning’s meeting. I honestly did. But, more importantly, that was secondary to my hopes of seducing you …”

“Seducing you,” Lenore repeats, too loud. “God, listen to how you talk. You’re a real winner, Freddy.”

“Fred,” he says. “Just Fred, please.”

She ignores him, spears a water chestnut and a pepper with her fork.

Woo takes a breath and goes on. “But what I find thrilling, right now, exciting, significant, is the fact that you intuited the actual intention, the hidden meanings, behind my words. You peeled back the first layer, what you wish to think of as a facade, though, again, I promise you it was an honest opinion on my part, but you stripped it away to expose the primary meaning of my message, the core of what I was attempting to communicate. You’re a natural, Detective Thomas.”

“My head is just growing by the minute.”

“What I mean to say is you’re the perfect person for this case. You appear to have a highly evolved sense of what I would call semantic intuitiveness, or, maybe, semiotic intuition, or …”

She cuts him off. “Look, Fred, whatever you think, I’m not a very intuitive person …”

“I beg to differ …”

“I’m just not, okay. I’m the ultimate pragmatist. That’s why I’m great at my job, if you want to know the truth. I find the easiest, most effective way of getting something done, then I just carry that out, follow it down the line. It seems simple to me and I don’t really understand why everyone doesn’t behave in this manner. Right now, what we’ve got to get straight is that fate has thrown us together. Well, fate and Mayor Victor Welby. Now, I don’t know why. Standard procedure would be that you leave us your phone number and we call you up when we’ve got a question. Maybe you make an appearance at a progress briefing. But Miskewitz made it clear that the mayor has other ideas. He wants you and me together on this. He doesn’t share his reasoning with me. So now I’ve got Mr. Ph.D. taking a field trip to Bangkok Park, with me as the tour guide. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I just have to deal with it, figure out what might be the best, most efficient way to achieve our mutual end. Our end is to find out if this Lingo shit has found its way to my street, and if it has, to neutralize its effect on the local environment. You agree with that?”

Woo smiles, pushes his sandwich away. “I like the way you talk. I like the rhythms of your natural speech.”

Lenore shakes her head. “Jesus Christ, you don’t catch on, do you? You know, in your own way you’re a real moron.”

“No, no, Detective,” he says. “I’m very clear on the fact that, from a romantic avenue, you’ve shut me down …”

“A romantic avenue,” Lenore repeats. “Jesus.”

“But from your side of things, you have to try to keep in mind that my life revolves around language. So when I make the statement that I love the way you speak, I’m commenting on a professional level.”

“I’m sure.”

“Now, as to your summation of our mutual problem, yes, I agree.”

“You agree?”

“That our first step is to determine the presence of the drug, to find out if there was any mass production or marketing. Let me ask you. It’s known I consulted with the Swanns while they were still at the Institute. Why aren’t I a suspect?”

“Don’t worry, you are.”

“Then let me say, here at the start, that my contact with them was very brief. We met three or four times at the most. I simply gave them my opinion on certain theoretical questions. If need be, Detective, I can certainly account for my whereabouts at the time of their deaths.”

“Yeah, well, believe me, Freddy, you’re a long shot right now. I’m more inclined to start piecing things together from the distribution end. Down in the Park.”

“Bangkok Park?”

“You ever been?”

“I’m afraid not,” Woo says.

“Not even a drive-through? Little tourist peek?”

“My time is fully claimed, I’m afraid.”

“Yeah, mine too.”

“I’ve heard many of the stories, of course …”

“Of course,” Lenore mumbles.

“Younger colleagues who’ve ventured down …”

“A little excitement, a little spice, little break from the scholarly grind.”

“Exactly.”

“They lose a week’s pay and their Blaupunkts and they think it’s worth it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I would. Middle-class tourists in the Park piss me off.”

“Of course.”

“Place is a cesspool. Tell your people to stay in the Canal Zone with all the bohemians. They can get their kicks hitting on teenage lesbians with purple-dyed hair and snake tattoos.”

“Now, the Canal Zone I’ve been to …” Woo begins.

“I bet. Listen, Fred, the Zone isn’t the Park. The Zone is all these kids playing artist in the run-down factories that their grandfathers broke their backs in. And that’s fine, that’s okay, I don’t care. If they want to pretend that the Zone is loaded up with truth and danger, great. As far as I can see they’re not hurting anyone. They play zipperhead music and write bonehead plays …”

“Actually, I’ve seen some of the performance pieces and …”

“And read dirty poetry. Super. Have a ball. But Bangkok Park isn’t the Canal Zone. It’s a whole different world. You know that the mortality rate in the Park is four times greater than any other square-mile area in the county? Probably in the whole goddamn state. Are you aware there’s an entire economy that’s completely independent from the rest of Quinsigamond and I’d bet its own little GNP works out at about ten times the city’s total budget? You can’t imagine the kind of cult crap that goes on in there. There’s just a whole culture, a whole different set of … I don’t know. You just have to taste it, you know. Words aren’t going to do it.”

Woo sits back. He folds his arms like he’s the one who’s made some point, waits a beat before quashing an almost condescending smile, leans forward, right in line with Lenore’s face, and says, “That’s always the case, isn’t it?”