Thirty-Three Teeth

In Search of Dtui

“A fat one?”

“She is quite large, I suppose.”

“Yeah. She was here. You know where she works?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“For the RR29.”

“RR29?”

“It’s the regulation complaint form that accompanies official telephone calls to law enforcement departments.”

“What did she do?”

“Illegal access to government documents. They said I’d need to find out where she works before they can do anything-especially seeing as she didn’t technically steal anything. So, do you?”

The man sat at a small desk in a room so crammed with piles and boxes of papers, one match would have sent the whole building to ashes in minutes.

So, this was it, Siri thought to himself looking at the vaguely Chinese features of a face slowly adopting the shape and color of a sheet of paper. This was what all the triplicates and quadruplicates came to. Hundreds of officious cadres like this, processing endless documents by hand, passing them on to other paper-faced clerks in other offices, and filing them away in rooms like this. What a system.

This was the filing section of the Department of Corrections. The only appointment marked in Dtui’s log for today was:

8:3 °CORRECTIONS

“So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Know where she works.”

“No. I have no idea.”

“Then how did you know she was here?”

“You just told me.”

“But why here, at Corrections?”

“It was next on my list. We’re investigating her. She’s tried this kind of thing before.”

“Who’s we?”

Siri produced his well-thumbed letter of introduction from the Justice Department. He was learning that in most cases, just having a document was enough to get him into places. Few bothered to read the long stodgy wording. The letterhead was enough. The clerk sensed he was already involved in a matter of intrigue.

“What’s she done, then?” the clerk asked.

“She goes around impersonating a nurse, you know, goes into this department and that, claiming this and that.”

“Damn. I knew there was something fishy about her. Didn’t look like any nurse I’d ever seen.”

“Suppose you tell me what happened.”

The filing clerk was visibly excited. His dull life desperately needed days such as these.

“She marches in here as if she owns the office and says Dr. Vansana asked her to come and look up something in the files. Dr. Vansana’s the physician we use at the correctional facilities. I mean, ha, as if anyone can just march in and claim to be this or that and get access to my files. I mean, she didn’t have so much as a P24.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I jest you not, comrade. Well, Dr. Vansana’s off at the reservoir today so there wasn’t even any way of checking her story. I wasn’t letting her get her hands in my drawers, I can tell you.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“Right. So she kicked up a fuss and I told her I wasn’t even supposed to be talking to her till I saw an Int5Q, so she should go away and come back with some paperwork. I asked her, “Where do you think the country would be if everyone conducted his or her daily business without the correct forms?’”

“Good for you.”

“I can’t even tell you what she said to that. I said ‘Good day’ and went back to my deskwork. She stormed out, and I suppose I eventually calmed down and forgot about her. I found myself engrossed in a rejac. budg. requisition that needed some backup Rll’s. I’m a bit short-staffed right now. Normally I’d have a girl running back and forth to the cabinet room for files, but these days I’m having to do it myself. So I went next door and what do you know? The door was locked. I banged and banged and who should come to the door?”

“I think I know.”

“Her, brazen as anything, comes and opens the door. And she has the nerve to tell me she took a wrong turn and got herself locked in that room with the files. A likely story I do not think. I mean, the lock’s on the inside for the first thing, and there she was opening it. I was flabbergasted. I’d never seen such abuse of the regulations.

“Of course, what I should have done at that point was restrain her and call for security, the police even. But, well, she was a big girl and I’m not a physically well person, so I instructed her to leave, forthwith. Would you believe she strolled past me smiling without a glimmer of guilt?”

“I would.” He fought back his own smile.

“What?”

“I mean, she’s a hardened criminal. These people have no shame. Too bad you don’t know what file she was looking at.”

“Ha. Not know? You don’t think I could spend over a year setting up this system and not know what’s been tampered with? She didn’t even bother to put it back in the drawer straight. DC19368.3. That, Comrade, is a criminal record file.”

“I wish all our witnesses were as diligent as you, comrade. I’m afraid I’ll have to take a look at that file. It’s the only evidence we have against her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Her name? We refer to her as … as HJJ838.”

The man jotted it down.

Twenty minutes later, Siri walked out of the Corrections Department into a brick wall of dry heat. It had to be the hottest damned year he’d ever known. There hadn’t been more than a sneeze of rain since last December. Nothing was really green anymore.

A depleted flock of bicycle taxi pedalers wilted on their back seats beneath the gray leaves of a peacock-tail tree.

“Good health,” Siri said hopefully.

“Good health, Uncle,” a couple replied. They’d seen him arrive on his motorcycle, so they knew there was no chance of a fare.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“I don’t suppose any of you recall giving a ride to a nurse here this morning, do you? About nine?”

“I do,” said a bare-chested young man with a stack of coat hangars inside his skin. “There was a heavy one this morning. It was me that took her.”

“Remember where to?”

“Out to Silver City, Uncle. Almost killed me it did, day like this.” “Thank you.”

Siri was on his way back to his bike when he glanced across the street. In the heat that shimmered up from the pavement, he saw Saloop sitting with his long tongue flopping out of his mouth.

“Saloop?” Siri said. “What the heck are you doing here?”

He remembered the old Lassie black and white films he’d seen at Le Cine in Paris. Perhaps his dog had come to tell him there was danger back at the house. He couldn’t think how he’d traced him here. He waited for an old Vietnamese truck to pass before going across to see. But once the vehicle and its trailer of tarry black smog had cleared the lane, Saloop had gone.

“I never will get that dog,” Siri said to himself.