Well, while we were fighting, I mean copulating, the doll fell on the floor and broke in two, and what do you think? A little piece of paper, folded in four, yellow, or beige rather, came out of it like another child. Ada lit a cigarette and offered me one, which I declined. I picked up the piece of paper, unfolded it, and read aloud: "Metropolitan Bank 000491625R." Ada didn't bat an eye, and told me nothing could be clearer. What could be clearer? I wanted to know, but got no reply. I reread the note, figured it might be a bank account number. "But then," I thought aloud, "why would Zelda put that code in that doll and that doll in the clay ball? And why give that clay ball to Dana? Do you know her?"
Ada: "Who?"
I: "Dana."
Ada: "I do."
I: "Why would Zelda give Dana that note?"
Ada: "Zelda gave her nothing. You don't know anything."
True, I knew very little--for example, I had never heard of Metropolitan Bank, and for that matter I had no idea who Ada and Bill were--but I did know a thing or two that neither they did not, for example, that Zelda had never been blind. "I'm her brother," I told her. "I know more that you think."
Ada laughed and approached me, and grabbed me by the neck, by my plump neck, and began to throttle me. I had a terrible time trying to prevent it, for Ada (why do I keep repeating that name?), while not big, had excellent technique, and would have killed me, I am certain, had her cell phone not rung and diverted her attention.
Ada took the call: "Oh, hi. Where are you? Right." Ada (what a name! how beautifully feminine, how palindromic!) let go of me and marched (unfemininely, I noticed with regret) toward the door, opened it, and in came Bill again. He nodded to me and winked. I nodded back but did not wink. Ada took him by the hand, then by the neck, and began to dig into that plump mouth with all of her tongue, her teeth, her upper lip, her nether lip. Bill, bewildered and happy, let her eat him, but kept one eye open and fixed on me.
It had begun to dawn. We had quite a bit of time before the bank opened, however, and Bill recommended we go to a diner he knew about three block away (a Frenchman, Bill declined to put any word in the plural). Thither we went, and it took a good while until Ada realized that her gun had been left behind, in the hotel room. We dropped our food and, panicking, hurried back to the hotel. We found the gun right where Ada had left it, on the night table.
At nine o'clock we drove (Bill at the wheel) to Metropolitan Bank, way out in the Bronx, on the edge of a neighborhood called Unionport, on Quimby Avenue, between a laundry and a Mexican grocery. From without it looked like another grocery or laundry. From within, however, it looked pretty ritzy, with a high ceiling and a huge chandelier and a brilliant marble floor and counter with one teller, very grave, in the middle of it behind a bulletproof window. Bill told Ada and me to wait in the waiting hall while he talked to the teller, whom he knew. He came back a minute later and demanded the yellow piece of paper, which I would not give him. He grabbed me by the neck, by my frail plump neck, and demanded the paper again. But I remained adamant, and eventually he let go of me. The grave clerk, perceiving our little tiff, came over and told me he needed the piece of paper. I grinned. "You people really take me for a moron, don't you," I declared. He apologized. Oh no. Not at all. He mumbled, "Kindly come with me." He led me down a long, narrow corridor and down one flight to what looked like a boiler room. The clerk knocked on the door, ajar, and told me to wait behind. He got a reply from within and told me again to wait behind, and he went in. He came out a minute later and told me I could go in.
I went into what turned out to be (I had already expected it) a palatial office: high ceiling, huge chandelier, brilliant marble floor. A man wearing a green velvet outfit and a grin, perched at gigantic marble writing table with the name and title "Ira Gold, Manager" engraved on a golden cylinder at one edge of it, told me to come in, to feel at home, to perch wherever I felt like (he had more than one chair from which to pick, let me tell you), to grab a cookie or a wedge of watermelon. I perched, and informed the manager grimly that the matter at hand did not allow for any of that dillydallying he wanted me to engage in. I mentioned Zelda. I told him that the girl had very probably died, but that nobody could know for certain. I produced the piece of paper with the name of the bank and the code or account number. He examined the note. He hummed and hemmed. "A remarkable combination," he mumbled, but added that it in no way denoted a code or a bank account. Well then, what? I wanted to know, and he continued to hem and hum and mumble, "Remarkable, remarkable." I noticed, by the watermelon bowl, a little colorful cube, a toy Zelda and I once played with, when we were children. I forget the name of it. We were never able to crack it. I took the cube and began to tackle it frantically, gripped by an uncontrollable urge to crack it once and for all, right then, at once.
But then the door flew open and Bill and Ada erupted into the office, waving their gun and bellowing like oxen. The manager got up. I got up. He told them to put the gun down, to get out. They walked right up to him, told him to be quiet or they would plug him full of lead. Bill grabbed him from behind, and Ada lunged forward, to punch him in the belly, it looked like; but no, the girl took him by the hand, then by the neck, a thick neck at that, and began to dig into that thin mouth with all of her tongue, her teeth, her upper lip, her nether lip, her everything, pointing her gun at him all the while. From fright the poor man dropped the piece of paper I had given him. Bill rummaged through one drawer, then another, then another, of the writing table, looking for a key, I imagined, or money. I held onto the cube, and Ada kept tearing at the poor thin mouth of the bank manager, and finally I couldn't take it anymore and began to cry, but with a vengeance, like a heifer left for dead by her mother. Everybody froze, Bill from rummaging, Ada and the manager from canoodling. They looked at me, expecting a word of reproof, a lecture. But I had nothing to impart, only mortification, and with it the urgency of the matter at hand, gentlemen, the matter of finding Zelda already, who may be dead. What did they know about "blind" Zelda, who (let me give you another example) at fifteen had her heart broken by a kid called George Becker and, by way of revenge, ordered a large pepperoni pizza from every pizza parlor in the phone book to 2114 Calenwood Drive, where George lived, a domicile promptly blockaded by the entire pizza delivery workforce of Ipikwa County. But my mortification got the better of me and I uttered not a word, and I let go of the cube I'd been trying to crack, and it fell on the table and knocked down a porcelain-framed picture (of Ira and a wife and a child), which fell on the floor and broke.
