Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys

The other cops drew their guns and advanced on the house. They were almost at the front door when the janitor came out, still damp from the shower, wearing a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. I’d started to calm down a little, but when I saw him I lost it again, screaming “Bad monkey!” and scrambling around to the far side of the police cars.

The cops pointed their guns at the janitor and told him to put his hands up, and he did. He was smooth. Instead of looking scared he acted bewildered, like he was this totally innocent guy who couldn’t imagine what the police were doing on his property.

They handcuffed him. “Come on now,” the lead cop coaxed me. “It’s all right, we’ve got him. Talk to me.” So I started babbling about the hunting knife, and eventually he nodded and said, “OK, just stay here,” and went inside the house.

The Diazes formed a protective huddle around me. “Are you OK, Jane?” Carlotta said. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head. “Just scared me out of my wits is all…But it’s fine now.”

Only, it wasn’t fine. I started figuring that out as soon as the cop came back with the wrong knife.

“Is this it?” he asked, holding out a scrawny little steak knife with a five-inch blade.

“No,” I said. “I told you, it was a hunting knife. It was big.”

“Show me.” He took me back inside with him. The hunting knife had disappeared; when I pointed to the spot on the floor where I’d dropped it, the cop said, “That’s where I found this,” and held up the steak knife again. “Are you sure this isn’t it?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I said, annoyed. “The janitor must have hidden the real knife before he came outside.” Then I remembered the toolbox: “Wait a minute…This way!”

I led him into the garage and around to the back of the van. “In there,” I said. “You’ll probably need his keys…” But the van’s back doors were unlocked now. The cop pulled them open.

“So,” he said, “what am I supposed to be looking at?”

The back of the van was empty. No blanket, no plastic sheeting, no luggage straps, no toolbox.

“Damn it!” I said. “He must have hidden this stuff, too.”

“What stuff?”

“His kidnapping equipment.”

“Equipment, huh?” The cop’s expression changed, in a way I didn’t like. “And you think he gathered up this…equipment…and hid it away just as we were arriving?”

“The stuff was here before, and now it’s gone. So yeah. What’s your problem?”

“No problem. It’s just, he must have been moving awfully fast, don’t you think?”

“Look, I’m not making this up.”

“I didn’t say you were making it up. Why would I think you were making it up?”

I should have just shut my mouth then. The thing was, he was right—the janitor would have had to move quickly, which meant he couldn’t have hidden the stuff very well. I’m sure I could have found it.

But the cop was giving me the same I-see-through-your-bullshit look that Officer Friendly had—only not, you know, so friendly—so not only did I keep on running my mouth, but I immediately brought up the one subject you never mention when you’re trying to get somebody to believe you.

“Take a whiff,” I said.

“A whiff?”

“Inside the van. Smell it.”

He leaned in and sniffed. “Air freshener?”

“Pot.”

His eyebrows went up. “Marijuana?”

“The janitor smokes it.”

“Really. You’d never guess that, looking at him.”

“Not to get high,” I said. “I mean, that too, but he smokes it to excite himself. Before…”

“Oh! Before he uses his kidnapping equipment, you mean…And you’re familiar with the smell of marijuana, are you?”

It was a fast trip downhill from there. The more skeptical he became, the more I talked—when he asked me what had put me on to the janitor in the first place, I actually told the truth, or at least enough of it to make myself sound like a complete idiot. “Monkey noises, eh? Well, I can see why you’d be suspicious of a man who made noises like a monkey…”

To complete my humiliation, he brought me back outside and asked Carlotta whether she knew anything about these monkey noises. “Monkey what?” said Carlotta.

“That’s what I thought,” said the cop, and told his buddies to turn the janitor loose.

My mouth wouldn’t stop running: “You’re letting him go?”

“You should be worried about whether I’m going to let you go,” the cop said. “If this gentleman wants to press charges against you for trespassing, I’ll be only too happy to run you in.”

But the janitor, still playing the innocent, said he didn’t want to press charges—he just wanted to know what was going on.

“Just a big misunderstanding, sir,” the cop told him. He shot me a look: “One that had better not happen again.”

The Diazes took me home. Señor Diaz made me ride in the back of the pickup, which I didn’t particularly mind, since he and Carlotta spent the entire trip arguing in high-decibel Spanish; when we stopped at the school to drop off the librarian, she stumbled out of the cab looking pale and half-deaf. Then when we got to my stop, Señor Diaz had a quieter conversation with my aunt and uncle. I didn’t need to listen in to know that I’d be taking the bus to school from now on.

After the Diazes left, my uncle told me that it “might be best” if I didn’t go by the diner or the gas station anymore, and my aunt added that they wouldn’t need my help at the store “for a while,” which I understood was her way of saying I was grounded. I got really mad, and started going on about how stupid it was that no one believed me, and how it wasn’t going to be my fault if the janitor killed another kid; but my aunt and uncle just shook their heads and left me alone to rant and rave.

It was Friday, so I had the whole weekend to feel sorry for myself. Monday was a little better; I got to sleep an extra hour and a half, which almost made up for having to take the school bus. I didn’t see Carlotta until second-period English. She ignored me during class, and afterwards I had to run out into the hall to catch up with her.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you, Jane,” she said. “My dad thinks you’re a bad influence.”

“I am a bad influence. It’s one of the reasons you like me.”

The joke fell flat, but at least she didn’t walk away. After a moment, she asked: “Did you hear about the janitor?”

“What about him?”

“He quit his job over the weekend. The librarian told me he called up the school superintendent on Saturday and said he was leaving.”

“Leaving as in moving away?”

“I guess so.”

“Well don’t you see what that means? He’s guilty! Even though the cops let him go, he’s afraid they’ll remember him next time a kid disappears.”

“Maybe,” said Carlotta. “Or maybe he’s afraid people will jump to conclusions when they hear the cops were at his place.”

“Carlotta, I swear, I didn’t make any of that stuff up.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I mean, if he’s really gone for good.” She looked at me. “You should probably be careful until we know that for sure, huh?”

The thought had already occurred to me. Friday afternoon, as we were about to leave the janitor’s house, I’d caught the janitor eyeballing me. The cops were already in their cars, and Felipe was revving the pickup, and I looked over and saw the janitor standing in his front doorway, still in his underwear, staring at me. He’d dropped the bewildered routine and put a whole new face on.

A hostile face?

No. He didn’t show any emotion at all. He was just…intent. Like he wanted to make really sure he’d recognize me next time we met up.