The Frumious Bandersnatch (10 page)

Disembarked and disoriented after their nocturnal ordeal, the weary voyagers dispersed in various directions, Captain Reeves—as befitted his role as commander—being the last to leave his vessel.

(“Captain
Peeved,
” Hawes called him behind his back but within earshot of Honey Blair, who, he noticed with satisfaction, acknowledged the sarcastic sobriquet with a reluctant smile of approval.)

The fog gathering around them, the detectives and the television people walked together in silence to where they'd parked in the A
UTHORIZED
P
ERSONNEL
zone dockside. Carella had indeed seized the tape as evidence. Honey was indeed intending to bring suit against the city. Hawes did not think this was such a good start for a relationship.

Honey and her crew climbed into the Channel Four van; the two detectives got into their unmarked Chevy sedan. The streets were empty at this early hour of the morning. Carella and Hawes made it back to the squadroom in less than ten minutes.

There was still a lot of work to do before the shift ended.

 

“
YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE
hit her so hard,” Avery was telling Cal.

“Come on, it was only a slap,” Cal said.

“You knocked her down. That was more than a slap.”

“She was making a run for it.”

Tamar Valparaiso was still unconscious and draped alongside Kellie Morgan on the back seat of the Ford Explorer, her head on Kellie's shoulder, her hands and feet bound, a blindfold over her eyes.

Kellie, to tell the truth, was sort of overwhelmed to be in such close proximity to someone she perceived to be a rock star even though she'd only seen her perform once at a club over in the next state, and that was at least nine months ago, before Tamar had got her recording contract.

They had left the Rinker at the Fairfield Street dock, all the way downtown in the Old Quarter of the city, taking with them only any personal items, and the masks, and the weapons, transferring all and sundry into the Ford. Avery was now driving. Cal was sitting beside him. They were moving slowly through the fog and the deserted streets, observing the speed limit, stopping at any red traffic light or full stop sign, but not traveling so slowly as to attract police attention. That was the last thing they needed at this stage of the game.

The tendrils of the fog embraced the car as if to crush it. Fog frightened Kellie. You never knew what might come at you out of a fog.

“When they pay the ransom,” Avery said, still on the case, “we're supposed…”

“
If
they pay the ransom,” Cal corrected.

“They'll pay it, don't worry. But then we're supposed to return her safe and sound. If we send her back with her face all bruised…”

“Ain't no bruises on her face,” Cal said.

“Girl's face is her fortune,” Kellie said from the back seat.

“Ours, too,” Avery reminded her.

“Tits ain't so bad, neither,” Cal said and grinned.

“Hey, cool that shit,” Kellie said.

“The way you hit her,” Avery said, refusing to let go, “her face is gonna swell up like a balloon.”

“Black and blue already,” Kellie said, looking over at Tamar and nodding.

“How's she doing otherwise?” Avery asked.

“Still out like a light,” Kellie said. “We got a blanket or something? She's half-naked here.”

“That ain't our fault,” Cal said. “She stripped her own self buck ass naked. They can't blame us for that.”

“They can blame you for swatting her,” Avery insisted.

“How'd you like my swatting the monster, huh?” Cal asked, grinning, turning to look at Avery. “Or didn't you like that, either? Him crouched and ready to spring for our throats, how come
you
didn't swat him, Ave? You were standing right there in front of him. How come
you
didn't take a swing?”

“Because we agreed no violence.”

“That was our agreement, yes,” Kellie said.

“You go in with 47s,” Cal said, “you got to expect violence.”

“Not if we agreed beforehand.”

“That was before I knew anybody was gonna go for my throat.”

“I don't think he was about to go for you,” Avery said reasonably. “He was just assessing the situation. He heard you yelling, he naturally wondered what was going on, him being on the floor and all, where he couldn't see. So he lifted himself up to take a look. You shouldn't've hit him and you
certainly
shouldn't've hit the girl. I don't want you hitting her again, Cal, you hear me?”

“Tell him,” Kellie said.

The car went silent.

The fog embraced it.

“Any questions?” Avery asked.

“Yeah. How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit?” Cal said, and laughed at his own witticism.

Nobody laughed with him.

 

IN THIS CITY,
the facades of the buildings conceal a multitude of endeavors, many of them criminal. Whore houses flourish on any avenue or side street, blatantly advertising themselves in the trendiest magazines as massage parlors, offering up to the tired businessman or the restless college kid a variety of pleasures to satisfy the most obsessive connoisseur. Here in this carnal candyland, the night stalker can find whatever he desires, at whatever price. Nor is this American flesh bazaar limited to the big bad city alone. Travel to the so-called heartland. Open the yellow pages of the local telephone directory, or surf the Internet in your hotel room. It is there. It is everywhere. It is available.

Many of the hidden warrens in this and other American cities now house drug pads to shame the ancient opium dens of China. Where not too many years ago, you could smoke a crack pipe in one of these places for a mere five bucks, this cheap cocaine derivative has now mysteriously fallen out of favor, to be replaced by heroin as the drug of choice, an ascendancy that no doubt thrills the poppy growers in Afghanistan now that they've been liberated by American soldiers. A sharp loaded with a heroin hit now cost almost three times as much as a puff of crack used to cost. You lay on a narrow cot, and an attendant wrapped a rubber tube around your arm and serviced you. It was like getting blown by a Korean whore in a similar shabby little apartment two blocks away, only better.

Early Sunday morning, far from the sordid city scene, in a gray-shingled beach house on a fog-shrouded beach in Russell County, miles from where the abduction on the River Harb had taken place, Tamar Valparaiso was just regaining consciousness.

SOMETHING
was covering her eyes.

She could not open her eyes because whatever it was—a cloth blindfold, duct tape, whatever—was so tight. Her first instinct was to reach up with her right hand to pull it free, whatever it was, but she discovered at once that her hands were bound behind her back. Her next instinct was to scream, but there was a gag in her mouth, as tight as the blindfold over her eyes. Run, she thought, run!, and tried to get to her feet, but her ankles were bound, too. She struggled for a moment, angrily, panicking in her helplessness, kicking out at nothing, and then lying still and silent, breathing hard, trying to figure out what was happening to her here.

All at once, she remembered.

Two men coming down the steps just as she was finishing the number. One of them hitting her. The other one clamping a sweet-smelling rag over her nose.

She lay still in the darkness.

Remembering.

She knew even before she began exploring with her legs, reaching out with her legs and her sandaled feet to touch the boundaries of the space she was in, knew somehow even before her feet touched the confining, defining walls, that she was in a closet. Lying on the hard wooden floor of a closet, her shallow breathing seeming to echo back at her in a small airless cubicle.

She almost panicked again.

She kicked out at the walls, tried to scream again, almost choked, tried to cough out the gag, tried to force her eyes open, her lids fluttering helplessly against the blindfold. She tried to calm herself. Sucked in great gulps of air through her nose. Lay still and silent for several moments, regaining her cool, telling herself to relax, be still.

She eased herself up into a sitting position, her back to what she supposed was the rear wall of the closet. Exploring with her feet, she located what she guessed was a hinge, the thin sole of her slightly heeled sandal catching on something that jutted from the otherwise flat surface, yes, it had to be a hinge, yes, she was indeed facing the closet door.

Bracing both feet hard against the floor, she inched her back slowly up the rear wall of the closet, banging her head on what was obviously a recessed horizontal shelf, but easing her way up and around it, and struggling to her feet at last. Her hands tied behind her back, her feet bound, essentially blind and mute, she used her head and her shoulder to explore the hinged side of the door, locating another hinge higher up. Using her nose as a pointer, she zeroed in on a small protruding knob at the top of the hinge.

The blindfold ended just above her cheekbone. She pressed the side of her face against the hinge, and tried to hook the edge of the blindfold over the knob. She was about to give up, when—on the eighth or ninth attempt—she finally snagged it. Yanking downward with a sharp jerk of her head, she pulled the blindfold loose, and opened her eyes.

A thin ribbon of light limned the lower edge of the closet door.

She waited for her eyes to adjust.

Duct tape.

It was duct tape.

The same thing that bound her ankles, and undoubtedly her hands, which she could not see.

She searched the closet floor and the shelf at eye level for any sharp object that might help her free her hands or her feet.

There was nothing.

She tried to hook the gag over the same hinge that had served her with the blindfold. But because it was a rag twisted an inch or so inside her mouth, and tied tightly at the back of her head, there was no slack to it at all, and she could not free it.

She did not know what to do next.

 

CARELLA
wanted to know what they were supposed to do next.

He had waited till a respectable seven
A.M.
before phoning Lieutenant Byrnes, and now the two men were discussing whether or not they should drag the FBI into this.

“For all I know, Loomis has already called them,” Carella said.

“Who's Loomis?” Byrnes asked.

In the background, Carella could hear a television set going. He imagined his boss at breakfast, sitting at his kitchen table over bacon and eggs, watching television as he ate. Byrnes was a compact man in his fifties, white-haired and blunt-featured. He had no particular fondness for the FBI.

“Barney Loomis,” Carella said. “He's the CEO of Bison Records. He thinks the perps are going to ask him for the ransom.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Her parents are divorced, one in Mexico, the other in Europe. Also, neither of them has any money.”

“State line been crossed here?” Byrnes asked.

“We don't know where the boat went after the snatch. Could've gone across the river, sure, docked someplace there. In which case, yes, a state line's been crossed.”

“You say this girl's a celebrity?”

“Personally, I never heard of her, Pete. According to Loomis, she's the hottest thing around. But he owns the label, so what do you expect him to say?”

“You think he may have already called the Feds?”

“I have no idea. He wants that girl back.”

“What'd you say her name was?”

“Tamar Valparaiso.”

“Cause here she is now,” Byrnes said, and got up to raise the volume on the television set. “Can you hear this?” he asked Carella.

“I can hear it,” Carella said, and nodded grimly.

“…from a luxury yacht in the River Harb last night,” a television newscaster was saying. “According to U.S. Coast Guard reports…”

“How'd they'd get in this?” Byrnes said into the phone.

“Harbor Patrol called them.”

“…two armed and masked men boarded the
River Princess
at about ten-fifteen, seizing the talented young singer as she was performing her debut album,
Bandersnatch,
for a hundred or more invited guests…”

“What channel is that?” Carella asked.

“Five,” Byrnes said.

“Four's gonna sue the city.”

“…Barney Loomis, who says Bison has not yet received a ransom demand. In Riverhead this morning…”

“That's it,” Byrnes said, and lowered the volume. “Sue the city? Why?”

“Cause I confiscated a tape of the kidnapping.”

“Ooops.”

“It was evidence. So what do we do here, Pete? Pursue this or phone the FBI?”

“Let me talk to the Commish. I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. What I
don't
want is for the Feds to use us as errand boys. That's the last thing I want. Nobody called from them yet, huh?”

“Not yet.”

“Let me see what the Commish advises. I know he won't want heat later on, anybody saying we dropped the ball prematurely. You're about out of there, anyway, aren't you?”

Carella looked up at the clock.

“Half an hour,” he said.

“Get some sleep, you may have to come back in. I don't know how this is gonna fall, Steve, we'll have to play it as it lays. Call me later, okay?”

“You coming in today?”

“No, it's supposed to be my day off. Call me at home.”

“There's the other line,” Carella said.

“I'll wait. Maybe it's the Feds.”

Carella put Byrnes on HOLD, stabbed at a button on the base of his phone.

“Carella,” he said.

“Carella, this is Sandy McIntosh, HPU. You got a minute?”

“Yeah, hang on.” He switched over to Byrnes again. “It's the Harbor Patrol. Am I on the job, or what?”

“Stay with it for now,” Byrnes said. “Call me later.”

Carella switched to the other line again.

“Okay, Sandy, I'm back,” he said.

“This may be nothing at all,” McIntosh said, “or maybe you can use it. Around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty last night…”

 

IT WAS NOT
often that this precinct caught something as big as a celebrity kidnapping—if, in fact, Tamar Valparaiso
was
a celebrity and not some figment of a record label's imagination.

Neither Bert Kling nor Meyer Meyer had ever heard of her. Perhaps this was not too surprising in Meyer's case. His kids listened to rock, but he was tone deaf when it came to anything more recent than the Beatles. Kling, on the other hand, was familiar with all the new groups, and even listened to rap on occasion. He had never heard of Tamar Valparaiso, even though her face and her story were splashed all over that morning's tabloids.

The two men signed in at seven-forty-five, were briefed by Carella and Hawes—who were exhausted after a long night on the water—and then headed out at eight-thirty, to pick up where the departing team had left off.

Sandy McIntosh had reported stopping a twenty-seven-foot Rinker at around nine-fifteen, nine-thirty last night, heading inbound toward Capshaw Boats, its home marina, at Fairfield and the river, just off Pier Seven. Three passengers aboard. Two men and a woman. Name on the boat's transom was
Hurley Girl.
Serial number stenciled on each of her sides was XL721G. Capshaw Boats was where Meyer and Kling were headed on this misty Sunday morning.

Today was the fourth of May.

Meyer had celebrated his wife's birthday the night before, ordering champagne for everyone in the small French restaurant where they'd dined—not an enormously big deal in that there'd been only half a dozen other patrons. He'd sure as hell impressed Sarah, though. Sarah Lipkin when he met her all those years ago. “Nobody's lips kin like Sarah's lips kin” was what the fraternity banter maintained, a premise Meyer was eager to test. Married all these years now, never tired of her lips. Married all these years now, he could still impress her with six bottles of champagne. Veuve Cliquot, though, don't forget.

Clear-eyed this morning, despite the full bottle of bubbly he and Sarah had shared last night, he was at the wheel of the police sedan, wondering out loud if the Feds would be coming in on this one.

“Thing I don't like about working with them,” he said, “is they have this superior…”

“Way I understand it, it's a dead cinch they'll come in,” Kling said.

“Then why are
we
shlepping all the way downtown?”

“Way the Loot wants it. Guess he'd like a heads up, case there's static later on.”

“
What's
her name again?” Meyer asked.

“Tamar Valparaiso.”

“Never heard of her.”

This was the third time he'd said this.

“Me, neither,” Kling said.

Third time for him, too.

The two made a good pair.

Both men were some six feet tall, but Meyer presented a burlier look, perhaps because he was entirely bald, perhaps because he was possessed of a steady, patient demeanor that made him seem somewhat plodding in contrast to Kling's more open, enthusiastic country-boy style. Born and bred in this city, Kling nonetheless looked like he'd been found in a basket in a corn field. He was the perfect Good Cop to Meyer's Bad Cop, although often they switched roles for the fun of it, blond, hazel-eyed, fuzzy-cheeked Kling suddenly snarling like a pit bull, steely blue-eyed big bald Meyer purring like a pussy cat.

The man who owned Capshaw Boats and its adjoining marina was a one-eyed former Navy SEAL who called himself Popeye, not to anyone's great surprise. He had opened the marina at a little before six this morning…

“Lots of skippers like to get out on the water before all the river traffic begins. That's a nice calm time of day, you know,” he said, “that time just before sunrise. It's called morngloam, not many people know that.”

Meyer certainly didn't know it.

Neither did Kling.

“I think it's a Scottish word,” Popeye said. “Morngloam. The opposite of it is evengloam. That's the time just before sunset. Evengloam. I think it comes from the word ‘gloaming.' I think that's a Scottish word. The derivation, I mean. I think it's Scottish.”

“Tell you what we're looking for,” Kling said. “Harbor Patrol stopped a boat from your marina last night…”

“Oh?” Popeye said, his one good eye widening in surprise.

“Name's
Hurley Girl,
serial number's…”

“Oh, sure, the Rinker. She was already back in this morning, when I got here.”

“Whose boat is she?” Meyer asked.

“Mine. Well, Capshaw's. I rent her out.”

“Then she doesn't belong to one of your customers, is that it?”

“No, she's mine. I just told you. She's a rental boat. I sell boats, and I store boats, and I service boats, but I also rent them.”

“Who'd you rent this one to? Would you remember?”