The Frumious Bandersnatch (13 page)

Oh, wow, he thought.

 

THE TWO PATROLMEN
riding Adam Four in Majesta's One-Oh-Four Precinct had been briefed at roll call before relieving on post at a quarter to four. They knew they should be on the lookout for a black Ford Explorer with the license plate number KBG 741, but they had no expectation of ever finding it. Most stolen vehicles ended up in chop shops ten minutes after they were boosted.

So they drove along relatively peaceful Sunday afternoon streets in a neighborhood that used to be Italian but was now largely Muslim, more worried, to tell the truth, about some fanatic blowing up a movie theater or a local bar than they were about finding a suspect Ford Explorer, when all at once, and lo and behold, there it was!

“Check it out,” the driver said.

The cop riding shotgun opened his notebook and glanced at the license plate number he'd scribbled into it at roll call.

“That's it,” he said, sounding surprised.

“I'm gonna play the Lotto tomorrow,” the driver said, and got on the pipe to his sergeant.

 

AT FOUR-TWENTY
that afternoon, Barney Loomis signed himself and Carella into the Rio Building downtown on Monroe Street, led him through the vast and silent Sunday afternoon lobby, and then into an elevator that whisked them to the twenty-third floor.

The reception area was vacant and still.

The Bison Records logo—a big brown buffalo on a black platter—stared down at them from behind an empty desk. Loomis touched four numbers on the code pad alongside the entrance doors, and then led the way down the hall. The walls were decorated with Bison recording artists. Carella recognized only Tamar Valparaiso among them.

Loomis's private office had two vast windows that looked out at the city's skyline. There was a huge black desk, black leather and chrome chairs, expensive audio equipment, a huge flat-screen television set, a bar in wood that matched the desk, and what appeared to be a genuine Picasso on one of the walls.

“What time will this man be here?” Loomis asked.

“I told him four-thirty.”

“Will he know what to do?”

“Oh yes.”

Curt Hennesy arrived at four-thirty-five. The security guard downstairs called up to make sure it was okay to let him in—even though Hennesy was a Detective/Third who'd showed his shield and his ID—and Loomis was in the reception area to meet him when he got off the elevator. He was carrying two rather large aluminum suitcases, which he set down while Loomis punched in the four-number code again.

“Fort Knox here,” he commented.

“Well, the music business,” Loomis said.

Hennesy picked up the suitcases again, and followed Loomis down the hallway to his office.

“You in charge here?” he asked Carella.

“Carella,” Carella said. “Eighty-seventh Squad.”

“Hennesy,” Hennesy said. “Tech Unit. What do you want done here?”

“Tap and Tape, Trap and Trace,” Carella said.

“Can I see your court orders?”

Carella fished them from his inside jacket pocket. Hennesy read them silently.

“Piece of cake,” he said. “Do you have a private line, Mr. Loomis?”

“Yes?”

“Is it likely your caller's going to use that number?”

“There's no way he would know that number.”

“Mmm, not so peachy apple pie after all,” Hennesy said. “What you're saying, to reach you he'd have to call the main number here, is that it? Bison's number?”

“Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”

“And the call would go through the switchboard, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, unless you want me to rewire your entire setup so that every call Bison gets is switched directly to your office…”

“No, I wouldn't want that.”

“I didn't think so. So let's see,” he said, thinking out loud. “The call still has to go through the switchboard. Your operator doesn't have to know anything, it's business as usual. Okay, so she puts the call through to you here, right. Let me get to work here,” he said, and took off his jacket, and looked for someplace to hang it…

“I'll take it,” Loomis said.

…and opened one of the aluminum suitcases.

“What I do most of the time,” he said, taking from the suitcase an assortment of tools which he was about to put on Loomis's polished desk top before he saw the alarmed look that crossed his face, and spread them on the carpeted floor instead, “I usually install wires in places the wise guys hang out, you know? We get a court order same as for a search warrant because that's what we're doing, we're seizing conversations, even if it's from bad guys talking. You ever hear of Stephen Sondheim?” he asked.

“Yes?” Loomis said.

“Yes?” Carella said.

“How come he never read the book
Wise Guys?
How come he never heard the expression ‘wise guys'? How come he writes a musical about two brothers, one's a welterweight boxer, the other's an architect, and he calls it
Wise Guys
when they ain't even gangsters? He's supposed to be very intelligent, how come he don't know these things? Anyway, this'll be the same thing here, we'll be seizing a conversation…that's why you needed your court orders, Carella, well I guess you knew that, huh? If you expect this to stand up in court later on, anyway. The way this'll work, I'll set up a Tap and Tape so that your law enforcement people,
us,
” he said, and winked at Carella, “can wear ear phones and listen to every call coming in, while meanwhile the recording equipment is voice-activated and starts whenever the guy even breathes into his phone. Meanwhile, the Trap and Trace'll give us the number he's calling from. Simple as A, B, C, right?” he said. “So get to work, Curt,” he told himself, “instead of passing the time of day here with these nice gentlemen.”

 

CARLIE EPWORTH,
the technician who'd led the team that had scoured the
Hurley Girl
stem to stern, called the 87th Squad at six that night and asked to talk to Detective Kling. Kling had already gone home.

Epworth left a message saying they'd come up negative for latents on the boat, but that they had some fiber and hair samples for possible matching purposes later on if they made an arrest.

At a quarter past six, fifteen minutes before Honey Blair's kidnapping tape went network on the “Nightly News,” a detective named Henry D'Amato called the 87th Squad and asked to talk to Detective Bert Kling, who had put out an APB on a black Ford Explorer with the license plate number KBG 741. He was informed that Kling had already gone home. D'Amato left a message saying they had recovered the suspect vehicle, and it was behind the station house at the One-Oh-Four in Majesta, awaiting further disposition. He said he'd be there till midnight if Kling wanted to get back to him.

Detective Hal Willis, who'd been briefed on the kidnapping out on the river, thought this was important enough to call Kling at the number he'd left. Kling agreed. He called the One-Oh-Four at once.

“Did you check with DMV?” he asked D'Amato.

“Yeah. It's registered to a woman named Polly Olson, you want the address?”

“Please,” Kling said, and listened, jotting down the address. “Was it reported stolen?” he asked.

“Didn't have a chance to check that,” D'Amato said.

“I'll get someone on it,” Kling said, and thanked D'Amato, and then immediately called Willis back.

“Hal,” he said, “we've got a make on that Ford Explorer, it's registered to a woman named Polly Olson at 317 Byrd Street, I think that's over by the Ship Canal. You want to check our boosted vehicles sheet, see if the Ford's on it? Either way, you ought to run on down there, see where she was last night while the Valparaiso girl was being abducted.”

“Why? You think she was part of it?”

“I only know this is the car that was spotted at the marina. And it's hers. So let's see what she has to say.”

“Well, the way I look at it,” Willis said, “there are only two possibilities here. Either the car was stolen, in which case the lady thanks me for finding it, or else it was used in a kidnapping, in which case I knock on her door and the lady shoots me in the face.”

“Maybe you ought to petition for a No-Knock,” Kling said, half-seriously.

“What judge in his right mind would grant me one?”

“Then you've got nothing to worry about, right?”

“Tell you what,” Willis said. “Why don't
you
run on down there to talk to her?”

“I'm off duty,” Kling said, and hung up, and immediately called the Mobile Crime Unit.

“Al Sheehan,” a man's voice said.

“Hey, Al,” Kling said, “this is Bert Kling at the Eight-Seven. We're working a kidnapping that went down last night…”

“Hey, yeah,” Sheehan said. “I was one of the techs who swept the
River Princess.
Something, huh?”

“I'll say. Al, we picked up a vehicle may have been involved, it's a black Ford Explorer parked behind the One-Oh-Four in Majesta. Detective named Henry D'Amato'll be there till midnight, he's got the keys. You want to do your number on it, see if the bad guys left anything for us?”

“The One-Oh-Four, huh? That's way the hell out in the sticks.”

“Half-hour ride,” Kling said.

“I'm in the middle of something here, I won't be able to head out till maybe seven or so. That be all right?”

“As soon as possible, okay?” Kling said. “Let me give you a number where you can reach me.”

It was six-thirty when he got off the phone.

Across the room, Sharyn Cooke was just turning on Channel Four's network news.

In his office, Barney Loomis and Steve Carella were about to watch the same broadcast.

 

THE THING
that impressed Loomis most was her performance.

Forget the fact that she was lip-synching, forget the fact that she and the black dancer—Joshua, was it? Jonah?—missed a few steps while they were furiously reenacting the rape they'd executed so masterfully on the video. Even forget the fact that she seemed a bit nervous performing live in front of a scant hundred or so people, what would she do when they booked her into a goddamn
arena?
With thousands and thousands of screaming fans?

Forget all that.

What came over in this three, four minutes of tape—now being broadcast into God knew how many homes all over the country—was the sheer conviction of Tamar's performance. There was a raw power to her voice, yes, but there was a sweetness, too, a poignant plea for innocence in a world gone suddenly brutal, the voice of a lark in a meadow swirling with hawks. Whatever else came over—her luminous beauty, her sexuality, her sensuality, her youthful exuberance, yes, all of those—it was her complete honesty that most impressed. And thrilled. And dazzled.

Long after her song was interrupted by the ugly reality of sudden violence, long after the two intruders carried her up those mahogany steps and out of the viewer's immediate stunned proximity, her glow lingered like a shining truth. Tamar Valparaiso hadn't been trying to sell anything but the purity of the moment. And in this moment, at six-forty-five on a Sunday night all across America, the verity she was selling all over again was “Bandersnatch.” There was no way that anyone watching this news report could ever doubt…

“Well, this is what I've done,” Hennesy said, coming in from the hallway. “I've got it set up so that…”

“Shhh,” Loomis warned.

Hennesy turned to watch the television screen.

On the screen, one of the masked men tossed Tamar over his shoulder.

The other one shouted, “You move, she dies!” and they backed away up the stairs and out of sight.

The tape ended.

The network news anchor came on again.

He could be seen visibly sighing.

“That was last night at ten-fifteen,” he said. “So far, there's been no word from the men who abducted Tamar Valparaiso.”

He paused, looked meaningfully into the camera for just an instant, and then said, “In Moscow today…”

Loomis turned off the set.

“When they
do
call,” Hennesy said, “here's what'll happen. The Tap and Tape I've hooked up is a more sophisticated version of the REMOB every telephone lineman…”

“What's a REMOB?” Loomis asked.

Carella didn't know what it was, either.

“Stands for ‘remote observation,' ” Hennesy said. “Telephone repairmen use it to check the ‘condition of the line,' or so they say. I personally think they get their jollies eavesdropping on phone phucks. Anyway, I found some unused pairs in the cable here, and set up my relay. Whenever the switchboard puts anyone through to your phone, the relay gets activated, connecting your line to the caller's. Carella here will have the option of just listening or automatically recording. At the same time, the Trap and Trace will be locating the caller's number. So you're in business. That'll be twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents,” Hennesy said and grinned like a kid on Halloween night.