The Frumious Bandersnatch (18 page)

“I used to work in a Hong Kong restaurant,” Benny told him the first time they met. Benny was tall and slender, with a droll smile and eyes that always seemed amused. He had the long narrow fingers of a Flower Dancer, precious assets in the delicate operations he performed. “I was making coolie wages,” he told Avery, “until I realized I was in a position to be of valuable assistance to certain people who had need of certain information.”

Avery thought it odd that a Chinese man would use an expression like “coolie wages,” but he made no comment because he believed it was important for a person to listen carefully while he was being educated.

“This was six years ago,” Benny said, “when the economy in Japan was still very big. You had all these Japanese tourists coming to Hong Kong, spending lots and lots of money, and paying for everything with credit cards. These certain people came to me with what is called a ‘skimmer.' What it is…”

A skimmer, Avery learned, was a battery-operated, wireless device that cost some three to five hundred dollars, and that fit easily into the inside pocket of Benny's jacket. Whenever Benny swiped a customer's credit card through this little machine, it read onto its very own computer chip all the data embedded in the card's magnetic security stripe.

“I'm not just talking name, number, and expiration date,” Benny said, grinning at the simplicity of it all. “What the skimmer
also
copies is the card's verification code. This is what's electronically forwarded from the merchant to the card company's central computer anytime a purchase is made. The code tells the company the card is valid. Once you've copied that code, you have everything you need to make an exact clone of the card.”

He was still grinning three weeks ago, when Avery went to see him again. Benny Lu lived in a small development house out on Sands Spit, a half-hour drive from the city. Avery told him what he needed. A fake credit card that would enable him to rent a car…

He told Benny he'd be renting a car instead of a boat because over the years he had learned that you shouldn't trust anyone but your mother, and maybe not even her…

…and a fake driver's license to back up the name on the phony credit card.

“Piece of cake,” Benny Lu said, grinning.

His basement looked like a computer nerd's hangout. Benny himself looked a little like Fu Manchu in the silk robe he was wearing, which he told Avery his sister who still lived in Hong Kong had sent him for Christmas.

“She says it's no different under the Chinese,” he assured Avery, who didn't give a rat's ass about Hong Kong
or
the British
or
the Chinese. All he cared about was getting the stuff he needed. It was raining outside the basement windows. This was now the end of April. The kidnapping scheme had already been underway for almost two months by then.

When Benny was skimming credit cards for the Hong Kong gang, he was paid a thousand Hong Kong dollars for every name he delivered, which at the time was the equivalent of about a hundred and fifty U.S. bucks. He would skim three or four cards every day except on his day off, which was Wednesday. This averaged out to something like a thousand bucks a week, not enough to buy his own restaurant but plenty of extra spending money if only the Hong Kong credit card dicks hadn't busted the gang, and almost busted him in the bargain.

Here in the U.S., Benny paid a hundred bucks for each name skimmed by his people in restaurants and gasoline stations. He got his supply of blank plastic cards from a manufacturer in Germany who mass-produced them and sold them to him (and many other counterfeiters like him) for two hundred bucks a card. Using a thermal dye printer, Benny stamped American Express, Visa, or Master-Card graphics onto the face of a blank card, embossed it with the name and account number of a skimmed card's true owner, and then embedded the stolen code onto the counterfeit's pristine magnetic stripe. He sold the clones for two thousand bucks a pop, cheap at twice the price when you considered that whatever you charged on the electronically identical card wouldn't be discovered until the genuine card's owner got his bill a month later.

“Sign the name on this sheet of paper a dozen or so times before you sign the back of the card,” Benny told him. “So it'll have a natural flow to it.”

“Andy Hardy?” Avery said. “That's the guy's name?”

“That's his name, that's right. That's the name on the original card.”

“Like in Mickey Rooney?”

“Who's Mickey Rooney?” Benny asked.

“Don't they show old movies on television in Hong Kong?”

“Sure, but who's Mickey Rooney?”

“He was Andy Hardy.”

“I don't get it.”

“You never heard of Judge Hardy?”

“I try to stay far away from judges,” Benny said.

Avery shrugged, and then signed the name “Andy Hardy” ten times before he signed the back of the card. He was now in possession of a credit card with the name ANDY HARDY embossed on its front in raised letters, and his own “Andy Hardy” signature on the back of it.

“How long will this fly?” he asked Benny.

“Should take you through the end of May at least.”

Which was world enough and time.

Replicating a driver's license was a simpler and much less expensive matter.

Benny explained that in his line of work a “template” was a layered graphics file that could be computer-manipulated to hide or reveal images and text. In the good old days two or three years ago, when thirty percent of all counterfeit and false identification seized by law enforcement agencies came from the internet, Benny had purchased driver's-license templates for all fifty states, God bless American enterprise!

Now, while April showers lashed his basement windows, Benny took a digital head-and-shoulders photograph of Avery standing against a blue background. He stored this on one of his computers, together with the scanned “Andy Hardy” signature Avery had used on the credit card. Loading the template for a Connecticut state driver's license, Benny first called up the photograph, hid it, and then revealed a stored Department-of-Motor-Vehicles signature. When he revealed the photo again, the signature seemed superimposed along its right hand side. Then, in repeated mouse clicks that first hid and then revealed successive layers, Benny replicated the Connecticut state seal, and a shadow image of Avery's head shot, and the Andy Hardy signature.

Filling in the blank spaces on the template, he typed in the name HARDY, ANDY and an address he pulled from a Connecticut phone book, and below that Avery's actual date of birth, September 12, 1969. Just beneath that, he typed in a date of issue, which he fabricated as July 26 the previous year, and to the right of that the letter M for Avery's sex, and the abbreviation BR for the color of his eyes, and 6'1" for his height. He typed in a false identifying license number across the top of the template, and then an expiration date that was on Avery's birthday, two years after the date of issuance. Lastly, he hid everything he'd already done, and revealed only the bar-code Connecticut had conceived as a security feature. When he revealed the license again, the bar code was running along the bottom of it.

Voilà!

He now had on his computer a document virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. All he had to do was print it and laminate it, and Avery would be in possession of a Connecticut state driver's license bearing his own photograph alongside Andy Hardy's name and signature.

The fake license cost Avery three hundred bucks.

For $2,300, he had become Judge Hardy's son.

Everything else was free.

That was because everything else had been stolen.

Including the girl, too, when he thought about it.

Cal was the experienced thief here, experienced in that he'd never been sent away for Auto Theft, of which there had been plenty, believe me, him having started taking cars on joy rides when he was but a mere sixteen. It was a shame his record had to've been marred by that one botched bank holdup, but nobody's perfect.

The first car they'd used was the black Explorer, which they'd driven to and from the marina, and which they'd already ditched this morning after they'd dropped the girl and Kellie off at the house. Scoped the early morning streets searching for a vehicle parked in a deserted area, found one that looked reliable enough, parked the Explorer behind it while Cal jimmied the door of the prospect car, opened the hood, jump-wired the ignition, and off they went into the wild blue yonder. Nice roomy Pontiac Montana, too.

Avery found it amusing that all these city dwellers owned or leased these big gas-guzzling SUVs with names that sounded all macho woodsy and outdoorsy. These people lived in apartment buildings, and they took the subway to work, and they probably never drove the car further than the nearest movie complex on weekends, but they were all dying to have these big monsters they could drive “off-road.” Off-road
where?
Avery wondered.

This was the big bad city, man. You didn't need an Explorer or a Montana or a Durango unless you wore leather chaps and a cowboy hat. Or unless you were transporting merchandise worth a quarter of a million bucks. They would use the Montana when they picked up the ransom money tomorrow, two hundred and fifty Gs in crisp new hundred-dollar bills. By then, Cal would have stolen the third and final car—probably another one with a name like Caravan or Forester or Range Rover—which they would use to drive the girl from the house to wherever they decided to drop her off.

At first Avery thought he might have some difficulty finding a suitable house. They needed something isolated, but they all wanted to get out of here as soon after the exchange as possible. Cal would be heading for Jamaica because he dug black girls. Kellie was heading for Paris, France; she had already begun taking French lessons. Because traveling together might be dangerous, Avery would be going to London first, and would join her a week later.

The house he'd found was in the direct flight path of the city's international airport, perched on the edge of South Beach, not one of the county's better resort areas. Even so, during the summer, and because of its location on the sea, the house would have carried a price tag of five, six thousand a month. A big old gray ramshackle structure furnished with rattan furniture and lumpy cushions that smelled of mildew, it was flanked by two similarly dilapidated buildings, empty now during the transitional days of April and May.

When the real estate agent told him the owner was asking three thou a month, Avery asked, “For what? A house nobody wants because of all the air traffic zooming and roaring overhead?” The agent argued that in these days of extended airport hassles and long delays the house's proximity to the airport was a plus. It must have also occurred to her that closeness to the airport might be desirable to terrorists as well—I mean, what the hell, did Avery look like some kind of fucking terrorist? The questions she'd asked, the identification she'd pored over—the fake Andy Hardy stuff, ha ha, lady—you'd think Avery was about to build a bomb instead of just kidnap a girl!

The girl was now safely ensconced in the house, and tomorrow morning Avery would make the first of his phone calls. The phones themselves—but that was another story.

By tomorrow night at this time, he'd be in possession of two hundred and fifty thousand bucks!

Thank you, Barney Loomis, and God bless us every one!

THERE WERE MARCHERS
outside the Rio Building when Carella got there on Monday morning at eight o'clock. The marchers were carrying hand-lettered signs on wooden sticks.

Some of the signs read:
ROCK RACIAL PROFILING
!

Others read:
TAMAR IS A RACIST
!

Yet others read:
WHY A BLACK RAPIST
?

The marchers were chanting, “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”

Television cameras were rolling.

Carella was not surprised to see the Reverend Gabriel Foster at the head of the procession.

Six-feet-two-inches tall, with the wide shoulders and broad chest of the heavyweight fighter he once had been, his eyebrows still ridged with scar tissue, Foster at the age of forty-nine still looked as if he could knock your average contender on his ass in thirty seconds flat. According to police records, the reverend's birth name was Gabriel Foster Jones. He'd changed it to Rhino Jones when he'd enjoyed his brief career as a boxer, and then settled on Gabriel Foster when he began preaching. Foster considered himself a civil rights activist. The police considered him a rabble rouser, an opportunistic self-promoter, and a race racketeer. His church, in fact, was listed in the files as a “sensitive location,” departmental code for anyplace where the uninvited presence of the police might cause a race riot.

Foster looked as if he might be promoting just such a commotion on this bright May morning.

“Good morning, Gabe,” Carella said.

“Ban Bander…” Foster said, and then cut himself off mid-sentence and opened his eyes wide when he saw Carella. He thrust out his hand, stepped away from the line of protestors, and grinned broadly. Carella actually believed the reverend was glad to see him. Shaking hands, Foster said, “Don't tell me you're on this kidnapping?”

“More or less,” Carella said, which was the truth.

“Did you see the video?” Foster asked him.

“I saw the taping they did last night,” Carella said. “Not the video itself, no.”

“It depicts the girl's rapist as a black man.”

“Well, it depicts a black dancer portraying some kind of mythical beast…”

“Some kind of mythical
black
beast,” Foster said.

“The beast in the original poem isn't black,” Carella said.

“That's exactly my…”

“And the poem was written in England, back in the 1800's.”

“So why…?”

“There isn't even a
rapist
in the poem. That's what's so fresh about the song. This girl takes a…”

“That's exactly my point, Steve! There
is
a rapist now. And the rapist is black.”

“Come on, Gabe. The song takes a powerful stand
against
rape! You can't object to that.”

“I can most certainly object to the rapist being black.”

“It's the
dancer
who's black. Tamar Valparaiso hired a black dancer. Equal opportunity. Do you object…?”

“To portray a black rapist.”

“Gabe, I think you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't know the girl, but I'm willing to bet my last dollar she isn't a racist.”

“I can smell one a hundred yards away,” Foster said.

“Maybe your nose is too sensitive,” Carella said. “I have to go upstairs, Gabe. You want my advice?”

“No.”

“Okay, see you later then.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Pack up and go home. You don't want to be on the wrong side of this one. It'll come back to haunt you.”

“Ah, but I'm on the right side of it, Steve. The rapist on that video is vicious and monstrous and black. That's racist. And that's good enough for me.”

“I have to go,” Carella said.

“Good seeing you again,” Foster said, and nodded briefly, and stepped back into the line of marchers. “Ban Bandersnatch!” he shouted. “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”

The black security guard who took Carella's name and phoned it upstairs glanced through the tall glass windows fronting the street, and asked, “What's
that
all about?”

“Beats me,” Carella said, and signed his name, and waited for clearance. When it came, he took the elevator up to the twenty-third floor, and went through the still-empty reception area directly to Barney Loomis' office at the end of the hall. The Squad was already there. Loomis was not.

“Steve, ah,” Corcoran said, and immediately looked at his watch as if to imply that Carella was late, which he wasn't. “Few people you should meet who weren't here yesterday,” he said, and introduced a handful of FBI agents and detectives whose names Carella forgot the moment he shook hands with them.

The office itself had undergone something of a transformation since late last night. There was now new equipment everywhere Carella looked. In fact, someone he guessed was an FBI technician was busily testing an electronic device set up on a long folding table across the room.

“Let me tell you what we've done here,” Endicott said.

He looked wide awake and alert, wearing this morning a dark gray suit that seemed better tailored than the blue one he'd worn yesterday. Corcoran, in contrast, was wearing brown slacks and a brown V-necked sweater over a plaid sports shirt. Carella himself had worn a suit today. He suddenly felt overdressed for a city detective.

“First off, we've installed a direct line to your office. You pick up that green phone there,” Endicott said, pointing, “and you've got the squadroom at the Eight-Seven. How's that for service?”

Carella was wondering How come?

“We figured we'd let you guys do what you do best, am I right, Charles?” Endicott said. “The legwork, the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty. We get anything to chase, you pick up that green phone, your boys are on it in a minute. Will that work for you?”

“Sure,” Carella said. “Thanks.”

“Regarding all this other stuff,” he said, “we noticed that your telephone guy set up a simple Tap and Tape, with a jack for a single listener, but we'll be more people working on this, so we've installed equipment that'll accommodate three more sets of ear phones, you can understand why that would be necessary,” Endicott said, and smiled hopefully, as if seeking Carella's approval.

“More the merrier,” Carella said.

“The other thing…the court orders you got yesterday were for the primary landline carriers…AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, MCI…but there are at least half a dozen other service providers so we've taken the liberty of obtaining court orders for those as well, assuming our boy will be calling from landline equipment—which may not be the case.”

“This is all so much easier since 9/11,” Corcoran said.

“Oh
so
much,” Endicott agreed. “Though I have to tell you the truth, I've never known a judge to turn down a federal request for a wiretap.”

“Used to be probable cause, probable cause,” Corcoran said, and rolled his eyes.

He was referring to the way it customarily worked. Before a judge could approve an application for electronic surveillance and issue a court order, he had to determine that:

• a) there was probable cause for belief that an individual was committing, had committed, or was about to commit an offense covered by law…
  
• b) there was probable cause for belief that particular communications concerning that offense would be obtained through such interception…
  
• c) normal investigative procedures had been tried and had failed or reasonably appeared unlikely to succeed or to be too dangerous…
  
• d) there was probable cause for belief that the facilities from which, or the place where the communications were to be intercepted were being used, or were about to be used, in connection with the commission of such offense.
  

In each of Carella's applications yesterday, he had cited probable cause. His petitions had been granted in every instance. But Corcoran was saying…

“Judges are a lot more malleable since 9/11. Before then, to get a court order for a pen register…”

“That's a sort of reverse caller-ID,” Endicott explained.

“Yes, I know,” Carella said.

“We record the numbers dialed
out.
”

“Yes, I…”

“…you had to show probable cause. Now, you just go in and say the information will be relevant to an ongoing investigation, and by federal law, a judge is required to approve the order. Relevant, can you believe it?”

“Makes it nice,” Endicott said.

“Makes it simple.”

“Anyway,” Endicott said, “since you'd covered only the landline carriers, we went ahead and obtained additional court orders for the wireless companies, too. These computers you see around the room…”

Carella counted four of them.

“…tap into our central computers down at Number One Fed. If our boy uses any of the seven mobile-phone providers servicing this city, we've got sophisticated links to all of them, and we'll triangulate in a second.”

Carella nodded.

He didn't know what “triangulate” meant. He said nothing.

“Want to try your new toy?” Corcoran said, and handed him the receiver on the green phone.

Carella put it to his ear.

He heard the phone ringing on the other end.

“Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Hawes.”

“Cotton, it's me. Just testing.”

“Testing what?” Hawes asked.

 

ON ONE WALL
of Bison's conference room down the hall, the company had set out a generous buffet consisting of orange juice (or grapefruit juice), croissants (plain or chocolate), Danish pastries (cheese or jelly), bagels (plain, onion, or poppy seed), smoked Norwegian salmon, cream cheese, butter, jellies and jams in a wide variety of flavors, and coffee (either full-strength or de-caf).

The four men seated around the huge rosewood conference table had helped themselves to the sideboard goodies and were now leisurely enjoying their morning repast before getting down to business. They were in a jocular mood. They had a lot to be happy about.

Barney Loomis' plate was brimming, as usual. He demolished his breakfast with obvious gusto now, listening to the chatter all around him, but not distracted by it in the slightest. Gulping down the last of his onion bagel heaped with salmon and cream cheese, he washed it down with the last of his “hi-test coffee,” as he called it, and began the meeting abruptly by asking, “Did you see those marchers outside? They're labeling Tamar a racist! What's wrong with these people, anyway?,” never once realizing that referring to the black protestors as “these people” might in itself be considered a trifle racist.

“Controversy never hurt anybody,” Binkie Horowitz said.

As Bison's Vice President in charge of Promotion, he had checked all his people before this morning's meeting, and was confident that the only thing that could possibly hurt them now was if the kidnappers actually killed Tamar Valparaiso, bite your tongue.

“I'm not so sure,” Loomis said. “We lose the black market because of those jackasses marching out there…”

“We won't lose the black market,” Binkie said, “don't worry.”

Short and slight, narrow-waisted and narrow-shouldered as well, he resembled a harried jockey whipping a tired nag across the finish line. Leaning over the table, his brown eyes intense, he said, “We are not at this very
moment,
in fact, losing the black market. We
are,
in fact, averaging
more
spins per hour on all-black radio than we are on the white stations. Take WJAX, for example—which by the way played Alicia Keys' ‘Fallin' ' a hundred and seven times in its first week of release—I checked with our man in Florida first thing this morning, and since news of the kidnapping broke, and especially since the kidnap tape ran last night on network news, they've been playing ‘Bandersnatch' every hour and a half, with requests for it pouring in all the time. If the momentum holds at that rate, we're looking at sixteen spins a day, times seven days a week, will come to a hundred and twelve spins in the next week alone, which will top Alicia's hundred and seven for a week on that same station. And I don't have to tell you ‘Fallin' ' was number one all over the country. And JAX is a
top
black station, this isn't some thirty-kilowatt shack in rural Mississippi. We don't have to worry about losing the black market, Barney, I can assure you of that.”

“Tell that to the good Reverend Foster,” Loomis said, going to the sideboard and pouring himself another cup of coffee. “He's a national player, he'll be all over cable television in a minute and a half.”