The Frumious Bandersnatch (31 page)

The two Mercurys came around the corner at that very moment, Endicott and Lonigan in the lead car, Feingold and Jones in the second. Corcoran had sprinted to the curb by then, and was flagging down the blue Merc. Loomis had thrown himself flat to the ground the way he'd seen them do in better movies than this one, even though there were no bullets flying at the moment.

At the moment, in fact, and even before Corcoran jumped into the blue Merc like somebody about to yell “Follow that car!” the black Lincoln Town car had raced out of sight like the
Enterprise
zooming off into a star-filled void.

Where it was zooming off to was a spot a mile away, where they had parked the very last of the stolen cars.

 

THEY HAD LEFT
8412 Winston Road in Calm's Point at seven-thirty, had encountered heavy traffic coming over the bridge, and did not get back to the squadroom till a minute past eight. A minute after that, Carella was calling the number he had for telephone company Special Assistance.

The Joint Task Force's hi-tech triangulation had ended in something like strangulation, and their Trap-and-Trace routine had proved futile in the face of stolen and disposable cell phones. So it got down to a weary detective sitting behind a cigarette-scarred desk in a grimy squadroom making a good old-fashioned phone call. In many ways the good old telephone company was always reliable if not always courteous. Even dealing with a so-called Special Operator assigned to helping law enforcement agencies working so-called important cases, the civility level was barely acceptable.

“Here's what we're looking for,” Carella told a woman named Miss Young. She had no first name. Just Miss Young. “We've got an Avery Hanes living at 8412 Winston Road in Calm's Point, for the year prior to this April first. And we've got…”

“Was that Winston as in Winston cigarettes?” Miss Young asked.

“As in Winston Churchill, yes,” Carella said. “And we've got a man named Calvin Wilkins, living at 379 Parrish Place in Calm's Point, from just before Thanksgiving to around the same time, April first. That's Parrish with a double-R.”

“And what is it you're seeking, Detective?”

“List of phone calls made from each of those numbers in March. I want phone numbers, names and addresses.”

“You'll need a court order for that.”

“That's not my understanding. We're not looking to put a pen register on those lines. In fact, the numbers are probably no longer in service. All I want is the numbers called and the names and addresses of the parties called. I'm sure you have those. If for billing purposes alone.”

“It's my understanding that a court order…”

“Miss, we're dealing with a kidnapping here. Any assistance you can give us…”

“One moment, please,” Miss Young said.

Carella waited.

“Miss Cole,” another voice said. “How may I help you, sir?”

Carella told her how she might help him.

“We'll need a court order for that,” she said.

“There's a certain urgency here,” Carella said.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“I'll get back to you,” he said, and hung up.

It was now five minutes past eight. It would take him forty minutes to get downtown and another forty minutes to shake a judge out of a tree at that hour. By then, Tamar Valparaiso might be dead. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had for the Joint Task Force downtown.

“Task Force,” a voice said.

“This is Carella,” he said. “Who's this?”

“Special Agent Jakes.”

“I need some help, Jakes.”

 

THEY PULLED THE
Lincoln in alongside and slightly to the rear of the Grand Cherokee Laredo they'd parked there earlier today. Cal threw up the hood of the Jeep and jump-started the vehicle. They were on their way again in three minutes flat, leaving the Lincoln with the key in the ignition in a neighborhood where “Your Money or Your Life” was a nursery rhyme. Avery figured if they had a little luck with traffic, they'd be at the beach house in half an hour or so. Then they'd return the girl and that was that.

End of story.

They never once considered the fact that an armed and dangerous person was in that house, and she was only twenty-four years old, and she had never in her life fired an AK-47.

 

“
DETECTIVE
Carella?”

“Yes?”

“This is Miss Cole again.”

Carella looked at the clock on the squadroom wall. The time was eight-fifteen.

“I just got a call from an FBI agent named Randall Jakes,” Miss Cole said. “He faxed me a copy of a court order that would seem to cover the request you made. Do you have a fax machine there?”

He gave her the fax number.

Five minutes later, he had on his desk two separate lists of the calls Avery Hanes and Calvin Wilkins had made from their respective telephones during the month of March. Not surprisingly, many of the calls had been from Hanes to Wilkins or vice versa. From Wilkins' number, there were half a dozen calls to Air Jamaica and American Airlines. From Hanes' number there were a dozen or more calls to American, British Air, Virgin Atlantic, Delta, and Air France. There were calls to Capshaw Boats, the marina from which they'd rented the Rinker presumably used in the kidnapping. There were calls to a person named Benjamin Lu, whoever he might turn out to be. Almost every day in March, Hanes had called a party listed only as “Unpublished.” An asterisk at the top of the page explained: “AT THE CUSTOMER'S REQUEST, THIS NUMBER IS UNPUBLISHED.” In the month of March, Hanes had also made seven calls to a real estate agent in Russell County.

Carella pulled the phone to him and began dialing again.

 

BY EIGHT-TWENTY-SEVEN
, he had dialed the number for Margaret Holmes Realty twice, on the off chance she'd been down the hall the first time. Concluding that she was closed for business at this hour, he dialed Information and told the operator he wanted a residential listing for a Margaret Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes, in the town of South Beach, which was where the real estate office was located. The operator came back to say she had no listing under that name. He asked her to try all the towns in Russell County, and she said she couldn't do that, she needed a specific town. He told her he was a police officer investigating a kidnapping, and she asked him to wait while she put a supervisor on the line. The supervisor told him he had to have a specific town, did he know how many towns there were in Russell County? It was eighty-thirty-three when Carella once again dialed the number he had for Special Assistance and asked for Miss Cole.

“I already
faxed
you those numbers,” she said. “Didn't you get them?”

“Yes, I got them, Miss Cole,” he said, “and thank you so much for your assistance,” turning on the charm and wondering if he should read a little T. S. Eliot to her. “Miss Cole, I wonder if you can help me here again,” he said. “I need a home number for a Margaret Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes, somewhere in Russell County, I don't have a specific town, do you think you can help me? I would so appreciate it.”

“Hmm,” Miss Cole said.

But then she said, “One moment, please.”

 

THE NUMBER
Miss Cole gave him rang four times before someone picked up.

“Hello?” a woman said.

“Miss Holmes?”

“
Mrs.
Holmes, yes?”

“This is Detective Carella of the Eighty-seventh Squad? In the city?”

“Yes, Detective?”

“Are you the Margaret Holmes who runs Margaret Holmes Realty in South Beach?”

“I am,” she said.

“Mrs. Holmes, we have an Avery Hanes calling you some six times this past month. Is that name familiar to you?”

“It is.”

Carella took a deep breath.

“Did you rent or sell anything to him?” he asked.

“I rented him a house on the beach,” she said. “Why? What's he done?”

 

THE PLAN WAS
to drop the girl off just anyplace. Give her some change to make a phone call, let her find her own way home, she was a big girl now. That was the way Ave had explained the plan to her.

They'd drop the girl off just anywhere on their way to the airport. Cal was supposed to be going to Jamaica, but they didn't care where he went, they didn't care if they ever saw him again as long as they lived. Ave was heading for London first, while Kellie herself flew to Paris where he would meet her later. It was a swell plan. Paris. Lah-dee-dah.

There was only one problem.

The girl had seen Kellie's face.

Tamar Valparaiso still didn't know who was behind those Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat masks, but she sure as hell knew that George W. Bush was a redheaded Irish girl with green eyes and freckles.

“You know,” Kellie confided now, “we're supposed to set you free as soon as they get back.”

“Promises, promises,” Tamar said.

“No, really. That's the plan. We leave here and drop you off someplace.”

“That would be nice,” Tamar said.

“Well, that's the plan.”

“Good,” Tamar said.

She ached all over. Her face, her body, everywhere he'd hit her, but especially below, where he'd brutally entered her. Cal, she thought. His name is Cal. And the other one is Ave. You'll pay, boys.

“You saw my face,” Kellie said out of the blue.

Tamar looked at her.

“You know what's behind this mask.”

“Well, don't worry…”

“You know what I look like.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” Tamar said. “Really, you've been good to me. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you.”

“Because I wouldn't want to lose all this, you know,” Kellie said reasonably.

“You don't have to worry, really.”

“We worked hard for this,” she said reasonably.

“I know you did. But, really, you don't have to…”

“You can describe me.”

“I hardly remember…”

“You know what I look like,” Kellie said again.

“Lots of girls look like…”

“Lots of girls didn't kidnap you,” Kellie said, and raised the AK-47 onto her hip.

“Don't…just be careful with that thing, okay?” Tamar said and reached out with her free hand.

Kellie backed away a pace.

The rifle was on single-shot. She fired three times. Two bullets entered Tamar's face just below the left eye, and the other took her just below the nose. The three shots blew off the back of her skull and splashed gristle and blood all over the radiator behind her.

Wow, Kellie thought.

IT WAS
eighty-forty-five on the squadroom clock.

“The address is 64 Beachside,” Carella told the detective in the South Beach Police Department. “There may be a kidnap victim there, so proceed with extreme caution.”

Out there in Russell County, they used more paramilitary rank designations than they did here in the big bad city. Detective-Sergeant James Cody asked if there was likely to be anyone armed and dangerous in that house.

Carella said, “Yes, that's likely.”

“We'll be careful then,” Cody said.

There was no need.

The only person in that house was a dead girl chained to a radiator.

Everyone else had driven off five minutes ago.

 

MISS COLE
was getting used to phone calls from Detective Stephen Louis Carella.

“Yes, Detective?” she said almost cheerfully.

“Miss Cole, I'm sorry to bother you again…”

“Oh, it's no bother at all,” she said.

“On this list of calls made from those two addresses I gave you…”

“Yes, Detective?”

Almost cooing the words.

“There were almost daily calls listed to an unpublished number. Now, I know it's telephone company policy not to reveal…”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “This is a kidnapping. Just give me a minute.”

She came back in three.

“All those calls were made to the same party,” she said.

“And who was that, Miss Cole?”

“A man named Barney Loomis,” she said. “At 583 South Thompson. Is that helpful to you, Detective?”

 

“
THEY HANDED US
a beaut,” Detective-Sergeant James Cody told the County Medical Examiner.

It was five minutes past nine that Tuesday night and the house at 64 Beachside was swarming with men wearing blue windbreakers, the word “POLICE” lettered in yellow across their backs. The dead girl was in one of the bedrooms. Her wrist was still handcuffed to the radiator.

“Christ, look what they did to her,” the ME said.

Cody nodded. “Can't find the key anyplace,” he said. “We were waiting for you to get here, see do you want us to saw through the cuffs or what. I figure they got out of here in one hell of a hurry. Left her behind all chained up that way.”

There were three spent cartridge cases on the floor, presumably spewed from the murder weapon.

“Shot her in the face at close range,” Cody said.

“Looks like,” the ME said.

The equivalent of South Beach's Crime Scene Unit was busy dusting for prints and vacuuming for fibers and hair. One of the technicians glanced toward the dead girl and muttered, “Fuckin animals.”

In one of the other bedrooms, they found three masks. Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat, and George W. Bush.

“Three of the world's great leaders,” Cody said dryly.

Just about then, Detectives Carella and Hawes were knocking on the door to Apartment 22C at 583 South Thompson.

 

AT NINE-FORTY-FIVE
that night, just as Air France's flight #23 for Paris was about to take off, Ollie and Patricia came out of the movie theater into a fairly decent rain. He took off his jacket, and over her protests draped it over her shoulders.

“You'll get all
wet!
” she told him.

“Tut tut,” he said. “Would you care to go for some pizza?”

Patricia said she wasn't hungry, but she'd be happy to join him.

Over his third slice, he told her he had learned a lot from that movie.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like it ain't only about a ticking clock,” Ollie said.

 

CARELLA DID NOT
learn that Tamar Valparaiso was dead until he and Hawes got back to the squadroom with Barney Loomis in tow. It was now ten o'clock. Flight #23 for Charles de Gaulle airport had been in the air for ten minutes already, and Avery Hanes was waiting in British Air's lounge to board flight #82 to London's Heathrow. Sergeant Murchison behind the muster desk told them that Mr. Loomis' attorney was waiting in the lieutenant's office.

“Also, you got a call from a Detective Cody out at South Beach,” he said, and handed Carella a folded message.

Carella glanced at it briefly.

“Want to take Mr. Loomis to his lawyer?” he asked Hawes, and then went to his own desk and immediately called the Joint Task Force, grateful when they put him through to Endicott rather than Corcoran.

“Stan,” he said, “the girl is dead. I just heard from the South Beach Police, she was being held in a house out there. All three of the perps are gone. I've got full names for two of them, and a given name for the third. They made calls to Air Jamaica, British Air, Air France, American, Virgin Atlantic, and Delta. You've got better ties to Homeland Security than we do, maybe you can flash their names on the airport computers here and across the river. I've got Barney Loomis in custody, I think he was an accomplice…”

“Wait a minute,
wait
a minute! Barney
Loomis?
”

“One of the perps called his home number every day in March.”

“You've been busy,” Endicott said dryly.

“Can you cover the airports?”

“What are those names you've got?” Endicott said.

 

BARNEY LOOMIS
' attorney was a man named Roger Halliday. He'd been watching
The West Wing
on television when Loomis called from his apartment. Balding and a trifle portly, he'd come to the squadroom in a dark blue business suit and tie, looking more like a banker than any criminal lawyer the detectives knew. Actually, he was a skilled corporate attorney, and it never occurred to him that he might be out of his league here.

“Is my client being charged with something?” he asked.

“Not yet, Mr. Halliday,” Hawes said. “We'd just like to ask him some questions.”

“He doesn't have to answer any questions, you know that.”

“Yes, we know that.”

“Has he been read his rights? The man's under arrest here, have you yet…?”

“We read them to him in his apartment,” Carella said.

“Read them to him again now,” Halliday said.

Carella read Loomis his rights again.

Halliday looked bored.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked Loomis. “You don't have to answer any questions if you don't want to. My advice is you ask them either to charge you or let you go. Even if they charge you, you don't have to answer any questions. This is America, don't forget.”

“Charge me with what?” Loomis asked. “I haven't done anything.”

“Why don't you just satisfy our curiosity, Mr. Loomis?” Carella said. “Answer a few questions for us, okay?”

“No, I don't think so,” Loomis said.

 

TWO HOMELAND SECURITY
agents boarded British Air's flight #82 ten minutes before it was scheduled to take off for London. They found Avery Hanes in the first-class section, where he was already enjoying a scotch and soda, and they asked him if he would mind accompanying them off the aircraft. Since they were both armed, he said he wouldn't mind at all.

Fifteen minutes later, he ratted out Barney Loomis, and told them they could find Calvin Wilkins in American Airline's first-class lounge. He also told them that his girlfriend Kellie Morgan would be landing in Paris at eleven-fifteen tomorrow morning.

Wilkins' flight to Jamaica was not scheduled to leave until seven
A.M.
tomorrow morning. He was curled up asleep on one of the lounge's sofas when they shook him awake. Looking up into what appeared to be nine-millimeter weapons, he said, “Oh shit.”

 

WHEN NELLIE BRAND
got to the squadroom at close to eleven, she was still wearing the long green gown and green satin slippers she'd worn to the annual May Cotillion at the River Dix Yacht Club, to which she and her husband belonged. She was also wearing a mink stole, and a jade necklace her husband had given her this past Christmas, and she looked less like a District Attorney answering a rotation call than a stockbroker's wife who'd been drinking champagne not an hour and a half ago, which she was and which she had been.

Carella took her aside and told her what he had.

“That's purely circumstantial,” she said. “Is that why you dragged me all the way up here?”

“I think it'll wash.”

“I don't. Guy could've called him for any one of a thousand reasons besides criminal chicanery.”

“How'd he happen to know him? How'd he get his home number?”

“How do I know? Having a person's home number doesn't add up to kidnapping.”

“The girl's dead, Nellie. This is now a death penalty case.”

“Where are these people with whom he allegedly conspired?”

“Flew the coop.”

“That's nice. And you say they left a dead girl behind?”

“Yes.”

“This singer I've been seeing all over television?”

“That's the one.”

“Very high profile, Steve. You'd better be right.”

“What can we lose?” Carella said. “Let's give it a shot.”

“I must be out of my mind,” Nellie said.

 

THE Q AND
A started at a quarter past eleven.

It had been a long Tuesday for everyone in that room. Well, everyone except maybe the police stenographer, who took down every word as Loomis was read his rights for the third time, and then advised that he did not have to answer any questions if he chose not to…

“I choose not to,” he said.

“In which case,” Nellie said, “we'll be charging you with Conspiracy to Commit Kidnapping…”

“That's ridiculous,” Halliday said.

“…and Kidnapping itself, which is an A-1 Felony…”

“You truly can't be serious, young lady.”

“Oh but I am, Counselor. Under the laws of this state, your client acted in concert, and it doesn't matter whether he was a principal or an accomplice…”

“A Grand Jury will kick this out in five minutes!”

“We'll see, I guess,” Nellie said. “You think they'll also kick out Felony Murder?”

“Murder?” Loomis said.

“Murder during a kidnapping,” Nellie said. “The same thing as Murder One.”

“What do you mean
murder?
” Loomis asked. “Did they
kill
Tamar? Are you saying they
killed
her?”

“She was shot in the face at close range with a high-powered rifle,” Carella said.

“That wasn't the
deal!
” Loomis shouted, and suddenly he was sobbing into his hands.

 

I LOVED THAT GIRL
as if she was my own daughter, he told them. The deal was they'd hold her till the ransom was paid, and then they'd let her go. They weren't supposed to hurt her, they certainly weren't supposed to…to…

And here he buried his face in his hands and began sobbing again.

Halliday took this opportunity to remind him that he was not compelled to say anything.

Loomis kept sobbing into his hands.

“Mr. Loomis?” Nellie said.

He just kept sobbing.

“Would you like to tell us what happened?” she said softly.

She was skilled at such things.

Loomis nodded into his hands.

Halliday shook his head.

 

I MAKE A HABIT
of stopping in record stores, checking on how our product is displayed, what kind of space we're getting, all that. I normally introduce myself to the manager, sometimes to the floor personnel, tell them I'm the CEO of Bison Records, explain how much this or that CD or album means to me, ask them to keep a personal eye on it. I love every record we put out. Every one of them. I love this business. I love music.

I knew Tamar was going to be a big star the minute I heard her for the first time. She could bang out a song like Cher, or hoot and holler like Steven Tyler. She could bend notes like the best blues and country singers, or break and yodel like Alanis Morissette. And sweet! Oh Jesus, what a
sweet
wonderful voice! She could break your heart with the simplest ballad. Like an angel. She sang like an angel.

Every store I went into, I told them to watch out for Tamar Valparaiso.