The Frumious Bandersnatch Read online

  “She looked angry.”

  “She’s supposed to look scared. I’ll go scare her when I finish my pizza here. I’ll put on my mask and scare the shit out of her.”

  “You keep away from her,” Avery said.

  “Why’d you open the closet, anyway?” Cal asked.

  “See if she wanted anything to eat. We’re not supposed to starve her to death, are we?”

  “We’re supposed to get two hundred and fifty thousand bucks, is what we’re supposed to do,” Avery said. “And then we’re supposed to return her safe and sound, end of story.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, safe and sound,” Kellie said. “That means feeding her, am I right?”

  “We’ll feed her, don’t worry,” Avery said.

  “Oh, we’ll take very good care of her, don’t worry,” Cal said, and bit into his pizza. Avery gave him a look. “What?” Cal asked.

  “Just stay away from her.”

  “Was Kellie went near her, not me.”

  “I’ll talk to her later,” Avery said. “When I finish here. Make her understand nobody’s going to hurt her.”

  “She sure looked mad.”

  “Needs a little scare, is what she needs,” Cal said.

  Avery looked at him again.

  “Just kidding,” Cal said, and held up his hands defensively.

  “Have some pizza,” Avery told Kellie.

  He seemed very calm, she thought.

  Maybe too calm.

  The girl had seen her face.

  CHANNEL FOUR’S offices were in a skyscraper on Moody Street, just off Jefferson Avenue. Hawes approached the imposing glass and stainless steel structure through a small pocket park with a waterfall flowing over its rear granite wall. Sitting at round metal tables in bright Sunday afternoon sunshine, half a dozen elderly people drank their cappuccinos or munched on their sandwiches. Hawes wondered what it was like to be old like that, fifty, sixty years or so.

  Security was tight here.

  A square-shield uniformed guard was standing alongside another man checking names at a lectern-sized desk. Hawes had called ahead, and so Honey Blair was expecting him. But the guy behind the podium asked him to sign in, and then he opened the manila envelope to check the video inside (even though the envelope was imprinted with the words POLICE DEPARTMENT—EVIDENCE) and then he called upstairs before allowing Hawes to proceed to the elevators.

  Honey was waiting in the seventh-floor hallway for him.

  She was wearing tan tailored slacks and a green cotton knit sweater. Apparently, she favored the short skirts and revealing tops only on camera. She took the evidence envelope from him, and unclasped it to check on the video inside, just the way the guard had. Satisfied, she nodded curtly, said, “Thanks, I appreciate it,” and was turning to go when Hawes said, “Hey.”

  She stopped.

  “We’re sorry,” he said. “We were doing our job.”

  “By stopping me from doing mine,” she said. “You cost me…” She looked at her watch. “It’s three o’clock. This tape should’ve aired at eleven last night. Now it won’t go out till the Five O’Clock News. That’s seventeen hours you cost me. My scoop went right down the drain.”

  “It’ll still…”

  “Be old news by the time anybody sees it.”

  “It’ll still get a lot of attention. It’s a very good tape.”

  “Oh, you watched it, huh?”

  “Evidence,” he said, and shrugged somewhat boyishly.

  “You probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I probably shouldn’t have told you I did that.”

  Honey nodded. Looked at him.

  “Want to watch it again?” she asked.

  AVERY HANES knocked on the closet door.

  “I’m going to open the door,” he said. “Don’t do anything foolish. No one’s going to hurt you. Okay? I know you can’t talk, but if you understand me, just kick the door, okay? We’re going to let you out of the closet, okay? So kick the door if you understand.”

  There was a sharp kick on the door.

  Then another one.

  Then several in succession.

  Sharp angry kicks.

  “I’m not sure you’re ready for this,” Avery said.

  Another series of kicks.

  “I’m not sure at all,” he said.

  And waited.

  There were no further kicks.

  He took the key Kellie had given him, inserted it into the hanging lock, twisted it, and then removed the lock from its hasp. He picked up the AK-47 from where he’d momentarily placed it on the floor, and cautiously opened the door.

  She was sitting on the floor with her back to the rear wall of the closet, knees bent, long legs tucked under her, skirt tattered, panties showing. Her brown eyes were wide at first. She blinked them against the sudden light that flooded in.

  “Nothing stupid now,” he said.

  She opened her eyes again.

  He was still wearing a dumb Halloween mask. One of those rubber things you pulled over your entire head. He was Yasir Arafat. She looked straight into the mask. Tried to read the eyes in the holes of the mask.

  “Take a good look,” he said. “They’re brown. Like yours.”

  She craned her neck, lifted her chin, shook her head violently from side to side, telling him she wanted the gag removed.

  “You’ll scream,” he said.

  She shook her head no.

  “If you scream, I’ll have to hurt you,” he said.

  She kept shaking her head no.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She nodded. Then shook her head strenuously again and again and again, asking him to please remove the goddamn gag.

  “Promise me you won’t scream.”

  She nodded. Rolled her brown eyes heavenward in solemn promise. He smiled.

  Reaching behind her head, he felt for the knot in the twisted rag, found it.

  “Turn,” he said.

  She turned her head.

  He put down the rifle for a moment, started plucking at the knot with the fingers and thumbs of both hands. She spit out the gag the moment she felt it coming loose. Kept coughing. He was afraid she might scream. He was ready to hit her if she screamed. He didn’t want to hit her, but he would if she screamed.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Hungry?”

  She nodded again.

  “I’ll untie your feet,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “You won’t try to run, will you?” he asked.

  Not until you untie my hands, too, she thought.

  “I won’t try to run,” she said.

  Her throat felt dry, the gag in it all that time.

  “If you scream, remember…”

  “I won’t scream.”

  “I’ll hit you.”

  “I remember.”

  “Good. So let me untie your feet now.”

  Good, she thought. One step at a time.

  She stretched her legs out toward him. Suddenly realized she was half-naked in the tattered costume. Almost pulled her legs back. He seemed not to notice. He took a sling blade knife from his pocket, snapped open the blade. It cut through the duct tape like water. She was more afraid of the knife than the rifle.

  “Want to stand now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to try standing?”

  He closed the knife, put it back in his pocket. She wondered all at once how they’d known where to find her last night. There hadn’t been any publicity about the cruise…well, she supposed anyone who’d been invited might have talked about it. It occurred to her that someone who’d worked on the video might be in on this. She started running faces through her mind. The grips, the stage hands, the prop guy, the lighting people, the sound technicians. Was one of them an accomplice here?

  “You have to believe we’re not going to hurt you,” he said.

  “I believe you,” she said. “What is it
you want?”

  “Just to get you back home safe and sound,” he said.

  “I mean…how much do you want?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Who do you expect to pay it?”

  “Barney Loomis.”

  He knew Barney’s name. He was going to ask Barney for the money, however much it was, unless he’d already asked him. This had to be an inside job. It had to be someone familiar with…

  “I’ll be calling him tomorrow morning. We’ll arrange an exchange as soon as possible.”

  An exchange, she thought. Me for the money.

  How much money? she wondered.

  “Everything will be fine,” he said. “You have to believe me. We don’t want to hurt you, and we don’t want any trouble. Just don’t scream, and don’t do anything foolish, okay?”

  “I won’t do anything foolish,” she promised.

  “Cause no one will hear you, anyway,” he said. “There’s no one for miles.”

  She said nothing. Was he lying to her?

  “Let’s get you something to eat, okay?” he said.

  “I have to pee,” she said.

  THERE WAS A palpable air of excitement in the small dark screening room.

  Honey and Hawes sat side by side on cushioned movie-theater seats, six rows of them, eight seats to the row, cup holders on the arms of each seat. They were sitting in the third row. Hawes felt privileged. This was a room reserved for top brass. That was part of the excitement. He was a mere flatfoot being treated like a VIP by a beautiful television celebrity.

  Another part of the excitement had to do with the video itself. Watching it on a sixty-inch screen in this exclusive chamber was a very different experience from watching it on a vintage television set in a stuffy little swing room with a patrolman snoring on a cot not twelve feet away. The tape seemed more vibrant here. The tape seemed more immediate.

  Moreover, Hawes was watching it through Honey’s eyes as well, and Honey was reacting not merely to its immediate unreeling but to the expectation that it would be aired on the Five O’Clock News, not an hour and a half from now. When the two masked perps came down those mahogany steps, she actually grabbed Hawes’s hand and squeezed it. When the left-handed perp hit the black dancer, she yelled, “Oh Jesus Christ!” And when he slapped Tamar, she winced and turned her head into Hawes’s shoulder. He almost came in his pants.

  “Do you know how many people will be watching this?” she asked. Her eyes were glowing. She could hardly sit still.

  “How many?” he said.

  “Thirty million.”

  “That many watch the local news?”

  “Who’s talking local? We’ll air it here in the city at five, and then give it a second shot when we go network. At six-thirty tonight, every man, woman, and child in the United States will be seeing it! Oh wow, Cotton!” she said, and impulsively leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  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 wh
en 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.