The Frumious Bandersnatch Read online

  Or else she was putting on one hell of an act.

  “I thought that old buggy was a goner for sure,” she said. “Where’d you find it?”

  “Are you Polly Olson?” Willis asked.

  His eyes were looking past her into the apartment where a microwave dinner in a black plastic dish rested on a coffee table in front of which a television set was going. He was looking for two possible accomplices with two possible AK-47s. Parker was looking for the same thing. Their eyes must have been darting.

  “How rude of me,” she said, “come in, come in,” and stepped aside, either to welcome them or to allow a clean line of fire for her shooter buddies. They stepped into the apartment. Nobody shot at them. Willis felt somewhat foolish.

  “Ma’am?” he said. “Is it your Ford Explorer that was stolen?”

  “It sure was! Man, that was fast!” she said. “You boys are to be commended.”

  “When did you report the car missing, ma’am?” Parker asked, getting straight to the point. He was due to be relieved at eleven-forty-five, and it was now close to that—well, actually, it was only eight-thirty, but he didn’t want to be delayed by a lot of bullshit here.

  “This morning. When I went down right after breakfast,” she said. “I get up early every morning to move the car. It’s alternate side of the street parking here. We can park it all night, but we have to move it in the morning. Even weekends. This is a busy street here, deliveries all the time.”

  “So you went down at what time, lady?” Parker asked impatiently.

  “Just before eight o’clock. It’s illegal to park between eight A.M. and six. I was going to move the car across the street, and then walk over to church. As it was, I missed the nine o’clock mass because I had to report the car missing and all. From where I’d left it.”

  “Where was that, ma’am?”

  “Right in front of the building. It would’ve been safe there until eight o’clock. Which is why I went down a few minutes before. Only to discover somebody had already moved it for me. I came right upstairs and called the police. Took me forever to report it stolen. I missed nine o’clock mass, I told you.”

  “What time did you move it last night, ma’am?”

  “Five to six. That’s what the signs say. Eight A.M. to six 6 P.M.”

  “So it had to’ve been stolen sometime after six last night, is that right?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “I was home all last night. Watching television,” she said. “Same as tonight,” she said, and her voice was suddenly so forlorn that Willis wanted to give her a hug. Her mention of the television set caused all of them to turn toward the screen, where for perhaps the twentieth time that day, the Valparaiso kidnapping tape was being aired.

  “Do I have to go for the car right now?” she asked, looking suddenly frightened. “I mean…can it wait till morning?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it can wait till morning,” Willis said, and was starting to give her the address of the One-Oh-Four, when all at once he heard himself saying, “In fact, I can stop by and drive you there, if you’d like.”

  “Why that would be very nice, young man,” she said.

  “Ten o’clock be all right?” he asked.

  “Ten o’clock would be fine,” she said.

  In the hallway outside, Parker said, “Love at first sight, Harold?”

  “Fuck you,” Willis explained.

  CARELLA was complaining that he felt like the father of the bride. Sitting beside him on the living room sofa, Teddy watched his lips and his signing hands, and then she herself signed, Well, in a sense you are.

  “No, darling,” he said, enunciating every word clearly, emphasizing them with his hands so that she wouldn’t miss their meaning or their importance to him, “not in any sense am I the father of the bride. I am the son of the bride, and I am the brother of the bride, but I am not in any way, shape, or form the father of the bride.”

  Yes, but to your mother and Angela, you are the father of the bride, Teddy insisted.

  “Their perception has nothing to…”

  You’re the person who’ll be giving them away.

  “I know that. But that doesn’t make me the father of the…”

  At least they’re not asking you to pay for the wedding.

  “Oh, that’ll be the day!” Carella said, and got off the sofa and began pacing. “My mother’s marrying a big ginzo from…”

  Steve! her eyes snapped, and her fingers crackled.

  “Is what he is,” Carella said. “He speaks English the way my grand father did when he first came to this country.”

  Luigi happens to speak English…

  “Luigi! Couldn’t he have picked a more…”

  …as well as you do. And he’s a very nice…

  “…wop-sounding…”

  You ought to be ashamed of your…

  “…name? Luigi! Jesus Christ!”

  Well, I’m not going to shout over you, Teddy signed, and folded her hands in her lap.

  The room went still.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  You should be, Teddy signed. It’s going to be a lovely wedding.

  “I’m sure it will be,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  But he was sure it would not be. Because the issue here wasn’t that his mother was about to marry a man from Italy, a real Italian, mind you, not somebody who was born here and who called himself Italian for God knew what obscure reasons, but someone actually from Italy, this was not the issue. The issue was that his mother was getting married at all. And so soon after his father was murdered. Before the funeral meats were cold, so to speak.

  Which was the other thing that rankled about this double wedding impending in June, next month, right around the corner, for which he had been unanimously declared father of the bride when he didn’t even choose to be either brother or son of the bride, brides, damn it! Of all the men in this vast city, of all the available bachelors pounding on her door and sniffing at her heels, why had his sister chosen the man who’d prosecuted the case of the People v. Cole, and lost that case, allowed his father’s murderer to walk free until another day? Why this particular man? Was there something fucking Electral about this? Something Carella was missing?

  The telephone rang.

  He looked up at the grandfather clock.

  It was nine-thirty.

  He went into the hall to answer it.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Detective Carella, please.”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Special Agent Stanley Endicott,” the voice on the other end said. “Is this Carella?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I’m not waking you, am I?”

  “No, I’m awake.”

  “I’m in command of the Joint Task Force here at Federal Square,” Endicott said. “We’ve been assigned the Valparaiso kidnapping, and I understand you were the officer who caught the initial complaint, is that correct?”

  “Well, the Harbor Patrol was actually the first to respond,” Carella said, and wondered why whenever the FBI appeared on the scene he automatically started covering his ass.

  “But you conducted the initial investigation, isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes, it is,” Carella said.

  “Aboard the River Princess, is the information I have here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve been working the case since, more or less.”

  Carella liked to think the old Eight-Seven had been giving it their all, but he said nothing.

  “Have you come up with anything so far?” Endicott asked.

  “We’ve been tracking a trio the Harbor Patrol stopped on the river, shortly before the kidnapping. We’ve got a name for the guy who rented a boat that may have been used, but that’s all we’ve got. There’s nothing on him in the computer, local, state, or federal. We’re thinking he used a phony credit card.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Andy Hardy,” Carella said
.

  “Oh really?” Endicott said, and chuckled.

  “We also have an eye witness to the boat coming back in before midnight last night…well, he didn’t actually see the boat, but he gave us a good description of the three people who might’ve been on the boat…”

  “Might’ve been,” Endicott said.

  “We’re fairly certain they’re the ones who brought the boat in. A man and two women. They drove off in a black Ford Explorer…”

  “Fairly certain,” Endicott said.

  Carella was silent for a moment.

  Then he said, “Do you want this or don’t you?”

  “I’m all ears,” Endicott said.

  “So cut the editorials, okay? We’ve been busting our asses on this ever since we caught it.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  “Look, call my lieutenant, okay? He’s got all our reports, he’ll give you everything you…”

  “I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “The Explorer was reported stolen at eight-thirty this morning. We checked with the owner, last time she saw the car was six last night, when she moved it per parking regulations. The boat the three hired—which may or may not have been the one used on the gig, before you repeat it back to me—was dusted by Mobile Crime top to bottom. It was wiped clean as a whistle. Also, we’ve set up a Tap and Tape plus a Trap and Trace in Barney Loomis’ office. We expect…”

  “So he told us.”

  “We expect the perps to call with a ransom demand sometime tomorrow. The office was closed today, and they have no way of knowing his home number. Plus, the girl’s parents are divorced and living, one in Mexico, the other in Europe someplace. So Loomis is the one the perps’ll most likely contact.”

  “So he told us,” Endicott said again.

  “That’s what we’ve done so far, and that’s what we’ve got.”

  “Which is essentially nothing,” Endicott said.

  “Well, as I mentioned earlier,” Carella said, “maybe you ought to talk to my lieutenant. He can give you any further…”

  “No, no, you’ve done splendidly,” Endicott said. “Not your fault these guys are smart. How about the crime scene itself? Has the lab come back to you with anything yet?”

  “They said I’d have their report by six tonight. I waited in the office till seven.”

  “Think it might be there now?”

  “Possibly. I can call the squadroom…”

  “If it’s there, maybe you can bring it along with the rest of the stuff.”

  “What stuff do you mean, Agent Endicott?”

  “It’s Special Agent Endicott, by the way, but you can call me Stan. What do people call you, Detective? Stephen? Steve? It says here Stephen Louis Car…”

  “Steve. People call me Steve.”

  “Steve, I’d like to go over whatever evidence you gathered at the scene…”

  “There wasn’t much.”

  “What ever there was. It’d be in your DD report, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “Your various conversations with eye witnesses…”

  “Yes.”

  “Your own evaluation of the crime scene…”

  “Yes, that would all be in our report.”

  “Photographs…”

  “Those would be coming from the lab.”

  “Plus whatever else you may have got from Mobile this evening.”

  “If there is anything else, yes, Stan. It was a big crime scene, they were very busy there, inside and outside the boat. The perps came up a ladder, you know, on the side of the boat…”

  “So you’re saying there might be footprint casts…”

  “I’m saying I don’t know what they got or didn’t get. Footprints or whatever. That’s why I’m waiting for the report. The perps were wearing gloves, so the likelihood of latents is nil. But they came down these highly polished steps into the ballroom, and they moved across a dance floor with another sensitive surface…”

  “That’s the kind of stuff I mean,” Endicott said. “Your first hand impressions of the scene. To supplement whatever you’ve got in writing. When do you think you can get down here?”

  “Down where?” Carella asked.

  “Why, Federal Square, Steve.”

  “How about first thing tomorrow morning?” Carella said.

  “How about right now?” Endicott said. “The Squad’s all here…”

  The Squad? Carella thought.

  “…and we’d love to get a jump on this before those sons of bitches call tomorrow. Think you can stop by your office first, see if that MCU report is in, and then head right on down here? It’s One Federal Square, nineteenth floor. We’ll be waiting,” he said, and hung up.

  Carella looked at the phone receiver.

  The Squad, he thought. Is that what the Joint Task Force calls itself, The Squad?

  He put the receiver back on the cradle.

  The Squad.

  “I have to go in again,” he told Teddy.

  It was not the first time she’d ever heard those words, but she pulled a face anyway.

  6

  THERE WAS ONLY one building in Federal Square, and it was appropriately addressed One Federal Square. A forty-story limestone structure lit from below with daggers of light, it would have looked imposing, and a bit intimidating, even if it were not the sole edifice on a plot of ground some fifty yards square.

  The Joint Task Force, a team of six crack FBI agents and an equal number of elite police detectives, occupied floors nineteen and twenty of the building. You could not enter those floors without a key. Carella did not have a key, which was why someone was meeting him downstairs in the lobby.

  The someone was Detective-Lieutenant Charles “Corky” Corcoran.

  In this whole wide world, there is no one with the surname Corcoran who does not also possess the nickname Corky. That is an indisputable truth. Male or female, if you are a Corcoran, you are also a Corky. Charles Farley Corcoran had been “Corky” when Carella met him some twenty-odd years ago at the Police Academy, and Carella guessed he was still Corky tonight, though there was clipped to his suit jacket pocket an ID card and a gold, blue-enameled detective shield hammered with the word LIEUTENANT. Beaming a toothy smile, blue eyes crinkling in a face stamped with the map of Ireland, he extended his hand and said, “Steve, long time no see.”

  His grip was firm and dry and warm. He looked as fit and as young as he had, lo those many years ago, when they were both rookies climbing ropes and firing pistols in the Academy.

  “Welcome to The Squad,” he said.

  The Squad, Carella thought. Supreme egotism in that the designation completely dismissed every detective squad in this city and declared itself The Squad, The One and Only Squad. Welcome.

  “Nice to be here,” Carella said.

  He was thinking he had not got to bed till almost eight-thirty this morning after being up all night on the kidnapping. He had been awakened by Byrnes at twelve-thirty and had spent the rest of the day either in court chasing court orders, or up in Loomis’ office supervising the installation of the telephone-surveillance equipment. It was now ten-thirty P.M., and he was beginning to feel just a wee bit weary.

  The usual modulation from night shift to day shift took place over a period of two days. You worked the midnight-to-eight A.M. shift for a full month, then you took two full days off and came back to work at eight in the morning, the theory being that you’d caught up on your sleep by that time, just like a business traveler adjusting to jet lag.

  Sure.

  “You’re looking good, Steve.”

  “Thanks. Do I still call you Corky?”

  “Most people call me Charles these days,” Corcoran said. “Or Lieutenant.” Still smiling, he said, “Come meet the team,” and led Carella across a vast lobby paved with massive blocks of unpolished marble to a bank of elevators simply marked 19–20. There were only two buttons and a keyway in the elevator that arrived. Corcoran took a
key ring from his pocket, slid a small key into the keyway, twisted it, and hit the button for 19.

  “I understand you’ve done some good work on this case,” Corcoran said.

  “Thank you,” Carella said.

  The elevator whirred silently up the shaft. The door slid open onto the nineteenth floor. The men stepped out into a corridor that ran past a warren of tiny work cubes, occupied with men and women at computers. Carella followed Corcoran to an unmarked door at the end of the hall. He opened the door and allowed Carella to precede him into a room.

  There were six smiling men in the room.

  Carella recognized only Barney Loomis, who was wearing a brown jacket over beige slacks, a brown turtleneck sweater, and brown loafers. Three of the other five men were both wearing dark blue suits, white shirts, blue ties, and highly polished, black, lace-up shoes. Carella figured them for FBI. They even looked somewhat alike, all three of them square-jawed and dark-haired, sporting the sort of conservative haircut made famous by Senator Trent Lott, although presumably their own barber was not in Washington, D.C.

  The Trent Lott Cut was a precision-tooled hair style that fit its wearer’s head like a carefully stitched toupee. This tailored-rug look was softened somewhat on the trio of agents—Carella guessed one of them was Endicott—because they were each in their thirties and were therefore presumed to be hipper than they actually were, especially since they carried nine-millimeter Glocks and FBI shields. The other two men could only be city detectives. Something in the way they carried themselves, something in their somewhat unpressed look, city detectives for sure. So what Carella had here was three smiling Feebs, two smiling dicks—well, three, when you counted Lieutenant Charles “Corky” Corcoran, standing behind him and presumably smiling as well—and last but not least…

  “Detective Carella,” Barney Loomis said, also smiling and stepping away from the other men, his right hand extended. “Glad you could come down.”