The Frumious Bandersnatch (12 page)

“Twelve-thirty-five.”

“Shall I wake Cotton? Are we still on this case, or what?”

“Far as I know. Nobody's heard a peep from the Feds, so I guess it's still ours. Ain't we lucky?”

“Oh my yes.”

“I guess this singer isn't very important, huh? Did Meyer and Bert get anything on the boat?”

“I've been asleep, Pete.”

“Right, I'm sorry. Stick with it, the four of you. Call Loomis, see if there's been a ransom demand yet. If this is really ours…”

“You just said it was, Pete.”

“Well, it is.”

“But you sound dubious.”

“I'm just surprised. I thought the Feds would've come knocking by now. Anyway, call Loomis. Is his office open today?”

“I have no idea.”

“You said he thought the perps might ask him for the money.”

“That's what he told me, yes.”

“So how will they know where to reach him? Did you get his home number?”

“Yes, Pete.”

“Do you think
they
have his home number?”

“I doubt it.”

“So they'll call at his office tomorrow, right? So let's get our Tech Unit to set up some stuff for us. We won't need a court order for a Tap and Trap, Loomis is a friendly, it's his own phone. But you'll need one for a Trap and Trace, maybe more than one. Try to get the equipment set up today, ready for when they call tomorrow, if they call.”

“I'll get on it right away.”

“I hate kidnappings,” Byrnes said, and sighed.

Both men fell silent.

“I sure would like a look at that tape,” Carella said.

“I have a feeling you'll be seeing it on television. Over and over again. But you've got till three o'clock. Play it before you take it back. Who's to know?”

“Is that an order?”

“It's a suggestion,” Byrnes said.

 

THE WATCHMAN'S
name was Abner Carmody.

He was asleep when Detectives Meyer and Kling knocked on his door at one that afternoon. He complained that he hadn't got to bed till eight this morning, time he got home from the marina and all, and he usually slept till three or four, had a late lunch (or early dinner, depending how you looked at it), and went to work again at six, putting in a twelve-hour day (or night, depending how you looked at it), from six
P.M.
to six
A.M.

“ ‘A man works from sun to sun,' ” he quoted out of the blue, “ ‘but a woman's work is never done.' So why are you waking me up?”

Carmody was in his sixties someplace, the detectives guessed, wearing striped pajamas and eyeglasses he'd put on when he came to answer the door. He hadn't invited the detectives in yet. They didn't care to go in, either. The man wasn't a suspect, there was nothing they wanted to see in his apartment.

“Sometime last night, maybe eleven-thirty, twelve o'clock,” Meyer prompted. “Twenty-seven-foot Rinker came in, passengers tied her up and drove off in a black Ford Explorer. Happen to see them?”

“What's this about?”

“Maybe nothing.”

“So why're you waking me up the crack of dawn, it's nothing?”

“We can come back later, if you like,” Kling said. With a warrant, he almost added, but didn't.

“Well, I'm up now,” Carmody said.

“Did you see the boat come in?”

“No, I must've been making rounds, other end of the marina. But I saw them carrying the box to the van, and driving off in it.”

“What box, sir?”

“This carton, maybe yay big,” he said, using his hands. “Two by two, three by three, no bigger'n that.”

“Heavy box? Did it seem to be heavy?”

“Not especially. Woman was carrying it. Couldn't have been too heavy, could it?”

“The masks,” Meyer said.

Kling nodded.

“What'd they look like?” he asked.

“Was only one of them. Just a plain cardboard box. Brown, you know. What they call corrugated.”

“I mean the people who got in the van. Did you happen to get a look?”

“Oh, yeah, the van was parked right under one of the sodium lights.”

“Two men and a woman, were they?” Kling asked.

“Yessir, two men and a woman. All of them wearing black all over—jeans, sweatshirts, jogging shoes. One of the men had curly black hair, the other one straight blond hair. The girl was a redhead.”

“How old would you say?”

“The girl? Early twenties.”

“And the men?”

“I'd say late twenties, early thirties.”

“I don't suppose you happened to notice the license plate on that van, did you?” Kling asked.

Carmody looked offended.

“I'm a watchman,” he said. “That's my job. To watch.”

And reeled off what he'd seen on that plate, letter for letter, numeral for numeral.

 

A PATROLMAN
with his back to them was sleeping on a cot in the swing room when Carella and Hawes came in to play the Channel Four tape. The television set down here in the basement of the old building was a relic of the eighties, with a screen much smaller than either of the men had at home, but it had a VCR attachment, and it would serve the purpose. They kept the volume low, so as not to awaken the sleeping patrolman.

Watching the tape was an odd experience.

They had heard this crime reported a hundred different ways by a hundred and twelve different people, so in a sense it was familiar to them. In a sense, they were seeing it all over again. But they were also seeing it for the very first time, objectively, no one telling them whether the men were short or tall or wearing black or blue or green, no one describing the action in often erroneous detail. There it was for them to see and to hear. It was rather like witnessing an actual address to the nation, rather than watching a bunch of talking heads commenting on it minutes later.

Hawes and Carella immediately agreed that the girl was a star.

Hawes voiced it first.

“She's good,” he said.

But they weren't talent scouts.

Nonetheless, she
was
good.

“
Very
good,” Carella agreed.

They were watching the part of the tape where Tamar Valparaiso was standing in uffish thought under the Tumtum tree, all unaware that she was about to be attacked. There he came now, big and muscular, the Bandersnatch, or the Jabberwock, or whoever her father had just warned her about a couple of seconds ago, suddenly leaping from behind a screen on the left side of the dance floor, looking menacing as hell in a scary clay-colored mask, the kind of guy neither of the detectives would choose to run into in a dark alley.

The ensuing rape, the attempted rape, was all too realistic.

Neither Carella nor Hawes had ever witnessed a rape in progress, but they had heard the testimony of far too many vics, and they knew damn well what the crime was all about. The dancer playing the rapist—there was no way this video could be considered anything but a choreographed visualization of a rape—seemed to understand completely that rape had nothing to do with sex (however sexy Tamar looked as her clothes kept shredding away) but instead had only to do with power. This creature, this thing, this animal seemed resolute in his rage to overwhelm this young girl half his size and weight, determined to prove by sheer force of strength that he was the superior being here, he was in control, he was the master, he would dominate, he would conquer, he would enter and invade and eventually humiliate and disgrace and demean and dishonor and utterly destroy. That was the whole thing about rape. It wasn't about getting laid. It was about showing just who owned who, babe.

They almost felt like intervening.

Jumping up and yelling, “Police! Stop!”

Probably wake up the sleeping uniform.

But the tape was that real and that frightening.

Then, of course, it all came out all right. Unlike rapes in real life, this one had a happy ending. The girl reached up for some imaginary kind of weapon and slashed out at her assailant…

“One, two! One, two! And through and through

“The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

“He left it dead, and with its head

“He went galumphing back.”

Helpless female becomes powerful male in order to defeat another powerful male. Where was the message there?

The rap ended.

The beast in its enraged crimson mask lay dead on the floor at Tamar's feet.

Now there was only the B-flat note again, that single repeated bass note, and Tamar fluidly moving the tune into the bluesy figure of its opening melody.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

“Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

“O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

“He chortled in his joy.”

Tamar's eyes shone, her voice rang out. She was home, baby, she was home.

“She's terrific,” Hawes said.

“A star,” Carella agreed.

“ 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

“Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

“All mimsy were the…”

“Don't nobody fucking
move!
”

“Here they come,” Hawes said, and leaned forward.

And here they came.

The detectives watched the screen intently.

This was a professional tape, recorded by skilled technicians. This wasn't something some passing motorist had shot from his car window because he'd happened to notice it occurring as he drove by. Nor was this something recorded on a bank or a supermarket camera, all fuzzy and grainy and virtually worthless for identification purposes. This was clear and sharp and focused and detailed and in full living color. This was the chronicle of a crime in progress and it would stand up in any court in the land.

You could not see the men's faces because of the masks, Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat, two gents intent on a little mischief. They were wearing black long-sleeved sweatshirts and black leather gloves. Black denim trousers. Black socks. Black running shoes.

“Reeboks,” Hawes said.

He had just made out the label.

Carella nodded.

Weapons were AK-47s, no question about it.

The shorter of the two was left-handed. Saddam Hussein. At least, he was carrying the rifle in his left hand. Pointing it up at the ceiling, like the real Hussein about to fire at the sky. Right hand on the mahogany banister.

“Ouch!” Hawes said when Hussein slammed the black dancer with the stock of the rifle.

They kept watching.

“Son of a bitch,” Hawes said, when Hussein slapped Tamar.

The other one, the taller one, Yasir Arafat, clapped a wet rag over her face.

“You move, she dies!” Hussein yelled.

“He sound black to you?” Carella asked.

“I don't know. Kind of muffled under that mask.”

“Witnesses all seemed to think they were black. I'm not getting that, are you?”

“Let's take another look,” Hawes said, and got up to rewind the tape.

“What's going on?” the sleeping patrolman asked, raising his head.

“Nothing, man, cool it,” Hawes said.

“I was up all fuckin night,” the patrolman said, and rolled over on the cot again.

They played the tape two more times.

They both felt they were missing something.

But they didn't know what.

THE FIRST THING
Kellie saw when she took the padlock off the closet door, and then opened the door itself, was a pair of big brown eyes glaring out at her. She slammed the door shut at once.

“Oh, shit!” she said, and fumbled the padlock into the hasp, and snapped it shut again. “Ave,” she yelled, “she saw me! Oh, Jesus, Ave, she saw me!” and went running into the kitchen.

The two men were sitting at a small round table near the window, eating the pizza Cal had brought back from the local Pizza Hut.

“What do you mean?” Avery asked.

“I opened the door, she was looking out at me.”

“So what'd you do?”

“Slammed the door shut.”

“So it was just a glimpse, right?”

“But she saw me,” Kellie said, more softly now, like a child trying to explain to her parents that the monster under the bed actually did exist. “She'll be able to identify me. Later. When we let her go.”

“She won't remember what you looked like. It was just a glimpse, am I right?”

“Yes, but…”

“We'll put on the masks. Don't worry, it'll be okay. It was just a glimpse.”

“What'd she do?” Cal asked. “Get the blindfold off?”

“I opened the closet, she was looking at me with her eyes wide open,” Kellie said, nodding.

“We'll wear the masks from now on,” Avery said. “You want some pizza?”

“Is it any good?”

“It's delicious,” Cal said. “Did she look scared?”

“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.