The Frumious Bandersnatch (9 page)

The party guests unanimously understood that the black guy in the mask that kept changing color and shape throughout the course of the song was supposed to be some kind of mythological beast, some kind of
Bandersnatch,
in fact, since that was the name of the song, though the man
did
warn his son to beware the Jabberwock, my son, didn't he? So maybe the beast was a
Jabberwock
or even a
Jubjub
bird. What
ever
the damn thing was, it was something to be
shunned,
man, as subsequent events were all too soon to demonstrate.

Most of the guests agreed, too, that the police should have been called while Tamar's partner was throwing her all over the dance floor and tearing her already flimsy nightgown, or whatever it was, to tattered ribbons, never a cop around when you needed one. Neo-realism was one thing, but here was this big muscular guy tossing around this little thing who couldn't weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds, if that, in an utterly convincing attempt to rape her. It didn't help that she was blond and he was black, the stereotype reinforced. What he was doing to her on that dance floor was intolerable.

So it was with considerable relief that the audience, black and white alike, saw Tamar wrap her tiny defenseless little hands around thin air, saw her grasp whatever imaginary something she was grasping (a vorpal sword, as it turned out), and rise up against this vicious
animal,
was what he was! who was determined to violate and despoil this flower of virgin maidenhood. “One two! One two!” they all agreed, “and through and through, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead,” they further agreed, “and with its head, he went galumphing back.”

The witnesses they questioned all seemed somewhat puzzled as to
who
exactly the “he” in the lyrics was since Tamar was very much a “she,” especially now that she was standing there tall and proud but bedraggled in her tattered underwear, or whatever it was, with half her admirable attributes hanging out for all and sundry to see. (This was a point that would spark considerable debate in the days to come, but Carella and Hawes didn't yet know the kind of notoriety this case would inspire; for now, they were just two working stiffs doing their jobs, and trying to protect their asses from Federal flack down the line.) In any case, just as Tamar's father, or whoever he was, her guardian perhaps, finished congratulating her on having slain the Jabberwock (instead of the Bandersnatch, by the way, after whom the song was named) and just as everything was back to normal again, with all the creatures gyring and gimbling and all the mome raths…

Just then, these two big black guys came barreling down the stairway with automatic weapons in their hands. One of them had his right hand on the mahogany banister, his left hand pointing the barrel of the gun up at the overhead. The other man had his weapon sort of cradled in his arms, his right finger curled around the trigger. Both of them came gliding down the steps almost as gracefully as the black rapist had glided through the song, one of them yelling, “Don't nobody fucking move!,” which effectively stopped
Tamar
dead in her tracks—but not the words to the song.

Until that moment, many people in the audience hadn't realized she was lip-synching. But now the words kept blaring from the speakers on either side of the dance floor…

“…borogroves

“And the mome raths outgrabe…”

…even though Tamar's mouth wasn't moving anymore. She was just standing stock still, staring wide-eyed at these two masked apparitions who came rushing toward her with seemingly malicious intent. She wondered for a moment—as in fact did the audience—if this wasn't somehow part of the act. Had Barney Loomis hired a supplementary dance team to add additional spice to the evening? But just then Jonah, the beast lying dead at her feet, popped up from the floor in response to the growled “Don't nobody fucking move!” Hunched in a dancer's crouch, arms widespread for balance, still wearing the hideous crimson-colored mask he'd worn in the finale, he must have seemed enormously threatening to the two men who were now not two feet away from where Tamar still stood in dumb-founded shock.

The left-handed one (the witnesses all agreed that Saddam Hussein had carried the weapon in his left hand throughout) reacted at once, swinging the gun at Jonah's head. Designed for the Soviet Army following World War II, the AK-47 was a sturdily built, well-designed gun with a pistol grip as well as a rifle stock. It was the stock that caught Jonah under the chin, sending him falling backward and onto the floor, where once again he lay prostrate as if dead—but this time a thin line of blood began seeping from under his mask.

The two men and Tamar stood frozen in surreal proximity, she in ivory-white tatters, they in inky black costumes and Middle Eastern masks, Mr. Hussein and Mr. Arafat. Nobody in the audience moved. The witnesses all agreed on this; there was only a stunned silence. The sole sound or motion was on the dance floor itself, where Tamar suddenly tried to break free of the little knot of three, only to be yanked back at once and slapped very hard by Hussein, the left-handed one. She reeled from the blow. The other one, the taller of the two…

The witnesses agreed that Yasir Arafat was about six-feet-two-inches tall, and his left-handed accomplice, Saddam Hussein, was some two or three inches shorter than that, a bit under six feet perhaps, both of them very muscularly built, which perhaps accounted for the first impression of a dance team coming down the steps…

The taller of the two suddenly clamped a wet rag over Tamar's face, and she fell against him limply. He threw her over his shoulder. The left-handed one shouted, “You move, she dies!” and they backed away up the steps, their guns trained on the still-speechless audience.

That was about it.

 

BARNEY LOOMIS, CEO
of Bison Records, was furious. Or perhaps frumious. Or perhaps both.

“That son of a bitch
slapped
her!” he shouted into Carella's face. He smelled of seared mustard salmon, which was the entrée he'd had for dinner. He also smelled of a men's cologne named “Acrid” which a lot of men in the music industry favored because it had the silhouette of a Luger pistol on its label. “She's a fragile person,” Loomis shouted, “a child practically! This is a child kidnapping, she's a child, she just celebrated her twentieth birthday in January! I want her
back
here! That man was a maniac, you could see he was deranged, first he hit Jonah with the gun…”

“I think I'm still bleeding,” Jonah said.

He had taken off the monster mask, and it was plain to see he wasn't still bleeding, but he kept exploring his jaw line tentatively, his eyes still wide in fright. Carella hoped he wasn't going to faint.

“You're not bleeding,” Loomis told him. “Go put on some clothes, go get dressed for Chrissake! How many kidnappings have you investigated this year?” he asked Carella.

“None,” Carella said. “This year? None.”

“How about last year? How about the past five, ten years? How many friggin kidnappings have you ever handled in your entire life as a cop?”

“One,” Carella answered. “In my entire life as a cop,” he added.

Loomis blinked at him.

“Well, at least you're honest,” he said.

“At least that,” Carella agreed. “But you don't have to worry. I'm sure the FBI will…”

“Whoever,” Loomis said. “All I want is Tamar back. And
fast
!”

“All
I
want,” a woman's voice said, “is to get my tape on the air. And
fast
!”

They all turned.

Carella recognized the woman at once. He had met her in the Grover Park Zoo this past Christmas when she was covering the “Lions Attack Woman” story. He had spoken to her on the phone only recently, soliciting a possible job at Channel Four for his wife, Teddy.

“Hello, Honey,” he said and extended his hand. “Nice to see you again.”

“I taped the whole thing, you know,” she said. “In case anyone's interested.”

“Interested?”
Carella said. “When can we…?”

“Back off,” Honey said. “Nobody sees it till Channel Four airs it.”

“Good!” Loomis said at once. “Let the whole damn city see what happened here tonight. Let the whole
world
see it! That maniac hitting her!”

“No one's broadcasting any evidence tape until I clear it with my superiors,” Carella said.

“Evidence tape? What?”

“I'll subpoena it, Honey.”

“Ashcroft notwithstanding, I thought this was still a free country.”

“A girl's been kidnapped here, Miss,” Hawes told her.

She turned to look at him.

“This is my partner, Cotton Hawes,” Carella said. “Cotton, this is Honey Blair of Channel Four News.”

“I watch you all the time,” Hawes said, and nodded.

Honey looked him over. She was seeing a tall, wide-shouldered man with blue eyes and flaming red hair except for a white streak some two inches wide over his left temple.

Hawes was seeing a blonde some five-feet-seven-inches tall, wearing a blue leather mini and an ice-blue, long-sleeved blouse and calf-high navy leather boots and looking infinitely more beautiful than she ever had on television.

Honey Blair and Cotton Hawes had met.

“Red, tell your partner here…” Honey started.

“It's Cotton,” he said softly, and looked into her eyes.

“Cotton, please tell your partner,” she said, returning his gaze, “that I'm sitting on the biggest scoop I've ever had in my life, a live tape of a kidnapping in progress, and if he doesn't let me go in the next five minutes, Channel Four will bring suit against the city,” she said, and smiled sweetly.

“We'll slap a court order on the tape,” Carella said.

“I don't care what you do after we air it.”

“I'll seize it as evidence right this minute.”

“My crew won't let you have it.”

“Then I'll arrest them as accessories to the crime of kidnapping.”

“As
what
? You'll
what
?”

“For withholding vital evidence,” Hawes explained.

Honey gave him a curt, dismissive look.

“Am I still bleeding?” Jonah asked.

“Will you go put on some clothes?” Loomis said.

“How'd I look on camera?” Jonah asked Honey.

“Gorgeous, darling.”

Jonah beamed and went off toward the changing room. The natives were beginning to get extremely restless, milling and seething and whiffling all around the ballroom deck as McIntosh and his crew continued taking names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

“So who
will
be handling this?” Loomis asked Carella. “You or the FBI?”

“For now, it's us,” Carella said. “We caught it, we'll finish up here, and then go do the paperwork. I'll talk to my lieutenant as soon as we get back to the squadroom, see what he advises. I'm sure this'll go to them, don't worry. Meanwhile, we'll want to contact the girl's parents. Do you know where we can…?”

“Forget it,” Loomis said, “they're divorced. Her father's living in Mexico with his second wife, her mother's in Europe someplace.”

“Are they people of means, would you know?”

“He used to sell vacuum cleaners, Christ knows what he's doing now. Her mother's a hairdresser. I'm sure neither of them is wealthy.”

“Then why would anyone want to kidnap her?” Hawes asked.

“Maybe because Tamar Valparaiso…”

Valparaiso, Carella thought.
Not
Valentino.

“…is under contract to Bison Records,” Loomis said, and nodded in sudden understanding. “Of course,” he said. “That's got to be it. I'm CEO and sole shareholder in the company. They're going to ask
me
for the goddamn money.”

“Then you better sit by the phone,” Hawes suggested.

 

BY FOUR A.M.
, McIntosh and his HPU team had gathered all the vitals from the passengers, crew, and caterers, had passed the list on to the detectives from the Eight-Seven, and had gone tootling off on their thirty-six footer into an early morning mist. The Mobile Crime Unit had arrived some two hours earlier and were examining the primary access routes. Half a dozen male and female technicians were still dusting and vacuuming the salon stairway and the small dance floor where most of the action had taken place. Another three were doing the same thing outside on the loading platform and boarding ladder, concentrating especially on latent footprints. And yet another three were searching for evidence on the second level cocktail lounge, where it was presumed the perps had entered before moving down to the lower deck.