The Frumious Bandersnatch

by Ed McBain

  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 nam
es, 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.

  Disembarked and disoriented after their nocturnal ordeal, the weary voyagers dispersed in various directions, Captain Reeves—as befitted his role as commander—being the last to leave his vessel.

  (“Captain Peeved,” Hawes called him behind his back but within earshot of Honey Blair, who, he noticed with satisfaction, acknowledged the sarcastic sobriquet with a reluctant smile of approval.)

  The fog gathering around them, the detectives and the television people walked together in silence to where they’d parked in the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL zone dockside. Carella had indeed seized the tape as evidence. Honey was indeed intending to bring suit against the city. Hawes did not think this was such a good start for a relationship.

  Honey and her crew climbed into the Channel Four van; the two detectives got into their unmarked Chevy sedan. The streets were empty at this early hour of the morning. Carella and Hawes made it back to the squadroom in less than ten minutes.

  There was still a lot of work to do before the shift ended.

  “YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE hit her so hard,” Avery was telling Cal.

  “Come on, it was only a slap,” Cal said.

  “You knocked her down. That was more than a slap.”

  “She was making a run for it.”

  Tamar Valparaiso was still unconscious and draped alongside Kellie Morgan on the back seat of the Ford Explorer, her head on Kellie’s shoulder, her hands and feet bound, a blindfold over her eyes.

  Kellie, to tell the truth, was sort of overwhelmed to be in such close proximity to someone she perceived to be a rock star even though she’d only seen her perform once at a club over in the next state, and that was at least nine months ago, before Tamar had got her recording contract.

  They had left the Rinker at the Fairfield Street dock, all the way downtown in the Old Quarter of the city, taking with them only any personal items, and the masks, and the weapons, transferring all and sundry into the Ford. Avery was now driving. Cal was sitting beside him. They were moving slowly through the fog and the deserted streets, observing the speed limit, stopping at any red traffic light or full stop sign, but not traveling so slowly as to attract police attention. That was the last thing they needed at this stage of the game.

  The tendrils of the fog embraced the car as if to crush it. Fog frightened Kellie. You never knew what might come at you out of a fog.

  “When they pay the ransom,” Avery said, still on the case, “we’re supposed…”

  “If they pay the ransom,” Cal corrected.

  “They’ll pay it, don’t worry. But then we’re supposed to return her safe and sound. If we send her back with her face all bruised…”

  “Ain’t no bruises on her face,” Cal said.

  “Girl’s face is her fortune,” Kellie said from the back seat.

  “Ours, too,” Avery reminded her.

  “Tits ain’t so bad, neither,” Cal said and grinned.

  “Hey, cool that shit,” Kellie said.

  “The way you hit her,” Avery said, refusing to let go, “her face is gonna swell up like a balloon.”

  “Black and blue already,” Kellie said, looking over at Tamar and nodding.

  “How’s she doing otherwise?” Avery asked.

  “Still out like a light,” Kellie said. “We got a blanket or something? She’s half-naked here.”

  “That ain’t our fault,” Cal said. “She stripped her own self buck ass naked. They can’t blame us for that.”

  “They can blame you for swatting her,” Avery insisted.

  “How’d you like my swatting the monster, huh?” Cal asked, grinning, turning to look at Avery. “Or didn’t you like that, either? Him crouched and ready to spring for our throats, how come you didn’t swat him, Ave? You were standing right there in front of him. How come you didn’t take a swing?”

  “Because we agreed no violence.”

  “That was our agreement, yes,” Kellie said.

  “You go in with 47s,” Cal said, “you got to expect violence.”

  “Not if we agreed beforehand.”

  “That was before I knew anybody was gonna go for my throat.”

  “I don’t think he was about to go for you,” Avery said reasonably. “He was just assessing the situation. He heard you yelling, he naturally wondered what was going on, him being on the floor and all, where he couldn’t see. So he lifted himself up to take a look. You shouldn’t’ve hit him and you certainly shouldn’t’ve hit the girl. I don’t want you hitting her again, Cal, you hear me?”

  “Tell him,” Kellie said.

  The car went silent.

  The fog embraced it.

  “Any questions?” Avery asked.

  “Yeah. How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit?” Cal said, and laughed at his own witticism.

  Nobody laughed with him.

  IN THIS CITY, the facades of the buildings conceal a multitude of endeavors, many of them criminal. Whore houses flourish on any avenue or side street, blatantly advertising themselves in the trendiest magazines as massage parlors, offering up to the tired businessman or the restless college kid a variety of pleasures to satisfy the most obsessive connoisseur. Here in this carnal candyland, the night stalker can find whatever he desires, at whatever price. Nor is this American flesh bazaar limited to the big bad city alone. Travel to the so-called heartland. Open the yellow pages of the local telephone directory, or surf the Internet in your hotel room. It is there. It is everywhere. It is available.

  Many of the hidden warrens in this and other American cities now house drug pads to shame the ancient opium dens of China. Where not too many years ago, you could smoke a crack pipe in one of these places for a mere five bucks, this cheap cocaine derivative has now mysteriously fallen out of favor, to be replaced by heroin as the drug of choice, an ascendancy that no doubt thrills the poppy growers in Afghanistan now that they’ve been liberated by American soldiers. A sharp loaded with a heroin hit now cost almost three times as much as a
puff of crack used to cost. You lay on a narrow cot, and an attendant wrapped a rubber tube around your arm and serviced you. It was like getting blown by a Korean whore in a similar shabby little apartment two blocks away, only better.

  Early Sunday morning, far from the sordid city scene, in a gray-shingled beach house on a fog-shrouded beach in Russell County, miles from where the abduction on the River Harb had taken place, Tamar Valparaiso was just regaining consciousness.

  3

  SOMETHING was covering her eyes.

  She could not open her eyes because whatever it was—a cloth blindfold, duct tape, whatever—was so tight. Her first instinct was to reach up with her right hand to pull it free, whatever it was, but she discovered at once that her hands were bound behind her back. Her next instinct was to scream, but there was a gag in her mouth, as tight as the blindfold over her eyes. Run, she thought, run!, and tried to get to her feet, but her ankles were bound, too. She struggled for a moment, angrily, panicking in her helplessness, kicking out at nothing, and then lying still and silent, breathing hard, trying to figure out what was happening to her here.

  All at once, she remembered.

  Two men coming down the steps just as she was finishing the number. One of them hitting her. The other one clamping a sweet-smelling rag over her nose.

  She lay still in the darkness.

  Remembering.

  She knew even before she began exploring with her legs, reaching out with her legs and her sandaled feet to touch the boundaries of the space she was in, knew somehow even before her feet touched the confining, defining walls, that she was in a closet. Lying on the hard wooden floor of a closet, her shallow breathing seeming to echo back at her in a small airless cubicle.