The Frumious Bandersnatch

by Ed McBain

“I’ll get someone on it,” Kling said, and thanked D’Amato, and then immediately called Willis back.

  “Hal,” he said, “we’ve got a make on that Ford Explorer, it’s registered to a woman named Polly Olson at 317 Byrd Street, I think that’s over by the Ship Canal. You want to check our boosted vehicles sheet, see if the Ford’s on it? Either way, you ought to run on down there, see where she was last night while the Valparaiso girl was being abducted.”

  “Why? You think she was part of it?”

  “I only know this is the car that was spotted at the marina. And it’s hers. So let’s see what she has to say.”

  “Well, the way I look at it,” Willis said, “there are only two possibilities here. Either the car was stolen, in which case the lady thanks me for finding it, or else it was used in a kidnapping, in which case I knock on her door and the lady shoots me in the face.”

  “Maybe you ought to petition for a No-Knock,” Kling said, half-seriously.

  “What judge in his right mind would grant me one?”

  “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?”

  “Tell you what,” Willis said. “Why don’t you run on down there to talk to her?”

  “I’m off duty,” Kling said, and hung up, and immediately called the Mobile Crime Unit.

  “Al Sheehan,” a man’s voice said.

  “Hey, Al,” Kling said, “this is Bert Kling at the Eight-Seven. We’re working a kidnapping that went down last night…”

  “Hey, yeah,” Sheehan said. “I was one of the techs who swept the River Princess. Something, huh?”

  “I’ll say. Al, we picked up a vehicle may have been involved, it’s a black Ford Explorer parked behind the One-Oh-Four in Majesta. Detective named Henry D’Amato’ll be there till midnight, he’s got the keys. You want to do your number on it, see if the bad guys left anything for us?”

  “The One-Oh-Four, huh? That’s way the hell out in the sticks.”

  “Half-hour ride,” Kling said.

  “I’m in the middle of something here, I won’t be able to head out till maybe seven or so. That be all right?”

  “As soon as possible, okay?” Kling said. “Let me give you a number where you can reach me.”

  It was six-thirty when he got off the phone.

  Across the room, Sharyn Cooke was just turning on Channel Four’s network news.

  In his office, Barney Loomis and Steve Carella were about to watch the same broadcast.

  THE THING that impressed Loomis most was her performance.

  Forget the fact that she was lip-synching, forget the fact that she and the black dancer—Joshua, was it? Jonah?—missed a few steps while they were furiously reenacting the rape they’d executed so masterfully on the video. Even forget the fact that she seemed a bit nervous performing live in front of a scant hundred or so people, what would she do when they booked her into a goddamn arena? With thousands and thousands of screaming fans?

  Forget all that.

  What came over in this three, four minutes of tape—now being broadcast into God knew how many homes all over the country—was the sheer conviction of Tamar’s performance. There was a raw power to her voice, yes, but there was a sweetness, too, a poignant plea for innocence in a world gone suddenly brutal, the voice of a lark in a meadow swirling with hawks. Whatever else came over—her luminous beauty, her sexuality, her sensuality, her youthful exuberance, yes, all of those—it was her complete honesty that most impressed. And thrilled. And dazzled.

  Long after her song was interrupted by the ugly reality of sudden violence, long after the two intruders carried her up those mahogany steps and out of the viewer’s immediate stunned proximity, her glow lingered like a shining truth. Tamar Valparaiso hadn’t been trying to sell anything but the purity of the moment. And in this moment, at six-forty-five on a Sunday night all across America, the verity she was selling all over again was “Bandersnatch.” There was no way that anyone watching this news report could ever doubt…

  “Well, this is what I’ve done,” Hennesy said, coming in from the hallway. “I’ve got it set up so that…”

  “Shhh,” Loomis warned.

  Hennesy turned to watch the television screen.

  On the screen, one of the masked men tossed Tamar over his shoulder.

  The other one shouted, “You move, she dies!” and they backed away up the stairs and out of sight.

  The tape ended.

  The network news anchor came on again.

  He could be seen visibly sighing.

  “That was last night at ten-fifteen,” he said. “So far, there’s been no word from the men who abducted Tamar Valparaiso.”

  He paused, looked meaningfully into the camera for just an instant, and then said, “In Moscow today…”

  Loomis turned off the set.

  “When they do call,” Hennesy said, “here’s what’ll happen. The Tap and Tape I’ve hooked up is a more sophisticated version of the REMOB every telephone lineman…”

  “What’s a REMOB?” Loomis asked.

  Carella didn’t know what it was, either.

  “Stands for ‘remote observation,’ ” Hennesy said. “Telephone repairmen use it to check the ‘condition of the line,’ or so they say. I personally think they get their jollies eavesdropping on phone phucks. Anyway, I found some unused pairs in the cable here, and set up my relay. Whenever the switchboard puts anyone through to your phone, the relay gets activated, connecting your line to the caller’s. Carella here will have the option of just listening or automatically recording. At the same time, the Trap and Trace will be locating the caller’s number. So you’re in business. That’ll be twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents,” Hennesy said and grinned like a kid on Halloween night.

  5

  DETECTIVE AL SHEEHAN called Kling at a quarter to eight that night. He reported that they’d gone out to the One-Oh-Four and thoroughly examined the recovered Ford Explorer. The car had been wiped clean.

  “We’re dealing with professionals here,” he said. “Or else, guys who’ve seen a lot of movies.”

  Kling thanked him and went back to watching a quartet of talking heads on one of the cable channels.

  One of them was saying she felt the “Bandersnatch” tape would only inspire further violent crimes like rape and female abuse.

  “Bullshit,” Sharyn Cooke announced.

  She was in the small kitchen of the apartment she shared with Bert Kling when she wasn’t in his apartment over the bridge. Why they didn’t just move in together and save one of the rents was something they talked about every so often. As it was, their separate work schedules often dictated which apartment they used on any given night.

  Sharyn Everard Cooke was the police department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon, the first black woman ever to be appointed to the job—though “black” was a misnomer in that her skin was the color of burnt almond. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro, which—together with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and eyes the color of loam—gave her the look of a proud Masai woman. Five-feet-nine-inches tall, she considered herself a trifle overweight at a hundred and thirty pounds. Bert Kling thought she looked just right. Bert Kling thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Bert Kling loved her to death.

  The only problem was where to sleep.

  Sharyn’s apartment was at the very end of the Calm’s Point subway line, some forty minutes from Kling’s studio apartment across the river in Isola. From his apartment, it took him twenty minutes to get to work in the morning. From her apartment, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. Sharyn still had her own private practice, but as a uniformed one-star chief, she was obliged to work fifteen to eighteen hours a week at the Chief Surgeon’s Office, which was located in Rankin Plaza in Majesta. Majesta was forty-five minutes by subway from Kling’s apartment. So it all got down to where they should sleep on any given night.

  Because of the kidnapping, and because Kling had to report in at seven-forty-five tomorrow mornin
g, they had planned to spend that Sunday night in his apartment. But at seven A.M. tomorrow, before she went to the office in Rankin Plaza, Sharyn had to be at St. Mary Magdalene’s in Calm’s Point, where three cops were in the Burn Unit after a blazing building collapsed on them.

  So here they were.

  “Strawberry or chocolate swirl?” she asked Kling.

  “Is that a trick question?” he asked.

  She was looking into the freezer compartment of her refrigerator.

  “The chocolate swirl is low-fat,” she said.

  “I’ll have the strawberry,” he said.

  “Racist decision,” she said, and at that moment, one of the talking heads on television said, “The lyrics are racist right from the last word in the second line.”

  Sharyn took her head out of the refrigerator.

  Kling looked up from the Sunday newspaper in his lap.

  “Which word are you referring to?” the hostess of the show asked. She was a white woman, one of innumerable blondes with long straight hair who proliferated on American cable television like amoebae in a petri dish. She called herself Candace Odell. Her guests called her Candy. The guest she was talking to was Jennifer O’Malley, also white, a redheaded columnist for one of the Chicago newspapers.

  “The word I’m referring to is ‘wabe,’ ” Jennifer said.

  “How do you find that word racist?” Candace asked.

  Her two other guests were black, one male, one female. The man’s name was Halliday Coombs. He was a radio commentator in Albany, New York. The woman’s name was Lucy Holden. She was a writer for a magazine based in Los Angeles. So many names to remember, so many people to keep track of. But America was a big country. And Candace was good with names. Besides, the screen was divided into four equal segments, so that a viewer could see either all four participants at the same time, or just the one the director decided to zoom in on. The camera was on all four of them just now. Made it easier to remember their names and faces.

  Sharyn carried a little bowl of strawberry ice cream into the living room, and then sat down next to Kling with her own bowl of low-fat chocolate swirl.

  “Think about it,” Jennifer said slyly. “ ‘Wabe.’ ”

  Three of the heads seemed to be thinking furiously. Jennifer’s head appeared to be smirking.

  “Let’s watch ‘Sex and the City,’ ” Sharyn said.

  “Shhh, this is about ‘Bandersnatch,’ ” Kling said.

  “Bander-who?”

  “The kidnapping, shhhh.”

  “How do black people pronounce the word ‘wave’?” Jennifer asked.

  “I pronounce it ‘wave,’ ” Lucy said.

  “So do I,” Halliday said.

  “So do I,” Sharyn said.

  “But I must admit…”

  “You never heard the joke with the punch line, ‘Oberlookin’ d’ribber’? For ‘Overlooking the river’?”

  “That’s a racist joke,” Candace said.

  “Tell me about it, Blondie,” Sharyn said.

  “How come you never call me Blondie?” Kling asked.

  “You want me to call you Blondie?”

  “I know that joke,” Halliday said, nodding. “And it is racist, yes. But I must admit I can also see a covert connection between ‘wabe’ and ‘wave.’ ”

  “I can’t,” Lucy insisted.

  “Neither can I,” Sharyn said. “How about you, Blondie?”

  “Let me taste that chocolate swirl,” Kling said.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cause once you taste black, ain no goin back,” Sharyn said.

  Lucy Holden had her arms folded across her breasts now, clear and unmistakable body language.

  “I’ll bet Blondie thinks that’s a stroke of pure genius,” Sharyn said. “Inviting a redheaded Irish girl to find all the racist references while the beautiful sistuh with attitude takes the high road.”

  “The same sort of black English has its echoes in the word ‘raths,’ ” Jennifer said. “Go to any ghetto in America, you’ll hear African-Americans calling rats ‘raths.’ The same way they’ll use the word ‘mens’ for ‘men.’ Or ‘underwears’ for ‘underwear.’ ”

  “I have never in my life called a rat a rath,” Lucy said.

  “Have you ever in your life even seen a rat?” Jennifer shot back.

  “Who do you find more attractive?” Sharyn asked. “The redhead or the sistuh with attitude?”

  “Is that another trick question?” Kling asked.

  “The one place I really detect clear racism is in the use of the words ‘Jubjub bird,’ ” Halliday said. “ ‘Beware the Jubjub bird.’ That is clearly a racist warning.”

  Lucy Holden rolled her eyes.

  “How do you find that racist?” Candace asked.

  “Well, Candy, I don’t know what I’m permitted to say on the air here.”

  “This is cable, go right ahead.”

  “I’m sure the Jubjub bird refers to the Johnson.”

  “The what!” Sharyn said, and burst out laughing.

  “Uh-huh,” Candace said. “Do you agree, Jennifer?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That the words ‘Jubjub bird’ as used in the song, refer…”

  “Actually, those words are code for the Johnson,” Halliday said.

  “Jennifer?”

  “Code words for the Johnson, yes,” Jennifer agreed, nodding.

  “And what is a Johnson?” Candace asked, and smiled encouragement.

  Sharyn was leaning forward now, clasping her knees, her eyes wide, her mouth virtually hanging open. There was a long hesitation. The screen was split into two parts now, showing Jennifer’s face on one half and Candace’s on the other. Jennifer’s face was blank. It suddenly occurred to Sharyn that neither of these two erudite white women knew what a Johnson was. She kept watching the screen, waiting. This was the highest suspense she’d seen on television since the O. J. Simpson white Bronco chase out there in the wilds of Los Angeles.

  The camera came in on Halliday again. He looked seriously concerned. “Well,” he said, “as I said earlier, I don’t know what I’m permitted to say here.”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” Lucy’s voice erupted, and suddenly the screen was filled with her face alone. “The Johnson is a man’s penis!” she shouted in closeup. “As in the expression ‘Slobber the Johnson,’ which means ‘Kiss the…’ ”

  “We have to break now,” Candace said at once, her smiling face suddenly filling the entire screen. “We’ll be back in just a moment to pursue the question raised by Tamar Valparaiso’s new video and CD. Is it ‘Race or Rape’? You decide! Stay with us.”

  “You want to stay with these fools, Blondie?” Sharyn asked. “Or you want me to take off my unner’wears and slobber yo ole Jubjub bird?”

  Kling got up to turn off the television set.

  WILLIS FIGURED 317 Byrd Street was six or seven blocks away from the spot on the Ship Canal where two detectives from the Three-One had allegedly drowned a pair of prostitutes who’d accused them of complicity in their illegal evil sex deeds. In a city of contrasts, the newly gentrified Byrd glistened like a rare jewel in a tarnished brass setting. Here there were the coffee houses and the elegant restaurants, the crafts shops and boutiques, the book stores and even a multiplex movie theater. Lining The Canal a dozen blocks away, there were bars that served as whore houses to the hundreds of merchant seamen and sailors who poured into the area every day of the week.

  According to the Eight-Seven’s hot car sheet, Polly Olson hadn’t reported her Ford Explorer missing till eight-thirty this morning, a good ten hours after the kidnapping last night. This may have been mere oversight, or it may have been a clever diversion by a woman setting up an alibi. Who me? Involved in a kidnapping? Hell, my car was stolen, I reported it stolen! In which case, Polly Olson might very well have been the woman accomplice on the Valparaiso kidnapping. In which case her two AK-47-toting pals might very well be with he
r tonight. Willis did not want to get shot tonight.

  In fact, he did not want to get shot ever again.

  The last time he’d got shot was in the thigh, and he thought that might be the last dance for him, verily, though it turned out he was still here, wasn’t he? And Parker hadn’t been along that night when a punk named Maxie Blaine from Georgia had virtually emptied a nine at the five cops coming through the door, luckily—or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint—hitting the smallest target of them all. Willis had never been in a shootout with Parker by his side, so he didn’t really know what kind of a backup he might make, but if there was going to be any gunplay within the next ten minutes or so, he could think of a lot of cops with whom he’d rather be paired.

  Neither did he like what he saw when they got to the entrance door of the building. There was a vertical row of bell buttons with lettered names alongside them and an intercom speaker above them. They would have to announce themselves before they were buzzed in.

  Parker knew just what he was thinking.

  “Hit every fucking button,” he said, and without waiting for Willis to comply, he hit ten or twelve buttons.

  Six or seven voices answered at once.

  “Police!” Parker yelled. “There’s a burglar on the roof. Buzz us in!”

  Only one answering buzz sounded, but it was enough to release the latch on the inner door.

  “I learned that from Carella,” Parker said, grinning.

  They climbed the steps to the third floor. The same choice greeted them outside apartment 3C. To be or not to be?

  Willis knocked.

  “Yes?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Police,” he said, and stepped to the side of the door in case anyone inside decided to pump a volley through it. “We found your car, ma’am,” he said. “Want to open the door, please?”

  Which gave her the option of going out the window and down the fire escape, which was better than her shooting at them through the wood.

  They waited.

  “Terrific!” they heard her say.

  There was a rush of footsteps to the door. They stayed well back on either side of the jamb until they heard a series of locks and chains falling and tumbling, and finally the door opened and a woman in a red bathrobe over a long white nightgown opened the door wide and smiled out at them. She was a woman in her early fifties, Willis guessed, hair up in curlers, wearing pink bunny slippers, he now noticed, face scrubbed clean, beaming out at them in unexpected pleasure. Wow, they had really located her car!