The Frumious Bandersnatch

9

THE CELL PHONEin the car rang at precisely three-forty-five, just as Barney Loomis was driving past the Buford Park exit on the River Harb Highway.

Carella picked up the phone, hit the SEND button.

“Hello?” he said.

“Who’s this?” Avery asked.

“Detective Carella,” he said.

“What’s your first name, Detective?”

“Steve.”

“Would you mind if I called you ‘Steve’?”

“Not at all.”

“I have trouble with Italian names, you see.”

And fuck you, too, Carella thought.

“Steve, is Mr. Loomis driving?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anyone else in the car with you?”

“No, sir.”

“Is this the only phone in the car?”

“Yes, sir.”

This was a lie. Carella had another cell phone in the side pocket on the right side of his windbreaker.

“Is it portable?”

“Sir?”

“Can it be taken out of the car?”

“Oh. Yes, sir, it can.”

“Let me talk to Mr. Loomis.”

Carella handed the phone to him.

“Hello?” Loomis said.

“Mr. Loomis, I want you to drive to Exit 17. That should take you ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Make a right turn at the top of the ramp. You’ll see a parking area for people who are sharing rides. Park there and wait. I’ll call again at four o’clock.”

There was a click on the line.

Loomis put down the phone.

“What’d he say?” Carella asked.

“Exit 17, park there and wait for his next call.”

The cell phone in Carella’s pocket rang. He yanked it out, hit the TALK button.

“Hello?” he said.

“Carella? This is Lieutenant Corcoran.”

“Yes, sir,” Carella said.

Back at the Academy, it used to be “Steve” and “Corky.” Now it was “Carella” and “Lieutenant Corcoran.”

“Have you heard anything yet?” Corcoran asked.

“Yes, sir, he just called.”

“What’d he say?”

“He wants us to…”

“What are you doing?” Loomis asked at once.

Carella turned to look at him, puzzled.

“What thehell are you doing?” Loomis shouted.

“Hold it a second,” Carella said into the phone, and turned to Loomis again. “Corcoran wants to know…”

“Give me that phone!” Loomis snapped and held out his right hand.

“Wants to talk to you, Lieutenant,” Carella said, and passed the phone to him.

“Lieutenant Corcoran?” Loomis said. “You listen to me,Lieutenant Corcoran. Are you fuckingcrazy? These people told us they’re going to kill Tamar if we try any tricks. I consider telling you where we’re going—and Christ knows what else you’ve got planned for the next few minutes—isexactly what they warned us about, it’s playing tricks. I don’t want you trying to find our location, I don’t want you sending in the fucking Marines, I just want to drop off the money and await further instructions, have you got that, Lieutenant Corcoran?” Loomis listened. “Yes, Lieutenant,” he said, “I am perfectly willing to take responsibility for whatever may happen to Tamar. So don’t call this number again, and don’t call the number in the car, and I hope to God you haven’t got anyone following us right this minute,” he said, glancing in the rear view mirror. “Because if anything happens to that girl, I will personally cut off your balls. Is that clear, Lieutenant Corcoran?” Loomis listened again. “Good. No more goddamntricks! ” he said, and nodded curtly, and handed the phone back to Carella.

“Hello?” Carella said. “Yes, I heard.” He listened. “Okay,” he said, “we play it his way. See you later,” he said, and hit the END button, and tossed the phone over his shoulder onto the back seat.

“I don’t like that man,” Loomis said. “I don’t likeany of them up there, you want the truth, Corcoran least of all. He’s too full of his own perfume.”

Carella said nothing.

“None of them on that task force has any concept that we’re dealing with a human life here,” Loomis said.

“Well, I think they know that, Mr. Loomis.”

“This is all one big game to them. The good guys and the bad guys. Never mind that the kidnappers spelled it all out, exposed their hole card, told us exactly what was at stake. It’s still all cops and robbers to them, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Loomis. But we’ll play it your way,” Carella said. “And hope for the best.”

They were approaching Exit 15 now. Loomis kept looking on and off into the rear view mirror, checking to see if anyone was following. Carella was wondering if maybe it wasn’t really all cops and robbers, after all.

That day long ago, it had been cops and robbers, all right, three real cops and three real robbers. The robbers were coming out of a bank on Twelfth and Culver, which was on Carella’s beat, and not too far from the station house. At the same time, a patrolman named Oscar Jackson was taking a five-minute break to run into the bank to cash his paycheck from last Friday while his partner, Patrolman Jimmy Ryan, sat at the wheel of their idling cruiser, which he’d just pulled into the curb outside the bank.

Police officers were still called patrolmen back then because there weren’t too many female uniforms on the force and there weren’t any real problems with gender identity. There weren’t many black patrolmen back then, either, but Oscar Jackson was indeed black, and he was just taking his wallet out of his pocket to remove the paycheck from it when these three guys wearing ski masks and carrying sawed-off shotguns came running down the bank steps. Nowadays, they’d be carrying Uzis or AK-47s, but this was back then, when you and I were young, Maggie.

Carella had just turned the corner when he saw Jackson—whom he’d noticed around the station house but whose name he didn’t yet know—look up and into the masked faces of the three armed men barreling down the wide front steps of the bank. Jackson didn’t need a program to tell him this was a robbery in progress. Neither did Carella. And neither did Patrolman Jimmy Ryan at the wheel of Charlie Two.

All three men unholstered their weapons, Jackson stepping to one side and immediately assuming a shooter’s crouch, Ryan coming out of the car and hunkering down behind the hood with his elbows on it and his gun in firing position, Carella fearlessly (but he was young) rushing toward the bank with his .38 in his right hand. All three fired in almost the same instant.

Only one of the robbers returned fire, and he directed his shotgun blast at the cop closest to him, who happened to be Oscar Jackson. Jackson fell to the pavement, bleeding from a devastating wound in his chest. The man who’d shot him dropped at the same moment, felled by three rounds from Ryan’s pistol. Carella had to empty his revolver before he dropped both of the other robbers. But the holdup attempt had been foiled and the only casualty was Oscar Jackson, who was dead even before Ryan and Carella knelt over him. His uncashed paycheck lay on the sidewalk beside him, in the widening pool of his own blood.

That day had been cops and robbers, all right, and maybe every day after that had been cops and robbers, too. But that day hadn’t been “one big game,” as Barney Loomis would have it, and neither was today a game, not when a twenty-year-old girl’s life was at stake. They’d been ready to proceed according to procedure, but Barney Loomis had called off the dogs. Carella just hoped nobody got hurt today.

“Exit 17 coming up,” Loomis said.

THEY HAD MOVEDthe girl into the smaller of the two bedrooms, where they’d fastened to the door a hasp and lock similar to the one on the closet door. There was a single window in that bedroom, but it opened onto the beach, and there was nobody on that beach but us seagulls, boss. Besides, the girl was handcuffed to the radiator and couldn’t get to the window even if she’d tried. Avery had warned her that there was no sense yelling for help because then they would have to kill her on the spot instead of delivering her to her benefactors at Bison this very night.

Avery had patiently explained to the girl everything they hoped to accomplish today, had laid it all out in detail, the way he had done so far with Barney Loomis and would continue to do throughout the day as events unfolded. This way, there’d be no surprises and no mistakes. After they picked up the cash, they’d deliver the girl tonight as promised, and waltz off with a bit more than $83,000 each, though Cal had already begun complaining that their share—Avery’s and Kellie’s, since they were a couple—would come to twice what he was getting for the same amount of work and risk.

Avery had explained to him, as patiently as he’d explained everything to the girl, that they’d have had to pay the same amount to whichever third party they’d engaged for the gig. So what difference did it make if Kellie was that person? Kellie knew how to handle a boat, and Avery had taught her how to use the assault rifle, more or less, though frankly she wasn’t too sure how she felt about maybe having to shoot the girl if she raised any kind of fuss while they were out there picking up the loot.

She was alone in the house with her now.

It was almost four-thirty. Kellie hadn’t heard a peep from the bedroom since the boys had left the house. She hoped the girl was okay, they were supposed to drop her off tonight in the same condition as when they’d snatched her. She went to the bedroom door, knocked on it, and yelled, “You okay, Tamar?” She felt sort of a thrill calling a rock star by her first name.

“I’m thirsty,” Tamar called from behind the locked door.

“Would you like some iced tea? There’s some iced tea in the fridge.”

“Please,” Tamar said.

“No funny stuff when I unlock the door, right?”

“What funny stuff did you have in mind?” Tamar asked.

Kellie smiled.

“I’ll bring you the tea,” she said to the door, and went down the hall and into the master bedroom. Cal had complained about this, too, the fact that the pair of them got to sleep in a big double bed in the big bedroom while he had to sleep on the living room couch. Cal complained about a lot of things. She’d be glad when this gig—listen to me, she thought, it must be contagious.

The three masks were on a shelf in the closet. Avery had ordered them from the Internet at forty-five bucks a pop, for all three of them to wear on the job itself, and in the house whenever they were around the girl. Actually, Kellie thought it was idiotic to be wearing a mask after the girl had already seen her face, something like locking the barn door after the horse had run off.

This still bothered her.

The fact that the girl had taken a good long look at her face—well, just a short glimpse, really. Even so, she’d undoubtedly seen the red hair and the green eyes, Kellie’s best features, actually, and maybe memorable, though she hated to sound conceited. Not to mention the freckles all over her Irish phiz, wouldn’t Tamar remember those? Wouldn’t she be able to describe her once they let her go free?

This really bothered her a lot.

Avery had chosen the Yasir Arafat mask for himself and the Saddam Hussein mask for Cal, probably because the two men were all over television these days—though not as often as Tamar Valparaiso. Kellie wished he’d ordered her at least a female mask, but certainlyany mask other than the one he finally chose for her, which was a George W. Bush mask that bore an uncanny resemblance to Alfred E. Neumann. Which, come to think of it, so did the actual President.

Kellie took the rubber mask down from the shelf now, and pulled it over her head, covering her face and her short red hair. Maybe Tamar had forgotten what she looked like, after all. There’d been only that few seconds of exposure before she slammed the closet door shut again. Shrugging (but it still bothered her), Kellie went into the kitchen, took a bottle of Snapple from the shelf, unscrewed the lid, and poured most of the contents into a glass. She drank the rest of the tea herself, straight from the bottle. Then she picked up the glass she’d poured for Tamar, and lifted the AK-47 from where it was resting on the kitchen table.

With the glass of tea in one hand and the assault rifle in the other, she went down the hall again, and unlocked the door to the bedroom.

She sure hoped Tamar wouldn’t try anything funny.

THEY’D BEEN PARKEDin the drop-off area at the top of the ramp no longer than three minutes when the car phone rang again. This time, Loomis himself picked up.

“Hello,” he said.

“Mr. Loomis?”

“Yes?”

“Drive west on Hawkes,” Avery said. “Make a right turn on Norman and proceed to the intersection of Norman and a Hun’ Eighty-fifth. Park there. Repeat, please.”

“I’m driving to Norman and a Hundred Eighty-fifth,” Loomis said.

“More later,” Avery said, and hung up.

“The Wasteland,” Carella said.

THERE WERE SOMEsections of this city that were completely forsaken, lost to rehabilitation, utterly resigned to rot and decay. The area that ran for some ten blocks west-to-east from 181st to 191st and another ten blocks north-to-south from Norman to Jewel was one such desolate location.

Appropriately nicknamed “The Wasteland” long before its buildings were abandoned by landlords loath to spend another nickel keeping them in repair, the area was later renounced even by the squatters who had taken up residence in its empty dwellings. The city finally condemned everything within the square half-mile The Wasteland encompassed. Windows and doors were boarded over, once stately living quarters left to crumble into dust.

Today, even in the waning daylight hours, the area resembled nothing more than a war zone. Rats had chewed away the wooden barriers on windows and doors; they now scampered freely from building to building, foraging in the garbage residents from neighboring areas came here to dump whenever the Department of Sanitation neglected its scheduled pickups. Like eyeless sockets in forgotten faces, The Wasteland’s empty windows stared out at only rubble-strewn lots.

Occasionally a patrol car from the Nine-Six swept through these potholed streets.

Occasionally, a dead body was discovered here before the rats left nothing but clean, picked-over bones.

When Carella was a college student, he used to call girls he was trying to impress and read to them passages from T. S. Eliot’s collected poems. He read mostly from “Prufrock,” which impressed nineteen-year-old co-eds with how deeply romantic and sensitive and experienced he was, especially when he came to the line “And I have known the eyes already.”

But he also read fromThe Waste Land —well not much of it, just the very beginning of the first poem, before it got so morbid and preoccupied with burying the dead. He would say into the phone, “I was just reading this poem a few minutes ago, and I thought, ‘Gee, I’ll bet Margie (or Alice or Mary or Jeannie) would love to hear it, so I hope you don’t mind my calling you,’ ” such baloney, such a line, but he was only twenty years old. He would then read the section beginning with the words “April is the cruellest month,” and keep reading through the stuff about being surprised by a sudden summer shower, and drinking coffee and talking in an outdoor German garden, it must have been, or perhaps Austrian because there was a cousin who was an archduke. Carella would pause dramatically before reading the line “I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter,” which was before the poem turned so serious, and which always evoked a sigh from Margie (or Alice or Mary or Jeannie).

He was so young then.

Handsome, too, he guessed.

Or maybe not.

He had graduated from high school at the age of seventeen, had attended college for a year before he was drafted to fight in one of America’s far too many wars. Transported to a foreign land, he saw for the first time in his life (and grew old all at once) a wasteland that was a far cry from Eliot’s poignant mix of memory and desire. Wounded in battle and shipped back to America when he was still only nineteen, he’d returned to college for a year and a half, and then, abruptly, decided to join the police force.

The Wasteland through which he and Barney Loomis drove on this fading May afternoon was not very much different from that devastated landscape in which Carella had fought all those years ago. Not so very different at all.

“Christ, whatis this place?” Loomis asked, appalled, and parked on the corner of Norman and 185th.

“DON’T PULL NOTHINGfunny now,” Kellie said, and hefted the rifle onto her hip to show she meant business.

Tamar pulled a face. Her left hand was handcuffed to the radiator, what the hell could she try to pull?

Kellie set the glass of tea on the floor, within reach of Tamar’s right hand. She picked up the glass and took a sip of tea.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked.

“President Bush.”

“After next year, that mask may be dated.”

“What do you mean?”

“He might not be elected again.”

“Who cares?” Kellie said, and shrugged.

“You wear that mask, people will ask who you’re supposed to be.”

“Youalready asked that. Anyway, I won’t have to wear it after tonight.”

“Why? What happens tonight?”

“We drop you off. Goodbye, Tamar Valparaiso.”

“You mean that?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Whose plan?”

“Ours. Me and the guys.”

“Arafat and Hussein?”

“Yeah,” Kellie said, and grinned behind her own mask. “Those are good masks, ain’t they?”

“Very good.”

“Better than this one. I wanted Queen Elizabeth. Or Hillary Clinton. Instead, he gets methis jackass.”

“How do you know that’s the plan?”

“Cause we’re partners, the three of us. They’re out right this minute, picking up the ransom money.”

“How much are you supposed to get?”

“None of your business.”

“I hope it’s a lot of money.”

“Oh, it’s plenty all right.”

“How much?”

“Never mind.”

“I just want to know how much you guys think I’m worth.”

“You’re worth plenty, honey. Especially now.”

“Why now?”

“You’ve been all over television. You don’t sell ten million copies of ‘Bandersnatch,’ I’lleat this friggin mask!”

“So how much did you ask for?”

“How’s the tea?”

“Fine. Did you make it?”

“No, it’s Snapple.”

“Who’s paying the ransom?”

“Barney Loomis, who do you think? You know him, right?”

“Of course I know him.”

“You know everybody in the business, I’ll bet.”

“No, but he’s the CEO of my label.”

“You know Mariah Carey?”

“Never met her. How much ransom is Loomis paying for me?”

“Enough to make it worth our while. J. Lo? Do you know her?”

“How much is that?”

“How much do youthink you’re worth?”

“Ten million records, you said? How about a million bucks?”

“Oh, sure, he’s just about to pay a million.”

“How muchis he about to pay?”

“Enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“A quarter of a mil, okay?”

“Nice payday,” Tamar said, and drained her glass.

Kellie looked at her watch.

“In fact,” she said, “they should be picking it up just about now.”

LOOMISpicked up the ringing telephone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Loomis?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to make a right turn on a Hun’ Eighty-fifth. Drive south for five and a half blocks. On the lefthand side of the street, you’ll see a wrecked automobile in front of a red brick building with no address numbers on it. Park behind that car. We’ll be watching you from that minute on. We’re in telephone contact with our partner. Any tricks and the girl dies. Repeat.”

“Five and a half blocks south on a Hundred Eighty-fifth. Park behind the wrecked car on the left.”

“And about tricks?”

“Tamar dies.”

“I think you’ve got it. By George, he’s got it!” Avery said playfully, and hung up.

“You heard,” Loomis told Carella.

“I heard. I should be giving all this to our people. You’re making a mistake here, Mr. Loo…”

“Then youdidn’t hear. Any tricks, and she dies. You want that onyour head, Detective Carella?”

Carella guessed he didn’t want that on his head.

“WRECKED CAR” had to be a euphemism for the rusted automobile skeleton that had been stripped, torched, and then abandoned in front of a building whose probably-brass address numerals had been similarly desecrated. Only the ghostly images of an 8, a 3, and a 7 remained on the wall to the right of the entrance door, brighter in absence than the surrounding soot-covered bricks. Carella was thinking he could have phoned in an address. 837 South 185th. Get the Feds to throw a net over the surrounding five blocks. Follow whoever picked up the cash. But no.

Loomis parked the limo behind the skeletal wreck. The black Lincoln basked in bright sunshine like a sleek black cat. In front of it, the rusted Whatever-It-Once-Had-Been crouched like a starving hyena, its ribs showing. The two men sat in silence, waiting. The caller had told them they’d be watched from this moment on. Carella scoped the area. Any one of five deserted tenements could be a sniper’s observation post. A rifleman could be kneeling behind any one of a hundred windows that looked down at the street.

“Why here, for God’s sake?” Loomis asked.

“Deserted area, number one,” Carella said. “Clear sight lines. From any one of these buildings, they can see for blocks around.”

The car phone rang.

He reached for it at once, but Loomis said, “I’ll take it,” and lifted the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Loomis?”

“Yes?”

“Put Steve on, could you please?”

“He wants you,” Loomis said, and handed him the phone.

“Carella,” he said.

“Are you armed, Steve?”

“I am.”

“What kind of weapon?”

“A Glock nine.”

“Do you have the money?”

“Yes.”

“Is it in a dispatch case?”

“Yes.”

“Step out of the car, Steve. Just you. Tell Mr. Loomis to stay in the car. Take the case with you. The phone, too. Don’t forget the phone, Steve. Wouldn’t want to lose touch, now would we? When you’re out of the car, talk to me, Steve. We’re not through here yet.”

Carella reached over for the dispatch case on the back seat. “He wants you to stay in the car,” he told Loomis.

“Why?”

Carella gave him a look, and then opened the door on his side, and stepped out onto the curb, the dispatch case in his left hand, the phone in his right. He closed the door behind him. He brought the phone to his mouth.

“I’m out,” he said.

“Go to the back of the car,” Avery said.

Carella went around to the back of the car.

“Look at the license plate.”

“I’m looking.”

“I want you to believe we’ve got binocs on you right this minute,” Avery said. “Is the license plate number BR-2100?”

“It is,” Carella said.

“Do something with your hands.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perform some sort of action.”

Carella put the dispatch case flat on the roof of the car, and then raised his left hand over his head.

“You put the dispatch case on the roof and raised your left hand, is that correct?” Avery asked.

“Yes,” Carella said.

“And the case is black, is that also correct?”

“Yes, it’s black.”

“I want you to believe that we can see you and that a rifle with a telescopic sight is trained on your head. Do you believe that?”

“I believe it.”

“Good. Ask Mr. Loomis to come out of the car, please.”

Carella went around to the driver’s side of the limo, rapped on the glass there. The window slid down.

“They want you to get out of the car,” Carella said.

“Why?” Loomis asked again.

Carella looked at him.

Loomis got out and slammed the door behind him.

“We see him,” Avery said. “Give him the dispatch case.”

Carella handed it to him.

“Tell him we’ve got rifles trained on both of you.”

“They’ve got us covered from somewhere around here,” Carella told Loomis, looking up at the surrounding buildings. “Rifles with telescopic sights.”

“Okay,” Loomis said, and looked up, too, and nodded.

“Steve?”

“Yes?”

“Here’s what I want you to do, Steve. Unholster your weapon. Remember, we’re watching you.”

Carella transferred the phone to his left hand. He reached down into his holster, yanked the Glock up and into his hand.

“It’s out,” he said.

“This is a bad neighborhood,” Avery said. “I guess you noticed that.”

“I noticed it.”

“We don’t want anything to happen to that money. Keep the piece in your hand, Steve. Make sure it’s visible in case any stray squatters get any brilliant ideas.”

“Okay.”

“Now I want you and Mr. Loomis to walk that money right into the red brick building there. Remember, we’re watching you.”

“He wants us to go inside that building,” Carella told Loomis.

“Why?” Loomis asked, and again Carella looked at him.

Together the men walked toward the building where the absent 8-3-7 numerals left stark reminders on the entrance wall. The barricade was gone from the front door, fragments of wood still clinging to the door frame where the boards had been torn free. Carella walked into the building first, gun hand leading him. He heard a frenzied scurrying and squealing up ahead, and stopped dead in his tracks.

He did not appreciate rats.

When he and Teddy had been living in their Riverhead house for just a week, he’d opened the basement door and was heading downstairs when he spotted a rat the size of an alley cat sitting on the steps, staring up at him with his beady little eyes and twitching whiskers. He’d slammed the door shut at once, whirled on Teddy, and frantically signed,We’re selling the house!

He definitely did not appreciate rats.

“What the hell isthat? ” Loomis asked behind him, and then saw one of the rats and let out a short sharp shriek.

Into the phone, Carella said, “The place is overrun with rats. Tell me what you want us to do, okay?”

“Go up to the first floor. Apartment 14. The numerals are still on the door.”

“Are you walking us into a trap?” Carella asked.

“You’ve got a gun in your hand,” Avery reminded him.

They started up the steps, Carella in the lead. The hand railing was gone. They braced themselves against the opposite wall. The building stank of garbage and human waste. Loomis covered his nose with a handkerchief. Carella felt like wretching. A single unboarded window on the first-floor landing cast uncertain light into the hallway. Apartment 14 was the fourth door down the hall.

“We’re here,” Carella said into the phone.

“Go inside.”

They went into the apartment. They were standing in the middle of a small kitchen. There were still boards on the only window in the room. In the semi-darkness, they heard the scurrying of more rats.

A dead Golden Retriever lay on the floor in front of a gas range that had been disconnected and overturned.

It looked as if the dog’s throat had been recently slit.

Flies were still buzzing around the open wound.

“Do you see the dog?” Avery asked.

“Yes?”

“That’s what we’ll do to the girl if there are any tricks.”

Carella said nothing.

“See the refrigerator?” Avery asked.

“Yes?”

“Open the door, Steve.”

Carella opened the door.

“The fridge doesn’t work, Steve,” Avery said. “No electricity in the building. I hope you didn’t bring us hot money.”

He sounded almost jovial now. Big joke here, the son of a bitch. Slits a dog’s throat, rats running all over the place, he jokes about hot money.

“What do you want me to do here?” Carella asked.

“You sound peeved, Steve.”

Carella said nothing.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“What did you ask?”

“Is the money hot?”

“No.”

“I certainly hope it’s not marked or anything.”

“It’s not marked.”

“Because I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the girl.”

“It’s not marked. Just tell me what you want me to do, okay?”

“What’s he saying?” Loomis asked.

Carella shook his head.

“Put the dispatch case on one of the shelves, Steve.”

Carella slid the case onto the shelf under the ice cube compartment.

“Now close the door and hang up. When you’re outside the building, I’ll call again.”

Carella closed the refrigerator door, and hit the END button.

“Let’s go,” he told Loomis.

They stepped out into the hallway again. Everywhere around them, there was the sound of chittering little creatures in the near-dark, glittering little eyes suddenly disappearing as the rats turned and ran off. He remembered being a rookie, remembered other cops telling him about babies in their cribs getting their faces chewed to ribbons by rats. Moving slowly and cautiously, he scraped his feet along the floor, feeling his way toward the stairwell.

“Here it is,” he told Loomis.

With his right hand, he felt for the wall again. With his left foot, he reached out for the first stair tread, afraid he would step on a rat. Behind him, Loomis said, “He’s gone too far. Why’d he kill that dog?”

“To show us he’s serious,” Carella said.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“He wanted me along to bear witness. So I’d go back and tell the others he’s serious about killing the girl.”

“We already knew that. He alreadytold us that.”

“Show is better than tell, Mr. Loomis.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” Loomis said again, sounding very much like a petulant child. “Nobody gets hurt, that was the deal. He didn’t have to kill the goddamn dog.”

They came down the stairs and out of the building. Both men blinked against the sunlight.

“Do you think they’re holding her in one of these buildings?” Loomis asked.

“I hope not,” Carella said.

The phone rang immediately.

“Hello?” Carella said.

“This is what I want you and Mr. Loomis to do,” Avery said. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Walk back to the car. Put the phone to your ear again when you get there.”

The two men walked back to the limo. Carella put the phone to his ear again.

“We’re here,” he said.

“I see you,” Avery said. “Just stand right where you are. I’ll call you again when we have the case. You can hang up now.”

Carella hit the END button.

THEY CAME DOWNfrom the seventh floor of the building at 5107 Ambrose, from which they’d been watching the action across the street at 837 South 185th. Hidden by the building itself, they crossed the empty lot behind it, and entered 837 through the rear door. They were both carrying the AK-47s they’d used on the boat gig two nights ago, but this time Cal’s rifle was fitted with a scope. On the first floor of the building, he told Avery he felt like shooting himself some rats. Avery told him to resist the urge.

They found the black dispatch case in the refrigerator, right where Carella had left it. Cal threw the beam of a flashlight on it, and Avery unclasped it. There was no time to count the money right now, but those looked like a whole lot of nice brand-new hundred-dollar bills in there.

They went downstairs and out the back door again. This time, they crossed the lot to where they’d parked the stolen Montana behind a twelve-story building on Lasser. Carella and Loomis may have heard them starting the car, but it wouldn’t matter, anyway. The girl was their insurance. Nobody was going to do anything stupid while they had the girl.

They didn’t call again until almost an hour later. By that time, they’d dumped all the cell phones they’d used since three this afternoon. It was now close to five-thirty, and Avery was using yet another stolen phone when he called from the house out on Sands Spit.

Barney Loomis answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” he said.

“You can go back to your office now,” Avery said. “We’ll call you again after we’ve counted the money. If it’s all here, you’ll get the girl back tonight. I promise.”

“Where will you…?” Loomis started, but Avery had already hung up.