The Frumious Bandersnatch

12

THE SQUADwas somewhat perturbed. One might even say they were quite blaxitomed! Special Agent in Charge Stanley Marshall Endicott had just learned from his superior at Division Headquarters that the Police Commissioner had ordered the 87th Squad to stay on the Valparaiso kidnapping case!

“A shitty little squad uptown,” he complained, visibly hummered.

The agents and detectives in the big conference room at Bison Records all shook their heads in solemn agreement. All except Lieutenant Charles Farley Corcoran, who was pacing the floor, quite red in the face, even for an Irishman.

“Dismissed my complaint,” he muttered, all visibly perscathed. “Said Carella wasn’t under my command and therefore could not have been insubordinate.”

“What do we do now?” Feingold asked. “Whose case is it, anyway? Do we dismantle here, or what?”

“It’s oursand theirs,” Endicott said.

“A horse race, you mean,” Feingold said sourly.

“I mean a horse race we’d betterwin! ”

“Suppose a motorcycle cop on the fuckinstreet insulted me?” Corcoran asked the air, still fuming, still all dejebbeled. “Would that be insubordination?”

“Damn right,” Jones agreed, kissing a little ass, not for nothing had he learned to make his way in the white man’s police department.

“Son of a bitch said he’d call again at three,” Endicott said.

“The Commissioner?” Lonigan asked. He was none too bright, even though he’d been credited with smashing a big heroin ring in Majesta. But that was ten years ago.

“The perp, the perp,” Endicott said, getting more and more perplexed himself. “This time we zero in,” he said, visibly afumitaxed. “If Loomis can’t keep him on the phone, I’ll personally cut off his balls.”

“The perp’s?” Lonigan asked.

Endicott merely looked at him.

THE TELEPHONE CALLcame at precisely threeP.M. The kidnapper was nothing if not punctual. Though she recognized the voice at once, Gloria Klein asked who was calling. When the kidnapper said, “This is personal,” she asked him to hold one second, please, and then buzzed Loomis’ inner office.

“Hello?” Loomis said.

“He’s back,” she said.

“It’s him,” Loomis told Endicott. He was already walking toward his isolation booth.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Endicott said, putting on the ear phones. “Keep him talking.”

Sitting in the booth, Loomis picked up the extension phone.

“Loomis,” he said.

“Have you got the money?”

“I’ll have it by six tonight. I’ve had to sell…”

“Seven-fifty in new hundreds?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Put Carella on.”

“He’s not here.”

There was a silence on the line.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t realize you’d need him again.”

“I don’t.”

“First tower’s on him,” Jones said.

“Is there another detective there?”

Corcoran nodded.

“Yes,” Loomis said.

“Is he listening to this?”

Corcoran shook his head.

“No,” Loomis said.

“You’re lying. Put him on.”

“Second tower’s got him. He’s in a moving vehicle,” Feingold said.

Corcoran picked up his extension.

“Hello?” he said.

“Who’s this?”

“Detective-Lieutenant Charles Corcoran.”

“May I call you Charles?”

“Is the girl still alive?”

“I’ll ask the fucking questions, Charles!”

Corcoran’s mouth tightened. Endicott was scowling.

“Go down to the limo at sevenP.M. sharp,” the caller said. “You, Mr. Loomis, and the money. Get on the River Dix Drive and head east. Rush hour should be over by then. I’ll call again at seven-fifteen. Any tricks and the girl dies.This phone is stolen, too,” he said, and laughed.

There was a click on the line.

“Son of a goddamn rotten son of a bitch bastard mother-fuckingcock sucker!” Jones yelled. “He always gets off a second before we triangulate.”

“You want this printout?” Feingold asked.

“You heard him, it’s stolen,” Endicott said.

“Will you have the money by then?” Corcoran asked Loomis.

“It should be here by six,” Loomis said.

“This time we play it our way,” Corcoran said.

THEY’D BEEN WAITINGoutside the building since a quarter past one, but the landlady didn’t show up until almost three-thirty. She was dressed for Marrakech.

No burkah covered her from head to toe, but instead she wore a modest black abayah that billowed out like the sail on a Sumerian galley, covering everything but her face and her slender hands. She had extraordinary brown eyes, almost as black as the abayah. With all that protective clothing, neither of the detectives could tell her exact age, but they guessed she was somewhere in her mid-forties. They also guessed the eyes were a bit flirtatious.

The apartment building was in a Calm’s Point neighborhood with a large Arab population, mostly Egyptians, Moroccans, and other immigrants from North Africa. The streets here were lined with Turkish coffee houses, shops selling hummus and baklava, katayif and kibbi, mjddara and tabbouleh. And although there were only twelve mosques in the entire city, one of them was located two blocks from the furnished room Calvin Robert Wilkins supposedly rented at the end of last year.

“We’re looking for the man who was renting a furnished room here from just before Thanksgiving to shortly after Christmas,” Carella told the landlady.

The landlady nodded.

“Know who we mean?” Hawes asked.

“Yes, I know,” she said.

They followed her up to the third floor.

“Rent was coming due on January one,” she told them. “Guess he was in a big hurry to leave, eh?”

Kirby Strauss the parole officer was right: The room Wilkins had been renting before he’d absconded was “perfectly decent.” Small, neat, tidy, inexpensively appointed with thrift-shop furniture.

“When he rented it, did he say he’d be leaving in January?” Carella asked.

“No. Said he wanted it on a month-to-month basis,” the woman said. “Which was okey-dokey with me.”

Showing off her American slang. Brown eyes flashing. Left hand on her hip. Big silver ring on the thumb of that hand. Some kind of bright green stone set in it. Not jade, something else. Not emerald either, not in a silver setting.

“When did he first tell you he’d be leaving?”

“Just after Christmas.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Sure. Jamaica.”

“No kidding? Jamaica, huh?”

“Sure. You know Jamaica? I asked was he going with his friends, he said no, just himself.”

“What friends?” Hawes asked at once.

“The two who came here all the time. Man and a woman.”

“When you say all the time…?”

The woman shrugged under her voluminous garment. Ripples flowed down to her toes. He noticed she was barefoot. Ring on the big toe of her right foot, too. Red stone on this one.

“Three, four times. He had the room only a month, you know. Little more than a month.”

“Would you know their names? These friends of his?”

“I don’t ask visitors’ names. There’s no trouble, I don’t ask visitors’ names.”

“What’d they look like?” Carella asked.

“The man was something like your height. Brown eyes like yours, curly black hair, very nice build,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “The girl was a redhead. Not like your red,” she said, turning to Hawes, “more brown in color, yes? With green eyes and…what do you call them? When there are spots on the face?”

“Freckles?” Hawes suggested.

“English,” she said, shaking her head. “Freckles, yes. I don’t think they were married, those two, but I think they were close, eh?” she said, and winked.

“You mean, like engaged,” Hawes said, nodding.

“No, I mean like sleeping together,” she said, and winked again.

“So he was leaving for Jamaica, but he wasn’t taking his friends with him, is that it?” Carella said.

“Well, not right that moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t going to Jamaica that very moment when he left the room here.”

“Then whenwas he going to Jamaica?”

“He said in the spring.”

“When in the spring?”

“He only said the spring. ‘In the spring, I’ll be on a beach in Jamaica.’ Was what he said.”

“So he might be in Jamaica right this minute, is that what you’re saying?”

“This is the spring, yes,” she said. “So he could be there now, yes. Who knows? I don’t even know where Jamaica is. Do you know where Jamaica is?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been to Jamaica?”

“No, but I know where it is.”

“Where is it?”

“In the Caribbean.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s that, the Caribbean?”

“It’s where Mr. Wilkins might be right this minute,” Hawes said.

“Mr.Who? ” she asked.

“Wilkins. Calvin Wilkins.”

“That’s not the name he gave me,” she said.

Hawes looked at her.

“He told me something else, not that.”

“What did he tell you?”

“I have to look,” she said.

They followed her downstairs to her apartment. There were beaded curtains and a double bed, and a calendar with Arabic lettering on it. She opened the top drawer of a small painted chest and took from it a ledger of some sort. She opened the book, trailed her forefinger down the page. Her fingernails were painted a green the color of the stone in the ring.

“Here,” she said, and tapped one of the names.

They looked at the page.

The name written there in a delicate feminine hand was:

Richard Martin

“Ricky, that’s right,” the landlady said.

“Ricky Martin,” Hawes said.

“Yes. That’s who his friends asked for, first time they came here.”

“Ricky Martin,” Hawes said again.

“Yes.”

“Ricky Martin is a singer.”

“This man was asinger? ”

“No, this man was a thief. RickyMartin is the singer.”

“He lived here more than a month, I never heard him sing,” the woman said, and shrugged again under the black garment.

“Did he say where he might be going? When he left here?”

“I told you. Jamaica.”

“I mean in January. When he moved out. Right then. Where was he going? Did he tell you?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Where?”

“To stay with his friends. I think perhaps they had in mind aménage à trois, eh? Perhaps that’s why he was in such a big hurry.”

Hawes had once known a woman named Jeanette, or was it Annette, who’d called it a “ménagedetrois. ” For the longest time, he himself had called it that.

“Are you fellows in such a big hurry, too?” the landlady asked. “Or shall I brew the three of us some nice jasmine tea?”

Laurette, Hawes guessed it was.

“Thanks,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful.”

“You think it’s because of the record store?” she asked.

Neither of the detectives knew what she meant.

“That he picked a singer’s name?”

They still didn’t know what she meant.

“Because he worked in a record store?” she said.

“Which one?” Carella asked at once.

“Laura something,” she said. “In the city. Someplace downtown.”

SOMEPLACEdowntown could have been anywhere.

In this city, when you crossed any of the bridges from the outlying sectors, you were heading into “The City.” And once you got into the city, you invariably headed “downtown” because that’s where all the action was.

They started with the yellow pages for Isola, a literal translation of the Italian word“isola,” for “island.” They looked first under RECORDS, TAPES & COMPACT DISCS, and found a sub-heading that readSee Compact Discs, Tapes & Records—Retail. They turned back to the Cs, and found a listing for exactly one hundred and twelve record shops. None of them were named Laura Something or Laura Anything. Under the L listings, they found seventeen. They called Wilkins’ former landlady at once.

“Do any of these names ring a bell?” they asked, and started reeling them off. “L&M Records, Lane Books Music & Café…”

“No,” she said.

“Lark Music, Laurence’s Records, Lewis Music & Video, Lexington Entertainment, Lion Heart Record Shop…”

“No, none of those.”

“Live Wire Compact Discs, Lone Star Records, Long John’s Music, Lorelei Records, Lotus…”

“What was that Laura one?”

“Ma’am?”

“LauraLee, was that it?”

“Lorelei Records? Is that what you mean?”

“That’s it,” she said. “Laura Lie.”

Lorelei Records was a chain of shops similar to Sam Goody’s. There were six of them in Isola alone, but only two of them were located in what might have been considered “downtown,” one of them on St. John’s Avenue in what was really “midtown,” the other one in the financial district at the very tip of the island. They struck paydirt on the first call they made.

“I THOUGHTyou said nothing fancy,” Patricia said.

“Nah, this is just a little Italian joint,” Ollie said, and held open the door for her to enter before him.

“This is fancy,” she said. “We’ll make it Dutch tonight.”

“No, no, I invited you.”

“Yeah, but I picked the movie.”

“Makes no difference. This is my treat. You want to take me out sometime, then you ask me.”

Patricia grinned.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll do that.”

“Hey, Detective Weeks,” a man sitting at the bar said, and immediately rose with his hand extended. “Long time no see, how you been?”

“Patricia,” Ollie said, “this is Artie Di Domenico, owner and proprietor of this fine restaurant. Artie, meet Patricia Gomez, a fellow police officer.”

“Nice to meet you,” Di Domenico said, and took her hand and graciously kissed it. Patricia felt like the queen of England. “Come,” he said, “I have a nice table for you,” and led them across the room to a table near the windows. This was only five-thirty, the place was almost empty. They had walked here from the precinct, directly after the shift changed. It was not yet dark outside.

“Something to drink?” Di Domenico asked.

“Some wine, Patricia?”

“I really can’t let you…”

“Tut tut, m’dear,” Ollie said. “Artie, do you have any of that fine Simi chardonnay?”

“Ma, certo,”Di Domenico said, spreading his hands wide the way Patricia had seen Henry Armetta do in an old black-and-white movie on television. “Subito,Detective Weeks!”

“This is so nice of you, really,” Patricia said.

“But we can’t eat too much,” Ollie said. “Because zee clock, she is ticking.”

Patricia looked puzzled.

“The movie starts at seven-forty-five,” he explained.

“Ah,” she said. “Well, I don’t eat much, anyway.”

“Ah, but I do,” Ollie said. “And this is very fine Italian food here.”

“I should have dressed more elegantly,” she said, looking around at the neat little tables with their white tablecloths and the candles burning everywhere and the posters of Italian villages on the walls.

“You are dressed to the nines,” Ollie said.

She was, in fact, wearing tailored brown slacks, and a pumpkin-colored cashmere sweater with a neat little tan jacket over it, and a string of pearls around her throat. Ollie thought she looked beautiful. He looked at his watch.

“Five-thirty-five,” he said.

“Zee clock, she is ticking,” Patricia said.

“I learned that from the smartest man I ever met,” Ollie said.

“Who’s that?”

“Henry Daggert. Though, actually, I never met him in person.”

“Is he a cop?”

“No, he’s an editor. Though maybe a spook, too.”

“A spy, you mean?”

“CIA, maybe,” Ollie said, nodding.

“Get out!”

“I’m serious. Being an editor might have been just a cover. But he certainly gave me some good advice. To use in my work.”

“On the job, you mean?”

“No. Writing books, I mean.”

“I sure hope you catch that guy.”

“Oh, me, too.”

“Cause if for no other reason, I’d love to read your book.”

“I’d love you to read it. It’s calledReport to the Commissioner. This cross-dressing hooker named Emilio Herrera stole it, the little prick, excuse my French. I’ll get him, though. What he don’t realize is zee clock, she is ticking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, anyway?” Patricia asked. “I mean, as it pertains to writing books?”

“What it means is that a vital element of all good suspense fiction is a ticking clock. Take a truly great master of literature like James Patterson, are you familiar with his uv?”

“His what?”

“His uv. That’s French for ‘body of work,’ anuv, they call it.”

“I forgot you were learning languages.”

“Yes, I am.”

“That’s so impressive, you have no idea.”

“Patterson always has a ticking clock in his books. If I may quote Henry Daggert, fiction editor and master spy for all I know, ‘You Must Introduce a Ticking Clock.’ ”

“Introduce it to who?” Patricia asked.

“Introduce it into your story. ‘You must give your protagonist only a limited amount of time to solve his problem,’ quote unquote. And to quote once again, ‘The reader should be regularly reminded of the urgency via Countdown Cues,’ quote unquote.”

“Gee, I never realized it was so complicated,” Patricia said.

“Ah yes, there are many tricks of the trade,” Ollie assured her, and looked at his watch again. “Five-forty-one,” he said. “Shall I get menus?”

Patricia waggled her eyebrows.

“Zee clock, she is ticking,” she said.

A HUGE POSTERof Tamar Valparaiso standing spread-legged in her torn and tattered “Bandersnatch” costume was in each front window of Lorelei Records on St. John’s Avenue. The poster did not show the actual beast attacking her, but its frumious shadow fell over her body, the jaws and claws threatening by implication. Scattered everywhere around each of the framed posters were stacks of the jewel-boxed CDs containing the title song and the album itself.

The manager was a black man named Angus Held.

Tall and narrow, he was wearing black jeans, a black sports shirt, and a gray sweater with a shawl collar when he came out of his office at the back of the shop. He knew why they were there; they had called ahead.

“Is Cal in some kind of trouble?” he asked at once.

Same thing he’d asked on the phone.

Same thing they always asked.

This time, they played it straight.

“He’s broken parole,” Carella said.

“Didn’t even know he wason parole,” Held said, shaking his head.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” Hawes asked.

“When he left the job. Middle of April, must’ve been. Right around Easter time.”

“Did he say he was going to Jamaica?”

“No. Is that where he went?”

“We don’t know where he went,” Carella said. “We’re trying to find him.”

“How long did he work here?” Hawes asked.

“Started just before Christmas. Comes and goes with the holidays, seems like. What was he in jail for?”

“A bank holdup.”

“Whoo,” Held said.

“Did he give you any trouble while he was here?”

“None at all. You say he was on parole, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Can’t understand why he broke it. Had himself a good job here.”

“What’d he do?”

“Worked in the stock room. This is a good location, we do lots of volume here. Wonder why he broke parole.”

Carella was wondering the same thing. Wilkins left a job as a dishwasher, got a better job here, you’d think he’d run to his parole officer and ask for a medal. Instead, he absconds. To do what? Kidnap Tamar Valparaiso? Whose picture was now in both front windows?

“Mind if we talk to some of the people in your stock room?” Hawes asked.

“I’ll take you back,” Held said.

THERE WEREthree people in the Lorelei stock room. One was Hispanic, one was Asian, one was black. Only the Asian guy had known Wilkins while he was still working here.

“Quiet type,” he said.

Which was what most of them said about people who’d committed crimes of violence.

“Kept mostly to himself.”

Which is what they also said.

“Can’t imagine him doing anything wrong.”

Ho-hum, Carella thought.

“Did he mention why he was quitting the job?” Hawes asked.

“Said he had bigger plans.”

“Like what?”

“Said he was going to retire to Jamaica.”

Jamaica again.

“Did he say how he planned to do that?”

“Nossir, he did not.”

“Mention any get-rich-quick scheme?”

“Nossir. I told you. He kept mostly to himself.”

“Ever see him with a redheaded girl and a…”

“Nope.”

“…guy about my height?” Carella said. “They might’ve been friends of his. Brown eyes, curly black hair, good build.”

“Sounds almost like Ave.”

“Ave? Who’s Ave?”

“Avery, I guess was his complete name. Feller worked outside selling records. I saw them together a few times.”

“Averywhat? ” Hawes asked.

“AVERY HANES,” the manager told them. “He used to work at The Wiz, selling computers and such. I hired him last year around this time.”

“We understand he was friends with Wilkins.”

“I guess maybe so. They’d talk music together all the time. Avery knew every record ever made. Always coming to me with ideas about how we could sell more records. Was him who suggested we put in the listening booths. I was about to give him a raise when he left. Come to think of it, they both left around the same time. Around Easter.”

“Maybe something bigger came along,” Carella suggested.

“Maybe so. He was opportunistic, that’s for sure.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, alert to possibilities. I’d hear him talking with customers, not just the usual do you like jazz, do you dig hip-hop, are you a Tony Bennett fan? He’d inquire what line of work they were in, were they musicians, were they in advertising, were they in publishing? I had the feeling he was looking for a better job. Didn’t want to sell records all his life, was all the timetrawling, you know whut I mean,trawling? ”

“Yes, sir,” Carella said. “I know what you mean.”

“So maybe he hooked something,” Held said.

“Maybe he did,” Carella said.

“You wouldn’t happen to have his address, would you?” Hawes asked.

IF CARELLAand Hawes had walked around the corner from Lorelei Records on St. John’s Avenue at precisely five past seven that evening, they’d have seen first a black Lincoln Town car pulling out of the garage under the Rio Building, and next two unmarked Mercury sedans behind it. Barney Loomis was at the wheel of the limo. Corcoran was sitting beside him, a dispatch case with $750,000 in new hundred-dollar bills on his lap. Endicott and Lonigan were in the lead Mercury, the blue one. Feingold and Jones were in the white Mercury behind it. The rest of The Squad was back at Number One Fed, manning the computers. This time, they were playing it their way. This time, the Joint Task Force had every intention of winning the horse race the Commissioner had created.

Carella and Hawes did not walk around the corner to the building in which Bison Records had its offices. Nor did either of the men connect the proximity of Lorelei Records to the company not a hundred yards away on Monroe Street.

Instead, while the caravan made its way south through the last of the evening’s rush hour traffic, the detectives drove in the opposite direction toward 8412 Winston Road, which was the last address the manager of Lorelei Records had for Avery Hanes.

It was beginning to get dark.