The Frumious Bandersnatch

5

DETECTIVE AL SHEEHANcalled 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 morning, they had planned to spend that Sunday night in his apartment. But at sevenA.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 callme Blondie?” Kling asked.

“You want me to call you Blondie?”

“I know that joke,” Halliday said, nodding. “And itis 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 arath, ” Lucy said.

“Have you ever in your life evenseen 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.”

“Thewhat! ” 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 arecode for the Johnson,” Halliday said.

“Jennifer?”

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

“And whatis 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’spenis! ” 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 FIGURED317 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 wasstolen, Ireported 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 her 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!

Or else she was putting on one hell of an act.

“I thought that old buggy was a goner for sure,” she said. “Where’d you find it?”

“Are you Polly Olson?” Willis asked.

His eyes were looking past her into the apartment where a microwave dinner in a black plastic dish rested on a coffee table in front of which a television set was going. He was looking for two possible accomplices with two possible AK-47s. Parker was looking for the same thing. Their eyes must have been darting.

“How rude of me,” she said, “come in, come in,” and stepped aside, either to welcome them or to allow a clean line of fire for her shooter buddies. They stepped into the apartment. Nobody shot at them. Willis felt somewhat foolish.

“Ma’am?” he said. “Is it your Ford Explorer that was stolen?”

“It sure was! Man, that was fast!” she said. “You boys are to be commended.”

“When did you report the car missing, ma’am?” Parker asked, getting straight to the point. He was due to be relieved at eleven-forty-five, and it was now close to that—well, actually, it was only eight-thirty, but he didn’t want to be delayed by a lot of bullshit here.

“This morning. When I went down right after breakfast,” she said. “I get up early every morning to move the car. It’s alternate side of the street parking here. We can park it all night, but we have to move it in the morning. Even weekends. This is a busy street here, deliveries all the time.”

“So you went down at what time, lady?” Parker asked impatiently.

“Just before eight o’clock. It’s illegal to park between eightA.M. and six. I was going to move the car across the street, and then walk over to church. As it was, I missed the nine o’clock mass because I had to report the car missing and all. From where I’d left it.”

“Where was that, ma’am?”

“Right in front of the building. It would’ve been safe there until eight o’clock. Which is why I went down a few minutes before. Only to discover somebody had already moved itfor me. I came right upstairs and called the police. Took me forever to report it stolen. I missed nine o’clock mass, I told you.”

“What time did you move it last night, ma’am?”

“Five to six. That’s what the signs say. EightA.M. to six 6P.M. ”

“So it had to’ve been stolen sometime after six last night, is that right?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “I was home all last night. Watching television,” she said. “Same as tonight,” she said, and her voice was suddenly so forlorn that Willis wanted to give her a hug. Her mention of the television set caused all of them to turn toward the screen, where for perhaps the twentieth time that day, the Valparaiso kidnapping tape was being aired.

“Do I have to go for the car right now?” she asked, looking suddenly frightened. “I mean…can it wait till morning?”

“Yes, ma’am, it can wait till morning,” Willis said, and was starting to give her the address of the One-Oh-Four, when all at once he heard himself saying, “In fact, I can stop by and drive you there, if you’d like.”

“Why that would be very nice, young man,” she said.

“Ten o’clock be all right?” he asked.

“Ten o’clock would be fine,” she said.

In the hallway outside, Parker said, “Love at first sight, Harold?”

“Fuck you,” Willis explained.

CARELLAwas complaining that he felt like the father of the bride. Sitting beside him on the living room sofa, Teddy watched his lips and his signing hands, and then she herself signed,Well, in a sense you are.

“No, darling,” he said, enunciating every word clearly, emphasizing them with his hands so that she wouldn’t miss their meaning or their importance to him, “not inany sense am I the father of the bride. I am theson of the bride, and I am thebrother of the bride, but I am not in any way, shape, or form thefather of the bride.”

Yes, but to your mother and Angela, you are thefatherof the bride, Teddy insisted.

“Their perception has nothing to…”

You’re the person who’ll be giving them away.

“I know that. But that doesn’t make me thefather of the…”

At least they’re not asking you to pay for the wedding.

“Oh, that’ll be the day!” Carella said, and got off the sofa and began pacing. “My mother’s marrying a big ginzo from…”

Steve!her eyes snapped, and her fingers crackled.

“Is what heis, ” Carella said. “He speaks English the way mygrand father did when he first came to this country.”

Luigi happens to speak English…

“Luigi! Couldn’t he have picked a more…”

…as well as you do. And he’s a very nice…

“…wop-sounding…”

You ought to be ashamed of your…

“…name? Luigi! JesusChrist! ”

Well, I’m not going to shout over you,Teddy signed, and folded her hands in her lap.

The room went still.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

You should be,Teddy signed.It’s going to be a lovely wedding.

“I’m sure it will be,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

But he was sure it would not be. Because the issue here wasn’t that his mother was about to marry a man from Italy, a realItalian, mind you, not somebody who was born here and who called himself Italian for God knew what obscure reasons, but someone actuallyfrom Italy, this was not the issue. The issue was that his mother was getting married atall. And so soon after his father was murdered. Before the funeral meats were cold, so to speak.

Which was theother thing that rankled about this double wedding impending in June, next month, right around the corner, for which he had been unanimously declared father of the bride when he didn’t even choose to be either brother or son of the bride,brides, damn it! Of all the men in this vast city, of all the available bachelors pounding on her door and sniffing at her heels, why had his sister chosen the man who’d prosecuted the case of thePeople v.Cole, and lost that case, allowed his father’s murderer to walk free until another day? Why this particular man? Was there something fucking Electral about this? Something Carella was missing?

The telephone rang.

He looked up at the grandfather clock.

It was nine-thirty.

He went into the hall to answer it.

“Hello?” he said.

“Detective Carella, please.”

“Speaking.”

“This is Special Agent Stanley Endicott,” the voice on the other end said. “Is this Carella?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m not waking you, am I?”

“No, I’m awake.”

“I’m in command of the Joint Task Force here at Federal Square,” Endicott said. “We’ve been assigned the Valparaiso kidnapping, and I understand you were the officer who caught the initial complaint, is that correct?”

“Well, the Harbor Patrol was actually the first to respond,” Carella said, and wondered why whenever the FBI appeared on the scene he automatically started covering his ass.

“But you conducted the initial investigation, isn’t that correct?”

“Yes, it is,” Carella said.

“Aboard theRiver Princess, is the information I have here.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been working the case since, more or less.”

Carella liked to think the old Eight-Seven had been giving it their all, but he said nothing.

“Have you come up with anything so far?” Endicott asked.

“We’ve been tracking a trio the Harbor Patrol stopped on the river, shortly before the kidnapping. We’ve got a name for the guy who rented a boat that may have been used, but that’s all we’ve got. There’s nothing on him in the computer, local, state, or federal. We’re thinking he used a phony credit card.”

“What was the name?”

“Andy Hardy,” Carella said.

“Oh really?” Endicott said, and chuckled.

“We also have an eye witness to the boat coming back in before midnight last night…well, he didn’t actuallysee the boat, but he gave us a good description of the three people who might’ve been on the boat…”

“Might’vebeen,” Endicott said.

“We’re fairly certain they’re the ones who brought the boat in. A man and two women. They drove off in a black Ford Explorer…”

“Fairlycertain,” Endicott said.

Carella was silent for a moment.

Then he said, “Do you want this or don’t you?”

“I’m all ears,” Endicott said.

“So cut the editorials, okay? We’ve been busting our asses on this ever since we caught it.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Look, call my lieutenant, okay? He’s got all our reports, he’ll give you everything you…”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“The Explorer was reported stolen at eight-thirty this morning. We checked with the owner, last time she saw the car was six last night, when she moved it per parking regulations. The boat the three hired—which may or maynot have been the one used on the gig, before you repeat it back to me—was dusted by Mobile Crime top to bottom. It was wiped clean as a whistle. Also, we’ve set up a Tap and Tapeplus a Trap and Trace in Barney Loomis’ office. We expect…”

“So he told us.”

“We expect the perps to call with a ransom demand sometime tomorrow. The office was closed today, and they have no way of knowing his home number. Plus, the girl’s parents are divorced and living, one in Mexico, the other in Europe someplace. So Loomis is the one the perps’ll most likely contact.”

“So he told us,” Endicott said again.

“That’s what we’ve done so far, and that’s what we’ve got.”

“Which is essentially nothing,” Endicott said.

“Well, as I mentioned earlier,” Carella said, “maybe you ought to talk to my lieutenant. He can give you any further…”

“No, no, you’ve done splendidly,” Endicott said. “Not your fault these guys are smart. How about the crime scene itself? Has the lab come back to you with anything yet?”

“They said I’d have their report by six tonight. I waited in the office till seven.”

“Think it might be there now?”

“Possibly. I can call the squadroom…”

“If it’s there, maybe you can bring it along with the rest of the stuff.”

“What stuff do you mean, Agent Endicott?”

“It’sSpecial Agent Endicott, by the way, but you can call me Stan. What do people call you, Detective? Stephen? Steve? It says here Stephen Louis Car…”

“Steve. People call me Steve.”

“Steve, I’d like to go over whatever evidence you gathered at the scene…”

“There wasn’t much.”

“Whatever there was. It’d be in your DD report, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would.”

“Your various conversations with eye witnesses…”

“Yes.”

“Your own evaluation of the crime scene…”

“Yes, that would all be in our report.”

“Photographs…”

“Those would be coming from the lab.”

“Plus whatever else you may have got from Mobile this evening.”

“If thereis anything else, yes, Stan. It was a big crime scene, they were very busy there, insideand outside the boat. The perps came up a ladder, you know, on the side of the boat…”

“So you’re saying there might be footprint casts…”

“I’m saying I don’t knowwhat they got or didn’t get. Footprints or whatever. That’s why I’m waiting for the report. The perps were wearing gloves, so the likelihood of latents is nil. But they came down these highly polished steps into the ballroom, and they moved across a dance floor with another sensitive surface…”

“That’s the kind of stuff I mean,” Endicott said. “Your first hand impressions of the scene. To supplement whatever you’ve got in writing. When do you think you can get down here?”

“Down where?” Carella asked.

“Why, Federal Square, Steve.”

“How about first thing tomorrow morning?” Carella said.

“How about right now?” Endicott said. “The Squad’s all here…”

The Squad? Carella thought.

“…and we’d love to get a jump on this before those sons of bitches call tomorrow. Think you can stop by your office first, see if that MCU report is in, and then head right on down here? It’s One Federal Square, nineteenth floor. We’ll be waiting,” he said, and hung up.

Carella looked at the phone receiver.

The Squad, he thought. Is that what the Joint Task Force calls itself, The Squad?

He put the receiver back on the cradle.

The Squad.

“I have to go in again,” he told Teddy.

It was not the first time she’d ever heard those words, but she pulled a face anyway.