The Frumious Bandersnatch

13

THE CELL PHONE in Barney Loomis’ Lincoln Town car rang at precisely seven-fifteen P.M. By that time he and Corcoran were on the River Dix Drive heading downtown in thinning traffic. Loomis picked up at once.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” Avery asked.

“On the Drive. Approaching the Headley Building. Exit 12.”

“Get off at Exit 5, park in the little parking area there. I’ll call you again in ten minutes. Any tricks and the girl dies,” Avery said, and hung up.

“What?” Corcoran asked.

“Exit 5 parking area. He’ll call again when we’re there.”

Corcoran was on his own phone at once.

“He said any tricks…”

“Yeah, well, we have a few tricks of our own,” Corcoran said.

“Endicott.”

“He’s taking us to Exit 5. The parking area there. Why don’t one of you get there before us? Keep circling, low profile.”

“Will do,” Endicott said.

“He said he’d kill Tamar if we tried any tricks,” Loomis said.

“What he considers tricks is not what we consider tricks,” Corcoran said. “Do you want the girl back, or don’t you?”

“That’s all I want.”

“Well, the only way to get her is to get these guys first.”

“That’s not my view.”

“We tried your way already, Mr. Loomis. And you got double-crossed. Leave this to people who know what they’re doing, okay?”

“Tamar is with a confederate, you know that. If we try anything funny…”

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Loomis, okay? Tamar Valparaiso…”

“I don’t want to hear…”

“…may already be dead.”

“OH JESUS,” Kellie said.

She had just entered the room, and the first thing she saw was blood.

She closed the door behind her, went swiftly to where Tamar lay huddled near the radiator, her hand still cuffed to it, her wrist torn and caked with blood where she had tried to pull the hand free. Her nose was crusted with blood as well, her lips swollen, her eyes puffed and discolored. There was blood on her thighs and higher up on her legs.

“Oh, baby, what did he do to you?” Kellie asked, and put the rifle down on the floor, and took Tamar’s free hand in her own.

“YOU GONNA not talk to me forever?” Cal asked.

“Just shut up, you freak,” Avery told him. “Soon as we get this money, you’re history.”

“She asked for it,” Cal said. “Wasn’t my fault what happened.”

“I said shut up. You jeopardized this whole deal. This whole deal was we send her back safe. You wrecked her looks, you fucked up the whole deal, you fuckin moron.”

“He’ll bring the money, anyway. He don’t know what she looks like, all he knows is we got her. He don’t know nothin happened to her. He’ll bring the seven-fifty, you’ll see, and we’re on our way.”

“Just keep quiet, I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

Avery looked at his watch.

It was seventeen minutes past seven.

THE SUPERINTENDENT of the building at 8412 Winston Road told them his name was Ralph Hedrings. Hawes thought he’d said “Ralph Headrinse.” That was okay because Hedrings thought Hawes had said “Detective Horse.” When they got there at seven-twenty, the super was still at dinner. He didn’t particularly enjoy being interrupted by a pair of detectives looking for someone who’d moved out last month. Particularly someone who Hedrings considered had a superior attitude. But he asked his wife to keep his “supper” warm, was what he called it, and then stepped outside the building with them and lit a cigarette.

“She doesn’t know I still smoke,” he explained, letting out a self-satisfied poisonous cloud. “Her brother had his larynx removed last month, she thinks everybody in the world’s gonna get throat cancer now. I been smoking since I was sixteen, I don’t even cough. Why are you looking for Avery Hanes?”

“Few questions we need to ask him,” Carella said. “Would you know where…?”

“Him and his girlfriend were living here for almost a year. All of a sudden, he tells me he’s moving when the lease expired.”

“When was that, Mr. Hedrings?”

“April one,” Hedrings said.

“Any idea where he went?”

“None at all.”

“And you say he was living here with his girlfriend?”

“Redheaded girl.”

“Would you know her name?”

“Kellie. With ani.e. ”

“Kellie what?”

“Don’t know. He was the one signed the lease.”

So now they had three names.

Or, more accurately, two and a half names.

JUST AS LOOMIS pulled the town car off Exit 5, he spotted the blue Mercury with Endicott and Lonigan in it driving past the parking lot as though looking for an address somewhere on the street, cruising slowly, stop-and-go-ing. He pulled the car into the lot, and sat there, looking out over the wheel at the headlights zipping by on the Drive. Sitting beside him, Corcoran said into his phone, “We’re here. See anything yet?”

“Nothing,” Endicott said.

The car’s cell phone rang a moment later.

It was seven-twenty-six P.M. on the dashboard clock.

“WHERE are you?” Avery asked.

“Off Exit 5,” Loomis said.

“Take a left onto Fairlane. Drive downtown to the Grace Wagner School of Design on Cronley. Park in front of the statue there. No tricks.”

There was a click on the line.

“What’d he say?”

“The Wagner School of Design on Cronley. Wants us to park in front of the statue there.”

Corcoran tapped a button on the face of his cell phone.

“Endicott.”

“Heading downtown to Cronley, Wagner School of Design. He wants us to park there. Check out the building. Careful, they may be watching, same as before.”

“Moving,” Endicott said.

“He told me no tricks,” Loomis said.

Corcoran merely nodded.

“IS THIS PICTURE a mystery or something?” Ollie asked.

“No, not at all,” Patricia said. “It’s Shakespeare, I told you.”

“Because it’s called Looking for Richard, you know,” Ollie said, “which sounds like a sort of mystery, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe so.”

“Like a missing person or something, you know?”

They were sitting watching commercials on the screen, eating popcorn and waiting for the movie to start. Ollie had bought two big cartons of popcorn with extra butter, and two Diet Pepsis because a person couldn’t be too careful, and two big bars of Hershey’s chocolate with almonds in case Patricia was still hungry after she finished her popcorn. It bothered him that he had to sit here and watch commercials for restaurants and clothing stores, as if he hadn’t paid for the tickets and was getting something free.

It also bothered him that he didn’t know exactly what this movie was about. If it was about a missing person, he’d had some experience along those lines, you know, and could relate to the movie more easily. But if it was about Shakespeare, the way Patricia said it was, then why had they named it Looking for Richard, which made it sound as if somebody had been kidnapped or something?

“Are you sure this is going to be Shakespeare?” he asked her.

“Oh yes,” she said. “It’s about doing Richard the Third. ”

“Ah-ha!” he said. “It is a mystery!”

“It is?”

“You just said it’s about doing Richard the Third.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean ‘doing’ in that sense. I meant performing the play. Doing Richard the Third.”

“So why are they calling it Looking for Richard if there’s no ticking clock?” he asked. Reminded, he looked at his watch. It was seven-forty-three and the movie was scheduled to start at seven-forty-five. So where was it? Why did they have to sit here watching a commercial for an antiques store, as if anyone would want to buy old used furniture and stuff?

“I’m really excited about seeing this again,” Patricia said, and suddenly reached over for his hand and squeezed it.

“Me, too,” Ollie said dubiously.

His hand was sticky with butter.

Which was okay because her hand was, too.

THE GRACE WAGNER School of Design had once been called William Howard Taft High School, after the twenty-seventh President of the United States. Back then, it was a so-called academic high school, which meant that its students took subjects to qualify them for college entrance. But that was the good old days.

Nowadays, it was a vocational high school for kids looking for easy entrée to the world of high fashion. If you could maintain a C-average and draw a straight line, you were admitted to Grace Wagner, which incidentally had been named after a woman who’d served on the Board of Education and played flute.

A bronze statue that looked like a huge bolt of lightning striking an oversized soccer ball stood on the patchy front lawn of the school. By the time Loomis pulled the Lincoln up in front of the statue, Endicott and Lonigan had already driven twice around the school’s surrounding blocks. They had seen no one suspicious lurking about, but there was a light burning in one of the school’s top-floor windows, and they thought they’d seen shadows moving past.

Endicott reported this to Corcoran now.

“May be using the same M.O. they did in The Wasteland,” Corcoran suggested. “Take the high ground, cover the area through binocs.”

“I’ll wait for the second car to show,” Endicott said. “We’ll go in the back way, try to surprise them up there.”

“Don’t do anything to jeopardize the girl’s safety,” Corcoran warned.

Loomis figured this was for his benefit.

Besides, his phone was ringing.

“HELLO?” he said.

“We see you,” Avery said. “Get out of the car, both of you. Leave the money on the back seat. Leave the car unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Walk toward the school entrance. Now! Do it now! ” he said, and hung up.

“He wants us to leave the money and get out of the car. He wants us to walk toward the school. Wants it unlocked with the keys in it.”

Corcoran stabbed at his cell phone.

“Endicott.”

“They’re trying an end run,” he shouted. “Get around to the front of the school!Quick! ”

“What?” Endicott said.

The car phone rang again.

Loomis picked up.

“Yes?” he said.

“I said now! ” Avery said, and hung up.

“Let’s go!” Loomis said.“Please!”

Both men got out of the car. Corcoran looked up the street, to where he could see a green SUV moving swiftly toward the parked Lincoln.

“Here they come!” he said, and reached under his jacket into his shoulder holster.

“Don’t!”Loomis shouted.

IT ALL HAPPENED so fast that later none of the agents or detectives could reconstruct it in proper sequence. It was rather like one of those movies directed by someone fresh out of film school, with jump cuts and flash forwards and four or five stories unreeling at the same time.

The first story was Barney Loomis wetting his pants the moment all those guns opened fire. Actually, there was only one gun at first, and it was in the right hand of Detective-Lieutenant Charles Farley Corcoran and he opened fire the moment the two men got out of what he now could see was a green Montana, and climbed into the black town car waiting at the curb in front of Grace Wagner. The Lincoln’s engine roared into life an instant later, and the car pulled away from the curb just as its rear window slid down and a second gun opened up, a rifle this time spewing automatic fire, which is when Loomis wet his pants because he could actually hear bullets whizzing past his right ear.

The two Mercurys came around the corner at that very moment, Endicott and Lonigan in the lead car, Feingold and Jones in the second. Corcoran had sprinted to the curb by then, and was flagging down the blue Merc. Loomis had thrown himself flat to the ground the way he’d seen them do in better movies than this one, even though there were no bullets flying at the moment.

At the moment, in fact, and even before Corcoran jumped into the blue Merc like somebody about to yell “Follow that car!” the black Lincoln Town car had raced out of sight like the Enterprise zooming off into a star-filled void.

Where it was zooming off to was a spot a mile away, where they had parked the very last of the stolen cars.

THEY HAD LEFT 8412 Winston Road in Calm’s Point at seven-thirty, had encountered heavy traffic coming over the bridge, and did not get back to the squadroom till a minute past eight. A minute after that, Carella was calling the number he had for telephone company Special Assistance.

The Joint Task Force’s hi-tech triangulation had ended in something like strangulation, and their Trap-and-Trace routine had proved futile in the face of stolen and disposable cell phones. So it got down to a weary detective sitting behind a cigarette-scarred desk in a grimy squadroom making a good old-fashioned phone call. In many ways the good old telephone company was always reliable if not always courteous. Even dealing with a so-called Special Operator assigned to helping law enforcement agencies working so-called important cases, the civility level was barely acceptable.

“Here’s what we’re looking for,” Carella told a woman named Miss Young. She had no first name. Just Miss Young. “We’ve got an Avery Hanes living at 8412 Winston Road in Calm’s Point, for the year prior to this April first. And we’ve got…”

“Was that Winston as in Winston cigarettes?” Miss Young asked.

“As in Winston Churchill, yes,” Carella said. “And we’ve got a man named Calvin Wilkins, living at 379 Parrish Place in Calm’s Point, from just before Thanksgiving to around the same time, April first. That’s Parrish with a double-R.”

“And what is it you’re seeking, Detective?”

“List of phone calls made from each of those numbers in March. I want phone numbers, names and addresses.”

“You’ll need a court order for that.”

“That’s not my understanding. We’re not looking to put a pen register on those lines. In fact, the numbers are probably no longer in service. All I want is the numbers called and the names and addresses of the parties called. I’m sure you have those. If for billing purposes alone.”

“It’s my understanding that a court order…”

“Miss, we’re dealing with a kidnapping here. Any assistance you can give us…”

“One moment, please,” Miss Young said.

Carella waited.

“Miss Cole,” another voice said. “How may I help you, sir?”

Carella told her how she might help him.

“We’ll need a court order for that,” she said.

“There’s a certain urgency here,” Carella said.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and hung up.

It was now five minutes past eight. It would take him forty minutes to get downtown and another forty minutes to shake a judge out of a tree at that hour. By then, Tamar Valparaiso might be dead. He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had for the Joint Task Force downtown.

“Task Force,” a voice said.

“This is Carella,” he said. “Who’s this?”

“Special Agent Jakes.”

“I need some help, Jakes.”

THEY PULLED THE Lincoln in alongside and slightly to the rear of the Grand Cherokee Laredo they’d parked there earlier today. Cal threw up the hood of the Jeep and jump-started the vehicle. They were on their way again in three minutes flat, leaving the Lincoln with the key in the ignition in a neighborhood where “Your Money or Your Life” was a nursery rhyme. Avery figured if they had a little luck with traffic, they’d be at the beach house in half an hour or so. Then they’d return the girl and that was that.

End of story.

They never once considered the fact that an armed and dangerous person was in that house, and she was only twenty-four years old, and she had never in her life fired an AK-47.

“DETECTIVE Carella?”

“Yes?”

“This is Miss Cole again.”

Carella looked at the clock on the squadroom wall. The time was eight-fifteen.

“I just got a call from an FBI agent named Randall Jakes,” Miss Cole said. “He faxed me a copy of a court order that would seem to cover the request you made. Do you have a fax machine there?”

He gave her the fax number.

Five minutes later, he had on his desk two separate lists of the calls Avery Hanes and Calvin Wilkins had made from their respective telephones during the month of March. Not surprisingly, many of the calls had been from Hanes to Wilkins or vice versa. From Wilkins’ number, there were half a dozen calls to Air Jamaica and American Airlines. From Hanes’ number there were a dozen or more calls to American, British Air, Virgin Atlantic, Delta, and Air France. There were calls to Capshaw Boats, the marina from which they’d rented the Rinker presumably used in the kidnapping. There were calls to a person named Benjamin Lu, whoever he might turn out to be. Almost every day in March, Hanes had called a party listed only as “Unpublished.” An asterisk at the top of the page explained: “AT THE CUSTOMER’S REQUEST, THIS NUMBER IS UNPUBLISHED.” In the month of March, Hanes had also made seven calls to a real estate agent in Russell County.

Carella pulled the phone to him and began dialing again.

BY EIGHT-TWENTY-SEVEN, he had dialed the number for Margaret Holmes Realty twice, on the off chance she’d been down the hall the first time. Concluding that she was closed for business at this hour, he dialed Information and told the operator he wanted a residential listing for a Margaret Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes, in the town of South Beach, which was where the real estate office was located. The operator came back to say she had no listing under that name. He asked her to try all the towns in Russell County, and she said she couldn’t do that, she needed a specific town. He told her he was a police officer investigating a kidnapping, and she asked him to wait while she put a supervisor on the line. The supervisor told him he had to have a specific town, did he know how many towns there were in Russell County? It was eighty-thirty-three when Carella once again dialed the number he had for Special Assistance and asked for Miss Cole.

“I already faxed you those numbers,” she said. “Didn’t you get them?”

“Yes, I got them, Miss Cole,” he said, “and thank you so much for your assistance,” turning on the charm and wondering if he should read a little T. S. Eliot to her. “Miss Cole, I wonder if you can help me here again,” he said. “I need a home number for a Margaret Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes, somewhere in Russell County, I don’t have a specific town, do you think you can help me? I would so appreciate it.”

“Hmm,” Miss Cole said.

But then she said, “One moment, please.”

THE NUMBER Miss Cole gave him rang four times before someone picked up.

“Hello?” a woman said.

“Miss Holmes?”

“Mrs.Holmes, yes?”

“This is Detective Carella of the Eighty-seventh Squad? In the city?”

“Yes, Detective?”

“Are you the Margaret Holmes who runs Margaret Holmes Realty in South Beach?”

“I am,” she said.

“Mrs. Holmes, we have an Avery Hanes calling you some six times this past month. Is that name familiar to you?”

“It is.”

Carella took a deep breath.

“Did you rent or sell anything to him?” he asked.

“I rented him a house on the beach,” she said. “Why? What’s he done?”

THE PLAN WAS to drop the girl off just anyplace. Give her some change to make a phone call, let her find her own way home, she was a big girl now. That was the way Ave had explained the plan to her.

They’d drop the girl off just anywhere on their way to the airport. Cal was supposed to be going to Jamaica, but they didn’t care where he went, they didn’t care if they ever saw him again as long as they lived. Ave was heading for London first, while Kellie herself flew to Paris where he would meet her later. It was a swell plan. Paris. Lah-dee-dah.

There was only one problem.

The girl had seen Kellie’s face.

Tamar Valparaiso still didn’t know who was behind those Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat masks, but she sure as hell knew that George W. Bush was a redheaded Irish girl with green eyes and freckles.

“You know,” Kellie confided now, “we’re supposed to set you free as soon as they get back.”

“Promises, promises,” Tamar said.

“No, really. That’s the plan. We leave here and drop you off someplace.”

“That would be nice,” Tamar said.

“Well, that’s the plan.”

“Good,” Tamar said.

She ached all over. Her face, her body, everywhere he’d hit her, but especially below, where he’d brutally entered her. Cal, she thought. His name is Cal. And the other one is Ave. You’ll pay, boys.

“You saw my face,” Kellie said out of the blue.

Tamar looked at her.

“You know what’s behind this mask.”

“Well, don’t worry…”

“You know what I look like.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Tamar said. “Really, you’ve been good to me. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

“Because I wouldn’t want to lose all this, you know,” Kellie said reasonably.

“You don’t have to worry, really.”

“We worked hard for this,” she said reasonably.

“I know you did. But, really, you don’t have to…”

“You can describe me.”

“I hardly remember…”

“You know what I look like,” Kellie said again.

“Lots of girls look like…”

“Lots of girls didn’t kidnap you,” Kellie said, and raised the AK-47 onto her hip.

“Don’t…just be careful with that thing, okay?” Tamar said and reached out with her free hand.

Kellie backed away a pace.

The rifle was on single-shot. She fired three times. Two bullets entered Tamar’s face just below the left eye, and the other took her just below the nose. The three shots blew off the back of her skull and splashed gristle and blood all over the radiator behind her.

Wow, Kellie thought.