The Frumious Bandersnatch (23 page)

“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 SOME
sections 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 from
The 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, what
is
this place?” Loomis asked, appalled, and parked on the corner of Norman and 185th.

 

“DON'T PULL NOTHING
funny 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.”

“You
already
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 me
this
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'll
eat
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 you
think
you're worth?”

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

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

“How much
is
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.”

 

LOOMIS
picked 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 you
didn't
hear. Any tricks, and she dies. You want that on
your
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.”