The Frumious Bandersnatch

by Ed McBain

  “Let me tell you what we’ve done here,” Endicott said.

  He looked wide awake and alert, wearing this morning a dark gray suit that seemed better tailored than the blue one he’d worn yesterday. Corcoran, in contrast, was wearing brown slacks and a brown V-necked sweater over a plaid sports shirt. Carella himself had worn a suit today. He suddenly felt overdressed for a city detective.

  “First off, we’ve installed a direct line to your office. You pick up that green phone there,” Endicott said, pointing, “and you’ve got the squadroom at the Eight-Seven. How’s that for service?”

  Carella was wondering How come?

  “We figured we’d let you guys do what you do best, am I right, Charles?” Endicott said. “The legwork, the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty. We get anything to chase, you pick up that green phone, your boys are on it in a minute. Will that work for you?”

  “Sure,” Carella said. “Thanks.”

  “Regarding all this other stuff,” he said, “we noticed that your telephone guy set up a simple Tap and Tape, with a jack for a single listener, but we’ll be more people working on this, so we’ve installed equipment that’ll accommodate three more sets of ear phones, you can understand why that would be necessary,” Endicott said, and smiled hopefully, as if seeking Carella’s approval.

  “More the merrier,” Carella said.

  “The other thing…the court orders you got yesterday were for the primary landline carriers…AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, MCI…but there are at least half a dozen other service providers so we’ve taken the liberty of obtaining court orders for those as well, assuming our boy will be calling from landline equipment—which may not be the case.”

  “This is all so much easier since 9/11,” Corcoran said.

  “Oh so much,” Endicott agreed. “Though I have to tell you the truth, I’ve never known a judge to turn down a federal request for a wiretap.”

  “Used to be probable cause, probable cause,” Corcoran said, and rolled his eyes.

  He was referring to the way it customarily worked. Before a judge could approve an application for electronic surveillance and issue a court order, he had to determine that:

  a) there was probable cause for belief that an individual was committing, had committed, or was about to commit an offense covered by law…

  b) there was probable cause for belief that particular communications concerning that offense would be obtained through such interception…

  c) normal investigative procedures had been tried and had failed or reasonably appeared unlikely to succeed or to be too dangerous…

  d) there was probable cause for belief that the facilities from which, or the place where the communications were to be intercepted were being used, or were about to be used, in connection with the commission of such offense.

  In each of Carella’s applications yesterday, he had cited probable cause. His petitions had been granted in every instance. But Corcoran was saying…

  “Judges are a lot more malleable since 9/11. Before then, to get a court order for a pen register…”

  “That’s a sort of reverse caller-ID,” Endicott explained.

  “Yes, I know,” Carella said.

  “We record the numbers dialed out.”

  “Yes, I…”

  “…you had to show probable cause. Now, you just go in and say the information will be relevant to an ongoing investigation, and by federal law, a judge is required to approve the order. Relevant, can you believe it?”

  “Makes it nice,” Endicott said.

  “Makes it simple.”

  “Anyway,” Endicott said, “since you’d covered only the landline carriers, we went ahead and obtained additional court orders for the wireless companies, too. These computers you see around the room…”

  Carella counted four of them.

  “…tap into our central computers down at Number One Fed. If our boy uses any of the seven mobile-phone providers servicing this city, we’ve got sophisticated links to all of them, and we’ll triangulate in a second.”

  Carella nodded.

  He didn’t know what “triangulate” meant. He said nothing.

  “Want to try your new toy?” Corcoran said, and handed him the receiver on the green phone.

  Carella put it to his ear.

  He heard the phone ringing on the other end.

  “Eighty-seventh Squad, Detective Hawes.”

  “Cotton, it’s me. Just testing.”

  “Testing what?” Hawes asked.

  ON ONE WALL of Bison’s conference room down the hall, the company had set out a generous buffet consisting of orange juice (or grapefruit juice), croissants (plain or chocolate), Danish pastries (cheese or jelly), bagels (plain, onion, or poppy seed), smoked Norwegian salmon, cream cheese, butter, jellies and jams in a wide variety of flavors, and coffee (either full-strength or de-caf).

  The four men seated around the huge rosewood conference table had helped themselves to the sideboard goodies and were now leisurely enjoying their morning repast before getting down to business. They were in a jocular mood. They had a lot to be happy about.

  Barney Loomis’ plate was brimming, as usual. He demolished his breakfast with obvious gusto now, listening to the chatter all around him, but not distracted by it in the slightest. Gulping down the last of his onion bagel heaped with salmon and cream cheese, he washed it down with the last of his “hi-test coffee,” as he called it, and began the meeting abruptly by asking, “Did you see those marchers outside? They’re labeling Tamar a racist! What’s wrong with these people, anyway?,” never once realizing that referring to the black protestors as “these people” might in itself be considered a trifle racist.

  “Controversy never hurt anybody,” Binkie Horowitz said.

  As Bison’s Vice President in charge of Promotion, he had checked all his people before this morning’s meeting, and was confident that the only thing that could possibly hurt them now was if the kidnappers actually killed Tamar Valparaiso, bite your tongue.

  “I’m not so sure,” Loomis said. “We lose the black market because of those jackasses marching out there…”

  “We won’t lose the black market,” Binkie said, “don’t worry.”

  Short and slight, narrow-waisted and narrow-shouldered as well, he resembled a harried jockey whipping a tired nag across the finish line. Leaning over the table, his brown eyes intense, he said, “We are not at this very moment, in fact, losing the black market. We are, in fact, averaging more spins per hour on all-black radio than we are on the white stations. Take WJAX, for example—which by the way played Alicia Keys’ ‘Fallin’ ’ a hundred and seven times in its first week of release—I checked with our man in Florida first thing this morning, and since news of the kidnapping broke, and especially since the kidnap tape ran last night on network news, they’ve been playing ‘Bandersnatch’ every hour and a half, with requests for it pouring in all the time. If the momentum holds at that rate, we’re looking at sixteen spins a day, times seven days a week, will come to a hundred and twelve spins in the next week alone, which will top Alicia’s hundred and seven for a week on that same station. And I don’t have to tell you ‘Fallin’ ’ was number one all over the country. And JAX is a top black station, this isn’t some thirty-kilowatt shack in rural Mississippi. We don’t have to worry about losing the black market, Barney, I can assure you of that.”

  “Tell that to the good Reverend Foster,” Loomis said, going to the sideboard and pouring himself another cup of coffee. “He’s a national player, he’ll be all over cable television in a minute and a half.”

  J. P. Higgins, Bison’s VP in charge of Video Production, had been silent until now. Truth of the matter was that he was nursing a hangover this morning, having partied too strenuously aboard the River Princess on Saturday night, and having partied privately with the black reporter from Rolling Stone last night, celebrating what he considered the fortuitous circumstance of a kidnapping that had thrust Tamar’s video into nati
onal prominence.

  Dressed this morning in sweater and slacks and wearing a blue beret he thought made him look debonair if only he had a mustache, he turned to Binkie Horowitz and, seemingly suddenly inspired, asked, “Any chance we can get more cable stations to show our video?”

  “Why not?” Loomis said from the sideboard, and while he was just standing there, fixed himself another bagel with salmon and cream cheese. “If Foster’s going to join the talking heads, then maybe they’d like to lead in with our actual goddamn video! Let it speak for itself. Hell, that video isn’t about race, it’s about rape!”

  “That’s a good point to make to the radio stations, too,” Harry Di Fidelio said. “A good talking point. ‘Bandersnatch’ isn’t about race, it’s about rape. Race, rape, they almost rhyme, in fact. What they call a slant rhyme.”

  Dressed this morning in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and a blue tie, Di Fidelio lacked only laced black shoes to blend right in with most of the FBI agents down the hall in Loomis’ office. Instead, unaware that he might be emulating the fashion preferences of a former U.S. President, he was wearing brown loafers with the blue suit. His socks were brown, too, but that’s because he was color blind.

  As Bison’s VP in charge of Radio Marketing, Di Fidelio was constantly on the lookout for ways to convince the deejays that they actually had something to talk about. It was one thing to Pay-for-Play a radio station, and another to sic the indie promoters on them, but if you could give a deejay a truly personal reason to plug a record, you were home free. So far, the single had been played on more than 115 Top 40 stations including Z100, WKTU, KIIS, WHYI, KZQZ, WNCI, KDWB, KSLZ, WEZB, and enough damn alphabet soup to feed an army of fans. But if this thing became really controversial…

  “Rape or Race, we could say,” he suggested, and spread his hands on the air to spell out the words. “Rape or Race. You decide.”

  “That’s not bad,” Binkie said. “Rape or Race. We fight fire with fire. Go head to toe with Foster or anyone else who wants to bring up the race issue. Hell, our hands are clean, our credentials are spotless,” he said, seemingly unaware of the fact that no one around that table was black.

  “Let’s shotgun the video all over the place,” Loomis said. “Use the ‘Rape or Race’ pitch, I like it, spell it all out for them. Maybe get viewers to call in or e-mail, get a poll going, is it rape or race? You decide.”

  “Rape or Race,” Di Fidelio repeated, spreading his hands on the air again, reminding everyone that this was his idea, after all. “You decide.”

  “Be great if we could get some women’s rights groups to champion the video,” Higgins said. “Get them to say what a brave stand Tamar took, get them to suggest she herself may be out there getting raped this very…”

  “I wouldn’t go there,” Loomis said at once.

  “Well, we don’t really know what’s happening to her, do we?” Higgins said. His head was pounding. He didn’t feel like arguing.

  “When they call today,” Loomis said, and looked at his watch, “I’ll ask to speak to her. Before we turn over any money, I want some assurance that…”

  “Incidentally…”

  They all turned toward the far end of the table.

  A short, slender man wearing a blue blazer, gray flannel slacks, a paler blue shirt, and a gold-and-blue silk-rep tie, sat there with only a cup of coffee in front of him. Jedediah Bailey, the firm’s accountant.

  “Do you have any idea how much they’ll be asking for?”

  “Of course not,” Loomis said. “How would I know how much…?”

  “Just asking,” Jedediah said, and spread his hands defensively, palms outward. He’d merely wanted to ascertain that Loomis could get hold of what would most certainly be a sizable amount of cash in a short period of time. Loomis was the company’s sole shareholder and CEO. Were his personal assets liquid enough? That’s all Jedediah wished to determine, so sue him.

  “I’m hoping we’ll have her back by tonight sometime,” Loomis said.

  The room went silent.

  “You know…” Higgins ventured, and then shook his head.

  “What?” Loomis asked.

  “It wouldn’t hurt if this thing dragged on even longer. Few days longer,” Higgins said, and shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt, really.”

  He was the only one in the room who’d dared say it.

  THE ENTIRE SQUAD was in the office when Endicott gave Loomis’ private secretary her marching orders.

  Gloria Klein was in her early thirties, a somewhat plain-looking woman, even in the mini and tight sweater she felt appropriate to her job at a record company. She kept shifting her attention and her pale blue eyes from Endicott to Loomis, as if checking to see that her boss agreed with all this.

  “Mr. Loomis won’t be taking any calls from people you can identify. If you recognize a name, you tell the caller Mr. Loomis will get back to him or her. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “Now, Gloria,” Endicott said, “if a caller refuses to give his name, or if he says something like ‘This is personal,’ you ask him to hold, please, and then check with Mr. Loomis before putting him through. Have you got that?”

  “Yes, sir. Does this have to do with Tamar, sir?”

  No, it has to do with the price of fish in Norway, Endicott thought, but did not say.

  “Yes, it has to do with Tamar,” he said.

  “Are we expecting a call from her kidnappers, is that it?”

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anyone whose name you recognize…”

  “Mr. Loomis will call back.”

  “Any strange name, or anyone who won’t give a name…”

  “I buzz Mr. Loomis, check if it’s okay to put the call through.”

  “Very good, Gloria. And if anyone should ask, there’s no one here with Mr. Loomis.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Gloria said, and made eye contact with her boss again, checking.

  Loomis gave a slight nod.

  THE PHONE on his desk rang at twelve o’clock sharp.

  He picked up.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Mr. Loomis, there’s someone who says you’re expecting his call. He wouldn’t give a name.”

  “Give me three minutes, and then put him through.”

  He replaced the receiver on its cradle, and turned to the others. “Won’t give a name, says I’m expecting his call.”

  “Bingo,” Corcoran said, and nodded toward a makeshift structure not unlike a phone booth, its walls baffled to deaden any sound in the office around him. Loomis entered the booth at once, sat in a chair set up in front of an extension phone. Endicott, Corcoran, and two of his detectives put on ear phones at the monitoring equipment. Carella stood by the green phone that would connect him directly to the Eight-Seven. The three other detectives and the remaining agent were already sitting at phones that linked them to One Fed Square.

  The room was utterly silent.

  When the phone rang again, its sound burst on the air like a hand grenade.

  “Here he is,” Endicott said. “Just sound natural, hear what he has to say. We’ll be on him, believe me.”

  The phone kept ringing.

  “That’s three, four…”

  “Pick up,” Endicott said.

  In the booth, Loomis picked up the receiver.

  “Barney Loomis,” he said.

  “We have the girl,” the voice on the phone said. “We want $250,000 in unmarked, hundred-dollar bills. We’ll call at three P.M. sharp to tell you where to deliver it. Do anything foolish and she dies.”

  “How do I know she’s still alive?” Loomis asked at once.

  “Would you like to talk to her?”

  “Yes. Yes, please. Let me talk to her.”

  There was a silenc
e.

  “Verizon landline is tracking,” one of the agents said.

  “Sweetheart, come here a minute.”

  This on Loomis’ phone. Somewhat apart, as if the caller were holding the receiver out to someone.

  “Verizon says it’s a cell phone,” one of the detectives said.

  There was another silence, longer this time.

  “Tell Mr. Loomis you’re okay,” the voice on the phone said. “No, don’t touch the phone!” Sharply. “Just tell him you’re fine.”

  “It’s AT&T wireless,” the same detective said.

  “Get on it,” Endicott said.

  A shorter silence.

  “Hello?”

  “Tamar?”

  “Yes, Barney.”

  Across the room, an agent was asking an AT&T operator to determine the number of the cell phone and track its location.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Barney.”

  “Nobody’s hurt you, have they?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “I’ll get the money they want, Tamar. You’ll be home soon.”

  “Thank you, Barney.”

  “How’s the CD doing?” Tamar asked.

  “Very well, actually.”

  “First tower’s tracking,” one of the agents reported.

  “Am I gonna be a star?”

  “Oh, you betcha, kid. A real diva.”

  “Good. I have to go now, Barney. He wants me to get off the phone.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” Loomis said.

  The man’s voice came on again.

  “Okay?” he asked. “Satisfied, Mr. Loomis?”

  “Second tower’s got it.”

  “Yes. Thank you,” Loomis said.

  “Get the money by three P.M.”

  “Keep him on,” Endicott said.

  There was a click on the line.

  “Shit!”

  “The way this works,” Corcoran said, yanking off his ear phones, “is the landline company hands us off to the wireless provider, who tracks the call through the base station towers handling it. It’s called triangulation. These are three radio towers, you understand, a cell phone is a radio phone. The first tower judges a rough distance to the caller. Second tower narrows the choice to two points. Third tower pinpoints the location. Unfortunately, our guy got off before the third tower could zero in.”