Ed Mcbain - The Frumious Bandersnatch

“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.”

“Avery what? ” 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 time trawling, 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.

THE CELL PHONEin Barney Loomis’ Lincoln Town car rang at precisely seven-fifteenP.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 GONNAnot 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 SUPERINTENDENTof 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 an i.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 LOOMISpulled 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?”