Ed Mcbain: The Frumious Bandersnatch

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.

IT WASeighty-forty-five on the squadroom clock.

“The address is 64 Beachside,” Carella told the detective in the South Beach Police Department. “There may be a kidnap victim there, so proceed with extreme caution.”

Out there in Russell County, they used more paramilitary rank designations than they did here in the big bad city. Detective-Sergeant James Cody asked if there was likely to be anyone armed and dangerous in that house.

Carella said, “Yes, that’s likely.”

“We’ll be careful then,” Cody said.

There was no need.

The only person in that house was a dead girl chained to a radiator.

Everyone else had driven off five minutes ago.

MISS COLEwas getting used to phone calls from Detective Stephen Louis Carella.

“Yes, Detective?” she said almost cheerfully.

“Miss Cole, I’m sorry to bother you again…”

“Oh, it’s no bother at all,” she said.

“On this list of calls made from those two addresses I gave you…”

“Yes, Detective?”

Almost cooing the words.

“There were almost daily calls listed to an unpublished number. Now, I know it’s telephone company policy not to reveal…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “This is a kidnapping. Just give me a minute.”

She came back in three.

“All those calls were made to the same party,” she said.

“And who was that, Miss Cole?”

“A man named Barney Loomis,” she said. “At 583 South Thompson. Is that helpful to you, Detective?”

“THEY HANDED USa beaut,” Detective-Sergeant James Cody told the County Medical Examiner.

It was five minutes past nine that Tuesday night and the house at 64 Beachside was swarming with men wearing blue windbreakers, the word “POLICE” lettered in yellow across their backs. The dead girl was in one of the bedrooms. Her wrist was still handcuffed to the radiator.

“Christ, look what they did to her,” the ME said.

Cody nodded. “Can’t find the key anyplace,” he said. “We were waiting for you to get here, see do you want us to saw through the cuffs or what. I figure they got out of here in one hell of a hurry. Left her behind all chained up that way.”

There were three spent cartridge cases on the floor, presumably spewed from the murder weapon.

“Shot her in the face at close range,” Cody said.

“Looks like,” the ME said.

The equivalent of South Beach’s Crime Scene Unit was busy dusting for prints and vacuuming for fibers and hair. One of the technicians glanced toward the dead girl and muttered, “Fuckin animals.”

In one of the other bedrooms, they found three masks. Saddam Hussein, Yasir Arafat, and George W. Bush.

“Three of the world’s great leaders,” Cody said dryly.

Just about then, Detectives Carella and Hawes were knocking on the door to Apartment 22C at 583 South Thompson.

AT NINE-FORTY-FIVEthat night, just as Air France’s flight #23 for Paris was about to take off, Ollie and Patricia came out of the movie theater into a fairly decent rain. He took off his jacket, and over her protests draped it over her shoulders.

“You’ll get all wet! ” she told him.

“Tut tut,” he said. “Would you care to go for some pizza?”

Patricia said she wasn’t hungry, but she’d be happy to join him.

Over his third slice, he told her he had learned a lot from that movie.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like it ain’t only about a ticking clock,” Ollie said.

CARELLA DID NOTlearn that Tamar Valparaiso was dead until he and Hawes got back to the squadroom with Barney Loomis in tow. It was now ten o’clock. Flight #23 for Charles de Gaulle airport had been in the air for ten minutes already, and Avery Hanes was waiting in British Air’s lounge to board flight #82 to London’s Heathrow. Sergeant Murchison behind the muster desk told them that Mr. Loomis’ attorney was waiting in the lieutenant’s office.

“Also, you got a call from a Detective Cody out at South Beach,” he said, and handed Carella a folded message.

Carella glanced at it briefly.

“Want to take Mr. Loomis to his lawyer?” he asked Hawes, and then went to his own desk and immediately called the Joint Task Force, grateful when they put him through to Endicott rather than Corcoran.

“Stan,” he said, “the girl is dead. I just heard from the South Beach Police, she was being held in a house out there. All three of the perps are gone. I’ve got full names for two of them, and a given name for the third. They made calls to Air Jamaica, British Air, Air France, American, Virgin Atlantic, and Delta. You’ve got better ties to Homeland Security than we do, maybe you can flash their names on the airport computers here and across the river. I’ve got Barney Loomis in custody, I think he was an accomplice…”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! Barney Loomis? ”

“One of the perps called his home number every day in March.”

“You’ve been busy,” Endicott said dryly.

“Can you cover the airports?”

“What are those names you’ve got?” Endicott said.

BARNEY LOOMIS’ attorney was a man named Roger Halliday. He’d been watching The West Wing on television when Loomis called from his apartment. Balding and a trifle portly, he’d come to the squadroom in a dark blue business suit and tie, looking more like a banker than any criminal lawyer the detectives knew. Actually, he was a skilled corporate attorney, and it never occurred to him that he might be out of his league here.

“Is my client being charged with something?” he asked.

“Not yet, Mr. Halliday,” Hawes said. “We’d just like to ask him some questions.”

“He doesn’t have to answer any questions, you know that.”

“Yes, we know that.”

“Has he been read his rights? The man’s under arrest here, have you yet…?”

“We read them to him in his apartment,” Carella said.

“Read them to him again now,” Halliday said.

Carella read Loomis his rights again.

Halliday looked bored.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked Loomis. “You don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want to. My advice is you ask them either to charge you or let you go. Even if they charge you, you don’t have to answer any questions. This is America, don’t forget.”

“Charge me with what?” Loomis asked. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Why don’t you just satisfy our curiosity, Mr. Loomis?” Carella said. “Answer a few questions for us, okay?”