The Frumious Bandersnatch

looked rather like a claw—he slashed out at the skirt of her tunic, opening a slit from her waist to her thigh, down the lefthand side of the garment.

Tamar backed away.

He came at her again, this time clawing at the garment’s bodice, leaving in tatters a goodly portion of the fabric over her right breast. The pulsing beat behind them, insistent, a rap riff without words, a rap stroll without talk, he began stalking her now, closing and retreating, swiping and withdrawing, each new slash of either claw ripping more and more of her tunic away. Viciously, he slashed at her again—and missed! Seizing her advantage, Tamar shoved out at him, knocking him more completely off balance. He fell to the floor, and lay there as if dead, his hands and arms covering his head and his face. Tamar circled him cautiously…the quarter note, the quarter- note rest…and drew a sharp breath, breasts heaving on the quarter note again, again.

Silence.

She moved closer to him.

Bent over him.

A sudden blinding flash of light transformed the copper mask to one of sheer crimson and the creature on the floor became a fully realized raging beast that sprang to its feet and attacked again without warning.

There was no question in this last minute or so of the dance that Tamar was struggling for her life. With each slash of the beast’s claws, as more and more of her garment was torn away to reveal the flesh beneath, she appeared to grow weaker and weaker until at last the beast seemed to become a dozen or more beasts, and the assault became not some college-boy adventure in the back seat of Daddy’s Ford but a realized gang-rape in the middle of a dark municipal park.

Tamar reached out and up for something.

Both hands closed around something.

She struggled from her knees to her feet.

The beast circled warily, ready to charge her again.

Her eyes turned fully upon him, a laser beam caught in a hot follow spot.

And she rapped out the words in exultant victory.

“One, two! One, two! And through and through

“The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

“He left it dead, and with its head

“He went galumphing back.”

The rap ended.

The beast in its enraged red mask lay dead on the floor at Tamar’s feet.

Now there was only the B-flat note again, that single repeated bass note, and Tamar fluidly moving the tune into the bluesy figure of its opening melody.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

“Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

“O Frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

“He chortled in his joy.”

Tamar’s eyes shone, her voice rang out. She was home, baby, she was home.

“ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

“Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

“All mimsy were the…”

“Don’t nobody fuckingmove! ”

Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat were coming down the wide mahogany staircase.

2

TALL AND LEANand with the easy stride of an athlete—which he most certainly wasn’t—Steve Carella came into the squadroom at twenty minutes to twelve that Saturday night, fresh as a daisy, and ready to go to work.

“It’s for you,” Andy Parker said, and handed him the phone.

Actually, it wasn’t for Carella.

It was for whichever detective happened to be on duty at the Eight-Seven at this hour of the night. But the Graveyard Shift was just beginning to meander in, and Parker was never too eager to catch a new case, so he considered himself officially relieved, and passed the call on to Carella, who was a bit bewildered by the precise timing.

“Carella,” he said into the phone.

“Hello, Carella,” a gruff, smoke-tarnished voice said. “This is Captain Jimson, Harbor Patrol.”

A jumper, Carella thought at once. Someone’s taken a dive off the Hamilton Bridge.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“I just had a call from one of my people out on the water, a Sergeant McIntosh, aboard one of our thirty-six footers. At around ten-thirty, he responded to a distress call from the skipper of a cruise yacht called theRiver Princess …are you with me, Coppola?”

“It’s Carella, sir.”

“Sorry. TheRiver Princess, some kind of party for a rock singer.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Two armed masked men boarded the boat around ten-fifteen and kidnapped her.”

Oh boy, Carella thought.

“You’re the local onshore precinct. Coast Guard has a DPB waiting to take you out there from Pier 39…”

“Yes, sir,” Carella said.

He didn’t know what a DPB was.

“…that’s on the river and Twelfth. How long will it take you to get crosstown?”

Carella glanced at the precinct wall map.

“Give me fifteen minutes, sir,” he said.

“The man you’re meeting is a lieutenant j.g. named Carlyle Apted.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, would you know who the singer…?”

But the captain had already hung up, and Cotton Hawes was just walking into the squadroom.

“Cotton,” he said, “don’t get comfortable. We’re up.”

COTTON HAWESfelt right at home on the Coast Guard’s little 38-foot DPB. This was the kind of boat he’d commanded duringhis little war. Everybody in America had his own little war, and everybody in that war did his own little thing. Carella had trudged through mud as a grunt in the infantry. Hawes had stood on the bridge of a boat not unlike this one, grinning into flying bullets, spray and spume. Everybody in America who’d ever fought or merely served in any of the country’s innumerable little wars would never forget his own particular war, although sometimes he would like to. But there would always be more little wars and even some big ones, and therefore many more opportunities to remember. Or perhaps forget.

Cotton Hawes stood on the bridge of the cutter alongside Lieutenant Carlyle Apted, a man in his late twenties, he guessed, who had been summoned to the scene the moment Sergeant McIntosh realized he was dealing with a kidnapping here.

“Guess he figured this would get Federal sooner or later,” Apted said.

Then what arewe ding here? Carella wondered. Let the Feebs have it now, and welcome to it.

“What you’re on now,” Apted told Hawes, perhaps suspecting that Carella didn’t really care to know, “is a Deployable Pursuit Boat, what we call a DPB. She’s a thirty-eight footer, designed to give the Coast Guard a new capability in the war against drugs.”

Another little war, Carella thought.

“What it is, you see, most of your illegal narcotics are smuggled in on these ‘go-fasts,’ we call ’em. They’re