The Frumious Bandersnatch

Even Jonah Wills, Tamar’s dance partner, was convinced the two guys who’d kidnapped her were black. Perhaps this was because they were both entirely dressed in black: black denims and black sweatshirts and black running shoes and black leather gloves. Their AK-47s were black, too, which might have contributed to the overall impression of black power. Then, too, Jonah himself was black—although this wasn’t an accurate description of his color, which was more closely related to the mahogany of the stair rail than the color of anthracite, say, or obsidian—and his presence on the dance floor, muscles rippling and gleaming, wearing a mask quite different from the Hussein and Arafat masks the intruders were wearing, might also have contributed to the consensus of opinion that there were nowthree black men molesting this poor blond white girl wearing hardly anything at all.

Or perhaps the words “Don’t nobody fucking move!” hadn’t sounded ofay enough to this largely white crowd, although in truth the black-to-white ratio here tonight was larger than you’d find at similar glittery events hither and yon throughout this fair city. Then again, this was the music industry here.

Even so, everybody wanted to go home.

Having inherited this cockamamie case from Parker—who was already nursing his third beer in a bar around the corner from his apartment, and chatting up a blonde he didn’t realize was a hooker—Carella and Hawes were reluctant to let anyone go just yet, not until they had a clearer picture of just what the hell had happened here. They were mindful of the fact that the FBI might be coming in behind them, and they didn’t want to hear the usual crap the Feebs laid down about “inefficient and insufficient investigation at the local level.” So they went through the facts—or the perceived facts—again and again until they were able to piece together a more or less scenario- by-committee, not unlike many of the movies one saw these days, where a hundred and twelve writers shared screen credit, except that it was by now almost two in the morning.

The party guests unanimously understood that the black guy in the mask that kept changing color and shape throughout the course of the song was supposed to be some kind of mythological beast, some kind ofBandersnatch, in fact, since that was the name of the song, though the mandid warn his son to beware the Jabberwock, my son, didn’t he? So maybe the beast was aJabberwock or even aJubjub bird. Whatever the damn thing was, it was something to beshunned, man, as subsequent events were all too soon to demonstrate.

Most of the guests agreed, too, that the police should have been called while Tamar’s partner was throwing her all over the dance floor and tearing her already flimsy nightgown, or whatever it was, to tattered ribbons, never a cop around when you needed one. Neo-realism was one thing, but here was this big muscular guy tossing around this little thing who couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds, if that, in an utterly convincing attempt to rape her. It didn’t help that she was blond and he was black, the stereotype reinforced. What he was doing to her on that dance floor was intolerable.

So it was with considerable relief that the audience, black and white alike, saw Tamar wrap her tiny defenseless little hands around thin air, saw her grasp whatever imaginary something she was grasping (a vorpal sword, as it turned out), and rise up against this viciousanimal, was what he was! who was determined to violate and despoil this flower of virgin maidenhood. “One two! One two!” they all agreed, “and through and through, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead,” they further agreed, “and with its head, he went galumphing back.”

The witnesses they questioned all seemed somewhat puzzled as towho exactly the “he” in the lyrics was since Tamar was very much a “she,” especially now that she was standing there tall and proud but bedraggled in her tattered underwear, or whatever it was, with half her admirable attributes hanging out for all and sundry to see. (This was a point that would spark considerable debate in the days to come, but Carella and Hawes didn’t yet know the kind of notoriety this case would inspire; for now, they were just two working stiffs doing their jobs, and trying to protect their asses from Federal flack down the line.) In any case, just as Tamar’s father, or whoever he was, her guardian perhaps, finished congratulating her on having slain the Jabberwock (instead of the Bandersnatch, by the way, after whom the song was named) and just as everything was back to normal again, with all the creatures gyring and gimbling and all the mome raths…

Just then, these two big black guys came barreling down the stairway with automatic weapons in their hands. One of them had his right hand on the mahogany banister, his left hand pointing the barrel of the gun up at the overhead. The other man had his weapon sort of cradled in his arms, his right finger curled around the trigger. Both of them came gliding down the steps almost as gracefully as the black rapist had glided through the song, one of them yelling, “Don’t nobody fucking move!,” which effectively stoppedTamar dead in her tracks—but not the words to the song.

Until that moment, many people in the audience hadn’t realized she was lip-synching. But now the words kept blaring from the speakers on either side of the dance floor…

“…borogroves

“And the mome raths outgrabe…”

…even though Tamar’s mouth wasn’t moving anymore. She was just standing stock still, staring wide-eyed at these two masked apparitions who came rushing toward her with seemingly malicious intent. She wondered for a moment—as in fact did the audience—if this wasn’t somehow part of the act. Had Barney Loomis hired a supplementary dance team to add additional spice to the evening? But just then Jonah, the beast lying dead at her feet, popped up from the floor in response to the growled “Don’t nobody fucking move!” Hunched in a dancer’s crouch, arms widespread for balance, still wearing the hideous crimson-colored mask he’d worn in the finale, he must have seemed enormously threatening to the two men who were now not two feet away from where Tamar still stood in dumb-founded shock.

The left-handed one (the witnesses all agreed that Saddam Hussein had carried the weapon in his left hand throughout) reacted at once, swinging the gun at Jonah’s head. Designed for the Soviet Army following World War II, the AK-47 was a sturdily built, well-designed gun with a pistol grip as well as a rifle stock. It was the stock that caught Jonah under the chin, sending him falling backward and onto the floor, where once again he lay prostrate as if dead—but this time a thin line of blood began seeping from under his mask.

The two men and Tamar stood frozen in surreal proximity, she in ivory-white tatters, they in inky black costumes and Middle Eastern masks, Mr. Hussein and Mr. Arafat. Nobody in the audience moved. The witnesses all agreed on this; there was only a stunned silence. The sole sound or motion was on the dance floor itself, where Tamar suddenly tried to break free of the little knot of three, only to be yanked back at once and slapped very hard by Hussein, the left-handed one. She reeled from the blow. The other one, the taller of the two…

The witnesses agreed that Yasir Arafat was about six-feet-two-inches tall, and his left-handed accomplice, Saddam Hussein, was some two or three inches shorter than that, a bit under six feet perhaps, both of them very muscularly built, which perhaps accounted for the first impression of a dance team coming down the steps…

The taller of the two suddenly clamped a wet rag over Tamar’s face, and she fell against him limply. He threw her over his shoulder. The left-handed one shouted, “You move, she dies!” and they backed away up the steps, their guns trained on the still-speechless audience.

That was about it.

BARNEY LOOMIS, CEOof Bison Records, was furious. Or perhaps frumious. Or perhaps both.

“That son of a bitchslapped her!” he shouted into Carella’s face. He smelled of seared mustard salmon, which was the entree he’d had for dinner. He also smelled of a men’s cologne named “Acrid” which a lot of men in the music industry favored because it had the silhouette of a Luger pistol on its label. “She’s a fragile person,” Loomis shouted, “a child practically! This is a child kidnapping, she’s a child, she just celebrated her twentieth birthday in January! I want herback here! That man was a maniac, you could see he was deranged, first he hit Jonah with the gun…”

“I think I’m still bleeding,” Jonah said.

He had taken off the monster mask, and it was plain to see he wasn’t still bleeding, but he kept exploring his jaw line tentatively, his eyes still wide in fright. Carella hoped he wasn’t going to faint.

“You’re not bleeding,” Loomis told him. “Go put on some clothes, go get dressed for Chrissake! How many kidnappings have you investigated this year?” he asked Carella.

“None,” Carella said. “This year? None.”

“How about last year? How about the past five, ten years? How many friggin kidnappings have you ever