The Frumious Bandersnatch

handled in your entire life as a cop?”

“One,” Carella answered. “In my entire life as a cop,” he added.

Loomis blinked at him.

“Well, at least you’re honest,” he said.

“At least that,” Carella agreed. “But you don’t have to worry. I’m sure the FBI will…”

“Whoever,” Loomis said. “All I want is Tamar back. Andfast !”

“AllI want,” a woman’s voice said, “is to get my tape on the air. Andfast !”

They all turned.

Carella recognized the woman at once. He had met her in the Grover Park Zoo this past Christmas when she was covering the “Lions Attack Woman” story. He had spoken to her on the phone only recently, soliciting a possible job at Channel Four for his wife, Teddy.

“Hello, Honey,” he said and extended his hand. “Nice to see you again.”

“I taped the whole thing, you know,” she said. “In case anyone’s interested.”

“Interested?”Carella said. “When can we…?”

“Back off,” Honey said. “Nobody sees it till Channel Four airs it.”

“Good!” Loomis said at once. “Let the whole damn city see what happened here tonight. Let the wholeworld see it! That maniac hitting her!”

“No one’s broadcasting any evidence tape until I clear it with my superiors,” Carella said.

“Evidence tape? What?”

“I’ll subpoena it, Honey.”

“Ashcroft notwithstanding, I thought this was still a free country.”

“A girl’s been kidnapped here, Miss,” Hawes told her.

She turned to look at him.

“This is my partner, Cotton Hawes,” Carella said. “Cotton, this is Honey Blair of Channel Four News.”

“I watch you all the time,” Hawes said, and nodded.

Honey looked him over. She was seeing a tall, wide-shouldered man with blue eyes and flaming red hair except for a white streak some two inches wide over his left temple.

Hawes was seeing a blonde some five-feet-seven-inches tall, wearing a blue leather mini and an ice-blue, long-sleeved blouse and calf-high navy leather boots and looking infinitely more beautiful than she ever had on television.

Honey Blair and Cotton Hawes had met.

“Red, tell your partner here…” Honey started.

“It’s Cotton,” he said softly, and looked into her eyes.

“Cotton, please tell your partner,” she said, returning his gaze, “that I’m sitting on the biggest scoop I’ve ever had in my life, a live tape of a kidnapping in progress, and if he doesn’t let me go in the next five minutes, Channel Four will bring suit against the city,” she said, and smiled sweetly.

“We’ll slap a court order on the tape,” Carella said.

“I don’t care what you do after we air it.”

“I’ll seize it as evidence right this minute.”

“My crew won’t let you have it.”

“Then I’ll arrest them as accessories to the crime of kidnapping.”

“Aswhat ? You’llwhat ?”

“For withholding vital evidence,” Hawes explained.

Honey gave him a curt, dismissive look.

“Am I still bleeding?” Jonah asked.

“Will you go put on some clothes?” Loomis said.

“How’d I look on camera?” Jonah asked Honey.

“Gorgeous, darling.”

Jonah beamed and went off toward the changing room. The natives were beginning to get extremely restless, milling and seething and whiffling all around the ballroom deck as McIntosh and his crew continued taking names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

“So whowill be handling this?” Loomis asked Carella. “You or the FBI?”

“For now, it’s us,” Carella said. “We caught it, we’ll finish up here, and then go do the paperwork. I’ll talk to my lieutenant as soon as we get back to the squadroom, see what he advises. I’m sure this’ll go to them, don’t worry. Meanwhile, we’ll want to contact the girl’s parents. Do you know where we can…?”

“Forget it,” Loomis said, “they’re divorced. Her father’s living in Mexico with his second wife, her mother’s in Europe someplace.”

“Are they people of means, would you know?”

“He used to sell vacuum cleaners, Christ knows what he’s doing now. Her mother’s a hairdresser. I’m sure neither of them is wealthy.”

“Then why would anyone want to kidnap her?” Hawes asked.

“Maybe because Tamar Valparaiso…”

Valparaiso, Carella thought.Not Valentino.

“…is under contract to Bison Records,” Loomis said, and nodded in sudden understanding. “Of course,” he said. “That’s got to be it. I’m CEO and sole shareholder in the company. They’re going to askme for the goddamn money.”

“Then you better sit by the phone,” Hawes suggested.

BY FOUR A.M., McIntosh and his HPU team had gathered all the vitals from the passengers, crew, and caterers, had passed the list on to the detectives from the Eight-Seven, and had gone tootling off on their thirty-six footer into an early morning mist. The Mobile Crime Unit had arrived some two hours earlier and were examining the primary access routes. Half a dozen male and female technicians were still dusting and vacuuming the salon stairway and the small dance floor where most of the action had taken place. Another three were doing the same thing outside on the loading platform and boarding ladder, concentrating especially on latent footprints. And yet another three were searching for evidence on the second level cocktail lounge, where it was presumed the perps had entered before moving down to the lower deck.

Disembarked and disoriented after their nocturnal ordeal, the weary voyagers dispersed in various directions, Captain Reeves—as befitted his role as commander—being the last to leave his vessel.

(“CaptainPeeved, ” Hawes called him behind his back but within earshot of Honey Blair, who, he noticed with satisfaction, acknowledged the sarcastic sobriquet with a reluctant smile of approval.)

The fog gathering around them, the detectives and the television people walked together in silence to where they’d parked in the AUTHORIZEDPERSONNELzone dockside. Carella had indeed seized the tape as evidence. Honey was indeed intending to bring suit against the city. Hawes did not think this was such a good start for a relationship.

Honey and her crew climbed into the Channel Four van; the two detectives got into their unmarked Chevy sedan. The streets were empty at this early hour of the morning. Carella and Hawes made it back to the squadroom in less than ten minutes.

There was still a lot of work to do before the shift ended.

“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVEhit her so hard,” Avery was telling Cal.

“Come on, it was only a slap,” Cal said.

“You knocked her down. That was more than a slap.”

“She was making a run for it.”

Tamar Valparaiso was still unconscious and draped alongside Kellie Morgan on the back seat of the Ford Explorer, her head on Kellie’s shoulder, her hands and feet bound, a blindfold over her eyes.

Kellie, to tell the truth, was sort of overwhelmed to be in such close proximity to someone she perceived to be a rock star even though she’d only seen her perform once at a club over in the next state, and that was at least