Ford’s on it? Either way, you ought to run on down there, see where she was last night while the Valparaiso girl was being abducted.”
“Why? You think she was part of it?”
“I only know this is the car that was spotted at the marina. And it’s hers. So let’s see what she has to say.”
“Well, the way I look at it,” Willis said, “there are only two possibilities here. Either the car was stolen, in which case the lady thanks me for finding it, or else it was used in a kidnapping, in which case I knock on her door and the lady shoots me in the face.”
“Maybe you ought to petition for a No-Knock,” Kling said, half-seriously.
“What judge in his right mind would grant me one?”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?”
“Tell you what,” Willis said. “Why don’t
“I’m off duty,” Kling said, and hung up, and immediately called the Mobile Crime Unit.
“Al Sheehan,” a man’s voice said.
“Hey, Al,” Kling said, “this is Bert Kling at the Eight-Seven. We’re working a kidnapping that went down last night…”
“Hey, yeah,” Sheehan said. “I was one of the techs who swept the
“I’ll say. Al, we picked up a vehicle may have been involved, it’s a black Ford Explorer parked behind the One-Oh-Four in Majesta. Detective named Henry D’Amato’ll be there till midnight, he’s got the keys. You want to do your number on it, see if the bad guys left anything for us?”
“The One-Oh-Four, huh? That’s way the hell out in the sticks.”
“Half-hour ride,” Kling said.
“I’m in the middle of something here, I won’t be able to head out till maybe seven or so. That be all right?”
“As soon as possible, okay?” Kling said. “Let me give you a number where you can reach me.”
It was six-thirty when he got off the phone.
Across the room, Sharyn Cooke was just turning on Channel Four’s network news.
In his office, Barney Loomis and Steve Carella were about to watch the same broadcast.
THE THINGthat impressed Loomis most was her performance.
Forget the fact that she was lip-synching, forget the fact that she and the black dancer—Joshua, was it? Jonah?—missed a few steps while they were furiously reenacting the rape they’d executed so masterfully on the video. Even forget the fact that she seemed a bit nervous performing live in front of a scant hundred or so people, what would she do when they booked her into a goddamn
Forget all that.
What came over in this three, four minutes of tape—now being broadcast into God knew how many homes all over the country—was the sheer conviction of Tamar’s performance. There was a raw power to her voice, yes, but there was a sweetness, too, a poignant plea for innocence in a world gone suddenly brutal, the voice of a lark in a meadow swirling with hawks. Whatever else came over—her luminous beauty, her sexuality, her sensuality, her youthful exuberance, yes, all of those—it was her complete honesty that most impressed. And thrilled. And dazzled.
Long after her song was interrupted by the ugly reality of sudden violence, long after the two intruders carried her up those mahogany steps and out of the viewer’s immediate stunned proximity, her glow lingered like a shining truth. Tamar Valparaiso hadn’t been trying to sell anything but the purity of the moment. And in this moment, at six-forty-five on a Sunday night all across America, the verity she was selling all over again was “Bandersnatch.” There was no way that anyone watching this news report could ever doubt…
“Well, this is what I’ve done,” Hennesy said, coming in from the hallway. “I’ve got it set up so that…”
“Shhh,” Loomis warned.
Hennesy turned to watch the television screen.
On the screen, one of the masked men tossed Tamar over his shoulder.
The other one shouted, “You move, she dies!” and they backed away up the stairs and out of sight.
The tape ended.
The network news anchor came on again.
He could be seen visibly sighing.
“That was last night at ten-fifteen,” he said. “So far, there’s been no word from the men who abducted Tamar Valparaiso.”
He paused, looked meaningfully into the camera for just an instant, and then said, “In Moscow today…”
Loomis turned off the set.
“When they
“What’s a REMOB?” Loomis asked.
Carella didn’t know what it was, either.
“Stands for ‘remote observation,’ ” Hennesy said. “Telephone repairmen use it to check the ‘condition of the line,’ or so they say. I personally think they get their jollies eavesdropping on phone phucks. Anyway, I found some unused pairs in the cable here, and set up my relay. Whenever the switchboard puts anyone through to your phone, the relay gets activated, connecting your line to the caller’s. Carella here will have the option of just listening or automatically recording. At the same time, the Trap and Trace will be locating the caller’s number. So you’re in business. That’ll be twelve dollars and thirty-seven cents,” Hennesy said and grinned like a kid on Halloween night.
5
DETECTIVE AL SHEEHANcalled Kling at a quarter to eight that night. He reported that they’d gone out to the One-Oh-Four and thoroughly examined the recovered Ford Explorer. The car had been wiped clean.
“We’re dealing with professionals here,” he said. “Or else, guys who’ve seen a lot of movies.”
Kling thanked him and went back to watching a quartet of talking heads on one of the cable channels.
One of them was saying she felt the “Bandersnatch” tape would only inspire further violent crimes like rape and female abuse.
“Bullshit,” Sharyn Cooke announced.
She was in the small kitchen of the apartment she shared with Bert Kling when she wasn’t in his apartment over the bridge. Why they didn’t just move in together and save one of the rents was something they talked about every so often. As it was, their separate work schedules often dictated which apartment they used on any given night.
Sharyn Everard Cooke was the police department’s Deputy Chief Surgeon, the first black woman ever to be appointed to the job—though “black” was a misnomer in that her skin was the color of burnt almond. She wore her black hair in a modified Afro, which—together with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and eyes the color of loam—gave her the look of a proud Masai woman. Five-feet-nine-inches tall, she considered herself a trifle overweight at a hundred and thirty pounds. Bert Kling thought she looked just right. Bert Kling thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. Bert Kling loved her to death.
The only problem was where to sleep.
Sharyn’s apartment was at the very end of the Calm’s Point subway line, some forty minutes from Kling’s studio apartment across the river in Isola. From his apartment, it took him twenty minutes to get to work in the morning. From her apartment, it took him an hour and fifteen minutes. Sharyn still had her own private practice, but as a uniformed one-star chief, she was obliged to work fifteen to eighteen hours a week at the Chief Surgeon’s Office, which was located in Rankin Plaza in Majesta. Majesta was forty-five minutes by subway from Kling’s
