The Frumious Bandersnatch

7

THERE WERE MARCHERSoutside the Rio Building when Carella got there on Monday morning at eight o’clock. The marchers were carrying hand-lettered signs on wooden sticks.

Some of the signs read:ROCK RACIAL PROFILING!

Others read:TAMAR IS A RACIST!

Yet others read:WHY A BLACK RAPIST?

The marchers were chanting, “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”

Television cameras were rolling.

Carella was not surprised to see the Reverend Gabriel Foster at the head of the procession.

Six-feet-two-inches tall, with the wide shoulders and broad chest of the heavyweight fighter he once had been, his eyebrows still ridged with scar tissue, Foster at the age of forty-nine still looked as if he could knock your average contender on his ass in thirty seconds flat. According to police records, the reverend’s birth name was Gabriel Foster Jones. He’d changed it to Rhino Jones when he’d enjoyed his brief career as a boxer, and then settled on Gabriel Foster when he began preaching. Foster considered himself a civil rights activist. The police considered him a rabble rouser, an opportunistic self-promoter, and a race racketeer. His church, in fact, was listed in the files as a “sensitive location,” departmental code for anyplace where the uninvited presence of the police might cause a race riot.

Foster looked as if he might be promoting just such a commotion on this bright May morning.

“Good morning, Gabe,” Carella said.

“Ban Bander…” Foster said, and then cut himself off mid-sentence and opened his eyes wide when he saw Carella. He thrust out his hand, stepped away from the line of protestors, and grinned broadly. Carella actually believed the reverend was glad to see him. Shaking hands, Foster said, “Don’t tell me you’re on this kidnapping?”

“More or less,” Carella said, which was the truth.

“Did you see the video?” Foster asked him.

“I saw the taping they did last night,” Carella said. “Not the video itself, no.”

“It depicts the girl’s rapist as a black man.”

“Well, it depicts a black dancer portraying some kind of mythical beast…”

“Some kind of mythicalblack beast,” Foster said.

“The beast in the original poem isn’t black,” Carella said.

“That’s exactly my…”

“And the poem was written in England, back in the 1800’s.”

“So why…?”

“There isn’t even arapist in the poem. That’s what’s so fresh about the song. This girl takes a…”

“That’s exactly my point, Steve! Thereis a rapist now. And the rapist is black.”

“Come on, Gabe. The song takes a powerful standagainst rape! You can’t object to that.”

“I can most certainly object to the rapist being black.”

“It’s thedancer who’s black. Tamar Valparaiso hired a black dancer. Equal opportunity. Do you object…?”

“To portray a black rapist.”

“Gabe, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know the girl, but I’m willing to bet my last dollar she isn’t a racist.”

“I can smell one a hundred yards away,” Foster said.

“Maybe your nose is too sensitive,” Carella said. “I have to go upstairs, Gabe. You want my advice?”

“No.”

“Okay, see you later then.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Pack up and go home. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of this one. It’ll come back to haunt you.”

“Ah, but I’m on the right side of it, Steve. The rapist on that video is vicious and monstrous and black. That’s racist. And that’s good enough for me.”

“I have to go,” Carella said.

“Good seeing you again,” Foster said, and nodded briefly, and stepped back into the line of marchers. “Ban Bandersnatch!” he shouted. “Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch! Ban Bandersnatch!”

The black security guard who took Carella’s name and phoned it upstairs glanced through the tall glass windows fronting the street, and asked, “What’sthat all about?”

“Beats me,” Carella said, and signed his name, and waited for clearance. When it came, he took the elevator up to the twenty-third floor, and went through the still-empty reception area directly to Barney Loomis’ office at the end of the hall. The Squad was already there. Loomis was not.

“Steve, ah,” Corcoran said, and immediately looked at his watch as if to imply that Carella was late, which he wasn’t. “Few people you should meet who weren’t here yesterday,” he said, and introduced a handful of FBI agents and detectives whose names Carella forgot the moment he shook hands with them.

The office itself had undergone something of a transformation since late last night. There was now new equipment everywhere Carella looked. In fact, someone he guessed was an FBI technician was busily testing an electronic device set up on a long folding table across the room.

“Let me tell you what we’ve done here,” Endicott said.

He looked wide awake and alert, wearing this morning a dark gray suit that seemed better tailored than the blue one he’d worn yesterday. Corcoran, in contrast, was wearing brown slacks and a brown V-necked sweater over a plaid sports shirt. Carella himself had worn a suit today. He suddenly felt overdressed for a city detective.

“First off, we’ve installed a direct line to your office. You pick up that green phone there,” Endicott said, pointing, “and you’ve got the squadroom at the Eight-Seven. How’s that for service?”

Carella was wondering How come?

“We figured we’d let you guys do what you do best, am I right, Charles?” Endicott said. “The legwork, the nuts and bolts, the nitty gritty. We get anything to chase, you pick up that green phone, your boys are on it in a minute. Will that work for you?”

“Sure,” Carella said. “Thanks.”

“Regarding all this other stuff,” he said, “we noticed that your telephone guy set up a simple Tap and Tape, with a jack for a single listener, but we’ll be more people working on this, so we’ve installed equipment that’ll accommodate three more sets of ear phones, you can understand why that would be necessary,” Endicott said, and smiled hopefully, as if seeking Carella’s approval.

“More the merrier,” Carella said.

“The other thing…the court orders you got yesterday were for the primary landline carriers…AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, MCI…but there are at least half a dozen other service providers so we’ve taken the liberty of obtaining court orders for those as well, assuming our boy will be calling from landline equipment—which may not be the case.”

“This is all so much easier since 9/11,” Corcoran said.

“Ohso much,” Endicott agreed. “Though I have to tell you the truth, I’ve never known a judge to turn down a federal request for a wiretap.”

“Used to be probable cause, probable cause,” Corcoran said, and rolled his eyes.

He was referring to the way it customarily worked. Before a judge could approve an application for electronic surveillance and issue a court order, he had to determine that: